Wanted, an English Girl

by Moore, Dorothea

  “What? Mademoiselle de Monti going?” Gill cried, forgetting everything in sheer dismay.

  “Going? No, she has already gone,” the Prince corrected, chuckling.

  “What for? I mean, would you tell me why she has gone away—sir?” Gill asked dully.

  Only such a little while ago—as she dressed for dinner—Mademoiselle de Monti had been warning her—Gill—of mysterious danger; now the danger had come many steps nearer, for Gabrielle de Monti had gone.

  “A plotter and confoundedly impertinent; it was quite time she went,” the Prince assured Gill, with a communicativeness which would have told her that he had already drunk too much if she had been a little more experienced. “She is at this moment on her way to the frontier, escorted by two soldiers. Quick work, eh? And I advise you to take care, Miss Gillian Courtney, or you may find yourself following her example, which would be a pity for the Grand-Duchess, wouldn’t it?”

  “You’re not sending all her own people away, are you?” Gill asked desperately. “You wouldn’t be so cruel to her?”

  “Not at all,” the Prince said. “On the contrary, I purpose to retain all those among her attendants who are not discovered plotting against the German Government—even you, Fräulein Gillian—an English girl.”

  Gill was obliged to say, thank you; she was brought so very low by her dread of separation from Carina.

  CHAPTER XXII

  Gillian Keeps Her Promise

  “Sit down—we want to talk to you,” directed the Prince. And Gill sat down, with outward meekness, but inward rebellion.

  “Captain Cartaret of England is, the Baron assures me, a friend of yours,” Waldemar went on, still in the same rather jocular tone.

  “I knew him when he was here,” Gill said, wondering what it was that they were wanting to know, and whether harm could possibly come of a simple everyday answer like that.

  “You have heard, of course, that he is wounded?” the Baron interposed at this point, and Gillian forgot to wonder why they should take the trouble to tell her that fact, in her anxiety.

  “No? Oh, do tell me! Is he badly hurt? Is it in the papers?” She tumbled her questions out breathlessly.

  The Baron, with a quick sidelong glance at the Prince, took out an English newspaper from his pocket, and unfolded it.

  Gill’s heart warmed to the familiar-looking sheets with their clear printing. “It will perhaps interest you to see for yourself,” the Baron said, politely, spreading out the newspaper before her.

  Gillian read with feverish interest that among the wounded in the Roll of Honour was 2nd Lieutenant R. Cheshire, and Captain R. A. Cartaret. Lieutenant Cheshire, who was seriously wounded, it was mentioned later, owed his life to Captain Cartaret, who had gone back for him when he fell in a trench which was being stormed by the Germans, and carried him in safely, under a heavy fire.

  Gill felt ridiculously inclined to “behave like an idiot,” as she put it to herself, as she read that paragraph; how utterly splendid people were! Could she possibly borrow the paper for Carina? She would want to know about them both—Rupert-George and Dick, poor Dick, who was seriously wounded. Gill wondered if that meant he was in danger; Dick, who had remembered he was born an Englishman, directly there was war, and rushed off to give himself to England, with a dislocation only just reduced. There was no mention made of Captain Cartaret’s wound, except that he was in the Roll of Honour. Gill hoped that meant he at least was not badly hurt.

  She looked up from the paper and spoke as cheerfully as she could manage. There was not much that she could do for England here, but at least she owed it to her country that Germans should not hear an English voice tremble because Englishmen were hurt; fighting for England.

  “May I show this to her Grand-ducal Highness? She would be interested to hear of Mr. Cheshire and of Captain Cartaret.”

  “Assuredly. She has not then heard that Cartaret was hit?” asked the Baron. “Nor you, either, Fräulein Gillian?”

  “No.” Gill was quite innocent. “I haven’t heard anything of him since he left Chardille after …”

  She pulled up, remembering Prince Waldemar’s covert threat. She must try not to make him unnecessarily annoyed with her, if she did not want to share the fate of Mademoiselle de Monti.

  She had meant to say “After the duel with Captain von Posen,” but, as Dick had remarked, that was “a blow for the haughty Prussian,” and it seemed wiser to leave her sentence unfinished.

  “Have you done with me now, sir?” she asked, anxious to escape as soon as possible from company in which it was so fatally easy to say the wrong thing.

  The Prince was beginning to say something, what, she did not catch, when the Baron interrupted him, with quite extraordinary lack of ceremony.

  “Your Imperial Highness would not wish to detain the young lady, when she is naturally all eagerness to communicate her news to the Grand-Duchess.”

  He spoke with a good deal more emphasis than was usual in his level tones, and the Prince, after staring at him as though puzzled for a moment, gave vent to a sudden explosion of laughter, in the midst of which he graciously intimated to Gillian that she was at liberty to rejoin the Grand-Duchess.

  Gill bowed her head to the Prince and walked out, too entirely thankful to escape to notice particularly the amazing amount of interest that was displayed over the question of communication between the Grand-ducal Palace and Rupert-George.

  When she was out in the hall again she hesitated for a moment. She did not want to blurt her news out before everybody in the drawing-room, as the Baron had apparently expected her to do. It was news that must matter to Carina very much—Dick, her old friend and playfellow, and Rupert-George. …

  How soon would Carina give the signal of dismissal and come to bed, she wondered? Dinner had been very late and then Gill had been upstairs for some time writing the letter to Dick’s mother—the letter which must now be finished in a very different strain—and then had come the interview with the Prince.

  Time must be getting on, but there was no clock in the great hall. Gill ran upstairs to the first landing, meaning to look at the French clock in Carina’s bedroom before making her decision.

  The door of the Grand-Duchess’s bedroom was open and the room lit brilliantly. Gill walked straight in, but forgot the reason which had brought her there the moment that she set foot on the threshold. For a stranger was standing by Carina’s dressing-table; a rather solid stranger, with a good deal of fair hair elaborately arranged above a pinkish face which was almost entirely devoid of expression.

  Gill spoke at once, in a fizzle of indignation at any German (the lady’s nationality was patent) daring to intrude in Carina’s rooms.

  “Excuse me, but these are the private apartments of Her Grand-ducal Highness. I think you must have mistaken your way.”

  The German lady turned and looked at Gill, and Gill saw that her eyelashes were as light as her hair, and that she had a trick of blinking her round eyes beneath them.

  “Ah, the Engleesh mees!” she said, without interest, and then added in a matter-of-fact tone, which was horribly convincing: “I am Fräulein von Dimme, appointed to the post left vacant by Mademoiselle de Monti, since the discovery of the anti-German plot.”

  Gill was speechless.

  *

  Presently she was in her own room, high up in the Palace, lying in bed staring out into the darkness. She had not seen Carina alone; that horrible Fräulein von Dimme had been there all the time, expressionless, but determined.

  Gill had heard from Mademoiselle Pipignon that Carina had received the news of Mademoiselle de Monti’s banishment with indignant incredulity at first, and then very quietly. The Baron had brought her the news, suavely regretting the necessity, and hinting mysteriously at the ramification of a very serious plot, which involved a large part of her Grand-ducal Highness’s household; but which the Prince was anxious to hush up and overlook as far as possible in his consideration for Her Grand-ducal
highness.

  “Which of my household is paid to lie about the rest,” the Grand-Duchess had asked, with her head held up, and then she had obeyed Monsieur Dellotte’s entreating glance and said nothing more.

  Fräulein von Dimme was established as a maid of honour without remonstrance on her part: the only sign she gave of feeling the situation was in a message sent to the Prince, that she was retiring early, and could not therefore have the pleasure of seeing him again this evening.

  There had been something worse for the poor young ruler of Insterburg to bear before the evening was over. She loved Gabrielle de Monti, but she leant on Pipchen, and Mademoiselle Pipignon was ill—quite seriously ill, the court doctor, sent for in haste, appeared to think. She had looked desperately tired all the evening, though without losing an atom of her wooden uprightness, but the news of Mademoiselle de Monti’s dismissal had turned her very white, and she had only just reached Carina’s bedroom when she fainted, a weakness the possibility of which she had always pooh-poohed, except in the case of the feeble-minded.

  The doctor spoke of severe over-strain followed by shock; she was put to bed and a nurse sent for. Through all her very real anxiety for dear old Pipchen, Gill could not help a faint inward giggle at the thought of her fury when she found herself helplessly in the hands of a nurse.

  There had been no chance of talking to Carina, and Gillian had gone to bed in despair at last, to lie awake and think and think, staring out there blankly, miserably, into the darkness.

  She had made no attempt to finish her letter to the Comtesse Vandercédon; it did not seem possible to go on writing about ordinary things when Gabrielle had been banished and Mademoiselle Pipignon was ill and Germans were everywhere. (A German maid had come to unhook her evening frock to-night in Stephanie’s place.) She just lay awake and thought, about all kinds of things—among others that interview with Prince Waldemar, when he had seemed to want to know more about Captain Cartaret and Gill’s knowledge of his movements than the Baron wished him to ask. Gill could not think why the Prince should be anxious to find out whether or no such an unimportant person should have heard from Captain Cartaret; then suddenly it came to her, as she remembered a night, her first in Chardille, when she had heard one sentence through the cupboard, a question as to the relations between the Grand-Duchess and “that damned meddler Cartaret.” Prince Waldemar was afraid that the Grand-Duchess and Rupert-George might care for each other, and that was why he was so anxious to know whether there was any communication between them, either directly, or through Gill. It struck the girl that she had been rather stupid not to see this sooner; only perhaps the fact that she had not seen made it all the easier to live up to the part which Mademoiselle de Monti had pressed upon her, the shy, stupid schoolgirl, incapable of getting seriously in the way of the Prussian Prince.

  Gillian had got so far when a clock somewhere from below struck twelve, and was taken up before it had finished by the many clocks of the Palace, and by the midnight “chime” from the Cathedral. The “chime” had been given long ago during the Thirty Years’ War in pursuance of a vow made by an Insterburger noble in gratitude for the relieving of the town at midnight, that all who waked and watched in Chardille at that hour should recollect that God did not slumber.

  Gill knew the wording of the old carillon:

  When all is dark,

  And slumber deep

  Doth wrap the world,

  God doth not sleep,

  and had sometimes thought, in the comfortable detached way that one thinks when trouble and danger seem a long way off from oneself or those who are very near and dear, that the words must be a comfort to people who did not go to sleep like herself within a few minutes of the time that their heads had touched the pillow.

  Now, as she lay and listened, she knew that she badly wanted the assurance of God’s watchfulness, for she was dreadfully, horribly afraid for Carina. And then she knew that she was so afraid that she must get up and go to her Grand-Duchess at once.

  Of course Pipchen would say it was not etiquette, if she were able to say anything at all, poor Pipchen! but Gill did not care just then. She need not let Carina know she was afraid for her; the news of Dick and Captain Cartaret was reason sufficient for her midnight visit.

  Gill got up and put on the long pale blue dressing-gown with which she had replaced that left behind at the Baron’s house. Warm-padded pale blue slippers followed, and she slipped downstairs, feeling her way in place of turning on the electric light for fear somebody should catch the unusual glow and come out to see who was walking about the Palace in a dressing-gown at this hour of the night.

  She slept two floors above the Grand-Duchess; as she came down the second flight of stairs she heard unmistakable sounds of movement coming from Carina’s room. Only they were unusual sounds to come from it—heavy, clumsy movements that were puzzling.

  They were only puzzling, not frightening; if it were not that everything is frightening when Fear is already in possession. Gillian came down that last flight of stairs at a record pace, considering the darkness.

  Carina’s room was dark too, but her door was open, and somebody was in the room with her, stumbling across it, falling into chairs, upsetting a little knickknack table that barred his path, and swearing at the misadventure. Gill knew the voice that swore, though she had not heard it hitherto so thick and angry. Only what was Prince Waldemar doing there?

  Gill was in Carina’s room in two seconds from the moment that she realised what the sounds were. Prince Waldemar seemed trying to find the electric light, for he was fumbling with his hands against the wall, laughing and talking, as he did so, in a horrible drunken way.

  “Confound the dark! Didn’t I say I wouldn’t have it? Plenty of light, that’s my tip—plenty of light to see how devilish handsome little Cousin Carina looks in her tantrums. … But I’m going to kiss her good night if all the chairs and tables and damned English officers get in my way—”

  Gill saw Carina now. She was standing up, rigid in her long white dressing-gown against the curtains of her bed. A drunken brute was between her and the door; she just stood still. Through all the noise made by the Prince, Gill could hear her quick outraged breathing.

  To call for help was a last resort if all else failed, but he had nearly reached the electric switch nearest the door. His last words had however given Gill an idea—a desperate idea.

  She caught boldly at his sleeve. “If Your Imperial Highness will come with me I have something important to tell you about—Captain Cartaret.”

  She spoke the last words with a good deal of emphasis, and the Prince, fuddled though he was with drink, evidently took them in. He turned to her, barging straight into an armchair as he moved, and almost destroying his extremely shaky balance.

  “Here, what is it? So the Baron, sly old fox! was right, and the English girl does know. … Turn on the light, someone. …”

  “This way—the switch is over here,” Gill told him with decision, though she was trembling violently. She got him to the door and out on to the landing, where she turned on the light in time to discover Captain von Posen coming up the stairs; in search presumably of his royal master, but not himself in a very much soberer condition than the Prince.

  Gillian did not wait to comment on the situation. She released the Prince’s sleeve and walked back with dignity into Carina’s room, shutting and locking the door after her.

  Then Carina gave a little shivering sigh, and relaxed her strained rigidity. “Gillian!” she called.

  Gill turned up the light, and came across to her. She noticed that as she came near the Grand-Duchess laid down a little jewelled dagger, beautifully chased and very sharp, which she must have caught up from the table near.

  Carina was shivering violently now that the ordeal was over. Gillian wrapped her white velvet dressing-gown more closely around her, and then turned to stir the fire into a blaze.

  But Carina clung to her like a frightened child. “Don’t
leave me, Gillian!”

  Gillian got both arms tightly round her. “Of course I shan’t ever again!” she asseverated. “Would you mind if I slept on the sofa here? Though, of course, nothing could possibly happen again—that Prussian pig was too disgustingly drunk to know his way about—that was all—still I would rather stay.”

  “Yes, stay, Gill, please; if it won’t be too uncomfortable for you,” Carina said. “Don’t go upstairs for pillows and blankets; we will make up your bed with some of mine.”

  She spoke with a tremendous effort after calmness, and had got her voice into order as she put the question, “What did you say to Prince Waldemar about … Captain Cartaret, Gill, dear?”

  “Nothing really,” Gill explained. “Only something to get the beast out with me. He’s got a kind of feeling that he doesn’t want Captain Cartaret round, taking care of you; but I wish he were here to crumple up Waldemar, as he did in the opera-house.”

  “Oh, so do I!” Carina said.

  *

  When the winter’s morning came up grey and dismal, and Gill had to bundle off her sofa and up to her own little room before the maids should discover where she had spent the night and wonder, she sat down and enclosed, in a hastily-concluded letter to Dick’s mother, a letter to Captain Cartaret which she begged might be forwarded at once. It was quite a short one, and only said:

  “You remember what you made me promise outside Wingeld’s? Well, she wants help badly now.—Gillian.”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Ways that are Dark

  Five days and nights had gone by since Gillian wrote to Rupert-George; five dragging, endless days and nights, when Fear seemed to lie in wait, as it were, round every corner.

  Gillian hardly ever left Carina in those days, and a little bed was made up for her in the Grand-Duchess’s room, where she slept, or woke to a nightmare terror that Prince Waldemar was there, stumbling, drunk and horrible, among the furniture as he had done on that ghastly night when in desperation she had sent for Carina’s champion.