Mademoiselle Pipignon was no better; it was a thorough nervous breakdown, the doctor said, and she would not be up and about again for weeks. Another German lady was introduced into the Palace in her place to keep company with that Fräulein von Dimme who was in Mademoiselle de Monti’s.
One or the other seemed to be in every room where one tried to take refuge from them, and Gill did not know which was the more hateful—Fräulein von Dimme, with her pink expressionless face, or the Baroness von Adelströmer, who never allowed anybody to forget her condescension in being there at all.
The anti-German plot, which the Baron von Traume purported to have discovered hatching among the Palace staff, had meant that half the servants were replaced by Germans: everywhere that one looked, it seemed to Gill, one saw the closely-shaved head, with pink skin showing, of a German footman, or the portly form and profuse plaits of a German maid.
And it all had to be borne in silence—that drawing of the net closer and closer around Carina.
It was that horrible sensation of closing in that frightened Gill, and she knew that for all Carina’s splendid courage it was frightening her too.
Chardille was full of Germans, Insterburg was full of Germans; they were like locusts, as fast as one cloud crossed the Belgian Frontier another one was settling down over the poor little Grand-Duchy.
Now they were in the Palace itself, with Prince Waldemar at their head. And Waldemar had wanted Mademoiselle de Monti gone, and she was found “conspiring”; he had wanted Germans about Carina, and her faithful servants were implicated in the plot. What he wanted came to pass, and he wanted to marry Carina.
Carina had never spoken of the possibility to Gillian yet; she only held the Prince quietly and persistently at arm’s length; but there was a hunted look in her eyes at times, which Gill could not bear to see.
It was the evening of the fifth day since Gill wrote, a wet blusterous evening, with a hungry wind howling about the walls of the old castle like a soul in pain.
The Grand-Duchess was being dressed by one of the maids, with Fräulein von Dimme in attendance. Gillian was standing by the dressing-table, all ready in her white evening frock. She had Carina’s dressing-case open and was supposed to be selecting the jewels for this evening’s wear, but her thoughts were really leagues away from pendants and bracelets, and she could not even have told off-hand what dress Carina was wearing.
Prince Waldemar had been more than usually offensive to-day, and she was beginning to see a hundred reasons why it should be impossible for Rupert-George to come to Carina’s help; or, if he did come, to do anything. The fact that he was wounded might so easily make him unable to travel for ages yet, and how in the world was he to get through Belgium, and if he came …? Gillian was young for her age in many ways, and she had obeyed a blind instinct of trust when she appealed to the man who had stood by Carina in the opera-house and made an enemy of Waldemar for her sake. Real life was not a story-book, as she knew by now, and yet somehow she felt sure that Rupert-George could help. Mademoiselle de Monti had looked queerly at her in that last talk that they had had together, and said, “So you have found out something?” not at all as though she considered Gill to be a silly mistaken child. … If Gill had only realised then what Prince Waldemar would do she would have consulted Mademoiselle de Monti in the matter. She certainly knew Rupert-George rather well, Gill was sure of that, when she remembered that evening at Estinotti’s.
It was possible that Rupert-George might know one of those suitable princes of whom Dick had spoken; Gill thought of the look that she had seen on his handsome face in the opera-house, and wondered whether it would be a very cruel thing to ask him about that Prince Alexander who shot big game and hated publicity and was considered suitable by Monsieur Dellotte. Of one thing Gill felt sure, Rupert-George would serve the Grand-Duchess loyally if he had the chance, even to the bringing of that suitable prince to her rescue when he really loved her hopelessly himself. Only when would he come? When could he come?
“Have you the jewellery, Miss Courtney, or is it that you dream?” inquired the level placid voice of Fräulein von Dimme, and Gill awoke with a start to a sense of her neglected duties.
“Will you wear the pearls to-night, Ma’am, or the emerald set?” she asked.
“The pearls, I think,” Carina answered a little wearily, and Gill had lifted the tray to look into the case when Fräulein von Dimme’s voice again broke in, if anything so placid could be said to break.
“Miss Courtney forgets. The pearls are in a separate case behind locked doors.”
Gillian, as she woke to a sense of her own stupidity and hastened to look for the pearls in their proper place, wondered a little at the extraordinary knowledge displayed by Fräulein von Dimme over the whereabouts of the Grand-Duchess’ jewels. It was no part of her duties to get out the ornaments, nor to put them away, and the historic pearls had not been worn by Carina since the night of Waldemar’s return, and yet she was able to tell Gillian where to find them without taking one instant for thought.
The oddness of it seemed to strike Carina too, for she turned to look at her new maid of honour, with a steady, considering look for a moment, before asking Gillian for the Scandinavian tiara. But she made no comment. Carina was very quiet in these days, in curious contrast to the bright, impulsive girl who had over-ridden Pipchen’s scruples and insisted upon giving the English schoolgirl tea in her own rooms three months ago.
She and Gillian went downstairs together then, for it was already eight o’clock, Fräulein von Dimme gliding down in her soft slippers a decorous three steps behind. Prince Waldemar was standing in the hall, but still booted, spurred and helmeted, and in close confabulation with Captain Fritz von Posen. He stopped talking as he heard Carina on the stairs, and came to meet her.
“You’re ready, and I’m not, little Cousin. Devilish careless, but Fritz, here, kept me, with news of a rascally spy Lieutenant Stutgarten has laid hands on. English, they think,” with a glance at Gillian.
“How do you know that the man is a spy, Cousin Waldemar?” Carina asked him quickly. “Please remember that Insterburg is a neutral state.”
Prince Waldemar laughed, the rather high-pitched laugh that always maddened Gillian.
“Bless your innocence, my dear! When a fellow who isn’t a German takes the trouble to come along in a train of wounded got up as a German Red-Cross Orderly, you begin to smell a rat. However, we can easily find out all we want to know about him.”
“You won’t ill-use him, Cousin?”
“Oh, we’re only going to talk—with the buckle end of a belt possibly,” the Prince assured her. “I mean to know the fellow’s nationality and what he’s doing here, that’s all; so if you’ll be so charming as to put dinner back half an hour …”
The cool request was made in the arrogant tone of the typical Prussian, serenely unconscious that anything can be of consequence except his own convenience.
Gill fancied that the tone would have roused Carina in any case, even if no possibly English prisoner were in question. She spoke with great decision.
“I am afraid what you ask is impossible, Cousin Waldemar. May I beg that you will make it convenient to dine with me now?”
Gill thought that the Prince was considerably astonished, but Carina did not look an easy person to browbeat, as she stood upon the lowest step of the grand staircase—her eyes flashing, her graceful figure drawn up to its full height.
“Of course, if you … make a point …” he stammered.
“Shall I go and have a look at the fellow, and find out what he is, sir?” Von Posen enquired, with a grin, but was snubbed into silence by a decided:
“Mind your own business! I’ll deal with him. Tell them to shut him up somewhere till I’ve dined with her Grand-ducal Highness.”
Von Posen saluted, and withdrew, looking sulky, and Prince Waldemar accompanied Carina to the dining-room, elaborately apologising for the Service uniform which “business afterwards
” made needful.
“Cousin Waldemar,” she said suddenly, “I do beg of you to leave this man alone.”
“Leave a spy alone? Possibly, also, a spy who is English?”
“Even if he is a spy he could do you no harm now. Even if he is English—”
Gill saw Prince Waldemar turn his light, rather prominent eyes full upon Carina’s eager, pleading face.
“Any special reason why an Englishman should be favoured, my dear cousin?” he asked blandly, and Gill knew that he was thinking of Captain Cartaret. His glance went from Carina to Gill herself. Gill found herself wondering how much he remembered of what she had said in desperation the night when he was so drunk.
Carina flushed. “Nationality has, of course, nothing to do with it. You are perfectly aware that I object strongly to the ill-treatment of any prisoner here in Chardille.”
The Prince’s eyes were still suspicious. He did not seem to believe that her appeal could possibly be dictated by motives of humanity alone.
Dinner dragged on its weary length, as usual. Waldemar drank a good deal—as usual. Gill could not eat; she was thinking about the prisoner. Was he an Englishman? If so, it was useless to look for any mercy at the thick, scented hands of Prince Waldemar. It seemed an interminable time before Carina gave the signal for the ladies to leave. As her cousin rose to his feet to let her pass she looked him straight in the face:
“Cousin, will you be so good as to come to me in the Round Library before you go out to examine the prisoner?”
Waldemar bowed with exaggerated deference. “Your wishes are my commands.”
Gill brought up the rear of the ladies, as befitted her youth. As she was passing through the door she felt a hand upon her shoulder, and Prince Waldemar pulled her back into the room, shutting the door upon Fräulein von Dimme.
“Here, one word with you, young lady!”
Gill faced him squarely. She did not anticipate any question that would be specially difficult to answer. What he said, therefore, came with all the more shock.
“When do you expect that damned meddler Cartaret, the Englishman?”
Gill felt herself grow scarlet. A person in a book would have met the question with an unmoved face, she knew, and have made it impossible for the Prince to tell anything from her expression; but then, in a book people are never taken entirely at a disadvantage—so entirely that their mind feels an absolute blank, and there seems nothing left in all the world to say.
The Prince laughed, a horrid satisfied laugh. “My compliments to you, Fräulein Gillian. I am glad I took the Baron’s advice and didn’t pack you off with that De Monti woman. You are really quite convenient, upon my word!”
“I don’t know what Your Imperial Highness can mean,” Gill said desperately, but she knew that she said it too late.
“Don’t you?” laughed the Prince. “Well, come along with me, and let’s see if Carina manages to understand a little more than you do.”
Gill went with him; she had no choice, for his heavy hand was on her shoulder. But her soul was in a state of furious rebellion; how much had he found out, and what would his knowledge mean to the Grand-Duchess and to Rupert-George? She thought of his brutal tone about the spy who might turn out to be an Englishman, and felt positively ill. And they were in the Round Library before she could think of anything to say or do.
The Grand-Duchess was standing by the high mantelpiece, looking very little and alone in the great gloomy room. She lifted her head as the Prince came in, and Gill saw that her face was as white as her dress.
“Cousin,” she said, “do you still propose to ill-treat a helpless prisoner, in defiance of my expressed desire?”
“That depends entirely upon how fast and truthfully he answers my questions,” the Prince told her brutally. “If he tells me everything I want to know, he may save his skin; but I can assure you that he will have to be uncommonly prompt about it if he is an Englishman.”
“Then, if no consideration is to be paid to my appeal, I shall make it known to the Powers that I am suffering under German tyranny, and …”
Waldemar came close to her. “Will you? I think not.”
The expression which Gillian could only describe by the old childish one of “cock-a-hoop” was on his fatuous face. She knew instinctively he felt quite certain that he held the winning cards.
“I hardly think you will do that, my dear—” He stooped his head and whispered something which Gill did not catch. A deep flush stained the whiteness of Carina’s face.
The Prince laughed coarsely. “So the wedding had better synchronise with the capture of Calais, little cousin. Something rather appropriate about that, as Calais isn’t exactly eager to be wooed and won, but will be all the same.”
There was a deferential knocking at the door, and Von Posen answered the prompt “Enter!” with which Prince Waldemar insulted the Grand-Duchess in her own palace.
“Are you ready, sir? The spy is in the Palace guardroom.”
“I’ll come!” Waldemar said. He bowed swaggeringly to Carina, and put his hand under Gill’s chin as he passed her, turning her face towards him. “So you know nothing of the movements of Cartaret the Englishman?” he jeered. “The English education—one admires its absolute futility. I can read you as one reads a book, Miss Gillian Courtney, and for that convenient stupidity I am almost inclined to pardon you all the trouble that you managed to give the day we entered Insterburg.”
He released her and went out, followed by Von Posen.
Gillian turned dumbly to Carina, who was standing rigid there beside the mantelpiece until the door had closed behind Von Posen. The net was very closely woven round her now, and what had the Prince dared to whisper?
She looked at the English girl with great piteous eyes.
“Gillian, I will not be forced to marry that … that monster. I will die sooner.” Her voice broke. “But we are all alone, you and I—and who knows how much longer I shall have you?”
Gillian put both arms tightly round her. “I don’t know what you’ll say to me”—she rushed the words out, in sheer desperation—“but I’ve written to Captain Cartaret and asked him to come here.”
It was out now, for good or evil.
“You wrote to him?” Carina said, in a low startled voice. “You asked him to come? You told him what I said to you the other night. Gill—!”
For a whole dreadful minute Gill thought that Carina was furiously angry with her. But she stood sturdily to what she had done; after all she had meant to do it for the best.
“He made me promise to write to him if ever you were in trouble,” she said. “I hope it wasn’t wrong, but I did it five days ago, after that awful night when the Prince was so drunk, you know. … I say, you don’t mind as much as all that, do you?”
For Carina had her head down on Gill’s shoulder, and was crying as though her heart would break.
“Mind! ” She lifted up an April face in a moment, where a smile was gleaming through the tears. “He made you promise? That was just like him. When was it? And what did he say? Tell me exactly. … Only he mustn’t come if he is wounded, and Waldemar has no mercy for Englishmen. Tell him he mustn’t come, Gill, at least not yet—only, if things are very terrible …”
“He will come, I am sure he will,” Gillian told her decidedly; “and as Prince Waldemar seems to have guessed or found out in some horrible way that I’ve been trying to communicate with him, don’t you think we had better think of some place to hide him away from this German crew?” (Stories of adventure were in Gill’s mind.) “I suppose in an old place like this there are some secret chambers or something, aren’t there?”
“You are quite right, Gillian dear.” Carina went to the wall and opened a door, which Gill had not previously noticed, in the brown stamped leather that covered the wall.
“This is one way into the chapel,” she whispered. “When my father was alive he used it, as he was much in the library. I am not, as you know, but we will us
e my father’s way to-night. Come quickly, before the Baroness or Fräulein von Dimme come to hunt us down, and I will show you something.”
The private door led straight into the little dark, old chapel, which Gill knew well, as she went there to service daily. What she did not know was that the chapel, belonging to the oldest part of the Palace, had any connection with the secret passage to which Dick had once alluded when talking to Mademoiselle de Monti and herself.
In a dark niche behind a massive Norman pillar Carina leaned her hand upon a great stone, and it rolled back, displaying a dark opening and worn steps disappearing into blackness.
“That leads into the secret passages and so to the old grotto—a perfect labyrinth, where anyone who knew the place might play at hide-and-seek for days and never be discovered,” Carina said. “If Captain Cartaret comes—but he won’t, at least not yet. …”
“Do let us put some food there—things in tins would do and keep all right—and a blanket, and then we shall be all ready if he does,” Gill urged.
“Gill, you are wonderful!—but I can’t—at least not yet, or I shall have Fräulein von Dimme, with her soft slippers, stealing after me,” Carina said. “Besides, he will not come—why should he?—and I think I hear Fräulein von Dimme now.”
She stepped quickly back through the private door into the library, a very different Carina, from the one whom Prince Waldemar had left, for all that she said that Captain Cartaret would not come.
Gillian did not follow her, but stood beside the pillar staring at the opening. The chapel was lit only by the tiny lamps that burnt day and night before the shrines of the Madonna and St. Estelle, to whom the little chapel was dedicated. The lights sent a soft white radiance out into a circle about them, but over the rest of the building velvet blackness reigned.
Wanted, an English Girl Page 22