The Captain dismounted in haste, cutting the man short with a shower of oaths, and desiring him to find the Prince at once and let him know that Captain von Posen awaited his pleasure. Gill fancied that the gallant Captain was anxious the Prince should think that he had been awaiting his pleasure for a little longer than was actually the case, for he dismissed the orderly and the horses with the same vigour that he had shown to the chauffeur. Again the stars fought!
Both men had hurried obediently away, and Von Posen had flung off his own uniform coat and had one arm in the chauffeur’s when six-foot-one of athletic young manhood, in the pink of condition except for a damaged wrist, landed full on the top of him. Rupert-George saw to it that there was no time for a sound that might rouse undesired attention. It was all over in a moment, and he was staggering to the rhododendron bushes carrying something heavy and motionless across his shoulder.
Gill had not a second, however, for wondering whether Von Posen was dead or merely stunned, for a sudden flare of light shone out upon the wide steps, and a voice called “Von Posen!”
Gillian saw in a flash what she could do to distract attention from the man frantically struggling into a long driving-coat among the rhododendron bushes.
She ran up the steps, her head down, her whole appearance, she hoped, expressive of terror—and it wouldn’t be far short of the truth either, she thought to herself.
The man who had called to Von Posen—she recognised Lieutenant Stutgarten—swung round as she darted past him in the wide doorway.
“Halt! Who goes there?”
Gill fled across the echoing hall with panic-stricken haste, but she had done what she meant to do—attracted his attention. Heavy footsteps sounded in pursuit, and she felt herself grasped at the very door of the Round Library, from which room she had a faint hope she might have escaped into the passages in time to warn Carina before everything was sprung upon her. However, that couldn’t be helped. She stood still and let her captor turn her round and look into her face.
“Ach, Himmel! but it is the English girl!” he burst out in evident exultation, and pushed Gill before him in at the door of the Round Library. “I have the honour to present Miss Gillian Courtney to your Imperial Highness,” he said with triumph.
It was up to Gill now; she knew that!
She got an impression that the Prince had drunk a good deal since she had seen him last in the Round Library, not quite five hours ago. His usually pale eyes were bloodshot, she noticed, as he got up from his chair and came towards her. That was all that she had time to see about him, for he spoke at once.
“Where are the other two? Don’t dare to lie to me!”
Gillian shrank back from him. “What two, sir?”
His hand was on her shoulder. “Take care! I’m not playing. Why are you in this dress?”
Gill gazed at him in silence, not having expected that question. He tightened his grasp. “I will tell you. You were assisting that stupid little fool Carina to get away from me.”
“Well, suppose I was?” Gill said defiantly.
“Teufel! you have an insolence. Where is she?”
“Do you expect me to tell you that?”
“Come inside, Stutgarten, you fool, and shut the door,” ordered the Prince, and Gill found her heart thumping a little, even though she only had to play the part of a silly, scared schoolgirl and not a heroine. If only it were not so terribly important! But she thought of Cartaret waiting with the car and the pass and faith in her English grit, and held on to her nerve and courage with determination.
“Now, Englanderin, no nonsense or it will be very much the worse for you. You own that you were trying to help the Grand-Duchess to get away? What did you come back for?”
Gill pinched her apron.
“You had better answer,” the Prince told her. “Stutgarten, what was it you did to those little Belgian fools at the farm? They squealed enough.”
“I came back because …”
Gill broke off. It was difficult to know what reason to give, and being horribly frightened at heart did not make her task any easier. “Because … Captain Cartaret …” she stammered, and then stopped again.
“He met the Grand-Duchess in the chapel, didn’t he?” said the Prince.
“Who told you that? Fräulein von Dimme?” Gill asked, in a voice that was a very fair imitation of despair.
“Yes. Now you see how much I know already, perhaps you will observe that it is advisable to give up humbugging and tell me the rest.”
With the folly of girlhood. The sneering words rushed into Gillian’s head. Well, he should have his schoolgirl folly and see how he liked it.
“Yes, he came to the chapel,” she mumbled, the words seeming to be dragged out of her, “but he was to come back for us afterwards.”
“And he has failed to keep his appointment, and you two birds found yourselves helpless to escape without him, and you came back to see if I’d got him?” interrupted the Prince in sudden good humour. “Excellently done, my dear.”
“Oh, who told you all that?” Gill cried out.
“Aha! we’ll have a little more out of you before I answer your questions. Where is Carina?”
“I w—won’t tell you that,” Gill stammered.
“Won’t you? You imagine, you little fool, that she can get away—without Cartaret?”
“Oh, where is he?” Gill gave a very creditable gasp. It was all the easier to achieve, because crying wouldn’t have been at all difficult just then.
Waldemar took her chin and turned her face roughly towards him, staring into her eyes.
“Do tell me where he is?” Gill entreated, with a quaver of fear that was quite genuine. Did he guess anything?
“You don’t know? You haven’t heard?” He gave a brutal laugh. “Done for, my dear. No more hugging in chapels for our pretty Carina. Potted while he was trying to get away from Stutgarten, wasn’t he, Lieutenant? and squirming somewhere in a cottage—I forget where—”
Gill thought that either the Prince had forgotten that to play humanity was his rôle, or he did not think it worth while to restrain his natural tone before her. Not that she cared, for escape was in sight.
“Dying! Don’t say he’s dying!” she said; and then she really broke down and cried, in the blessed relief of it. “You’ll let the Grand-Duchess see him before he …”
Her voice broke on the last word, and that wasn’t acting either.
“Yes; if you behave with sense and bring Carina to me, I’ll have her taken to him at once,” the Prince said.
A clock struck two!
*
It was striking only the quarter past when Prince Waldemar’s big car passed the officer in charge of the gate, and then two muffled figures were clinging together inside it, and a chauffeur with eyes like blue steel was steering it deftly out into the night.
CHAPTER XXVIII
In the Track of the Hun
Gill had been asleep, dead asleep, for all the swinging of the car as it tore onwards. She had been asleep for some time too, for it had been dark when she lost consciousness of her surroundings—even of Carina’s hand clasped in hers—and when she roused, it was to see Carina’s face above her, clear in the late winter’s dawn.
She wondered drowsily for a minute or so where she was; then a violent lurch almost flung her off the seat, as the car dodged a great pit in the very middle of the road, and dodged it on two wheels. Carina’s sudden clutch only just saved her.
“Sorry,” apologised Rupert-George from the driving-seat.
Realisation came then in a flash—not the comfortable leisured realisation of waking in one’s bed at home—something very different. Gill knew that Rupert-George was sitting at the wheel, hunched rather forward, as though to see further than anybody else, and driving the great car with a steady recklessness. He had been driving like that without a pause ever since they left Chardille six hours ago.
It was with her head on Carina’s lap that Gill was lyin
g, and they were Carina’s arms that held her in her place on the deep-cushioned seat, as the car lurched and swayed. Carina’s face was pale and tired, in the dull grey November morning, but her eyes shone out of it, as Gill had never seen them shine in all these months that she had known her, and there was a little smile about her mouth as she saw that Gill was awake.
“At last, my friend! Indeed you are wonderful to sleep at all.”
Rupert-George was slowing down at last, and turning the car in at a broken iron gate. He caught the last remark, and looked round with laughter in his eyes.
“It’s in the nation, Carina. We’ve all been snoring hard for years, while those who knew yelled into our ears that the Germans were preparing this almighty bust. Bless us! we can sleep through anything.”
“Gillian is awake now,” said Carina, “and” (with a little shiver) “I hope that England is the same.”
Gill sat up, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. Everything was coming back. It was last night only that she and Carina had heard of the English prisoner; that she herself had gone into the secret passages and walked into Rupert-George; that the midnight meeting in the chapel had happened, and the flight from it, and the search for the pass, which was to lead to the great opportunity—the opportunity which had been so desperately full of risks, and yet which had brought Carina safe out of the hands of her enemies. It had appeared so impossible that it could be right to betray Carina and the hiding-place, and yet that was what Gill had had to do for Carina’s sake. She had set her teeth and done it, and somehow—that was the almost incredible thing—Carina had managed to trust her through all.
It was Stutgarten who went down with her into the secret passage, and Stutgarten who told the lie about Captain Cartaret. Gillian could not lie to Carina, even for Carina’s sake; though she felt it even more despicable to do as she did and by her betrayal make Carina think that the thing was true. It had been horribly difficult to bear it in silence when Carina came to her and kissed her, and thanked her for understanding so well what would be her wishes. But Gill did bear it; too much was at stake to allow of the luxury of feelings.
Prince Waldemar was still in the Round Library when they came to it from the chapel—a Waldemar who acted his part better than he had done with Gillian; though she almost wondered that the Grand-Duchess did not see the unattractive grin, which he seemed trying to hide by much pulling of his moustache, as he offered sympathy and the immediate use of his car and chauffeur. But Carina’s eyes, abnormally large and bright in her little face, seemed to be looking, not at him nor at her immediate surroundings, but somewhere far away.
She never hesitated for an instant, nor spoke except to thank the Prince for his offer, and to say that she must have Gill with her.
She had been handed to the car, and Waldemar had bowed over her cold hand with exaggerated deference, then nodded significantly to the chauffeur; and they were really off at last.
There had been nothing said until the old city gate had opened to the Prince’s pass—with frightened alacrity before his chauffeur’s face, and subdued sniggering behind him. Then, when they were whirling through darkness, the car responding like a live thing to the skilful guidance of Cartaret’s hands, Gill obeyed a sudden decisive jerk of his head towards her and spoke softly: “Carina!”
Carina did not seem to hear; she was staring straight before her. “Are we driving as fast as we can?” she asked.
Gill caught her by the sleeve. “Carina, it’s not true … he isn’t … oh, do tell her yourself!” she finished desperately, and then Cartaret turned his head so that Carina saw his face in the light of the head-lamps.
*
That was six hours ago … they had been tearing on ever since, through the storm and darkness, except when a sentry challenged and Rupert-George fumbled for the pass, with numbed hands. And now they were stopping.
“Are we there?” Gill asked, a little vague as to what “there” night be.
Cartaret laughed, as he backed the car neatly off the grass-grown avenue and landed it, at the cost of two or three violent bumps, well out of sight from the main road among some bushes.
“If ‘there’ is quite out of the wood, no. But here is where you both are going to have a cup of the best coffee ever made, and a rest before you go on.”
Gill was very thankful to hear it. There was no denying that she had been feeling as though she would give almost anything in the world for the sight of a fire and breakfast, only she would have died sooner than have said so, when Carina was so brave and cheery.
Rupert-George got down rather stiffly from the driving-seat and gave his hand first to Carina and then to Gillian, to help them to alight.
“I came across this place when one of our poor chaps was too horribly mangled to bear moving even to the Clearing Hospital,” he said. “Two old ladies live here. Their story is one of the many heart-breaking ones of the war—they have never budged, however near the shelling might be, and they have taken in the dying, times without number, and shown the most amazing self-devotion. They asked me to come and look them up again, if I could manage it.”
While he was speaking, Rupert-George had been guiding the two girls through a sort of shrubbery—he carefully avoided the drive—and up to the back premises of an old stone house, that had many windows closed, but a door that stood hospitably wide open.
“I’ll scout,” he whispered, and leaving the two still just inside the shrubbery, he walked quietly in at the door.
Carina did not appear to be surprised at anything, Gill noticed; she seemed to have put herself absolutely into the hands of Captain Cartaret, with an unquestioning child-like faith, as though she had at last reached her haven after a rough voyage of many storms.
The two said nothing while Cartaret was gone; Gill felt a little shy of her friend, in these new circumstances, and Carina herself seemed in some blissful dream and stood looking after him with happy smiling eyes and an unconsciousness, which was almost provoking, that the morning air was very cold, and dinner last night a very distant memory.
And then Gillian felt quite angry with herself for feeling anything could be provoking that Carina did; Carina, for whom she felt such a tender reverence.
Really, it could not have been five minutes that Rupert-George kept them waiting there in the cold shrubbery; then he came back to them, accompanied by a little old lady, so delicately slim, and clear-complexioned, that she looked, Gill thought, as though she ought to stand behind glass doors.
She wore a black satin gown, short and full, a shawl of white silk crêpe and a cap of old yellowing lace with white satin bows. She picked her way delicately down the wet path, in little high-heeled shoes that would not have been nearly large enough for Gill, and came straight up to Carina, taking Carina’s two hands in her own little warm ones, and curtsying to the ground.
“Welcome, my dears,” she said, with beautiful simplicity.
She took them into the old house, of which little more than half appeared to be in use.
“When the Germans came, we found other homes in a safer neighbourhood for our young maids,” the little old lady explained, perhaps seeing Gill’s puzzled glance at the many shuttered windows, which gave the appearance of sleep to the stone house. “Only our old Philomène would not leave us, and she is rheumatic, though wonderful indeed for her years, the good soul!”
That was said when the two girls had been conducted up the polished uncarpeted stairs to a large spotless bedroom, smelling of lavender and pot-pourri. It had an enormous four-post bed, hung with pale old-fashioned chintz, standing French fashion in the middle of the wonderfully polished floor, and very little else in the way of furniture.
“I will fetch a cover for your dressing-table,” the little lady told Carina. “Claud so dislikes one, the dear boy, and it is his room; so that I only cover the toilet-table when others occupy it.”
“But indeed you must not allow us to displace anybody else,” Carina said quickly. “You are so good to
take in wayfarers such as we are; you must not let us be a trouble, Madame.”
The old lady smiled, as she knelt before the hearth to light the fire that was ready-laid in the old-fashioned grate.
“Claud sleeps in the keeping of God, my children. You are not displacing him; no one could do that.”
She rose from her knees and, after shaking out her skirt with care, drew back the curtains of the bed and showed a careful patch in one.
“He smokes in bed, the bad one,” she explained, “and one night he burned a hole in the chintz that my sister and I hardly allow even Philomène to wash. ‘How shall I ever explain the disgrace of a patched bed-curtain to guests?’ I ask him. ‘Ma tante,’ he says to me—we are his great-aunts, figure to yourselves, my children, my sister Cècile and myself—‘Ma tante, the room will now have to be for me always, that you need never tell.’”
“Where did he die?” Carina asked, her soft voice full of sympathy.
“Near Ypres, my little ones. He was wounded and there came Germans, wearing coats they had stripped from the English Thòmas. He knew the clothes of our brave ally, and asked for water.
“‘There’s water where they dig the graves,’ they tell him, and stab him with their bayonets again and again. … Ah! mes petites, I should not tell you these sad things, but indeed to us Claud is yet here, laughing and seeking to make us like the smell of his cigarettes and the strange songs he sings … only that for him there never is the growing old and wise and sad.”
The old lady was busied, as she spoke, in spreading a delicate cover on the toilet-table; her voice had trembled a little as she spoke of the German brutality, but her eyes were dry. Perhaps she had already cried all her tears away.
“Have you had Germans here?” Carina asked.
“Three times in all,” she answered quietly. “The first time—ah! that was hard to bear, for it was then we learned about Claud. The German lieutenant who killed him boasted of it, you must understand, being proud of the wit of his answer. … After that first time nothing mattered very much. I was grieved that they should have killed the garden, for it was a garden that had lived and been loved for three hundred years; but—after all—Cècile could not have taken the same interest in it when Claud was gone.”
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