Gill was standing by the window; she looked through it as the old lady turned her pretty faded eyes in the direction of the out-door world, and saw what she had meant by the garden being killed. Old velvet turf had been hacked up by horses’ hoofs and spurred heels—flower-beds had undergone the same destructive trampling; the sun-dial lay forlornly on its side, with shivered face and broken pedestal; a mossed Triton, that had been the centre of a fountain, would seem to have been used as a target for revolver practice.
“They desired to entertain themselves, the German soldiers,” the old lady said. “My sister and I did not care so much when there was no Claud to marry and live in the old place when we were gone. But we had loved the garden, and worked much in it, since our gardener was but a young boy, and unskilled though good-hearted. But I keep you from your breakfast, my poor children, and I smell that Philomène has the coffee ready.”
Carina and Gillian had by this time divested themselves of their out-door garments and were ready to accompany their old hostess down to breakfast. They both—for Gill read aright Carina’s slightly blank expression when only another old lady was discovered in the large bare dining-room—were disappointed to find no sign of Rupert-George there. The second old lady was presented to Carina as “my sister Cècile,” and made such a curtsy as Gill had never seen equalled in all her three months’ experience of the Grand-Ducal court.
Mademoiselle Cècile was like her sister, but her manner was less decisive and her blue eyes were paler and wore a slightly wandering look. It seemed that she was the elder, though she did not look it; for she sat at the head of the long polished table and poured out the fragrant coffee and frothing milk. Gill noticed, however, that her sister sat beside her, keeping an unobtrusive watch upon her and rectifying any little error that might occur. Gill thought that Mademoiselle Cècile de Clune-Guyon—such she learned to be the name of these ladies—looked as though she might have suffered from some severe shock at no distant date.
Carina asked for Captain Cartaret at once; her position had taught her to restrain all signs of embarrassment and she put the question as simply as Gill could have done; more simply and unconsciously, Gill thought, than she herself could have managed just now, knowing what she knew.
“The English Capitaine? Ah! he is gone,” Mademoiselle Marguarite de Clune-Guyon told her. “He drank a cup of Philomène’s coffee, standing in the kitchen—did he not, Philomène?—and took bread to eat upon the way, and was off, without even waiting to pay his respects to Sister Cècile. He has a heart of gold, that young man.”
“What has he gone for?” Gill demanded, rather bluntly, not being sure how Carina appreciated the golden-heartedness of this proceeding.
“My child, you do not realise that we are here behind the German fighting line as it advances towards Calais. There has been no firing as yet this morning—when it commences … you will understand that we are not far away. The Capitaine goes to find a way through, and bids me guard you well and cause you to rest till he returns.”
“You are so good, dear Mademoiselle,” Carina said, with her unfailing courtesy; but Gill noticed that she had very little more appetite for her breakfast after receiving the news of Captain Cartaret’s scouting expedition.
She made a plucky effort to eat, however, and afterwards lay down obediently beside Gill upon that four-post bed, whose curtains would always bear witness to the venial sins of Claud de Clune-Guyon, cold in a damp grave somewhere in the neighbourhood of ruined Ypres. But by that time the firing that Mademoiselle Marguarite spoke of had begun, seeming to the girls like one long terrible roar. It rattled the well-set windows in their firm frames; it shook the whole house, solid though it was; it made sleep very difficult even to people as tired as themselves.
They lay and talked in snatches, sometimes stopping in the middle of a sentence when a nerve-shattering explosion seemed suddenly to dominate the ordinary steady roar.
They did not really talk much—you don’t when you are listening all the time. Carina never even asked what Gill and Rupert-George had done in the Baron’s house; perhaps Cartaret had told her while Gill was asleep; more probably the past had ceased to matter for the moment. Prince Waldemar and Captain von Posen seemed an immeasurable distance off from this old house—known, as they had learned from their hostesses, by the quaint name of Pont de Fée.
Gill did doze a little, after a time, hearing the booming of the guns all through her sleep; but whenever she roused to clear consciousness of her surroundings Carina was always lying in the same position, with her beautiful eyes turned towards the door, as though not to be a second in hearing if anybody came to it.
It was after a doze of unusual length that Gill woke to find the place beside her empty, and the early sunset of winter red in the sky. She sat up, startled—Carina certainly was not in the bedroom; she must have gone downstairs. Gill felt quite angry with herself for having managed to sleep when Carina was awake and perhaps wanting her.
She jumped off the bed in a desperate hurry, and fled downstairs to find out what was happening.
Something was! Two chairs were standing close together by the fire-place in the room where they had breakfasted: in one of them Mademoiselle Marguarite was sitting still, with a look as though her breath had just been taken violently away. Carina must have just risen from the other, for she was standing only a step or so away from it. But her little hands were on Rupert-George’s sleeve and her eyes upon his face.
It was a very muddy sleeve that she was holding: Gill had never seen quite so much mud on any one person before, as Rupert-George had managed to acquire. He looked pale and tired as well as muddy; but Gill had a feeling that he was intensely excited, through all the tiredness and the mud and the ordinary quiet of his manner.
“So if you’ll risk it, dear,” he was saying, “it’s the chance of a lifetime.”
“I am not afraid. But you—will not the English take you for a spy, appearing suddenly in their midst in your German coat and with poor Bèrnard’s clothes beneath?”
“Depends who is occupying the village. It may mean being separated from you for a little, but we don’t shoot people off-hand, you know. It only means explaining if I’m not known, and you’ll be in the care of our fellows, my darling. I shall be quite happy about you.”
It was more than Carina would be, to judge by the troubled look that came into her eyes, and Mademoiselle Marguarite rushed into the breach to take that look away.
“If it is an English uniform that Monsieur le Capitain desires I have one of his own regiment, having kept that of the young officer he brought here to die, poor boy! We washed the blood from it, Philomène and I, and I was keeping it till happier days, in the thought that some day, perhaps, his mother …”
Rupert-George handed the old lady from her chair before she had reached so far.
“A thousand thanks. The very thing, if I may have it now?”
The two went out together; Carina caught at Gillian’s hand.
“Gill, he is wonderful! He has been scouting, and the English have retaken a village, in which he was billeted three weeks ago, and …”
“We are going there?” Gill did not trouble to ask how this was to be achieved in the greatness of the fact.
The girls had their outer wraps on in an incredibly short space of time, and were back in the sitting-room, now all lit up by the crimson of the sunset. It struck Gillian that it would be dark before long; evidently their escape to the English-held village was to be a deed of darkness.
Quick as Carina and Gillian had been, Captain Cartaret had already inducted himself into the khaki uniform. He was standing before the fire talking earnestly to the two old sisters, as they helped Philomène to spread a hasty meal for the travellers. Gill thought that she would carry that picture in her mind as long as she lived—the long bare spotless room, all lit up by the sunset glow; the two dainty old ladies, moving with quick light steps, Philomène, with her withered-apple face and great white cap, an
d a dish of something steaming in her two hands; and, dominating the peaceful homely scene, the thunder of the guns.
Rupert-George stopped talking seriously as the two came in, and spoke to Gillian.
“Have you ever gone in for a bun and lemonade race—the kind when you tear to a given spot, devour stodgy bun and fizzy lemonade at your most desperate pace, before sprinting back again?”
“No, never!”
“Then imagine you’re doing it now, if you don’t mind.”
Gill had eaten a good many scrambled meals in her day, when Elys had wanted all the glass in getting up and she was late for breakfast, and running it fine for prayers and call-over at the “High,” but she had never got through a really solid meal at quite such a pace before. Cartaret was determined that both girls should make a thoroughly good supper, for all the hurry.
“Though I hope to find ourselves grubbing on ‘Machonochie’s rations’ to-night; it’s quite equally possible we may spend the night in a ditch,” he assured them cheerfully, as he went out to fetch the car, while they finished their meal.
They were ready at the door, however, by the time the car had been backed out of the bushes and brought round to the steps: Carina stooped to kiss first Mademoiselle Cècile and then her sister.
“Some day, when all this terrible war is over, you must allow Gillian and myself and … and Captain Cartaret to come and see you again, and to try to say the thank-you which to-day we only feel,” she said softly, and then they had to drive away from the hospitable doors of Pont de Fée; the two old sisters waving to them till they were quite out of sight.
“I do hope we shall go back,” Gill said fervently.
“Mademoiselle Marguarite does not think it likely that they will be spared when the German retreat sets in,” Carina told her sadly. “But she will not leave Pont de Fée—transplantation would kill poor Mademoiselle Cécile, she feels, and there is much that they can do at times for the wounded. One would be glad to risk dying for a cause like that.”
“Is that what you talked about when I was asleep?” Gill asked.
“Partly. We talked of Gabrielle de Monti, who is related to her.”
“Oh, what did she say? We’ve heard nothing of Gabrielle for such ages.”
“It’s dreadful, but splendid too, Gill. She was nursing at a hospital, and the Germans shelled it deliberately. There were terrible scenes; the patients had to be moved down to the cellars—Gabrielle and the Matron were moving the last of the poor suffering men when a shell. … The other two were killed—Gabrielle is recovering, but … her face is marked a good deal. My brave Gabrielle, and she was so beautiful!”
“What a horrible pity!” Gill said, in rather a choked voice. It was inadequate and not at all the right thing to say—she knew that; but it was the only thing that would come just then. She was silent after that, staring straight before her.
They were travelling over desolate, ravaged country, with nothing left about it that was beautiful. What had been roads could now use that title by courtesy only; the girls were flung to and fro in the car and were forced to hold on with both hands.
As the sunset died and darkness fell, Gillian found herself wondering how long it would be before the car went head foremost into one of the yawning cavities which Cartaret told her were called “Willy Holes.” But he appeared to know his way as well by dark as by day, and kept on steadily, avoiding human habitation, until they had been driving for not far short of an hour. Then he slowed down.
“I say, are we going on in the dark?” Gill enquired.
Cartaret came round to the side of the car. “Yes, we are—more or less—the more depends on the goodness of our luck. Carina—both of you—see over there!”
There, where he pointed, showed a smoulder of dull red against the dark sky.
“That marks the village we retook this morning. It’s at a salient of the German front.”
“And the Germans are between it and us?” Carina asked.
“Yes, they are, and it would be—well, the most extraordinary good luck if they aren’t looking out for us. You see, I’m afraid I didn’t damage our friend Von Posen sufficiently to shut his mouth for any length of time—I was a bit handicapped by hurry and the need of keeping the show quiet. Waldemar is pretty safe to have stopped the earths by now and to be beginning on his game of hide and seek—so that’s why, instead of trying to dodge round the German lines, I’m going to ask you if you mind taking a short cut—underneath them.”
Gill said, “Oh!” It was rather a startling conclusion.
Carina said, “Rupert, you are wonderful! Was that what you meant about the passage?”
“It struck me as a possible way through when, in the course of my scouting this morning, I found that we had retaken Yssonnek. We held it three weeks ago, before I was hit, and it was then I discovered the passage, while prospecting in the Curé’s cellar to find out its capacity in the Sunday Service line. There was an entrance to the passage behind an innocent wood pile, and the blessed thing runs out this side for the best part of two miles. Dampish, and none too savoury, of course. Aired a bit by the rabbit-hole type of ventilation, but I shouldn’t advise the route for ladies if there were anything else that gave half as good a chance of putting ourselves under the protection of the British Flag with comfortable promptitude.”
“As though I mind damp, or anything, as long as I can get away from Waldemar,” Carina said, in response to this carefully whispered information. “Let us get out of the car and go to find this passage at once.”
“Wait a minute—we’re nearly a mile off the spot where that passage emerges,” Rupert-George explained. “It’s vile walking for girls, and I hope to make use of the car in a way that I’m afraid wouldn’t exactly commend itself to its rightful owner. So sit tight until I ask you to move, and then clear out at your best speed and make for the nearest ditch. And please don’t talk, for we’re getting into a rather ticklish neighbourhood.”
He resumed his seat at the wheel, and the car crawled on, making, Gill thought, a most appalling noise considering what Cartaret had said about the neighbourhood. However, she supposed there was no help for it, and certainly Rupert-George was a person who managed to inspire a wonderful confidence.
Carina seemed to read her thoughts. “He would not let us fall into the hands of Waldemar, whatever happened,” she whispered, and Gill pulled her courage together and did not even jump when a broad glare of searchlight whitely illumined the dim road a yard or se in front of the car.
Cartaret turned his head.
“Out! Quick! Ditch on left! I’m coming.”
Gill and Carina scrambled down on to the wet road with instant obedience. The moment they had left it the car swung forward, with Rupert-George lying sideways on the driving-seat, his legs hanging over the edge. More they had not time to see, for Gill dragged Carina across the road and down into a deep overgrown ditch more than half full of muddy water. As they took to this dismal shelter, a perfect hail of shots rang out, followed by a crash, and a chorus of shrieks and curses.
Carina shivered painfully—Gill felt her—as the two clung together in the ditch; but she did not speak, while the two endured some of the longest and most horrible minutes they had ever known. And then someone came crawling along the road, and there was a faint splash as the someone dropped into the ditch, so near Gill that she could have touched him just by putting out her hand.
She was afraid to speak, for a cold horror was upon her that it might be a German looking for them; but Carina seemed to know by a queer sort of instinct. “Rupert!” she breathed.
“Yes. Thank God!” he answered. “Keep in the ditch. Come after me.”
They followed him, trying hard not to splash, crouching low, their faces whipped by the wet, decaying vegetation—freezingly cold, utterly in the dark as to their destination.
Then at last Gill, who came next behind their leader, felt her wrist clutched by a very cold wet hand, and herself dragged a litt
le to one side and pushed, as it seemed to her, into the centre of a very prickly bush that appeared to overhang the ditch.
“Guard your face,” warned Rupert-George. She rolled over, still clutched by him, and wondered whether she was in a Willy Hole. Rupert-George had kept her from falling, and she alighted safely on her feet, though in a pool of water. A moment later, Carina was helped down beside her. Rupert-George followed, though more slowly than Gill would have expected of him, and, holding his torch well down so that it should not be seen from above, he showed them that what seemed to be a pit, with its mouth hidden by the great bush, narrowed behind them to a passage that looked little better than an enlarged rabbit burrow. As he pointed out the way that led to safety, a white flare shone through the bush above their heads. The searchlights were at work again.
“That means they have discovered that we are not underneath what is left of the car,” Rupert-George said quietly. “Into the passage, please.”
“What did you do with the car?” Gill asked, when they had crawled for several yards along a passage where it was not possible to stand anything like upright, and the indefatigable Cartaret had called a halt at last.
“Fixed the wheel and set her at full speed as I dropped off her,” he said briefly. “There was a patrol waiting for us a little further on, you know; they probably have every road watched. They thought, as I meant them to think, that I was rushing them, and gave all their attention to stopping the car. I fancy by the row that she rewarded their kind attentions by jumping the ditch and coming full into the midst of them at the finish. Well, they were firing on girls.”
Rupert-George spoke rather jerkily; Carina suddenly stooped and felt for the torch which he had put down when he gave the fugitive party permission to rest.
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