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  WANTED, AN ENGLISH GIRL

  Wanted, an English Girl

  THE ADVENTURES

  OF AN ENGLISH SCHOOLGIRL

  IN GERMANY

  Dorothea Moore

  Books to Treasure

  5 Woodview Terrace,

  Nailsea, Bristol, BS48 1AT

  UK

  www.bookstotreasure.co.uk

  First published 1915

  This edition 2015

  Design and layout © Books to Treasure

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the above publisher of this book.

  ISBN 978-1-909423-14-5 (eBook)

  ISBN 978-1-909423-28-2 (Print)

  CONTENTS

  Illustrations

  About the Author

  Introduction

  1. “Wanted”

  2. Out into the World

  3. The Berta Girl

  4. Gillian Plights Her Troth

  5. The House in the Rue St. Denise

  6. The Real Berta

  7. The Result of Hanging a Coat

  8. Morning Brings Counsel

  9. Prince Waldemar

  10. How the Evening Began

  11. How it Went On

  12. How it Ended

  13. What Berta Told

  14. Declaration of War

  15. The Home in the Rue des Carillons

  16. The Bridge of St. Odelle

  17. Friendly Occupation

  18. A Court Appointment

  19. Three Months Later

  20. The Return of Prince Waldemar

  21. Under the Iron Hand

  22. Gillian Keeps Her Promise

  23. Ways that are Dark

  24. Re-enter Rupert-George

  25. Midnight in the Chapel

  26. Gillian Plays the Spy

  27. Rather Rapid

  28. In the Track of the Hun

  29. S.O.S.

  30. How Gill Came Back

  To Edmund

  at the Front

  this book is dedicated

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  “He had his knife open in a second, and passed the blade in at the side of the window”

  “‘Berta! You’re not going to do that!’ Gillian urged”

  “Holding the manifesto in a hand that wasn’t quite steady, Gill dictated it down the ’phone”

  “An extraordinarily familiar voice said, ‘Hullo, Miss Gillian!’”

  “Where are the other two? Don’t dare to lie to me!”

  “Standing on a tottering first floor she flashed out that ‘Save our Souls’ again and again”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Dorothea Moore was born in Islington in 1881 to William and Alice Moore. Her father was ordained in 1882, and served as curate and later as priest in charge at such places as Romsey, Horningsham and Mereworth. Dorothea Moore was educated at Godolphin School and Cheltenham Ladies’ College. Apparently lame as a child, she turned to writing and went on to produce many books for girls, including historical novels and Ruritanian and adventure stories as well as her school stories. She was a keen Guider and wrote a number of books that featured Girl Guides. Moore also had at least two plays professionally produced and, according to The Encyclopaedia of Girls’ School Stories, may have toured with the Alexander Maclean Company for the 1911–12 season. She died in 1933.

  INTRODUCTION

  Wanted, an English Girl by Dorothea Moore was first published in 1916 and provides a fascinating window into the attitudes of the British people living through the early stages of what was to become known as the First World War.

  Stories of German atrocities at the beginning of the War, via refugees and returning soldiers, prompted the government to commission a report. The Bryce Report, published in May 1915, outlined the Germans’ treatment of both soldiers and civilians, particularly in Belgium, and makes for harrowing reading. Although it was largely discredited after the war because of its emphasis on the more sensational aspects of the depositions, it undoubtedly influenced policy and attitudes towards the Germans and the German offensive at the time.

  Dorothea Moore’s brother Edmund, to whom her book is dedicated, served in the Royal Army Medical Corps, so the reports coming out of Europe would have been of particular interest to her. The story of Luxembourg’s young Grand Duchess, 20-year-old Marie-Adélaïde, meeting the invading German army at the Adolphe Bridge to protest their presence, and the subsequent German occupation of their neutral territory, was fallow ground for this writer of Ruritanian adventure stories, and the parallels in this book are quite striking.

  Although Wanted, an English Girl follows the usual line for a girls’ story and produces a satisfactory ending for the heroine, it is by no means a happy read. Moore doesn’t hold back from describing the horrors that the oppressors inflict on the residents of Insterburg or on civilians further afield. Such graphic representation may be surprising, but schoolgirls of the era were probably accustomed to reading the war news in the papers and would more than likely have been familiar already with the types of events described.

  Wanted, an English Girl is one of Moore’s rarest books and Books to Treasure is delighted to make it available again at this time, as we commemorate 100 years since the start of World War I.

  Adrianne Fitzpatrick

  Wanted,

  an English Girl

  CHAPTER I

  “Wanted”

  “Nuts for Gill!”

  Gillian stood still in the doorway, although she was late for breakfast already, and Aunt Edith was not lenient towards unpunctuality, even on the first morning of the holidays. The tone in which Elys, her contemporary cousin, had said “Nuts” told its own tale to her experienced ears.

  “Here, I say, what is it? Not an idea about me?” she asked, in accents that were distinctly dismayed.

  Her aunt laid down a letter which she had been holding, and faced round on Gillian. The three girls, ranging from eleven to sixteen, who were sitting at the table, grinned appreciatively; their mother spoke in answer.

  “Dear me, how silly you are, Gill! One would think I was in the habit of ill-treating you. And it’s the most delightful way of spending the holidays that anybody could imagine, and—”

  “I knew it was an idea,” groaned Gill, as her aunt paused for a moment to consult the letter on its thin foreign paper.

  Gillian came across the room, and sat down in her place at the breakfast table. She was a tall slender girl, who would probably be very pretty in a few years’ time, when she had learned to carry her height gracefully, and to put on, instead of pitch-forking on, her clothes. She had hazel eyes, in which the green predominated, and masses of brown hair, which looked as though it might with advantage be better brushed. The navy serge, white blouse, and school tie belonging to her years were not becoming to her; she did not look half as well in them as her fair, plump cousin, Elys.

  “What’s going to be such a delightful holiday?” she inquired, without enthusiasm, helping herself to toast.

  “Mrs. Trant sent me the advertisement,” Aunt Edith answered, with the aggressive cheerfulness which her family found so trying. “You remember Mrs. Trant?”

  “Yes, I remember her; always on the look-out for a career for someone else’s girls,” Frances interpolated.

  “She knows how anxious I always am that you girls should improve your languages in the holidays. I am sure I cannot think why it is that your French never seems to be of any use when I ask old Madame Crespigny to t
ea; and I will say for Gill she is the best of you there, if she wouldn’t go asking old Madame horrid things about the Franco-Prussian War, which aren’t at all suitable for a schoolgirl’s ears, and too fast for me to follow, too. But the advertisement says—listen, Gill, and think yourself lucky—that a nice English girl, who must be a lady, is wanted as holiday companion to a girl of sixteen, living in Insterburg, who wants to talk English and study English literature. She’s a Von too. Yes, really …”

  “What!” interrupted poor Gillian. “I haven’t got to go and be companion to a German girl, have I?”

  “And teach her English literature! (Lucky you got the prize for it, Gill, in spite of your spelling.) And agree with her politely when she tells you that Shakespeare was born a Prussian,” Elys contributed unfeelingly.

  “And get stuffed into a German prison for doing one of the things that are ‘verboten’—everything is,” chimed in Frances.

  “Gill will have to eat sweet soup made of chocolate and vanilla and things, till she gets to look a sort of sack, like Grethel Steiniger, at the High,” jeered Gill’s youngest cousin, Flossie. “Won’t it be funny?”

  “Do be quiet, children,” Mrs. Tracy said, rather querulously; she made numberless small rules, but had never succeeded in teaching politeness to her girls. “Do give me a chance to hear myself speak. Here has something turned up which is just the very thing I always wanted for Gillian, and you all pretend it is going to be disagreeable.”

  “When you’ve been slaving all the term, you’re not particularly keen to go and teach literature to a German girl,” Gillian said ruefully. “Of course it is very kind of you, Aunt Edith, but I’m sure you had better find someone else who would like it better. I don’t a bit want to go and stay with strangers, and I simply loathe Germans—if you’d seen the utterly piggy way that Grethel ate, you wouldn’t wonder. Thank goodness! she’s left the High for good. …”

  “But this isn’t Germany!” Mrs. Tracy almost screamed in exasperation. “The Baroness—think what fun you’ll have staying with a real Baroness, Gill—lives in”—she referred again to her letter—“the grand-duchy of Insterburg. A lovely place, I expect, but of course you girls ought to know everything about it, with all I pay for your education. The Baroness, whose name is—dear me, how badly dear Mrs. Trant writes!—whose name is Von Traume …”

  “That’s German, anyhow,” Gill said.

  “‘Baroness Von Traume,’” Aunt Edith went on glibly, “‘is a charming and talented woman, who lives in a beautiful house in the capital of Insterburg.’ What a lovely time you’ll have, Gill!—and her daughter, Berta …”

  “Also charming and talented?” this from Elys.

  “Of course. For goodness’ sake, don’t keep on interrupting, girls! ‘The Baroness moves in the very best society, and Berta has sometimes been honoured by an invitation to tea with the Grand-Duchess, Carina, who is only a year or two older than she is.’ …”

  “Wonder if Gill will get asked to tea with this Grand-Duchess what’s-her-name, when the Berta girl is?” Elys said.

  “Of course she will.” Aunt Edith was quite sure about it. “Dear me, Gill, most girls would give their eyes for your luck!”

  “I’m sure I wish they had it, then,” Gill answered gloomily. “I don’t want it; but I daresay this Baroness person will have laid hands upon another English girl by now.”

  “I shall catch the early post and tell Mrs. Trant that I shall be delighted for you to go to Insterburg,” Mrs. Tracy said. “One of you get an atlas—quick!—and find out where it is, before I address the envelope.”

  Gill got up, rather unwillingly, to fetch the much-battered school atlas from its shelf. She felt as though she were sealing her own fate by the action; perhaps she was, for Aunt Edith’s geography was very vague, and post time was near.

  Afterwards, when a very great many things had happened, Gillian sometimes looked back to that morning—the first morning of those summer holidays of 1914—and wondered whether her life would have been at all the same if she had not discovered the whereabouts of Insterburg in time for Aunt Edith to answer that advertisement by the early post.

  CHAPTER II

  Out into the World

  Gill sat, back to the engine, in a second-class foreign railway carriage, and surveyed the situation with despairing courage. In less than half an hour she would arrive at Chardille, the capital of Insterburg, if the train were punctual. She had parted on the Belgian Frontier from the rather austere governess, who crammed various subjects, which they had no wish to learn, into inattentive English children all the term, and spent her holidays in applying the same process to more industrious, but also more critical pupils abroad. And now Gill was about to face by herself the unknown horrors to be found in the house of the charming and talented Baroness von Traume.

  There had been no escape; Aunt Edith’s answer to the advertisement must have proved quite satisfactory, for the Baroness had wired that she and her daughter would be pleased to receive Miss Gillian Courtney as soon as she could be despatched. Mrs. Tracy was much impressed by the fact that the Baroness said all this in a telegram. In some mysterious way she considered the fact that the Baroness should telegraph was a compliment to her own literary style used on Gill’s behalf.

  So it was settled, and in the course of one agitated day Aunt Edith provided her niece with a travelling companion, a Burberry and a new umbrella (Gill was always losing hers), two new pairs of gloves, the same of stockings, and a hold-all, which Mrs. Tracy considered as very superior to a box, inasmuch as you could stuff everything you had forgotten into it at the last moment. The laundry was frantically desired to send back Gillian’s clothes two days early, and everybody sat up till twelve o’clock at night to superintend and help fitfully in her packing.

  Then had come the good-byes, congratulatory and cheerful from Aunt Edith, of course. The three girls had come down to the station to see Gill off—Frances, who was more enterprising than her elder sister, a little inclined to be envious. “Of course it’s hateful going,” she said, “and I don’t suppose you’ll find your languages, that they all think you are so good at, much use in Insterburg; but at least the holidays won’t be so eternally stodgy for you, as they’ll be for us.”

  “And, anyhow, Gill will have no end to tell us,” Flossie interrupted, with her habitual giggle; “I expect the Baroness and her ways will be most awfully funny; mind you write and tell us if they eat like pigs.”

  “I hope you will come back all right at the end of the holidays,” Elys said mournfully. “I shall never get along with my algebra without you.”

  “Oh, I’m sure to come back in plenty of time for the beginning of term,” Gill told her hastily, “and as for adventures, I don’t suppose I shall have any more than you do. It will be reading literature with that Berta girl all the time; still of course I’ll write and tell you anything there is.”

  Then the train had steamed out of the station, leaving the three familiar faces behind—Elys’ fair, plump, untroubled, and brainless; Frances’ thin, muddy-complexioned and near-sighted; and Flossie’s round and childish, with its tip-tilted nose covered with freckles. Those three, with Aunt Edith, who somehow never counted very much, had represented the chief part of Gill’s world for the last ten years—at least the world that people knew about. There was another world to which no one held the key but herself, and even she was rather shy still of opening its door.

  There had been a time, long ago, when there was another world, a world with a whole lot of dark-skinned, white-robed natives in it, who called her Missee Baba Sahib, and always seemed to come running to do anything she wanted; and there was a splendid soldier father, who was the best playmate in all the world. She had no distinct recollection of her mother, but there was a large photo in a silver frame that stood on her father’s writing-table, which she had learned to associate with the name. She had a vague idea, which she never put into words, that she would find that pretty, sweet-faced mothe
r in the place everyone called Home, where children were generally sent before they were as tall as she was; but in the course of some serious conversations with father, about the time when her sixth birthday was drawing near, it transpired that she was going to someone called Aunt Edith, who was mother’s sister, and who had a dear little girl about Gill’s own age; and that she would go to a place called a kindergarten, where there would be lots of other nice little girls to play with.

  The going home happened just before her sixth birthday; Captain Courtney had meant to bring her to England himself, but just as his passage was taken there was Frontier trouble, and his regiment was ordered to the front.

  Gill went home with a padre’s wife, and was duly met at Southampton by Aunt Edith, and by a fat little girl who seemed able to do nothing but stare at the new cousin. Gill went with them to a rather dull house in a rather dull town, which had many odd things about it—only three servants, none of whom had dark faces, and a staircase leading from one floor to another. Gill did not cry, though she was very homesick, for father had said, “Be a man!” when he left her on board the big home-bound liner; but she did not shake down quickly into the new life. It still seemed very strange, when there came the dreadful morning when she and Elys, coming down after nursery breakfast to see Aunt Edith in the dining-room, saw her look at a long paper by her plate with startled eyes. Then she got up suddenly, and caught Gill in her arms and began to cry. Later, somehow, the little girl came to understand that father would never come on the long “leave” he had promised when he said good-bye.

  There was a new black frock for her, with crape on it, and a black one without crape for Elys, and Aunt Edith read something to her from the paper about Captain Courtney’s “brief but brilliant career and gallant death at the moment of victory.”

  Father’s things came home; most of them Gill never saw, but his sword was kept, and by and by was unearthed in a spring-cleaning from the box-room, and Gillian was allowed to hang it up in the room she shared with her eldest cousin.