While in the ambulance, Mary Brander resolutely put her conversation
with Cuthbert aside, but as soon as she started for her walk home, it
became uppermost in her thoughts. It was certainly a curious affair.
From time to time friends at home with whom she corresponded, sent her
local newspapers, and this had especially been the case during the first
few months of her stay in Germany, as they naturally supposed she would
be greatly interested in the calamity of the bank failure.
She had, at the time it was issued, read the full report of the
committee of investigation upon its affairs, and, although she had
passed lightly over the accounts, she had noticed that the proceeds of
the sale of the Fairclose estates were put down as subject to a
deduction of fifteen thousand pounds for a previous mortgage to Jeremiah
Brander, Esq. The matter had made no impression upon her mind at this
time, but it now came back to her remembrance.
Of course it was perfectly natural that if Mr. Hartington wished to
borrow money it was to her father, as his solicitor and friend, that he
would have gone. There could be nothing unusual in that, but what
Cuthbert had told her about Mr. Hartington buying the shares but two
months before his death was certainly singular. Surely her father could
have prevented his taking so disastrous a step. Few men are regarded by
members of their family in exactly the same light as they are considered
by the public, and Jeremiah Brander was certainly no exception. While
the suavest of men in the eyes of his fellow-townsmen, his family were
well aware that he possessed a temper. When the girls were young his
conversation was always guarded in their hearing, but as they grew up he
no longer felt the same necessity for prudence of speech, and frequently
indulged in criticisms of the colleagues, for whom he professed the most
unbounded respect and admiration in public.
Mary had often felt something like remorse at the thought that the first
time she read Martin Chuzzlewit, many touches in the delineation of Mr.
Pecksniff's character had reminded her of her father. She believed him
to be a just and upright man, but she could not help admitting to
herself that he was not by a long way the man the public believed him to
be. It was a subject on which she rarely permitted herself to think.
They had never got on very well together, and she acknowledged to
herself that this was as much her fault as his. It was not so much the
fact that she had a strong will and was bent on going her own way,
regardless of the opinion of others, that had been the cause of the
gulf which had grown up between them, as the dissimilarity of their
character, the absolute difference between the view which she held of
things in general, to that which the rest of her family entertained
regarding them, and the outspoken frankness with which she was in the
habit of expressing her contempt for things they praised highly.
Thinking over this matter of Mr. Hartington's purchase of the bank
shares, she found herself wondering what motive her father could have
had in permitting him to buy them, for knowing how the Squire relied
upon his opinion in all business matters, she could not doubt that the
latter could have prevented this disastrous transaction. That he must
have had some motive she felt sure, for her experience of him was amply
sufficient for her to be well aware that he never acted without a motive
of some sort. So far as she could see, no motive was apparent, but this
in no way altered her opinion.
"Cuthbert thinks it a curious affair, and no wonder," she said to
herself. "I don't suppose he has a suspicion that anything has been
wrong, and I don't suppose there has; but there may have been what they
call sharp practice. I don't think Cuthbert likes my father, but he is
the very last man to suspect anyone. It was horrid, before, being at
Fairclose--it will be ten times as bad now. The whole thing is
disgusting. It is wicked of me to think that my father could possibly do
anything that wasn't quite honorable and right--especially when there is
not the slightest reason for suspecting him. It is only, I suppose,
because I know he isn't exactly what other people think him to be, that
makes me uneasy about it. I know well enough that I should never have
gone away from home as I did, if it had not been that I hated so to hear
him running down people with whom he seemed to be so friendly, and
making fun of all the things in which he seemed so interested. It used
to make me quite hateful, and he was just as glad, when I said I should
like to go to Girton, to get rid of me as I was to go.
"It is all very well to say, honor your father and mother, but if you
can't honor them what are you to do? I have no doubt I am worrying
myself for nothing now, but I can't help it. It is dreadful to feel
like that towards one's father, but I felt quite a chill run through me
when Cuthbert said he should go and see that man Cumming and try to get
to the bottom of things. One thing is certain, I will never live at
Fairclose--never. If he leaves it between us, Julia and Clara may live
there if they like, and let me have so much a year and go my own way.
But I will never put foot in it after father and mother are gone. It is
all very miserable, and I do think I am getting to be a most hateful
girl. Here am I suspecting my own father of having done something wrong,
although of what I have not the least idea, and that without a shadow of
reason, then I am almost hating a woman because a man I refused loves
her. I have become discouraged and have thrown up all the plans I had
laid down for myself, because it does not seem as easy as I thought it
would be. No, that is not quite true. It is much more because Cuthbert
has laughed me out of them. Anyhow I should be a nice woman to teach
other women what they should do, when I am as weak as the weakest of
them. I don't think there ever was a more objectionable sort of girl in
the world than I have become."
By the time that she had arrived at this conclusion she had nearly
reached home. A sudden feeling that she could not in her present mood
submit to be petted and fussed over by Madame Michaud struck her, and
turning abruptly she walked with brisk steps to the Arc de Triomphe and
then down the Champs Elysées and along the Rue Rivoli, and then round
the Boulevards, returning home fagged out, but the better for her
exertion. One thing she determined during her walk, she would give up
her work at the ambulance.
"There are plenty of nurses," she said, "and one more or less will make
no difference. I am miserably weak, but at any rate I have sense enough
to know that it will be better for me not to be going there every day,
now that he is out of danger. He belongs to someone else, and I would
rather die than that he should ever dream what a fool I am; and now I
know it myself it will be harder and harder as he gets better to be
talking to him indifferently." Accordingly the next morning, when she
went down, she told Dr. Swinburne that she felt that she must, at any
rate for a time, give up nursing.
"You are quite right, Miss Brander," he said, kindly, "you have taxed
your strength too much already, and are looking a mere shadow of what
you were two months ago. You are quite right to take a rest. I have
plenty of assistance, and there is not likely to be such a strain again
as that we have lately gone through. Paris cannot hold out many weeks
longer, and after the two failures I feel sure that there will be no
more attempts at a sortie, especially as all hopes that an army may come
to our relief are now at an end."
She found it more difficult to tell Cuthbert, but it was not necessary
for her to begin the subject, for he noticed at once that she had not
the usual nursing-dress on.
"You are going to take a holiday to-day, I suppose?" he said, as she
came up to his bedside.
"I am going to take a holiday for some little time," she said, quietly.
"They can do very well without me now. Almost all the patients in this
ward are convalescent, and I really feel that I need a rest."
"I am sure you do," he said, earnestly, "it has been an awful time for
you to go through, and you have behaved like a heroine. A good many of
us owe our lives to you, but the work has told on you sadly. I don't
suppose you know yourself how much. We shall all miss you at this end of
the ward--miss you greatly, but I am sure there is not one who will not
feel as I do, glad to know that you are taking a rest after all your
work. Of course you will look in sometimes to see how your patients are
progressing. As for myself I hope I shall be able to come up to see you
at the Michauds in another ten days or so. Now that the doctor has taken
to feeding me up I can feel that I am gaining strength every day."
"You must not hurry, Cuthbert," she said, gravely. "You must keep quiet
and patient."
"You are not in your nursing-dress now, Miss Brander, and I decline
altogether to be lectured by you. I have been very good and obedient up
to now, but I only bow to lawfully constituted authority, and now I
come under the head of convalescent I intend to emancipate myself."
"I shall not come down here to see you unless I hear good accounts of
your conduct," she said, with an attempt to speak playfully. "Well,
good-bye, Cuthbert. I hope you will not try to do too much."
"Good-bye, dear, thanks for all your goodness to me," he said,
earnestly, as he held her hand for a moment in his.
"He had no right to call me dear," Mary thought, almost indignantly, as
he left the hospital, "and he does not guess I know why he is longing to
be out again. I almost wonder he has never spoken to me about her. He
would know very well that I should be interested in anything that
concerns him, and I think he might have told me. I suppose he will bring
her up some day and introduce her as his wife. Anyhow I am glad I know
about it, and shall be able to take it as a matter of course."
Mary did not pay another visit to the ambulance. Now that she had given
up her work she felt the reaction, and although she refused to take to
her bed she passed her time sitting listless and weak in an easy-chair,
paying but slight attention to Madame Michaud's talk, and often passing
the greater part of the day in her own room.
Madame Michaud felt so uneasy about her that she went down to the
ambulance and brought up Dr. Swinburne, who scolded Mary for not having
sent for him before. He prescribed tonics, sent her up a dozen of wine
from the hospital, ordered her to wrap herself up and sit at an open
window for a time each day, and to make an effort to take a turn round
the garden as soon as she felt strong enough to do so.
On his return to the ambulance the surgeon said carelessly to Cuthbert,
who had now gained sufficient strength to be of considerable use as an
assistant in the ward--
"I have been up to see your late nurse, Miss Brander. There is nothing
serious the matter with her, but, as I thought likely would be the case,
she has collapsed now that her work is over, and will need a good deal
of care and attention to build her up again. You will be out in a few
days now and I am sure it will do her good if you will go up and have a
chat with her and cheer her up a bit. She is not in bed. My visit did
her good; but she wants rousing, and remember if you can get her to
laugh, and joke her about her laziness, it will do more good than by
expressing your pity for her."
"I think I am well enough to be discharged now, Doctor,' Cuthbert said,
eagerly.
"Yes, but you will have to be very careful for some time. You will want
generous food, and I don't see how you are to get it outside."
"I suppose the restaurants are still open?"
"The common ones are closed, but you can-still get a dinner at some of
the best places, although you will have to pay very heavily for it."
"I don't mind that, Doctor; and besides I am very anxious to be at work
again. It will be no more tiring standing at an easel than it is doing
what I can to help here."
"That is true enough, providing you do not do too much of it. Up to a
certain extent it will be a good thing for you, but mind, I distinctly
forbid you to attempt any such folly as to try to walk from the Quartier
Latin up to Passy. Let me see," he added, thoughtfully. "Yes, I think it
can be managed. I will send you home by the ambulance that will be here
to-morrow morning at eight o'clock. You are to keep yourself quiet all
day, and I will get Madame de Millefleurs to send her carriage round for
you at eleven o'clock next day, to take you round by Passy. She has told
me many times that it is always at the disposal of any of my patients to
whom it would be useful. I will see her some time to-morrow and arrange
about it."
"Thank you, indeed, Doctor. I need not say how grateful I am to you for
all the kindness I have received here."
"We have done the best we could for you," the doctor said, "and I am
sure there is not one of those who have provided funds for this
ambulance but feels well rewarded by the knowledge that it has been the
means of saving many lives. I think we may say that we have not lost
one whom it was humanly possible to save, while in the French hospitals
they have lost hundreds from over-crowding, want of ventilation, and
proper sanitary arrangements. The mortality there has been fearful, and
the percentage of deaths after amputations positively disgraceful."
René came late that afternoon to pay a visit to Cuthbert, and was
delighted to find that he was to be out next morning.
"I have kept your rooms in order," he said, "and will have a big fire
lighted in them before you arrive. They will give you breakfast before
you leave, I hope."
"They will do that, René, but I shall manage very well if there is still
anything left of that store of mine in the big cupboard."
"You may be sure that there is," René replied. "I am always most
particular in locking up the doors when I come away, and I have not used
the key you gave me of the cupboard. I was positively afraid to. I am
virtuous, I hope, but there are limits to one's power to resist
temptation. I know you told me to take anything I liked but if I had
once began I could never have stopped."
"Then we will have a feast to-morrow, René. Ask all the others in to
supper, but you must act as cook. Tell them not to come to see me till
eight o'clock. If they kept dropping in all day it would be too much for
me. I wish Dampierre could be with us, but he has not got on so fast as
I have. His wounds were never so serious, but the doctor said the bones
were badly smashed and take longer to heal. He says he is not a good
patient either, but worries and fidgets. I don't think those visits of
Minette were good for him, the doctor had to put a stop to them. He
would talk and excite himself so. However, I hear that he is likely to
be out in another fortnight."
"By that time it will be all over," Rend said, "negotiations are going
on now, and they say that in three or four days we shall surrender."
"The best thing to do, René. Ever since that last sortie failed all hope
has been at an end, and there has been no point in going on suffering,
for I suppose by this time the suffering has been very severe."
"Not so very severe, Cuthbert. Of course, we have been out of meat for a
long time, for the ration is so small it is scarcely worth calling meat,
but the flour held out well and so did the wine and most other things. A
few hundred have been killed by the Prussian shells, but with that
exception the mortality has not been very greatly above the average,
except that smallpox has been raging and has carried off a large number.
Among young children, too, the mortality has been heavy, owing to the
want of milk and things of that sort. I should doubt if there has been a
single death from absolute starvation."
To M. Goudé's students that supper at Cuthbert Harrington's was a
memorable event. The master himself was there. Two large hams, and
dishes prepared from preserved meats were on the table, together with an
abundance of good wine. It was the first reunion they had had since the
one before the sortie, and it was only the gaps among their number, and
the fact that their host and several of their comrades were still weak,
and greatly changed in appearance, that restrained their spirits from
breaking into hilarity.
The next morning Madame de Millefleurs' carriage came to the door and
Cuthbert was driven to the Michauds. For a moment Margot failed to
recognize Cuthbert as she opened the door. As she did so she exclaimed--
"Mon Dieu, Monsieur Hartington, you look like a ghost."
"I am very far from being a ghost, Margot, though there is not much
flesh on my bones. How is Mademoiselle Brander? I hear she has not been
well."
"She is as pale as you are, monsieur, but not so thin. She does nothing
but sit quiet all day with her eyes wide open--she who was always so
bright and active and had a smile for every one. I go out and cry often
after going into her room. She has just gone into the parlor. You will
find her alone there," she added, for Margot had always had her ideas as
to the cause of Cuthbert's visits.
Mary was sitting at the open window and did not look round as Cuthbert
entered.
"Well, Mary, is it actually you, doing nothing?" he said, cheerily.
She turned round with a start, and a flush of color swept across her
face.
"How you startled me," she said. "I am glad indeed to see you. I did not
think you would be out so soon. Surely it is very foolish of you coming
so far."
"Still thinking you are a nurse, Mary," he laughed. "I can assure you I
am very prudent, and I have been brought up here in a carriage a
carriage--with live horses. Dr. Swinburne told me you had not got over
the effects of your hard work, and that he had had to order you to take
tonics, so you see instead of being a nurse you are a patient at
present, while I am a free man. I came out of hospital yesterday
morning, and we had a grand supper last night out of my hoards, which I
found just as I had left them, which says wonders for the honesty of the
Parisians in general, and for the self-denial of my friend René Caillard
in particular."
"Why, I should have thought----" and she stopped, abruptly.
"What would you have thought, Miss Brander?"
"Oh, nothing."
"No, no, I cannot be put off in that way. You were going to say that you
thought I should have distributed my stores long ago, or that I ought to
have sent for them for the use of the hospital. I really ought to have
done so. It would have been only fair, but in fact the idea never
occurred to me. René had the keys of my rooms and I told him to use the
stores as he liked, meaning for himself and for our comrades of the
studio."
"I should have thought," she began again, and then, as before,
hesitated, and then asked, abruptly, "Have you not something to tell me,
Cuthbert--something that an old friend would tell to another? I have
been expecting you to tell me all the time you were in the hospital, and
have felt hurt you did not."
Cuthbert looked at her in surprise. There was a slight flush on her
cheek and it was evident that she was deeply in earnest.
"Tell you something, Mary," he repeated. "I really don't know what you
mean--no, honestly, I have not a notion."
"I don't wish to pry into your secrets," she said, coldly. "I learned
them accidentally, but as you don't wish to take me into your confidence
we will say no more about it."
"But we must say more about it," he replied. "I repeat I have no idea of
what you are talking about. I have no secret whatever on my mind. By
your manner it must be something serious, and I think I have a right to
know what it is."
She was silent for a moment and then said--
"If you wish it I can have no possible objection to tell you. I will
finish the question I began twice. I should have thought that you would
have wished that your stores should be sent to the lady you are engaged
to."
Cuthbert looked at her in silent surprise.
"My dear Mary," he said, gravely, at last, "either you are dreaming or I
am. I understood that your reply to my question, the year before last,
was as definite and as absolute a refusal as a man could receive.
Certainly I have not from that moment had any reason to entertain a
moment's doubt that you yourself intended it as a rejection."
"What are you talking about?" she asked, rising to her feet with an
energy of which a few minutes before she would have deemed herself
altogether incapable. "Are you pretending that I am alluding to myself,
are you insulting me by suggesting that I mean that I am engaged to
you?"
"All I say is, Mary, that if you do not mean that, I have not the most
remote idea in the world what you do mean."
"You say that because you think it is impossible I should know," Mary
retorted, indignantly, "but you are mistaken. I have had it from her own
lips."
"That she was engaged to me?"
"She came to the hospital to see you the night you were brought in, and
she claimed admittance on the ground that she was affianced to you."
Cuthbert's surprise changed to alarm as it flashed across him that the
heavy work and strain had been too much for the girl, and that her brain
had given way.
"I think that there must be some mistake, Mary," he said, soothingly.
"There is no mistake," she went on, still more indignantly; "she came
with your friend, René, and I knew her before she spoke, for I had seen
her face in a score of places in your sketch-book, and you told me she
was a model in your studio. It is no business of mine, Mr. Hartington,
whom you are going to marry. I can understand, perhaps, your wish that
the matter should remain for a time a secret, but I did not think when I
told you that I knew it, you would have kept up the affectation of
ignorance. I have always regarded you as being truthful and honorable
beyond all things, and I am bitterly disappointed. I was hurt that you
should not have given your confidence to me, but I did think when I told
you that I knew your secret you would have manfully owned it, and not
descended to a pretence of ignorance."
For a moment Cuthbert's face had expressed bewilderment, but as she went
on speaking, a smile stole across his face. Mary noticed it and her
voice and manner changed.
"I think, Mr. Hartington," she said, with great dignity, "you must see
that it will be pleasanter for us both that this interview shall
terminate."
He rose from his seat, took his hat off the table, and said, quietly--
"I have but one observation to make before I go. You have discovered,
Miss Brander, that you made one mistake in your life. Has it never
struck you that you might also have made a mistake this time? I think
that our very long acquaintance might have induced you to hesitate a
little before you assumed it as a certainty that your old acquaintance
was acting in this way, and that for the sake of old times you might
have given him the benefit of the doubt."
The strength that Mary's indignation had given her, deserted her
suddenly. Her fingers tightened on the back of the chair by her side for
support.
"How could there be any mistake," she asked, weakly, her vigorous attack
now turned into a defence, more by his manner than his words, "when I
heard her say so?"
"Sit down, child," he said, in his old authoritative manner. "You are
not fit to stand."
She felt it would be a step towards defeat if she did so, but he brought
up the chair in which she had before been sitting and placed it behind
her, and quietly assisted her into it.
"Now," he went on, "you say you heard it from her lips. What did she
say?"
"She said she insisted on going in to see you, and that as your
affianced wife she had a right to do so."
"She said that, did she? That she was the affianced wife of Cuthbert
Hartington?"
Mary thought for a moment.
"No, she did not use those words, at least, not that I can remember; but
it was not necessary, I knew who she was. I have seen the sketches in
your book, and there were several of them on the walls of your room. Of
course I knew who she was speaking of, though she did not, so far as I
can remember, use your name."
"Did it never occur to you, Miss Brander, that it was a natural thing
one should have many sketches of the girl who always stood as a model in
the studio, and that every student there would have his sketch-book full
of them? Did you not know that there were three or four other wounded
men of the same corps as myself in the hospital; that one at least was a
fellow-student of mine, and also a foreigner, and that this young woman
was just as likely to be asking to see him as to see me?"
An awful feeling of doubt and shame came with overpowering force over
Mary Brander.
"No," she said, desperately, "I never thought of such a thing. Naturally
I thought it was you, and there was no reason why it shouldn't be. You
were perfectly free to please yourself, only I felt hurt that when you
got better you did not tell me."
Her voice was so weak that Cuthbert poured some water into a glass and
held it to her lips.
"Now, child," he went on in a lighter voice, "I am not going to scold
you--you are too weak to be scolded. Some day I may scold you as you
deserve. Not only is Minette--I told you her name before--nothing to me,
but I dislike her as a passionate, dangerous young woman; capable,
perhaps, of good, but certainly capable of evil. However, I regret to
say that Arnold Dampierre, the man who was in the next bed to me, you
know, does not see her in the same light, and I am very much afraid he
will be fool enough to marry her. Actually, she did a few days later
obtain permission to see him, and has, I believe, seen him several times
since; but as he was moved out of your ward whilst I was battling with
the fever, I have not seen her. Now don't cry, child, you have been a
goose, but there is no harm done, and you ought to be glad to know that
your old friend is not going to make a fool of himself; and he can still
be regarded by you as truthful and honorable. Do you think I would have
taken you round to my rooms if I had been going to make her their
mistress?"
"Don't, don't!" the girl cried. "Don't say anything more, Cuthbert. I
cannot bear it."
"I am not going to say any more. Madame de Millefleurs' horses must by
this time be half-frozen, and her coachman be out of all patience, and I
must be going. I shall come again as soon as I can, and I shall be very
angry if I don't find you looking much more like yourself when I next
come."