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 Elysees 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.”
Rene 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, Rene, 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,” Rene 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,
Rene. 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, Rene.
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. Goude’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 Rene 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. Rene 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, Rene, 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.”