A Girl of the Commune. Henty George Alfred
but neither embarrassment nor emotion on her face as she said, frankly—
"Why, Cuthbert Hartington, this is a curious meeting. I did know you were in Paris, for I had heard as much from my father, but I had no idea of your address and I have wondered many times since I came here, five weeks ago, whether we should run against each other. No, I have not dropped from the clouds, and you ought to have known I should be here; I told you that I was going to have a year in Germany and then a year in France. My year in Germany was up two months ago. I went home for a fortnight, and here I am as a matter of course."
"I might have known you would carry out your programme exactly as you had sketched it, but I thought that the disturbed state of things over here might have induced you to defer that part of the plan until a more appropriate season. Surely Paris is not just at present a pleasant abode for a young lady, and is likely to be a much more unpleasant one later on."
"I think there could hardly be a more appropriate time for being here, Mr. Hartington; one could have no better time for studying social problems than the present when conventionalities have gone to the winds and one sees people as they are; but this is hardly the place to talk. I am boarding with a family at No. 15 Avenue de Passy. Will you come and see me there?"
"Certainly I will, if you will allow me. What will be a convenient time?"
"I should say three o'clock in the afternoon. They are all out then, except Madame Michaud and her little daughter, and we shall be able to chat comfortably, which we could not do if you came in the evening, when the father is at home and two boys who are away at school during the day. Will you come to-morrow?"
"Yes, my afternoons are free at present."
She held out her hand and then walked away with a steady business-like step. Cuthbert stood watching her till she had disappeared in the crowd.
"She has no more sentiment in her composition at present," he said to himself with a laugh that had some bitterness in it, "than a nether millstone. Her mind is so wrapped up in this confounded fad of hers that there is no room in it for anything else. I might have been a cousin, instead of a man she had refused, for any embarrassment or awkwardness she felt at our sudden meeting. It clearly made no impression at all upon her. She remembers, of course, that she met me at Newquay. I don't suppose she has really forgotten that I asked her to be my wife, but it was a mere incident, and affected her no more than if I had asked her to buy a picture and she had refused. I wish to goodness I had not met her again. I had got fairly over it, and was even beginning to wonder how I ever could have wanted to marry anyone so different in every way from the sort of woman I fancied I should have fallen in love with. How foolish of her coming over to Paris at this time. Well, I daresay it has all saved a lot of trouble. I suppose at that time Brander would have been delighted at the prospect, but it would have been a very different thing after the failure of the bank. I don't think he would have made a pleasant father-in-law under the present circumstances. He is an old fox. I always thought so, and I think so more than ever now. It has been a queer affair altogether. I wonder what Mary thinks of it all. I suppose she will talk to me about it to-morrow afternoon. By the way, I have to go this evening with René and the others to be sworn in or attested, or whatever they call it, at the Mairie. Their report as to the officers is satisfactory. I have heard that Longfranc was an excellent officer before he came into some money, cut the army and took up art. I have no doubt he will make a good major, and he understands the men better than most army men would do. They say the Colonel is a good man, too, and was very popular with his regiment before he retired from the service."
CHAPTER VI
On inquiry of the concierge at No. 15 Avenue de Passy, Cuthbert was informed that Madame Michaud lived on the third floor. On ascending and ringing the bell the door was opened by an elderly servant.
"I have called to see Mademoiselle Brander, is she at home?"
"She is, sir."
"Would you give her my card, if you please?"
"Mademoiselle is expecting you," the servant said, and led the way at once into a sitting-room.
It was of the usual type of such room—of good size but bare, with bee's-waxed flooring, plainly frescoed walls, and a ceiling colored gray and bordered with painted arabesques. Two or three small rugs relieved the bareness of the floor. An oval table on very thin legs stood in the middle; the chairs and couch seemed to have been made to match it, and had an eminently bare and uncomfortable appearance; a vase of flowers stood on a spindle-legged little table in front of one of the windows which opened down to the ground. Some colored prints in frames of stained wood hung on the walls, and some skimpy curtains draped the windows.
Mary Brander was seated with a writing-pad on her knee at the window unoccupied by the vase and its support. She put the writing-pad and a book, evidently a large diary, down on the floor.
"You are punctual to the minute, Mr. Hartington. I should never have credited you with that virtue."
"Nor with any other virtue, I imagine, Miss Brander," he said, with a smile.
"Oh, yes, I do. I credit you with numbers of them. Now draw that chair up to the window—it is not comfortable, but it is the best of them—and let us talk. Now, in the first place you don't know how sorry, how dreadfully sorry I have been about what has happened at home. I was shocked, indeed, at the news of the sudden death of your dear father. He was always so kind when he came to see us, and I liked him so much, I felt for you deeply. It must have been an awful shock for you. I heard it a few days after I got to Dresden. Then came the other news about that terrible failure and its consequences. It seemed too shocking altogether that you should have lost the dear old place, but I do think I was most shocked of all when I heard that my father had bought it. Somehow it did not seem to be right. Of course it must have been, but it did not seem so to me. Did it to you, Cuthbert?" and she looked at him wistfully.
"I have no doubt it was all right," he said, "and as it was to be sold, I think I preferred it should be to your father rather than anybody else. I believe I rather liked the thought that as it was not to be my home it would be yours."
She shook her head.
"It does not seem to me to be natural at all, and I was miserable all the time I was there the other day."
"Your father respected my wishes in all respects, Mary. I believe he kept on all the old servants who chose to stay. He promised me that he would not sell my father's hunters, and that no one should ride them, but that they should be pensioners as long as they lived; and the same with the dogs, and that at any time, if I moved into quarters where I could keep a dog or two, he would send up my two favorites to me."
"Yes, they are all there. I went out and gave cakes to the dogs and sugar to the horses every day, and talked to them, and I think regularly had a cry over them. It was very foolish, but I could not help it. It did all seem so wrong and so pitiful. I could not learn much about you from father. He said that you had only written once to him on business since things were finally settled; but that you had mentioned that you were going to Paris, and he said, too—" and she hesitated for a moment, "that although you had lost Fairclose and all the property, you had enough to live upon in a way—a very poor way—but still enough for that."
"Not such a very poor way," he said. "There is no secret about it. I had five thousand pounds that had been settled on my mother, and fortunately that was not affected by the smash, so I have two hundred a year, which is amply sufficient for my wants."
"It is enough, of course, to live upon in a way, Cuthbert, but so different from what you were accustomed to."
"I don't suppose you spend two hundred a year," he said, with a smile.
"Oh, no, but a woman is so different. That is just what I have, and of course I don't spend anything like all of it; but as I said, it is so different with you, who have been accustomed to spend ever so much more."
"I don't find myself in any way pinched. I can assure you my lodgings in the Quartier Latin are not what you would call sumptuous, but they are comfortable enough, and they do not stand me in a quarter of what I paid for my chambers in London. I can dine sumptuously on a franc and a half. Another franc covers my breakfast, which is generally café au lait