A Girl of the Commune Part 17

"Ah! Those Prussians!" she exclaimed, in a tone of the deepest hate, with a gesture of defiance towards Versailles. "They will dare to fire at you!"

"Yes, I imagine they will do that, Minette," he said with a laugh, "and pretty hotly, too."

"Well, if they kill you," she said, pa.s.sionately, "I will avenge you. I will go out through the outposts and will find my way to Versailles, and I will kill William or Bismarck. They may kill me afterwards, I care nothing for that. Charlotte Corday was a reactionist, but she slew Marat and died calmly and bravely. I could do as much and would to revenge you."

"I hope you would not attempt anything so mad, Minette. Of course, I must take my chance as everyone else will do, and the Prussians will be no more to blame if one of their bullets killed me than if it had struck anyone else. Everyone who goes into a battle has to run his chances. I had an elder brother killed in the civil war we had in the States. I have no great love for the North, but I do not blame them especially for the death of my brother. There were a great number killed on both sides, and that he should be among them was the fortune of war. But it is bitterly cold, Minette; let us be walking. I am glad we are not on outpost duty to-night. I put on so many flannel shirts that I can hardly b.u.t.ton my tunic over them, but in spite of that it is cold work standing with one's hands on one's trigger looking out into the darkness. It is quite a relief when a rifle rings out either from our side or the other. Then for a bit everyone is alive and active, we think the Prussians are advancing, and they think we are, and we both blaze away merrily for a bit. Then there is a lull again, and perhaps an hour or two of dreary waiting till there is a fresh alarm. As soon as we are relieved, we hurry off to our quarter, where there is sure to be a fire blazing. Then we heat up the coffee in our canteens, pouring in a little spirits, and are soon warm again."

"I cannot see why they don't form corps of women, Arnold; we have just as much at stake as the men have, and I am sure we should be quite as brave as the most of them, a great deal braver than the National Guard."

"I have no doubt you would, dear, but it will be quite time for you to fight when all the men are used up. What the women ought to do is to drive the men outside the walls. If the women were to arm themselves with mops soaked in dirty water, and were to attack every man under forty they found lurking in the streets, they would soon make a change in things. You should begin in your own quarter first, for although they are always denouncing the bourgeois for not fighting, I cannot see that there is any more eagerness to go out at Montmartre than there is in the quarter of the Bank--in fact, a great deal less."

"Why should the ouvriers fight with the Germans, Arnold--to them it matters little whether Paris is taken by the Germans or not--it is not they whose houses will be sacked, it is not they who will have to pay the indemnity."

"No, but at least they are Frenchmen. They can talk enough about the honor of France, but it is little they do to preserve it. They shout, 'the Prussians must be destroyed,' and then go off quietly to their cabarets to smoke and drink. I do not admire the bourgeois, but I do not see anything more admirable among the ouvriers. They talk grandly but they do nothing. There is no difficulty in getting volunteers for the war companies among the National Guard of the centre, though to them the extra pay is nothing; but at Belleville and Montmartre the war companies don't fill up. They rail at the bourgeois but when it comes to fighting outside the walls I will wager that the shopkeepers show the most courage."

"They will fight when there is anything to fight for," she said, confidently, "but they don't care to waste their time on the walls when there is nothing to do, and the Germans are miles away."

"Well, we shall see," he replied, grimly. "Anyhow, I wish it were all over, and that we were on our way home. You have never seen a ship yet, Minette. You will be astonished when you go on board one of the great liners," and as they walked along the Boulevards he told her of the floating palaces, in one of which they were to cross the ocean, and forgetting for a time the questions that absorbed her, she listened with the interest of a child hearing a fairy-tale. When they neared Montmartre they separated, for Minette would never walk with him in her own quarter.

The next morning, November 28th, the order was issued that the gates were to be closed and that no one was to be allowed to pa.s.s out under any pretext whatever. No one doubted that the long-expected sally was to be carried out. Bodies of troops marched through the streets, trains of wagons with munitions of war moved in the same direction, and in an hour all Paris knew that the sortie was to take place somewhere across the loop formed by the Marne.

"It is for to-morrow," Pierre Leroux exclaimed, running into Cuthbert's room, "we are to parade at daybreak. The gates are shut, and troops are moving about everywhere."

"All right, Pierre; we have been looking for it for so long, that it comes almost as a surprise at last."

Cuthbert got up, made himself a cup of coffee, drank it with a piece of dry bread, and then sallied out. Mary would be on duty at ten o'clock.

He knew the road she took on her way to the hospital and should meet her. In half an hour he saw the trim figure in the dark dress, and the white band round the arm.

"I suppose you have heard that we are going to stir up the German nest to-morrow," he said gayly.

"Yes, I have heard," she said, sadly, "it is very dreadful."

"It is what we have been waiting for and longing for for the last two months. We are to be under arms at daybreak, and as you will be at the ambulance for the next twenty-four hours I thought I would make an effort to catch you on the way. I want you to come round to my lodgings."

She looked surprised.

"Of course I will come," she said frankly, "but what do you want me to do that for?"

"Well, there is no saying as to who will come back again tomorrow, Mary, and I want you to see my two pictures. I have been working at them for the last two months steadily. They are not quite finished yet, but another week would have been enough for the finishing touches, but I don't suppose you will miss them. n.o.body has seen them yet, and n.o.body would have seen them till they were quite ready, but as it is possible they never may be finished I should like you to see them now. I am not taking you up under any false pretences," he said, lightly, "nor to try again to get you to change your mission. I only want you to see that I have been working honestly. I could see when I have spoken of my painting there was always a little incredulity in the way in which you listened to me. You had so completely made up your mind that I should never be earnest about anything that you could not bring yourself to believe that I wasn't amusing myself with art here, just as I did in London. I had intended to have brought them triumphantly in a fiacre to your place, when they were finished, and I can't deny myself the pleasure of disabusing your mind. It is not far out of your way, and if we walk fast you can still arrive at your ambulance in time. If there were any fiacres about I would call one, but they have quite disappeared. In the first place, because no one is rich enough to be able to pay for such luxuries, and in the second, because most of the horses have been turned to other uses."

She did not seem to pay very much attention to what he was saying, but broke in with the question--

"Do you think there will be much fighting?"

"It would be folly to try to persuade you that there won't," he said.

"When there are so many thousand men with guns and cannon who are determined to get out of a place, and an equal number of men with guns and cannon just as determined to keep them in, the chances are that, as the Irish say, there will be wigs on the green. I do not suppose the loss will be great in comparison to the number engaged, because certainly a good many of the French will reconsider their determination to get out, and will be seized with a burning desire to get back as soon as the German sh.e.l.ls begin to fall among them, still I do hope that they will make a decent fight of it. I know there are some tremendously strong batteries on the ground enclosed by the loop of the Marne, which is where they say it is going to be, and the forts will be able to help, so that certainly for a time we shall fight with great advantages. I do wish that it was not so cold, fighting is bad enough in summer; but the possibility of lying out all night on the snow wounded is one I very strongly object to."

He continued to talk in the same light strain, until they reached his lodgings, in order to put the girl at her ease.

"So this is your sitting-room," she said, with a laugh that had a tremor in it, "it is just what I supposed it would be, very untidy, very dusty, and yet in its way, comfortable. Where are the pictures?"

"Behind that screen; I keep them in strict seclusion there. Now if you will sit down by the window I will bring the easels out."

She did as he told her. The pictures were covered when he brought them out. He placed them where the light would fall best on them, and then removed the cloths.

"They have not arrived at the glories of frames yet," he said, "but you must make allowances for that. I can a.s.sure you they will look much larger and more important when they are in their settings."

The girl sat for a minute without speaking. They were reproductions on a larger scale and with all the improvements that his added skill and experience could introduce of the two he had exhibited to M. Goude, when he entered the studio.

"I had intended to do battle-pieces," he said, "and have made innumerable sketches, but somehow or other the inspiration did not come in that direction, so I fell back on these which are taken from smaller ones I painted before I left London. Do you like them? You see I hang upon your verdict. You at present represent the public to me."

There were tears standing in the girl's eyes.

"They are beautiful," she said, softly, "very beautiful. I am not a judge of painting, though I have been a good deal in the galleries of Dresden, and I was at Munich too; and I know enough to see they are painted by a real artist. I like the bright one best, the other almost frightens me, it is so sad and hopeless, I think--" and she hesitated, "that girl in the veranda is something like me, though I am sure I never look a bit like that, and I am nothing--nothing like so pretty."

"You never look like that, Miss Brander, because you have never felt as that girl is supposed to be feeling; some day when the time comes that you feel as she does you will look so. That is a woman, a woman who loves. At present that side of your nature has not woke up. The intellectual side of you, if I may so speak, has been forced, and your soul is still asleep. Some day you will admit that the portrait, for I own it to be a portrait, is a life-like one. Now--" he broke off abruptly, "we had better be going or you will be late at your post."

She said no more until they were in the street.

"I have been very wrong," she said suddenly, after walking for some time in silence. "You must have worked hard indeed. I own I never thought that you would. I used to consider your sketches very pretty, but I never thought that you would come to be a great artist."

"I have not come to that yet," he said, "but I do hope that I may come to be a fair one some day--that is if the Germans don't forcibly interfere--but I have worked very hard, and I may tell you that Goude, who is one of the best judges in Paris, thinks well of me. I will ask you to take care of this," he said, and he took out a blank envelope.

"This is my will. A man is a fool who goes into a battle without making provision for what may happen. When I return you can hand it to me again. If I should not come back please inclose it to your father. He will see that its provisions are carried out. I may say that I have left you the two pictures. You have a right to them, for if it had not been for you I don't suppose they would ever have been painted. I only wish that they had been quite finished."

Mary took the paper without a word, nor did she speak again until they arrived at the ambulance, then she turned and laid her hand in his.

"Good-bye, Mary, I hope I shall ask you for that envelope back again in a couple of days."

"G.o.d grant that it may be so," she said, "I shall suffer so till you do."

"Yes, we have always been good friends, haven't we? Now, child, you always used to give me a kiss before I left you then. Mayn't I have one now?"

She held up her face, he kissed her twice, and then turned and strode away.

"I wonder whether she will ever grow to be a woman," he said to himself, bitterly, "and discover that there is a heart as well as brains in her composition. There was no more of doubt or hesitation in the way in which she held up her face to be kissed, than when she did so as a child. Indeed, as a child, I do think she would have cried if I told her at parting that I was going away for good. Well, it is of no use blaming her. She can't help it if she is deficient in the one quality that is of all the most important. Of course she has got it and will know it some day, but at present it is latent and it is evident that I am not the man who has the key of it. She was pleased at my pictures. It was one of her ideas that I ought to do something, and she is pleased to find that I have buckled to work in earnest, just as she would be pleased if Parliament would pa.s.s a law giving to women some of the rights which she has taken it into her head they are deprived of. However, perhaps it is better as it is. If anything happens to me to-morrow, she will be sorry for a week or two just as she would if she lost any other friend, while if Arnold Dampierre goes down Minette will for a time be like a mad woman. At any rate my five thousand will help her to carry out her crusade. I should imagine that she won't get much aid in that direction from her father.

"Halloa, I know that man's face," he broke off as he noticed a well-dressed man turn in at the door of a quiet-looking residence he was just approaching, "I know his face well; he is an Englishman, too, but I can't think where I have seen him." He could not have told himself why he should have given the question a second thought, but the face kept haunting him in spite of the graver matters in his mind, and as he reached the door of his lodgings he stopped suddenly.

"I have it," he exclaimed, "it is c.u.mming, the manager of the bank, the fellow that ruined it and then absconded. I saw they were looking for him in Spain and South America and a dozen other places, and here he is.

By Jove, he is a clever fellow. I suppose he came here as soon as the war broke out, knowing very well that the police would have plenty of other things to think of besides inquiring as to the antecedents of Englishmen who took up their residence here. Of course he has been absolutely safe since the fall of the Empire. The fellow has grown a beard and mustache; that is why I did not recognize him at first. Of course he has taken another name. Well, I don't know that it is any business of mine. He got off with some money, but I don't suppose it was any great sum. At any rate it would not be enough to make any material difference to the creditors of the bank. However, I will think it over later on. There is no hurry about the matter. He is here till the siege is over, and I should certainly like to have a talk with him. I have never been able to get it quite out of my mind that there has been something mysterious about the whole affair as far as my father was concerned, though where the mystery comes in is more than I can imagine.

I expect it is simply because I have never liked Brander, and have always had a strong idea that our popular townsman was at bottom a knave as well as a humbug."

Mary Brander went about her work very quietly all day, and more than one of the wounded patients remarked the change in her manner.

"Mademoiselle is suffering to-day," one of them said to her, as he missed the ring of hopefulness and cheeriness with which she generally spoke to him.

"I am not feeling well, I have a bad headache; and moreover I have friends in the sortie that is to be made to-night."