A Girl of the Commune

by G. A. Henty

  CHAPTER VI.

  On inquiry of the concierge at No. 15 Avenue de Passy, Cuthbert wasinformed that Madame Michaud lived on the third floor. On ascending andringing 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 atonce into a sitting-room.

  It was of the usual type of such room--of good size but bare, withbee's-waxed flooring, plainly frescoed walls, and a ceiling colored grayand bordered with painted arabesques. Two or three small rugs relievedthe bareness of the floor. An oval table on very thin legs stood in themiddle; the chairs and couch seemed to have been made to match it, andhad an eminently bare and uncomfortable appearance; a vase of flowersstood on a spindle-legged little table in front of one of the windowswhich opened down to the ground. Some colored prints in frames ofstained wood hung on the walls, and some skimpy curtains draped thewindows.

  Mary Brander was seated with a writing-pad on her knee at the windowunoccupied by the vase and its support. She put the writing-pad and abook, evidently a large diary, down on the floor.

  "You are punctual to the minute, Mr. Hartington. I should never havecredited you with that virtue."

  "Nor with any other virtue, I imagine, Miss Brander," he said, with asmile.

  "Oh, yes, I do. I credit you with numbers of them. Now draw that chairup to the window--it is not comfortable, but it is the best of them--andlet us talk. Now, in the first place you don't know how sorry, howdreadfully sorry I have been about what has happened at home. I wasshocked, indeed, at the news of the sudden death of your dear father. Hewas always so kind when he came to see us, and I liked him so much, Ifelt for you deeply. It must have been an awful shock for you. I heardit a few days after I got to Dresden. Then came the other news aboutthat terrible failure and its consequences. It seemed too shockingaltogether that you should have lost the dear old place, but I do thinkI 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 itdid not seem so to me. Did it to you, Cuthbert?" and she looked at himwistfully.

  "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 anybodyelse. I believe I rather liked the thought that as it was not to be myhome it would be yours."

  She shook her head.

  "It does not seem to me to be natural at all, and I was miserable allthe time I was there the other day."

  "Your father respected my wishes in all respects, Mary. I believe hekept on all the old servants who chose to stay. He promised me that hewould 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 samewith the dogs, and that at any time, if I moved into quarters where Icould 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 andsugar to the horses every day, and talked to them, and I think regularlyhad a cry over them. It was very foolish, but I could not help it. Itdid all seem so wrong and so pitiful. I could not learn much about youfrom father. He said that you had only written once to him on businesssince things were finally settled; but that you had mentioned that youwere going to Paris, and he said, too--" and she hesitated for a moment,"that although you had lost Fairclose and all the property, you hadenough to live upon in a way--a very poor way--but still enough forthat."

  "Not such a very poor way," he said. "There is no secret about it. I hadfive thousand pounds that had been settled on my mother, and fortunatelythat was not affected by the smash, so I have two hundred a year, whichis amply sufficient for my wants."

  "It is enough, of course, to live upon in a way, Cuthbert, but sodifferent 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 ofcourse I don't spend anything like all of it; but as I said, it is sodifferent with you, who have been accustomed to spend ever so muchmore."

  "I don't find myself in any way pinched. I can assure you my lodgings inthe Quartier Latin are not what you would call sumptuous, but they arecomfortable enough, and they do not stand me in a quarter of what I paidfor my chambers in London. I can dine sumptuously on a franc and a half.Another franc covers my breakfast, which is generally _cafe au lait_ andtwo eggs; another franc suffices for supper. So you see that mynecessaries of life, including lodgings and fuel, do not come toanything like half my income, and I can spend the rest in riotous livingif I choose."

  The girl looked at him earnestly.

  "You are not growing cynical, I hope, Cuthbert?"

  "I hope not. I am certainly not conscious of it. I don't look cynical,do I?"

  "No," she said, doubtfully. "I do not see any change in you, but what doyou do with yourself?"

  "I paint," he said.

  "Really!"

  "Really and truly, I have become what you wanted me to become, a veryearnest person indeed, and some day people may even take to buying mypictures."

  "I never quite know when you are in earnest, Cuthbert; but if it is trueit is very good news. Do you mean that you are really studying?"

  "I am indeed. I work at the studio of one M. Goude, and if you choose toinquire, you will find he is perhaps the best master in Paris. I amafraid the Prussians are going to interrupt my studies a good deal. Thishas made me angry and I have enlisted--that is to say, been sworn in asa member of the Chasseurs des Ecoles, which most of the students atGoude's have joined."

  "What! You are going to fight against the Germans!" she exclaimed,indignantly. "You never can mean it, Cuthbert."

  "I mean it, I can assure you," he said, amused at her indignation. "Isuppose you are almost Germanized, and regard their war against theFrench as a just and holy cause."

  "Certainly I do," she said, "though of course, I should not say so here.I am in France and living in a French family, and naturally I would saynothing that would hurt the feelings of the people round me, but therecan be no doubt that the French deserve all the misfortunes that havefallen upon them. They would have invaded Germany, and all these pooryoung Germans have been torn away from their friends and families tofight."

  "So have these young Frenchmen. To my mind the war was deliberatelyforced upon France, but I think we had better agree to differ on thissubject. You have been among Germans and it is not unnatural that youshould have accepted their version. I have been living among Frenchmen,and although I do not say that it would not have been much wiser if theyhad avoided falling into the pit dug for them, my sympathies are whollywith them, except in this outburst of folly that has resulted in theestablishment, for a time at any rate, of a Republic. Now, I have nosympathy whatever with Republics, still less for a Republic controlledby political adventurers, and like many Frenchmen I am going to fightfor France, and in no way for the Republic. At any rate let us agree toavoid the subject altogether. We shall never convince each other howevermuch we might argue it over."

  The girl was silent for two or three minutes, and then said--

  "Well, we will agree not to quarrel over it. I don't know how it is thatwe always see things so differently, Cuthbert. However, we may talkabout your doings without arguing over the cause. Of course you do notsuppose there will be much fighting--a week or two will see the end ofit all."

  "Again we differ," he said. "I believe that there will be some sharpfighting, and I believe that Paris will hold out for months."

  She looked at him incredulously.

  "I should have thought," she said, after a pause, "you were the lastperson who would take this noisy shouting mob seriously."

  "I don't think anything of the mob one way or the other," he said. "Idespise them utterly; but the troops and the mobiles are sufficie
nt toman the forts and the walls, and I believe that middle-class corps, likethe one I have entered, will fight manfully; and the history of Parishas shown over and over again that the mob of Paris, fickle,vain-headed, noisy braggadocios as they are, and always have been, canat least starve well. They held out against Henry of Navarre tillnumbers dropped dead in the streets, and until the Spaniards came atlast from the Netherlands and raised the siege, and I believe they willhold out now. They have courage enough, as has been shown over and overagain at the barricades, but they will be useless for fighting becausethey will submit to no discipline. Still, as I said, they can starve,and it will be a long time indeed before the suffering will becomeintense enough to drive them to surrender. I fear that you havealtogether underrated the gravity of the situation, and that you willhave very severe privations to go through before the siege is over."

  "I suppose I can stand it as well as others," she laughed, "but I thinkyou are altogether wrong. However, if it should come it will be veryinteresting."

  "Very," he said, shortly, "but I doubt if you will see it quite in thesame light when it comes to eating rats."

  "I should not eat them," she said, decidedly.

  "Well, when it comes to that or nothing, I own that I myself shall eatrats if I can get them. I have heard that the country rat, the fellowthat lives in ricks, is by no means bad eating, but I own to having adoubt as to the Paris rat."

  "It is disgusting to think of such a thing," she said, indignantly, "theidea is altogether ridiculous."

  "I do not know whether you consider that betting is among the thingsthat woman has as much right to do as man; but if you do, I am ready towager it will come to rats before Paris surrenders."

  "I never made a bet in my life," she said, "but I will wager five francswith you that there will be nothing of the sort. I do not say that ratsmay not be eaten in the poor quarters. I do not know what they eatthere. I hear they eat horse-flesh, and for anything I know they may eatrats; but I will wager that rats will never be openly sold as an articleof food before Paris surrenders."

  "It is a bet," he said, "and I will book it at once," and he gravelytook out a pocket-book and made an entry. "And now," he said, as hereplaced the book in his pocket, "how do you pass your time?"

  "I spend some hours every day at the Bibliotheque. Then I take a walk inthis quarter and all round the Boulevards. One can walk just as freelythere as one could in Germany, but I find that I cannot venture off theminto the poorer quarters; the people stare, and it is not pleasant."

  "I certainly should not recommend you to make experiments that way. Inthe great thoroughfares a lady walking by herself passes unnoticed,especially if she looks English or American. They are coming tounderstand that young women in those countries are permitted an amountof freedom that is shocking to the French mind, but the idea has notpermeated to the lower strata of society.

  "If you are really desirous of investigating the ways of the femalepopulation of the poorer quarters, I shall be happy to escort youwhenever you like, but I do not think you will be altogether gratifiedwith the result of your researches, and I think that you would obtain amuch closer insight into French lower class life by studying Balzac andsome of the modern writers--they are not always savory, but at leastthey are realistic."

  "Balzac is terrible," she said, "and some of the others I have read alittle of are detestable. I don't think you can be serious in advisingme to read them."

  "I certainly should not advise you to read any of them, Miss Brander, ifyou were a young lady of the ordinary type; but as you take up the causeof woman in general it is distinctly necessary that you should study allthe phases of female life. How else can you grapple with the question?"

  "You are laughing at me again, Mr. Hartington," she said, somewhatindignantly.

  "I can assure you that I am not. If your crusade is in favor only ofgirls of the upper and middle classes, you are touching but the fringeof the subject, for they are outnumbered by twenty to one by those ofother classes, and those in far greater need of higher life than theothers."

  "It seems rather hopeless," Mary Brander said, despondently, after apause, "one is so unable to influence them."

  "Exactly so. You are setting yourself to move a mountain. When the timecomes there may be an upheaval, and the mountain may move of its ownaccord; but the efforts of a thousand or ten thousand women as earnestas yourself would be no more use in proportion, than those of a colonyof ants working to level the mountain."

  "Don't discourage me, Cuthbert," she said, pitifully. "I do believe withall my heart in my principles, but I do often feel discouraged. The taskseems to grow larger and more difficult the more I see of it, and I ownthat living a year among German women was rather crushing to me."

  "That I can quite understand," he said, with a smile, "the averageGerman woman differs as widely in her ideas--I do not say aspirations,for she has none--from your little group of theorists at Girton as thepoles are apart."

  "But do not think," she replied, rallying, "that I am in the leastshaken because I see that the difficulty is greater than I have lookedfor. Your simile of ants is not correct. Great things can be done byindividuals. Voltaire and Rousseau revolutionized French thought fromthe top to the bottom. Why should not a great woman some day rise andexercise as great influence over her sex as these two Frenchmen did? Butdo not let us talk about that any more. I want to hear more about whatyou are doing. I have thought of you so much during the past year--ithas all seemed so strange and so sad. Are you really working hard--Imean steadily and regularly?"

  "You evidently think that impossible," he laughed, "but I can assure youit is true. If you doubt me I will give you Goude's address, and if youcall upon him and say that you have an interest in me--you can assignany reason you like, say that you are an aunt of mine and intend tomake me your heir--and beg him to inform you frankly of his opinion ofmy work and progress, I feel sure that he will give you an account thatwill satisfy your doubts."

  "I don't think I could do that," she said, seriously. "There, you arelaughing at me again," she broke off as she looked up at him. "Of courseI could not do such a thing, but I should very greatly like to knowabout you."

  "I do think, Miss Brander, I am working hard enough and steady enough tosatisfy even you. I did so for six months in England with a fellow namedTerrier. He was just the master I wanted. He had not a shadow ofimagination, but was up in all the technical details of painting, and insix months' hard work I really learnt to paint; previous to that I knewnothing of painting. I could make a colored sketch, but that was all,now I am on the highway to becoming an artist. Goude will only receivepupils whom he considers likely to do him credit, and on seeing two ofthe things I had done after I had been working with Terrier, he acceptedme at once. He is a splendid master--out and away the best in Paris, andis really a great artist himself. He is a peppery little man and willtolerate no nonsense, and I can assure you that he is well satisfiedwith me. I am going to set to work to do a couple of pictures on my ownaccount for next year's Salon. I should have waited another year beforetrying my wings, if he had not encouraged me to venture at once, and ashe is very much opposed to his pupils painting for exhibition until theyare sufficiently advanced to begin with a success, it is proof that hehas at least some hopes of me."

  "I am glad indeed, Cuthbert. I shan't be quite so sorry now as I havebeen about your losing Fairclose. It is so much nobler to work than itis to fritter away a life doing nothing. How tiresome it is," she said,"that you have taken this unfortunate idea in your head of joining aFrench corps. It will unsettle you altogether."

  "Really," he broke in with a laugh, "I must protest against beingconsidered so weak and unstable. You had a perfect right in thinking melazy, but I don't think you have any right in considering me a reed tobe shaken by every passing wind. I can assure you that I am very fixedin my resolves. I was content to be lazy before simply because there wasno particular reason for my being otherwise, and I admit thatconstitutionally I
may incline that way; but when a cataclysm occurred,and, as I may say, the foundations were shaken, it became necessary forme to work, and I took a resolution to do so, and have stuck to it.Possibly I should have done so in any case. You see when a man is toldby a young lady he is a useless idler, who does but cumber the earth, itwakes him up a little."

  "I am sure I didn't say that," Mary said, indignantly, but with a hotflush on her cheeks.

  "Not in those precise words, but you spoke to that effect, and myconscience told me you were not far wrong in your opinion. I had begunto meditate whether I ought not to turn over a new leaf when I came insuddenly for Fairclose; that of course seemed to knock it all on thehead. Then came what we may call the smash. This was so manifestly aninterposition of Providence in the direction of my bestirring myselfthat I took the heroic resolution to work."

  Mary felt that it was desirable to avoid continuing the subject. She hadlong since come to regard that interview in the garden as a sort oftemporary aberration on his part, and that although, perhaps, sincere atthe moment, he had very speedily come to laugh at his own folly, and hadrecognized that the idea was altogether ridiculous. Upon her it had madeso little impression that it had scarcely occurred to her when they met,that any passage of the sort had taken place, and had welcomed him asthe lad she had known as a child, rather than as the man who had, undera passing impulse, asked her to marry him.

  "I think," she said suddenly, "I will fetch Madame Michaud in. It willbe nice for you to come here in the evening sometimes, and it would bebetter for her to ask you to do so than for me. These French people havesuch funny ideas."

  "It would certainly be more pleasant," he agreed, "and evening will bethe time that I have most leisure--that is to say, when we do not happento be on duty, as to which I am very vague at present. They say thesailors will garrison the forts and the army take the outpost duty; butI fancy, when the Germans really surround us, it will be necessary tokeep so strong a force outside the walls, that they will have to callout some of us in addition. The arrangement at present is, we are todrill in the morning and we shall paint in the afternoon; so the eveningwill be the only time when we shall be free."

  "What do you do in the evening generally? You must find it very lonely."

  "Not at all. I have an American who is in our school, and who lodges inthe same house as I do. Then there are the students, a light-hearted,merry set of young fellows. We have little supper-parties and go to eachother's rooms to chatter and smoke. Then, occasionally, I drop into thetheatre. It is very much like the life I had in London, only a good dealmore lively and amusing, and with a great deal less luxury and a verymuch smaller expenditure; and--this is very serious I can assureyou--very much worse tobacco."

  The girl laughed merrily.

  "What will you do about smoking when you are reduced to the extremityyou prophesy?"

  "That point is, I confess, troubling me seriously. I look forward withvery much greater dread to the prospect of having to smoke dried leavesand the sweepings of tobacco warehouses, than I do to the eating ofrats. I have been making inquiries of all sorts as to the state of thestock of tobacco, and I intend this evening to invest five pounds inlaying in a store; and mean to take up a plank and hide it under thefloor, and to maintain the most profound secrecy as to its existence.There is no saying whether, as time goes on, it may not be declared anoffence of the gravest character for any one to have a private store ofany necessary. If you have any special weaknesses, such as chocolate ortea, or anything of that sort, I should advise you not to lose a momentin laying in a good stock. You will see in another week, when peoplebegin to recognize generally what a siege means, that everythingeatable will double in price, and in a month only millionaires will beable to purchase them."

  "I really will buy some tea and chocolate," she said.

  "Get in a good stock," he said. "Especially of chocolate. I am quiteserious, I can assure you. Unfortunately, you have no place for keepinga sheep or two, or a bullock; and bread, at the end of a couple ofmonths, could scarcely be eaten; but, really, I should advise you toinvest in a dozen of those big square boxes of biscuits, and a ham ortwo may come in as a welcome addition some day."

  Mary laughed incredulously, but she was much more inclined than beforeto look at matters seriously, when, on fetching Madame Michaud in, thatlady, in the course of conversation, mentioned that her husband had thatmorning bought three sacks of flour and a hundred tins of preservedmeats.

  "He is going to get some boxes," she said, "and to have the flouremptied into them, then the baker will bring them round in a cart, sothat no one will guess it is flour. He says it is likely that there willbe an order issued that everything of that sort is to be given into apublic store for general distribution, so it must be brought herequietly. He tells me that every one he knows is doing the same thing. Myservant has been out this morning eight times and has been buying eggs.She has brought a hundred each time, and we are putting them in a caskin salt."

  "Do you really think all that is necessary, madame?" Mary asked,doubtfully.

  "Most certainly I do. They say everything will go up to such prices asnever were heard of before. Of course, in a month or two the countrywill come to our rescue and destroy the Prussians, but till then we havegot to live. Already eggs are fetching four times as much as they didlast week. It is frightful to think of it, is it not, monsieur?"

  "If I were in your place, madame, I would not reckon too surely onrelief in a month. I think that there is no doubt that, as you say,there will be a prohibition of anyone keeping provisions of any sort,and everything will be thrown into the public magazines. Likely enoughevery house will be searched, and you cannot hide your things toocarefully."

  "But why should they insist on everything being put in publicmagazines?" Mary asked. "It will not go further that way than if peoplekeep their own stocks and eat them."

  "It will be necessary, if for nothing else, to prevent rioting when thepinch comes, and people are starving in the poorer quarters. You may besure if they have a suspicion that the middle and upper classes havefood concealed in their houses, they will break in and sack them. Thatwould only be human nature, and therefore in the interest of order alonea decree forbidding anyone to have private stores would have to bepassed; besides it would make the food go much further, for you may besure that everything will be doled out in the smallest quantitiessufficient to keep life together, and before the end of the siege comeseach person may only get two or three ounces of bread a day."

  Madame Michaud nodded as if prepared to be reduced even to thatextremity.

  "You are right, monsieur, I am going to get stuff and to make a greatnumber of small bags to hold the flour; then we shall hide it away underthe boards in many places, so that if they find some they may not findit all."

  "The idea is a good one, madame, but it has its disadvantages. If theyfind one parcel they will search so closely everywhere that they willfind the rest. For that reason one good hiding-place, if you couldinvent one, would be better than many."

  "One does not know what is best to do," Madame Michaud said, with agesture of tragic despair. "Who could have thought that such a thingcould happen to Paris!"

  "It is unexpected, certainly," Cuthbert agreed, "but it has beenforeseen, otherwise they would never have taken the trouble to buildthis circle of forts round Paris. They are useful now not only inprotecting the city but in covering a wide area, where the cattle andsheep may feed under the protection of the guns. I don't think we areas likely to be as badly off for meat as for bread, for after the flocksand herds are all eaten up there are the horses, and of these there mustbe tens of thousands in Paris."

  "That is a comfort, certainly," the Frenchwoman said, calmly, while MaryBrander made a little gesture of disgust.

  "I have never tried horseflesh myself, at least that I know of, but theysay it is not so bad; but I cannot think that they will have to kill thehorses for food. The country will not wait until we are reduced to thatextremity.
"

  "Mr. Hartington has joined one of the regiments of volunteers, MadameMichaud."

  "That is good of you, monsieur; my husband is in the National Guard, andthey say every one will have to take up a musket; but as you are aforeigner, of course this would not apply to you."

  "Well, for the time being I consider myself a Parisian, and as a Germanshell is just as likely to fall on the roof of the house where I live ason any other, I consider myself to be perfectly justified in doing mybest in self-defence."

  "I trust that you will call whenever you are disposed in the evening,monsieur," Madame Michaud said, cordially; "it will give my husbandpleasure to meet an English gentleman who is voluntarily going to fightin the cause of France."

  "Thank you, madame. I shall be very glad to do so. Mademoiselle's fatheris a very old friend of our family, and I have known her ever since shewas a little child. It will be pleasant to me to make the acquaintanceof monsieur. And now, Miss Brander, I must be going."