A Girl of the Commune, G. A. Henty [great novels to read txt] 📗

them, and thought they would pull round with the aid of additional capital. As far as I could make out, from the report of the men who went into the matter, he did not seem to have drawn any money at all on his own account, until the very day he bolted, when he took the eight or ten thousand pounds there was in the safe. No. I don't think I meant to hand him over or indeed to say anything about it. I thought I would give him a good fright, which he richly deserves, and then ask him a few questions. I have never quite understood how it was that dear old dad came to buy those shares. I did inquire so far as to find out it was Cumming himself who transferred them to him, and I should really like to hear what was said at the time. If the man can prove to me that when he sold them he did not know that the bank was going to break, I should have no ill-will against him, but if I were sure he persuaded him to buy, knowing that ruin would follow, I would hunt him down and spare no pains to get him punished."[Pg 199]

"Why should he have persuaded your father to buy those shares?"

"That's just what I cannot make out. He could have had no interest in involving him in the smash. Besides they were not on intimate terms in any way. I cannot imagine that my father would have gone to him for advice in reference to business investments. It was, of course, to your father he would have turned in such matters."

"How long had he been a shareholder?"

"He bought the shares only two months before his death, which makes the matter all the more singular."

"What did father say, Cuthbert?" the girl said, after a short pause. "I suppose you spoke to him about it."

"He said that my father had heard some rumors to the effect that the bank was not in a good state, and having no belief whatever in them, he bought the shares, thinking that his doing so would have a good effect upon its credit, in which as a sort of county institution, he felt an interest."

"But did not father, who was solicitor to the bank, and must have known something of its affairs, warn him of the danger that he was running?"

"That is what I asked him myself, but he said that he only attended to its legal business, and outside that knew nothing of its affairs."

"It seems a curious affair altogether," Mary said, gravely, "But it is time for me to be at work again."

CHAPTER XVI.

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[Pg 200] 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[Pg 201] 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[Pg 202] 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[Pg 203] 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