A Girl of the Commune

"Yes, no doubt. The shares have not been transferred to my name as your father's executor. I had intended when I came up next week to go through the accounts with you, to recommend you to instruct me to dispose of them at once, which I should have done in my capacity of executor without transferring them in the first place to you. Therefore, any claim there may be will lie against the estate and not against you personally."

"That is satisfactory anyhow," Cuthbert said, calmly. "I don't know how I should get on without it. Of course I shall be sorry to lose this place, but in some respects the loss will be almost a relief to me. A country life is not my vocation, and I have been wondering for the last fortnight what on earth I should do with myself. As it is, I shall, if it comes to the worst, be obliged to work. I never have worked because I never have been forced to do so, but really I don't know that the prospects are altogether unpleasant, and at any rate I am sure that I would rather be obliged to paint for my living than to pass my life in trying to kill time."

The lawyer looked keenly at his client, but he saw that he was really speaking in earnest, and that his indifference at the risk of the loss of his estates was unaffected.

"Well," he said, after a pause, "I am glad indeed that you take it so easily; of course, I hope most sincerely that things may not be anything like so bad as that, and that, at worst, a call of only a few pounds a share will be sufficient to meet any deficiency that may exist, still I am heartily glad to see that you are prepared to meet the event in such a spirit, for to most men the chance of such a calamity would be crushing."

"Possibly I might have felt it more if it had come upon me two or three years later, just as I had got to be reconciled to the change of life, but you see I have so recently and unexpectedly come into the estate that I have not even begun to appreciate the pleasures of possession or to feel that they weigh in the slightest against the necessity of my being obliged to give up the life I have been leading for years. By the bye," he went on, changing the subject carelessly, "how is your daughter getting on in Germany? I happened to meet her at Newquay three weeks ago, and she told me she was going out there in the course of a week or so. I suppose she has gone."

"Yes, she has gone," Mr. Brander said, irritably. "She is just as bent as you were, if you will permit me to say so, on the carrying out of her own scheme of life. It is a great annoyance to her mother and me, but argument has been thrown away upon her, and as unfortunately the girls have each a couple of thousand, left under their own control by their mother's sister, she was in a position to do as she liked. However, I hope that a year or two will wean her from the ridiculous ideas he has taken up."

"I should doubt whether her cure will be as prompt as you think, it seemed to me that her ideas were somewhat fixed, and it will need a good deal of failure to disillusionize her."

"She is as obstinate as a little mule," Mr. Brander said shortly. "However, I must be going," he went on, rising from his chair. "I drove over directly I had finished my breakfast and must hurry back again to the office. Well, I hope with all my heart, Mr. Hartington, that this most unfortunate affair will not turn out so badly after all."

Cuthbert did not echo the sentiment, but accompanied his visitor silently to the door, and after seeing him off returned to the room, where he reseated himself in his chair, filled and lighted his pipe, put his legs on to another chair, and proceeded to think the matter out.

It was certainly a wholly unexpected change; but at present he did not feel it to be an unpleasant one, but rather a relief. He had for the last ten days been bemoaning himself. While but an heir apparent he could live his own life and take his pleasure as he liked. As owner of Fairclose he had duties to perform—he had his tenants' welfare to look after, there would be the bailiff to interview every morning and to go into all sorts of petty details as to hedges and ditches, fences and repairs, and things he cared not a jot for, interesting as they were to his dear old father. He supposed he should have to go on the Bench and to sit for hours listening to petty cases of theft and drunkenness, varied only by a poaching affray at long intervals.

There would be county gatherings to attend, and he would naturally be expected to hunt and to shoot. It had all seemed to him inexpressedly dreary. Now all that was, if Brander's fears were realized, at an end, even if it should not turn out to be as bad as that, the sum he would be called upon to pay might be sufficient to cripple the estate and to afford him a good and legitimate excuse for shutting up or letting the house, and going away to retrench until the liabilities were all cleared off. Of course he would have to work in earnest now, but even the thought of that was not altogether unpleasant.

"I believe it is going to be the best thing that ever happened to me," he said to himself. "I know that I should never have done anything if it hadn't been for this, and though I am not fool enough to suppose I am ever going to turn out anything great, I am sure that after a couple of years' hard work I ought to paint decently, and anyhow to turn out as good things as some of those men. It is just what I have always been wanting, though I did not know it. I am afraid I shall have to cut all those dear old fellows, for I should never be able to give myself up to work among them. I should say it would be best for me to go over to Paris; I can start on a fresh groove there. At my age I should not like to go through any of the schools here. I might have three months with Terrier; that would be just the thing to give me a good start; he is a good fellow but one who never earns more than bread and cheese.

"There isn't a man in our set who really knows as much about it as he does. He has gone through our own schools, was a year at Paris, and another at Rome. He has got the whole thing at his fingers' ends, and would make a splendid master if he would but go in for pupils, but with all that he can't paint a picture. He has not a spark of imagination, nor an idea of art; he has no eye for color, or effect. He can paint admirably what he sees, but then he sees nothing but bare facts. He is always hard up, poor fellow, and it would be a real boon to him to take me for three months and stick at it hard with me, and by the end of that time I ought to be able to take my place in some artist's school in Paris without feeling myself to be an absolute duffer among a lot of fellows younger than myself. By Jove, this news is like a breeze on the east coast in summer—a little sharp, perhaps, but splendidly bracing and healthy, just the thing to set a fellow up and make a man of him. I will go out for a walk and take the dogs with me."

He got up, went to the stables, and unchained the dogs, who leapt round him in wild delight, for the time of late had been as dull for them as for him; told one of the stable boys to go to the house and say that he would not be back to lunch, and then went for a twenty mile walk over the hills, and returned somewhat tired with the unaccustomed exertion, but with a feeling of buoyancy and light-heartedness such as he had not experienced for a long time past. For the next week he remained at home, and then feeling too restless to do so any longer, went to town, telling Mr. Brander to let him know as soon as the committee, that had already commenced its investigations into the real state of the bank's affairs, made their first report.

The lawyer was much puzzled over Cuthbert's manner. It seemed to him utterly impossible that anyone should really be indifferent to losing a fine estate, and yet he could see no reason for Cuthbert's assuming indifference on so vital a subject unless he felt it. He even discussed the matter with his wife.

"I cannot understand that young Hartington," he said; "most men would have been completely crumpled up at the news I gave him, but he took it as quietly as if it had been a mere bagatelle. The only possible explanation of his indifference that I can think of is that he must have made some low marriage in London, and does not care about introducing his wife to the county; it is just the sort of thing that a man with his irregular Bohemian habits might do—a pretty model, perhaps, or some peasant girl he has come across when out sketching."

"He never did care particularly about anything," Mrs. Brander said, "and it may be he is really glad to get away from the country."

"That would be possible enough if he had a good income in addition to Fairclose, but all that he will have is that five thousand that came to him from his mother, and I should say he is likely enough to run through that in a couple of years at the outside, and then where will he be?"

"I can't think, Jeremiah, how you ever permitted his father to do such a mad thing as to take those shares."

"I know what I am doing, my dear, don't you worry yourself about that. You have been wanting me for a very long time to give up business and go into the country. How would Fairclose suit you?"

"You are not in earnest," she exclaimed, with an excitement very unusual to her. "You can't mean that?"

"I don't often say what I don't mean, my dear, and if Fairclose comes into the market, more unlikely things than that may come to pass; but mind, not a word of this is to be breathed."

"And do you really think it will come into the market?" she asked.

"As certain as the sun will rise to-morrow morning. We only held our first meeting to-day, but that was enough to show us that the directors ought all to be shut up in a lunatic asylum. The affairs of the bank are in a frightful state, simply frightful; it means ruin to every one concerned."

"It is fortunate, indeed, that you did not hold any shares, Jeremiah."

"I was not such a fool," he said, shortly, "as to trust my money in the hands of a body of men who were all no doubt excellent fellows and admirable county gentlemen, but who knew no more of business than babies, and who would be mere tools in the hands of their manager; and I had the excellent excuse that I considered the legal adviser of a bank should have no pecuniary stake whatever in its affairs, but be able to act altogether without bias."

There was an ironical smile on his lips, and his wife said, admiringly—

"How clever you are, Jeremiah."

"It did not require much cleverness for that," he said, with some complacency. "You can reserve your compliments, my dear, until we are established at Fairclose. All I ask is that you won't ask any questions or allude to the matter until it is settled, but leave it entirely in my hands. So far things are working in the right direction."

"Perhaps it will be a good thing for Cuthbert Hartington after all," she said, after sitting for some minutes in silence.

"No doubt it will," he said. "At any rate as he does not take it to heart in the slightest degree, we need not worry ourselves over him."

"It is funny," she said, "but sometimes the idea has occurred to me that Cuthbert might some day take a fancy to one of our girls, and I might see one of them mistress at Fairclose; but I never dreamt I might be mistress there myself, and I can't guess, even now, how you can think of managing it."

"Don't you trouble to guess, at all, my dear; be content with the plum when it falls into your mouth, and don't worry yourself as to how I manage to shake the tree to bring the fruit down."

Three weeks later it became known definitely that after calling up the remainder of the bank's capital there would be a deficiency of nearly a million, and that every shareholder would be called upon to contribute to the full extent of his ability, to cover the losses. One or two letters from Mr. Brander had already prepared Cuthbert for the final result of the investigation, and he had already begun to carry out the plan he had marked out for himself. He had, as soon as he had returned, astonished his friends by informing them that he found that instead of coming into his father's estates, as he had expected, it was not likely he would ever touch a penny from them, as his father had been a shareholder in the Abchester Bank, and so he believed everything would be swept away.

"Fortunately," he went on, "I have got enough of my own to keep my head above water, and, I dare say you fellows won't believe me, but I mean to go to work in earnest."

The announcement was made to a dozen men who were smoking in Wilson's studio, he having returned the day before from Cornwall.

"Well, youngster, I won't commiserate with you," he growled. "I have been wondering since I heard from King last night what had kept you away, what on earth you would do with yourself now you have come into your money. I often thought it was the worst thing in the world for you that you had not got to work, and if you are really going to set to now, I believe the time will come when you will think that this misfortune is the best thing that ever happened to you."

"I am not quite sure that I do not think so already," Cuthbert replied. "I am not at all disposed to fancy myself a martyr, I can assure you. I mean to go over to Paris and enter an Art School there. I know what you fellows are. You would never let me work."

There was a general chorus of indignation.

"Well, how much do you work yourselves? You potter about for nine months in the year, and work for four or five hours a day for the other three."

"Saul among the prophets!" Wilson exclaimed. "The idea of Cuthbert Hartington rebuking us for laziness is rich indeed," and a roar of laughter showed the general appreciation of the absurdity.

"Never mind," Cuthbert said, loftily. "You will see; 'from morn till dewy eve,' will be my idea of work. It is the way you men loaf, and call it working, that has so far kept me from setting to. Now I am going to burst the bonds of the Castle of Indolence, and when I come back from Paris I shall try to stir you all up to something like activity."

There was another laugh, and then Wilson said, "Well, it is the best thing you can do to go abroad. I don't believe you would ever make a fresh start here."

"I have made fresh a start, Wilson; our respected brother Terrier here, has undertaken to teach me the rudiments, and for the next three months his studio doors will be closed to all visitors from ten to five."

"Is that so? I congratulate you, Cuthbert; that really looks like business, and if Terrier can't teach you how to use the brush and put on color no one can. Gentlemen, we will drink the health of the new boy. Here is to Cuthbert Hartington, and success to him." Glasses were raised and the sentiment heartily echoed.

For three months Cuthbert worked steadily; to his own surprise, not less than to that of his instructor, he found the hours none too long for him. During that time he had received a letter from Mr. Brander that surprised him.

"Dear Mr. Hartington,—In accordance with your instructions I at once informed the Receiver of the bank that you were prepared to hand over the Fairclose estates for the benefit of the creditors, instead of waiting for the calls to be made, and that you wished the matter to be arranged as speedily as possible as you were shortly going abroad. The necessary deeds will in a few days be prepared. You will doubtless be surprised to hear that I have arranged with the Receiver for the purchase of the estates by private treaty. I have long been intending to retire from business, and have been on the lookout for an estate in the county. I hope this arrangement will not be displeasing to you."

As Mr. Brander had the reputation of being a wealthy man, and his wife's wishes that he should retire from business and purchase an estate in the county were public property, Cuthbert was not surprised, but at the same time he was not altogether pleased. He had never liked the lawyer. He had no particular grounds for not doing so, but he had as a boy an instinctive notion that he was a humbug.

"I wonder," he said to himself, "whether he has all along had an eye to Fairclose, and whether he really did his best to dissuade my father from making that disastrous investment. At any rate, it does not make any difference to me who is there. It might have been some stranger, some manufacturing fellow; I would rather think of Mary being at the old place than a man of that sort. He would have been more likely than Brander to be hard on the tenants, and to have sold off all the things and have turned the place inside out. I don't say that under ordinary circumstances I should choose Brander as a landlord, but he will know well enough that there would be nothing that would do him more harm in the county than a report that he was treating the Squire's tenants harshly. Well, I suppose I had better write him a line saying that I am glad to hear that he has bought the place, as I would naturally prefer that it should be in his hands than those of a stranger."

A fortnight later, Cuthbert, in looking over the "Abchester Guardian," which was sent to him weekly, as the subscription was not yet run out, read the following paragraph: "We understand that our greatly respected townsman, Mr. J. Brander, has purchased the house and estate of Fairclose, which has come into the market owing to the failure of the Abchester Bank, in which the late Mr. Hartington was most unfortunately a shareholder, and which has involved hundreds of families in ruin. The greatest sympathy is everywhere expressed for Mr. Cuthbert Hartington. We understand that the price given by Mr. Brander was £55,000. We believe that we are correct in stating that Mr. Brander was the holder of a mortgage of £15,000 on the estate."