A Girl of the Commune

by G. A. Henty

"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 Cumming, 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."

"Ah, yes, mademoiselle, there must be many sad hearts in Paris. As for me, my spirits have risen since I heard it. At last we are going to begin in earnest and it is time. I only wish I could have been well enough to have taken my share in it. It is tiresome to think that I have been wounded in a trifling skirmish. I should not have minded if it had been tomorrow, so that, when I am an old man, I might tell my grandchildren that I got that scar on the day when we drove the Prussians from the front of Paris. That would have been something to say. Courage, mademoiselle, after all there are twenty who get through these things safely, to every one that is hit, and your friends will be covered with glory."

"I hope that it will be as you think," she said, "but it may be the other way, and that the sortie will fail."

"You must not think that," he said. "We have not had a fair chance before, now we have got one. But even should we not win the first time, we will the second or the third. What, are Frenchmen always to be beaten by these Prussians? They have beaten us of late, because we have been badly led; but there must come another Jena to us one of these days."

Mary nodded and then passed on to the next patient. In the evening the news came that things were not all in readiness, and that the sortie was deferred at least for twenty-four hours.

"You are not well, Miss Brander," the chief surgeon of the hospital said to her soon afterwards, "I have noticed all day that you have been looking fagged and worn out. As it is certain now that we shall have no unusual pressure upon our resources for another thirty-six hours at any rate, I think you had better go home."