Missing, Mrs. Humphry Ward [free e books to read online .TXT] 📗

PART I

MISSING


CHAPTER I

'Shall I set the tea, Miss?'

Miss Cookson turned from the window.

'Yes--bring it up--except the tea of course--they ought to be here at any time.'

'And Mrs. Weston wants to know what time supper's to be?'

The fair-haired girl speaking was clearly north-country. She pronounced the 'u' in 'supper,' as though it were the German 'u' in _Suppe_.

Miss Cookson shrugged her shoulders.

'Well, they'll settle that.'

The tone was sharp and off-hand. And the maid-servant, as she went downstairs, decided for the twentieth time that afternoon, that she didn't like Miss Cookson, and she hoped her sister, Mrs. Sarratt, would be nicer. Miss Cookson had been poking her nose into everything that afternoon, fiddling with the rooms and furniture, and interfering with Mrs. Weston. As if Mrs. Weston didn't know what to order for lodgers, and how to make them comfortable! As if she hadn't had dozens of brides and bridegrooms to look after before this!--and if she hadn't given them all satisfaction, would they ever have sent her all them picture-postcards which decorated her little parlour downstairs?

All the same, the house-parlourmaid, Milly by name, was a good deal excited about this particular couple who were now expected. For Mrs. Weston had told her it had been a 'war wedding,' and the bridegroom was going off to the front in a week. Milly's own private affairs--in connection with a good-looking fellow, formerly a gardener at Bowness, now recently enlisted in one of the Border regiments--had caused her to take a special interest in the information, and had perhaps led her to put a bunch of monthly roses on Mrs. Sarratt's dressing-table. Miss Cookson hadn't bothered herself about flowers. That she might have done!--instead of fussing over things that didn't concern her--just for the sake of ordering people about.

When the little red-haired maid had left the room, the lady she disliked returned to the window, and stood there absorbed in reflections that were not gay, to judge from the furrowed brow and pinched lips that accompanied them. Bridget Cookson was about thirty; not precisely handsome, but at the same time, not ill-looking. Her eyes were large and striking, and she had masses of dark hair, tightly coiled about her head as though its owner felt it troublesome and in the way. She was thin, but rather largely built, and her movements were quick and decided. Her tweed dress was fashionably cut, but severely without small ornament of any kind.

She looked out upon a beautiful corner of English Lakeland. The house in which she stood was built on the side of a little river, which, as she saw it, came flashing and sparkling out of a lake beyond, lying in broad strips of light and shade amid green surrounding fells. The sun was slipping low, and would soon have kindled all the lake into a white fire, in which its islands would have almost disappeared. But, for the moment, everything was plain:--the sky, full of light, and filmy grey cloud, the fells with their mingling of wood and purple crag, the shallow reach of the river beyond the garden, with a little family of wild duck floating upon it, and just below her a vivid splash of colour, a mass of rhododendron in bloom, setting its rose-pink challenge against the cool greys and greens of the fell.

But Bridget Cookson was not admiring the view. It was not new to her, and moreover she was not in love with Westmorland at all; and why Nelly should have chosen this particular spot, to live in, while George was at the war, she did not understand. She believed there was some sentimental reason. They had first seen him in the Lakes--just before the war--when they two girls and their father were staying actually in this very lodging-house. But sentimental reasons are nothing.

Well, the thing was done. Nelly was married, and in another week, George would be at the front. Perhaps in a fortnight's time she would be a widow. Such things have happened often. 'And then what shall I do with her?' thought the sister, irritably,--recoiling from a sudden vision of Nelly in sorrow, which seemed to threaten her own life with even greater dislocation than had happened to it already. 'I must have my time to myself!--freedom for what I want'--she thought to herself, impatiently, 'I can't be always looking after her.'

Yet of course the fact remained that there was no one else to look after Nelly. They had been left alone in the world for a good while now. Their father, a Manchester cotton-broker in a small way, had died some six months before this date, leaving more debts than fortune. The two girls had found themselves left with very small means, and had lived, of late, mainly in lodgings--unfurnished rooms--with some of their old furniture and household things round them. Their father, though unsuccessful in business, had been ambitious in an old-fashioned way for his children, and they had been brought up 'as gentlefolks'--that is to say without any trade or profession.

But their poverty had pinched them disagreeably--especially Bridget, in whom it had produced a kind of angry resentment. Their education had not been serious enough, in these days of competition, to enable them to make anything of teaching after their Father's death. Nelly's water-colour drawing, for instance, though it was a passion with her, was quite untrained, and its results unmarketable. Bridget had taken up one subject after another, and generally in a spirit of antagonism to her surroundings, who, according to her, were always 'interfering' with what she wanted to do,--with her serious and important occupations. But these occupations always ended by coming to nothing; so that, as Bridget was irritably aware, even Nelly had ceased to be as much in awe of them as she had once been.

But the elder sister had more solid cause than this for dissatisfaction with the younger. Nelly had really behaved like a little fool! The one family asset of which a great deal might have been made--should have been made--was Nelly's prettiness. She was _very_ pretty--absurdly pretty--and had been a great deal run after in Manchester already. There had been actually two proposals from elderly men with money, who were unaware of the child's engagement, during the past three months; and though these particular suitors were perhaps unattractive, yet a little time and patience, and the right man would have come along, both acceptable in himself, and sufficiently supplied with money to make everything easy for everybody.

But Nelly had just wilfully and stubbornly fallen in love with this young man--and wilfully and stubbornly married him. It was unlike her to be stubborn about anything. But in this there had been no moving her. And now there was nothing before either of them but the same shabbiness and penury as before. What if George had two hundred and fifty a year of his own, besides his pay?--a fact that Nelly was always triumphantly brandishing in her sister's eyes.

No doubt it was more than most young subalterns had--much more. But what was two hundred and fifty a year? Nelly would want every penny of it for herself--and her child--or children. For of course there would be a child--Bridget Cookson fell into profound depths of thought, emerging from them, now as often before, with the sore realisation of how much Nelly might have done with her 'one talent,' both for herself and her sister, and had not done.

The sun dropped lower; one side of the lake was now in shadow, and from the green shore beneath the woods and rocks, the reflections of tree and crag and grassy slope were dropping down and down, unearthly clear and far, to that inverted heaven in the 'steady bosom' of the water. A little breeze came wandering, bringing delicious scents of grass and moss, and in the lake the fish were rising.

Miss Cookson moved away from the window. How late they were! She would hardly get home in time for her own supper. They would probably ask her to stay and sup with them. But she did not intend to stay. Honeymooners were much better left to themselves. Nelly would be a dreadfully sentimental bride; and then dreadfully upset when George went away. She had asked her sister to join them in the Lakes, and it was taken for granted that they would resume living together after George's departure. But Bridget had fixed her own lodgings, for the present, a mile away, and did not mean to see much of her sister till the bridegroom had gone.

There was the sound of a motor-car on the road, which ran along one side of the garden, divided from it by a high wall. It could hardly be they; for they were coming frugally by the coach. But Miss Cookson went across to a side window looking on the road to investigate.

At the foot of the hill opposite stood a luxurious car, waiting evidently for the party which was now descending the hill towards it. Bridget had a clear view of them, herself unseen behind Mrs. Weston's muslin blinds. A girl was in front, with a young man in khaki, a convalescent officer, to judge from his frail look and hollow eyes. The girl was exactly like the fashion-plate in the morning's paper. She wore a very short skirt and Zouave jacket in grey cloth, high-heeled grey boots, with black tips and gaiters, a preposterous little hat perched on one side of a broad white forehead, across which the hair was parted like a boy's, and an ostrich plume on the top of the hat, which nodded and fluttered so extravagantly that the face beneath almost escaped the spectator's notice. Yet it was on the whole a handsome face, audacious, like its owner's costume, and with evident signs--for Bridget Cookson's sharp eyes--of slight make-up.

Miss Cookson knew who she was. She had seen her in the neighbouring town that morning, and had heard much gossip about her. She was Miss Farrell, of Carton Hall, and that gentleman coming down the hill more slowly behind her was no doubt her brother Sir William.

Lame? That of course was the reason why he was not in the army. It was not very conspicuous, but still quite definite. A stiff knee, Miss Cookson supposed--an accident perhaps--some time ago. Lucky for him!--on any reasonable view. Bridget Cookson thought the war 'odious,' and gave no more attention to it than she could help. It had lasted now nearly a year, and she was heartily sick of it. It filled the papers with monotonous news which tired her attention--which she did not really try to understand. Now she supposed she would have to understand it. For George, her new brother-in-law, was sure to talk a terrible amount of shop.

Sir William was very tall certainly, and good-looking. He had a short pointed beard, a ruddy, sunburnt complexion, blue eyes and broad shoulders--the common points of the well-born and landowning Englishman. Bridget looked at him with a mixture of respect and hostility. To be rich was to be so far interesting; still all such persons, belonging to a world of which she knew nothing, were in her eyes 'swells,' and gave themselves airs; a procedure on their part, which would be stopped when the middle and lower classes were powerful enough to put them in their place. It was said, however, that this particular man was rather a remarkable specimen of his kind--didn't hunt--didn't preserve--had trained