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

continued the sentence.

'Why does she blacken her eyebrows, and paint her lips, and powder her cheeks? Is that what you mean?'

Nelly's look was apologetic. 'She doesn't really want it, does she?' she said shyly, as though remembering that she was speaking to a kinswoman of the person discussed. 'She could do so well without it.'

'No--to be quite candid, I don't think she _would_ look so well without it. That's the worst of it. It seems to suit her to be made up!--though everybody knows it _is_ make-up.'

'Of course, if George wanted me to "make up," I should do it at once,' said Nelly, thoughtfully, propping her chin on her hands, and staring at the lake. 'But he hates it. Is--is Miss Farrell--' she looked round--'in love with anybody?'

Miss Martin laughed.

'I'll leave you to find out--when you go there. So if your husband liked you to paint and powder, you would do it?'

The older woman looked curiously at her companion. As she sat there, on a rock above the lake, in a grey nurse's dress with a nurse's bonnet tied under her chin, Hester Martin conveyed an impression of rugged and unconscious strength which seemed to fuse her with the crag behind her. She had been gathering sphagnum moss on the fells almost from sunrise that morning; and by tea-time she was expecting a dozen munition-workers from Barrow, whom she was to house, feed and 'do for,' in her little cottage over the week-end. In the interval, she had climbed the steep path to that white farm where death had just entered, and having mourned with them that mourn, she had come now, as naturally, to rejoice with Nelly Sarratt.

Nelly considered her question, but not in any doubtfulness of mind.

'Indeed, I would,' she said, decidedly. 'Isn't it my duty to make George happy?'

'What "George"? If Mr. Sarratt wanted you to paint and powder----'

'He wouldn't be the "George" I married? There's something in that!' laughed Nelly. Then she lifted her hand to shade her eyes against the westering sun--'Isn't that Sir William coming?'

She pointed doubtfully to a distant figure walking along the path that skirts the western edge of the lake. Miss Martin put up her glasses.

'Certainly. Coming no doubt to give you a lesson. But where are your sketching things?'

Nelly rose in a hurry.

'I forgot about them when I came out. The telegram--' She pressed her hands to her eyes, with a long breath.

'I'll run back for them. Will you tell him?'

She departed, and Hester awaited her cousin. He came slowly along the lake, his slight lameness just visible in his gait--otherwise a splendid figure of a man, with a bare head, bearded and curled, like a Viking in a drawing by William Morris. He carried various artist's gear slung about him, and an alpenstock. His thoughts were apparently busy, for he came within a few yards of Hester Martin, before he saw her.

'Hullo! Hester--you here? I came to get some news of Mrs. Sarratt and her husband. Is he all right?'

Hester repeated the telegram, and added the information that seeing him coming, Mrs. Sarratt had gone in search of her sketching things.

'Ah!--I thought if she'd got good news she might like to begin,' said Farrell. 'Poor thing--she's lucky! Our casualties these last few days have been awful, and the gain very small. Men or guns--that's our choice just now. And it will be months before we get the guns. So practically, there's no choice. Somebody ought to be hung!'

He sat down frowning. But his face soon cleared, and he began to study the point of view.

'Nothing to be made of it but a picture post-card,' he declared. 'However I daresay she'll want to try it. They always do--the beginners. The more ambitious and impossible the thing, the better.'

'Why don't you _teach_ her?' said Hester, severely.

Farrell laughed.

'Why I only want to amuse her, poor little soul!' he said, as he put his easel together. 'Why should she take it seriously?'

'She's more intelligence than you think.'

'Has she? What a pity! There are so many intelligent people in the world, and so few pretty ones,'

He spoke with a flippant self-confidence that annoyed his cousin. But she knew very well that she was poorly off in the gifts that were required to scourge him. And there already was the light form of Nelly, on the footbridge over the river. Farrell looked up and saw her coming.

'Extraordinary--the grace of the little thing!' he said, half to himself, half to Hester. 'And she knows nothing about it--or seems to.'

'Do you imagine that her husband hasn't told her?' Hester's tone was mocking.

Farrell looked up in wonder. 'Sarratt? of course he has--so far as he has eyes to see it. But he has no idea how remarkable it is.'

'What? His wife's beauty? Nonsense!'

'How could he? It wants a trained eye,' said Farrell, quite serious. 'Hush!--here she comes.'

Nelly came up breathlessly, laden with her own paraphernalia. Farrell at once perceived that she was pale and hollow-eyed. But her expression was radiant.

'How kind of you to come!' she said, looking up at him. 'You know I've had good news--splendid news?'

'I do indeed. I came to ask,' he said gravely. 'He's out of it for a bit?'

'Yes, for three weeks!'

'So you can take a rest from worrying?'

She nodded brightly, but she was not yet quite mistress of her nerves, and her face quivered. He turned away, and began to set his palette, while she seated herself.

Hester watched the lesson for half an hour, till it was time to go and make ready for her munition-workers. And she watched it with increasing pleasure, and increasing scorn of a certain recurrent uneasiness she had not been able to get rid of. Nothing could have been better than Farrell's manner to Ariadne. It was friendly, chivalrous, respectful--all it should be--with a note of protection, of unspoken sympathy, which, coming from a man nearly twenty years older than the little lady herself, was both natural and attractive. He made an excellent teacher besides, handling her efforts with a mixture of criticism and praise, which presently roused Nelly's ambition, and kindled her cheeks and eyes. Time flew and when Hester Martin rose to leave them, Nelly cried out in protest--'It can't be five o'clock!'

'A quarter to--just time to get home before my girls arrive!'

'Oh, and I must go too,' said Nelly regretfully. 'I promised Bridget I would be in for tea. But I _was_ getting on--wasn't I?' She turned to Farrell.

'Swimmingly. But you've only just begun. Next time the sitting must be longer.'

'Will you--will you come in to tea?'--she asked him shyly. 'My sister would be very glad.'

'Many thanks--but I am afraid I can't. I shall be motoring back to Carton to-night. To-morrow is one of my hospital days. I told you how I divided my week, and salved my conscience.'

He smiled down upon her from his great height, his reddish gold hair and beard blown by the wind, and she seemed to realise him as a great, manly, favouring presence, who made her feel at ease.

Hester Martin had already vanished over the bridge, and Farrell and Nelly strolled back more leisurely towards the lodgings, he carrying her canvas sketching bag.

On the way she conveyed to him her own and Bridget's acceptance of the Carton invitation.

'If Miss Farrell won't mind our clothes--or rather our lack of them! I did mean to have my wedding dress altered into an evening dress--but!----'

She lifted her hand and let it fall, in a sad significant gesture which pleased his fastidious eye.

'You hadn't even the time of the heart for it? I should think not!' he said warmly. 'Who cares about dress nowadays?'

'Your sister!' thought Nelly--but aloud she said--

'Well then we'll come--we'll be delighted to come. May I see the hospital?'

'Of course. It's like any other hospital.'

'Is it very full now?' she asked him uneasily, her bright look clouding.

'Yes--but it ebbs and flows. Sometimes for a day or two all our men depart. Then there is a great rush.'

'Are they bad cases?'

There was an unwilling insistence in her voice, as though her mind dealt with images it would gladly have put away, but could not.

'A good many of them. They send them us as straight as they can from the front. But the surgeons are wonderfully skilful. It's simply marvelous what they can do.'

He seemed to see a shiver pass through her slight shoulders, and he changed the subject at once. The Carton motor should come for her and her sister, he said, whenever they liked, the following Saturday afternoon. The run would take about an hour. Meanwhile--

'Do you want any more books or magazines?' he asked her smiling, with the look of one only eager to be told how to serve her. They had paused in the road outside the lodgings.

'Oh I how could we! You sent us such a bundle!' cried Nelly gratefully. 'We are always finding something new in it. It makes the evenings so different. We will bring them back when we come.'

'Don't hurry. And go on with the drawing. I shall expect to see it a great deal further on next time. It's all right so far.'

He went his way back, speedily, taking a short cut over Loughrigg to his cottage. His thoughts, as he climbed, were very full of Mrs. Sarratt. But they were the thoughts of an artist--of a man who had studied beauty, and the European tradition of beauty, whether in form or landscape, for many years; who had worked--_a contre coeur_--in a Paris studio, and had copied Tintoret--fervently--in Venice; who had been a collector of most things, from Tanagra figures to Delia Robbias. She made an impression upon him in her lightness and grace, her small proportions, her lissomness of outline, very like that of a Tanagra figure. How had she come to spring from Manchester? What kindred had she with the smoke and grime of a great business city? He fell into amused speculation. Manchester has always possessed colonies of Greek merchants. Somewhere in the past was there some strain of southern blood which might account for her? He remembered a beautiful Greek girl at an Oxford Commemoration, when he had last attended that function; the daughter of a Greek financier settled in London, whose still lovely mother had been drawn and painted interminably by the Burne Jones and William Morris group of artists. _She_ was on a larger scale than Mrs. Sarratt, but the colour of the flesh was the same--as though light shone through alabaster--and the sweetness of the deep-set eyes. Moreover she had produced much the same effect on the bystander, as of a child of nature, a creature of impulse and passion--passion, clinging and self-devoted, not fierce and possessive--through all the more superficial suggestions of reticence and self-control. 'This little creature is only at the beginning of her life'--he thought, with a kind of pity for her very softness and exquisiteness. 'What the deuce will she have made of it, by the end? Why should such beings grow old?'

His interest in her led him gradually to other thoughts--partly disagreeable, partly philosophical. He had once--and only once--found himself involved in a serious love-affair, which, as it had left him a bachelor, had clearly come to no good. It