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

had lost a leg after frightful haemorrhage; that other, the merest boy, whose right eye had been excised--she could not get them out of her mind, nor the stories they had told her of the actions in which they had been wounded.

'George--George!' It was a moan of misery, stifled in the darkness.

Then, suddenly, she remembered she had not said good-night to Bridget. She had forgotten Bridget. She had been unkind. She got up, and sped along the passage to Bridget's room.

'Bridget!' She just opened the door. 'May I come in?'

'Come in.'

Bridget was already in bed. In her hands was a cup of steaming chocolate which a maid had just brought her, and she was lingering over it with a face of content.

Nelly opened her eyes in astonishment.

'Did you ask for it, Bridget?'

'I did--or rather the housemaid asked what I would have. She said--"ladies have just what they like in their rooms." So I asked for chocolate.'

Nelly sat down on the bed.

'Is it good?'

'Excellent,' said Bridget calmly. 'Whatever did you expect?'

'We seem to have been eating ever since we came!' said Nelly frowning,--'and they call it economising!'

Bridget threw back her head with a quiet laugh.

'Didn't I tell you so?'

'I wondered how you got on at dinner?' said Nelly hesitating. 'Captain Marsworth didn't seem to be taking much trouble?'

'It didn't matter to me,' said Bridget. 'That kind of man always behaves like that,'

Nelly flushed.

'You mean soldiers behave like that?'

'Well, I don't like soldiers--brothers-in-law excepted, of course.' And Bridget gave her short, rather harsh laugh.

Nelly got up.

'Well, I shall be ready to go as early as you like on Monday, Bridget. It was awfully good of you to pack all my things so nicely!'

'Don't I always?' Bridget laughed.

'You do--you do indeed. Good-night.'

She touched Bridget's cheek with her lips and stole away.

Bridget was left to think. There was a dim light in the room showing the fine inlaid furniture, the flowery paper, the chintz-covered arm-chairs and sofa, and, through an open door, part of the tiled wall of the bathroom.

Miss Cookson had never slept in such a room before, and every item in it pleased a starved sense in her. Poverty was _hateful_! Could one never escape it?

Then she closed her eyes, and seemed to be watching Sir William and Nelly in the gardens, his protecting eager air--her face looking up. Of _course_ she might have married him--with the greatest ease!--if only George Sarratt had not been in the way.

But supposing--

All the talk that evening had been of a new 'push'--a new and steady offensive, as soon as the shell supply was better. George would be in that 'push.' Nobody expected it for another month. By that time he would be back at the front. She lay and thought, her eyes closed, her harsh face growing a little white and pinched under the electric lamp beside her. Potentially, her thoughts were murderous. The _wish_ that George might not return formed itself clearly, for the first time, in her mind. Dreams followed, as to consequences both for Nelly and herself, supposing he did not return. And in the midst of them she fell asleep.


CHAPTER VII

August came, the second August of the war. The heart of England was sad and sick, torn by the losses at Gallipoli, by the great disaster of the Russian retreat, by the shortage of munitions, by the endless small fighting on the British front, which eat away the young life of our race, week by week, and brought us no further. But the spirit of the nation was rising--and its grim task was becoming nakedly visible at last. _Guns--men!_ Nothing else to say--nothing else to do.

George Sarratt's battalion returned to the fighting line somewhere about the middle of August. 'But we are only marking time,' he wrote to his wife. 'Nothing doing here, though the casualties go on every day. However we all know in our bones there will be plenty to do soon. As for me I am--more or less--all right again.'

Indeed, as September wore on, expectation quickened on both sides of the Channel. Nelly went in fear of she knew not what. The newspapers said little, but through Carton and the Farrells, she heard a great deal of military gossip. The shell supply was improving--the new Ministry of Munitions beginning to tell--a great blow was impending.

Weeks of rain and storm died down into an autumnal gentleness. The bracken was turning on the hills, the woods beginning to dress for the pageant of October. The sketching lessons which the usual August deluge had interrupted were to begin again, as soon as Farrell came home. He had been in France for a fortnight, at Etaples, and in Paris, studying new methods and appliances for the benefit of the hospital. But whether he was at home or no, the benefactions of Carton never ceased. Almost every other day a motor from the Hall drove up laden with fruit and flowers, with books and magazines.

The fourth week of September opened. The rumours of coming events crept more heavily and insistently than ever through a sudden spell of heat that hung over the Lakes. Nelly Sarratt slept little, and wrote every day to her George, letters of which long sections were often destroyed when written, condemned for lack of cheerfulness.

She was much touched by Farrell's constant kindness, and grateful for it; especially because it seemed to keep Bridget in a good temper. She was grateful too for the visitors whom a hint from him would send on fine afternoons to call on the ladies at Rydal--convalescent officers, to whom the drive from Carton, and tea with 'the pretty Mrs. Sarratt' were an attraction, while Nelly would hang breathless on their gossip of the war, until suddenly, perhaps, she would turn white and silent, lying back in her garden chair with the look which the men talking to her--brave, kind-hearted fellows--soon learnt to understand. Marsworth came occasionally, and Nelly grew to like him sincerely, and to be vaguely sorry for him, she hardly knew why. Cicely Farrell apparently forgot them entirely. And in August and the first part of September she too, according to Captain Marsworth's information, had been away, paying visits.

On the morning of September 26th, the Manchester papers which reached the cottage with the post contained columns of telegrams describing the British attack at Loos, and the French 'push' in Champagne. Among the letters was a short word from Sarratt, dated the 24th. 'We shall probably be in action to-morrow, dearest. I will wire as soon as I can, but you must not be anxious if there is delay. As far as I can judge it will be a big thing. You may be sure I shall take all the precautions possible. God bless you, darling. Your letters are _everything_.'

Nelly read the letter and the newspaper, her hands trembling as she held it. At breakfast, Bridget eyed her uncomfortably.

'He'll be all right!' she said with harsh decision. 'Don't fret.'

The day passed, with heavy heat mists over the Lake, the fells and the woods blotted out. On pretence of sketching, Nelly spent the hours on the side of Loughrigg, trying sometimes to draw or sew, but for the most part, lying with shut eyes, hidden among the bracken. Her faculty for dreaming awake--for a kind of visualisation sharper than most people possess--had been much developed since George's departure. It partly tormented, partly soothed her.

Night came without news. 'I _can't_ hear till to-morrow night,' she thought, and lay still all night patient and sleepless, her little hands crossed on her breast. The window was wide open and she could see the stars peering over Loughrigg.

Next morning, fresh columns in the newspaper. The action was still going on. She must wait. And somehow it was easier to wait this second day; she felt more cheerful. Was there some secret voice telling her that if he were dead, she would have heard?

After lunch she set out to take some of the Carton flowers to the farmer's wife living in a fold of the fell, who had lost her only son in the July fighting. Hester Martin had guided her there one day, and some fellow-feeling had established itself rapidly between Nelly, and the sad, dignified woman, whose duties went on as usual while all that gave them zest had departed.

The distance was short, and she left exact word where she could be found. As she climbed the narrow lane leading to the farm, she presently heard a motor approaching. The walls enclosing the lane left barely room to pass. She could only scramble hurriedly up a rock which had been built into the wall, and hold on to a young tree growing from it. The motor which was large and luxurious passed slowly, and in the car she saw two young men, one pale and sickly-looking, wrapped in a great-coat though the day was stuffily warm: the other, the driver, a tall and stalwart fellow, who threw Nelly a cold, unfriendly look as they went by. Who could they be? The road only led to the farm, and when Nelly had last visited Mrs. Grayson, a week before, she and her old husband and a granddaughter of fourteen had been its only inmates.

Mrs. Grayson received her with a smile.

'Aye, aye, Mrs. Sarratt, coom in. Yo're welcome.'

But as Nelly entered the flagged kitchen, with its joints of bacon and its bunches of dried herbs, hanging from the low beamed ceiling, its wide hob grate, its dresser, table and chairs of old Westmorland oak, every article in it shining with elbow-grease,--she saw that Mrs. Grayson looked particularly tired and pale.

'Yo mun ha' passed them in t' lane?' said the farmer's wife wearily, when the flowers had been admired and put in water, and Nelly had been established in the farmer's own chair by the fire, while his wife insisted on getting an early cup of tea.

'Who were they, Mrs. Grayson?'

'Well, they're nobbut a queer soart, Mrs. Sarratt--and I'd be glad to see t' back on 'em. They're "conscientious objectors"--that's what they are--an my husband coom across them in Kendal toother day. He'd finished wi t' market, and he strolled into the room at the Town Hall, where the men were coomin' in--yo know--to sign on for the war. An' he got talkin' wi' these two lads, who were lookin' on as he was. And they said they was "conscientious objectors"--and wouldn't fight not for nothing nor nobody. But they wouldn't mind doing their bit in other ways, they said. So John he upped and said--would they coom and help him with his second crop o' hay--you know we've lost nearly all our men, Mrs. Sarratt--and they said they would--and that very evening he brought 'em along. And who do you think they are?'

Nelly could not guess; and Mrs. Grayson explained that the two young men were the wealthy sons of a wealthy Liverpool tradesman and were starting a branch of their father's business in Kendal. They had each of them a motor, and apparently unlimited money. They had just begun to be useful in the hay-making--'But they wouldn't _touch_ the stock--they wouldn't kill anything--not a rat! They wouldn't even shoo the birds from the oats! And last night one of them was took ill--and I must go and sit up with him, while his brother fetched the big car from Kendal to take him