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

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'Ah, well--when a man's got to my stage, he must make experiments on his own. It won't be France--I know that. But there's lots else.'

'You'll break down in a week!' she said with energy. 'I had a talk about you with Seaton yesterday.'

He looked at her with amusement. For the moment, she was no longer Cicely Farrell, extravagantly dressed, but the shrewd hospital worker, who although she would accept no responsibility that fettered her goings and comings beyond a certain point, was yet, as he well knew, invaluable, as a force in the background, to both the nursing and medical staff of Carton.

'Well, what did Seaton say?'

'That you would have another bad relapse, if you attempted yet to go to work.'

'I shall risk it.'

'That's so like you. You never take anyone's advice.'

'On the contrary, I am the meekest and most docile of men.' She shrugged her shoulders.

'You were docile, I suppose, when Seaton begged you not to go off to the Rectory, and give yourself all that extra walking backwards and forwards to the hospital every day?'

'I wanted a change of scene. I like the old Rector--I even like family prayers.'

'I am sure everything--and _everybody_--is perfect at the Rectory!'

'No--not perfect--but peaceable.'

He looked at her smiling. His grey eyes, under their strong black brows, challenged her. She perceived in them a whole swarm of unspoken charges. Her own colour rose.

'So peace is what you want?'

'Peace--and a little sympathy.'

'And we give you neither?'

He hesitated.

'Willy never fails one.'

'So it's my crimes that are driving you away? It's all to be laid on my shoulders?'

He laughed--uncertainly.

'Don't you believe me when I say I want to do some work?'

'Not much. So I have offended you?'

His look changed, became grave--touched with compunction.

'Miss Farrell, I oughtn't to have been talking like this. You and Willy have been awfully good to me.'

'And then you call me "Miss Farrell"!' she cried, passionately--'when you know very well that you've called me Cicely for years.'

'Hush!' said Marsworth suddenly, 'what was that?'

He turned back towards Rydal. On the shore path, midway between them and the little bay at the eastern end of the lake, where Farrell and Nelly Sarratt had been sitting, were Hester Martin and Bridget. They too had turned round, arrested in their walk. Beyond them, at the edge of the water, Farrell could be seen beckoning. And a little way behind him on the slope stood a boy with a bicycle.

'He is calling us,' said Marsworth, and began to run.

Hester Martin was already running--Bridget too.

But Hester and Marsworth outstripped the rest. Farrell came to meet them.

'Hester, for God's sake, get her sister!'

'What is it?' gasped Hester. 'Is he killed?'

'No--"Wounded and missing!" Poor, poor child!'

'Where is she?'

'She's sitting there--dazed--with the telegram. She's hardly said anything since it came.'

Hester ran on. There on a green edge of the bank sat Nelly staring at a fluttering piece of paper.

Hester sank beside her, and put her arms round her.

'Dear Mrs. Sarratt!'

'What does it mean?' said Nelly turning her white face. 'Read it.'

'"Deeply regret to inform you your husband reported wounded and missing!"'

'_Missing?_ That means--a prisoner. George is a prisoner--and wounded! Can't I go to him?'

She looked piteously at Hester. Bridget had come up and was standing near.

'If he's a prisoner, he's in a German hospital. Dear Mrs. Sarratt, you'll soon hear of him!'

Nelly stood up. Her young beauty of an hour before seemed to have dropped from her like the petals of a rose. She put her hand to her forehead.

'But I shan't see him--again'--she said slowly--'till the end of the war--_the end of the war_'--she repeated, pressing her hands on her eyes. The note of utter desolation brought the tears to Hester's cheeks. But before she could say anything, Nelly had turned sharply to her sister.

'Bridget, I must go up to-night!'

'Must you?' said Bridget reluctantly. 'I don't see what you can do.'

'I can go to the War Office--and to that place where they make enquiries for you. Of _course_, I must go to London!--and I must stay there. There might be news of him any time.'

Bridget and Hester looked at each other. The same thought was in their minds. But Nelly, restored to momentary calmness by her own suggestion, went quickly to Farrell, who with his sister and Marsworth was standing a little way off.

'I must go to London to-night, Sir William. Could you order something for me?'

'I'll take you to Windermere, Mrs. Sarratt,' said Cicely before her brother could reply. 'The motor's there now.'

'No, no, Cicely, I'll take Mrs. Sarratt,' said Farrell impatiently. 'I'll send back a car from Ambleside, for you and Marsworth.'

'You forget Sir George Whitehead,' said Cicely quietly. 'I'll do everything.'

Sir George Whitehead of the A.M.S.C. was expected at Carton that evening on a visit of inspection to the hospital. Farrell, as Commandant, could not possibly be absent. He acknowledged the fact by a gesture of annoyance. Cicely immediately took things in charge.

A whirl of packing and departure followed. By the time she and her charges left for Windermere, Cicely's hat and high heels had been entirely blotted out by a quite extraordinary display on her part of both thoughtfulness and efficiency. Marsworth had seen the same transformation before, but never so markedly. He tried several times to make his peace with her; but she held aloof, giving him once or twice an odd look out of her long almond-shaped eyes.

'Good-bye, and good luck!' said Farrell to Nelly, through the car window; and as she held out her hand, he stooped and kissed it with a gulp in his throat. Her deathly pallor and a grey veil thrown back and tied under her small chin gave her a ghostly loveliness which stamped itself on his recollection.

'I am going up to town myself to-morrow. I shall come and see if I can do anything for you.'

'Thank you,' said Nelly mechanically. 'Oh yes, I shall have thought of many things by then. Good-bye.'

Marsworth and Farrell were left to watch the disappearance of the car along the moonlit road.

'Poor little soul!' said Farrell--'poor little soul!' He walked on along the road, his eyes on the ground. Marsworth offered him a cigar, and they smoked in silence.

'What'll the next message be?' said Farrell, after a little while. '"Reported wounded and missing--now reported killed"? Most probable!'

Marsworth assented sadly.


CHAPTER VIII

It was a pale September day. In the country, among English woods and heaths the sun was still strong, and trees and bracken, withered heath, and reddening berries, burned and sparkled beneath it. But in the dingy bedroom of a dingy Bloomsbury hotel, with a film of fog over everything outside, there was no sun to be seen; the plane trees beyond the windows were nearly leafless; and the dead leaves scudding and whirling along the dusty, airless streets, under a light wind, gave the last dreary touch to the scene that Nelly Sarratt was looking at. She was standing at a window, listlessly staring at some houses opposite, and the unlovely strip of garden which lay between her and the houses. Bridget Cookson was sitting at a table a little way behind her, mending some gloves.

The sisters had been four days in London. For Nelly, life was just bearable up to five or six o'clock in the evening because of her morning and afternoon visits to the Enquiry Office in D---- Street, where everything that brains and pity could suggest was being done to trace the 'missing'; where sat also that kind, tired woman, at the table which Nelly by now knew so well, with her pitying eyes, and her soft voice, which never grew perfunctory or careless. 'I'm _so_ sorry!--but there's no fresh news.' That had been the evening message; and now the day's hope was over, and the long night had to be got through.

That morning, however, there had been news--a letter from Sarratt's Colonel, enclosing letters from two privates, who had seen Sarratt go over the parapet in the great rush, and one of whom had passed him--wounded--on the ground and tried to stay by him. But 'Lieutenant Sarratt wouldn't allow it.' 'Never mind me, old chap'--one witness reported him as saying. 'Get on. They'll pick me up presently.' And there they had left him, and knew no more.

Several other men were named, who had also seen him fall, but they had not yet been traced. They might be in hospital badly wounded, or if Sarratt had been made prisoner, they had probably shared his fate. 'And if your husband has been taken prisoner, as we all hope,' said the gentle woman at the office--'it will be at least a fortnight before we can trace him. Meanwhile we are going on with all other possible enquiries.'

Nelly had those phrases by heart. The phrases too of that short letter--those few lines--the last she had ever received from George, written two days before the battle, which had reached her in Westmorland before her departure.

That letter lay now on her bosom, just inside the folds of her blouse, where her hand could rest upon it at any moment. How passionately she had hoped for another, a fragment perhaps torn from his notebook in the trenches, and sent back by some messenger at the last moment! She had heard of that happening to so many others. Why not to her!--oh, why not to her?

Her heart was dry with longing and grief; her eyes were red for want of sleep. There were strange numb moments when she felt nothing, and could hardly remember why she was in London. And then would come the sudden smart of reviving consciousness--the terrible returns of an anguish, under which her whole being trembled. And always, at the back of everything, the dull thought--'I always knew it--I knew he would die!'--recurring again and again; only to be dashed away by a protest no less persistent--'No, no! He is _not dead!--not dead!_ In a fortnight--she said so--there'll be news--they'll have found him. Then he'll be recovering--and prisoners are allowed to write. Oh, my George!--my George!'

It was with a leap of ecstasy that yet was pain, that she imagined to herself the coming of the first word from him. Prisoners' letters came regularly--no doubt of that. Why, the landlady at the hotel had a son who was at Ruhleben, and she heard once a month. Nelly pictured the moment when the letter would be in her hand, and she would be looking at it. Oh, no doubt it wouldn't be addressed by him! By the nurse perhaps--a German nurse--or another patient. He mightn't be well enough. All the same, the dream filled her eyes with tears, that for a moment eased the burning within.

Her life was now made up of such moments and dreams. On the whole, what held her most was the fierce refusal to think of him as dead. That morning, in dressing, among the clothes they had hurriedly brought with them from Westmorland, she saw a thin black dress--a useful stand-by in the grime of London--and lifted her hands to take it from the peg on which it hung. Only to recoil from it with horror. _That_--never! And she had dressed herself with care