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

little. At last she said, her face still buried--

'It was only--to tell me--that he loved me--'

There was silence again. Then Nelly rose to her feet. She pressed her hair back from her white face.

'I don't want any supper, Bridget. I think--I should like to go to bed.'

Bridget helped her to undress. It was now nearly dark and she drew down the blinds. When she looked again at Nelly, she saw her lying white and still, her wide eyes fixed on vacancy.

'I found a visitor downstairs,' she said, abruptly. 'It was Sir William Farrell.'

Nelly shewed no surprise, or interest. But she seemed to find some words mechanically.

'Why did he come?'

Bridget came to the bedside.

'He wants us to go and stay at his flat--their flat. He and his sister have it together--in St. James' Square. He wants us to go to-morrow. He's going back to Carton. There are two servants there. We shouldn't have any trouble. And you'd be close to D---- Street. Any news they got they could send round directly.'

Nelly closed her eyes.

'I don't care where we go,' she said, under her breath.

'He wanted a line to-night,' said Bridget--'I can't hear of any lodgings. And the boarding-houses are all getting frightfully expensive--because food's going up so.'

'Not a boarding-house!' murmured Nelly. A shiver of repulsion ran through her. She was thinking of a boarding-house in one of the Bloomsbury streets where she and Bridget had once stayed before her marriage--the long tables full of strange faces--the drawing-room crowded with middle-aged women, who stared so.

'Well, I can write to him to-night then, and say we'll go to-morrow? We certainly can't stay here. The charges are abominable. If we go to their flat, for a few days, we can look round us and find something cheap.'

'Where is it?' said Nelly faintly.

'In St. James' Square.'

The address conveyed very little to Nelly. She knew hardly anything of London. Two visits--one to some cousins in West Kensington, another to a friend at Hampstead--together with the fortnight three years ago in the Bloomsbury boarding-house, when Bridget had had some grand scheme with a publisher which never came off, and Nelly had mostly stayed indoors with bad toothache:--her acquaintance with the great city had gone no further. Of its fashionable quarters both she and Bridget were entirely ignorant, though Bridget would not have admitted it.

Bridget got her writing-case out of her trunk and began to write to Sir William. Nelly watched her. At last she said slowly, as though she were becoming a little more conscious of the world around her:--

'It's awfully kind of them. But we needn't stay long.'

'Oh no, we needn't stay long.'

Bridget wrote the letter, and disappeared to post it. Nelly was left alone in darkness. The air about her seemed to be ringing with the words of her letter.

'MY OWN DARLING,--We are just going over. I have found a man going back to D.H.Q. who will post this--and I just want you to know that, whatever happens, you are my beloved, and our love can't die. God bless you, my dear, dear wife.... We are all in good spirits--everything ought to go well--and I will write the first moment possible.

'GEORGE.'

She seemed to see him, tearing the leaf from the little block she had given him, and standing in the trench, so slim and straight in his khaki. And then, what happened after? when the rush came? Would she never know? If he never came back to her, what was she going to do with her life? Waves of lonely terror went through her--terror of the long sorrow before her--terror of her own weakness.

And then again--reaction. She sat up in bed, angrily wrestling with her own lapse from hope. Of course it was all coming right! She turned on the light, with a small trembling hand, and tried to read a newspaper Bridget had brought in. But the words swam before her; the paper dropped from her grasp; and when Bridget came back, her face was hidden, she seemed to be asleep.

* * * * *

'Is this it?' said Nelly, looking in alarm at the new and splendid house before which the taxi had drawn up.

'Well, it's the right number!' And Bridget, rather flurried, looked at the piece of paper on which Farrell had written the address for her, the night before.

She jumped out of the taxi and ran up some marble steps towards a glass door covered with a lattice metal-work, beyond which a hall, a marble staircase and a lift shewed dimly. Inside, a porter in livery, at the first sight of the taxi, put down the newspaper he was reading, and hurried to the door.

'Is this Sir William Farrell's flat?' asked Bridget.

'It's all right, Miss. They're expecting you. Sir William went off this morning. I was to tell you he had to go down to Aldershot to-day on business, but he hoped to look in this evening, on his way to Euston, to see that you had everything comfortable.'

Reluctantly, and with a feeble step, Nelly descended, helped by the porter.

'Oh, Bridget, I wish we hadn't come!' She breathed it into her sister's ear, as they stood together in the hall, waiting for the lift which had been called. Bridget shut her lips tightly, and said nothing.

The lift carried them up to the third floor, and there at the top the ex-army cook and his wife were waiting, a pair of stout and comfortable people, all smiles and complaisance. The two small trunks were shouldered by the man, and the woman led the way.

'Lunch will be ready directly, Ma'am,' she said to Nelly, who followed her in bewilderment across a hall panelled in marble and carpeted with something red and soft.

'Sir William thought you would like it about one o'clock. And this is your room, please, Ma'am--unless you would like anything different. It's Miss Farrell's room. She always likes the quiet side. And I've put Miss Cookson next door. I thought you'd wish to be together?'

Nelly entered a room furnished in white and pale green, luxurious in every detail, and hung with engravings after Watteau framed in white wood. Through an open door shewed another room a little smaller, but equally dainty and fresh in all its appointments. Bridget tripped briskly through the open door, looked around her and deposited her bag upon the bed. Nelly meanwhile was being shewn the green-tiled and marble-floored bathroom attached to her room, Mrs. Simpson chattering on the various improvements and subtleties, which 'Miss Cicely' had lately commanded there.

'But I'm sure you'll be wanting your lunch, Ma'am,' said the woman at last, venturing a compassionate glance at the pale young creature beside her. 'It'll be ready in five minutes. I'll tell Simpson he can serve it.'

She disappeared, and Nelly sank into a chair. Why had they come to this place? Her whole nature was in revolt. The gaiety and luxury of the flat seemed to rise up and reproach her. What was she doing in such surroundings?--when George--Oh, it was hateful--hateful! She thought with longing of the little bare room in the Rydal lodgings, where they had been happy together.

'Well, are you ready?' said Bridget, bustling in. 'Do take off your things. You look absolutely done up!'

Nelly rose slowly, but her face had flushed.

'I can't stay here, Bridget!' she said with energy--'I can't! I don't know why we came.'

'Because we were asked,' said Bridget calmly. 'We can stay, I think, for a couple of days, can't we, till we find something else? Where are your brushes?'

And she began vigorously unpacking for her sister, helplessly watched by Nelly. They had just come from D---- Street, where Nelly had been shewn various letters and telegrams; but nothing which promised any real further clue to George Sarratt's fate. He had been seen advancing--seen wounded--by at least a dozen men of the regiment, and a couple of officers, all of whom had now been communicated with. But the wave of the counter-attack--temporarily successful--had rushed over the same ground before the British gains had been finally consolidated, and from that fierce and confused fighting there came no further word of George Sarratt. It was supposed that in the final German retreat he had been swept up as a German prisoner. He was not among the dead found and buried by an English search party on the following day--so much had been definitely ascertained.

The friendly volunteer in D---- Street--whose name appeared to be Miss Eustace--had tried to insist with Nelly that on the whole, and so far, the news collected was not discouraging. At least there was no verification of death. And for the rest, there were always the letters from Geneva to wait for. 'One must be patient,' Miss Eustace had said finally. 'These things take so long! But everybody's doing their best.' And she had grasped Nelly's cold hands in hers, long and pityingly. Her own fine aquiline face seemed to have grown thinner and more strained even since Nelly had known it. She often worked in the office, she said, up to midnight.

All these recollections and passing visualisations of words and faces, drawn from those busy rooms a few streets off, in which not only George Sarratt's fate, but her own, as it often seemed to Nelly, were being slowly and inexorably decided, passed endlessly through her brain, as she mechanically took off her things, and brushed her hair.

Presently she was following Bridget across the hall to the drawing-room. Bridget seemed already to know all about the flat. 'The dining-room opens out of the drawing-room. It's all Japanese,' she said complaisantly, turning back to her sister. 'Isn't it jolly? Miss Farrell furnished it. Sir William let her have it all her own way.'

Nelly looked vaguely round the drawing-room, which had a blue Persian carpet, pale purple walls, hung with Japanese colour prints, a few chairs, one comfortable sofa, a couple of Japanese cabinets, and pots of Japanese lilies in the corners. It was a room not meant for living in. There was not a book in it anywhere. It looked exactly what it was--a perching-place for rich people, who liked their own ways, and could not be bored with hotels.

The dining-room was equally bare, costly, and effective. Its only ornament was a Chinese Buddha, a great terra-cotta, marvellously alive, which had been looted from some Royal tomb, and now sat serenely out of place, looking over the dainty luncheon-table to the square outside, and wrapt in dreams older than Christianity.

The flat was nominally lent to 'Mrs. Sarratt,' but Bridget was managing everything, and had never felt so much in her element in her life. She sat at the head of the table, helped Nelly, gave all the orders, and was extraordinarily brisk and cheerful.

Nelly scarcely touched anything, and Mrs. Simpson who waited was much concerned.

'Perhaps you'd tell Simpson anything you could fancy, Madam,' she said anxiously in Nelly's ear, as she handed the fruit. Nelly must needs smile when anyone spoke kindly to her. She smiled now, though very wearily.