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

rising anger. 'But it's a very difficult position, you must see for yourself. Ever since George Sarratt disappeared, you've been--what shall I say?--the poor child's earthly Providence. Her illness--her convalescence--you've done everything--you've provided everything--'

'With her sister's consent, remember!--and I promised Sarratt to look after them!'

Farrell's blue eyes were now bright and stubborn. Hester realised him as ready for an argument which both he and she had long foreseen. She and Farrell had always been rather intimate friends, and he had come to her for advice in some very critical moments of his life.

'Her sister!' repeated Hester, contemptuously. 'Yes, indeed, Bridget Cookson--in my opinion--is a great deal too ready to accept everything you do! But Nelly has fought it again and again. Only, in her weakness, with you on one side--and Bridget on the other--what could she do?'

She had taken the plunge now. Her own colour had risen--her hand shook a little on her needles. And she had clearly roused some strong emotion in Farrell. After a few moments' silence, he fell upon her, speaking rather huskily.

'You mean I have taken advantage of her?'

'I don't mean anything of the kind!' Hester's tone shewed her distress. 'I know that all you have done has been out of pure friendship and goodness--

He stopped her.

'Don't go on!' he said roughly. 'Whatever I am, I'm not a hypocrite. I worship the ground she treads on!'

There was silence. Hester bent again over her work. The thoughts of both flew back over the preceding six months. Nelly's utter collapse after five or six weeks in London, when the closest enquiries, backed by Farrell's intelligence, influence and money--he had himself sent out a special agent to Geneva--had failed to reveal the slightest trace of George Sarratt; her illness, pneumonia, the result of a slight chill affecting a general physical state depressed by grief and sleeplessness; her long and tedious convalescence; and that pitiful dumbness and inertia from which she had only just begun to emerge. Hester was thinking too of the nurses, the doctors, the lodgings at Torquay, the motor, the endless flowers and books!--all provided, practically, by Farrell, aided and abetted by Bridget's readiness--a discreditable readiness, in the eyes of a person of such Spartan standards as Hester Martin--to avail herself to any extent of other people's money. The patient was not to blame. Even in the worst times of her illness, Nelly had shewn signs of distress and revolt. But Bridget, instructed by Farrell, had talked vaguely of 'a loan from a friend'; and Nelly had been too ill, too physically weak, to urge enquiry further.

Seeing that he was to blame, Farrell broke in upon Hester's recollections.

'You know very well'--he said vehemently--'that if anything less had been done for her, she would have died!'

Would she? It was the lavishness and costliness of Farrell's giving which had shocked Hester's sense of delicacy, and had given rise--she was certain--to gossip among the Farrell friends and kindred that could easily have been avoided. She looked at her companion steadily.

'Suppose we grant it, Willy. But now she's convalescent, she's going to get strong. Let her live her own life. You can't marry her--and'--she added it deliberately--'she is as much in love with her poor George as she ever was!'

Farrell moved restlessly in his chair. She saw him wince--and she had intended the blow.

'I can't marry her--yet--perhaps for years. But why can't I be her friend? Why can't I share with her the things that give me pleasure--books--art--and all the rest? Why should you condemn me to see her living on a pittance, with nobody but a sister who is as hard as nails to look after her?--lonely, and unhappy, and dull--when I know that I could help her, turn her mind away from her trouble--make her take some pleasure in life again? You talk, Hester, as though we had a dozen lives to play with, instead of this one rickety business!'

His resentment grew with the expression of it. But Hester met him unflinchingly.

'I'm anxious--because human nature is human nature--and risk is risk,' she said slowly.

He bent forward, his hands on his knees.

'I swear to you I will be honestly her friend! What do you take me for, Hester? You know very well that--I have had my adventures, and they're over. I'm not a boy. I can answer for myself.'

'All very well!--but suppose--_suppose_--before she felt herself free--and against her conscience--_she_ were to fall in love with _you_?'

Farrell could not conceal the flash that the mere words, reluctantly as they were spoken, sent through his blue eyes. He laughed.

'Well--you're there! Act watch-dog as much as you please. Besides--we all know--you have just said so--that she does not believe in Sarratt's death, that she feels herself still his wife, and not his widow. That fact establishes the relation between her and me. And if the outlook changes--'

His voice dropped to a note of pleading--

'Let me, Hester!--let me!'

'As if I could prevent you!' said Hester, rather bitterly, bending again over her work.

'Yes, you could. You have such influence with her now, that you could banish me entirely if you pleased. A word from you would do it. But it would be hideously cruel of you--and abominally unjust! However, I know your power--over her--and so over me. And so I made up my mind it was no good trying to conceal anything from you. I've told you straight out. I love her--and because I love her--you may be perfectly certain I shall protect her!'

Silence again. Farrell had turned towards the open window. When Hester turned her eyes she saw his handsome profile, his Nibelung's head and beard against the stony side of the fell. A man with unfair advantages, it seemed to her, if he chose to put out his strength;--the looks of a king, a warm heart, a sympathetic charm, felt quite as much by men as by women, and ability which would have distinguished him in any career, if his wealth had not put the drag on industry. But at the moment he was not idle. He was more creditably and fully employed then she had ever known him. His hospital and his pride in it were in fact Nelly Sarratt's best safeguard. Whatever he wished, he could not possibly spend all his time at her feet.

Hester tried one more argument--the conventional.

'Have you ever really asked yourself, Willy, how it will look to the outside world--what people will think? It is all very well to scoff at Mrs. Grundy, but the poor child has no natural guardian. We both agree her sister is no use to her.'

'Let them think!'--he turned to her again with energy--'so long as you and I _know_. Besides--I shan't compromise her in any way. I shall be most careful not to do so.'

'Look at this room!' said Hester drily. She herself surveyed it. Farrell's laugh had a touch of embarrassment.

'Well?--mayn't anyone give things to a sick child? Hush!--here she is!'

He drew further back into the room, and they both watched a little figure in a serge dress crossing the footbridge beyond the garden. Then she came into the garden, and up the sloping lawn, her hat dangling in her hand, and the spring sunshine upon her. Hester thought of the preceding June; of the little bride, with her springing step, and radiant eyes. Nelly, as she was now, seemed to her the typical figure--or rather, one of the two typical figures of the war--the man in action, the woman in bereavement. Sorrow had marked her; bitten into her youth, and blurred it. Yet it had also dignified and refined her. She was no less lovely.

As she approached, she saw them and waved to them. Farrell went to the sitting-room door to meet her, and it seemed both to him and Hester that in spite of her emaciation and her pallor, she brought the spring in with her. She had a bunch of willow catkins and primroses in her hand, and her face, for all its hollow cheeks and temples, shewed just a sparkle of returning health.

It was clear that she was pleased to see Farrell. But her manner of greeting him now was very different from what it had been in the days before her loss. It was much quieter and more assured. His seniority--there were nineteen years between them--his conspicuous place in the world, his knowledge and accomplishment, had evidently ceased to intimidate her. Something had equalised them.

But his kindness could still make her shy.

Half-way across the room, she caught sight of a picture, on an easel, both of which Farrell had brought with him.

'Oh!---' she said, and stopped short, looking from it to him.

He enjoyed her surprise.

'Well? Do you remember admiring it at the cottage? I'm up to the neck in work. I never go there. I thought you and Hester might as well take care of it for a bit.'

Nelly approached it. It was one of the Turner water-colours which glorified the cottage; the most adorable, she thought, of all of them. It shewed a sea of downs, their grassy backs flowing away wave after wave, down to the real sea in the gleaming distance. Between the downs ran a long valley floor--cottages on it, woods and houses, farms and churches, strung on a silver river; under the mingled cloud and sunshine of an April day. It breathed the very soul of England,--of this sacred long-descended land of ours. Sarratt, who had stood beside her when she had first looked at it, had understood it so at once.

'Jolly well worth fighting for--this country! isn't it?' he had said to Farrell over her head, and once or twice afterwards he had spoken to her of the drawing with delight. 'I shall think of it--over there. It'll do one good.'

As she paused before it now, a sob rose in her throat. But she controlled herself quickly. Then something beyond the easel caught her eye--a mass of flowers, freesias, narcissus, tulips, tumbled on a table; then a pile of new books; and finally, a surprising piece of furniture.

'What have you been doing now?' she asked him, wondering, and, as Hester thought, shrinking back a little.

'It's from Cicely'--he said apologetically. 'She made me bring it. She declared she'd sampled the sofa here,--' he pointed to an ancient one in a corner--'and it would disgrace a dug-out. It's her affair--don't blame me!'

Nelly looked bewildered.

'But I'm not ill now. I'm getting well.'

'If you only knew what a ghost you look still,' he said vehemently, 'you'd let Cicely have her little plot. This used to stand in my mother's sitting-room. It was bought for her. Cicely had it put to rights.'

As he spoke, he made a hasty mental note that Cicely would have to be coached in her part.

Nelly examined the object. It was a luxurious adjustable couch, covered in flowery chintz, with a reading-desk, and well supplied with the softest cushions.

She laughed, but there was rather a flutter in her laugh.

'It's awfully kind of Cicely. But you know--'

Her eyes turned on Farrell with a sudden insistence. Hester had just left the room, and her distant voice--with other voices--could be heard in the garden.

'--You know you mustn't--all of you--spoil me so, any more. I've got my life to face. You mean it so kindly--but--'

She sank into a chair by the window that Farrell had placed for her, and her aspect struck him painfully.