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

There was so much weakness in it; and yet a touch of fierceness.

'I've got my life to face,' she repeated--'and you mustn't, Sir William--you _mustn't_ let me get too dependent on you--and Cicely--and Hester. Be my friend--my true friend--and help me--'

She bent forward, and her pale lips just breathed the rest--

'Help me--_to endure hardness_! That's what I want--for George's sake--and my own. I must find some work to do. In a few months perhaps I might be able to teach--but there are plenty of things I could do now. I want to be just--neglected a little--treated as a normal person!'

She smiled faintly at him as he stood beside her. He felt himself rebuked--abashed--as though he had been in some sort an intruder on her spiritual freedom; had tried to purchase her dependence by a kindness she did not want. That was not in her mind, he knew. But it was in Hester's. And there was not wanting a certain guilty consciousness in his own.

But he threw it off. Absurdity! She _did_ need his friendship; and he had done what he had done without the shadow of a corrupt motive--_en tout bien, tout honneur_.

It was intolerable to him to think of her as poor and resourceless--left to that disagreeable sister and her own melancholy thoughts. Still the first need of all was that she should trust him--as a good friend, who had slipped by force of circumstances into a kind of guardian's position. Accordingly he applied himself to the kind of persuasion that befits seniority and experience. She had asked to be treated as a normal person. He proved to her, gently laughing at her, that the claim was preposterous. Ask her doctor!--ask Hester! As for teaching, time enough to talk about that when she had a little flesh on her bones, a little strength in her limbs. She might read, of course; that was what the couch was for. Lying there by the window she might become as learned as she liked, and get strong at the same time. He would keep her stocked with books. The library at Carton was going mouldy for lack of use. And as for her drawing, he had hoped--perhaps--she might some time take a lesson--

Then he saw a little shiver run through her.

'Could I?' she said in a low voice, turning her face away. And he perceived that the bare idea of resuming old pleasures--the pleasures of her happy, her unwidowed time--was still a shock to her.

'I'm sure it would help'--he said, persevering. 'You have a real turn for water-colour. You should cultivate it--you should really. In my belief you might do a great deal better with it than with teaching.'

That roused her. She sat up, her eyes brightening.

'If I _worked_--you really think? And then,' her voice dropped--'if George came back--'

'Exactly,' he said gravely--'it might be of great use. Didn't you wish for something normal to do? Well, here's the chance. I can supply you with endless subjects to copy. There are more in the cottage than you would get through in six months. And I could send you over portfolios of my own studies and _academies_, done at Paris, and in the Slade, which would help you--and sometimes we could take some work out of doors.'

She said nothing, but her sad puzzled eyes, as they wandered over the garden and the lake, shewed that she was considering it.

Then suddenly her expression changed.

'Isn't that Cicely's voice?' She motioned towards the garden.

'I daresay. I sent on the motor to meet her at Windermere. She's been in town for two or three weeks, selling at Red Cross Bazaars and things. And by George!--isn't that Marsworth?'

He sprang up to look, and verified his guess. The tall figure on the lawn with Cicely and Hester was certainly Marsworth. He and Nelly looked at each other, and Nelly smiled.

'You know Cicely and I have become great friends?' she said shyly. 'It's so odd that I should call her Cicely--but she makes me.'

'She treats you nicely?--at last?'

'She's awfully good to me,' said Nelly, with emphasis. 'I used to be so afraid of her.'

'What wrought the miracle?'

But Nelly shook her head, and would not tell.

'I had a letter from Marsworth a week ago,' said Farrell reflecting--'asking how and where we all were. I told him I was tied and bound to Carton--no chance of getting away for ages--but that Cicely had kicked over the traces and gone up to London for a month. Then he sent a post-card to say that he was coming up for a fortnight's treatment, and would go to his old quarters at the Rectory. Ah!--'

He paused, grinning. The same thought occurred to both of them. Marsworth was still suffering very much at times from his neuralgia in the arm, and had a great belief in one of the Carton surgeons, who, with Farrell's aid, had now installed one of the most complete electrical and gymnastic apparatus in the kingdom, at the Carton hospital. Once, during an earlier absence of Cicely's before Christmas, he had suddenly appeared at the Rectory, for ten days' treatment; and now--again! Farrell laughed.

'As for Cicely, you can never count on her for a week together. She got home-sick, and wired to me that she was coming to-night. I forgot all about Marsworth. I expect they met at the station; and quarrelled all the way here. What on earth is Cicely after in that direction! You say you've made friends with her. Do you know?'

Nelly looked conscious.

'I--I guess something,' she said.

'But you mustn't tell?'

She nodded, smiling. Farrell shrugged his shoulders.

'Well, am I to encourage Marsworth--supposing he comes to me for advice--to go and propose to the Rector's granddaughter?'

'Certainly not!' said Nelly, opening a pair of astonished eyes.

'Aha, I've caught you! You've given the show away. But you know'--his tone grew serious--'it's not at all impossible that he may. She torments him too much.'

'He must do nothing of the kind,' said Nelly, with decision.

'Well, you tell him so. I wash my hands of them. I can't fathom either of them. Here they are!'

Voices ascending the stairs announced the party. Cicely came in first; tired and travel-stained, and apparently in the worst of tempers. But she seemed glad to see Nelly Sarratt, whom she kissed, to the astonishment of her Cousin Hester, who was not as yet aware of the new relations between the two. And then, flinging herself into a chair beside Nelly, she declared that she was dead-beat, that the train had been intolerably full of khaki, and that soldiers ought to have trains to themselves.

'Thank your stars, Cicely, that you are allowed to travel at all,' said Farrell. 'No civilian nowadays matters a hap'orth.'

'And then we talk about Prussian Militarism!' cried Cicely. And she went off at score describing the invasion of her compartment at Rugby by a crowd of young officers, whose manners were 'atrocious.'

'What was their crime?' asked Marsworth, quietly. He sat in the background, cigarette in hand, a strong figure, rather harshly drawn, black hair slightly grizzled, a black moustache, civilian clothes. He had filled out since the preceding summer and looked much better in health. But his left arm was still generally in its sling.

'They had every crime!' said Cicely impatiently. 'It isn't worth discriminating.'

Marsworth raised his eyebrows.

'Poor boys!'

Cicely flushed.

'You think, of course, I have no right to criticise anything in khaki!'

'Not at all. Criticism is the salt of life.' His eyes twinkled.

'That I entirely deny!' said Cicely, firmly. She made a fantastic but agreeable figure as she sat near the window in the full golden light of the March evening. Above her black toque there soared a feather which almost touched the ceiling of the low room--a _panache_, nodding defiance; while her short grey skirts shewed her shapely ankles and feet, clothed in grey gaiters and high boots of the very latest perfection.

'What do you deny, Cicely?' asked her brother, absently, conscious always, through all the swaying of talk, of the slight childish form of Nelly Sarratt beneath him, in her deep chair; and of the eyes and mouth, which after the few passing smiles he had struck from them, were veiled again in their habitual sadness. '_Here I and sorrow sit_.' The words ran through his mind, only to be passionately rejected. She was young!--and life was long. Forget she would, and must.

At her brother's question, Cicely merely shrugged her shoulders.

'Your sister was critical,' said Marsworth, laughing,--'and then denies the uses of criticism.'

'As some people employ it!' said Cicely, pointedly.

Marsworth's mouth twitched--but he said nothing.

Then Hester, perceiving that the atmosphere was stormy, started some of the usual subjects that relieve tension; the weather--the possibility of a rush of Easter tourists to the Lakes--the daffodils that were beginning to make beauty in some sheltered places. Marsworth assisted her; while Cicely took a chair beside Nelly, and talked exclusively to her, in a low voice. Presently Hester saw their hands slip together--Cicely's long and vigorous fingers enfolding Nelly's thin ones. How had two such opposites ever come to make friends? The kindly old maid was very conscious of cross currents in the spiritual air, as she chatted to Marsworth. She was keenly aware of Farrell, and could not keep the remembrance of what he had said to her out of her mind. Nelly's face and form, also, as the twilight veiled them, were charged for Hester with pitiful meaning. While at the back of her thoughts there was an expectation, a constant and agitating expectation, of another arrival. Bridget Cookson might be upon them at any moment. To Hester Martin she was rapidly becoming a disquieting and sinister element in this group of people. Yet why, Hester could not really have explained.

The afternoon was rapidly drawing in, and Farrell was just beginning to take out his watch, and talk of starting home, when the usual clatter of wheels and hoofs announced the arrival of the evening coach. Nelly sat up, looking very white and weary.

'I am expecting my sister,' she said to Farrell. 'She has no doubt come by this coach.'

And in a few more minutes, Bridget was in the room, distributing to everybody there the careless staccato greetings which were her way of protecting herself against the world. Her entrance and her manner had always a disintegrating effect upon other human beings; and Bridget had no sooner shaken hands with the Farrells than everybody--save Nelly--was upon their feet and ready to move. One of Bridget's most curious and marked characteristics was an unerring instinct for whatever news might be disagreeable to the company in which she found herself; and on this occasion she brought some bad war news--a German advance at Verdun, with corresponding French losses--and delivered it with the emphasis of one to whom it was not really unwelcome. Cicely, to whom, flourishing her evening paper, she had mainly addressed herself, listened with the haughty and casual air she generally put on for Bridget Cookson. She had succumbed for her own reasons to the charm of Nelly. She was only the more inclined to be rude to Bridget. Accordingly she professed complete incredulity on the subject of the news. 'Invented,'--she supposed--'to sell some halfpenny rag or other. It would all be contradicted to-morrow.' Then when Bridget, smarting under so much scepticism, attempted to support her tale by the testimony of various stale morsels of military gossip, current in