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

Her small raftered room was invaded by the last stormy light of the autumn evening. The open casement window admitted a cold wind. Bridget shut it, with a shiver. But instead of lying down, she took a chair by the window, absently removed her hat, and sat there thinking. The coppery light from the west illumined her face with its strong discontented lines, and her hands, which were large, but white and shapely--a source indeed of personal pride to their owner.

Presently, in the midst of her reverie, she heard a step outside, and saw Sir William Farrell approaching the gate. Nelly, wrapped in a white shawl, was still strolling about the garden, and Bridget watched their meeting--Nelly's soft and smiling welcome, and Farrell's eagerness, his evident joy in finding her alone.

'And she just wilfully blinds herself!' thought Bridget contemptuously--'talks about his being a brother to her, and that sort of nonsense. He's in love with her!--of course he's in love with her. And as for Nelly--she's not in love with him. But she's getting used to him; she depends on him. When he's not there she misses him. She's awfully glad to see him when he comes. Perhaps, it'll take a month or two. I give it a month or two--perhaps six months--perhaps a year. And then she'll marry him--and--'

Here her thoughts became rather more vague and confused. They were compounded of a fierce impatience with the war, and of certain urgent wishes and ambitions, which had taken possession of a strong and unscrupulous character. She wanted to travel. She wanted to see the world, and not to be bothered by having to think of money. Contact with very rich people, like the Farrells, and the constant spectacle of what an added range and power is given to the human will by money, had turned the dull discontent of her youth into an active fever of desire. She had no illusions about herself at all. She was already a plain and unattractive old maid. Nobody would want to marry her; and she did not want to marry anybody. But she wanted to _do_ things and to _see_ things, when the hateful war was over. She was full of curiosities about life and the world, that were rather masculine than feminine. Her education, though it was still patchy and shallow, had been advancing since Nelly's marriage, and her intelligence was hungry. The satisfaction of it seemed too to promise her the only real pleasures to which she could look forward in life. On the wall of her bedroom were hanging photographs of Rome, Athens, the East. She dreamt of a wandering existence; she felt that she would be insatiable of movement, of experience, if the chance were given her.

But how could one travel, or buy books, or make new acquaintances, without money?--something more at any rate than the pittance on which she and Nelly subsisted.

What was it Sir William was supposed to have, by way of income?--thirty thousand a year? Well, he wouldn't always be spending it on his hospital, and War income tax, and all the other horrible burdens of the time. If Nelly married him, she would have an ample margin to play with; and to do Nelly justice, she was always open-handed, always ready to give away. She would hand over her own small portion to her sister, and add something to it. With six or seven hundred a year, Bridget would be mistress of her own fate, and of the future. Often, lately, in waking moments of the night, she had felt a sudden glow of exultation, thinking what she could do with such a sum. The world seemed to open out on all sides--offering her new excitements, new paths to tread in. She wanted no companion, to hamper her with differing tastes and wishes. She would be quite sufficient to herself.

The garden outside grew dark. She heard Farrell say 'It's too cold for you--you must come in,' and she watched Nelly enter the house in front of him--turning her head back to answer something he said to her. Even through the dusk Bridget was conscious of her sister's beauty. She did not envy it in the least. It was Nelly's capital--Nelly's opportunity. Let her use it for them both. Bridget would be well satisfied to gather up the crumbs from her rich sister's table.

Then from the dream, she came back with chill and desperation--to reality. The letter in her pocket--the journey before her--she pondered alternatives. What was she to do in this case--or in that? Everything might be at stake--everything was at stake--her life and Nelly's--

The voices from the parlour below came up to her. She heard the crackling of a newly lighted fire--Farrell reading aloud--and Nelly's gentle laughter. She pictured the scene; the two on either side of the fire, with Nelly's mourning, her plain widow's dress, as the symbol--in Nelly's eyes--of what divided her from Farrell, or any other suitor, and made it possible to be his friend without fear. Bridget knew that Nelly so regarded it. But that of course was just Nelly's foolish way of looking at things. It was only a question of time.

And meanwhile the widow's dress had quite other meanings for Bridget. She pondered long in the dark, till the supper bell rang.

At supper, her silence embarrassed and infected her companions, and Farrell, finding it impossible to get another tete-a-tete with Nelly, took his leave early. He must be up almost with the dawn so as to get to Carton by nine o'clock.

* * * * *

Out of a stormy heaven the moon was breaking as he walked back to his cottage. The solitude of the mountain ways, the freshness of the rain-washed air, and the sweetness of his hour with Nelly, after the bustle of the week, the arrivals and departures, the endless business, of a great hospital:--he was conscious of them all, intensely conscious, as parts of a single, delightful whole to which he had looked forward for days. And yet he was restless and far from happy. He wandered about the mountain roads for a long time--watching the moon as it rose above the sharp steep of Loughrigg and sent long streamers of light down the Elterwater valley, and up the great knees of the Pikes. The owls hooted in the oak-woods, and the sound of water--the Brathay rushing over the Skelwith rocks, and all the little becks in fell and field, near and far--murmured through the night air, and made earth-music to the fells. Farrell had much of the poet in him; and the mountains and their life were dear to him. But he was rapidly passing into the stage when a man over-mastered by his personal desires is no longer open to the soothing of nature. He had recently had a long and confidential talk with his lawyer at Carlisle, who was also his friend, and had informed himself minutely about the state of the law. Seven years!--unless, of her own free will, she took the infinitesimal risk of marriage before the period was up.

But he despaired of her doing any such thing. He recognised fully that the intimacy she allowed him, her sweet openness and confidingness, were all conditioned by what she regarded as the fixed points in her life; by her widowhood, legal and spiritual, and by her tacit reliance on his recognition of the fact that she was set apart, bound as other widows were not bound, protected by the very mystery of Sarratt's fate, from any thought of re-marriage.

And he!--all the time the strength of a man's maturest passion was mounting in his veins. And with it a foreboding--coming he knew not whence--like the sudden shadow that, as he looked, blotted out the moonlight on the shining bends and loops of the Brathay, where it wandered through the Elterwater fields.


CHAPTER XII

Bridget Cookson slowly signed her name to the letter she had been writing in the drawing-room of the boarding-house where she was accustomed to stay during her visits to town. Then she read the letter through--

'I can't get back till the middle or end of next week at least. There's been a great deal to do, of one kind or another. And I'm going down to Woking to-morrow to spend the week-end with a girl I met here who's knocked up in munition-work. Don't expect me till you see me. But I daresay I shan't be later than Friday.'

Bridget Cookson had never yet arrived at telling falsehoods for the mere pleasure of it. On the whole she preferred not to tell them. But she was well aware that her letter to Nelly contained a good many, both expressed and implied.

Well, that couldn't be helped. She put up her letter, and then proceeded to look carefully through the contents of her handbag. Yes, her passport was all right, and her purse with its supply of notes. Also the letter that she was to present to the Base Commandant, or the Red Cross representative at the port of landing. The latter had been left open for her to read. It was signed 'Ernest Howson, M.D.,' and asked that Miss Bridget Cookson might be sent forward to No. 102, General Hospital, X Camp, France, as quickly as possible.

There was also another letter addressed to herself in the same handwriting. She opened it and glanced through it--

'DEAR MISS COOKSON,--I think I have made everything as easy for you as I can on this side. You won't have any difficulty. I'm awfully glad you're coming. I myself am much puzzled, and don't know what to think. Anyway I am quite clear that my right course was to communicate with you--_first._ Everything will depend on what you say.'

The following afternoon, Bridget found herself, with a large party of V.A.D.'s, and other persons connected with the Red Cross, on board a Channel steamer. The day was grey and cold, and Bridget having tied on her life-belt, and wrapped herself in her thickest cloak, found a seat in the shelter of the deck cabins whence the choppy sea, the destroyer hovering round them, and presently the coast of France were visible. A secret excitement filled her. What was she going to see? and what was she going to do? All round her too were the suggestions of war, commonplace and familiar by now to half the nation, but not to Bridget who had done her best to forget the war. The steamer deck was crowded with officers returning from leave who were walking up and down, all of them in life-belts, chatting and smoking. All eyes were watchful of the sea, and the destroyer; and the latest submarine gossip passed from mouth to mouth. The V.A.D.'s with a few army nurses, kept each other company on the stern deck. The mild sea gave no one any excuse for discomfort, and the pleasant-faced rosy girls in their becoming uniforms, laughed and gossiped with each other, though not without a good many side glances towards the khaki figures pacing the deck, many of them specimens of English youth at its best.

Bridget however took little notice of them. She was becoming more and more absorbed in her own problem. She had not in truth made up her mind how to deal with it, and she admitted reluctantly that she would have to be guided by circumstance. Midway across, when the French coast and its lighthouses were well in view, she took out the same letter which she had received two days