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

at once.'

'Has he a wife?'

'Yes, but she is very delicate. That is why Dr. Howson wrote to me. If there were any chance--of course we must send for her. But I shall know--I shall know at once.'

'I suppose you will--yes, I suppose you will,' mused the major. 'Though of course a man is terribly aged by such an experience. He's English--that we're certain of. He often seems to understand--half understand--a written phrase or word in English. And he is certainly a man of refinement. All his personal ways--all that is instinctive and automatic--the subliminal consciousness, so to speak--seems to be that of a gentleman. But it is impossible to get any response out of him, for anything connected with the war. And yet we doubt whether there is any actual brain lesion. So far it seems to be severe functional disturbance--which is neurasthenia--aggravated by his wounds and general state. But the condition is getting worse steadily. It is very sad, and very touching. However, you will get it all out of Vincent. You must have some dinner first. I wish you a good-night.'

And the good man, so stout and broad-shouldered that he seemed to be bursting out of his khaki, hurried away. The lady seemed to him curiously hard and silent--'a forbidding sort of party.' But then he himself was a person of sentiment, expressing all the expected feelings in the right places, and with perfect sincerity.

Bridget took her modest dinner, and then sat by the window, looking out over a lonely expanse of sand, towards a moonlit sea. To right and left were patches of pine wood, and odd little seaside villas, with fantastic turrets and balconies. A few figures passed--nurses in white head dresses, and men in khaki. Bridget understood after talking to the little _patronne_, that the name of the place was Paris a la Mer, that there was a famous golf course near, and that large building, with a painted front to the right, was once the Casino, and now a hospital for officers.

It was all like a stage scene, the sea, the queer little houses, the moonlight, the passing figures. Only the lights were so few and dim, and there was no music.

'Miss Cookson?'

Bridget turned, to see a tall young surgeon in khaki, tired, pale and dusty, who looked at her with a frown of worry, a man evidently over-driven, and with hardly any mind to give to this extra task that had been put upon him.

'I'm sorry to be late--but we've had an awful rush to-day,' he said, as he perfunctorily shook hands. 'There was some big fighting on the Somme, the night before last, and the casualty trains have been coming in all day. I'm only able to get away for five minutes.

'Well now, Miss Cookson'--he sat down opposite her, and tried to get his thoughts into business shape--'first let me tell you it's a great misfortune for you that Howson's had to go off. I know something about the case--but not nearly as much as he knows. First of all--how old was your brother-in-law?'

'About twenty-seven--I don't know precisely.'

'H'm. Well of course this man looks much older than that--but the question is what's he been through? Was Lieutenant Sarratt fair or dark?'

'Rather dark. He had brown hair.'

'Eyes?'

'I can't remember precisely,' said Bridget, after a moment. 'I don't notice the colour of people's eyes. But I'm sure they were some kind of brown.'

'This man's are a greenish grey. Can you recollect anything peculiar about Lieutenant Sarratt's hands?'

Again Bridget paused for a second or two, and then said--'I can't remember anything at all peculiar about them.'

The surgeon looked at her closely, and was struck with the wooden irresponsiveness of the face, which was however rather handsome, he thought, than otherwise. No doubt, she was anxious to speak deliberately, when so much might depend on her evidence and her opinion. But he had never seen any countenance more difficult to read.

'Perhaps you're not a close observer of such things?'

'No, I don't think I am.'

'H'm--that's rather a pity. A great deal may turn on them, in this case.'

Then the face before him woke up a little.

'But I am quite sure I should know my brother-in-law again, under any circumstances,' said Bridget, with emphasis.

'Ah, don't be so sure! Privation and illness change people terribly. And this poor fellow has _suffered_!'--he shrugged his shoulders expressively. 'Well, you will see him to-morrow. There is of course no external evidence to help us whatever. The unlucky accident that the Englishman's companion--who was clearly a Belgian peasant, disguised--of that there is no doubt--was shot through the lungs at the very moment that the two men reached the British line, has wiped out all possible means of identification--unless, of course, the man himself can be recognised by someone who knew him. We have had at least a dozen parties--relations of "missing" men--much more recent cases--over here already--to no purpose. There is really no clue, unless'--the speaker rose with a tired smile--'unless you can supply one, when you see him. But I am sorry about the fingers. That has always seemed to me a possible clue. To-morrow then, at eleven?'

Bridget interrupted.

'It is surely most unlikely that my brother-in-law could have survived all this time? If he had been a prisoner, we should have heard of him, long ago. Where could he have been?'

The young man shrugged his shoulders.

'There have been a few cases, you know--of escaped prisoners--evading capture for a long time--and finally crossing the line. But of course it _is_ very unlikely--most unlikely. Well, to-morrow?' He bowed and departed.

Bridget made her way to her small carpetless room, and sat for long with a shawl round her at the open window. She could imagine the farm in this moonlight. It was Saturday. Very likely both Cicely and Sir William were at the cottage. She seemed to see Nelly, with the white shawl over her dark head, saying good-night to them at the farm-gate. That meant that it was all going forward. Some day,--and soon,--Nelly would discover that Farrell was necessary to her--that she couldn't do without him--just as she had never been able in practical ways to do without her sister. No, there was nothing in the way of Nelly's great future, and the free development of her--Bridget's--own life, but this sudden and most unwelcome stroke of fate. If she had to send for Nelly--supposing it really were Sarratt--and then if he died--Nelly might never get over it.

It might simply kill her--why not? All the world knew that she was a weakling. And if it didn't kill her, it would make it infinitely less likely that she would marry Farrell--in any reasonable time. Nelly was not like other people. She was all feelings. Actually to see George die--and in the state that these doctors described--would rack and torture her. She would never be the same again. The first shock was bad enough; this might be far worse. Bridget's selfishness, in truth, counted on the same fact as Farrell's tenderness. 'After all, what people don't see, they can't feel'--to quite the same degree. But if Nelly, being Nelly, had seen the piteous thing, she would turn against Farrell, and think it loyalty to George to send her rich suitor about his business. Bridget felt that she could exactly foretell the course of things. A squalid and melancholy veil dropped over the future. Poverty, struggle, ill-health for Nelly--poverty, and the starving of all natural desires and ambitions for herself--that was all there was to look forward to, if the Farrells were alienated, and the marriage thwarted.

A fierce revolt shook the woman by the window. She sat on there till the moon dropped into the sea, and everything was still in the little echoing hotel. And then though she went to bed she could not sleep.

* * * * *

After her coffee and roll in the little _salle a manger_, which with its bare boards and little rags of curtains was only meant for summer guests, and was now, on this first of November, nippingly cold, Bridget wandered a little on the shore watching the white dust of the foam as a chill west wind skimmed it from the incoming waves, then packed her bag, and waited restlessly for Dr. Vincent. She understood she was to be allowed, if she wished, two visits in the hospital, so as to give her an opportunity of watching the patient she was going to see, without undue hurry, and would then be motored back to D---- in time for the night boat. She was bracing herself therefore to an experience the details of which she only dimly foresaw, but which must in any case be excessively disagreeable. What exactly she was going to do or say, she didn't know. How could she, till the new fact was before her?

Punctually on the stroke of eleven, a motor arrived in charge of an army driver, and Bridget set out. They were to pick up Vincent in the town of X---- itself and run on to the Camp. The sun was out by this time, and all the seaside village, with its gimcrack hotels and villas flung pell-mell upon the sand, and among the pines, was sparkling under it. So were the withered woods, where the dead leaves were flying before the wind, the old town where Napoleon gathered his legions for the attack on England, and the wide sandy slopes beyond it, where the pine woods had perished to make room for the Camp. The car stopped presently on the edge of the town. To the left spread a river estuary, with a spit of land beyond, and lighthouses upon it, sharp against a pale blue sky. Every shade of pale yellow, of lilac and pearl, sparkled in the distance, in the scudding water, the fast flying westerly clouds, and the sandy inlets among the still surviving pines.

'You're punctuality itself,' said a man emerging from a building before which a sentry was pacing--'Now we shall be there directly.'

The building, so Bridget was informed, housed the Headquarters of the Base, and from it the business of the great Camp, whether on its military or its hospital side, was mainly carried on. And as they drove towards the Camp her companion, with the natural pride of the Englishman in his job, told the marvellous tale of the two preceding years--how the vast hospital city had been reared, and organised--the military camp too--the convalescent camp--the transports--and the feeding.

'The Boche thought they were the only organisers in the world!--We've taught them better!' he said, with a laugh in his pleasant eyes, the whole man of him, so weary the night before, now fresh and alert in the morning sunshine.

Bridget listened with an unwilling attention. This bit of the war seen close at hand was beginning to suggest to her some new vast world, of which she was wholly ignorant, where she was the merest cypher on sufferance. The thought was disagreeable to her irritable pride, and she thrust it aside. She had other things to consider.

They drew up outside one of the general hospitals lined along the Camp road.

'You'll find him in a special ward,' said Vincent, as he handed her out. 'But I'll take you first to Sister.'

They entered the first hut, and made their way past various small rooms, amid busy