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

people going to and fro. Bridget was aware of the usual hospital smell of mingled anesthetic and antiseptic, and presently, her companion laid a hasty hand on her arm and drew her to one side. A surgeon passed with a nurse. They entered a room on the right, and left the door of it a little ajar.

'The operating theatre,' said Vincent, with a gesture that shewed her where to look; and through the open door Bridget saw a white room beyond, an operating table and a man, a splendid boy of nineteen or twenty lying on it, with doctors and nurses standing round. The youth's features shewed waxen against the white walls, and white overalls of the nurses.

'This way,' said Vincent. 'Sister, this is Miss Cookson. You remember--Dr. Howson sent for her.'

A shrewd-faced woman of forty in nurse's dress looked closely at Bridget.

'We shall be very glad indeed, Miss Cookson, if you can throw any light on this case. It is one of the saddest we have here. Will you follow me, please?'

Bridget found herself passing through the main ward of the hut, rows of beds on either hand. She seemed to be morbidly conscious of scores of eyes upon her, and was glad when she found herself in the passage beyond the ward.

The Sister opened a door into a tiny sitting-room, and offered Bridget a chair.

'They have warned you that this poor fellow is deaf and dumb?'

'Yes--I had heard that.'

'And his brain is very clouded. He tries to do all we tell him--it is touching to see him. But his real intelligence seems to be far away. Then there are the wounds. Did Dr. Howson tell you about them?'

'He said there were bad wounds.'

The Sister threw up her hands.

'How he ever managed to do the walking he must have done to get through the lines is a mystery to us all. What he must have endured! The wounds must have been dressed to begin with in a German field-hospital. Then on his way to Germany, before the wounds had properly healed--that at least is our theory--somewhere near the Belgian frontier he must have made his escape. What happened then, of course, during the winter and spring nobody knows; but when he reached our lines, the wounds were both in a septic state. There have been two operations for gangrene since he has been here. I don't think he'll stand another.'

Bridget lifted her eyes and looked intently at the speaker--

'You think he's very ill?'

'Very ill,' said the Sister emphatically. 'If you can identify him, you must send for his wife at once--_at once_! Lieutenant Sarratt was, I think, married?'

'Yes,' said Bridget. 'Now may I see him?'

The Sister looked at her visitor curiously. She was both puzzled and repelled by Bridget's manner, by its lack of spring and cordiality, its dull suggestion of something reserved and held back. But perhaps the woman was only shy; and oppressed by the responsibility of what she had come to do. The Sister was a very human person, and took tolerant views of everything that was not German. She rose, saying gently--

'If I may advise you, take time to watch him, before you form or express any opinion. We won't hurry you.'

Bridget followed her guide a few steps along the corridor. The Sister opened a door, and stood aside to let Bridget pass in. Then she came in herself, and beckoned to a young probationer who was rolling bandages on the further side of the only bed the room contained. The girl quietly put down her work and went out.

There was a man lying in the bed, and Bridget looked at him. Her heart beat so fast, that she felt for a moment sick and suffocated. The Sister bent over him tenderly, and put back the hair, the grey hair which had fallen over his forehead. At the touch, his eyes opened, and as he saw the Sister's face he very faintly smiled. Bridget suddenly put out a hand and steadied herself by a chair standing beside the bed. The Sister however saw nothing but the face on the pillow, and the smile. The smile was so rare!--it was the one sufficient reward for all his nurses did for him.

'Now I'll leave you,' said the Sister, forbearing to ask any further questions. 'Won't you sit down there? If you want anyone, you have only to touch that bell.'

She disappeared. And Bridget sat down, her eyes on the figure in the bed, and on the hand outside the sheet. Her own hands were trembling, as they lay crossed upon her lap.

How grey and thin the hair was--how ghostly the face--what suffering in every line!

Bridget drew closer.

'George!' she whispered.

No answer. The man's eyes were closed again. He seemed to be asleep. Bridget looked at his hand--intently. Then she touched it.

The heavy blue-veined eyelids rose again, as though at the only summons the brain understood. Bridget bent forward. What colour there had been in it before ebbed from her sallow face; her lips grew white. The eyes of the man in the bed met hers--first mechanically--without any sign of consciousness; then--was it imagination?--or was there a sudden change of expression--a quick trouble--a flickering of the lids? Bridget shook through every limb. If he recognised her, if the sight of her brought memory back--even a gleam of it--there was an end of everything, of course. She had only to go to the nearest telegraph office and send for Nelly.

But the momentary stimulus passed as she looked--the eyes grew vacant again--the lids fell. Bridget drew a long breath. She raised herself and moved her chair farther away.

Time passed. The window behind her was open, and the sun came in, and stole over the bed. The sick man scarcely moved at all. There was complete silence, except for the tread of persons in the corridor outside, and certain distant sounds of musketry and bomb practice from the military camp half a mile away.

He was dying--the man in the bed. That was plain. Bridget knew the look of mortal illness. It couldn't be long.

She sat there nearly an hour--thinking. At the end of that time she rang the hand-bell near her.

Sister Agnes appeared at once. Bridget had risen and confronted her.

'Well,' said the Sister eagerly. But the visitor's irresponsive look quenched her hopes at once.

'I see nothing at all that reminds me of my brother-in-law,' said Bridget with emphasis. 'I am very sorry--but I cannot identify this person as George Sarratt.'

The Sister's face fell.

'You don't even see the general likeness Dr. Howson thought he saw?'

Bridget turned back with her towards the bed.

'I see what Dr. Howson meant,' she said, slowly. 'But there is no real likeness. My brother-in-law's face was much longer. His mouth was quite different. And his eyes were brown.'

'Did you see the eyes again? Did he look at you?'

'Yes.'

'And there was no sign of recognition?'

'No.'

'Poor dear fellow!' said the Sister, stooping over him again. There was a profound and yearning pity in the gesture. 'I wish we could have kept him more alive--more awake--for you, to see. But there had to be morphia this morning. He had a dreadful night. Are you _quite_ sure? Wouldn't you like to come back this afternoon, and watch him again? Sometimes a second time--Oh, and what of the hands?--did you notice them?' And suddenly remembering Dr. Howson's words, the Sister pointed to the long, bloodless fingers lying on the sheet, and to the marked deformity in each little finger.

'Yet--but George's hands were not peculiar in any way.' Bridget's voice, as she spoke, seemed to herself to come from far away; as though it were that of another person speaking under compulsion.

'I'm sorry--I'm sorry!'--the Sister repeated. 'It's so sad for him to be dying here--all alone--nobody knowing even who he is--when one thinks how somebody must be grieving and longing for him.'

'Have you no other enquiries?' said Bridget, abruptly, turning to pick up some gloves she had laid down.

'Oh yes--we have had other visitors--and I believe there is a gentleman coming to-morrow. But nothing that sounded so promising as your visit. You won't come again?'

'It would be no use,' said the even, determined voice. 'I will write to Dr. Howson from London. And I do hope'--for the first time, the kindly nurse perceived some agitation in this impressive stranger--'I do hope that nobody will write to my sister--to Mrs. Sarratt. She is very delicate. Excitement and disappointment might just kill her. That's why I came.'

'And that of course is why Dr. Howson wrote to you first. Oh I am sure he will take every care. He'll be very, very sorry! You'll write to him? And of course so shall I.'

The news that the lady from England had failed to identify the nameless patient to whom doctor and nurses had been for weeks giving their most devoted care spread rapidly, and Bridget before she left the hospital had to run the gauntlet of a good many enquiries, at the hands of the various hospital chiefs. She produced on all those who questioned her the impression of an unattractive, hard, intelligent woman whose judgment could probably be trusted.

'Glad she isn't my sister-in-law!' thought Vincent as he turned back from handing her into the motor which was to take her to the port. But he did not doubt her verdict, and was only sorry for 'old Howson,' who had been so sure that something would come of her visit.

The motor took Bridget rapidly back to D----, where she would be in good time for an afternoon boat. She got some food, automatically, at a hotel near the quay, and automatically made her way to the boat when the time came. A dull sense of something irrevocable,--something horrible,--overshadowed her. But the 'will to conquer' in her was as iron; and, as in the Prussian conscience, left no room for pity or remorse.


CHAPTER XIII

A psychologist would have found much to interest him in Bridget Cookson's mental state during the days which followed on her journey to France. The immediate result of that journey was an acute sharpening of intelligence, accompanied by a steady, automatic repression of all those elements of character or mind which might have interfered with its free working. Bridget understood perfectly that she had committed a crime, and at first she had not been able to protect herself against the normal reaction of horror or fear. But the reaction passed very quickly. Conscience gave up the ghost. Selfish will, and keen wits held the field; and Bridget ceased to be more than occasionally uncomfortable, though a certain amount of anxiety was of course inevitable.

She did not certainly want to be found out, either by Nelly or the Farrells; and she took elaborate steps to prevent it. She wrote first a long letter to Howson giving her reasons for refusing to believe in his tentative identification of the man at X---- as George Sarratt, and begging him not to write to her sister. 'That would be indeed _cruel_. She can just get along now, and every month she gets a little stronger. But her heart, which was weakened by the influenza last year, would never stand the shock of a fearful disappointment. Please let her be. I take all the responsibility. That man is not George Sarratt. I hope you may soon discover who