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

the books with which he had come laden and approached her with outstretched hands. 'I say!--you don't look well!' His look, suddenly sobered, examined her.

'Oh yes, I am quite well. Bridget comes to-night.'

She hurriedly withdrew herself, and he sat down opposite her, holding some chilly fingers to the blaze, surveying her all the time.

'Why doesn't Bridget stop here and look after you?'

Nelly laughed. 'Because she has much more interesting things to do!'

'That's most unlikely! Have you been alone all the week?'

'Yes, but quite busy, thank you--and quite well.' 'You don't look it,' he repeated gravely, after a moment.

'So busy, and so well,' she insisted, 'that even I can't find excuses for idling here much longer.'

He gave a perceptible start. 'What does that mean? What are you going to do?'

'I don't know. But I think'--she eyed him uneasily--'hospital work of some kind.'

He shook his head.

'I wouldn't take you in my hospital! You'd knock up in a week.'

'You're quite, quite mistaken,' she said, eagerly. 'I can wash dishes and plates now as well as anyone. Hester told me the other day of a small hospital managed by a friend of hers--where they want a parlour-maid. I could do that capitally.'

'Where is it?' he asked, after a moment.

She hesitated, and at last said evasively--

'In Surrey somewhere--I think.'

He took up the tongs, and deliberately put the fire together, in silence. At last he said--

'I thought you promised Cicely and me that you wouldn't attempt anything of the kind?'

'Not till I was fit.' Her voice trembled a little. 'But now I am--quite fit.'

'You should let your friends judge that for you,' he said gently.

'No, no, I can't. I must judge for myself.' She spoke with growing agitation. 'You have been so awfully, awfully good to me!--and now'--she bent forward and laid a pleading hand on his arm--'now you must be good to me in another way I you must let me go. I brood here too much. I want not to think--I am so tired of myself. Let me go and think about other people--drudge a little--and slave a little! Let me--it will do me good!'

His face altered perceptibly during this appeal. When he first came in, fresh from the frosty air, his fair hair and beard flaming in the firelight, his eyes all pleasure, he had seemed the embodiment of whatever is lusty and vigorous in life--an overwhelming presence in the little cottage room. But he had many subtler aspects. And as he listened to her, the Viking, the demi-god, disappeared.

'And what about those--to whom it will do harm?'

'Oh no, it won't do harm--to anybody,' she faltered.

'It will do the greatest harm!'--he laid a sharp emphasis on the words. 'Isn't it worth while to be just the joy and inspiration of those who can work hard--so that they go away from you, renewed like eagles? Cicely and I come--we tell you our troubles--our worries--our failures, and our successes. We couldn't tell them to anyone else. But you sit here; and you're so gentle and so wise--you see things so clearly, just because you're not in the crowd, not in the rough and tumble--that we go away--bucked up!--and run our shows the better for our hours with you. Why must women be always bustling and hurrying, and all of them doing the same things? If you only knew the blessing it is to find someone with a little leisure just to feel, and think!--just to listen to what one has to say. You know I am always bursting with things to say!'

He looked at her with a laugh. His colour had risen.

'I arrive here--often--full of grievances and wrath against everybody--hating the Government--hating the War Office--hating our own staff, or somebody on it--entirely and absolutely persuaded that the country is going to the dogs, and that we shall be at Germany's mercy in six months. Well, there you sit--I don't know how you manage it!--but somehow it all clears away. I don't want to hang anybody any more--I think we are going to win--I think our staff are splendid fellows, and the nurses, angels--(they ain't, though, all the same!)--and it's all _you_!--just by being you--just by giving me rope enough--letting me have it all out. And I go away with twice the work in me I had when I came. And Cicely's the same--and Hester. You play upon us all--just because'--he hesitated--'because you're so sweet to us all. You raise us to a higher power; you work through us. Who else will do it if you desert us?'

Her lips trembled.

'I don't want to desert you, but--what right have I to such comfort--such luxury--when other people are suffering and toiling?'

He raised his eyebrows.

'Luxury? This little room? And there you sit sewing and knitting all day! And I'll be bound you don't eat enough to keep a sparrow!'

There was silence. She was saying to herself--'Shall I ever be able to go?--to break with them all?' The thought, the image, of George flashed again through her mind. But why was it so much fainter, so much less distinct than it had been an hour ago? Yet she seemed to turn to him, to beg him piteously to protect her from something vague and undefined.

Suddenly a low voice spoke--

'Nelly!--don't go!'

She looked up--startled--her childish eyes full of tears.

He held out his hand, and she could not help it, she yielded her own.

Farrell's look was full of energy, of determination. He drew nearer to her, still holding her hand. But he spoke with perfect self-control.

'Nelly, I won't deceive you! I love you! You are everything to me. It seems as if I had never been happy--never known what happiness could possibly mean till I knew you. To come here every week--to see you like this for these few hours--it changes everything--it sweetens everything--because you are in my heart--because I have the hope--that some day----'

She withdrew her hand and covered her face.

'Oh, it's my fault--my fault!' she said, incoherently--'how could I?--how _could_ I?'

There was silence again. He opened his lips to speak once or twice, but no words came. One expression succeeded another on his face; his eyes sparkled. At last he said--'How could you help it? You could not prevent my loving you.'

'Yes, I could--I ought----,' she said, vehemently. 'Only I was a fool--I never realised. That's so like me. I won't face things. And yet'--she looked at him miserably--'I did beg you to let me live my own life--didn't I?--not to spoil me--not--not to be so kind to me.'

He smiled.

'Yes. But then you see--you were you!'

She sprang up, looking down upon him, as he sat by the fire. 'That's just it. If I were another person! But no!--no! I can't be your friend. I'm not old enough--or clever enough. And I can't ever be anything else.'

'Why?' He asked it very quietly, his eyes raised to hers. He could see the quick beat of her breath under her black dress.

'Because I'm not my own. I'm not free--you know I'm not. I'm not free legally--and I'm not free in heart. Oh, if George were to come in at that door!'--she threw back her head with a passionate gesture--'there would be nobody else in the world for me--nobody--nobody!'

He stooped over the fire, fidgeting with it, so that his face was hidden from her.

'You know, I think, that if I believed there was the faintest hope of that, I should never have said a word--of my own feelings. But as it is--why must you feel bound to break up this--this friendship, which means so much to us all? What harm is there in it? Time will clear up a great deal. I'll hold my tongue--I promise you. I won't bother you. I won't speak of it again--for a year--or more--if you wish. But--don't forsake us!'

He looked up with that smile which in Cicely's unbiased opinion gave him such an unfair advantage over womankind.

With a little sob, Nelly walked away towards the window, which was still uncurtained though the night had fallen. Outside there was a starry deep of sky, above Wetherlam and the northern fells. The great shapes held the valley in guard; the river windings far below seemed still to keep the sunset; while here and there shone scattered lights in farms and cottages, sheltering the old, old life of the dales.

Insensibly Nelly's passionate agitation began to subside. Had she been filling her own path with imaginary perils and phantoms? Yet there echoed in her mind the low-spoken words--'I won't deceive you! I love you!' And the recollection both frightened and touched her.

Presently Farrell spoke again, quite in his usual voice.

'I shall be in despair if you leave me to tackle Cicely alone. She's been perfectly mad lately. But you can put it all right if you choose.'

Nelly was startled into turning back towards him.

'Oh!--how can I?'

'Tell her she has been behaving abominably, and making a good fellow's life a burden to him. Scold her! Laugh at her!'

'What has she been doing?' said Nelly, still standing by the window.

Farrell launched into a racy and elaborate account--the effort of one determined, _coute que coute_, to bring the conversation back to an ordinary key--of Cicely's proceedings, during the ten days since Nelly had seen her.

It appeared that Marsworth, after many weeks during which they had heard nothing of him, had been driven north again to his Carton doctor, by a return of neuralgic trouble in his wounded arm; and as usual had put up at the Rectory, where as usual Miss Daisy, the Rector's granddaughter, had ministered to him like the kind little brick she was.

'You see, she's altogether too good to be true!' said Farrell. 'And yet it is true. She looks after her grandfather and the parish. She runs the Sunday school, and all the big boys are in love with her. She does V.A.D. work at the hospital. She spends nothing on her dress. She's probably up at six every morning. And all the time, instead of being plain, which of course virtue ought to be, she's as pretty as possible--like a little bird. And Cicely can't abide her. I don't know whether she's in love with Marsworth. Probably she is. Why not? At any rate, whenever Marsworth and Cicely fall out, which they do every day--Cicely has the vile habit--of course you know!--of visiting Marsworth's sins upon little Daisy Stewart. I understood she was guilty of some enormity at the Red Cross sale in the village last week. Marsworth was shocked, and had it out with her. Consequently they haven't been on speaking terms for days.'

'What shall we do with them to-morrow?' cried Nelly in alarm, coming to sit down again by the fire and taking up her knitting. How strange it was--after that moment of tempestuous emotion--to have fallen back within a few minutes into this familiar, intimate chat! Her pulse was still rushing. She knew that something irrevocable had happened, and that when she was alone, she must face it. And meanwhile here she sat knitting!--and trying to help him with Cicely as usual!

'Oh, and to-morrow!'--said Farrell with amusement, 'the fat will indeed be in the fire.'

And he revealed the fact that on his way through Grasmere he had fallen in with the Stewarts. The old man had been suffering from bronchitis, and the