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

used to try and tackle her--because no one else would. Her father was dead. Her mother had no influence with her; and Willy was too lazy. So I tried my hand. And I find myself doing the same thing now. But of course it's fatal--it's fatal!'

Nelly tried to cheer him up, but she was not herself very hopeful. She, perceived too clearly the martinet in him and the rebel in Cicely. If something were suddenly to throw them together, some common interest or emotion, each might find the other's heart in a way past undoing. On the other hand the jarring habit, once set up, has a way of growing worse, and reducing everything else to dust and ashes. Finally she wound up with a timid but emphatic counsel.

'Please--please--don't be sarcastic.'

He looked injured.

'I never am!'

Nelly laughed.

'You don't know when you are. And be very nice to her this afternoon.'

'How can I, if she shews me at once that I'm unwelcome? You haven't answered my question.'

He was standing ready for departure. Nelly's face changed--became all sad and tender pity.

'You must ask it yourself!' she said eagerly, 'Go on asking it. It would be too--too dreadful, wouldn't it?--to miss everything--by being proud, or offended, for nothing----'

'What do you mean by everything?'

'You know,' she said, after a moment, shielding her eyes as they looked into the fire; 'I'm sure you know. It _is_ everything.'

As he walked back to the cottage, he found himself speculating not so much about his own case as about his friend's. Willy was certainly in love. And Nelly Sarratt was as softly feminine as Cicely was mannish and strong. But he somehow did not feel that Willy's chances were any safer than his own.

A car arrived at one o'clock bringing Cicely, much wrapped up in fur coat and motor-veils. She came impetuously into the sitting-room, and seemed to fill it. It took some time to peel her and reduce her to the size of an ordinary mortal. She then appeared in a navy-blue coat and skirt, with navy-blue boots buttoned almost to the knees. The skirt was immensely full and immensely short. When the strange erection to which the motor-veil was attached was removed, Cicely showed a dark head with hair cut almost short, and parted on the left side. Her eyebrows were unmistakably blackened, her lips unmistakably--strengthened; and Nelly saw at once that her guest was in a very feverish and irritated condition.

'Are you alone?' said Cicely, glancing imperiously round her, when the disrobing was done.

'Bridget is here.'

'What are you going to do this afternoon?'

'Can't we have a walk, you and I, together?'

'Of course we can. Why should we be bothered with anyone else?'

'I suppose,' said Nelly timidly--'they will come in to tea?'

'"They"? Oh! you mean Willy and Captain Marsworth? It is such a pity Willy can't find somebody more agreeable for these Sundays.'

Cicely threw herself back in her chair, and lifted a navy-blue boot to the fire.

'More agreeable than Captain Marsworth?'

'Exactly. Willy can't do anything without him, when he's in these parts; and it spoils everything!'

Nelly dropped a kiss on Cicely's hair, as she stood beside her.

'Why didn't you put off coming till next week?'

'Why should I allow my plans to be interfered with by Captain Marsworth?' said Cicely, haughtily. 'I came to see _you_!'

'Well, we needn't see much of him,' said Nelly, soothingly, as she dropped on a stool beside her friend.

'I'm not going to be kept out of the cottage, by Captain Marsworth, all the same!' said Cicely hastily. 'There are several books there I want.'

'Oh, Cicely, what have you been doing?' said Nelly, laying her head on her guest's knees.

'Doing? Nothing that I hadn't a perfect right to do. But I suppose--that very particular gentleman--has been complaining?'

Nelly looked up, and met an eye, fiercely interrogative, yet trying hard not to be interrogative.

'I've been doing my best to pick up the pieces.'

'Then he has been complaining?'

'A little narrative of facts,' said Nelly mildly.

'Facts--_facts_!' said Cicely, with the air of a disturbed lioness. 'As if a man whose ideas of manners and morals date from about--a million years before the Flood.'

'Dear!--there weren't any manners or morals a million years before the Flood.'

Cicely drew a breath of exasperation.

'It's all very well to laugh, but if you only knew how _impossible_ that man is!'

'Then why not get a Sunday free from him?'

Cicely flushed against her will, and said nothing. Nelly's black eyes observed her with as much sarcasm in their sweetness as she dared to throw into them. She changed her tone.

'Don't go to the cottage this afternoon, Cicely.'

'Why?' The voice was peremptory.

'Well, because----' Nelly described Farrell's chance meeting with the Stewarts and the inevitable invitation. Cicely's flush deepened. But she tried to speak carelessly.

'Of course, the merest device on that girl's part! She arranged it all.'

'I really don't think she did.'

'Ah, well, _you_ haven't seen what's been going on. A more shameless pursuit----'

Cicely stopped abruptly. There was a sudden sparkle in Nelly's look, which seemed to shew that the choice of the word 'pursuit' had been unlucky.

Miss Farrell quieted down.

'Of course,' she said, with a very evident attempt to recapture whatever dignity might be left on the field, 'neither Willy nor I like to see an old friend throwing himself away on a little pink and white nonentity like Daisy Stewart. We can't be expected to smile upon it.'

'But I understand, from one of the parties principally concerned, that there is really nothing in it!' said Nelly, smiling.

'One of the perjuries I suppose at which Jove laughs!' said Cicely getting up, and hastily rearranging her short curls with the help of various combs, before the only diminutive looking-glass the farm sitting-room provided. 'However, we shall see what happens. I have no doubt Miss Daisy has arranged the proposal scene for this very afternoon. We shall be in for the last act of the play.'

'Then you _are_ going to the cottage?'

'Certainly!' said Cicely, with a clearing brow. 'Don't let's talk any more about it. Do give me some lunch. I'm ravenous. Ah, here's your sister!'

For through a back window looking on what had once been a farm-yard, and was now a small garden, Cicely saw Bridget emerge from the rebuilt outhouse where an impromptu study had been devised for her, and walk towards the farm.

'I say, what's happened to your sister?'

'Happened to her? What do you mean?'

'She looks so much older.'

'I suppose she's been working too hard,' said Nelly, remorsefully. 'I wish I knew what it was all about.'

'Well, I can tell you'--said Cicely laughing and whispering--'that Willy doesn't think it's about anything in particular!'

'Hush!' said Nelly, with a pained look. 'Perhaps we shall all turn out to be quite wrong. We shall discover that it was something--'

'Desperately interesting and important? Not it! But I'm going to be as good as good. You'll see.'

And when Bridget appeared, Cicely did indeed behave herself with remarkable decorum. Her opinion was that Nelly's strange sister had grown more unlike other people than ever since she had last seen her. She seemed to be in a perpetual brown study, which was compatible, however, with a curious watchfulness which struck Cicely particularly. She was always aware of any undercurrent in the room--of anyone going in or out--of persons passing in the road. At lunch she scarcely opened her lips, but Cicely was all the time conscious of being observed. After luncheon Bridget got up abruptly, and said she was going down to Grasmere to post a letter.

'Oh, then,' said Nelly--'you can ask if there are any for me.'

For there was no delivery at the farm on Sunday morning. Bridget nodded, and they soon saw her emerge from the farm gate and take the Grasmere road.

'I must say your sister seems greatly to prefer her own company to ours,' said Cicely, lighting her cigarette.

Again Nelly looked distressed.

'She was always like that,' she said at last. 'It doesn't really mean anything.'

'Do I know you well enough to ask whether you get on with her?'

Nelly coloured. 'I try my best'--she said, rather despairingly. Then she added--'she does all sorts of things for me that I'm too lazy to do for myself!'

'I believe she likes Willy better than most people!' laughed Cicely. 'I'm not suggesting, please, that she has designs upon him. But she is certainly more forthcoming to him than to anybody else, isn't she?'

Nelly did not reply. The remark only clouded her look still more. For her inner mind was perfectly aware of Bridget's attitude towards William Farrell, and understood it only too well. She knew by this time, past any doubt, that Bridget was hungry for the Farrell wealth, and was impatient with herself as a little fool who had not yet made certain of it. If she stuck to her purpose--if she went away and cut off all communication with Carton--Bridget would probably quarrel with her for good.

Would she stick to her purpose? Her mind was miserably swaying to and fro. She felt morally as she had once felt--physically--on a summer afternoon long before, when she, who could not swim, had gone imperceptibly out of her depth, while bathing, and had become suddenly aware of a seaward current, carrying her away. No help was near. For five minutes, which had seemed five years, she had wrestled against the deadly force, which if her girlish strength had been a fraction less, would have swept her out, a lifeless plaything to the open sea. Spiritually, it was the same now. Farrell's will, and--infinitely less important, but still, to be reckoned with--Bridget's will, were pressing her hard. She did not know if she could keep her footing.

Meanwhile Cicely, in complete ignorance of the new and agonised tension in Nelly's mind, was thinking only of her own affairs. As soon as her after-luncheon cigarette was done, she sprang up and began to put on her hat.

'So you _are_ going to the cottage?' said Nelly.

'Certainly. How do you like my boots?'

She held up one for inspection.

'I don't like them!'

'Fast, you think? Ah, wait till you see my next costume! High Russian boots, delicious things, up to there!' Cicely indicated a point above the knee, not generally reached by the female boot--'hand-painted and embroidered--with tassels--you know!--corduroy trousers!'

'Cicely!--you won't!'

'Shan't I--and a pink jersey, the new shade? I saw a friend of mine in this get-up, last week. Ripping! Only she had red hair, which completed it. Perhaps I might dye mine!'

They sallied forth into a mild winter afternoon. Nelly would have avoided the cottage and Farrell if she could, but Cicely had her own way as usual. Presently they turned into a side lane skirting the tarn, from which the cottage and its approaches could be seen, at a distance. From the white-pillared porch, various figures were emerging, four in all.

Cicely came to a stop.

'There, you see!' she said, in her sharpest voice--'Look there!' For two of the figures, whom it was easy to identify as Captain Marsworth and Miss Stewart, diverging from the other pair, went off by themselves in the direction of