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

/> 'I want you to help me get an appointment for somebody.'

'For whom?'

'For the man Daisy Stewart wants to marry.'

Cicely could not conceal her start.

'I don't like being mystified,' she said coldly.

Marsworth allowed his smile to shew itself.

'I'm not trying to mystify you in the least. Daisy Stewart has been engaged for nearly a year to one of the house-surgeons in your hospital--young Fellows. Nobody knows it--not Willy even. It has been kept a dead secret, because that wicked old man the Rector won't have it. Daisy makes him comfortable, and he won't give her up, if he can help it. And as young Fellows has nothing but his present pay--a year with board and lodging--it seemed hopeless. But now he has got his eye on something.'

And in a quiet business-like voice Marsworth put the case of the penniless one--his qualifications, his ambitions, and the particular post under the Army Medical Board on which he had set his hopes. If only somebody with influence would give him a leg up!

Cicely interrupted.

'Does Willy know?'

'No. You see, I have come to you first.'

'How long have you known?'

'Since my stay with them last autumn. I suspected something then, just as I was leaving; and Miss Daisy confessed--when I was there in May. Since then she seems to have elected me her chief adviser. But, of course, I had no right to tell anybody anything.'

'That is what you like--to advise people?'

Marsworth considered it.

'There was a time'--he said, at last, in a different voice, 'when my advice used to be asked by someone else--and sometimes taken.'

Cicely pretended to light another cigarette, but her slim fingers shook a little.

'And now--you never give it?'

'Oh yes, I do,' he said, with sudden bitterness--'even unasked. I'm always the same old bore.'

There was silence. His right hand stole towards her left that was lying limply over her knee. Cicely's eyes looking down were occupied with his disabled arm, which, although much improved, was still glad to slip into its sling whenever it was not actively wanted.

But just as he was capturing her, Cicely sprang up.

'I must go and see about Sir John Raine.'

'Cicely--I don't care a brass farthing about Sir John Raine!'

'But having once brought him in, I recommend you to stick to him,' said Cicely, with teasing eyes. 'And don't go advising young women. It's not good for the military. _I'm_ going to take this business in hand.'

And she made for departure, but Marsworth got to the door first, and put his back against it.

'Find me the Turner, Cicely.'

'A man who asks for a thing on false pretences shouldn't have it.'

A silence. Then a meek voice said--

'Captain Marsworth, my brother, Sir William Farrell, will be requiring my services at tea!'

Marsworth moved aside and she forward. But as she neared him, he caught her passionately in his arms and kissed her. She released herself, crimson.

'Do I like being kissed?' she said in a low voice--'do I? Anyway don't do it again!--and if you dare to say a word yet--to anyone--'

Her eyes threatened; but he saw in them revelations her pride could not check, and would have disobeyed her at once; but she was too quick for him. In a second she had opened the door and was gone.

During the rest of the afternoon, her brother and Nelly watched Cicely's proceedings with stupefaction; only equalled by the bewilderment of Miss Daisy Stewart. For that young lady was promoted to the good graces of Sir William's formidable sister with a rapidity and completeness which only natural good manners and good sense could have enabled her to deal with; considering the icy exclusion to which she had been so long condemned. But as she possessed both, she took it very simply; always with the same serene light in her grey eyes.

Marsworth said to himself presently that young Fellows' chances were good. But in truth he hardly remembered anything about them, except that by the help of them he had kissed Cicely! And he had yet to find out what that remarkable fact was to mean, either to himself or to her. She refused to let him take her back to the farm, and she only gave him a finger in farewell. Nor did she say a word of what had happened, even to Nelly.

Nelly spent again a very wakeful night. Farrell had walked home with them, and she understood from him that, although he was going over early to Carton the following morning, he would be at the cottage again before many days were over. It seemed to her that in telling her so he had looked at her with eyes that seemed to implore her to trust him. And she, on hearing it, had been merely dumb and irresponsive, not forbidding or repellent, as she ought to have been. The courage to wound him to the quick--to leave him bereft, to go out into the desert herself, seemed to be more and more oozing away from her.

Yet there beside her bed, on the table which held her Testament, and the few books--almost all given her by W.F.--to which she was wont to turn in her wakeful hours, was George's photograph in uniform. About three o'clock in the morning she lit her candle, and lay looking at it, till suddenly she stretched out her hand for it, kissed it repeatedly, and putting it on her breast, clasped her hands over it, and so fell asleep.

But before she fell asleep, she was puzzled by the sounds in Bridget's room next door. Bridget seemed to be walking about--pacing up and down incessantly. Sometimes the steps would cease; only to begin again after a while with the same monotony. What could be the matter with Bridget? This vague worry about her sister entered into and heightened all Nelly's other troubles. Yet all the same, in the end, she fell asleep; and the westerly wind blowing over Wetherlam, and chasing wild flocks of grey rain-clouds before him, found no one awake in the cottage or the farm to listen to the concert he was making with the fells, but Bridget--and Cicely.

* * * * *

Bridget Cookson had indeed some cause for wakefulness. Locked away in the old workbox, where she kept the papers to which she attached importance, was a letter bearing the imprint 'O.A.S.,' which had been delivered to her on Sunday afternoon by the Grasmere post-mistress. It ran as follows:

'DEAR MISS COOKSON,--I know of course that you are fully convinced the poor fellow we have here in charge has nothing to do with your brother-in-law. But as you saw him, and as the case may throw light on other cases of a similar nature, I thought I would just let you know that owing apparently to the treatment we have been carrying out, there are some very interesting signs of returning consciousness since your visit, though nothing very definite as yet. He is terribly ill, and physically I see no chance for him. But I think he _may_ be able to tell us who he is before the end, in which case I will inform you, lest you should now or at any future time feel the smallest misgiving as to your own verdict in the matter. This is very unlikely, I know, for I understand you were very decided; but still as soon as we have definite information--if we get it--you may wish to inform poor Mrs. Sarratt of your journey here. I hope she is getting stronger. She did indeed look very frail when I saw her last.

'Yours very truly,

'ROBERT HOWSON.'

Since the receipt of that letter Bridget's reflections had been more disagreeable than any she had yet grappled with. In Nelly's company the awfulness of what she had done did sometimes smite home to her. Well, she had staked everything upon it, and the only possible course was to brazen it out. That George should die, and die _quickly_--without any return of memory or speech, was what she terribly and passionately desired. In all probability he would die quickly; he might even now be dead. She saw the thing perpetually as a race between his returning mind--if he still lived, and it was returning--and his ebbing strength. If she had lived in old Sicilian days, she would have made a waxen image like the Theocritean sorceress, and put it by the fire, that as it wasted, so George might waste. As it was, she passed her time during the forty-eight hours after reading Howson's letter in a silent and murderous concentration on one thought and wish--George Sarratt's speedy death.

What a release indeed for everybody!--if people would only tell the truth, and not dress up their real feelings and interests in stale sentimentalisms. Farrell made happy at no very distant date; Nelly settled for life with a rich man who adored her; her own future secured--with the very modest freedom and opportunity she craved:--all this on the one side--futile tragedy and suffering on the other. None the less, there were moments when, with a start, she realised what other people might think of her conduct. But after all she could always plead it was a mistake--an honest mistake. Are there not constantly cases in the law courts, which shew how easy it is to fail in identifying the right person, or to persist in identifying the wrong one?

During the days before Farrell returned, the two sisters were alone together. Bridget would gladly have gone away out of sight and hearing of Nelly. But she did not dare to leave the situation--above all, the postman--unwatched. Meanwhile Nelly made repeated efforts to break down the new and inexplicable barrier which seemed to have arisen between herself and Bridget. Why would Bridget always sit alone in that chilly outside room, which even with a large fire seemed to Nelly uninhabitable? She tried to woo her sister, by all the small devices in her power.

'Why won't you come and sit with me a bit, Bridget? I'm so dull all alone!'--she would say when, after luncheon or high tea, Bridget showed signs of immediately shutting herself up again.

'I can't. I must do some work.'

'Do tell me what you're doing, Bridget?'

'Oh, you wouldn't understand.'

'Well, other people don't always think me a born idiot!'--Nelly would say, not without resentment. 'I really could understand, Bridget, if you'd try.'

'I haven't the time.'

'And you're killing yourself with so many hours of it. Why should you slave so? If you only would come and help me sometimes with the Red Cross work, I'd do any needlework for you, that you wanted.'

'You know I hate needlework.'

'You're not doing anything--not _anything_--for the war, Bridget!' Nelly would venture, wistfully, at last.

'There are plenty of people to do things for the war. I didn't want the war! Nobody asked my opinion.'

And presently the door would shut, and Nelly would be left to watch the torrents of rain outside, and to endeavour by reading and drawing, by needlework and the society of her small friend Tommy, whenever she could capture him, to get through the day. She pined for Hester, but Hester was doing Welfare work in a munition factory at Leeds, and could not be got at.