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

the Flood?--well, the motor gave out there! Herbert and the chauffeur sat under it in the snow and worked at it. I thought the river was coming over the road, and that the wind would blow us all away. But it'll be all right for your crossing to-morrow--the storm will have quite gone down. Herbert thinks you'll start about twelve o'clock,--and you'll be at the camp that same night. Oh, isn't it wonderful!--isn't it _ripping_?' cried Cicely under her breath, stooping down to kiss Nelly, while the two men talked at the carriage window.--'You're going to get him home! We'll have the best men in London to look after him. He'll pull through, you'll see--he'll pull through!'

Nelly sank into a seat and closed her eyes. Cicely's talk--why did she call Marsworth 'Herbert'?--was almost unbearable to her. _She_ knew through every vein that she was going across the Channel--to see George die. If only she were in time!--if only she might hold him in her arms once more! Would the train never go?

Farrell, in spite of snow and storm, pushed his way back to Carton that night. In that long motor drive a man took counsel with himself on whom the war had laid a chastening and refining hand. The human personality cannot spend itself on tasks of pity and service without taking the colour of them, without rising insensibly to the height of them. They may have been carelessly adopted, or imposed from without. But the mere doing of them exalts. As the dyer's hand is 'subdued to what it works in,' so the man that is always about some generous business for his fellow-men suffers thereby, insensibly, a change, which is part of the 'heavenly alchemy' for ever alive in the world. It was so at any rate with William Farrell. The two years of his hospital work--hard, honest grappling with the problems of human pain and its relief--had made a far nobler man of him. So now, in this solitary hour, he looked his trouble--courageously, chivalrously--in the face. The crash of all his immediate hopes was bitter indeed. What matter! Let him think only of those two poor things about to meet in France.

As to the future, he was well aware of the emotional depths in Nelly's nature. George Sarratt's claim upon her life and memory would now be doubly strong. For, with that long and intimate observation of the war which his hospital experience had brought him, Farrell was keenly aware of the merciful fact that the mere distance which, generally speaking, the war imposes between the man dying on the battle-field and those who love him at home, inevitably breaks the blow. The nerves of the woman who loses her husband or her son are, at least, not tortured by the actual sight of his wounds and death. The suffering is spiritual, and the tender benumbing touch of religion or patriotism, or the remaining affections of life, has less to fight with than when the physical senses themselves are racked with acute memories of bodily wounds and bodily death. It is not that sorrow is less deep, or memory less tenacious; but both are less ruinous to the person sorrowing. So, at least, Farrell had often seen it, among even the most loving and passionate of women. Nelly's renascence in the quiet Westmorland life had been a fresh instance of it; and he had good reason for thinking that, but for the tragic reappearance of George Sarratt, it would not have taken very long,--a few months more, perhaps--before she would have been persuaded to let herself love, and be loved again.

But now, every fibre in her delicate being--physical and spiritual--would be racked by the sight of Sarratt's suffering and death. And no doubt--pure, scrupulous little soul!--she would be tormented by the thought of what had just passed between herself and him, before the news from France arrived. He might as well look that in the face.

Well!--patience and time--there was nothing else to look to. He braced himself to both, as he sped homeward through the high snowy roads, and dropped through sleeping Keswick to Bassenthwaite and Carton. Then with the sight of the hospital, the Red Cross flag drooping above its doorway, as he drove up to it, the burden and interest of his great responsibilities returned upon him. He jumped out to say a few cheery words of thanks to his chauffeur, and went on with a rapid step to his office on the ground floor, where he found important letters and telegrams awaiting him. He dealt with them till far into the night. But the thought of Nelly never really left him; nor that haunting physical memory of her soft head upon his shoulder.


CHAPTER XVI

Of the weary hours which intervened between her meeting with Cicely and Marsworth at Windermere station and her sight of Dr. Howson on the rain-beaten quay at Bolougne, Nelly Sarratt could afterwards have given no clear account. Of all the strings that were pulled, and the exalted persons invoked, in order to place her as quickly as possible by the side of her dying husband, she knew practically nothing. Cicely and Marsworth, with Farrell to help them at the other end of a telegraph wire, did everything. Passports and special permits were available in a minimum of time. In the winter dawn at Euston Station, there was the grey-headed Miss Eustace waiting; and two famous Army doctors journeyed to Charing Cross a few hours later, on purpose to warn the wife of the condition in which she was likely to find her husband, and to give her kindly advice as to how she could help him most. The case had already made a sensation at the Army Medical Headquarters; the reports on it from France were being eagerly followed; and when the young wife appeared from the north, her pathetic beauty quickened the general sympathy. Nelly's path to France was smoothed in every possible way. No Royalty could have been more anxiously thought for.

But she herself realised scarcely anything about it. It was her nature to be grateful, sweet, responsive; but her gratitude and her sweetness during these hours were automatic, unconscious. She was the spectator, so to speak, of a moving picture which carried her on with it, in which she was merely passive. The crowded boat, the grey misty sea, the destroyers to right and left, she was aware of them in one connection only--as part of the process by which she and George were to meet again.

But at last the boat was alongside the quays of the French port, and through sheets of rain she saw the lights of a climbing town, and the gleaming roadways of the docks. Crowds of men in khaki; a park of big guns, their wet nozzles glittering under the electric lamps overhead; hundreds of tethered horses; a long line of motor lorries;--the scene to her was all a vague confusion, as Cicely, efficient and masterful as usual, made a way for them both along the deck of the steamer through close ranks of soldiers--a draft waiting their orders to disembark. Then as they stepped on land, perception sharpened in a moment. A tall man in khaki--whom she recognised as Dr. Howson--came eagerly forward.

'Mrs. Sarratt!--I hope you're not too tired. Would you rather get some food here, in the town, or push on at once?'

'At once, please. How is he?'

A pair of kind grey eyes looked down upon her sadly.

'Very ill, _-very_ ill!--_but_ quite sensible. I know you will be brave.'

He carried her along the quay--while Cicely was taken possession of by a nurse in uniform, who talked rapidly in an undertone.

'I have two cars,' said Howson to Nelly--'You and I will go first. Our head Sister, Miss Parrish, who has been in charge of the case for so long, will bring Miss Farrell.'

And as they reached the two waiting motors, Nelly found her hand grasped by a comely elderly woman, in a uniform of grey and red.

'He was quite comfortable when we left him, Mrs. Sarratt. There's a wonderful difference, even since yesterday, in his _mind_. He's beginning to remember everything. He knows you're coming. He said--"Give her my dear love, and tell her I'm not going to have my supper till she comes. She shall give it me." Think of that! It's like a miracle. Three weeks ago, he never spoke, he knew nobody.'

Nelly's white face trembled, but she said nothing. Howson put her into the foremost car, and they were soon off, threading their way through the busy streets of the base, while the Sister followed with Cicely.

'Oh, it was _cruel_ not to let Mrs. Sarratt know earlier!' said the Sister indignantly, in answer to a hurried question from Cicely as soon as they were alone. 'She might have had three weeks with him, and now there can only be a day or two. What was Miss Cookson about? Even if she were just mistaken, she might at least have brought her sister over to see for herself--instead of preventing it by every means in her power. A most extraordinary woman!'

Cicely felt her way in reply. She really knew nothing except what Farrell had been able hurriedly to say to Marsworth at Windermere station--which had been afterwards handed on to her. Farrell himself was entirely mystified. 'The only motive I can suggest'--he had said to Marsworth--'is that Miss Cookson had an insane dislike of her brother-in-law. But, even so, why did she do it?'

Why, indeed? Cicely now heard the whole story from her companion; and her shrewd mind very soon began to guess at reasons. She had always observed Bridget's complaisance towards her brother, and even towards herself--a clumsy complaisance which had never appealed at all either to her or him. And she had noticed many small traits and incidents that seemed to shew that Bridget had resented her sister's marriage, and felt bitterly that Nelly might have done far better for herself. Also that there was a strong taste for personal luxury in Bridget, which seemed entirely lacking in Nelly.

'She wanted Willy's money!'--thought Cicely--'and couldn't get it for herself. So when poor Sarratt disappeared, she saw a way of getting it through Nelly. Not a bad idea!--if you are to have ideas of that kind. But then, why behave like an idiot when Providence had done the thing for you?'

That was really the puzzle. George Sarratt was dying. Why not let poor Nelly have her last weeks with him in peace, and then--in time--marry her safely and lawfully to Willy?

But Cicely had again some inkling of Bridget's probable reply. She had not been intimate with Nelly for more than a year without realising that she was one of those creatures--so rare in our modern world--who do in truth live and die by their affections. The disappearance of her husband had very nearly killed her. In the first winter after he was finally reported as 'Missing--believed killed,' and when she had really abandoned hope, the slightest accident--a bad chill--an attack of childish illness--any further shock--might have slit the thin-spun life in a few days or weeks. The Torquay doctor had told Hester that she was on the brink of tuberculosis, and if she were exposed to infection would certainly develop it. Since then she had gained greatly in vitality and strength. If only Fate had left her alone! 'With happiness and Willy, she'd have been all right!' thought Cicely, who was daily accustomed to watch the effect of mind on body in her brother's hospital. But now, with this fresh and deeper tragedy before her--tearing at the poor little heart--crushing the life again out of the frail being--why,