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

/> Cicely perched herself on the edge of his writing-table.

'Hester has brought her to Rydal all right,' she said cheerfully.

'How is she?'

'As you might expect. But Hester says she talks of nothing but going to work. She has absolutely set her heart upon it, and there is no moving her.'

'It is, of course, an absurdity,' said Farrell, frowning.

'Absurdity or not, she means to do it, and Hester begs that nobody will try to persuade her against it. She has promised Hester to stay with her for three weeks, and then she has already made her arrangements.'

'What is she going to do?'

'She is going to a hospital near Manchester. They want a V.A.D. housemaid.'

Farrell rose impatiently, and stretching out his hand for his pipe, began to pace the room, steeped evidently in disagreeable reflection.

'You know as well as I do'--he said at last--that she hasn't the physical strength for it.'

'Well then she'll break down, and we can put her to bed. But try she will, and I entirely approve of it,' said Cicely firmly. 'Hard physical work--till you drop--till you're so tired, you must go to sleep--that's the only thing when you're as miserable as poor Nelly. You know it is, Will. Don't you remember that poor Mrs. Henessy whose son died here? Her letters to me afterwards used to be all about scrubbing. If she could scrub from morning till night, she could just get along. She scrubbed herself sane again. The bigger the floor, the better she liked it. When bedtime came, she just slept like a log. And at last she got all right. But it was touch-and-go when she left here.'

'She was a powerfully-built woman,' said Farrell gloomily.

'Oh, well, it isn't always the strapping ones that come through. Anyway, old boy, I'm afraid you can't do anything to alter it.'

She looked at him a little askance. It was perfectly understood between them that Cicely was more or less acquainted with her brother's plight, and since her engagement to Marsworth had been announced it was astonishing how much more ready Farrell had been to confide in her, and she to be confided in.

But for her few days in France, however, with Nelly Sarratt, Marsworth might still have had some wrestles to go through with Cicely. At the very moment when Farrell's telephone message arrived, imploring her to take charge of Nelly on her journey, Cicely was engaged in fresh quarrelling with her long-suffering lover. But the spectacle of Sarratt's death, and Nelly's agony, together with her own quick divination of Nelly's inner mind, had worked profoundly on Cicely, and Marsworth had never shewn himself a better fellow than in his complete sympathy with her, and his eager pity for the Sarratts. 'I haven't the heart to tease him'--Cicely had said candidly after her return to England. 'He's been so horribly nice to me!' And the Petruchio having once got the upper hand, the Katherine was--like her prototype--almost overdoing it. The corduroy trousers, Russian boots, the flame-coloured jersey actually arrived. Cicely looked at them wistfully and locked them up. As to the extravagances that still remained, in hats, or skirts, or head-dressing, were they to be any further reduced, Marsworth would probably himself implore her not to be too suddenly reasonable. For, without them, Cicely would be only half Cicely.

But his sister's engagement, perhaps, had only made Farrell feel more sharply than ever the collapse of his own hopes. Three days after Sarratt's death Nelly had written to him to give him George's dying message, and to thank him on her own account for all that he had done to help her journey. The letter was phrased as Nelly could not help phrasing anything she wrote. Cicely, to whom Nelly dumbly shewed it, thought it 'sweet.' But on Farrel's morbid state, it struck like ice, and he had the greatest difficulty in writing a letter of sympathy, such as any common friend must send her, in return. Every word seemed to him either too strong or too weak. The poor Viking, indeed, had begun to look almost middle-aged, and Cicely with a pang had discovered or fancied some streaks of grey in the splendid red beard and curly hair. At the same time her half-sarcastic sense perceived that he was far better provided than Nelly, with the means of self-protection against his trouble. 'Men always are,' thought Cicely--'they have so much more interesting things to do.' And she compared the now famous hospital, with its constant scientific developments, the ever-changing and absorbing spectacle of the life within it, and Farrell's remarkable position amid its strenuous world--with poor Nelly's 'housemaiding.'

But Nelly was choosing the path that suited her own need, and in the spiritual world, the humblest means may be the best. It was when she was cooking for her nuns that some of St. Teresa's divinest ecstasies came upon her! Not that there was any prospect of ecstasy for Nelly Sarratt. She seemed to herself to be engaged in a kind of surgery--the cutting or burning away of elements in herself that she had come to scorn. Hester, who was something of a saint herself, came near to understanding her. Cicely could only wonder. But Hester perceived, with awe, a _fierceness_ in Nelly--a kind of cruelty--towards herself, with which she knew well, from a long experience of human beings, that it was no use to argue. The little, loving, easy-going thing had discovered in her own gentleness and weakness, the source of something despicable--that is, of her own failure to love George as steadfastly and truly as he had loved her. The whole memory of her marriage was poisoned for her by this bitter sense that in little more than a year after she had lost him, while he was actually still alive, and when the law even, let alone the highest standards of love, had not released her, she had begun to yield to the wooing of another man. Perhaps only chance, under all the difficult circumstances of her intimacy with Farrell, had saved her from a shameful yielding--from dishonour, as well as a broken faith.

'What had brought it about?'--she asked herself. And she asked it with a desperate will, determined to probe her own sin to the utmost. 'Soft living!'--was her own reply--moral and physical indolence. The pleasure of being petted and spoiled, the readiness to let others work for her, and think for her, what people called her 'sweetness!' She turned upon it with a burning hatred and contempt. She would scourge it out of herself. And then perhaps some day she would be able to think of George's last faint words with something else than remorseful anguish--_ love you, sweetheart!--I love you, sweetheart!'_

During the three weeks, however, that she was with Hester, she was very silent. She clung to Hester without words, and with much less than her usual caressingness. She found--it was evident--a certain comfort in solitary walks, in the simple talk of Mrs. Tyson, and 'Father Time,' who came to see her, and scolded her for her pale cheeks with a disrespectful vigour which brought actually a smile to her eyes. Tommy was brought over to see her; and she sat beside him, while he lay on the floor drawing Hoons and Haggans, at a great rate, and brimful of fresh adventures in 'Jupe.' But he was soon conscious that his old playfellow was not the listener she had been; and he presently stole away with a wistful look at her.

One evening early in December, Hester coming in from marketing in Ambleside, found Nelly, sitting by the fire, a book open on her knee, so absorbed in thought that she had not heard her friend's entrance. Yet her lips seemed to be moving. Hester came softly, and knelt down beside her.

'Darling, I have been such a long time away!'

Nelly drew a deep breath.

'Oh, no I--I--I've been thinking,'

Hester looked at the open book, and saw that it was 'The Letters of St. Ignatius'--a cheap copy, belonging to a popular theological 'Library,' she herself had lately bought.

'Did that interest you, Nelly?' she asked, wondering.

'Some of it'--said Nelly, flushing a little. And after a moment's hesitation, she pointed to a passage under her hand:--'For I fear your love, lest it injure me, for it is easy to do what you will; but it is difficult for me to attain unto God, if ye insist on sparing me.'

And suddenly Hester remembered that before going out she had entreated Nelly to give herself another fortnight's rest before going to Manchester. It would then be only six weeks since her husband's death. 'And if you break down, dear,'--she had ventured--'it won't only be trouble to you--but to them '--meaning the hospital authorities. Whereupon for the first time since her return, Nelly's eyes had filled with tears. But she made no reply, and Hester had gone away uneasy.

'Why will you be so hard on yourself?' she murmured, taking the lovely childish face in her two hands and kissing it.

Nelly gently released herself, and pointed again, mutely, to a passage further on--the famous passage in which the saint, already in the ecstasy of martyrdom, appeals again to the Christian church in Rome, whether he is bound, not to save him from the wild beasts of the arena. 'I entreat you, shew not unto me an unseasonable love! Suffer me to be the food of wild beasts, through whom it is allowed me to attain unto God. I am the corn of God; let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ.... Pardon me in this. I know what is expedient for me. I am but now beginning to be a disciple.'

'Nelly dear--what do you mean?'

A faint little smile crossed Nelly's face.

'Oh, nothing--only;--' she sighed again--'It's so _splendid_! Such a will!--such a faith! No one thinks like that now. No one is willing to be "the corn of God."'

'Oh, yes they are!' said Hester, passionately. 'There are thousands of men--and women--in this war, who are willing to do everything--suffer everything--for others--their country--their people at home.'

'Well, then they're happy!--and why hold anyone back?' said Nelly, with soft reproach. And letting her head drop on Hester's shoulder, she said, slowly--

'Let me go, dear Hester--let me go! It's drudgery I want--_drudgery_' she repeated with intensity. 'Something that I don't want to do--something that's against the grain--all day long.' Then she laughed and roused herself. 'Not much likeness between me and St. Ignatius, is there?'

Hester considered her gravely.

'When people like you are wrestling all day and every day with something too hard for them, their strength gives way. They think they can do it, but they can't.'

'My strength won't give way,' said Nelly, with quiet conviction. Then, after pausing a moment, she said with a strange ardour--'I once heard a story--a true story--of a man, who burnt his own hand off, because it had struck his friend. He held it in a flame till there was only the burnt stump, and after that he forgave himself and could bear to live again.'

'But whom have you struck, you poor child!' cried Hester.

'_George_!' said Nelly, looking at her with bitterly shining eyes.

Hester's arms enfolded her, and they talked far into the night. Before they separated, Hester had agreed that the date of Nelly's departure should be not postponed, but quickened.

And during the few remaining days they were together, Hester could only notice with growing amazement the change in all the small ways and habits that