Missing

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

CHAPTER X

'You have gone far enough,' said Cicely imperiously. 'I am going to take you home.'

'Let me sit a little first. It's all so lovely. Nelly dropped into the soft springy turf, dried by a mild east wind, and lay curled up under a rock, every tremulous nerve in her still frail body played on by the concert of earth and sky before her. It was May; the sky was china-blue, and the clouds sailed white upon it. The hawthorns too were white upon the fell-side, beside the ageing gold of the gorse, while below, the lake lay like roughened silver in its mountain cup, and on the sides of Nab Scar, below the screes, the bronze of the oaks ran in and out among the feathery green of the larch plantations, or the flowering grass of the hay-meadows dropping to the lake. The most spiritual moment of the mountain spring was over. This was earth in her moment of ferment, rushing towards the fruition of summer.

Nelly's youth was keenly, automatically conscious of the physical pleasure of the day; except indeed for recurrent moments, when that very pleasure revived the sharpness of grief. Soon it would be the anniversary of her wedding day. Every hour of that day, and of the honeymoon bliss which followed it, seemed to be still so close to her. Surely she had only to put out her hand to find his, and all the horror and the anguish swept away. Directly she shut her eyes on this spring scene, she was in that other life, which had been, and therefore must still be.

But she had not been talking of him with Cicely. She very seldom talked of him now, or of the past. She kept up correspondence with half a dozen men of his company—the brother officer to whom Sarratt had given his last letter—a sergeant, and three or four privates, who had written to her about him. She had made friends with them all, especially with the young lieutenant. They seemed to like hearing from her; and she followed all their migrations and promotions with a constant sympathy. One of them had just written to her from a hospital at Boulogne. He had been seriously wounded in a small affair near Festubert early in May. He was getting better he said, but he hardly cared whether he recovered or not. Everybody he cared for in the regiment had 'gone west' in the fighting of the preceding month. No big push either,—just many little affairs that came to nothing—it was 'damned luck!' There was one of his officers that he couldn't get over—he couldn't get over 'Mr. Edward' being killed. He—the writer—had been Mr. Edward's servant for a month or two—having known his people at home—and a nicer young fellow never stepped. 'When I go back, I'm going to look for Mr. Edward—they say he was buried close to the trenches where he fell, and I'm going to put him in some quiet place; and then when the war's over we can bring him back to Baston Magna, and lay him with his own people in Baston churchyard.'

'I wonder who Mr. Edward was,' said Nelly to herself, with half shut eyes. She had entirely forgotten Cicely's neighbourhood. But Cicely turned round, and asked her what she was thinking of. Nelly repeated the letter, and Cicely suddenly shewed agitation—'Edward!—Baston Magna!—he means Edward Longmore!'

Cicely rarely cried. When she was moved, she had a way of turning a grey-white, and speaking with particular deliberation, as though every word were an effort. Of late, for some mysterious reason, she only indulged occasionally in 'make-up'; there was no rouge, at any rate, on this afternoon, to disguise her change of colour. She looked oddly at Nelly.

'I danced with him at Christmas,' she said. 'There was a very smart party at a house in Grosvenor Square. The Prince was there, home on short leave, and about twenty young men in khaki, and twenty girls. Edward Longmore was there—he wrote to me afterwards. Oh, he was much younger than I. He was the dearest, handsomest, bravest little fellow. When I saw his name in the list—I just'—she ground her small white teeth—'I just cursed the war! Do you know'—she rolled over on the grass beside Nelly, her chin in her hands—'the July before the war, I used to play tennis in a garden near London. There were always five or six boys hanging about there—jolly handsome boys, with everything that anybody could want—family, and money, and lots of friends—all the world before them. And there's not one of them left. They're all dead—dead! Think of that! Boys of twenty and twenty-one. What'll the girls do they used to play and dance with? All their playfellows are gone. They can't marry—they'll never marry. It hadn't anything to do with me, of course. I'm twenty-eight. I felt like a mother to them! But I shan't marry either!'

Nelly didn't answer for a moment. Then she put out a hand and turned
Cicely's face towards her.

'Where is he?—and what is he doing?' she said, half laughing, but always with that something behind her smile which seemed to set her apart.

Cicely sat up.

'He? Oh, that gentleman! Well, he has got some fresh work—just the work he wanted, he says, in the Intelligence Department, and he writes to Willy that life is "extraordinarily interesting," and he's "glad to have lived to see this thing, horrible as it is."'

'Well, you wouldn't wish him to be miserable?'

'I should have no objection at all to his being miserable,' said Cicely calmly, 'but I am not such a fool as to suppose that I should ever know it, if he were.'

'Cicely!'

Cicely took up a stalk of grass, and began to bite it. Her eyes seemed on fire. Nelly was suddenly aware of the flaming up of fierce elemental things in this fashionably dressed young woman whose time was oddly divided between an important share in the running of her brother's hospital, and a hungry search after such gaieties as a world at war might still provide her with. She could spend one night absorbed in some critical case, and eagerly rendering the humblest V.A.D. service to the trained nurses whom her brother paid; and the next morning she would travel to London in order to spend the second night in one of those small dances at great houses of which she had spoken to Nelly, where the presence of men just come from, or just departing to, the firing line lent a zest to the talk and the flirting, the jealousies and triumphs of the evening that the dances of peace must do without. Then after a morning of wild spending in the shops she would take a midday train back to Cumberland and duty.

Nelly, looking at her, wondered afresh how they had ever come to be friends. Yet they were friends, and her interest in Cicely's affairs was one of the slender threads drawing her back to life.

It had all happened when she was ill at the flat; after that letter from the Geneva Red Cross which reported that in spite of exhaustive enquiries among German hospitals, and in the prisoners' camps no trace of Lieutenant Sarratt could be found. On the top of the letter, and the intolerable despair into which it had plunged her, had come influenza. There was no doubt—Nelly's recollection faced it candidly—that she would have come off badly but for Cicely. Bridget had treated the illness on the hardening plan, being at the moment slightly touched with Christian Science. Nelly should 'think it away.' To stay in bed and give in was folly. She meanwhile had found plenty to do in London, and was away for long hours. In one of these absences, Cicely—having been seized with a sudden hunger for the flesh-pots of 'town'—appeared at the flat with her maid. She discovered Nelly Sarratt in bed, and so weak as to be hardly capable of answering any question. Mrs. Simpson was doing her best; but she gave an indignant account of Bridget's behaviour, and Cicely at once took a strong line, both as a professional nurse—of sorts—and as mistress of the flat. Bridget, grimly defensive, was peremptorily put on one side, and Cicely devoted the night she was to have spent in dancing to tending her half-conscious guest. In the days that followed she fell, quite against her will, under the touching charm of Nelly's refinement, humility and sweetness. Her own trenchant and masterful temper was utterly melted, for the time, by Nelly's helpless state, by the grief which threatened to kill her, and by a gratefulness for any kindness shewn her, which seemed to Cicely almost absurd.

She fell in love—impetuously—with the little creature thus thrown upon her pity. She sent for a trained nurse and their own doctor. She wired for Hester Martin, and in forty-eight hours Bridget had been entirely ousted, and Nelly's state had begun to shew signs of improvement. Bridget took the matter stoically. 'I know nothing about nursing,' she said, with composure. 'If you wish to look after my sister, by all means look after her. Many thanks. I propose to go and stay near the British Museum, and will look in here when I can.'

So she departed, and Cicely stayed in London for three weeks until Nelly was strong enough to go to Torquay. Then, reluctantly, she gave up her charge to Bridget, she being urgently wanted at Carton, and Hester at Rydal. Bridget reappeared on the scene with the same sangfroid as she had left it. She had no intention of quarrelling with the Farrells whatever they might do; and in an eminently satisfactory interview with Sir William—quite unknown to Nelly—she allowed him to give her a cheque which covered all their expenses at Torquay.

Meanwhile Nelly had discovered Cicely's secret—which indeed was not very secret. Captain Marsworth had appeared in London for the purpose of attending his Medical Board, and called at the flat. Nelly was by that time on the sofa, with Cicely keeping guard, and Nelly could sometimes deaden her own consciousness for a little in watching the two. What were they after? Marsworth's ethical enthusiasms and resentments, the prophetic temper that was growing upon him in relation to the war, his impatience of idleness and frivolity and 'slackness,' of all modes of life that were not pitched in a key worthy of that continuous sacrifice of England's youngest and noblest that was going on perpetually across the Channel:—these traits in him made it very easy to understand why, after years of philandering with Cicely Farrell, he was now, apparently, alienated from her, and provoked by her. But then, why did he still pursue her?—why did he still lay claim to the privileges of their old intimacy, and why did Cicely allow him to do so?

At last one evening, after a visit from Marsworth which had been one jar from beginning to end, Cicely had suddenly dropped on a stool, beside Nelly on the sofa.

'What an intolerable man!' she said with crimson cheeks. 'Shall I tell
Simpson not to let him in again?'

Nelly looked her surprise, for as yet there had been no confidence on this subject between them. And then had come a torrent—Cicely walking stormily up and down the room, and pouring out her soul.

The result of which outpouring was that through all the anger and denunciation, Nelly very plainly perceived that Cicely was a captured creature, endeavouring to persuade herself that she was still free. She loved Marsworth—and hated him. She could not make up her mind to give up for his sake the 'lust of the eye and the pride of life,' as he clearly would endeavour to make her give them up, the wild bursts of gaiety and flirting for which she periodically rushed up to town, the passion for dress, the reckless extravagance with which it pleased her to shock him whenever they met. And he also—so it seemed to Nelly—was torn by contradictory feelings. As soon as Cicely was within reach, he could not keep away from her; and yet when confronted with her, and some new vagary, invented probably to annoy him, though he might refrain 'even from good words,' his critical mouth and eye betrayed him, and set the offender in a fury.

However, it was the quarrels between these two strange lovers, if they were lovers, that had made a friendship, warm and real—on Cicely's side even impassioned—between Nelly and Cicely. For Cicely had at last found someone—not of her own world—to whom she could talk in safety. Yet she had treated the Sarratts cavalierly to begin with, just because they were outsiders, and because 'Willy' was making such a fuss with them; for she was almost as easily jealous in her brother's case as in Marsworth's. But now Nelly's sad remoteness from ordinary life, her very social insignificance, and the lack of any links between her and the great Farrell kinship of relations and friends, made her company, and her soft, listening ways specially welcome and soothing to Cicely's excited mood.

During the latter half of the winter they had corresponded, though Cicely was the worst of letter-writers; and since Nelly and her sister had been in Rydal again there had been constant meetings. Nelly's confidences in return for Cicely's were not many nor frequent. The effects of grief were to be seen in her aspect and movements, in her most pathetic smile, in her increased dreaminess, and the inertia against which she struggled in vain. Since May began, she had for the first time put on black. Nobody had dared to speak to her about it, so sharply did the black veil thrown back from the childish brow intensify the impression that she made, as of something that a touch might break. But the appearance of the widow's dress seemed to redouble the tenderness with which every member of the little group of people among whom she lived treated her—always excepting her sister. Nelly had in vain protested to Farrell against the 'spoiling' of which she was the object. 'Spoiled' she was, and it was clear both to Hester and Cicely, after a time, that though she had the will, she had not the strength to resist.

Unless on one point. She had long since stopped all subsidies of money from Farrell through Bridget, having at last discovered the plain facts about them. Her letter of thanks to him for all he had done for her was at once so touching and so determined, that he had not dared since to cross her will. All that he now found it possible to urge was that the sisters would allow him to lend them a vacant farmhouse of his, not far from the Loughrigg Tarn cottage. Nelly had been so far unwilling; it was clear that her heart clung to the Rydal lodgings. But Hester and Cicely were both on Farrell's side. The situation of the farm was higher and more bracing than Rydal; and both Cicely and Farrell cherished the notion of making it a home for Nelly, until indeed—

At this point Farrell generally succeeded in putting a strong rein upon his thoughts, as part of the promise he had made to Hester. But Cicely, who was much cooler and more matter of fact than her brother, had long since looked further ahead. Willy was in love, irrevocably in love with Nelly Sarratt. That had been plain to her for some time. Before those days in the flat, when she herself had fallen in love with Nelly, and before the disappearance of George Sarratt, she had resented Willy's absurd devotion to a little creature who, for all her beauty, seemed to Cicely merely an insignificant member of the middle classes, with a particularly impossible sister. And as to the notion that Mrs. Sarratt might become at some distant period her brother's wife, Lady Farrell of Carton, Cicely would have received it with scorn, and fought the realisation of it tooth and nail. Yet now all the 'Farrell feeling,' the Farrell pride, in this one instance, at any rate, was gone. Why? Cicely didn't know. She supposed first because Nelly was such a dear creature, and next because the war had made such a curious difference in things. The old lines were being rubbed out. And Cicely, who had been in her day as exclusively snobbish as any other well-born damsel, felt now that it would not matter in the least if they remained rubbed out. Persons who 'did things' by land or sea; persons who invented things; persons with ideas; persons who had the art of making others follow them into the jaws of death;—these were going to be the aristocracy of the future. Though the much abused aristocracy of the present hadn't done badly either!

So she was only concerned with the emotional aspects of her brother's state. Was Nelly now convinced of her husband's death?—was that what her black meant? And if she were convinced, and it were legally possible for her to marry again and all that—what chance would there be for Willy? Cicely was much puzzled by Nelly's relation to him. She had seen many signs, pathetic signs, of a struggle on Nelly's side against Farrell's influence; especially in the time immediately following her first return to the north in March. She had done her best then, it seemed to Cicely, to do without him and to turn to other interests and occupations than those he set her, and she had failed; partly no doubt owing to her physical weakness, which had put an end to many projects,—that of doing week-end munition work for instance—but still more, surely, to Farrell's own qualities. 'He is such a charmer with women,' thought Cicely, half smiling; 'that's what it is.'

By which she meant that he had the very rare gift of tenderness; of being able to make a woman feel, that as a human being, quite apart from any question of passion, she interested and touched him. It was just sympathy, she supposed, the artistic magnetic quality in him, which made him so attractive to women, and women so attractive to him. He was no longer a young man in the strict sense; he was a man of forty, with the prestige of great accomplishment, and a wide knowledge of life. It was generally supposed that he had done with love-affairs, and women instinctively felt it safe to allow him a personal freedom towards them, which from other men would have offended them. He might pat a girl's shoulder, or lay a playful grasp on a woman's arm, and nobody minded; it was a sign of his liking, and most people wished to be liked by him. However he never allowed himself any half-caress of the kind towards Nelly Sarratt now; and once or twice, in the old days, before Sarratt's disappearance, Cicely had fancied that she had seen Nelly check rather sharply one of these demonstrations of Willy's which were so natural to him, and in general so unconscious and innocent.

And now he never attempted them. What did that mean? Simply—so Cicely thought—that he was in love, and dared venture such things no longer. But all the same there were plenty of devices open to him by which week after week he surrounded Nelly with a network of care, which implied that he was always thinking of her; which were in fact a caress, breathing a subtle and restrained devotion, more appealing than anything more open. And Cicely seemed to see Nelly yielding—unconsciously; unconsciously 'spoilt,' and learning to depend on the 'spoiler.' Why did Hester seem so anxious always about Farrell's influence with Nelly—so ready to ward him off, if she could? For after all, thought Cicely, easily, however long it might take for Nelly to recover her hold on life, and to clear up the legal situation, there could be but one end of it. Willy meant to marry this little woman; and in the long run no woman would be able to resist him.

* * * * *

The friends set out to stroll homewards through the long May evening, talking of the hideous Irish news—how incredible amid the young splendour of the Westmorland May!—or of the progress of the war.

Meanwhile Bridget Cookson was walking to meet them from the Rydal end of the Lake. She was accompanied by a Manchester friend, a young doctor, Howson by name, who had known the sisters before Nelly's marriage. He had come to Ambleside in charge of a patient that morning, and was going back on the morrow, and then to France. Bridget had stumbled on him in Ambleside, and finding he had a free evening had invited him to come and sup with them. And a vivid recollection of Nelly Cookson as a girl had induced him to accept. He had been present indeed at the Sarratt wedding, and could never forget Nelly as a bride, the jessamine wreath above her dark eyes, and all the exquisite shapeliness of her slight form, in the white childish dress of fine Indian muslin, which seemed to him the prettiest bridal garment he had ever seen. And now—poor little soul!

'You think she still hopes?'

Bridget shrugged her shoulders.

'She says so. But she has put on mourning at last—a few weeks ago.'

'People do turn up, you know,' said the doctor musing. 'There have been some wonderful stories.'

'They don't turn up now,' said Bridget positively—'now that the enquiries are done properly.'

'Oh, the Germans are pretty casual—and the hospital returns are far from complete, I hear. However the probabilities, no doubt, are all on the side of death.'

'The War Office are certain of it,' said Bridget with emphasis. 'But it's no good trying to persuade her. I don't try.'

'No, why should you? Poor thing! Well, I'm off to X—— next week,' said the young man. 'I shall keep my eyes open there, in case anything about him should turn up.'

Bridget frowned slightly, and her face flushed.

'Should you know him again, if you saw him?' she asked, abruptly.

'I think so,' said the doctor with slight hesitation, 'I remember him very well at the wedding. Tall and slight?—not handsome exactly, but a good-looking gentlemanly chap? Oh yes, I remember him. But of course, to be alive now, if by some miraculous chance he were alive, and not to have let you know—why he must have had some brain mischief—paralysis—or——'

'He isn't alive!' said Bridget impatiently. 'The War Office have no doubts whatever.'

Howson was rather surprised at the sudden acerbity of her tone. But his momentary impression was immediately lost in the interest roused in him by the emergence from the wood, in front, of Nelly and Cicely. He was a warm-hearted fellow, himself just married, and the approach of the black-veiled figure, which he had last seen in bridal white, touched him like an incident in a play.

Nelly recognised him from a short distance, and went a little pale.

'Who is that with your sister?' asked Cicely.

'It is a man we knew in Manchester,—Doctor Howson.'

'Did you expect him?'

'Oh no.' After a minute she added—'He was at our wedding. I haven't seen him since.'

Cicely was sorry for her. But when the walkers met, Nelly greeted the young man very quietly. He himself was evidently moved. He held her hand a little, and gave her a quick, scrutinising look. Then he moved on beside her, and Cicely, in order to give Nelly the opportunity of talking to him for which she evidently wished, was forced to carry off Bridget, and endure her company patiently all the way home.

When Nelly and the doctor arrived, following close on the two in front,
Cicely cried out that Nelly must go and lie down at once till supper.
She looked indeed a deplorable little wraith; and the doctor, casting,
again, a professional eye on her, backed up Cicely.

Nelly smiled, resisted, and finally disappeared.

'You'll have to take care of her,' said Howson to Bridget. 'She looks to me as if she couldn't stand any strain.'

'Well, she's not going to have any. This place is quiet enough! She's been talking of munition-work, but of course we didn't let her.'

Cicely took the young man aside and expounded her brother's plan of the farm on the western side of Loughrigg. Howson asked questions about its aspect, and general comfort, giving his approval in the end.

'Oh, she'll pull through,' he said kindly, 'but she must go slow. This kind of loss is harder to bear—physically—than death straight out. I've promised her'—he turned to Bridget—'to make all the enquiries I can. She asked me that at once.'

After supper, just as Howson was departing, Farrell appeared, having driven himself over through the long May evening, ostensibly to take Cicely home, but really for the joy of an hour in Nelly's company.

He sat beside her in the garden, after Howson's departure, reading to her, by the lingering light, the poems of a great friend of his who had been killed at Gallipoli. Nelly was knitting, but her needles were often laid upon her knee, while she listened with all her mind, and sometimes with tears in her eyes, that were hidden by the softly dropping dusk. She said little, but what she did say came now from a greatly intensified inner life, and a sharpened intelligence; while all the time, the charm that belonged to her physical self, her voice, her movements, was at work on Farrell, so that he felt his hour with her a delight after his hard day's work. And she too rested in his presence, and his friendship. It was not possible now for her to rebuff him, to refuse his care. She had tried, tried honestly, as Cicely saw, to live independently—to 'endure hardness.' And the attempt had broken down. The strange, protesting feeling, too, that she was doing some wrong to George by accepting it was passing away. She was George's, she would always be his, to her dying day; but to live without being loved, to tear herself from those who wished to love her—for that she had proved too weak. She knew it, and was not unconscious of a certain moral defeat; as she looked out upon all the strenuous and splendid things that women were doing in the war.

* * * * *

Farrell and Cicely sped homeward through a night that was all but day. Cicely scarcely spoke; she was thinking of Marsworth. Farrell had still in his veins the sweetness of Nelly's presence. But there were other thoughts too in his mind, the natural thoughts of an Englishman at war. Once, over their heads, through the luminous northern sky, there passed an aeroplane flying south-west high above the fells. Was it coming from the North Sea, from the neighbourhood of that invincible Fleet, on which all hung, by which all was sustained? He thought of the great ships, and the men commanding them, as greyhounds straining in the leash. What touch of fate would let them loose at last?

The Carton hospital was now full of men fresh from the front. The casualties were endless. A thousand a night often along the French front—and yet no real advance. The far-flung battle was practically at a stand-still. And beyond, the chaos in the Balkans, the Serbian débacle! No—the world was full of lamentation, mourning and woe; and who could tell how Armageddon would turn? His quick mind travelled through all the alternative possibilities ahead, on fire for his country. But always, after each digression through the problems of the war, thought came back to the cottage at Rydal, and Nelly on the lawn, her white throat emerging from the thin black dress, her hands clasped on her lap, her eyes turned to him as he read.

And all the time it was just conceivable that Sarratt might still be discovered. At that thought, the summer night darkened.