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, the prospects of a happy ending were decidedly less. The odious Bridget might after all have acted intelligibly, though abominably.
As to the history of Sarratt's long disappearance, Cicely found that very little was known.
'We don't question him,' said the Sister. 'It only exhausts him; and it wouldn't be any good. He may tell his wife something more, of his own accord, but we doubt whether he knows much more than he told Dr. Howson. He remembers being wounded at Loos—lying out undiscovered, he thinks for two days—then a German hospital—and a long, long journey. And that's practically all. But just lately—this week, actually!—Dr. Howson has got some information, through a family of peasants living near Cassel, behind the British lines. They have relations across the Belgian border, and gradually they have discovered who the man was who came over the frontier with Mr. Sarratt. He came from a farm, somewhere between Brussels and Courtrai, and now they've managed to get a letter through from his brother. You know the man himself was shot just as they reached the British lines. But this letter really tells a good deal. The brother says that they found Mr. Sarratt almost dead,—and, as they thought, insane—in a wood near their house. He was then wearing the uniform of a British officer. They guessed he was an escaped prisoner, and they took him in and hid him. Then news filtered through to them of two English officers who had made their escape from a hospital train somewhere south-west of Brussels; one slightly wounded, and one severely; the severely wounded man suffering also from shell-shock. And the slightly wounded man was shot, while the other escaped. The train, it was said, was lying in a siding at the time—at the further edge of the forest bordering their farm. So, of course, they identified the man discovered by them as the severely wounded officer. Mr. Sarratt must have somehow just struggled through to their side of the forest, where they found him.
'What happened then, we can't exactly trace. He must have been there all the winter. He was deaf and dumb, from nerve-shock, and could give no account of himself at all. The men of the farm, two unmarried sons, were good to him, but their old mother, whose family was German, always hated his being there. She was in terror of the German military police who used to ride over the farm, and one day, when her sons were away, she took Mr. Sarratt's uniform, his identification disk, and all the personal belongings she could find, and either burned or buried them. The sons, who were patriotic Belgians, were however determined to protect him, and no doubt there may have been some idea of a reward, if they could find his friends. But they were afraid of their tyrannical old mother, and of what she might do. So at last they made up their minds to try somehow and get him over the French frontier, which was not far off, and through the German lines. One of the brothers, whose name was Benoit Desalles, to whom they say poor Mr. Sarratt was much attached, went with him. They must have had an awful time, walking by night, and hiding by day. Mr. Sarratt's wounds must have been in a bad state, for they were only half healed when he escaped, and they had been neglected all the winter. So how he dragged himself the distance he did, the doctors can't imagine. And the peasants near the frontier from whom we have got what information we have, have no knowledge at all of how he and his Belgian guide finally got through the German lines. But when they reached our lines, they were both, as Dr. Howson wrote to Miss Cookson, in German uniforms. His people suppose that Benoit had stripped some German dead, and that in the confusion caused in the German line—at a point where it ran through a Belgian village—by a British raid, at night, they got across the enemy trenches. And no doubt Benoit had local knowledge which helped.
'Then in the No Man's Land, between the lines, they were under both shell and rifle-fire, till it was seen by our men that Benoit had his hands up, and that the other was wounded. The poor Belgian was dragging Mr. Sarratt who was unconscious, and at last—wasn't it ill-luck?—just as our men were pulling them into the trench, Benoit was shot through the head by a German sniper. That, at least, is how we now reconstruct the story. As far as Mr. Sarratt is concerned, we let it alone. We have no heart to worry him. Poor fellow—poor, gallant, patient fellow!'
And the Sister's strong face softened, as Bridget had seen it soften at
Sarratt's bedside.
'And there is really no hope for him?' asked Cicely after a time. The
Sister shook her head.
'The wounds have never healed—and they drain his life away. The heart can't last out much longer. But he's not in pain now—thank God! It's just weakness. I assure you, everybody—almost—in this huge camp, asks for him and many—pray for him.' The Sister's eyes filled with tears. 'And now that the poor wife's come in time, there'll be an excitement! I heard two men in one of our wards discussing it this morning. "They do say as Mrs. Sarratt will be here to-day," said one of them. "Well, that's a bit of all right, ain't it?" said the other, and they both smoked away, looking as pleased as Punch. You see Miss Cookson's behaviour has made the whole thing so extraordinary.'
Cicely agreed.
'I suppose she thought it would be all over in a day or two,' she said, half-absently.
The Sister looked puzzled.
'And that it would be better not to risk the effect on his wife? Of course Mrs. Sarratt does look dreadfully delicate. So you don't think it was a mistake? It's very difficult to see how it could be! The hands alone—one would think that anybody who really knew him must have recognised them.'
Cicely said no more. But she wondered how poor Nelly and her sister would ever find it possible to meet again.
Meanwhile, in the car ahead, Howson was gently and tenderly preparing the mind of Nelly for her husband's state. He described to her also, the first signs of Sarratt's returning consciousness—the excitement among his doctors and nurses—the anxious waiting for the first words—the first clear evidence of restored hearing. And then, at last, the dazed question—'Where am I?'—and the perplexed effort to answer Howson's—'Can you tell us your name and regiment?'
Howson described the breathless waiting of himself and another doctor, and then the slow coming of the words: 'My name is George Sarratt, Lieutenant, 21st Lanchesters. But why——?'
A look of bewilderment at nurses and doctors, and then again—sleep.
'The next time he spoke, it was quite distinctly and of his own accord. The nurse heard him saying softly—it was in the early morning—"I want my wife—send for her." She told him you had been already sent for, and he turned his head round at once and went to sleep.'
Howson could hardly go on, so keenly did he realise the presence of the woman beside him. The soft fluttering breath unmanned him. But by degrees Nelly heard all there was to know; especially the details of the rapid revival of hearing, speech, and memory, which had gone on through the preceding three days.
'And what is such a blessing,' said Howson, with the cheerfulness of the good doctor—'is that he seems to be quite peaceful—quite at rest. He's not unhappy. He's just waiting for you. They'll have given him an injection of strychnine this evening to help him through.'
'How long?' The words were just breathed into the darkness.
'A day or two certainly—perhaps a week,' he said reluctantly. 'It's a question of strength. Sometimes it lasts much longer than we expect.'
He said nothing to her of her sister's visit. Instinctively he suspected some ugly meaning in that story. And Nelly asked no questions.
Suddenly, she was aware of lights in the darkness, and then of a great camp marked out in a pattern of electric lamps, stretching up and away over what seemed a wide and sloping hillside. Nelly put down the window to see.
'Is it here?' 'No. A little further on.'
It seemed to her interminably further. The car rattled over the rough pavement of a town, then through the darkness of woods—threading its way through a confusion of pale roads—until, with a violent bump, it came to a stop.
In the blackness of the November night, the chauffeur, mistaking the entrance to a house, had run up a back lane and into a sand-bank.
'Do you hear the sea?' said Howson, as he helped Nelly to alight.
'There'll be wind to-night. But here we are.'
She looked round her as they walked through a thin wood. To her right beyond the bare trees was a great building with a glass front. She could see lights within—the passing figures of nurses—rows of beds—and men in bed jackets—high rooms frescoed in bright colours.
'That used to be the Casino. Now it's a Red Cross Hospital. There are always doctors there. So when we moved him away from the camp, we took this little house close to the Hospital. The senior surgeon there can be often in and out. He's looking after him splendidly.'
A small room in a small house, built for summer lodgings by the sea; bare wooden walls and floor; a stove; open windows through which came the slow boom of waves breaking on a sandy shore; a bed, and in it an emaciated figure, propped up.
Nelly, as the door closed behind her, broke into a run like the soft flight of a bird, and fell on her knees beside the bed. She had taken off her hat and cloak. Excitement had kindled two spots of red in her pale cheeks. The man in the bed turned his eyes towards her, and smiled.
'Nelly!'
Howson and the Sister went on tiptoe through a side door into another room.
'Kiss me, Nelly!'
Nelly, trembling, put her soft lips to his. But as she did so, a chill anguish struck her—the first bitterness of the naked truth. As yet she had only seen it through a veil, darkly. Was this her George—this ghost, grey-haired, worn out, on the brink of the unknown? The old passionate pressure of the mouth gone—for ever! Her young husband—her young lover—she saw him far back in the past, on Rydal lake, the dripping oars in his hand. This was a spirit which touched her—a spiritual love which shone upon her. And she had never yet known so sharp an agony.
So sharp it was that it dried all tears. She knelt there with his hands in hers, kissing them, and gazing at him.
'Nelly, it's hard luck! Darling, I'd better have been patient. In time, perhaps, I should have come back to you. How I got away—who planned it—I don't remember. I remember nothing—of all that time. But Howson has heard something, through some people near Cassel—has he told you?'
'Yes—but don't try to remember.'
He smiled at her. How strange the old sweetness on these grey lips!
'Have you missed me—dreadfully? Poor little Nelly! You're very pale—a little shadow! Darling!—I would like to live!'
And at that—at last—the eyes of both, as they gazed at each other, filled with tears. Tears for the eternal helplessness of man,—the 'tears of things.'
But he roused himself, snatching still at a little love, a little brightness—before the dark. The strychnine injected had given him strength.
'Give me that jelly—and the champagne. Feed me, Nelly! But have you had any food?'
The stress laid on the 'you' the tone of his voice, were so like his old self that Nelly caught her breath. A ray of mad hope stole in. She began to feed him, and as she did so, the Sister, as though she had heard Sarratt's question, came quietly in with a tray on which was some food for Nelly, and put it down beside her. Then she disappeared again.
With difficulty, Sarratt swallowed a few mouthfuls of jelly and champagne. Then his left hand—the right was helpless—made a faint but peremptory sign, and Nelly obediently took some food under his dimly smiling eyes.
'I have thought of this so often,' he murmured—I knew you'd come. It's been like someone walking through a dark passage that was getting lighter. Only once—I had a curious dream. I thought I saw Bridget'
Nelly, trembling, took away his tray and her own, and then knelt down again beside him. She kissed his forehead, and tried to divert his thoughts by asking him if he was warm enough. His hands were very cold. Should she make up the fire?
'Oh, no,—it's all right. But wasn't it strange? Suddenly, I seemed to be looking at her—quite close—and she at me. And I was worried because I had seen her more distinctly than I could remember you. Come nearer—put your dear head against me. Oh, if I could only hold you, as I used to!'
There was silence a little. But the wine had flushed him, and when the bloodless lids lifted again, there was more life in the eyes.
'Nelly, poor darling, have you been very lonely?—Were the Farrells kind to you?'
'Yes, George, very kind. They did everything—everything they could.'
'Sir William promised me'—he said, gratefully. 'And where have you been all the time? At Rydal?'
'No. I was ill—after the news came——'
'Poor Nelly!'
'And Sir William lent us one of his farms—near his cottage—do you remember?'
'A little. That was kind of him—very kind. Nelly—I want to send him a message——'
'Yes.'
'Give him my grateful thanks, darling,—and—and—my blessing.'
Nelly hid her face against him, and he felt the convulsion of tearless sobbing that passed through her.
'Poor Nelly!'—he said again, touching her hand tenderly. Then after another pause—'Sit there, darling, where I can see you—your dear head, and your eyes, and your pretty neck. You must go to bed soon, you know—but just a little while! Now tell me what you have been doing. Talk to me. I won't talk. I'll rest—but I shall hear. That's so wonderful—that I can hear you. I've been living in such a queer world—no tongue—no ears—no mind, hardly—only my eyes.'
She obeyed him by a great effort. She talked to him—of what, she hardly knew!—about her months in London and Torquay—: about her illness—the farm—Hester Martin—and Cicely.
When she came to speak of her friendship with Cicely, he smiled in surprise, his eyes still shut.
'That's jolly, dearest. You remember, I didn't like her. She wasn't at all nice to you—once. But thank her for me—please.'
'She's here now, George, she brought me here. She wouldn't let me come alone.'
'God bless her!' he said, under his breath. 'I'll see her—to-morrow. Now go on talking. You won't mind if I go to sleep? They won't let you stop here, dear. You'll be upstairs. But you'll come early—won't you?'
They gave him morphia, and he went to sleep under her eyes. Then the night nurse came in, and the surgeon from the hospital opposite, with Howson. And Cicely took Nelly away.
Cicely had made everything ready in the little bare room upstairs. But when she had helped Nelly to undress, she did not linger.
'Knock on the wall, if you want me. It is only wood, I shall hear directly.'
Nelly kissed her and she went. For nothing in her tender service that day was Nelly more grateful to her.
Then Nelly put out her light, and drawing up the blind, she sat for long staring into the moonlight night. The rain had stopped, but the wind was high over the sea, which lay before her a tumbled mass of waves, not a hundred yards away. To her right was the Casino, a subdued light shining through the blinds of its glass verandahs, behind which she sometimes saw figures passing—nurses and doctors on their various errands. Were there men dying there to-night—like her George?
The anguish that held her, poor child, was no simple sorrow. Never—she knew it doubly now—had she ceased to love her husband. She had told Farrell the truth—'If George now were to come in at that door, there would be no other man in the world for me!' And yet, while George was dying, and at the very moment that he was asking for her, she had been in Farrell's arms, and yielding to his kisses. George would never know; but that only made her remorse the more torturing. She could never confess to him—that indeed was her misery. He would die, and her unfaith would stand between them for ever.
A cleverer, a more experienced, a more practical woman, in such a case, would have found a hundred excuses and justifications for herself that never occurred to Nelly Sarratt, to this young immature creature, in whom the passionate love of her marriage had roused feelings and emotions, which, when the man on whom they were spent was taken from her, were still the master-light of all her seeing—still so strong and absorbing, that, in her widowed state, they were like blind forces searching unconsciously for some new support, some new thing to love. She had nearly died for love—and then when her young strength revived it had become plain that she could only live for love. Her hands had met the hands seeking hers, inevitably, instinctively. To refuse, to stand aloof, to cause pain—that had been the torment, the impossibility, for one who had learnt so well how to give and to make happy. There was in it no sensual element—only Augustine's 'love of loving.' Yet her stricken conscience told her that, in her moral indecision, if the situation had lasted much longer, she had not been able to make up her mind to marry Farrell quickly, she might easily have become his mistress, through sheer weakness, sheer dread of his suffering, sheer longing to be loved.
Explanations and excuses, for any more seasoned student of human nature, emerged on every hand. Nelly in her despair allowed herself none of them. It merely seemed to her, in this night vigil, that she was unworthy to touch her George, to nurse him, to uphold him; utterly unworthy of all this reverent pity and affection that was being lavished upon her for his sake.
She sat up most of the night, wrapped in her fur cloak, alive to any sound from the room below. And about four in the morning, she stole down the stairs to listen at his door. There one of the nurses found her, and moved with pity, brought her in. They settled her in an arm-chair near him; and then with the tardy coming of the November day, she watched the sad waking that was so many hours nearer death, at that moment when man's life is at its wretchedest, and all the forces of the underworld seem to be let loose upon it.
And there, for five days and nights, with the briefest possible intervals for food, and the sleep of exhaustion, she sat beside him. She was dimly conscious of the people about her, of the boundless tenderness and skill that was poured out upon the poor sufferer at her side; she did everything for George that the nurses could shew her how to do—; it was the one grain of personal desire left in her, and doctors and nurses developed the most ingenious pity in devising things for her to do, and in letting every remedy that soothed his pain, or cleared his mind, go, as far as possible, through her hands. And there were moments when she would walk blindly along the sea beach with Cicely, finding a stimulus to endure in the sharpness of the winter wind, or looking in vague wonder at the great distant camp, with its streets of hospitals, its long lines of huts, its training-grounds, and the bodies of men at work upon them. Here, the war came home to her, as a vast machine by which George, like millions of others, had been caught and crushed. She shuddered to think of it.
At intervals Sarratt still spoke a good deal, though rarely after their third day together. He asked her once—'Dear, did you ever send for my letter?' She paused a moment to think. 'You mean the letter you left for me—in case?' He made a sign of assent, and then smiled into the face bending over him. 'Read it again, darling. I mean it all now, as I did then.' She could only kiss him softly—without tears. After the first day she never cried.
On the last night of his life, when she thought that all speech was over, and that she would never hear his voice, or see a conscious look, again, he opened his eyes suddenly, and she heard—'I love you, sweetheart! I love you, sweetheart!' twice over. That was the last sound. Towards midnight he died.
Next morning Cicely wrote to Farrell:—
'We are coming home to-morrow after they bury him in the cemetery here.
Please get Hester—whatever she may be doing—to throw it up, and come
and meet us. She is the only person who can help Nelly now for a bit
Nelly pines for Rydal—where they were together. She would go to
Hester's cottage. Tell Hester.
'Why, old boy, do such things happen? That's what I keep asking—not being a saint, like these dear nurses here, who really have been angelic. I am the only one who rebels. George Sarratt was so patient—so terribly patient! And Nelly is just crushed—for the moment, though I sometimes expect to see a strange energy in her before long. But I keep knocking my head all day, and part of the night—the very small part that I'm not asleep—against the questions that everybody seems to have asked since the world began—and I know that I am a fool, and go on doing it.
'George Sarratt, I think, was a simple Christian, and died like one. He seemed to like the Chaplain, which was a comfort. How much any of that means to Nelly I don't know.'
She also wrote to Marsworth:—
'Meet us, please, at Charing Cross. I have no spirit to answer your last letters as they deserve. But I give you notice that I don't thrive on too sweet a diet—and praise is positively bad for me. It wrinkles me up the wrong way.
'What can be done about that incredible sister? She ought to know that Nelly is determined not to see her. Just think!—they might have had nearly a month together, and she cut it down to five days!
('Dear Herbert, say anything you like, and the sweeter the better!)
'Yours,