But Hester went at last, and Nelly was alone. The lake lay steeped in a rich twilight, into which the stars were rising. The purple breast of Silver How across the water breathed of shelter, of rest, of things ineffable. Nelly's eyes were full of tears, and her hands clasped on her breast scarcely kept down the sobbing. There, under the hands, was the letter which George had written to her, the night before he left her. She had been told of its existence within a few days of his disappearance; and though she longed for it, a stubborn instinct had bade her refuse to have it, refuse to open it. 'No!—I was only to open it, if George was dead. And he is not dead!' And as time went on, it had seemed to her for months, as if to open it, would be in some mysterious way to seal his fate. But at last she had sent for it—at last she had read it—with bitter tears.
She would wear no black for him—her lost lover. She told herself to hope still. But she was, in truth, beginning to despair. And into her veins, all unconsciously, as into those of the old brown earth, the tides of youth, the will to live, were slowly, slowly, surging back.
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!'