There was silence. But presently there was a stifled sob in the darkness; and Hester knew that Nelly was thinking of those irrecoverable weeks of which Bridget's cruelty had robbed her.
Then presently bedtime came, and Hester saw her guest to her room. But a little while after, as she was standing by her own window she heard the garden door open and perceived a small figure slipping down over the lawn—a shadow among shadows—towards the path along the lake. And she guessed of course that Nelly had gone out to take a last look at the scene of her lost happiness, before her departure on the morrow.
Only twenty-two—with all her life before her—if she lived!
Of course, the probability was that she would live—and gradually forget—and in process of time marry William Farrell. But Hester could not be at all sure that the story would so work out. Supposing that the passion of philanthropy, or the passion of religion, fastened upon her—on the girlish nature that had proved itself with time to be of so much finer and rarer temper than those about her had ever suspected? Both passions are absorbing; both tend to blunt in many women the natural instinct of the woman towards the man. Nelly had been an old-fashioned, simple girl, brought up in a backwater of life. Now she was being drawn into that world of the new woman—where are women policemen, and women chauffeurs, and militant suffragists, and women in overalls and breeches, and many other strange types. The war has shown us—suddenly and marvellously—the adaptability of women. Would little Nelly, too, prove as plastic as the rest, and in the excitement of meeting new demands, and reaching out to new powers, forget the old needs and sweetnesses?
It might be so; but in her heart of hearts, Hester did not believe it would be so.
Meanwhile Nelly was wandering through the May dusk along the lake. She walked through flowers. The scents of a rich earth were in the air; daylight lingered, but a full and golden moon hung over Loughrigg in the west; and the tranced water of the lake was marvellously giving back the beauty amid which it lay—form, and colour, and distance—and all the magic of the hour between day and night. There was no boat, alack, to take her to the island; but there it lay, dreaming on the silver water, with a great hawthorn in full flower shewing white upon its rocky side. She made her way to the point nearest to the island, and there sat down on a stone at the water's edge.
Opposite to her was the spot where she and George had drifted with the water on their last night together. If she shut her eyes she could see his sunburnt face, blanched by the moonlight, his strong shoulders, his hands—which she had kissed—lying on the oars. And mingling with the vision was that other—of a grey, dying face, a torn and broken body.
Her heart was full of intensest love and yearning; but the love was no longer a torment. She knew now that if she had been able to tell George everything, he would never have condemned her; he would only have opened his arms and comforted her.
She was wrapped in a mystical sense of communion with him, as she sat dreaming there. But in such a calm and exaltation of spirit, that there was ample room besides in her mind for the thought of William Farrell—her friend. Her most faithful and chivalrous friend! She thought of Farrell's altered aspect, of the signs of a great task laid upon him, straining even his broad back. And then, of his loneliness. Cicely was gone—his 'little friend' was gone.
What could she still do for him? It seemed to her that even while George stood spiritually beside her, in this scene of their love, he was bidding her think kindly and gratefully of the man whom he had blessed in dying—the man who, in loving her, had meant him no harm.