'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.