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,
'CICELY.'