'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 debacle! 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.



CHAPTER XI

In the summer of 1916, a dark and miserable June, all chilly showers and lowering clouds, followed on the short-lived joys of May. But all through it, still more through the early weeks of July, the spiritual heaven for English hearts was brightening. In June, two months before she was expected to move, Russia flung herself on the Eastern front of the enemy. Brussiloff's victorious advance drove great wedges into the German line, and the effect on that marvellous six months' battle, which we foolishly call the Siege of Verdun, was soon to be seen. Hard pressed they were, those heroes of Verdun!—how hard pressed no one in England knew outside the War Office and the Cabinet, till the worst was over, and the Crown Prince, 'with his dead and his shame,' had recoiled in sullen defeat from the prey that need fear him no more.

Then on the first of July, the British army, after a bombardment the like of which had never yet been seen in war, leapt from its trenches on the Somme front, and England held her breath while her new Armies proved of what stuff they were made. In those great days 'there were no stragglers—none!' said an eye-witness in amazement. The incredible became everywhere the common and the achieved. Life was laid down as at a festival. 'From your happy son'—wrote a boy, as a heading to his last letter on this earth.

And by the end of July the sun was ablaze again on the English fields and harvests. Days of amazing beauty followed each other amid the Westmorland fells; with nights of moonlight on sleeping lakes, and murmuring becks; or nights of starlit dark, with that mysterious glow in the north-west which in the northern valleys so often links the evening with the dawn.

How often through these nights Nelly Sarratt lay awake, in her new white room in Mountain Ash Farm!—the broad low window beside her open to the night, to that 'Venus's Looking Glass' of Loughrigg Tarn below her, and to the great heights beyond, now dissolving under the moon-magic, now rosy with dawn, and now wreathed in the floating cloud which crept in light and silver along the purple of the crags. To have been lifted to this height above valley and stream, had raised and strengthened her, soul and body, as Farrell and Hester had hoped. Her soul, perhaps, rather than her body; for she was still the frailest of creatures, without visible ill, and yet awakening in every quick-eyed spectator the same misgiving as in the Manchester doctor. But she was calmer, less apparently absorbed in her own grief; though only, perhaps, the more accessible to the world misery of the war. In these restless nights, her remarkable visualising power, which had only thriven, it seemed, upon the flagging of youth and health, carried her through a series of waking dreams, almost always concerned with the war. Under the stimulus of Farrell's intelligence, she had become a close student of the war. She read much, and what she read, his living contact with men and affairs—with that endless stream of wounded in particular, which passed through the Carton hospital—and his graphic talk illumined for her. Then in the night arose the train of visions; the trenches—always the trenches; those hideous broken woods of the Somme front, where the blasted soil has sucked the best life-blood of England; those labyrinthine diggings and delvings in a tortured earth, made for the Huntings of Death—'Death that lays man at his length'—for panting pursuit, and breathless flight, and the last crashing horror of the bomb, in some hell-darkness at the end of all:—these haunted her. Or she saw visions of men swinging from peak to peak above fathomless depths of ice and snow on the Italian front; climbing precipices where the foot holds by miracle, and where not only men but guns must go; or vanishing, whole lines of them, awfully forgotten in the winter snows, to reappear a frozen and ghastly host, with the melting of the spring.

And always, mingled with everything, in the tense night hours—that slender khaki figure, tearing the leaf from his sketch-book, leaping over the parados,—falling—in the No Man's Land. But, by day, the obsession of it now often left her.

It was impossible not to enjoy her new home. Farrell had taken an old Westmorland farm, with its white-washed porch, its small-paned windows outlined in white on the grey walls, its low raftered rooms, and with a few washes of colour—pure blue, white, daffodil yellow—had made all bright within, to match the bright spaces of air and light without. There was some Westmorland oak, some low chairs, a sofa and a piano from the old Manchester house, some etchings and drawings, hung on the plain walls by Farrell himself, with the most fastidious care; and a few—a very few things—from his own best stores, which Hester allowed him to 'house' with Nelly from time to time—picture, or pot, or tapestry. She played watch-dog steadily, not resented by Farrell, and unsuspected by Nelly. Her one aim was that the stream of Nelly's frail life should not be muddied by any vile gossip; and she achieved it. The few neighbours who had made acquaintance with 'little Mrs. Sarratt' had, all of them been tacitly, nay eagerly willing, to take their cue from Hester. To be vouched for by Hester Martin, the 'wise woman' and saint of a country-side, was enough. It was understood that the poor little widow had been commended to the care of William Farrell and his sister, by the young husband whose gallant death was officially presumed by the War Office. Of course, Mrs. Sarratt, poor child, believed that he was still alive—that was so natural! But that hope would die down in time. And then—anything might happen!

Meanwhile, elderly husbands—the sole male inhabitants left in the gentry houses of the district—who possessed any legal knowledge, informed their wives that no one could legally presume the death of a vanished husband, under seven years, unless indeed they happen to have a Scotch domicile, in which case two years was enough. Seven years!—preposterous!—in time of war, said the wives. To which the husbands would easily reply that, in such cases as Mrs. Sarratt's, the law indeed might be 'an ass,' but there were ways round it. Mrs. Sarratt might re-marry, and no one could object, or would object. Only—if Sarratt did rise from the dead, the second marriage would be ipso facto null and void. But as Sarratt was clearly dead, what did that matter?

So that the situation, though an observed one—for how could the Farrell comings and goings, the Farrell courtesies and benefactions, possibly be hid?—was watched only by friendly and discreet eyes, thanks always to Hester. Most people liked William Farrell; even that stricter sect, who before the war had regarded him as a pleasure loving dilettante, and had been often scandalised by his careless levity in the matter of his duties as a landlord and county magnate. 'Bill Farrell' had never indeed evicted or dealt hardly with any mortal tenant. He had merely neglected and ignored them; had cared not a brass farthing about the rates which he or they, paid—why should he indeed, when he was so abominably rich from other sources than land?—nothing about improving their cows, or sheep or pigs; nothing about 'intensive culture,' or jam or poultry, or any of the other fads with which the persons who don't farm plague the persons who do; while the very mention of a public meeting, or any sort of public duty, put him to instant flight. Yet even the faddists met him with pleasure, and parted from him with regret. He took himself 'so jolly lightly'; you couldn't expect him to take other people seriously. Meanwhile, his genial cheery manner made him a general favourite, and his splendid presence, combined with his possessions and his descent, was universally accepted as a kind of Cumberland asset, to which other counties could hardly lay claim. If he wanted the little widow, why certainly, let him have her! It was magnificent what he had done for his hospital; when nobody before the war had thought him capable of a stroke of practical work. Real good fellow, Farrell! Let him go in and win. His devotion, and poor Nelly's beauty, only infused a welcome local element of romance into the ever-darkening scene of war.

* * * * *

The first anniversary of Sarratt's disappearance was over. Nelly had gone through it quite alone. Bridget was in London, and Nelly had said to Cicely—'Don't come for a few days—nor Sir William—please! I shall be all right.'

They obeyed her, and she spent her few days partly on the fells, and partly in endless knitting and sewing for a war-workroom recently started in her immediate neighbourhood. The emotion to which she surrendered herself would soon reduce her to a dull vacancy; and then she would sit passive, not forcing herself to think, alone in the old raftered room, or in the bit of garden outside, with its phloxes and golden rods; her small fingers working endlessly—till the wave of feeling and memory returned upon her. Those few days were a kind of 'retreat,' during which she lived absorbed in the recollections of her short, married life, and, above all, in which she tried piteously and bravely to make clear to herself what she believed; what sort of faith was in her for the present and the future. It often seemed to her that during the year since George's death, her mind had been wrenched and hammered into another shape. It had grown so much older, she scarcely knew it herself. Doubts she had never known before had come to her; but also, intermittently, a much keener faith. Oh, yes, she believed in God. She must; not only because George had believed in Him, but also because she, her very self, had been conscious, again and again, in the night hours, or on the mountains, of ineffable upliftings and communings, of flashes through the veil of things. And so there must be another world; because the God she guessed at thus, with sudden adoring insight, could not have made her George, only to destroy him; only to give her to him for a month, and then strike him from her for ever. The books she learnt to know through Farrell, belonging to that central modern literature, which is so wholly sceptical that the 'great argument' itself has almost lost interest for those who are producing it, often bewildered her, but did not really affect her. Religion—a vague, but deeply-felt religion—soothed and sheltered her. But she did not want to talk about it.

After these days were over, she emerged conscious of some radical change. She seemed to have been walking with George 'on the other side,' and to have left him there—for a while. She now really believed him dead, and that she had got to live her life without him. This first full and sincere admission of her loss tranquillised her. All the more reason now that she should turn to the dear friendships that life still held, should live in and for them, and follow where they led, through the years before her. Farrell, Cicely, Hester—they stood between her weakness—oh how conscious, how scornfully conscious, she was of it!—and sheer desolation. Cicely, 'Willy,'—for somehow she and he had slipped almost without knowing it into Christian names—had become to her as brother and sister. And Hester too—so strong!—so kind!—was part of her life; severe sometimes, but bracing. Nelly was conscious, indeed, occasionally, that something in Hester disapproved something in her. 'But it would be all right,' she thought, wearily, 'if only I were stronger.' Did she mean physically or morally? The girl's thought did not distinguish.

'I believe you want me "hatched over again and hatched different"!' she said one evening to Hester, as she laid her volume of 'Adam Bede' aside.

'Do I ever say so?'

'No—but—if you were me—you wouldn't stop here moping!' said Nelly, with sudden passion. 'You'd strike out—do something!'

'With these hands?' said Hester, raising one of them, and looking at it pitifully. 'My dear—does Bridget feed you properly?'

'I don't know. I never think about it. She settles it.'

'Why do you let her settle it?'

'She will!' cried Nelly, sitting upright in her chair, her eyes bright and cheeks flushing, as though something in Hester's words accused her. 'I couldn't stop her!'

'Well, but when she's away?'

'Then Mrs. Rowe settles it,' said Nelly, half laughing. 'I never enquire. What does it matter?'

She put down her knitting, and her wide, sad eyes followed the clouds as they covered the purple breast of the Langdales, which rose in threatening, thunder light, beyond the steely tarn in front. Hester watched her anxiously. How lovely was the brown head, with its short curls enclosing the delicate oval of the face! But Nelly's lack of grip on life, of any personal demand, of any healthy natural egotism, whether towards Bridget, or anybody else, was very disquieting to Hester. In view of the situation which the older woman saw steadily approaching, how welcome would have been some signs of a greater fighting strength in the girl's nature!

* * * * *

But Nelly had made two friends since the migration to the farm with whom at any rate she laughed; and that, as Hester admitted, was something.

One was a neighbouring farmer, an old man, with splendid eyes, under dark bushy brows, fine ascetic features, grizzled hair, and a habit of carrying a scythe over his shoulder which gave him the look of 'Old Father Time,' out for the mowing of men. The other was the little son of a neighbouring parson, an urchin of eight, who had succumbed to an innocent passion for the pretty lady at the farm.

One radiant October afternoon, Nelly carried out a chair and some sketching things into the garden. But the scheme Farrell had suggested to her, of making a profession of her drawing, had not come to much. Whether it was the dying down of hope, and therewith of physical energy, or whether she had been brought up sharp against the limits of her small and graceful talent, and comparing herself with Farrell, thought it no use to go on—in any case, she had lately given it up, except as an amusement. But there are days when the humblest artist feels the creative stir; and on this particular afternoon there were colours and lights abroad on the fells, now dyed red with withering fern, and overtopped by sunny cloud, that could not be resisted. She put away the splints she was covering, and spread out her easel.

And presently, through every bruised and tired sense, as she worked and worked, the 'Eternal Fountain of that Heavenly Beauty' distilled His constant balm. She worked on, soothed and happy.

In a few minutes there was a sound at the gate. A child looked in—black tumbled hair, dark eyes, a plain but most engaging countenance.

'I'm tomin in,' he announced, and without any more ado, came in. Nelly held out a hand and kissed him.

'You must be very good.'

'I is good,' said the child, radiantly.

Nelly spread a rug for him to lie on, and provided him with a piece of paper, some coloured chalks and a piece of mill board. He turned over on his front and plunged into drawing—

Silence—till Nelly asked—

'What are you drawing, Tommy?'

'Haggans and Hoons,' said a dreamy voice, the voice of one absorbed.

'I forget'—said Nelly gravely—'which are the good ones?'

'The Hoons are good. The Haggans are awfully wicked!' said the child, slashing away at his drawing with bold vindictive strokes.

'Are you drawing a Haggan, Tommy?'

'Yes.'

He held up a monster, half griffin, half crocodile, for her to see, and she heartily admired it.

'Where do the Haggans live, Tommy?'

'In Jupe,' said the child, again drawing busily.

'You mean Jupiter?'

'I don't!' said Tommy reproachfully, 'I said Jupe, and I mean Jupe. Perhaps'—he conceded, courteously—'I may have got the idea from that other place. But it's quite different. You do believe it's quite different—don't you?'

'Certainly,' said Nelly.

'I'm glad of that—because—well, because I can't be friends with people that say it isn't different. You do see that, don't you?'

Nelly assured him she perfectly understood, and then Tommy rolled over on his back, and staring at the sky, began to talk in mysterious tones of 'Jupe,' and the beings that lived in it, Haggans, and Hoons, lions and bears, and white mice. His voice grew dreamier and dreamier. Nelly thought he was asleep, and she suddenly found herself looking at the little figure on the grass with a passionate hunger. If such a living creature belonged to her—to call her its very own—to cling to her with its dear chubby hands!

She bent forward, her eyes wet, above the unconscious Tommy. But a step on the road startled her, and raising her head she saw 'Old Father Time,' with scythe on shoulder, leaning on the little gate which led from the strip of garden to the road, and looking at her with the expression which implied a sarcastic view of things in general, and especially of 'gentlefolk.' But he was favourably inclined to Mrs. Sarratt, and when Nelly invited him in, he obeyed her, and grounding his scythe, as though it had been a gun, he stood leaning upon it, indulgently listening while she congratulated him on a strange incident which, as she knew from Hester, had lately occurred to him.

A fortnight before, the old man had received a letter from the captain of his son's company in France sympathetically announcing to him the death in hospital of his eldest son, from severe wounds received in a raid, and assuring him he might feel complete confidence 'that everything that could be done for your poor boy has been done.'

The news had brought woe to the cottage where the old man and his wife lived alone, since the fledging of their sturdy brood, under a spur of Loughrigg. The wife, being now a feeble body, had taken to her bed under the shock of grief; the old man had gone to his work as usual, 'nobbut a bit queerer in his wits,' according to the farmer who employed him. Then after three days came a hurried letter of apology from the captain, and a letter from the chaplain, to say there had been a most deplorable mistake, and 'your son, I am glad to say, was only slightly wounded, and is doing well!'

Under so much contradictory emotion, old Backhouse's balance had wavered a good deal. He received Nelly's remarks with a furtive smile, as though he were only waiting for her to have done, and when they ceased, he drew a letter slowly from his pocket.

'D'ye see that, Mum?'

Nelly nodded.

'I'se juist gotten it from t' Post Office. They woant gie ye noothin' till it's forced oot on 'em. But I goa regular, an to-day owd Jacob—'at's him as keps t' Post Office—handed it ower. It's from Donald, sure enoof.'

He held it up triumphantly. Nelly's heart leapt—and sank. How often in the first months of her grief had she seen—in visions—that blessed symbolic letter held up by some ministering hand!—only to fall from the ecstasy of the dream into blacker depths of pain.

'Oh, Mr. Backhouse, I'm so glad!' was all she could find to say. But her sweet trembling face spoke for her. After a pause, she added—'Does he write with his own hand?'

'You mun see for yorsel'.' He held it out to her. She looked at it mystified.

'But it's not opened!'

'I hadna juist me spectacles,' said Father Time, cautiously. 'Mebbee yo'll read it to me.'

'But it's to his mother!' cried Nelly. 'I can't open your wife's letter!'

'You needn't trooble aboot that. You read it, Mum. There'll be noothin' in it.'

He made her read it. There was nothing in it. It was just a nice letter from a good boy, saying that he had been knocked over in 'a bit of a scrap,' but was nearly all right, and hoped his father and mother were well, 'as it leaves me at present.' But when it was done, Father Time took off his hat, bent his grey head, and solemnly thanked his God, in broad Westmorland. Nelly's eyes swam, as she too bowed the head, thinking of another who would never come back; and Tommy, thumb in mouth, leant against her, listening attentively.

At the end of the thanksgiving however, Backhouse raised his head briskly.

'Not that I iver believed that foolish yoong mon as wrote me that Dick wor dead,' he said, contemptuously. 'Bit it's as weel to git things clear.'

Nelly heartily agreed, adding—

'I may be going to London next week, Mr. Backhouse. You say your son will be in the London Hospital. Shall I go and see him?'

Backhouse looked at her cautiously.

'I doan't know, Mum. His moother will be goin', likely.'

'Oh, I don't want to intrude, Mr. Backhouse. But if she doesn't go?'

'Well, Mum; I will say you've a pleasant coontenance, though yo're not juist sich a thrivin' body as a'd like to see yer. But theer's mony people as du more harm nor good by goin' to sit wi' sick foak.'

Nelly meekly admitted it; and then she suggested that she might be the bearer of anything Mrs. Backhouse would like to send her son—clothes, for instance? The old man thawed rapidly, and the three, Nelly, Tommy, and Father Time, were soon sincerely enjoying each other's society, when a woman in a grey tweed costume, and black sailor hat, arrived at the top of a little hill in the road outside the garden, from which the farm and its surroundings could be seen.

At the sight of the group in front of the farm, she came to an abrupt pause, and hidden from them by a projecting corner of wall she surveyed the scene—Nelly, with Tommy on her knee, and the old labourer who had just shouldered his scythe again, and was about to go on his way.

It was Bridget Cookson, who had been to Kendal for the day, and had walked over from Grasmere, where the char-a-banc, alias the 'Yellow Peril,' had deposited her. She had passed the Post Office on her way, and had brought thence a letter which she held in her hand. Her face was pale and excited. She stood thinking; her eyes on Nelly, her lips moving as though she were rehearsing some speech or argument.

Then when she had watched old Backkhouse make his farewell, and turn towards the gate, she hastily opened a black silk bag hanging from her wrist, and thrust the letter into it.

After which she walked on, meeting the old man in the lane, and run into by Tommy, who, head foremost, was rushing home to shew his glorious Haggan to his 'mummy.'

Nelly's face at sight of her sister stiffened insensibly.

'Aren't you very tired, Bridget? Have you walked all the way? Yes, you do look tired! Have you had tea?'

'Yes, at Windermere.'

Bridget cleared the chair on which Nelly had placed her paint-box, and sat down. She was silent a little and then said abruptly—

'It's a horrid bore, I shall have to go to London again.'

'Again?' Nelly's look of surprise was natural. Bridget had returned from another long stay in the Bloomsbury boarding-house early in October, and it was now only the middle of the month. But Bridget's doings were always a great mystery to Nelly. She was translating something from the Spanish—that was all Nelly knew—and also, that when an offer had been made to her through a friend, of some translating work for the Foreign Office, she had angrily refused it. She would not, she said, be a slave to any public office.

'Won't it be awfully expensive?' said Nelly after a pause, as Bridget did not answer. The younger sister was putting her painting things away, and making ready to go in. For though the day had been wonderfully warm for October, the sun had just set over Bowfell, and the air had grown suddenly chilly.

'Well, I can't help it,' said Bridget, rather roughly. 'I shall have to go.'

Something in her voice made Nelly look at her.

'I say you are tired! Come in and lie down a little. That walk from Grasmere's too much for you!'

Bridget submitted with most unusual docility.

The sisters entered the house together.

'I'll go upstairs for a little,' said Bridget. 'I shall be all right by supper.' Then, as she slowly mounted the stairs, a rather gaunt and dragged figure in her dress of grey alpaca, she turned to say—

'I met Sir William on the road just now. He passed me in the car, and waved his hand. He called out something—I couldn't hear it.'

'Perhaps to say he would come to supper,' said Nelly, her face brightening. 'I'll go and see what there is.'

Bridget went upstairs. Her small raftered room was invaded by the last stormy light of the autumn evening. The open casement window admitted a cold wind. Bridget shut it, with a shiver. But instead of lying down, she took a chair by the window, absently removed her hat, and sat there thinking. The coppery light from the west illumined her face with its strong discontented lines, and her hands, which were large, but white and shapely—a source indeed of personal pride to their owner.

Presently, in the midst of her reverie, she heard a step outside, and saw Sir William Farrell approaching the gate. Nelly, wrapped in a white shawl, was still strolling about the garden, and Bridget watched their meeting—Nelly's soft and smiling welcome, and Farrell's eagerness, his evident joy in finding her alone.

'And she just wilfully blinds herself!' thought Bridget contemptuously—'talks about his being a brother to her, and that sort of nonsense. He's in love with her!—of course he's in love with her. And as for Nelly—she's not in love with him. But she's getting used to him; she depends on him. When he's not there she misses him. She's awfully glad to see him when he comes. Perhaps, it'll take a month or two. I give it a month or two—perhaps six months—perhaps a year. And then she'll marry him—and—'

Here her thoughts became rather more vague and confused. They were compounded of a fierce impatience with the war, and of certain urgent wishes and ambitions, which had taken possession of a strong and unscrupulous character. She wanted to travel. She wanted to see the world, and not to be bothered by having to think of money. Contact with very rich people, like the Farrells, and the constant spectacle of what an added range and power is given to the human will by money, had turned the dull discontent of her youth into an active fever of desire. She had no illusions about herself at all. She was already a plain and unattractive old maid. Nobody would want to marry her; and she did not want to marry anybody. But she wanted to do things and to see things, when the hateful war was over. She was full of curiosities about life and the world, that were rather masculine than feminine. Her education, though it was still patchy and shallow, had been advancing since Nelly's marriage, and her intelligence was hungry. The satisfaction of it seemed too to promise her the only real pleasures to which she could look forward in life. On the wall of her bedroom were hanging photographs of Rome, Athens, the East. She dreamt of a wandering existence; she felt that she would be insatiable of movement, of experience, if the chance were given her.

But how could one travel, or buy books, or make new acquaintances, without money?—something more at any rate than the pittance on which she and Nelly subsisted.

What was it Sir William was supposed to have, by way of income?—thirty thousand a year? Well, he wouldn't always be spending it on his hospital, and War income tax, and all the other horrible burdens of the time. If Nelly married him, she would have an ample margin to play with; and to do Nelly justice, she was always open-handed, always ready to give away. She would hand over her own small portion to her sister, and add something to it. With six or seven hundred a year, Bridget would be mistress of her own fate, and of the future. Often, lately, in waking moments of the night, she had felt a sudden glow of exultation, thinking what she could do with such a sum. The world seemed to open out on all sides—offering her new excitements, new paths to tread in. She wanted no companion, to hamper her with differing tastes and wishes. She would be quite sufficient to herself.

The garden outside grew dark. She heard Farrell say 'It's too cold for you—you must come in,' and she watched Nelly enter the house in front of him—turning her head back to answer something he said to her. Even through the dusk Bridget was conscious of her sister's beauty. She did not envy it in the least. It was Nelly's capital—Nelly's opportunity. Let her use it for them both. Bridget would be well satisfied to gather up the crumbs from her rich sister's table.

Then from the dream, she came back with chill and desperation—to reality. The letter in her pocket—the journey before her—she pondered alternatives. What was she to do in this case—or in that? Everything might be at stake—everything was at stake—her life and Nelly's—

The voices from the parlour below came up to her. She heard the crackling of a newly lighted fire—Farrell reading aloud—and Nelly's gentle laughter. She pictured the scene; the two on either side of the fire, with Nelly's mourning, her plain widow's dress, as the symbol—in Nelly's eyes—of what divided her from Farrell, or any other suitor, and made it possible to be his friend without fear. Bridget knew that Nelly so regarded it. But that of course was just Nelly's foolish way of looking at things. It was only a question of time.

And meanwhile the widow's dress had quite other meanings for Bridget. She pondered long in the dark, till the supper bell rang.

At supper, her silence embarrassed and infected her companions, and Farrell, finding it impossible to get another tete-a-tete with Nelly, took his leave early. He must be up almost with the dawn so as to get to Carton by nine o'clock.

* * * * *

Out of a stormy heaven the moon was breaking as he walked back to his cottage. The solitude of the mountain ways, the freshness of the rain-washed air, and the sweetness of his hour with Nelly, after the bustle of the week, the arrivals and departures, the endless business, of a great hospital:—he was conscious of them all, intensely conscious, as parts of a single, delightful whole to which he had looked forward for days. And yet he was restless and far from happy. He wandered about the mountain roads for a long time—watching the moon as it rose above the sharp steep of Loughrigg and sent long streamers of light down the Elterwater valley, and up the great knees of the Pikes. The owls hooted in the oak-woods, and the sound of water—the Brathay rushing over the Skelwith rocks, and all the little becks in fell and field, near and far—murmured through the night air, and made earth-music to the fells. Farrell had much of the poet in him; and the mountains and their life were dear to him. But he was rapidly passing into the stage when a man over-mastered by his personal desires is no longer open to the soothing of nature. He had recently had a long and confidential talk with his lawyer at Carlisle, who was also his friend, and had informed himself minutely about the state of the law. Seven years!—unless, of her own free will, she took the infinitesimal risk of marriage before the period was up.

But he despaired of her doing any such thing. He recognised fully that the intimacy she allowed him, her sweet openness and confidingness, were all conditioned by what she regarded as the fixed points in her life; by her widowhood, legal and spiritual, and by her tacit reliance on his recognition of the fact that she was set apart, bound as other widows were not bound, protected by the very mystery of Sarratt's fate, from any thought of re-marriage.

And he!—all the time the strength of a man's maturest passion was mounting in his veins. And with it a foreboding—coming he knew not whence—like the sudden shadow that, as he looked, blotted out the moonlight on the shining bends and loops of the Brathay, where it wandered through the Elterwater fields.



CHAPTER XII

Bridget Cookson slowly signed her name to the letter she had been writing in the drawing-room of the boarding-house where she was accustomed to stay during her visits to town. Then she read the letter through—

'I can't get back till the middle or end of next week at least. There's been a great deal to do, of one kind or another. And I'm going down to Woking to-morrow to spend the week-end with a girl I met here who's knocked up in munition-work. Don't expect me till you see me. But I daresay I shan't be later than Friday.'

Bridget Cookson had never yet arrived at telling falsehoods for the mere pleasure of it. On the whole she preferred not to tell them. But she was well aware that her letter to Nelly contained a good many, both expressed and implied.

Well, that couldn't be helped. She put up her letter, and then proceeded to look carefully through the contents of her handbag. Yes, her passport was all right, and her purse with its supply of notes. Also the letter that she was to present to the Base Commandant, or the Red Cross representative at the port of landing. The latter had been left open for her to read. It was signed 'Ernest Howson, M.D.,' and asked that Miss Bridget Cookson might be sent forward to No. 102, General Hospital, X Camp, France, as quickly as possible.

There was also another letter addressed to herself in the same handwriting. She opened it and glanced through it—

'DEAR MISS COOKSON,—I think I have made everything as easy for you as I can on this side. You won't have any difficulty. I'm awfully glad you're coming. I myself am much puzzled, and don't know what to think. Anyway I am quite clear that my right course was to communicate with you—first. Everything will depend on what you say.'

The following afternoon, Bridget found herself, with a large party of V.A.D.'s, and other persons connected with the Red Cross, on board a Channel steamer. The day was grey and cold, and Bridget having tied on her life-belt, and wrapped herself in her thickest cloak, found a seat in the shelter of the deck cabins whence the choppy sea, the destroyer hovering round them, and presently the coast of France were visible. A secret excitement filled her. What was she going to see? and what was she going to do? All round her too were the suggestions of war, commonplace and familiar by now to half the nation, but not to Bridget who had done her best to forget the war. The steamer deck was crowded with officers returning from leave who were walking up and down, all of them in life-belts, chatting and smoking. All eyes were watchful of the sea, and the destroyer; and the latest submarine gossip passed from mouth to mouth. The V.A.D.'s with a few army nurses, kept each other company on the stern deck. The mild sea gave no one any excuse for discomfort, and the pleasant-faced rosy girls in their becoming uniforms, laughed and gossiped with each other, though not without a good many side glances towards the khaki figures pacing the deck, many of them specimens of English youth at its best.

Bridget however took little notice of them. She was becoming more and more absorbed in her own problem. She had not in truth made up her mind how to deal with it, and she admitted reluctantly that she would have to be guided by circumstance. Midway across, when the French coast and its lighthouses were well in view, she took out the same letter which she had received two days before at the Grasmere post-office, and again read it through.

'X Camp, 102, General Hospital.

'DEAR MISS COOKSON,—I am writing to you, in the first instance instead of to Mrs. Sarratt, because I have a vivid remembrance of what seemed to me your sister's frail physical state, when I saw you last May at Rydal. I hope she is much stronger, but I don't want to risk what, if it ended in disappointment, might only be a terrible strain upon her to no purpose—so I am preparing the way by writing to you.

'The fact is I want you to come over to France—at once. Can you get away, without alarming your sister, or letting her, really, know anything about it? It is the merest, barest chance, but I think there is just a chance, that a man who is now in hospital here may be poor George Sarratt—only don't build upon it yet, please. The case was sent on here from one of the hospitals near the Belgian frontier about a month ago, in order that a famous nerve-specialist, who has joined us here for a time, might give his opinion on it. It is a most extraordinary story. I understand from the surgeon who wrote to our Commandant, that one night, about three months ago, two men, in German uniforms, were observed from the British front-line trench, creeping over the No Man's Land lying between the lines at a point somewhere east of Dixmude. One man, who threw up his hands, was dragging the other, who seemed wounded. It was thought that they were deserters, and a couple of men were sent out to bring them in. Just as they were being helped into our trench, however, one of them was hit by an enemy sniper and mortally wounded. Then it was discovered that they were not Germans at all. The man who had been hit said a few incoherent things about his wife and children in the Walloon patois as he lay in the trench, and trying to point to his companion, uttered the one word "Anglais"—that, everyone swears to—and died. No papers were found on either of them, and when the other man was questioned, he merely shook his head, with a vacant look. Various tests were applied to him, but it was soon clear, both that he was dumb—and deaf—from nerve shock, probably—and that he was in a terrible physical state. He had been severely wounded—apparently many months before—in the shoulder and thigh. The wounds had evidently been shockingly neglected, and were still septic. The surgeon who examined him thought that what with exposure, lack of food, and his injuries, it was hardly probable he would live more than a few weeks. However, he has lingered till now, and the specialist I spoke of has just seen him.

'As to identification marks there were none. But you'll hear all about that when you come. All I can say is that, as soon as they got the man into hospital, the nurses and surgeons became convinced that he was English, and that in addition to his wounds, it was a case of severe shell-shock—acute and long-continued neurasthenia properly speaking,—loss of memory, and all the rest of it.

'Of course the chances of this poor fellow being George Sarratt are infinitesimal—I must warn you as to that. How account for the interval between September 1915 and June 1916—for his dress, his companion—for their getting through the German lines?

'However, directly I set eyes on this man, which was the week after I arrived here, I began to feel puzzled about him. He reminded me of someone—but of whom I couldn't remember. Then one afternoon it suddenly flashed upon me—and for the moment I felt almost sure that I was looking at George Sarratt. Then, of course, I began to doubt again. I have tried—under the advice of the specialist I spoke of—all kinds of devices for getting into some kind of communication with him. Sometimes the veil between him and those about him seems to thin a little, and one makes attempts—hypnotism, suggestion, and so forth. But so far, quite in vain. He has, however, one peculiarity which I may mention. His hands are long and rather powerful. But the little fingers are both crooked—markedly so. I wonder if you ever noticed Sarratt's hands? However, I won't write more now. You will understand, I am sure, that I shouldn't urge you to come, unless I thought it seriously worth your while. On the other hand, I cannot bear to excite hopes which may—which probably will—come to nothing. All I can feel certain of is that it is my duty to write, and I expect that you will feel that it is your duty to come.

'I send you the address of a man at the War Office—high up in the R.A.M.C.—to whom I have already written. He will, I am sure, do all he can to help you get out quickly. Whoever he is, the poor fellow here is very ill.'

* * * * *

The steamer glided up the dock of the French harbour. The dusk had fallen, but Bridget was conscious of a misty town dimly sprinkled with lights, and crowned with a domed church; of chalk downs, white and ghostly, to right and left; and close by, of quays crowded with soldiers, motors, and officials. Carrying her small suit-case, she emerged upon the quay, and almost immediately was accosted by the official of the Red Cross who had been told off to look after her.

'Let me carry your suit-case. There is a motor here, which will take you to X——. There will be two nurses going with you.'

Up the long hill leading southwards out of the town, sped the motor, stopping once to show its pass to the sentries—khaki and grey, on either side of the road, and so on into the open country, where an autumn mist lay over the uplands, beneath a faintly starlit sky. Soon it was quite dark. Bridget listened vaguely to the half-whispered talk of the nurses opposite, who were young probationers going back to work after a holiday, full of spirits and merry gossip about 'Matron' and 'Sister,' and their favourite surgeons. Bridget was quite silent. Everything was strange and dreamlike. Yet she was sharply conscious that she was nearing—perhaps—some great experience, some act—some decision—which she would have to make for herself, with no one to advise her. Well, she had never been a great hand at asking advice. People must decide things for themselves.

She wondered whether they would let her see 'the man' that same night. Hardly—unless he were worse—in danger. Otherwise, they would be sure to think it better for her to see him first in daylight. She too would be glad to have a night's rest before the interview. She had a curiously bruised and battered feeling, as of someone who had been going through an evil experience.

Pale stretches of what seemed like water to the right, and across it a lighthouse. And now to the left, a sudden spectacle of lines of light in a great semicircle radiating up the side of a hill.

The nurses exclaimed—

'There's the Camp! Isn't it pretty at night?'

The officer sitting in front beside the driver turned to ask—

'Where shall I put you down?'

'Number——' said both the maidens in concert. The elderly major in khaki—who in peace-time was the leading doctor of a Shropshire country town—could not help smiling at the two lassies, and their bright looks.

'You don't seem particularly sorry to come back!' he said.

'Oh, we're tired of holidays,' said the taller of the two, with a laugh. 'People at home think they're so busy, and—-'

'You think they're doing nothing?'

'Well, it don't seem much, when you've been out here!' said the girl more gravely—'and when you know what there is to do!'

'Aye, aye,' said the man in front. 'We could do with hundreds more of your sort. Hope you preached to your friends.'

'We did!' said both, each with the same young steady voice.

'Here we are—Stop, please.'

For the motor had turned aside to climb the hill into the semicircle. On all sides now were rows of low buildings—hospital huts—hospital marquees—stores—canteens. Close to the motor, as it came to a stand-still, the door of a great marquee stood open, and Bridget could see within, a lighted hospital ward, with rows of beds, men in scarlet bed-jackets, sitting or lying on them—flowers—nurses moving about. The scene was like some bright and delicate illumination on the dark.

'I shall have to take you a bit further on,' said the major to Bridget, as the two young nurses waved farewell. 'We've got a room in the hotel for you. And Dr. Howson will come for you in the morning. He thought that would be more satisfactory both for you and the patient than that you should go to the hospital to-night.'

Bridget acquiesced, with a strong sense of relief. And presently the camp and its lights were all left behind again, and the motor was rushing on, first through a dark town, and then through woods—pine woods—as far as the faint remaining light enabled her to see, till dim shapes of houses, and scattered lamps began again to appear, and the motor drew up.

'Well, you'll find a bed here, and some food,' said the major as he handed her out. 'Can't promise much. It's a funny little place, but they don't look after you badly.'

They entered one of the small seaside hotels of the cheaper sort which abound in French watering-places, where the walls of the tiny rooms seem to be made of brown paper, and everyone is living in their neighbour's pocket. But a pleasant young woman came forward to take Bridget's bag.

'Mademoiselle Cook—Cookson?' she said interrogatively. 'I have a letter for Mademoiselle. Du medecin,' she added, addressing the major.

'Ah?' That gentleman put down Bridget's bag in the little hall, and stood attentive. Bridget opened the letter—a very few words—and read it with an exclamation.

'DEAR MISS COOKSON,—I am awfully sorry not to meet you to-night, and at the hospital to-morrow. But I am sent for to Bailleul. My only brother has been terribly wounded—they think fatally—in a bombing attack last night. I am going up at once—there is no help for it. One of my colleagues, Dr. Vincent, will take you to the hospital and will tell me your opinion. In haste.—Yours sincerely,

'ERNEST HOWSON.'

'H'm, a great pity!' said the major, as she handed the note to him. 'Howson has taken a tremendous interest in the case. But Vincent is next best. Not the same thing perhaps—but still—Of course the whole medical staff here has been interested in it. It has some extraordinary features. You I think have had a brother-in-law "missing" for some time?'

He had piloted her into the bare salle a manger, where two young officers, with a party of newly-arrived V.A.D.'s were having dinner, and where through an open window came in the dull sound of waves breaking on a sandy shore.

'My brother-in-law has been missing since the battle of Loos,' said Bridget—'more than a year. We none of us believe that he can be alive. But of course when Dr. Howson wrote to me, I came at once.'

'Has he a wife?'

'Yes, but she is very delicate. That is why Dr. Howson wrote to me. If there were any chance—of course we must send for her. But I shall know—I shall know at once.'

'I suppose you will—yes, I suppose you will,' mused the major. 'Though of course a man is terribly aged by such an experience. He's English—that we're certain of. He often seems to understand—half understand—a written phrase or word in English. And he is certainly a man of refinement. All his personal ways—all that is instinctive and automatic—the subliminal consciousness, so to speak—seems to be that of a gentleman. But it is impossible to get any response out of him, for anything connected with the war. And yet we doubt whether there is any actual brain lesion. So far it seems to be severe functional disturbance—which is neurasthenia—aggravated by his wounds and general state. But the condition is getting worse steadily. It is very sad, and very touching. However, you will get it all out of Vincent. You must have some dinner first. I wish you a good-night.'

And the good man, so stout and broad-shouldered that he seemed to be bursting out of his khaki, hurried away. The lady seemed to him curiously hard and silent—'a forbidding sort of party.' But then he himself was a person of sentiment, expressing all the expected feelings in the right places, and with perfect sincerity.

Bridget took her modest dinner, and then sat by the window, looking out over a lonely expanse of sand, towards a moonlit sea. To right and left were patches of pine wood, and odd little seaside villas, with fantastic turrets and balconies. A few figures passed—nurses in white head dresses, and men in khaki. Bridget understood after talking to the little patronne, that the name of the place was Paris a la Mer, that there was a famous golf course near, and that large building, with a painted front to the right, was once the Casino, and now a hospital for officers.

It was all like a stage scene, the sea, the queer little houses, the moonlight, the passing figures. Only the lights were so few and dim, and there was no music.

'Miss Cookson?'

Bridget turned, to see a tall young surgeon in khaki, tired, pale and dusty, who looked at her with a frown of worry, a man evidently over-driven, and with hardly any mind to give to this extra task that had been put upon him.

'I'm sorry to be late—but we've had an awful rush to-day,' he said, as he perfunctorily shook hands. 'There was some big fighting on the Somme, the night before last, and the casualty trains have been coming in all day. I'm only able to get away for five minutes.

'Well now, Miss Cookson'—he sat down opposite her, and tried to get his thoughts into business shape—'first let me tell you it's a great misfortune for you that Howson's had to go off. I know something about the case—but not nearly as much as he knows. First of all—how old was your brother-in-law?'

'About twenty-seven—I don't know precisely.'

'H'm. Well of course this man looks much older than that—but the question is what's he been through? Was Lieutenant Sarratt fair or dark?'

'Rather dark. He had brown hair.'

'Eyes?'

'I can't remember precisely,' said Bridget, after a moment. 'I don't notice the colour of people's eyes. But I'm sure they were some kind of brown.'

'This man's are a greenish grey. Can you recollect anything peculiar about Lieutenant Sarratt's hands?'

Again Bridget paused for a second or two, and then said—'I can't remember anything at all peculiar about them.'

The surgeon looked at her closely, and was struck with the wooden irresponsiveness of the face, which was however rather handsome, he thought, than otherwise. No doubt, she was anxious to speak deliberately, when so much might depend on her evidence and her opinion. But he had never seen any countenance more difficult to read.

'Perhaps you're not a close observer of such things?'

'No, I don't think I am.'

'H'm—that's rather a pity. A great deal may turn on them, in this case.'

Then the face before him woke up a little.

'But I am quite sure I should know my brother-in-law again, under any circumstances,' said Bridget, with emphasis.

'Ah, don't be so sure! Privation and illness change people terribly. And this poor fellow has suffered!'—he shrugged his shoulders expressively. 'Well, you will see him to-morrow. There is of course no external evidence to help us whatever. The unlucky accident that the Englishman's companion—who was clearly a Belgian peasant, disguised—of that there is no doubt—was shot through the lungs at the very moment that the two men reached the British line, has wiped out all possible means of identification—unless, of course, the man himself can be recognised by someone who knew him. We have had at least a dozen parties—relations of "missing" men—much more recent cases—over here already—to no purpose. There is really no clue, unless'—the speaker rose with a tired smile—'unless you can supply one, when you see him. But I am sorry about the fingers. That has always seemed to me a possible clue. To-morrow then, at eleven?'

Bridget interrupted.

'It is surely most unlikely that my brother-in-law could have survived all this time? If he had been a prisoner, we should have heard of him, long ago. Where could he have been?'

The young man shrugged his shoulders.

'There have been a few cases, you know—of escaped prisoners—evading capture for a long time—and finally crossing the line. But of course it is very unlikely—most unlikely. Well, to-morrow?' He bowed and departed.

Bridget made her way to her small carpetless room, and sat for long with a shawl round her at the open window. She could imagine the farm in this moonlight. It was Saturday. Very likely both Cicely and Sir William were at the cottage. She seemed to see Nelly, with the white shawl over her dark head, saying good-night to them at the farm-gate. That meant that it was all going forward. Some day,—and soon,—Nelly would discover that Farrell was necessary to her—that she couldn't do without him—just as she had never been able in practical ways to do without her sister. No, there was nothing in the way of Nelly's great future, and the free development of her—Bridget's—own life, but this sudden and most unwelcome stroke of fate. If she had to send for Nelly—supposing it really were Sarratt—and then if he died—Nelly might never get over it.

It might simply kill her—why not? All the world knew that she was a weakling. And if it didn't kill her, it would make it infinitely less likely that she would marry Farrell—in any reasonable time. Nelly was not like other people. She was all feelings. Actually to see George die—and in the state that these doctors described—would rack and torture her. She would never be the same again. The first shock was bad enough; this might be far worse. Bridget's selfishness, in truth, counted on the same fact as Farrell's tenderness. 'After all, what people don't see, they can't feel'—to quite the same degree. But if Nelly, being Nelly, had seen the piteous thing, she would turn against Farrell, and think it loyalty to George to send her rich suitor about his business. Bridget felt that she could exactly foretell the course of things. A squalid and melancholy veil dropped over the future. Poverty, struggle, ill-health for Nelly—poverty, and the starving of all natural desires and ambitions for herself—that was all there was to look forward to, if the Farrells were alienated, and the marriage thwarted.

A fierce revolt shook the woman by the window. She sat on there till the moon dropped into the sea, and everything was still in the little echoing hotel. And then though she went to bed she could not sleep.

* * * * *

After her coffee and roll in the little salle a manger, which with its bare boards and little rags of curtains was only meant for summer guests, and was now, on this first of November, nippingly cold, Bridget wandered a little on the shore watching the white dust of the foam as a chill west wind skimmed it from the incoming waves, then packed her bag, and waited restlessly for Dr. Vincent. She understood she was to be allowed, if she wished, two visits in the hospital, so as to give her an opportunity of watching the patient she was going to see, without undue hurry, and would then be motored back to D—— in time for the night boat. She was bracing herself therefore to an experience the details of which she only dimly foresaw, but which must in any case be excessively disagreeable. What exactly she was going to do or say, she didn't know. How could she, till the new fact was before her?

Punctually on the stroke of eleven, a motor arrived in charge of an army driver, and Bridget set out. They were to pick up Vincent in the town of X—— itself and run on to the Camp. The sun was out by this time, and all the seaside village, with its gimcrack hotels and villas flung pell-mell upon the sand, and among the pines, was sparkling under it. So were the withered woods, where the dead leaves were flying before the wind, the old town where Napoleon gathered his legions for the attack on England, and the wide sandy slopes beyond it, where the pine woods had perished to make room for the Camp. The car stopped presently on the edge of the town. To the left spread a river estuary, with a spit of land beyond, and lighthouses upon it, sharp against a pale blue sky. Every shade of pale yellow, of lilac and pearl, sparkled in the distance, in the scudding water, the fast flying westerly clouds, and the sandy inlets among the still surviving pines.

'You're punctuality itself,' said a man emerging from a building before which a sentry was pacing—'Now we shall be there directly.'

The building, so Bridget was informed, housed the Headquarters of the Base, and from it the business of the great Camp, whether on its military or its hospital side, was mainly carried on. And as they drove towards the Camp her companion, with the natural pride of the Englishman in his job, told the marvellous tale of the two preceding years—how the vast hospital city had been reared, and organised—the military camp too—the convalescent camp—the transports—and the feeding.

'The Boche thought they were the only organisers in the world!—We've taught them better!' he said, with a laugh in his pleasant eyes, the whole man of him, so weary the night before, now fresh and alert in the morning sunshine.

Bridget listened with an unwilling attention. This bit of the war seen close at hand was beginning to suggest to her some new vast world, of which she was wholly ignorant, where she was the merest cypher on sufferance. The thought was disagreeable to her irritable pride, and she thrust it aside. She had other things to consider.

They drew up outside one of the general hospitals lined along the Camp road.

'You'll find him in a special ward,' said Vincent, as he handed her out. 'But I'll take you first to Sister.'

They entered the first hut, and made their way past various small rooms, amid busy people going to and fro. Bridget was aware of the usual hospital smell of mingled anesthetic and antiseptic, and presently, her companion laid a hasty hand on her arm and drew her to one side. A surgeon passed with a nurse. They entered a room on the right, and left the door of it a little ajar.

'The operating theatre,' said Vincent, with a gesture that shewed her where to look; and through the open door Bridget saw a white room beyond, an operating table and a man, a splendid boy of nineteen or twenty lying on it, with doctors and nurses standing round. The youth's features shewed waxen against the white walls, and white overalls of the nurses.

'This way,' said Vincent. 'Sister, this is Miss Cookson. You remember—Dr. Howson sent for her.'

A shrewd-faced woman of forty in nurse's dress looked closely at Bridget.

'We shall be very glad indeed, Miss Cookson, if you can throw any light on this case. It is one of the saddest we have here. Will you follow me, please?'

Bridget found herself passing through the main ward of the hut, rows of beds on either hand. She seemed to be morbidly conscious of scores of eyes upon her, and was glad when she found herself in the passage beyond the ward.

The Sister opened a door into a tiny sitting-room, and offered Bridget a chair.

'They have warned you that this poor fellow is deaf and dumb?'

'Yes—I had heard that.'

'And his brain is very clouded. He tries to do all we tell him—it is touching to see him. But his real intelligence seems to be far away. Then there are the wounds. Did Dr. Howson tell you about them?'

'He said there were bad wounds.'

The Sister threw up her hands.

'How he ever managed to do the walking he must have done to get through the lines is a mystery to us all. What he must have endured! The wounds must have been dressed to begin with in a German field-hospital. Then on his way to Germany, before the wounds had properly healed—that at least is our theory—somewhere near the Belgian frontier he must have made his escape. What happened then, of course, during the winter and spring nobody knows; but when he reached our lines, the wounds were both in a septic state. There have been two operations for gangrene since he has been here. I don't think he'll stand another.'

Bridget lifted her eyes and looked intently at the speaker—

'You think he's very ill?'

'Very ill,' said the Sister emphatically. 'If you can identify him, you must send for his wife at once—at once! Lieutenant Sarratt was, I think, married?'

'Yes,' said Bridget. 'Now may I see him?'

The Sister looked at her visitor curiously. She was both puzzled and repelled by Bridget's manner, by its lack of spring and cordiality, its dull suggestion of something reserved and held back. But perhaps the woman was only shy; and oppressed by the responsibility of what she had come to do. The Sister was a very human person, and took tolerant views of everything that was not German. She rose, saying gently—

'If I may advise you, take time to watch him, before you form or express any opinion. We won't hurry you.'

Bridget followed her guide a few steps along the corridor. The Sister opened a door, and stood aside to let Bridget pass in. Then she came in herself, and beckoned to a young probationer who was rolling bandages on the further side of the only bed the room contained. The girl quietly put down her work and went out.

There was a man lying in the bed, and Bridget looked at him. Her heart beat so fast, that she felt for a moment sick and suffocated. The Sister bent over him tenderly, and put back the hair, the grey hair which had fallen over his forehead. At the touch, his eyes opened, and as he saw the Sister's face he very faintly smiled. Bridget suddenly put out a hand and steadied herself by a chair standing beside the bed. The Sister however saw nothing but the face on the pillow, and the smile. The smile was so rare!—it was the one sufficient reward for all his nurses did for him.

'Now I'll leave you,' said the Sister, forbearing to ask any further questions. 'Won't you sit down there? If you want anyone, you have only to touch that bell.'

She disappeared. And Bridget sat down, her eyes on the figure in the bed, and on the hand outside the sheet. Her own hands were trembling, as they lay crossed upon her lap.

How grey and thin the hair was—how ghostly the face—what suffering in every line!

Bridget drew closer.

'George!' she whispered.

No answer. The man's eyes were closed again. He seemed to be asleep. Bridget looked at his hand—intently. Then she touched it.

The heavy blue-veined eyelids rose again, as though at the only summons the brain understood. Bridget bent forward. What colour there had been in it before ebbed from her sallow face; her lips grew white. The eyes of the man in the bed met hers—first mechanically—without any sign of consciousness; then—was it imagination?—or was there a sudden change of expression—a quick trouble—a flickering of the lids? Bridget shook through every limb. If he recognised her, if the sight of her brought memory back—even a gleam of it—there was an end of everything, of course. She had only to go to the nearest telegraph office and send for Nelly.

But the momentary stimulus passed as she looked—the eyes grew vacant again—the lids fell. Bridget drew a long breath. She raised herself and moved her chair farther away.

Time passed. The window behind her was open, and the sun came in, and stole over the bed. The sick man scarcely moved at all. There was complete silence, except for the tread of persons in the corridor outside, and certain distant sounds of musketry and bomb practice from the military camp half a mile away.

He was dying—the man in the bed. That was plain. Bridget knew the look of mortal illness. It couldn't be long.

She sat there nearly an hour—thinking. At the end of that time she rang the hand-bell near her.

Sister Agnes appeared at once. Bridget had risen and confronted her.

'Well,' said the Sister eagerly. But the visitor's irresponsive look quenched her hopes at once.

'I see nothing at all that reminds me of my brother-in-law,' said Bridget with emphasis. 'I am very sorry—but I cannot identify this person as George Sarratt.'

The Sister's face fell.

'You don't even see the general likeness Dr. Howson thought he saw?'

Bridget turned back with her towards the bed.

'I see what Dr. Howson meant,' she said, slowly. 'But there is no real likeness. My brother-in-law's face was much longer. His mouth was quite different. And his eyes were brown.'

'Did you see the eyes again? Did he look at you?'

'Yes.'

'And there was no sign of recognition?'

'No.'

'Poor dear fellow!' said the Sister, stooping over him again. There was a profound and yearning pity in the gesture. 'I wish we could have kept him more alive—more awake—for you, to see. But there had to be morphia this morning. He had a dreadful night. Are you quite sure? Wouldn't you like to come back this afternoon, and watch him again? Sometimes a second time—Oh, and what of the hands?—did you notice them?' And suddenly remembering Dr. Howson's words, the Sister pointed to the long, bloodless fingers lying on the sheet, and to the marked deformity in each little finger.

'Yet—but George's hands were not peculiar in any way.' Bridget's voice, as she spoke, seemed to herself to come from far away; as though it were that of another person speaking under compulsion.

'I'm sorry—I'm sorry!'—the Sister repeated. 'It's so sad for him to be dying here—all alone—nobody knowing even who he is—when one thinks how somebody must be grieving and longing for him.'

'Have you no other enquiries?' said Bridget, abruptly, turning to pick up some gloves she had laid down.

'Oh yes—we have had other visitors—and I believe there is a gentleman coming to-morrow. But nothing that sounded so promising as your visit. You won't come again?'

'It would be no use,' said the even, determined voice. 'I will write to Dr. Howson from London. And I do hope'—for the first time, the kindly nurse perceived some agitation in this impressive stranger—'I do hope that nobody will write to my sister—to Mrs. Sarratt. She is very delicate. Excitement and disappointment might just kill her. That's why I came.'

'And that of course is why Dr. Howson wrote to you first. Oh I am sure he will take every care. He'll be very, very sorry! You'll write to him? And of course so shall I.'

The news that the lady from England had failed to identify the nameless patient to whom doctor and nurses had been for weeks giving their most devoted care spread rapidly, and Bridget before she left the hospital had to run the gauntlet of a good many enquiries, at the hands of the various hospital chiefs. She produced on all those who questioned her the impression of an unattractive, hard, intelligent woman whose judgment could probably be trusted.

'Glad she isn't my sister-in-law!' thought Vincent as he turned back from handing her into the motor which was to take her to the port. But he did not doubt her verdict, and was only sorry for 'old Howson,' who had been so sure that something would come of her visit.

The motor took Bridget rapidly back to D——, where she would be in good time for an afternoon boat. She got some food, automatically, at a hotel near the quay, and automatically made her way to the boat when the time came. A dull sense of something irrevocable,—something horrible,—overshadowed her. But the 'will to conquer' in her was as iron; and, as in the Prussian conscience, left no room for pity or remorse.



CHAPTER XIII

A psychologist would have found much to interest him in Bridget Cookson's mental state during the days which followed on her journey to France. The immediate result of that journey was an acute sharpening of intelligence, accompanied by a steady, automatic repression of all those elements of character or mind which might have interfered with its free working. Bridget understood perfectly that she had committed a crime, and at first she had not been able to protect herself against the normal reaction of horror or fear. But the reaction passed very quickly. Conscience gave up the ghost. Selfish will, and keen wits held the field; and Bridget ceased to be more than occasionally uncomfortable, though a certain amount of anxiety was of course inevitable.

She did not certainly want to be found out, either by Nelly or the Farrells; and she took elaborate steps to prevent it. She wrote first a long letter to Howson giving her reasons for refusing to believe in his tentative identification of the man at X—— as George Sarratt, and begging him not to write to her sister. 'That would be indeed cruel. She can just get along now, and every month she gets a little stronger. But her heart, which was weakened by the influenza last year, would never stand the shock of a fearful disappointment. Please let her be. I take all the responsibility. That man is not George Sarratt. I hope you may soon discover who he is.'

Step No. 2 was to go, on the very morning after she arrived in London, to the Enquiry Office in A—— Street. Particulars of the case in France had that morning reached the office, and Bridget was but just in time to stop a letter from Miss Eustace to Nelly. When she pointed out that she had been over to France on purpose to see for herself, that there was no doubt at all in her own mind, and that it would only torment a frail invalid to no purpose to open up the question, the letter was of course countermanded. Who could possibly dispute a sister's advice in such a case? And who could attribute the advice to anything else than sisterly affection!

Meanwhile among the mountains an unusually early winter was beginning to set in. The weather grew bitterly cold, and already a powdering of snow was on the fell-tops. For all that, Nelly could never drink deep enough of the November beauty, as it shone upon the fells through some bright frosty days. The oaks were still laden with leaf; the fern was still scarlet on the slopes; and the ghylls and waterfalls leapt foaming white down their ancestral courses. And in this austerer world, Nelly's delicate personality, as though braced by the touch of winter, seemed to move more lightly and buoyantly. She was more vividly interested in things and persons—in her drawing, her books, her endless knitting and sewing for the wounded. She was puzzled that Bridget stayed so long in town, but alack! she could do very well without Bridget. Some portion of the savour of life, of that infinity of small pleasures which each day may bring for the simple and the pure in heart, was again hers. Insensibly the great wound was healing. The dragging anguish of the first year assailed her now but rarely.

One morning she opened the windows in the little sitting-room, to let in the sunshine, and the great spectacle of the Pikes wrapped in majestic shadow, purple-black, with the higher peaks ranged in a hierarchy of light behind them.

She leant far out of the window, breathing in the tonic smell of the oak leaves on the grass beneath her, and the freshness of the mountain air. Then, as she turned back to the white-walled raftered room with its bright fire, she was seized with the pleasantness of this place which was now her home. Insensibly it had captured her heart, and her senses. And who was it—what contriving brain—had designed and built it up, out of the rough and primitive dwelling it had once been?

Of course, William Farrell had done it all! There was scarcely a piece of furniture, a picture, a book, that was not of his choosing and placing. Little by little, they had been gathered round her. His hand had touched and chosen them, every one. He took far more pleasure and interest in the details of these few rooms than in any of his own houses and costly possessions.

Suddenly—as she sat there on the window-ledge, considering the room, her back to the mountains—one of those explosions of consciousness rushed upon Nelly, which, however surprising the crash, are really long prepared and inevitable.

What did that room really mean—the artistic and subtle simplicity of it?—the books, the flowers, and the few priceless things, drawings or terra-cottas, brought from the cottage, and changed every few weeks by Farrell himself, who would arrive with them under his arm, or in his pockets, and take them back in like manner.

The colour flooded into Nelly's face. She dropped it in her hands with a low cry. An agony seized her. She loathed herself.

Then springing up passionately she began to pace the narrow floor, her slender arms and hands locked behind her.

Sir William was coming that very evening. So was Cicely, who was to be her own guest at the farm, while Marsworth, so she heard, was to have the spare room at the cottage.

She had not seen William Farrell for some time—for what counted, at least, as some time in their relation; not since that evening before Bridget went away—more than a fortnight. But it was borne in upon her that she had heard from him practically every day. There, in the drawer of her writing-table, lay the packet of his letters. She looked for them now morning after morning, and if they failed her, the day seemed blank. Anybody might have read them—or her replies. None the less Farrell's letters were the outpouring of a man's heart and mind to the one person with whom he felt himself entirely at ease. The endless problems and happenings of the great hospital to which he was devoting more and more energy, and more and more wealth; the incidents and persons that struck him; his loves and hates among the staff or the patients; the humour or the pity of the daily spectacle;—it was all there in his letters, told in a rich careless English that stuck to the memory. Nelly was accustomed to read and re-read them.

Yes, and she was proud to receive them!—proud that he thought so much of her opinion and cared so much for her sympathy. But why did he write to her, so constantly, so intimately?—what was the real motive of it all?