Missing - Mrs. Humphry Ward (books to read as a couple txt) 📗

the prospects of a happy ending were decidedly less. The odious Bridget might after all have acted intelligibly, though abominably.

As to the history of Sarratt's long disappearance, Cicely found that very little was known.

'We don't question him,' said the Sister. 'It only exhausts him; and it wouldn't be any good. He may tell his wife something more, of his own accord, but we doubt whether he knows much more than he told Dr. Howson. He remembers being wounded at Loos--lying out undiscovered, he thinks for two days--then a German hospital--and a long, long journey. And that's practically all. But just lately--this week, actually!--Dr. Howson has got some information, through a family of peasants living near Cassel, behind the British lines. They have relations across the Belgian border, and gradually they have discovered who the man was who came over the frontier with Mr. Sarratt. He came from a farm, somewhere between Brussels and Courtrai, and now they've managed to get a letter through from his brother. You know the man himself was shot just as they reached the British lines. But this letter really tells a good deal. The brother says that they found Mr. Sarratt almost dead,--and, as they thought, insane--in a wood near their house. He was then wearing the uniform of a British officer. They guessed he was an escaped prisoner, and they took him in and hid him. Then news filtered through to them of two English officers who had made their escape from a hospital train somewhere south-west of Brussels; one slightly wounded, and one severely; the severely wounded man suffering also from shell-shock. And the slightly wounded man was shot, while the other escaped. The train, it was said, was lying in a siding at the time--at the further edge of the forest bordering their farm. So, of course, they identified the man discovered by them as the severely wounded officer. Mr. Sarratt must have somehow just struggled through to their side of the forest, where they found him.

'What happened then, we can't exactly trace. He must have been there all the winter. He was deaf and dumb, from nerve-shock, and could give no account of himself at all. The men of the farm, two unmarried sons, were good to him, but their old mother, whose family was German, always hated his being there. She was in terror of the German military police who used to ride over the farm, and one day, when her sons were away, she took Mr. Sarratt's uniform, his identification disk, and all the personal belongings she could find, and either burned or buried them. The sons, who were patriotic Belgians, were however determined to protect him, and no doubt there may have been some idea of a reward, if they could find his friends. But they were afraid of their tyrannical old mother, and of what she might do. So at last they made up their minds to try somehow and get him over the French frontier, which was not far off, and through the German lines. One of the brothers, whose name was Benoit Desalles, to whom they say poor Mr. Sarratt was much attached, went with him. They must have had an awful time, walking by night, and hiding by day. Mr. Sarratt's wounds must have been in a bad state, for they were only half healed when he escaped, and they had been neglected all the winter. So how he dragged himself the distance he did, the doctors can't imagine. And the peasants near the frontier from whom we have got what information we have, have no knowledge at all of how he and his Belgian guide finally got through the German lines. But when they reached our lines, they were both, as Dr. Howson wrote to Miss Cookson, in German uniforms. His people suppose that Benoit had stripped some German dead, and that in the confusion caused in the German line--at a point where it ran through a Belgian village--by a British raid, at night, they got across the enemy trenches. And no doubt Benoit had local knowledge which helped.

'Then in the No Man's Land, between the lines, they were under both shell and rifle-fire, till it was seen by our men that Benoit had his hands up, and that the other was wounded. The poor Belgian was dragging Mr. Sarratt who was unconscious, and at last--wasn't it ill-luck?--just as our men were pulling them into the trench, Benoit was shot through the head by a German sniper. That, at least, is how we now reconstruct the story. As far as Mr. Sarratt is concerned, we let it alone. We have no heart to worry him. Poor fellow--poor, gallant, patient fellow!'

And the Sister's strong face softened, as Bridget had seen it soften at Sarratt's bedside.

'And there is really no hope for him?' asked Cicely after a time. The Sister shook her head.

'The wounds have never healed--and they drain his life away. The heart can't last out much longer. But he's not in pain now--thank God! It's just weakness. I assure you, everybody--almost--in this huge camp, asks for him and many--pray for him.' The Sister's eyes filled with tears. 'And now that the poor wife's come in time, there'll be an excitement! I heard two men in one of our wards discussing it this morning. "They do say as Mrs. Sarratt will be here to-day," said one of them. "Well, that's a bit of all right, ain't it?" said the other, and they both smoked away, looking as pleased as Punch. You see Miss Cookson's behaviour has made the whole thing so extraordinary.'

Cicely agreed.

'I suppose she thought it would be all over in a day or two,' she said, half-absently.

The Sister looked puzzled.

'And that it would be better not to risk the effect on his wife? Of course Mrs. Sarratt does look dreadfully delicate. So you _don't_ think it was a mistake? It's very difficult to see how it could be! The hands alone--one would think that anybody who really knew him must have recognised them.'

Cicely said no more. But she wondered how poor Nelly and her sister would ever find it possible to meet again.

Meanwhile, in the car ahead, Howson was gently and tenderly preparing the mind of Nelly for her husband's state. He described to her also, the first signs of Sarratt's returning consciousness--the excitement among his doctors and nurses--the anxious waiting for the first words--the first clear evidence of restored hearing. And then, at last, the dazed question--'Where am I?'--and the perplexed effort to answer Howson's--'Can you tell us your name and regiment?'

Howson described the breathless waiting of himself and another doctor, and then the slow coming of the words: 'My name is George Sarratt, Lieutenant, 21st Lanchesters. But why----?'

A look of bewilderment at nurses and doctors, and then again--sleep.

'The next time he spoke, it was quite distinctly and of his own accord. The nurse heard him saying softly--it was in the early morning--"I want my wife--send for her." She told him you had been already sent for, and he turned his head round at once and went to sleep.'

Howson could hardly go on, so keenly did he realise the presence of the woman beside him. The soft fluttering breath unmanned him. But by degrees Nelly heard all there was to know; especially the details of the rapid revival of hearing, speech, and memory, which had gone on through the preceding three days.

'And what is such a blessing,' said Howson, with the cheerfulness of the good doctor--'is that he seems to be quite peaceful--quite at rest. He's not unhappy. He's just waiting for you. They'll have given him an injection of strychnine this evening to help him through.'

'How long?' The words were just breathed into the darkness.

'A day or two certainly--perhaps a week,' he said reluctantly. 'It's a question of strength. Sometimes it lasts much longer than we expect.'

He said nothing to her of her sister's visit. Instinctively he suspected some ugly meaning in that story. And Nelly asked no questions.

Suddenly, she was aware of lights in the darkness, and then of a great camp marked out in a pattern of electric lamps, stretching up and away over what seemed a wide and sloping hillside. Nelly put down the window to see.

'Is it here?' 'No. A little further on.'

It seemed to her interminably further. The car rattled over the rough pavement of a town, then through the darkness of woods--threading its way through a confusion of pale roads--until, with a violent bump, it came to a stop.

In the blackness of the November night, the chauffeur, mistaking the entrance to a house, had run up a back lane and into a sand-bank.

'Do you hear the sea?' said Howson, as he helped Nelly to alight. 'There'll be wind to-night. But here we are.'

She looked round her as they walked through a thin wood. To her right beyond the bare trees was a great building with a glass front. She could see lights within--the passing figures of nurses--rows of beds--and men in bed jackets--high rooms frescoed in bright colours.

'That used to be the Casino. Now it's a Red Cross Hospital. There are always doctors there. So when we moved him away from the camp, we took this little house close to the Hospital. The senior surgeon there can be often in and out. He's looking after him splendidly.'

A small room in a small house, built for summer lodgings by the sea; bare wooden walls and floor; a stove; open windows through which came the slow boom of waves breaking on a sandy shore; a bed, and in it an emaciated figure, propped up.

Nelly, as the door closed behind her, broke into a run like the soft flight of a bird, and fell on her knees beside the bed. She had taken off her hat and cloak. Excitement had kindled two spots of red in her pale cheeks. The man in the bed turned his eyes towards her, and smiled.

'Nelly!'

Howson and the Sister went on tiptoe through a side door into another room.

'Kiss me, Nelly!'

Nelly, trembling, put her soft lips to his. But as she did so, a chill anguish struck her--the first bitterness of the naked truth. As yet she had only seen it through a veil, darkly. Was this her George--this ghost, grey-haired, worn out, on the brink of the unknown? The old passionate pressure of the mouth gone--for ever! Her young husband--her young lover--she saw him far back in the past, on Rydal lake, the dripping oars in his hand. This was a spirit which touched her--a spiritual love which shone upon her. And she had never yet known so sharp an agony.

So sharp it was that it dried all tears. She knelt there with his hands in hers, kissing them, and gazing at him.

'Nelly, it's hard luck! Darling, I'd better have been patient. In time, perhaps, I should have come back to you. How I got away--who planned it--I don't remember. I remember nothing--of all that time. But Howson has heard something, through some people near Cassel--has he told you?'

'Yes--but don't try to remember.'

He smiled at her. How strange the old sweetness on these grey lips!

'Have you missed me--dreadfully? Poor little Nelly! You're very pale--a little shadow! Darling!--I _would_ like to live!'

And at that--at last--the eyes of both, as they gazed at each other, filled with tears. Tears for the eternal helplessness of man,--the 'tears of things.'

But he roused himself, snatching still at a little love, a little brightness--before the