Missing | Page 7

a little first--in
our room.'
She disappeared through a door at the end of the sitting-room. Her last
words--softly spoken--produced a kind of shock of joy in Sarratt. He
sat motionless, hearing the echo of them, till she reappeared. When she
came back, she had taken off her serge travelling dress and was
wearing a little gown of some white cotton stuff, with a blue cloak, the
evening having turned chilly, and a hat with a blue ribbon. In this garb
she was a vision of innocent beauty; wherein refinement and a touch of
strangeness combined with the dark brilliance of eyes and hair, with the
pale, slightly sunburnt skin, the small features and tiny throat, to rivet
the spectator. And she probably knew it, for she flushed slightly under
her husband's eyes.
'Oh, what a paradise!' she said, under her breath, pointing to the scene
beyond the window. Then--lifting appealing hands to him--'Take me

there!'

CHAPTER II
The newly-married pair crossed a wooden bridge over the stream from
the Lake, and found themselves on its further shore, a shore as
untouched and unspoilt now as when Wordsworth knew it, a hundred
years ago. The sun had only just vanished out of sight behind the
Grasmere fells, and the long Westmorland after-glow would linger for
nearly a couple of hours yet. After much rain the skies were clear, and
all the omens fair. But the rain had left its laughing message behind; in
the full river, in the streams leaping down the fells, in the freshness of
every living thing--the new-leafed trees, the grass with its flowers, the
rushes spreading their light armies through the flooded margins of the
lake, and bending to the light wind, which had just, as though in
mischief, blotted out the dream-world in the water, and set it rippling
eastwards in one sheet of living silver, broken only by a cloud-shadow
at its further end. Fragrance was everywhere--from the trees, the young
fern, the grass; and from the shining west, the shadowed fells, the
brilliant water, there breathed a voice of triumphant beauty, of
unconquered peace, which presently affected George Sarratt strangely.
They had just passed through a little wood; and in its friendly gloom,
he had put his arm round his wife so that they had lingered a little, loth
to leave its shelter. But now they had emerged again upon the radiance
of the fell-side, and he had found a stone for Nelly to rest on.
'That those places in France, and that sky--should be in the same
world!' he said, under his breath, pointing to the glow on the eastern
fells, as he threw himself down on the turf beside her.
Her face flushed with exercise and happiness suddenly darkened.
'Don't--don't talk of them to-night!'--she said passionately--'not
to-night--just to-night, George!'

And she stooped impetuously to lay her hand on his lips. He kissed the
hand, held it, and remained silent, his eyes fixed upon the lake. On that
day week he would probably just have rejoined his regiment. It was
somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bailleul. Hot work, he heard, was
expected. There was still a scandalous shortage of ammunition--and if
there was really to be a 'push,' the losses would be appalling. Man after
man that he knew had been killed within a week--two or three
days--twenty-four hours even!--of rejoining. Supposing that within a
fortnight Nelly sat here, looking at this lake, with the War Office
telegram in her hand--'Deeply regret to inform you, etc.' This was not a
subject on which he had ever allowed himself to dwell, more than in his
changed circumstances he was bound to dwell. Every soldier, normally,
expects to get through. But of course he had done everything that was
necessary for Nelly. His will was in the proper hands; and the night
before their wedding he had written a letter to her, to be given her if he
fell. Otherwise he had taken little account of possible death; nor had it
cost him any trouble to banish the thought of it.
But the beauty of the evening--of this old earth, which takes no account
of the perishing of men--and Nelly's warm life beside him, hanging
upon his, perhaps already containing within it the mysterious promise
of another life, had suddenly brought upon him a tremor of soul--an
inward shudder. Did he really believe in existence after death--in a
meeting again, in some dim other scene, if they were violently parted
now? He had been confirmed while at school. His parents were Church
people of a rather languid type, and it seemed the natural thing to do.
Since then he had occasionally taken the Communion, largely to please
an elder school-friend, who was ardently devout, and was now a
Chaplain on the Western front. But what