GOOD OLD ANNA

By MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES

Author of
“The Chink in the Armour,” “The Lodger,”
“The End of Her Honeymoon,” etc., etc.

NEW YORK

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

GOOD OLD ANNA

CHAPTER I

“And now,” asked Miss Forsyth thoughtfully, “and now, my dear Mary, what, may I ask, are you going to do about your good old Anna?”

“Do about Anna?” repeated the other. “I don’t quite understand what you mean.”

In her heart Mrs. Otway thought she understood very well what her old friend, Miss Forsyth, meant by the question. For it was Wednesday, the 5th of August, 1914. England had just declared war on Germany, and Anna was Mrs. Otway’s faithful, highly valued German servant.

Miss Forsyth was one of those rare people who always require an answer to a question, and who also (which is rarer still) seldom speak without having first thought out what they are about to say. It was this quality of mind, far more than the fact that she had been born, sixty years ago, in the Palace at Witanbury, which gave her the position she held in the society of the cathedral town.

But this time she herself went on speaking: “In your place I should think very seriously of sending Anna back to Germany.” There was an unusual note of hesitation and of doubt in her voice. As a rule Miss Forsyth knew exactly what she thought about everything, and what she herself would be minded to do in any particular case.

But the other lady, incensed at what she considered uncalled-for, even rather impertinent advice, replied sharply, “I shouldn’t think of doing anything so unkind and so unjust! Why, because the powers of evil have conquered—I mean by that the dreadful German military party—should I behave unjustly to a faithful old German woman who has been with me—let me see—why, who has been with me exactly eighteen years? With the exception of a married niece with whom she went and stayed in Berlin three autumns ago, my poor old Anna hasn’t a relation left in Germany. Her whole life is centred in me—or perhaps I ought to say in Rose. She was the only nurse Rose ever had.”

“And yet she has remained typically German,” observed Miss Forsyth irrelevantly.

“Of course she has!” cried Mrs. Otway quickly. “And that is why we are both so much attached to her. Anna has all the virtues of the German woman; she is faithful, kindly, industrious, and thrifty.”

“But, Mary, has it not occurred to you that you will find it very awkward sometimes?” Again without waiting for an answer, Miss Forsyth went on: “Our working people have long felt it very hard that there should be so many Germans in England, taking away their jobs.”

“They have only themselves to thank for that,” said Mrs. Otway, with more sharpness than was usual with an exceptionally kindly and amiable nature. “Germans are much more industrious than our people are, and they are content with less wages. Also you must forgive me if I say, dear Miss Forsyth, that I don’t quite see what the jealousy of the average working-man, or, for the matter of that, of the average mechanic, has to do with my good old Anna, especially at such a time as this.”

“Don’t you really?” Miss Forsyth looked curiously into the other’s flushed and still fair, delicately tinted face. She had always thought Mary Otway a rather foolish, if also a lovable, generous-hearted woman. But this was one of the few opinions Miss Forsyth always managed to keep to herself.

“I suppose you mean,” said the other reluctantly, “that if I had not had Anna as a servant all these years I should have been compelled to have an Englishwoman?”

“Yes, Mary, that is exactly what I do mean! But of course I should never have spoken to you about the matter were it not for to-day’s news. My maid, Pusey, you know, spoke to me about it this morning, and said that if you should be thinking of parting with her—if your good old Anna should be thinking, for instance, of going back to Germany—she knew some one who she thought would suit you admirably. It’s a woman who was cook in a very good London place, and whose health has rather given way.”

Miss Forsyth spoke with what was for her unusual animation.

As is always the way with your active, intelligent philanthropist, she was much given to vicarious deeds of charity. At the same time she never spared herself. Her own comfortable house always contained one or more of the odd-come-shorts whom she had not managed to place out in good situations.

Again a wave of resentment swept over Mrs. Otway. This was really too much!

“How would such a woman as you describe—a cook who has been in a good London place, and who has lost her health—work into our—mine and Rose’s—ways? Why, we should both be afraid of such a woman! She would impose on us at every turn. If you only knew, dear Miss Forsyth, how often, in the last twenty years, I have thanked God—I say it in all reverence—for having sent me my good old Anna! Think what it has been to me”—she spoke with a good deal of emotion—“to have in my tiny household a woman so absolutely trustworthy that I could always go away and leave my child with her, happy in the knowledge that Rose was as safe with Anna as she was with me——”

Her voice broke, a lump came into her throat, but she hurried on: “Don’t think that it has all been perfect—that I have lain entirely on a bed of roses! Anna has been very tiresome sometimes; and, as you know, her daughter, to whom I was really attached, and whom I regarded more or less as Rose’s foster-sister, made that unfortunate marriage to a worthless London tradesman. That’s the black spot in Anna’s life—I don’t mind telling you that it’s been a blacker spot in mine than I’ve ever cared to admit, even to myself. The man’s always getting into scrapes, and having to be got out of them! Why, you once helped me about him, didn’t you? and since then James Hayley actually had to go to the police about the man.”

“Mr. Hayley will be busier than ever now.”

“Yes, I suppose he will.”

And then the two ladies, looking at one another, smiled one of those funny little smiles which may mean a great deal, or nothing at all.

James Hayley, the son of one of Mrs. Otway’s first cousins, was in the Foreign Office; and if he had an inordinate opinion of himself and of his value to his country, he was still a very good, steady fellow. Lately he had fallen into the way of coming down to Witanbury exceedingly often; but when doing so he did not stay with the Otways, in their pretty house in the Close, as would have been natural and as would also naturally have made his visits rather less frequent; instead, he stayed in lodgings close to the gateway which divided the Close from the town, and thus was able to be at the Trellis House as much or as little as he liked. It was generally much. Mrs. Otway wondered whether the war would so far affect his work as to keep him away from Witanbury this summer. She rather hoped it would.

“I’m even more sorry than usual for Jervis Blake to-day!” and this time there was a note of real kindness in Miss Forsyth’s voice. “I shouldn’t be surprised if he enlisted.”

“Oh, I hope he won’t do that!” Mrs. Otway was shocked at the suggestion. Jervis Blake was a person for whom she had a good deal of tolerant affection. He was quite an ordinary young man, and he had had the quite ordinary bad luck of failing to pass successive Army examinations. The news that he had failed again had just become known to his friends, and unluckily it was his last chance, as he was now past the age limit. The exceptional feature in his very common case was that he happened to be the only son of a distinguished soldier.

“I should certainly enlist if I were he,” continued Miss Forsyth thoughtfully. “He wouldn’t have long to wait for promotion from the ranks.”

“His father would never forgive him!”

“The England of to-day is a different England from the England of yesterday,” observed Miss Forsyth drily; and as the other stared at her, genuinely astonished by the strange words, “Don’t you agree that that is so, Mary?”

“No, I can’t say that I do.” Mrs. Otway spoke with greater decision than was her wont. Miss Forsyth was far too fond of setting the world to rights.

“Ah! well, I think it is. And I only wish I was a young man instead of an old woman! I’m sorry for every Englishman who is too old to take up arms in this just cause. What must be Major Guthrie’s feelings to-day! How he must regret having left the Army to please his selfish old mother! It’s the more hard on him as he always believed this war would come. He really knows Germany.”

“Major Guthrie only knows military Germany,” said Mrs. Otway slowly.

“It’s only what you call military Germany which counts to-day,” observed Miss Forsyth quickly; and then, seeing that her friend looked hurt, and even, what she so very seldom was, angry too, she held out her hand with the words: “And now I must be moving on, for before going to the cathedral I have to see Mrs. Haworth for a minute. By the way, I hear that the Dean intends to give a little address about the war.” She added, in a different and a kindlier tone: “You must forgive me, Mary, for saying what I did about your good old Anna! But you know I’m really fond of you, and I’m even fonder of your sweet Rose than I am of you. I always feel that there is a great deal in Rose—more than in any other girl I know. And then—well, Mary, she is so very pretty! prettier than you even were, though you had a way of making every one think you lovely!”

Mrs. Otway laughed. She was quite mollified. “I know how fond you are of Rose,” she said gratefully, “and, of course, I don’t mind your having spoken to me about Anna. But as to parting with her—that would mean the end of the world to us, to your young friend Rose even more than to me. Why, it would be worse—far worse—than the war!”

CHAPTER II

As Mrs. Otway walked slowly on, she could not help telling herself that dear old Miss Forsyth had been more interfering and tiresome than she usually was this morning.

She felt ruffled by the little talk they two had just had—so ruffled and upset that, instead of turning into the gate of the house where she had been bound—for she, too, had meant to pay a call in the Close on her way to the cathedral—she walked slowly on the now deserted stretch of road running through and under the avenue of elm trees which are so beautiful and distinctive a feature of Witanbury Close.

Again a lump rose to her throat, and this time the tears started into her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. In sheer astonishment at her own emotion, she stopped short, and taking out her handkerchief dabbed her eyes hurriedly. How strange that this interchange of words with one whose peculiarities she had known, and, yes, suffered under and smiled at for so many years, should make her feel so—so—so upset!

Mrs. Otway was a typical Englishwoman of her age, which was forty-three, and of her class, which was that from which are drawn most of the women from whom the clergy of the Established Church choose their wives. There are thousands such, living in serene girlhood, wifehood, or widowhood, to be found in the villages and country towns of dear old England. With but very few exceptions, they are kindly-natured, unimaginative, imbued with a shrinking dislike of any exaggerated display of emotion; in some ways amazingly broad-minded, in others curiously limited in their outlook on life. Such women, as a rule, present few points of interest to students of human nature, for they are almost invariably true to type, their virtues and their defects being cast in the same moulds.

But Mrs. Otway was much more original and more impulsive, thus far less “groovy,” than the people among whom her lot was cast. There were even censorious folk in Witanbury who called her eccentric. She was generous-hearted, easily moved to enthusiasm, tenacious of her opinions and prejudices. She had remained young of heart, and her fair, curling hair, her slight, active figure, and delicately-tinted skin, gave her sometimes an almost girlish look. Those who met her for the first time were always surprised to find that Mrs. Otway had a grown-up daughter.

As a girl she had spent two very happy years in Germany, at Weimar, and she had kept from those far-off days a very warm and affectionate feeling towards the Fatherland, as also a rather exceptionally good knowledge both of the German language and of old-fashioned German literature. Then had come a short engagement, followed by five years of placid, happy marriage with a minor canon of Witanbury Cathedral. And then, at the end of those five years, which had slipped by so easily and so quickly, she had found herself alone, with one little daughter, and woefully restricted means. It had seemed, and indeed it had been, a godsend to come across, in Anna Bauer, a German widow who, for a miraculously low wage, had settled down into her little household, to become and to remain, not only an almost perfect servant, but as time went on a most valued and trusted friend.

The fact that Mrs. Otway had been left a legacy by a distant relation, while making her far more comfortable, had not caused her to alter very materially her way of life. She had raised Anna’s modest wage, and she was no longer compelled to look quite so closely after every penny. Also, mother and daughter were now able to take delightful holidays together. They had planned one such for this very autumn to Germany—Germany, the country still so dear to Mrs. Otway, which she had always longed to show her daughter.

It was natural that the news which had burst upon England to-day should have unsealed the fountain of deep emotion in her nature. Mrs. Otway, like almost every one she knew, had not believed that there would or could be a great Continental war, and when that had become, with stunning suddenness, an accomplished fact, she had felt sure that her country would remain out of the awful maelstrom.

Send their good old Anna back to Germany? Why, the idea was unthinkable! What would she, Mary Otway, what would her daughter, Rose, do without Anna? Anna had become—Mrs. Otway realised it to-day as she had never realised it before—the corner-stone of their modest, happy House of Life.

Miss Forsyth had, however, said one thing which was unfortunately true. It is strange how often these positive, rather managing people hit the right nail on the head! The fact that England and Germany were now at war would sometimes make things a little awkward with regard to poor old Anna. Something of the kind had, indeed, happened on this very morning, less than two hours ago. And at the time it had been very painful, very disagreeable....

Mrs. Otway and her daughter, each opening a newspaper before beginning breakfast, had looked up, and in awe-struck tones simultaneously exclaimed, “Why, we are at war!” and “War has been declared!” And then Mrs. Otway, as was her wont, had fallen into eager, impulsive talk. But she had to stop abruptly when the dining-room door opened—for it revealed the short, stumpy figure of Anna, smiling, indeed beaming even more than usual, as she brought in the coffee she made so well. Mother and daughter had looked at one another across the table, an unspoken question in each pair of kind eyes. That question was: Did poor old Anna know?

The answer came with dramatic swiftness, and in the negative. Anna approached her mistress, still with that curious look of beaming happiness in her round, fat, plain face, and after she had put down the coffee-jug she held out her work-worn hand. On it was a pink card, and in her excitement she broke into eager German.

“The child has come!” she exclaimed. “Look! This is what I have received, gracious lady,” and she put the card on her mistress’s plate.

What was written, or rather printed, on that fancy-looking card, ran, when Englished, as follows:

The Joyous Birth of a Large-Eyed Sunday Maiden
is announced, ultra-jubilantly, by
WILHELM WARSHAUER, Sub-Inspector of Police in
Berlin, and Wife MINNA, born BROCKMANN.

Of course they both congratulated their good old Anna very heartily on the birth of the little great-niece in Berlin—indeed Rose, jumping up from the table, had surprised her mother by giving her old nurse a hug. “I’m so glad, dear Anna! How happy they seem to be!”

But when Anna had returned to her kitchen the two ladies had gone on silently and rather sadly with their breakfasts and their papers; and after she had finished, Mrs. Otway, with a heavy heart, had walked across the hall, to her pretty kitchen, to tell Anna the great and tragic news.

The kitchen of the Trellis House was oddly situated just opposite Mrs. Otway’s sitting-room and at right angles to the dining-room. Thus the two long Georgian windows of Anna’s domain commanded the wide green of the Cathedral Close, and the kitchen door was immediately on your right as you walked through the front door into the arched hall of the house.

On this momentous morning Anna’s mistress found the old German woman sitting at her large wooden table writing a letter. When Mrs. Otway came in, Anna looked up and smiled; but she did not rise, as an English servant would have done.

Mrs. Otway walked across to her, and very kindly she laid her hand on the older woman’s shoulder.

“I have something sad to tell you,” she said gently. “England, my poor Anna, is at war! England has declared war on Germany! But I have come to tell you, also, that the fact that our countries are at war will make no difference to you and to me, Anna—will it?”

Anna had looked up, and for a moment she had seemed bewildered, stunned by the news. Then all the colour had receded from her round face; it became discomposed, covered with red streaks. She broke into convulsive sobs as, shaking her head violently, she exclaimed, “Nein! Nein!”

If only poor old Anna had left it there! But she had gone on, amid her sobs, to speak wildly, disconnectedly, and yes—yes, rather arrogantly too, of the old war with France in 1870—of her father, and of her long-dead brother; how both of them had fought, how gloriously they had conquered!

Mrs. Otway had begun by listening in silence to this uncalled-for outburst. But at last, with a touch of impatience, she broke across these ill-timed reminiscences with the words, “But now, Anna? Now there is surely no one belonging to your family likely to fight? No one, I mean, likely to fight against England?”

The old woman stared at her stupidly, as if scarcely understanding the sense of what was being said to her; and Mrs. Otway, with a touch of decision in her voice, had gone on—“How fortunate it is that your Louisa married an Englishman!”

But on that Anna had again shaken her head violently. “No, no!” she cried. “Would that a German married she had—an honest, heart-good German, not a man like that bad, worthless George!”

To this surely unnecessary remark Mrs. Otway had made no answer. It was unluckily true that Anna’s English son-in-law lacked every virtue dear to a German heart. He was lazy, pleasure-loving, dishonest in small petty ways, and contemptuous of his thrifty wife’s anxious efforts to save money. Still, though it was not perhaps wise to say so just now, it would certainly have been a terrible complication if “little Louisa,” as they called her in that household, had married a German—a German who would have had to go back to the Fatherland to take up arms, perhaps, against his adopted country! Anna ought surely to see the truth of that to-day, however unpalatable that truth might be.

But, sad to say, good old Anna had been strangely lacking in her usual good sense, and sturdy good-humour, this morning. Not content with that uncalled-for remark concerning her English son-in-law, she had wailed out something about “Willi”—for so she always called Wilhelm Warshauer—the nephew by marriage to whom she had become devotedly attached during the pleasant holiday she had spent in Germany three years ago.

“I do not think Willi is in the least likely to go to the war and be killed,” said Mrs. Otway at last, a little sharply. “Why, he is in the police—a sub-inspector! They would never dream of sending him away. And then—— Anna? I wish you would listen to me quietly for a moment——”

Anna fixed her glazed, china-blue eyes anxiously on her mistress.

“If you go on in this way you will make yourself quite ill; and that wouldn’t do at all! I am quite sure that you will soon hear from your niece that Willi is quite safe, that he is remaining on in Berlin. England and Germany are civilised nations after all! There need not be any unreasonable bitterness between them. Only the soldiers and sailors, not our two nations, will be at war, Anna.”

Yes, the recollection of what had happened this morning left an aftermath of bitterness in Mrs. Otway’s kind heart. It was only too true that it would sometimes be awkward; in saying so downright Miss Forsyth had been right! She told herself, however, that after a few days they surely would all get accustomed to this strange, unpleasant, new state of things. Why, during the long Napoleonic wars Witanbury had always been on the qui vive, expecting a French landing on the coast—that beautiful coast which was as lonely now as it had been then, and which, thanks to motors and splendid roads, seemed much nearer now than then. England had gone on much as usual a hundred years ago. Mrs. Otway even reminded herself that Jane Austen, during those years of stress and danger, had been writing her delightful, her humorous, her placid studies of life as though there were no war!

And then, perhaps because of her invocation of that dear, shrewd mistress of the average British human heart, Mrs. Otway, feeling far more comfortable than she had yet felt since her talk with Miss Forsyth, began retracing her steps towards the cathedral.

She was glad to know that the Dean was going to give a little address this morning. It was sure to be kindly, wise, benignant—for he was himself all these three things. Many delightful German thinkers, theologians and professors, came and went to the Deanery, and Mrs. Otway was always asked to meet these distinguished folk, partly because of her excellent knowledge of German, and also because the Dean knew that, like himself, she loved Germany.

And now she turned sick at heart, as she suddenly realised that for a time, at any rate, these pleasant meetings would take place no more. But soon—or so she hoped with all her soul—this strange unnatural war would be over. Even now the bubble of Prussian militarism was pricked, for the German Army was not doing well at Liége. During the last two or three days she had read the news with increasing amazement and—but she hardly admitted it to herself—with dismay. She did not like to think of Germans breaking and running away! It had hurt her, made her angry, to hear the exultation with which some of her neighbours had spoken of the news. It was all very well to praise the gallant little Belgians, but why should that be done at the expense of the Germans?

Mrs. Otway suddenly told herself that she hoped Major Guthrie would not be at the cathedral this morning. Considering that they disagreed about almost everything, it was odd what friends he and she were! But about Germany they had never agreed, and that was the more strange inasmuch as Major Guthrie had spent quite a long time in Stuttgart. He thought the Germans of to-day entirely unlike the Germans of the past. He honestly believed them to be unprincipled, untrustworthy, and unscrupulous; and, strangest thing of all—or so Mrs. Otway had thought till within the last few days—he had long been convinced that they intended to conquer Europe by force of arms! So strong was this conviction of his that he had given time, and yes, money too, to the propaganda carried on by Lord Roberts in favour of National Service.

It was odd that a man whose suspicions of the country which was to her so dear almost amounted to a monomania, should have become her friend. But so it was. In fact, Major Guthrie was her only man friend. He advised her about all the things concerning which men are supposed to know more than women—such as investments, for instance. Of course she did not always take his advice, but it was often a comfort to talk things out with him, and she had come instinctively to turn to him when in any little trouble. Few days passed without Major Guthrie’s calling, either by chance or in response to a special invitation, at the Trellis House.

Unfortunately, or was it fortunately? the handsome old mother, for whose sake Major Guthrie had left the Army three years ago, didn’t care for clerical society. She only liked country people and Londoners. As far as Mrs. Otway could dislike any one, she disliked Mrs. Guthrie; but the two ladies seldom had occasion to meet—the Guthries lived in a pretty old house in Dorycote, a village two miles from Witanbury. Also Mrs. Guthrie was more or less chair-ridden, and Mrs. Otway had no carriage.

The bells of the cathedral suddenly broke across her troublesome, disconnected thoughts. Mrs. Otway never heard those chimes without a wave of remembrance, sometimes very slight, sometimes like to-day quite strong and insistent, of past joys and sorrows. Those bells were interwoven with the whole of her wifehood, motherhood, and widowhood; they had rung for her wedding, they had mustered the tiny congregation who had been present at Rose’s christening; the great bell had tolled the day her husband had died, and again to bid the kindly folk of Witanbury to his simple funeral. Some day, perhaps, the bells would ring a joyful peal in honour of Rose’s wedding.

As she walked up the path which leads from the road encircling the Close to the cathedral, she tried to compose and attune her mind to solemn, peaceful thoughts.

There was a small congregation, perhaps thirty in all, gathered together in the choir, but the atmosphere of that tiny gathering of people was slightly electric and charged with emotion. The wife of the Dean, a short, bustling lady, who had never been so popular in Witanbury and its neighbourhood as was her husband, came forward and beckoned to Mrs. Otway. “If no one else comes in,” she whispered, “I think we might all come up a little nearer. The Dean is going to say a few words about the war.”

And though a few more people did come in during the five minutes that followed, the whole of the little congregation finally collected in the stalls nearest the altar. And it was not from the ornate white stone pulpit, but from the steps of the altar, that the Dean, after the short service was over, delivered his address.

For what seemed a long time—it was really only a very few moments—Dr. Haworth stood there, looking thoughtfully at this little gathering of his fellow-countrymen and countrywomen. Then he began speaking. With great simplicity and directness he alluded to the awesome news which this morning had brought to them, to England. England’s declaration of war against their great neighbour, Germany—their great neighbour, and they should never forget, the only other great European nation which shared with them the blessings, he was willing to admit the perhaps in some ways doubtful blessings, brought about by the Reformation.

On hearing these words, three or four of his hearers moved a little restlessly in their seats, but soon even they settled themselves down to take in, and to approve, what he had to say.

England was going to war, however, in a just cause, to make good her promise to a small and weak nation. She had often drawn her sword on behalf of the oppressed, and never more rightly than now. But it would be wrong indeed for England to allow her heart to be filled with bitterness. It was probable that even at this moment a large number of Germans were ashamed of what had happened last Monday—he alluded to the Invasion of Belgium. Frederick the Great had once said that God was always on the side of the big battalions; in so saying he had been wrong. Even in the last two or three days they had seen how wrong. Belgium was putting up a splendid defence, and the time might come—he, the speaker, hoped it would be very soon—when Germany would realise that Might is not Right, when she would confess, with the large-hearted chivalry possible to a great and powerful nation, that she had been wrong.

Meanwhile the Dean wished to impress on his hearers the need for a generous broad-mindedness in their attitude towards the foe. England was a great civilised nation, and so was Germany. The war would be fought in an honourable, straightforward manner, as between high-souled enemies. Christian charity enjoined on us to be especially kind and considerate to those Germans who happened to be caught by this sad state of things, in our midst. He had heard these people spoken of that morning as “alien enemies.” For his part he would not care to describe by any such offensive terms those Germans who were settled in England in peaceful avocations. The war was not of their making, and those poor foreigners were caught up in a terrible web of tragic circumstance. He himself had many dear and valued friends in Germany, professors whose only aim in life was the spread of “Kultur,” not perhaps quite the same thing as we meant by the word culture, for the German “Kultur” meant something with a wider, more universal significance. He hoped the time would come, sooner perhaps than many pessimists thought possible, when those friends would acknowledge that England had drawn her sword in a righteous cause and that Germany had been wrong to provoke her.

CHAPTER III

While Mrs. Otway had been thinking over the now rather painful problem of her good old Anna, the subject of her meditations, that is Anna herself, from behind the pretty muslin curtain which hid her kitchen from the passers-by, was peeping out anxiously on the lawn-like stretch of green grass, bordered on two sides by high elms, which is so pleasant a feature of Witanbury Close.

Her knitting was in her hands, for Anna’s fingers were never idle, but just now the needles were still.

When your kitchen happens to be one of the best rooms on the ground floor, and one commanding not only the gate of your domain but the road beyond, it becomes important that it should not be quite like other people’s kitchens. It was Mrs. Otway’s pride, as well as Anna’s, that at any moment of the day a visitor who, after walking into the hall, opened by mistake the kitchen door, would have found everything there in exquisite order. The shelves, indeed, were worth going some way to see, for each shelf was edged with a beautiful “Kante” or border of crochet-work almost as fine as point lace. In fact, the kitchen of the Trellis House was more like a stage kitchen than a kitchen in an ordinary house, and the way in which it was kept was the more meritorious inasmuch as Anna, even now, when she had become an old woman, would have nothing of what is in England called “help.” She had no wish to see a charwoman in her kitchen. Fortunately for her, there lay, just off and behind the kitchen, a roomy scullery, where most of the dirty, and what may be called the smelly, work connected with cooking was done.

To the left of the low-ceilinged, spacious, rather dark scullery was Anna’s own bedroom. Both the scullery and the servant’s room were much older than the rest of the house, for the picturesque gabled bit of brown and red brick building which projected into the garden, at the back of the Trellis House, belonged to Tudor days, to those spacious times when the great cathedral just across the green was a new pride and joy to the good folk of Witanbury.

As Anna stood at one of the kitchen windows, peeping out at the quiet scene outside, but not drawing aside the curtain—for that she knew was forbidden to her, and Anna very seldom consciously did anything she knew to be forbidden—she felt far more unhappy and far more disturbed than did Mrs. Otway herself.

This morning’s news had stirred poor old Anna—stirred her more profoundly than even her kind mistress guessed. Mrs. Otway would have been surprised indeed had it been revealed to her that ever since breakfast Anna had spent a very anxious time thinking over her own immediate future, wondering with painful indecision as to whether it were not her duty to go back to Germany. But whereas Mrs. Otway had the inestimable advantage of being quite sure that she knew what it was best for Anna to do, the old German woman herself was cruelly torn between what was due to her mistress, to her married daughter, and, yes, to herself.

How unutterably amazed Mrs. Otway would have been this morning had she known that more than a month ago Anna had received a word of warning from Berlin. But so it was: her niece had written to her, “It is believed that war this summer there is to be. Willi has been warned that something shortly will happen.”

And now, as Anna stood there anxiously peeping out at the figure of her mistress pacing up and down under the avenue of high elms across the green, she did not give more than a glancing thought to England’s part in the conflict, for her whole heart was absorbed in the dread knowledge that Germany was at war with terrible, barbarous Russia, and with prosperous, perfidious France.

England, so Anna firmly believed, had no army to speak of—no real army. She remembered the day when France had declared war on Germany in 1870. How at once every street of the little town in which she had lived had become full of soldiers—splendid, lion-hearted soldiers going off to fight for their beloved Fatherland. Nothing of the sort had taken place here, though Witanbury was a garrison town. The usual tradesmen, strong, lusty young men, had called for orders that morning. They had laughed and joked as usual. Not one of them seemed aware his country was at war. The old German woman’s lip curled disdainfully.

For the British, as a people, Anna Bauer cherished a tolerant affection and kindly contempt. It was true that, all unknowing to herself, she also had a great belief in British generosity and British justice. The idea that this war, or rather the joining in of England with France against Germany, could affect her own position or condition in England would have seemed to her absurd.

Germany and England? A contrast indeed! In Germany her son-in-law, that idle scamp George Pollit, would by now be marching on his way to the French or Russian frontier. But George, being English, was quite safe—unfortunately. The only difference the war would make to him would be that it would provide him with an excuse for trying to get at some of Anna’s carefully-hoarded savings.

If good old Anna had a fault—and curiously enough it was one of which her mistress was quite unaware, though Rose had sometimes uncomfortably suspected the fact—it was a love of money.

Anna, in spite of her low wages, had saved far more than an English servant earning twice as much would have done. Her low wage? Yes, still low, though she had been raised four pounds a year when her mistress had come into a better income. Before then Anna had been content with sixteen pounds a year. She now received twenty pounds, but she was ruefully aware that she was worth half as much again. In fact thirty pounds a year had actually been offered to her, in a roundabout way, by a lady who had come as a visitor to a house in the Close. But the lady, like Anna herself, was a German; and, apart altogether from every other consideration, including Anna’s passionate love of Miss Rose, nothing would have made her take service with a mistress of her own nationality.

“This Mrs. Hirsch me to save her money wants. Her kind I know,” she observed to the emissary who had been sent to sound her. “You can say that Anna Bauer a good mistress has, and knows when she well suited is.”

She had said nothing of the matter to Mrs. Otway, but even so she sometimes thought of that offer, and she often felt a little sore when she reflected on the wages some of the easy-going servants who formed part of the larger households in the Close received from their employers.

Yet, in this all-important matter of money a stroke of extraordinary good luck had befallen Anna—one of those things that very seldom come to pass in our work-a-day world. It had happened, or perhaps it would be truer to say it had begun—for, unlike most pieces of good fortune, it was continuous—just three years ago, in the autumn of 1911, shortly after her return from that glorious holiday at Berlin. This secret stroke of luck, for she kept it jealously to herself, though there was nothing about it at all to her discredit, had now lasted for over thirty months, and it had had the agreeable effect of greatly increasing her powers of saving. Of saving, that is, against the day when she would go back to Germany, and live with her niece.

Mrs. Otway would have been surprised indeed had she known that Anna not only meant to leave the Trellis House, but that, in a quiet, reflective kind of way, she actually looked forward to doing so. Miss Rose would surely marry, for a good many pleasant-mannered gentlemen came and went to the Trellis House (though none of them were as rich as Anna would have liked one of them to be), and she herself would get past her work. When that had come to pass she would go and live with her niece in Berlin. She had not told her daughter of this arrangement, and it had been spoken of by Willi and her niece more as a joke than anything else; still, Anna generally managed to carry through what she had made up her mind to accomplish.

But on this August morning, standing there by the kitchen window of the Trellis House, the future was far from good old Anna’s mind. Her mind was fixed on the present. How tiresome, how foolish of England to have mixed up with a quarrel which did not concern her! How strange that she, Anna Bauer, in spite of that word of warning from Berlin, had suspected nothing!

As a matter of fact Mrs. Otway had said something to her about Servia and Austria—something, too, more in sorrow than in anger, of Germany “rattling her sword.” But she, Anna, had only heard with half an ear. Politics were out of woman’s province. But there! English ladies were like that.

Many a time had Anna laughed aloud over the antics of the Suffragettes. About a month ago the boy who brought the meat had given her a long account of a riot—it had been a very little one—provoked by one such lady madwoman in the market-place of Witanbury itself. In wise masculine Germany the lady’s relatives (for, strange to say, the Suffragette in question had been a high-born lady) would have put her in the only proper place for her, an idiot asylum.

Anna had been genuinely shocked and distressed on learning that her beloved nursling, Miss Rose, secretly rather sympathised with this mad female wish for a vote. Why, in Germany only some of the men had votes, and yet Germany was the most glorious, prosperous, and much-to-be-feared nation in the world. “Church, Kitchen, and Children”—that should be, and in the Fatherland still was, every true woman’s motto and province.

Anna’s mind came back with a sudden jerk to this morning’s surprising, almost incredible news. Since her two ladies had gone out, she had opened the newspapers on her kitchen table and read the words for herself—“England Declares War on Germany.” But how could England do such a thing, when England had no Army? True, she had ships—but then so now had Germany!

During that blissful holiday in Berlin, Anna had been persuaded to join the German Navy League. She had not meant to keep up her subscription, small though it was, after her return to England, but rather to her disgust she had found that one of the few Germans she knew in Witanbury represented the League, and that her name had been sent to him as that of a new member. Twice he had called at the tradesmen’s entrance to the Trellis House, and had demanded the sum of one shilling from her.

To-day Anna remembered with satisfaction those payments she had grudged. Thanks to her patriotism, and that of millions like her, Germany had now a splendid fleet with which to withstand her enemies. She wondered if that fleet (for which she had helped to pay) would ensure the safe delivery of parcels and letters. Probably yes.

With a relieved look on her face, the old woman dropped the curtains, and went back to the table and to her knitting.

Suddenly, with what seemed uncanny suddenness, the telephone bell rang in the hall.

Now Anna had never got used to the telephone. She had not opposed its introduction into the Trellis House, because it had been done by Miss Rose’s wish, but once it was installed, Anna had bitterly regretted its being there. It was the one part of her work that she carried out badly, and she knew that this was so. Not only did she find it most difficult to understand what was said through the horrible instrument, but her mistress’s friends found even more difficulty in hearing her, Anna. Sometimes—but she was very much ashamed of this—she actually allowed the telephone bell to go on ringing, and never answered it at all! She only did this, however, when her two ladies were away from Witanbury, and when, therefore, the message, whatever it might happen to be, could not possibly be delivered.

She waited now, hoping that the instrument would grow weary, and leave off ringing. But no; on it went, ping, ping, ping, ping—so at last very reluctantly Anna opened the kitchen door and went out into the hall.

Taking up the receiver, she said in a grumpy tone, “Ach! What is it? Yes?” And then her face cleared, and she even smiled into the telephone receiver.

To her great surprise—but the things that had happened to-day were so extraordinary that there was no real reason why she should be surprised at anything now—she had heard the voice of the one German in Witanbury—and there were a good many Germans in Witanbury—with whom she was on really friendly terms.

This was a certain Fritz Fröhling, a pleasant elderly man who, like herself, had been in England a long time—in fact in his case nearer forty than twenty years. He was a barber and hairdresser, and did a very flourishing business with the military gentlemen of the garrison. So Anglicised had he and his wife become that their son was in the British Army, where he had got on very well, and had been promoted to sergeant. Even among themselves, when Anna spent an evening with them, the Fröhlings generally talked English. Still, Fröhling was a German of the good old sort; that is, he had never become naturalised. But he was a Socialist; he did not share Anna’s enthusiasm for the Kaiser, the Kaiserine, and their stalwart sons.

This was the first time he had ever telephoned to her. “Is it Frau Bauer that I am addressing?”

And Anna, slightly thrilled by the unusual appellation, answered, “Yes, yes—it is, Herr Fröhling.”

“With you a talk I should like to have,” said the friendly familiar voice. “Could I this afternoon you see?”

“Not this afternoon,” answered Anna, “but this evening, I think yes. My mistress will I ask if I an evening free have can.”

“Is it necessary her to ask?” The question was put doubtfully.

“Yes, yes! But mind she will not. To me she is goodness itself—never more good than this morning she was,” shouted back Anna loyally.

“Fortunate you are,” the voice became rather sharp and dry. “I notice already have to quit—told I must skip.”

“Never!” cried Anna indignantly. “Who has that you told?”

“The police.”

“A bad business,” wailed Anna. She was shocked at what her old acquaintance told her. “I will Mrs. Otway ask you to help,” she shouted back.

He muttered a word or two and then, “Unless before eight you communicate, Jane and I expect you this evening.”

“Certainly, Herr Fröhling.”

CHAPTER IV

As Mrs. Otway left the cathedral, certain remarks made to her by members of the little congregation jarred on her, and made her feel, almost for the first time in her life, thoroughly out of touch with her friends and neighbours.

Some one whom Mrs. Otway really liked and respected came up to her and exclaimed, “I couldn’t help feeling sorry the Dean did not mention France and the French! Any one listening to him just now would have thought that only Germany and ourselves and Belgium were involved in this awful business.” And then the speaker, seeing that her words were not very acceptable, added quietly, “But of course the Dean, with so many German friends, is in a difficult position just now.” In fact, almost every one said something that hurt and annoyed her, and that though it was often only a word of satisfaction that at last England had gone in, as more than one of them put it, “on the right side.”

Passing through the arch of the square gateway which separates the town from the Close, Mrs. Otway hurried down the pretty, quiet street which leads in a rather roundabout way, and past one of the most beautiful grey stone crosses in England, into the great market square which is one of the glories of the famous cathedral city. Once there, she crossed the wide space, part cobbled, part paved, and made her way into a large building of stucco and red brick which bore above its plate-glass windows the inscription in huge gilt letters, “The Witanbury Stores.”

The Monday Bank Holiday had been prolonged, and so the Stores were only, so to speak, half open. But as Mrs. Otway stepped through into the shadowed shop, the owner of the Stores, Manfred Hegner by name, came forward to take her orders himself.

Manfred Hegner was quite a considerable person in Witanbury. Not only was he the biggest retail tradesman in the place, and an active member of the Witanbury City Council, but he was known to have all sorts of profitable irons in the fire. A man to keep in with, obviously, and one who was always willing to meet one half-way. Because of his German birth—he had been naturalised some years ago—and even more because of certain facial and hirsute peculiarities, he went by the nickname of “The Kaiser.”

Mrs. Otway took out of her bag a piece of paper on which she had written down, at her old Anna’s dictation, a list of groceries and other things needed at the Trellis House. And then she looked round, instinctively, towards the corner of the large shop where all that remained of what had once been the mainstay of Manfred Hegner’s business was always temptingly set forth. This was a counter of Delicatessen. Glancing at the familiar corner, Mr. Hegner’s customer told herself that her eyes must be playing her false. In the place of the familiar sausages, herrings, the pretty coloured basins of sauerkraut, and other savoury dainties, there now stood nothing but a row of large uninteresting Dutch cheeses!

The man who was waiting attentively by her side, a pencil and block of paper in his hand, saw the surprised, regretful look on his valued customer’s face.

“I have had to put away all my nice, fresh Delicatessen,” he said in a low voice. “It seemed wiser to do so, gracious lady.” He spoke in German, and it was in German that she answered.

“Did you really think it necessary to do such a thing? I think you are unfair on your adopted country, Mr. Hegner! English people are not so unreasonable as that.”

He was about to answer, when an odd-looking man, rather like a sailor, came in, and Mr. Hegner, with a hurried “Please excuse me one minute, ma’am,” in English, went off to attend to the new comer.

As Mr. Hegner went across his shop, Mrs. Otway was struck by his curious resemblance to the German Emperor; in spite of the fact that he was wearing a long white apron, he had quite a martial air. He certainly deserved his nickname. There were the same piercing, rather prominent eyes, the same look of energy and decision in his face; also the same peculiar turned-up moustache. But whereas the resemblance last week would have brought a smile, now it brought a furrow of pain to the English lady’s kindly face.

Poor Manfred Hegner! What must he and thousands of others like him—excellent, industrious, civil-spoken Germans—feel all through England to-day? Mrs. Otway, who had always liked the man, and who enjoyed her little chats with him, knew perhaps rather more about this prosperous tradesman than most of the Witanbury people knew. She was aware that he had been something of a rolling stone; he had, for instance, been for quite a long time in America, and it was there that he had shed most of his Germanisms of language. He was older than he looked, and his son by a first marriage lived in Germany—where, however, the young man was buyer for a group of English firms who did a great deal of business in cheap German-made goods.

His conversation with the odd-looking stranger over, Mr. Hegner hurried back to where his valued customer was standing. “Every one on the City Council is being most kind,” he said suavely. “And last night I had the honour of meeting the Dean. At his suggestion I am calling a little meeting this evening, here in my Stores, of the non-naturalised Germans of this town. There are a good many in Witanbury.”

And then Mrs. Otway suddenly remembered that the man now standing opposite to her was a member of the City Council. She remembered that some time ago, three or four years back at least, some disagreeable person had expressed indignation that an ex-German, one only just naturalised, should be elected to such a body. She had thought the speaker narrow-minded and ill-natured. An infusion of German thoroughness and thrift would do the City Council good, and perhaps keep down the rates!

“But you, Mr. Hegner, have been naturalised quite a long time,” she said sympathetically.

“Yes, indeed, gracious lady!” Mr. Hegner seemed surprised, perhaps a thought disturbed, by her natural remark. “I took out my certificate before I built the Stores, and just after I had married my excellent little English wife. Glad indeed am I now that I did so!”

“I am very glad too,” said Mrs. Otway. And yet—and yet she felt a slight quiver of discomfort. The man standing there was so very German after all—German not only in his appearance, but in all his little ways! If nothing else had proved it, his rather absurd nickname was clear proof that so he was even now regarded in Witanbury.

“And how about your son, Mr. Hegner?” she asked. “I suppose he is in Germany now? You must feel rather anxious about him.”

He hesitated oddly, and looked round him before he spoke. Then, vanquished, maybe, by the obvious sincerity and kindness of the speaker, he answered, in German, and almost in a whisper. “He is, I fear, by now on his way to the frontier. But may I ask a favour of the gracious lady? Do not speak of my son to the people of Witanbury.”

“Then he was never naturalised?” Mrs. Otway also spoke in a low voice—a voice full of pity and concern.

“No, no,” said Mr. Hegner hastily. “There was no necessity for him to be. His work was mostly, you see, over there.”

“Still he was educated here, surely?”

“That is so, gracious lady. He talks English better even than I do. He and I did consider the question of his taking out a certificate. Then we decided that, as he would be so much in Germany, it was better he should remain German. But his wife is an English girl.”

“How sorry you must be now that he did not naturalise!” she exclaimed.

An odd look came over Manfred Hegner’s face. “Yes, it is very regretful—the more so that it would do me harm if it were known in the town that I had a son in the German Army. But he will not fight against the English,” he added hastily. “No one will do that but the German sailors—is not that so, madam?”

“I really don’t know.”

“If at any time the gracious lady should hear anything of the sort, I should be grateful—nay, far more than grateful if she will let me know it!” He had lapsed back into German, and Mrs. Otway smiled very kindly at him.

“Yes, I will certainly let you know anything I hear. I know how very anxious you must be about this sad state of things.”

Mrs. Otway had left the shop, and she was already some way back across the Market Place, when there came the rather raucous sound of an urgent voice in her ear. Startled, she turned round. The owner of the Witanbury Stores stood by her side.

“Pardon, pardon!” he said breathlessly. “But would you, gracious lady, ask your servant” (he used the German word “Stütze”) “if she could make it convenient to join our gathering this evening at nine o’clock? Frau Anna Bauer is so very highly respected among the Germans here that we should like her to be present.”

“Certainly I will arrange for Anna to come,” answered Mrs. Otway. “But you may not be aware, Mr. Hegner, that my cook has become to all intents and purposes quite English—without, of course,” she hastily corrected herself, “giving up her love for the Fatherland. She has only one relation left in Germany, a married niece in Berlin. Her own daughter is the wife of an Englishman, a tradesman in London.”

“That makes no difference,” said Manfred Hegner; “she will be welcome, most heartily welcome, to-night! This is the moment, as the Reverend Mr. Dean so well put it to me, when all Germans should stick together, and consult as to the wisest and best thing to do in their own interests.”

“Yes, indeed, Mr. Hegner. I quite agree with the Dean. But do not do anything to upset my poor old Anna. She really is not involved in the question at all. She has lived with me nearly twenty years, and my daughter and I regard her far more as a friend than as a servant. The fact that she is German is an accident—the merest accident! Nothing in her life, thank God, will be changed for the worse. And, Mr. Hegner? I should like to say one more thing.” She looked earnestly into his face, but even she could see that his eyes were wandering, and that there was a slight look of apprehension in the prominent eyes now fixed on a group of farmers who stood a few yards off staring at him and at Mrs. Otway.

“Yes, gracious lady,” he said mechanically, “I am attending.”

“Do not think that English people bear any ill-feeling to you and your great country! We feel that Germany, by breaking her word to Belgium, has put herself in the wrong. It is England’s duty to fight, not her pleasure, Mr. Hegner. And we hope with all our hearts that the war will soon be over.”

He murmured a word of respectful assent. And then, choosing a rather devious route, skirting the fine old Council House, which is the most distinctive feature of Witanbury Market Place, he hurried back to his big stores.

Mrs. Otway opened the wrought-iron gate of the Trellis House with a feeling of restful satisfaction; but there, in her own pretty, peaceful home, a not very pleasant surprise awaited her. Good old Anna, hurrying out into the black and white hall to meet her gracious lady, did not receive Mr. Hegner’s kind invitation as her mistress had supposed she would do. A look of indecision and annoyance crossed her pink face.

“Ach, but to go to Mr. Fröhling promised have I,” she muttered.

And then Mrs. Otway exclaimed, “But the Fröhlings are Germans! They will certainly be there themselves. Mr. Fröhling cannot have known of this meeting when he and his wife asked you to supper. I think, Anna, that it is your duty to attend this gathering. The Dean not only approves of it, but, from what I could make out, he actually suggested that it should take place. Of course I know it makes no real difference to you; but still, Anna,” she spoke reprovingly, “you should not forget at such a time as this that you are German-born.”

The old woman looked up quickly at her mistress. Forget she was German-born! Mrs. Otway was a most good lady, a most kind employer, but she was sometimes foolish, very very foolish, in what she said! She, Anna Bauer, had often noticed it. Still, averse as she was from the thought, the old German woman was ruefully aware that she would have to accept Mr. Hegner’s invitation. When it came to a tussle of will between the two, herself and her mistress, Mrs. Otway generally won, partly because she was, after all, Anna’s employer, and also because she always knew exactly what it was she wanted Anna to do. Anna was emotional, easily touched, highly excitable; she also generally knew what she wanted, but she did not find it easy to force her will on others, least of all on her beloved if not exactly admired mistress.

Grumbling under her breath, she retreated into her kitchen; while Mrs. Otway, feeling tired and rather dispirited, went upstairs.

The back-door bell rang, and Anna went and opened it. A boy stood there, bearing on a tray not only the various little things Mrs. Otway had ordered at the Witanbury Stores half an hour before, but also an envelope addressed to “Frau Bauer.” Anna brought the things into the kitchen, then she opened with interest the envelope addressed to herself. It contained a card, elegantly headed:

“THE WITANBURY STORES.
Proprietor: Manfred Hegner.”

Across it were written in German the words: “You are bidden to a meeting at the above address to-night at nine o’clock. There will be cakes and coffee served before the meeting begins. Entrance by Market Row.”

Anna read the words again and again. This was treating her at last as she ought always to have been treated! Anna did not like her erst fellow-country-man, and she considered that she had good reason for her dislike. Resentment against ingratitude is not confined to any one nationality.

When Manfred Hegner had first come to Witanbury, Anna had been delighted to make his acquaintance, and she had spent many happy half-hours chatting with him in the little Delicatessen shop he had established in Bridge Street, close to the Market Place.

Starting with only the good-will of a bankrupt confectioner, he had very soon built up a wonderfully prosperous business. But his early success had been in a measure undoubtedly owing to Mrs. Otway and her German cook. Mrs. Otway had told all her friends of this amusing little German shop, and of the good things which were to be bought there. Delicatessen had become quite the fashion, not only among the good people of Witanbury itself, but among the county gentry who made the cathedral town their shopping headquarters, and who enjoyed motoring in there to spend an idly busy morning.

Then had come the erection of the big Stores. Over that matter quite a storm had arisen, and local feeling had been very mixed. A petition originated by those who called themselves the Art Society of Witanbury, pointed out that a large modern building of the kind proposed would ruin the old-world, picturesque appearance of the Market Place. But the big local builder, the man who later promoted the election of Manfred Hegner on to the City Council, bore down all opposition, and a group of charming old gabled houses—houses that were little more than cottages, and therefore perhaps hardly in keeping with the Market Place of so prosperous a town as was Witanbury—had been pulled down, and the large Stores had risen on their site.

And then one day—which happened to be a day when Mrs. Otway and her daughter were away on a visit—Manfred Hegner himself walked along into the Close, and so to the Trellis House, in order to make Anna a proposal. It was a simple thing that he asked Anna to do—namely that she should persuade her mistress to remove her custom from the long-established tradesmen where she had always dealt, and transfer it entirely to his Stores. His things, so he said, were better as well as cheaper than those sold by the smaller people, also he would be pleased to pay Anna a handsome commission on every bill paid by her mistress.

Anna had willingly fallen in with this plan. It had taken some time and some trouble, but in the end Mrs. Otway found it very convenient to get everything at the same place. For a while all had gone well for Manfred Hegner—well for him and well for Anna. At the end of a year, however, he had arbitrarily halved Anna’s commission, and that she felt to be (as indeed it was) most unfair, and not in the bond. She had no longer the power to retaliate, for her mistress had fallen into the way of going into the Stores herself. Mrs. Otway enjoyed rubbing up her German with Mr. Hegner, and the really intelligent zeal with which he always treated her, and her comparatively small orders, was very pleasant. Twice he had taken great trouble to procure for her a local Weimar delicacy which she remembered enjoying as a girl.

But when Anna, following her mistress’s example, walked along to the Stores to enjoy a little chat in her native language, Mr. Hegner would be short with her, very short indeed! In fact it was now a long time since the old woman had cared to set foot there. For another thing she did not like Mrs. Hegner, the pretty English girl Manfred Hegner had married five years before; she thought her a very frivolous, silly little woman, not at all what the wife of a big commercial man should be. Anna’s Louisa would have been a perfect helpmate for Manfred Hegner, and there had been a time, a certain three months, when Anna had thought the already prosperous widower was considering Louisa. His marriage to pretty Polly Brown had been a disappointment.

But now this politely-worded card of invitation certainly made a difference. Old Anna, who was not lacking in a certain simple shrewdness, had not expected Manfred Hegner to show any kindness to his ex-compatriots. She was touched to find him a better man than she expected. Most certainly would she attend this meeting!

As soon as her mistress had gone out to lunch, Anna telephoned to Mr. Fröhling and explained why she could not come to him that evening.

“We too asked to Hegner’s have been. As you are going, we your example will follow,” shouted the barber.

CHAPTER V

Rose Otway sat in the garden of the Trellis House, under the wide-branched cedar of Lebanon which was, to the thinking of most people in the Close, that garden’s only beauty. For it was just a wide lawn, surrounded on three sides by a very high old brick wall, under which ran an herbaceous border to which Rose devoted some thought and a good deal of time.

The great cedar rose majestically far above its surroundings; and when you stood at one of the windows of the Trellis House, and saw how wide the branches of the tree spread, you realised that the garden was a good deal bigger than it appeared at first sight.

Rose sat near a low wicker table on which in an hour or so Anna would come out and place the tea-tray. Spread out across the girl’s knee was a square of canvas, a section of a bed-spread, on which was traced an intricate and beautiful Jacobean design. Rose had already been working at it for six months, and she hoped to have finished it by the 14th of December, her mother’s birthday. She enjoyed doing this beautiful work, of which the pattern had been lent to her by a country neighbour who collected such things.

How surprised Rose would have been on this early August afternoon could she have foreseen that this cherished piece of work, on which she had already lavished so many hours of close and pleasant toil, would soon be put away for an indefinite stretch of time; and that knitting, which she had always disliked doing, would take its place!

But no such thought, no such vision of the future, came into her mind as she bent her pretty head over her work.

She felt rather excited, a thought more restless than usual. England at war, and with Germany! Dear old Anna’s Fatherland—the great country to which Rose had always been taught by her mother to look with peculiar affection, as well as respect and admiration.

Rose and Mrs. Otway had hoped to go to Germany this very autumn. They had saved up their pennies—as Mrs. Otway would have put it—for a considerable time, in order that they might enjoy in comfort, and even in luxury, what promised to be a delightful tour. Rose could hardly realise even yet that their journey, so carefully planned out, so often discussed, would now have to be postponed. They were first to have gone to Weimar, where Mrs. Otway had spent such a happy year in her girlhood, and then to Munich, to Dresden, to Nuremberg—to all those dear old towns with whose names Rose had always been familiar. It seemed such a pity that now they would have to wait till after the war to go to Germany.

After the war? Fortunately the people she had seen that day—and there had been a good deal of coming and going in the Close—all seemed to think that the war would be over very soon, and this pleasant view had been confirmed in a rather odd way.

Rose’s cousin, James Hayley, had rung her up on the telephone from London. She had been very much surprised, for a telephone message from London to Witanbury costs one-and-threepence, and James was careful about such things. When he did telephone, which was very seldom, he always waited to do so till the evening, when the fee was halved. But to-day James had rung up just before luncheon, and she had heard his voice almost as though he were standing by her side.

“Who’s there? Oh, it’s you, is it, Rose? I just wanted to say that I shall probably be down Saturday night. I shan’t be able to be away more than one night, worse luck. I suppose you’ve heard what’s happened?”

And then, as she had laughed—she had really not been able to help it (how very odd James was! He evidently thought Witanbury quite out of the world), he had gone on, “It’s a great bore, for it upsets everything horribly. The one good point about it is that it won’t last long.”

“How long?” she had called out.

And he had answered rather quickly, “You needn’t speak so loud. I hear you perfectly. How long? Oh, I think it’ll be over by October—may be a little before, but I should say October.”

“Mother thinks there’ll be a sort of Trafalgar!”

And then he had answered, speaking a little impatiently for he was very overworked just then, “Nothing of the sort! The people who will win this war, and will win it quickly, are the Russians. We have information that they will mobilise quickly—much more quickly than most people think. You see, my dear Rose,”—he was generally rather old-fashioned in his phraseology—“the Russians are like a steam roller”; she always remembered that she had heard that phrase from him first. “We have reason to believe that they can put ten million men into their fighting line every year for fifty years!”

Rose, in answer, said the first silly thing she had said that day: “Oh, I do hope the war won’t last as long as that!”

And then she had heard, uttered in a strange voice, the words, “Another three minutes, sir?” and the hasty answer at the other end, “No, certainly not! I’ve quite done.” And she had hung up the receiver with a smile.

And yet Rose, if well aware of his little foibles, liked her cousin well enough to be generally glad of his company. During the last three months he had spent almost every week-end at Witanbury. And though it was true, as her mother often observed, that James was both narrow-minded and self-opinionated, yet even so he brought with him a breath of larger air, and he often told the ladies at the Trellis House interesting things.

While Rose Otway sat musing over her beautiful work in the garden, good old Anna came and went in her kitchen. She too still felt restless and anxious, she too wondered how long this unexpected war would last. But whereas Rose couldn’t have told why she was restless and anxious, her one-time nurse knew quite well what ailed herself this afternoon.

Anna had a very good reason for feeling worried and depressed, but it was one she preferred to keep to herself. For the last two days she had been expecting some money from Germany, and since this morning she had been wondering, with keen anxiety, whether that money would be stopped in the post.

What made this possibility very real to her was the fact that an uncle of Anna’s, just forty-four years ago, that is, in the August of 1870, had been ruined owing to the very simple fact that a sum of money owing him from France had not been able to get through! It was true that she, Anna, would not be ruined if the sum due to her, which in English money came to fifty shillings exactly, were not to arrive. Still, it would be very disagreeable, and the more disagreeable because she had foolishly given her son-in-law five pounds a month ago. She knew it would have to be a gift, though he had pretended at the time that it was only a loan.

Anna wondered how she could find out whether money orders were still likely to come through from Germany. She did not like to ask at the Post Office, for her Berlin nephew, who transmitted the money to her half-yearly, always had the order made out to some neighbouring town or village, not to Witanbury. In vain Anna had pointed out that this was quite unnecessary, and indeed very inconvenient; and that when she had said she did not wish her mistress to know, she had not meant that. In spite of her protests Willi had persisted in so sending it.

Suddenly her face brightened. How easy it would be to find out all that sort of thing at the meeting to-night! Such a man as Manfred Hegner would be sure to know.

There came a ring at the front door of the Trellis House, and Anna got up reluctantly from her easy chair and laid down her crochet. She was beginning to feel old, so she often told herself regretfully—older than the Englishwomen of her own age seemed to be. But none of them had worked as hard as she had always worked. Englishwomen, especially English servants, were lazy good-for-nothings!

Poor old Anna; she did not feel happy or placid to-day, and she hated the thought of opening the door to some one who, maybe, would condole with her on to-day’s news. All Mrs. Otway’s friends knew Anna, and treated her as a highly respected institution. Those who knew a little German were fond of trying it on her.

It was rather curious, considering how long Anna had been in England, that she still kept certain little habits acquired in the far-off days when she had been the young cook of a Herr Privy Councillor. Thus never did she open the front door with a cheerful, pleasant manner. Also, unless they were very intimately known to her and to her mistress, she always kept visitors waiting in the hall. She would forget, that is, to show them straight into the pretty sitting-room which lay just opposite her kitchen. She often found herself regretting that the heavy old mahogany door of the Trellis House lacked the tiny aperture which in Berlin is so well named a “stare-hole,” and which enables the person inside the front door to command, as it were, the position outside.

But to-day, when she saw who it was who stood on the threshold, her face cleared a little, for she was well acquainted with the tall young man who was looking at her with so pleasant a smile. His name was Jervis Blake, and he came very often to the Trellis House. For two years he had been at “Robey’s,” the Army coaching establishment which was, in a minor degree, one of the glories of Witanbury, and which consisted of a group of beautiful old Georgian houses spreading across the whole of one of the wide corners of the Close.

Some of the inhabitants of the Close resented the fact of “Robey’s.” But Mr. Robey was the son of a former Bishop of Witanbury, the Bishop who had followed Miss Forsyth’s father.

Bishop Robey had had twin sons, who, unlike most twins, were very different. The elder, whom some of the oldest inhabitants remembered as an ugly, eccentric little boy, with a taste for cutting up dead animals, had insisted on becoming a surgeon. To the surprise of his father’s old friends, he had made a considerable reputation, which had been, so to speak, officially certified with a knighthood. The professional life of a great surgeon is limited, and Sir Jacques Robey, though not much over fifty and still a bachelor, had now retired.

The younger twin, Orlando, was the Army coach. He had been, even as a little boy, a great contrast to his brother, being both good looking and anything but eccentric. The brothers were only alike in the success they had achieved in their several professions, but they had for one another in full measure that curiously understanding sympathy and affection which seem to be the special privilege of twins.

Mr. Robey was popular and respected, and those dwellers in the Close who had daughters were pleased with the life and animation which the presence of so many young men gave to the place. The more thoughtful were also glad to think that the shadow of their beloved cathedral rested benignantly over the temporary home of those future officers and administrators of the Empire. And of all those who had been coached at “Robey’s” during the last two years, there was none better liked, though there had been many more popular, than the young man who now stood smiling at old Anna.

During the first three months of his sojourn in the Close, Jervis Blake had counted very little, for it had naturally been supposed that he would soon go off to Sandhurst or Woolwich. Then he had failed to pass the Army Entrance Examination, not once, as so many did, but again and again, and the good folk of Witanbury, both gentle and simple, had grown accustomed to see him coming and going in their midst.

Unfortunately for Jervis Blake, his father, though a distinguished soldier, was a very peculiar man, one who had owed nothing in his hard laborious youth to influence; and he had early determined that his only son should tread the path he had himself trod.

And now poor young Blake had reached the age limit, and failed for the last time. Every one had been sorry, but no one had been surprised in Witanbury Close, when the result of the May Army Exam. had been published in July.

One person, Mr. Robey himself, had been deeply concerned. Indeed, the famous coach muttered to one or two of his old friends, “It’s a pity, you know! Although I make my living by it, I often think there’s a good deal to be said against a system which passes in—well, some boys whose names I could give you, and which keeps out of the Army a lad like Jervis Blake! He’d make a splendid company officer—conscientious, honest, unselfish, keen about his work, and brave—well, brave as only a man——”

And one of those to whom he said it, seeing him hesitate, had broken in, with a slight smile, “Brave as only a man totally lacking in imagination can be, eh, Robey?”

“No, no, I won’t have you say that! Even an idiot has enough imagination to be afraid of danger! There’s something fine about poor Jervis.”

They’d gradually all got to call young Blake “Jervis” in that household. Perhaps Mrs. Robey alone of them all knew how much they would miss him. He was such a thoroughly good fellow, he was so useful to her husband in keeping order among the wilder spirits, and that without having about him a touch of the prig!

Rose looked up and smiled as the tall young man came forward and shook hands with her, saying as he did so, “I hope I’m not too early? The truth is, I’ve a good many calls to pay this afternoon. I’ve come to say good-bye.”

“I’m sorry. I thought you weren’t going away till Saturday.” Rose really did feel sorry—in fact, she was herself surprised at her rather keen sensation of regret. She had always liked Jervis Blake very much—liked him from the first day she had seen him. He had a certain claim on the kindness of the ladies of the Trellis House, for his mother had been a girl friend of Mrs. Otway’s.

Most people, as Rose was well aware, found his conversation boring. But it always interested her. In fact Rose Otway was the one person in Witanbury who listened with real pleasure to what Jervis Blake had to say. Oddly enough, his talk almost always ran on military matters. Most soldiers—and Rose knew a good many officers, for Witanbury is a garrison town—would discuss, before the Great War, every kind of topic except those connected with what they would have described as “shop.” But Jervis Blake, who, owing to his bad luck, seemed fated never to be a soldier, thought and talked of nothing else. It was thanks to him that Rose knew so much about the great Napoleonic campaigns, and was so well “up” in the Indian Mutiny.

And now, on this 4th of August, 1914, Jervis Blake sat down by Rose Otway, and began tracing imaginary patterns on the grass with his stick.

“I’m not going to tell any one else, but there’s something I want to tell you.” He spoke in a rather hard, set voice, and he did not look up, as he spoke, at the girl by his side.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Jervis? What is it?” There was something very kind, truly sympathetic, in her accents.

“I’m going to enlist.”

Rose Otway was startled—startled and sorry.

“Oh, no, you mustn’t do that!”

“I’ve always thought I should like to do it, if—if I failed this last time. But of course I knew it was out of the question—because of my father. But now—everything’s different! Even father will see that I have no other course open to me.”

“I—I don’t understand what you mean,” she answered, and to her surprise there came a queer lump in her throat. “Why is everything different now?”

He looked round at her with an air of genuine surprise, and, yes, of indignation, in his steady grey eyes. And under that surprised and indignant look, so unlike anything there had ever been before from him to her, the colour flushed all over her face.

“You mean,” she faltered, “you mean because—because England is at war?”

He nodded.

“But I thought—of course I don’t know anything about it, Jervis, and I daresay you’ll think me very ignorant—but from what the Dean said this morning I thought that only our fleet is to fight the Germans.”

“The Dean is an old——” and then they both laughed. Jervis Blake went on: “If we don’t go to the help of the French and the Belgians, then England’s disgraced. But of course we’re going to fight!”

Rose Otway was thinking—thinking hard. She knew a good deal about Jervis, and his relations with the father he both loved and feared.

“Look here,” she said earnestly. “We’ve always been friends, you and I, haven’t we, Jervis?”

And again he simply nodded in answer to the question.

“Well, I want you to promise me something!”

“I can’t promise you I won’t enlist.”

“I don’t want you to promise me that. I only want you to promise me to wait just a few days—say a week. Of course I don’t know anything about how one becomes a soldier, but you’d be rather sold, wouldn’t you, if you enlisted and then if your regiment took no part in the fighting—if there’s really going to be fighting?”

Rose Otway stopped short. She felt a most curious sensation of fatigue; it was as though she had been speaking an hour instead of a few moments. But she had put her whole heart, her whole soul, into those few simple words.

There was a long, long pause, and her eyes filled with tears. Those who knew her would have told you that Rose Otway was quite singularly self-possessed and unemotional. In fact she could not remember when she had cried last, it was so long ago. But now there came over her a childish, irresistible desire to have her way—to save poor, poor Jervis from himself. And suddenly the face of the young man looking at her became transfigured.

“Rose,” he cried—“Rose, do you really care, a little, what happens to me? Oh, if you only knew what a difference that would make!”

And then she pulled herself together. Jervis mustn’t become what she in her own mind called “silly.” Young men, ay, and older men too, had a way of becoming “silly” about Rose Otway. And up to now she had disliked it very much. But this afternoon she was touched rather than displeased.

“I care very much,” she said quietly. She knew the battle was won, and it was very collectedly that she added the words, “Now, I have your promise, Jervis? You’re not to do anything foolish——” Then she saw she had made a mistake. “No, no!” she cried hastily; “I don’t mean that—I don’t mean that a man who becomes a soldier in time of war is doing anything foolish! But I do think that you ought to wait just a few days. Everything is different now.” For the first time she felt that everything was indeed different in England—in this new strange England which was at war. It was odd that Jervis Blake should have brought that knowledge home to her.

“Very well,” he said slowly. “I’ll wait. I can’t wait a whole week, but I’ll wait till after Sunday.”

“The Robeys are going to the seaside on Monday, aren’t they?” She was speaking now quite composedly, quite like herself.

“Yes, and they kindly asked me to stay on till then.”

He got up. “Well,” he said, looking down at her—and she couldn’t help telling herself what a big, manly fellow he looked, and what a fine soldier he would make—“well, Rose, so it isn’t good-bye, after all?”

“No, I’m glad to say it isn’t.” She gave him a frank, kindly smile. “Surely you’ll stay and have some tea?”

“No, thank you. Jack Robey is feeling a little above himself to-day. You see it’s the fourth day of the holidays. I think I’ll just go straight back, and take him out for a walk. I rather want to think over things.”

As he made his way across the lawn and through the house, feeling somehow that the whole world had changed for the better, though he could not have told you exactly why, Jervis Blake met Mrs. Otway.

“Won’t you stay and have some tea?” she asked, but she said it in a very different voice from that Rose had used—Rose had meant what she said.

“Thanks very much, but I’ve got to get back. I promised Mrs. Robey I’d be in to tea; the boys are back from school, you know.”

“Oh, yes, of course! I suppose they are. Well, you must come in some other day before you leave Witanbury.”

She hurried through into the garden.

“I hope Jervis Blake hasn’t been here very long, darling,” she said fondly. “Of course I know he’s your friend, and that you’ve always liked him. But I’m afraid he would rather jar on one to-day. He’s always so disliked the Germans! Poor fellow, how he must feel out of it, now that the war he’s always been talking about has actually come!”

“Well, mother, Jervis was right after all. The Germans were preparing for war.”

But Mrs. Otway went on as if she had not heard the interruption. It was a way she had, and sometimes both Rose and old Anna found it rather trying. “This morning Miss Forsyth was saying she thought young Blake would enlist—that she’d enlist if she were in his place! It’s odd what nonsense she sometimes talks.”

Rose remained silent and her mother continued. “I’ve so many things to tell you I hardly know where to begin. It was a very interesting committee, more lively than usual. There seemed a notion among some of the people there that there will be war work of some kind for us to do. Lady Bethune thought so—though I can’t see how the war can affect any of us, here, in Witanbury. But just as we were breaking up, Lady Bethune told us some interesting things. There are, she says, two parties in the Government—one party wants us to send out troops to help Belgium, the other party thinks we ought to be content with letting the fleet help the French. I must say I agree with the Blue Water school.”

“I don’t,” said Rose rather decidedly. “If we really owe so much to Belgium that we have gone to war for her sake, then it seems to me we ought to send soldiers to help her.”

“But then we have such a small army,” objected Mrs. Otway.

“It may grow bigger,” observed her daughter quietly, “especially if people like Jervis Blake think of enlisting.”

“But it wasn’t Jervis Blake, darling child—it was Miss Forsyth who said that to me.”

“So it was! How stupid I am!” Rose turned a little pink. She did not wish to deceive her mother. But Mrs. Otway was so confiding, so sure that every one was as honourable as herself, that she could not always be trusted to keep secrets.

CHAPTER VI

Mr. and Mrs. Hegner stood together in their brilliantly lighted but now empty front shop. In a few minutes their guests would begin to arrive. Mrs. Hegner looked tired, and rather cross, for the shop had not been transformed into its present state without a good deal of hard work on the part of all of them, her husband, their German assistants, and herself—their English shopman had been told that to-night his services would not be required. But Mrs. Hegner, though her pretty face was tired and peevish-looking, yet looked far pleasanter than she had done half an hour ago, for her husband had just presented her with a long gold chain.

In a very, very quiet way, quite under the rose, so to speak, Mr. Hegner sometimes went in for small money-lending transactions. He would give loans on jewellery, and even on “curios” and good furniture; always, however, in connection with an account which had, maybe, run a little too long—never as a separate transaction. The old-fashioned chain of 18-carat gold, which he had just hung with a joking word round his pretty wife’s slender neck, had been the outcome of one of these minor activities.

It was now a quarter to nine; and suddenly there came the sound of loud, rather impatient knocking on the locked and barred front door of the shop. A frown gathered over Mr. Hegner’s face; it transformed his good-looking, generally genial, countenance into something which was, for the moment, very disagreeable.

“What can that be?” he said to his wife. “Did you not put plainly on every card ‘Entrance by Market Row,’ Polly?”

“Yes,” she said, a little frightened by his look. “It was most carefully put in every case, Manfred.”

The knocking had stopped now, as if the person outside expected the door to open. Husband and wife went forward.

“Who can it be?” said Mrs. Hegner uneasily.

And then her question was answered.

The voice was clear and silvery. “It’s Miss Haworth! Can I come in and speak to you a moment, Mr. Hegner, or has the meeting already begun?”

“Why, it’s the young lady from the Deanery!” exclaimed Manfred Hegner in a relieved voice; and both he and his wife began hastily unlocking and unbarring the great plate-glass doors.

The unbidden, unexpected visitor stepped forward into the shop, and Mrs. Hegner eagerly noted the cut and shape of the prettily draped pale blue silk evening coat, and tried to gain some notion of the evening gown beneath.

“I’m so glad to be in time—I mean before your meeting has begun. How very nice it all looks!” The speaker cast an approving glance on the rout chairs, on the table at the top of the room, on the counter where steamed, even now, the fragrant coffee. “The Dean has asked me to bring a message—of course quite an informal message, Mr. Hegner. He wants you to tell everybody that he is quite at their service if they want anything done.”

“That is very, very good of Mr. Dean. Polly, d’you hear that? Is not the Reverend gentleman truly good?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Hegner, a trifle mechanically.

She felt a touch of sharp envy as she looked at the beautiful girl standing there. Though Edith Haworth knew very little of Mrs. Hegner, except that Mrs. Hegner’s sister was her maid, Mrs. Hegner knew a great deal about Miss Haworth. How she had gone up to London just for one month of the season, and how during that one month she had become engaged to a rich young gentleman, a baronet. He was in the Army, too, but he couldn’t be much of a soldier, for he seemed to be a great deal in Witanbury—at least he had been here a great deal during the last three weeks. The two often walked about the town together; once they had stood for quite a long time just opposite the open doors of the Stores, and Mrs. Hegner on that occasion had looked at the handsome couple with sympathetic interest and excitement.

But now, to-night, nothing but sharp envy filled her soul. It was her fate, poor, pretty Polly’s fate, to sit behind that horrid glass partition over there, taking money, paying out endless small change, compelled always to look pleasant, or Manfred, if he caught her looking anything else, even when giving a farthing change out of a penny, would soon know the reason why! The young lady who stood smiling just within the door was not half as “fetching” as she, Polly, had been in her maiden days—and yet she was going to have everything the heart of woman could desire, a rich, handsome, young husband, and plenty of money!

As her eyes strayed out to the moonlit space outside where stood waiting, under the quaint little leafy mall which gives the Market Square of Witanbury such a foreign look, a gentleman in evening dress, Mrs. Hegner repeated mechanically, “Very kind, I’m sure, miss. They’ll appreciate it—that they will.”

“Well, that was all I came to say—only that my father will be very glad indeed to do anything he can. Oh, I did forget one more thing——” She lowered her voice a little. “The Dean thinks it probable, Mr. Hegner, that after to-day no German of military age will be allowed to leave England. You ought to tell everybody that this evening, otherwise some of them, without knowing it, might get into trouble.”

And then Mrs. Hegner, perhaps because she had become nervously aware that her husband had looked at her rather crossly a moment ago, blurted out, “There’s no fear of that, miss. We sent off a lot this morning to Harwich. I expect they’ll have been able to get a boat there all right——” She stopped suddenly, for her husband had just made a terrible face at her—a face full of indignation and wrath.

But Miss Haworth did not seem to have noticed anything.

“Oh, well,” she said, “perhaps it was a mistake to do that, but I don’t suppose it matters much, one way or the other. I must go now. The meeting is due to begin, isn’t it? And—and Sir Hugh is leaving to-night. He expects to find his marching orders when he gets back to town.” A little colour came into her charming face; she sighed, but not very heavily. “War is an awful thing!” she said; “but every soldier, of course, wants to see something of the fighting. I expect the feeling is just as strong in France and Germany as it is here.”

She shook hands warmly with Mr. and Mrs. Hegner, then she turned and tripped out into the dimly lighted and solitary Market Square. They watched her cross the road and take her lover’s arm.

“Fool!” said Mr. Hegner harshly. “Pretty, silly fool!” He mimicked what he thought to be her mincing accents. “Wants to see something of war, does he? I can tell him he will be satisfied before he has done!” There was a scowl on his face. “And you”—he turned on his wife furiously—“what business had you to say that about those young German men? I was waiting—yes, with curiosity—to hear what else you were going to tell her—whether you would tell her that I had paid their fares!”

“Oh, no, Manfred. You know I would never have done that after what you said to me yesterday.”

“Take it from me now, once for all,” he said fiercely, “that you say nothing—nothing, mark you—about this cursed, blasted war—this war which, if we are not very careful, is going to make us poor, to bring us to the gutter, to the workhouse, you and I!”

And then Hegner’s brow cleared as if by enchantment, for the first of their visitors were coming through from the back of the shop.

It was the manager of a big boot factory and his wife. They were both German-born, and the man had obtained his present excellent position owing to the good offices of Mr. Hegner. Taking his friend’s wise advice, he had become naturalised a year ago. But a nephew, who had joined him in business, had not followed his example, and he had been one of the young men who had been speeded off to Harwich, through Mr. Hegner’s exertions, early that morning.

While Mrs. Hegner tried to make herself pleasant to Mrs. Liebert, Mr. Hegner took Mr. Liebert aside.

“I have just learnt,” he said, in a quick whisper, “that the military gentlemen here are expecting marching orders to the Continent—I presume to Belgium.”

“That is bad,” muttered the other.

But Mr. Hegner smiled. “No, no,” he said, “not bad! It might have been disagreeable if they could have been got there last week. But by the time the fifty thousand, even the hundred thousand, English soldiers are in Belgium, there will be a million of our fellows there to meet them.”

“What are you going to say at this meeting?” asked the other curiously; he used the English word, though they still spoke German.

Mr. Hegner shrugged his shoulders. “This is not going to be a meeting,” he said laughingly. “It’s going to be a Kaffeeklatch! Those people to whom I have to say a word I shall see by myself, in our little parlour. I trust to you, friend Max, to make everything go well and lively. As to measures, it is far too early to think of any measures. So far all goes very well with me. I have had many tokens of sympathy and of friendship this morning. Just two or three, perhaps, would have liked to be disagreeable, but they did not dare.”

He hurried away, for his guests were arriving thick and fast.

It was a strange and, or so Mrs. Otway would have thought, a rather pathetic little company of men and women, who gathered together at Manfred Hegner’s Stores at nine o’clock on that fine August night. The blinds had been drawn down, and behind the blinds the shutters had been put up.

As to the people there, they all looked prosperous and respectable, but each one wore a slight air of apprehension and discomfort. Strange to say, not one of the Germans present really liked or trusted their host, and that was odd, for Manfred Hegner, apart from certain outstanding exceptions, had managed to make himself quite popular among the English inhabitants of Witanbury.

The men and the women had instinctively parted into two companies, but Mrs. Hegner went to and fro among both sets, pressing hospitably on all her guests the coffee, the creamy milk, and the many cakes, to say nothing of the large sandwiches she had been ordered to make that afternoon.

She felt oppressed and rather bewildered, for the people about her were all talking German, and she had never taken the trouble to learn even half a dozen words of her husband’s difficult nasal language. She kept wondering when the meeting would begin. Time was going on. They always got up very early in the morning, and already she was tired, very, very tired in fact, for it had been a long and rather an exciting day.

She had never before seen her husband quite so pleasant and jovial, and as she moved about she heard continually his loud, hearty laugh. He was cheering up the people round him—so much was clear. All of them had looked gloomy, preoccupied, and troubled when they came in, but now they seemed quite merry and bright.

There was one exception. Poor Mr. Fröhling looked very miserable. Mrs. Hegner felt very sorry for Mr. and Mrs. Fröhling. When her husband had heard of what had befallen the unfortunate barber, and how he had been ordered to pack up and leave his shop within a few hours, he had said roughly: “Fröhling is a fool! I told him to take out his certificate. He refused to do it, so now of course he will have to go. Witanbury has no use for that man!”

And now Mr. and Mrs. Fröhling, alone of the company there, sat together apart, with lowering brows.

Mrs. Hegner went up to them, rather timidly. “I want to tell you how sorry I am, Mr. Fröhling,” she said conciliatingly. Polly had a kind heart, if a pettish manner. “What a pity you didn’t take out your certificate when Manfred advised you to do so!”

Mr. Fröhling remained silent. But his wife said wistfully, “Ach, yes, Mrs. Hegner. It is a pity now; but still, the officers they have been kind to us, really very kind. One of them even said it would not have made much difference——”

Her husband interrupted her. “He nothing, Jane, said of the kind! That it ought not any difference to have made was what say he did. I, who have in England lived since the year 1874; I, who England love; I, whose son will soon for England be fighting!”

“My husband said,” began Mrs. Hegner—— And again Mr. Fröhling interrupted rather rudely: “You need not tell me what your husband say,” he remarked. “I know for myself exactly what Mr. Hegner say. If everything could be foreseen in this life we should all be very wise. Mr. Hegner, he does foresee more than most people, and wise he is.”

Mrs. Fröhling drew her hostess a little aside. “Don’t mind him,” she whispered. “He is so unhappy. And yet we should be thankful, for the gentlemen officers are getting up a little testimonial fund for poor Fröhling.”

“I suppose you’ve saved a good bit, too?” said Mrs. Hegner with curiosity.

“Not much—not much! Only lately have we turned the corner——” Mrs. Fröhling sighed. Then her face brightened, and Mrs. Hegner looking round saw that Anna Bauer, Mrs. Otway’s servant, was pushing her way through the crowd towards them.

Now pretty Polly disliked the old woman. Frau Bauer was not a person of any account, yet Manfred had ordered that she should be treated this evening with special consideration, and so Mrs. Hegner walked forward and stiffly shook hands with her latest guest.

CHAPTER VII

“Sit down, Fröhling, sit down!”

The old barber, rather to his surprise, had been invited to follow his host into the Hegners’ private parlour, a little square room situated behind the big front shop.

The floor of the parlour was covered with a large-patterned oilcloth. There was a round mahogany pedestal table, too large for the room, and four substantial cane-backed armchairs. Till to-day there had always hung over the piano a large engraving of the German Emperor, and on the opposite wall a smaller oleograph picture of Queen Victoria with her little great-grandson, the Prince of Wales, at her knee. The German Emperor had now been taken down, and there was a patch of clean paper marking where the frame had hung.

As answer to Mr. Hegner’s invitation, the older man sat down heavily in a chair near the table.

Both men remained silent for a moment, and a student of Germany, one who really knew and understood that amazing country, might well, had he seen the two sitting there, have regarded the one as epitomising the old Germany, and the other—naturalised Englishman though he now was—epitomising the new. Manfred Hegner was slim, active, and prosperous-looking; he appeared years younger than his age. Ludwig Fröhling was stout and rather stumpy; he seemed older than he really was, and although he was a barber, his hair was long and untidy. He looked intelligent and thoughtful, but it was the intelligence and the thoughtfulness of the student and of the dreamer, not of the man of action.

“Well, Mr. Fröhling, the International haven’t done much the last few days, eh? I’m afraid you must have been disappointed.” He of course spoke in German.

“Yes, I have been disappointed,” said the other stoutly, “very much disappointed indeed! But still, from this great crime good may come, even now. It has occurred to me that, owing to this war made by the great rulers, the people in Russia, as well as in my beloved Fatherland, may arise and cut their bonds.”

A light came into the speaker’s eyes, and Manfred Hegner looked at him in mingled pity and contempt. It was not his intention, however, to waste much time this evening listening to a foolish old man. In fact, he had hesitated as to whether he should include the Fröhlings in his invitations—then he had thought that if he omitted to do so the fact might possibly come to the ears of the Dean. Fröhling and the Dean had long been pleasantly acquainted. Then, again, it was just possible—not likely, but possible—that he might be able to get out of the ex-barber of the Witanbury garrison some interesting and just now valuable information.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked. “Have you made any plans yet?”

“We are thinking of going to London, and of making a fresh start there. We have friends in Red Lion Square.” Fröhling spoke as if the words were being dragged out of him. He longed to tell the other man to mind his own business.

“You haven’t a chance of being allowed to do that! Why, already, on the very first day, every German barber is suspected.” The speaker gave a short, unpleasant laugh.

“I am not suspected. So!” exclaimed Fröhling heatedly. “Not one single person has spoken as if he suspected me in this town! On the contrary, England is not harsh, Mr. Hegner. English people are too sensible and broad-minded to suspect harm where there is none. Indeed, they are not suspecting enough.”

Strange to say, old Fröhling’s last sentence found an agreeable, even a comforting, echo in Mr. Hegner’s heart. He looked up, and for the first time the expression on his face was really cordial. “Maybe you are right, Mr. Fröhling. Most heartily do I desire it may be so! And yet—well, one cannot say people would be altogether wrong in suspecting barbers, for barbers hear a great deal of interesting conversation, is it not so?”

“That depends on their customers,” said the other coldly. “I cannot say that I ever found the conversation of the young English officers here in Witanbury very illuminating.”

“Not exactly illuminating,” said the other cautiously. “But take the last few days? You must have heard a good deal of information as to coming plans.”

“Not one word did I hear,” said the other man quickly—“not one word, Mr. Hegner! Far more from my own intelligent, level-headed German assistant. He knew and guessed what none of these young gentlemen did—to what all the wicked intrigues of Berlin, Petersburg and Vienna, of the last ten days were tending.”

“I have heard to-night—in fact it was the daughter of the Dean who mentioned it—that the British Army is going to Belgium,” said Mr. Hegner casually. “Is your son going to Belgium, Mr. Fröhling?”

“Not that I know of,” said the other. But a troubled look came over his face. He opened his mouth as if to add something, and then tightly shut it again.

Mr. Hegner had the immediate impression that old Fröhling could have told him something worth hearing had he been willing to do so.

“Well, that is all,” said the host with a dismissory air, as he got up from his seat. “I have many to see, many to advise to-night. One thing I do tell you, Mr. Fröhling. You may take it from me that if you wish to leave this place you should clear out quickly. They will be making very tiresome regulations soon—but not now, not for a few days. Fortunately for you, and for all those who have not taken out their certificates, there is no organisation in this country. As for thoroughness, they do not know the meaning of the word.”

“I have sometimes wondered,” observed Mr. Fröhling mildly, “why you, who dislike England so much, should have taken out your certificate, Mr. Hegner. In your place I should have gone back to America.”

“You have no right, no business, to say that I dislike England!” cried his host vehemently. “It is a wicked thing to say to me on such a day as this! It is a thing that might do me great harm in this city of which I am a Councillor.”

“It is not a thing that I should say to any one but you,” returned the old man. “But nevertheless it is true. We have not very often met—but every time we have met you have spoken in a disagreeable, a derogatory, a jeering way of what is now your country.”

“And you,” said Mr. Hegner, his eyes flashing, “have often spoken to me in a derogatory, a jeering, a disagreeable way of Germany—of the country where we were each born, of our real Fatherland.”

“It is not of Germany that I speak ill,” said the older man wearily; “it is of what a few people have made of my beloved country. To-day we see the outcome of their evil doings. But all that is transitory. I am an old man, and yet I hope to see a free Germany rise up.”

He walked through into the shop, and beckoned to his wife. Then they both turned towards the door through which they had gained admittance earlier in the evening.

Mr. Hegner smoothed out his brow, and a mechanical smile came to his lips. He was glad the old Socialist had cleared out early. It is not too much to say that Manfred Hegner hated Fröhling. He wondered who would get the German barber’s job. He knew a man, a sharp, clever fellow, who like himself had lived for a long time in America—who was, in fact, an American citizen, though he had been born in Hamburg—who would be the very man for it. Perhaps now was scarcely the moment to try and get yet another foreigner, even if only this time an American, into the neighbourhood of the barracks.

The owner of the Witanbury Stores went over to the place where Anna Bauer was sitting talking to the mother of one of Mr. Hegner’s German employés. To call that young man German is, however, wrong, for some six weeks ago he had become naturalised. Well for him that he had done so, otherwise he would have had now to go back to the Fatherland and fight. His mother was the one really happy person in the gathering to-night, for the poor woman kept thanking God and Mr. Hegner in her heart for having saved her son from an awful fate. Treating the mother of his shopman as if she had not been there, Mr. Hegner bent towards the other woman.

“Frau Bauer,” he said graciously, “come into our parlour for a few moments. I should like a little chat with you.”

Anna got up and followed him through the crowd. What was it Mr. Hegner wanted to say to her? She felt slightly apprehensive. Surely he was going to tell her that now, owing to the war, he would have to stop the half-commission he was still giving her on Mrs. Otway’s modest orders? Her heart rose in revolt. An Englishman belonging to the type and class of Anna Bauer would have determined “to have it out” with him, but she knew well that she would not have the courage to say anything at all if he did this mean thing.

To her great surprise, after she had followed him into the parlour, Mr. Hegner turned the key in the lock.

“I have but a very little to say,” he exclaimed jovially, “but, while I say it, I do not care to be interrupted! It is more cosy so. Sit down, Frau Bauer, sit down!”

Still surprised, and still believing that her host was going to “best” her in some way, Anna did sit down. She fixed her light-blue, short-sighted eyes watchfully on his face. What a pity it was that he so greatly resembled her adored Kaiser!

“You are very kind,” she said mechanically.

“I believe that last Sunday, August 1st, there was owing to you this sum.” So saying, he pushed towards her across the table five half-sovereigns.

Anna Bauer uttered an exclamation of profound astonishment. She stared down at the money lying now close to her fat red hand.

“Is not that so?” he said, looking at her fixedly.

And at last she stammered out, “Yes, that is so. But—but——do you then know Willi, Mr. Hegner?”

The man sitting opposite to her remained silent for a moment. He hadn’t the slightest idea who “Willi” was. “Ach, yes! It is from him that you generally receive this money every six months—I had forgotten that! Willi is a good fellow. Have you known him long?” He wisely waited for a reply, for on his tongue had been the words, “I suppose he lives in London?”

“I have only known him three years,” said Anna, “and that though he married my niece seven years ago. Yes, Willi is indeed an excellent fellow!”

And then she suddenly bethought herself of what Mrs. Otway had said that very morning. Mr. Hegner would certainly be able to tell her the truth—he was the sort of man who knew everything of a practical, business nature. “Perhaps you will be able to tell me,” she asked eagerly, “if my nephew will have to fight—to go to the frontier. Mrs. Otway, she says that the police are always the last to be called out—is that true, Mr. Hegner?”

“Yes, I think I may assure you, Frau Bauer, that it is a fact.” He looked at her curiously. “You are very fond, then, of your niece’s husband, of the excellent Willi?”

“I am indeed,” she said eagerly, “and grateful to him too, for this money he sends me is very welcome, Mr. Hegner. I was so afraid it might not come this time.”

“And you were right to be afraid! It will become more and more difficult to get money from Germany to England,” said her host, and there was a touch of grimness in his voice. “Still, there are ways of getting over every difficulty. Should the war last as long, I will certainly see that you, Frau Bauer, receive what is your due on the 1st of next January. But many strange things may happen before then. Long before Christmas you may no longer be earning this money.”

“Oh! I hope that will not be the case!” She looked very much disturbed. £5 a year was about a fifth of good old Anna’s total income.

“Well, we shall see. I will do my best for you, Frau Bauer.”

“Thank you, thank you! I am very grateful to you, Mr. Hegner.”

Indeed old Anna’s feelings towards the man who sat there, playing with a pen in his hand, had undergone an extraordinary transformation. She had come into the room disliking him, fearing him, feeling sure that he was going to take some advantage of her. Now she stared at his moody, rather flushed face, full of wondering gratitude.

How strange that he had never taken the trouble to tell her that he knew Willi! She was sorry to remember how often she had dissuaded her mistress from getting something at the Stores that could be got elsewhere, some little thing on which the tiny commission she received would have been practically nil, or, worse still, overlooked. Her commission had been often overlooked of late unless she kept a very sharp look-out on the bills, which Mrs. Otway had a tiresome habit of locking away when receipted.

She took the five precious gold pieces off the table, and moved, as if to rise from her chair.

But Mr. Hegner waved his hand. “Sit down, sit down, Frau Bauer,” he said. “There is no hurry. I enjoy the thought of a little chat with you.” He waited a moment. “And are you thinking of staying on in your present position? You are—let me see—with Mrs. Otway?”

“Oh yes,” she said, brightening. “I shall certainly stay where I am. I am very happy there. They are very kind to me, Mr. Hegner. I love my young lady as much as I do my own child.”

“It is a quiet house,”rdquo; he went on, “a quiet house, with very little coming and going, Frau Bauer. Is not that so?”

“There is a good deal of visiting,” she said quickly. “It is a hospitable house.”

“Not often gentlemen of the garrison, I suppose?”

“Indeed, yes,” cried Anna eagerly. “You know how it is in England? It is not like in our country. Here everybody is much more associated. In some ways it is pleasanter.”

“Very true. And had any of these officers who came and called on your two ladies reason to suppose that the war was coming?”

Anna stared at him, surprised. “No, indeed!” she cried. “English officers never talk of warlike subjects. I have never even seen one of them wearing his uniform.”

“It looks to me as if I shall have to add a new line of officers’ kit to the Stores,” said Mr. Hegner thoughtfully. “And any information you give me about officers just now might be very useful in my business. I know, Frau Bauer, that you were annoyed, disappointed about that little matter of the commission being halved.”

“Oh no,” murmured Anna, rather confusedly.

“Yes, and I understand your point of view. Well, from to-day, Frau Bauer, I restore the old scale! And if at any time you can say anything about the Stores to the visitors who come to see your ladies—anything, you understand, that may lead to an order—I will be generous, I will recognise your help in the widest sense.”

Anna got up again, and so did her host. “Well, we have had a pleasant gossip,” he said. “And one word more, Frau Bauer. You have not told any one, not even your daughter, of—of——” he hesitated, for he did not wish to put in plain words the question he wished to convey—“of that other matter—of that in which your nephew is concerned?”

“I gave my solemn promise to Willi to say nothing,” said Anna, “and I am not one who ever breaks my word, Mr. Hegner.”

“That I am sure you are not! And Frau Bauer? Do not attempt to write to the Fatherland henceforth. Your letters would be opened, your business all spied out, and then the letters destroyed! I am at your disposal for any information you require. Come in and see us sometimes,” he said cordially. “Let me see—to-day is Wednesday. How about Sunday? Come in on Sunday night, if you can do so, and have a little supper. You may have news of interest to my business to give me, and in any case it is pleasant to chat among friends.”

CHAPTER VIII

It was now the morning of Friday, the third day of war, and Mrs. Otway allowed the newspaper she had been holding in her hands to slip on to the floor at her feet with an impatient sigh.

From where she sat, close to the window in her charming sitting-room, her eyes straying down to the ground read in huge characters at the top of one of the newspaper columns the words:

“THE FLEET MOBILISED.”
“MOTOR RUSH FOR VOLUNTEERS.”
“HOW THE NAVAL RESERVE RECEIVED THEIR
NOTICES.”
“OUR SAILORS’ GOOD-BYE.”

Then, at the top of another column, in rather smaller characters, as though that news was after all not really so important as the home news:

“Defeat of the Germans at Liége.”
“Complete Rout.”
“Germans Repulsed at All Points.”

Finally, in considerably smaller characters:

“ALLEGED GERMAN CRUELTIES IN BELGIUM.”

She raised her eyes and looked out, over the Close, to where the Cathedral rose like a diamond set in emeralds. What a beautiful day—and how quiet, how much more quiet than usual, was the dear, familiar, peaceful scene! All this week, thanks in a great measure to the prolonged Bank Holiday, Witanbury had been bathed in a sabbatical calm.

Oddly enough, this had not been as pleasant as it ought to have been. In fact, it had been rather unpleasant to find nearly all the shops shut day after day, and it had become really awkward and annoying not to be able to get money as one required it. At this very moment Rose was out in the town, trying to cash a cheque, for they were quite out of petty cash.

During the last three days Major Guthrie, who so seldom allowed more than a day and a half to slip by without coming to the Trellis House, had not called, neither had he written. Mrs. Otway was surprised, and rather annoyed with herself, to find how much she missed him. She realised that it was the more unreasonable of her, as at first, say all last Wednesday, she had shrunk from the thought of seeing him, the one person among her acquaintances, with the insignificant exception of young Jervis Blake, who had believed in the possibility of an Anglo-German conflict. But when the whole of that long day, the first day of war, had gone by, and the next day also, without bringing with it even the note which, during his infrequent absences, she had grown accustomed to receive from Major Guthrie, she felt hurt and injured.

Major Guthrie was one of those rather inarticulate Englishmen who can express themselves better in writing than in speech. When he and Mrs. Otway were together, she could always, and generally did, out-talk him; but often, after some discussion of theirs, he would go home and write her quite a good letter. And then, after reading it, and perhaps smiling over it a little, she would tear it up and put the pieces in the waste-paper basket.

Yes, her rather odd, unconventional friendship with Major Guthrie was a pleasant feature of her placid, agreeably busy life, and it was strange that he had neither come, nor written and explained what kept him away.

And while Mrs. Otway sat there, waiting she knew not quite for what, old Anna sat knitting in her kitchen on the other side of the hall, also restlessly longing for something, anything, to happen, which would give her news of what was really going on in the Fatherland. All her heart, during these last three days, had been with Minna and Willi in far-off Berlin.

A few moments ago a picture paper had been spread out on the table before Anna. She always enjoyed herself over that paper. It was Miss Rose’s daily gift to her old nurse, and was paid for out of her small allowance. The two morning papers read by her ladies were in due course used to light the fires; but Anna kept her own Daily Pictorials most carefully, and there was an ever-growing neat pile of them in a corner of the scullery.

But to-day’s Daily Pictorial lay in a crumpled heap, tossed to one side on the floor of the kitchen, for poor old Anna had just read out the words:

“FRENCH FRONTIER SUCCESSES.”
“GERMAN DRAGOON REGIMENT ANNIHILATED.”
“ONE THOUSAND GERMAN PRISONERS
IN ALSACE.”

Up to this strange, sinister week, Anna had contented herself with looking at the pictures. She had hardly ever glanced at the rest of the paper. She did not like the look of English print, and she read English with difficulty. But this morning the boy who had brought the fish had said, not disagreeably, but as if he was giving her a rather amusing bit of information, “Your friends have been catching it hot, Mrs. Bauer; and from what I can make out, they deserves it!” She had not quite understood what he meant, but it had made her uneasy; and after she had cleared away breakfast, and washed up, she had sat down with her paper spread before her.

She had looked long at a touching picture of a big sailor saying good-bye to the tiny baby in his arms. He was kissing the child, and Anna had contemplated him with a good deal of sympathy. That big bearded British sailor would soon be face to face with the German Navy. Thus he was surely doomed. His babe would soon be fatherless. Kind old Anna wiped her eyes at the thought.

And then? And then she had slowly spelled out the incredible, the dreadful news about the German Dragoon Regiment. Her father, forty-four years ago, had been a non-commissioned officer in a Dragoon Regiment.

Yes, both mistress and maid felt wretched on this, the third day of the war, which no one, in England at least, yet thought of as the Great War.

Mrs. Otway was restless, quite unlike herself. She wondered, uneasily, why she felt so depressed. Friday was the day when she always paid her few household books, but to-day, as it was still Bank Holiday, the books had not come in. Instead, she had had three letters, marked in each case “Private,” from humble folk in the town, asking her most urgently to pay at once the small sum she owed to each of them. In every case the writer expressed the intention of calling in person for the money. It was partly to try and get the cash with which to pay these accounts that Rose had gone out with a cheque. It was so odd, so disagreeable, to find oneself without the power of getting any ready money. Such a thing had never happened to Mrs. Otway before! It would be really very disagreeable if Rose, after all, failed to cash that cheque.

Then it suddenly occurred to her that James Hayley might bring her down some money to-morrow. Nothing would be easier, or so she supposed, than for him to get it. She went over to her writing-table by the window and hurriedly wrote a note. Then she made out a cheque for twenty pounds.

Oh yes, it would be quite easy for James, who was in a Government office, to get her the money!

Mrs. Otway, like most English people, had a limitless belief in the powers of any one connected with the Government. Twenty pounds? It was a good deal of money. She had never had so much cash in the house before. But what was happening now had taught her a lesson. The Dean had said that all the banks would be open again on Monday. But the Dean was not quite infallible. How often had he and she agreed that Germany would never, never dream of going to war with any of her peaceful neighbours!

She read over the letter she had written:

“Dear James,—I enclose a cheque for twenty pounds. Would you kindly get it cashed for me, and would you bring down the money to-morrow when you come? Of course I should like the money, if possible, in gold, but still it will do if you can get me two five-pound notes and the rest in gold and silver. I find that several people to whom I owe small amounts are anxious to be paid, and they do not seem to care about taking cheques. What strange times we live in! Both Rose and I long to see you and hear all the news.
“Your affectionate aunt,
“Mary Otway.”

James Hayley always called her “Aunt Mary,” though as a matter of fact he was the child of a first cousin.

She got up from her table, and began folding up the sheets of newspaper lying on the floor. She did not want poor old Anna to see the great staring headlines telling of the defeat of the Germans. Having folded the paper, and put it away in an unobtrusive corner, she went upstairs for her hat. She felt that it would do her good to go out into the air, and post the letter herself.

And then, as she came downstairs, she heard the gate of the Trellis House open and swing to. Rose coming back, no doubt. But no, it was not Rose, for instead of the handle of the door turning, there was a ring and a knock.

It was a ring and a knock which sounded pleasantly familiar. Mrs. Otway smiled as she turned into her sitting-room. It was the first time she had smiled that day.

Major Guthrie at last! It was half-past eleven now; they could have a good long, comfortable talk, and perhaps he would stop to lunch. Of course she would have to eat humble pie about the war, but he was the last man to say “I told you so!”

There were so many things she wanted to know, which now she could ask him, secure of a sensible, true answer. Major Guthrie, whatever his prejudices, was a professional soldier. He really did know something of military matters. He was not like the people who lived in the Close, and who were already talking such nonsense about the war. Mrs. Otway was too intelligent not to realise the fact that they, whatever their boasts, knew nothing which could throw real light on the great adventure which was beginning, only beginning, to fill all her thoughts.

Suddenly the door opened, and Anna announced, in a grumpy tone, “Major Guthrie.”

“I thought I was never going to see you again!”

There was an eagerness, a warmth of welcome in Mrs. Otway’s manner of which she was unconscious, but which gave a sudden shock of pleasure, aye, and perhaps even more than pleasure, to her visitor. He had expected to find her anxious, depressed, troubled—above all, deeply saddened by the dreadful thing having come to pass which she had so often vehemently declared would never, never happen.

They shook hands, but before she could go on to utter one of the many questions which were on her lips, Major Guthrie spoke. “I’ve come to say good-bye,” he said abruptly. “I’ve had my marching orders!” There was a strange light in the dark blue eyes which were the one beautiful feature he had acquired from his very handsome mother.

“I—I don’t understand——” And she really didn’t.

What could he mean? His marching orders? But he had left the Army four or five years ago. Besides, the Dean had told her only that morning that no portion of the British Army was going to the Continent—that on England’s part this was only going to be a naval war. The Dean had heard this fact from a friend in London, a distinguished German professor of Natural Theology, who was a very frequent visitor to the Deanery.

Major Guthrie slightly lowered his voice: “I had the telegram an hour ago,” he explained. “I thought you knew that I was in the Reserve, that I form part of what is called the Expeditionary Force.”

“The Expeditionary Force?” she repeated in a bewildered tone. “I didn’t know there was such a thing! You never told me about it.”

“Well, you’ve never been interested in such matters.” Major Guthrie smiled at her indulgently, and suddenly she realised that when they were together she generally talked of her own concerns, very, very seldom of his.

But what was this he was now saying? “Besides, it’s by way of being a secret. That’s the real reason I haven’t been out the last few days. I didn’t feel I could leave home for even five minutes. I’ve been on tenterhooks—in fact it will take me two or three days to get fit again. You see, I couldn’t say anything to anybody! And one heard such absurd rumours—rumours that the Government didn’t mean to send any troops to the Continent—that they had been caught napping—that the transport arrangements had broken down, and so on. However, it’s all right now! I report myself to-night; rejoin my old regiment to-morrow; and—well, in three or four days, please God, I shall be in France, and in a week at latest in Belgium.”

Mrs. Otway looked at him silently. She was too much surprised to speak. She felt moved, oppressed, excited. A British Army going to France—to Belgium? It seemed incredible!

And Major Guthrie also felt moved and excited, but he was not oppressed—he was triumphant, overjoyed. “I thought you’d understand,” he said, and there was a little break in his voice. “It’s made me feel a young man again—that’s what it’s done!”

“How does your mother take it?” asked Mrs. Otway slowly.

And then for the first time a troubled look came over his kind, honest face. “I haven’t told my mother,” he answered. “I’ve thought a good deal about it; and I don’t mean to say good-bye to her—I shall simply write her a note saying I’ve had to go up to town on business. She’ll have it when I’m gone. Then, when the news is allowed to be made public, I’ll write and tell her the truth. She felt my going to South Africa so much. You see, the man to whom she was engaged as a girl was killed in the Crimea.”

There was a moment’s silence between them, and then he asked, “And Miss Rose?—I should like to say good-bye to her. Is she at home?”

“No, she’s out in the town, doing some business for me—or rather trying to do it! Have you found any difficulty in getting cheques changed the last few days, Major Guthrie?”

“No; for I’ve always kept money in the house,” he said quickly. “And glad I am now that I did. It used to annoy my mother—it used to make her afraid that we should be burgled. But of course I never told any one else.” He looked at her rather oddly. “I’ve quite a lot of money here, with me now.”

“I wonder if you would be so kind as to cash me a cheque?” She grew a little pink. She was not used to asking even small favours from her friends. Impulsive, easy-going as she seemed, there was yet a very proud and reticent streak in Mary Otway’s nature.

“Of course I will. In fact——” and then he stopped abruptly, for she had gone up to her table, and was opening the letter she had just written to James Hayley.

“Could you really conveniently let me have as much as twenty pounds?” and she held him out the cheque.

“Certainly. Then you’re not expecting Miss Rose back for a minute or two?”

“Oh, no! She only went out twenty minutes ago.”

He was still standing, and Mrs. Otway suddenly felt herself to be inhospitable.

“Do sit down,” she said hurriedly. Somehow in the last few minutes her point of view, her attitude to her friend, her kind, considerate, courteous friend, had altered. She no longer looked at him with indulgent half-contempt as an idle man, a man who, though he was very good to his mother, and sometimes very useful to herself, had always led, excepting during the South African War (and that was a long time ago), an idle, useless kind of life. He was going now to face real danger, perchance—but her mind shrank from that thought, from that dread possibility—death itself. Somehow the fact that Major Guthrie was going with his regiment to France brought the War perceptibly nearer to Mrs. Otway, and made it for the first time real.

He quietly took the easy chair she had motioned him to take, and she sat down too.

“Well, I have to confess that you were right and I wrong! You always thought we should fight the Germans.” She tried to speak playfully, but there was a certain pain in the admission, for she had always scorned his quiet prophecies and declared him to be, in this one matter, prejudiced and unfair.

“Yes,” he said, “that’s quite true! But, Mrs. Otway? I’m very, very sorry to have been proved right. And I fear that you must feel it very much, as you have so many German friends.”

“I haven’t many German friends now,” she said quickly. “I had as a girl, and of course I’ve kept up with two or three of them, as you know. But it’s true that the whole thing is a great shock and—and a great pain to me. Unlike you, I’ve always thought very well of Germans.”

He said quietly, “So have I.”

“Ah, but not in my sense!” She could not help smiling a little ruefully. “You know I never thought of them in your sense at all—I mean not as soldiers.”

There was a pause, a long and rather painful pause, between them.

CHAPTER IX

Major Guthrie looked at Mrs. Otway meditatively.

Apart from his instinctive attraction for her—an attraction which had sprung into being the very first time they had met, at a dinner party at the Deanery—he had always regarded her as an exceptionally clever woman. She was able to do so much more than most of the ladies he had known. To his simple soldier mind there was something interesting and, well, yes, rather extraordinary, in a woman who sat on committees, who could hold her own so well in argument, and who yet remained very feminine, sometimes—so he secretly thought—quite delightfully absurd and inconsequent, with it all.

Major Guthrie had always been sorry that Mrs. Otway and his mother didn’t exactly hit it off. His mother had once been a beauty, and was now a rather shrewish, sharp-tongued old lady, who had outlived most of the people and most of the things she had cared for in life. Mrs. Otway irritated Mrs. Guthrie. The old lady despised the still pretty widow’s eager, interested, enthusiastic outlook on life.

Suddenly Major Guthrie took a large pocket-book out of his right breast pocket. He opened it, and Mrs. Otway saw that it contained a packet of bank-notes held together by an india-rubber band. There was also an empty white envelope in the pocket-book. Slipping off the band, he began counting the notes. When he had counted four, she called out, “Stop! Stop! I am only giving you a twenty-pound cheque.” And then she saw that they were not five-pound notes, as she had supposed, but ten-pound notes.

He went on counting, and mechanically, hardly knowing that she was doing so, she counted with him up to ten. He then took the envelope he had brought with him, put the ten notes inside, and getting up from his chair he laid the envelope on Mrs. Otway’s writing-table by the window.

“I want you to keep this by you in case of need. I know you will forgive me if I say that I shall go away feeling much happier if you will oblige me by doing what I ask in this matter.” Under the tan his face had got very red, and there was a deprecating expression in his dark blue eyes.

“I don’t understand,” she said, and the colour also rushed into her face.

“I beg of you not to be angry with me——” Major Guthrie stood up and looked down at her so humbly, so wistfully, that she felt touched instead of angry. “You see, I don’t like the thought of your being caught, as you’ve been caught this week apparently, without any money in the house.”

But if Mrs. Otway felt touched by the kind thought which had prompted the offer of this uncalled-for loan, she also felt just a little vexed. Major Guthrie was treating her just like a child!

“I’m not in the least likely to be short of money,” she cried, “once the banks are open again. The Dean says that everything will be as usual by Monday, and I have quite a lot of money coming in towards the end of this month. In fact, as we can’t now go abroad, I shall be even richer than usual. Still, please don’t think I’m not grateful!”

She got up too, and looked at him frankly. The colour had now gone from his face, and he looked tired and grey. She told herself that it had been very kind of him to have thought of this—the act of a true friend. And so, a little shyly, she put out her hand for a moment, naturally supposing that he would grasp it in friendship. But he did nothing of the sort, so she quietly let her hand fall again by her side, and feeling rather foolish sat down again by her writing-table.

“With regard to the money you are expecting at the end of this month—do you mean the dividends due on the amount you put in that Six Per Cent. Hamburg Loan?” he asked, quietly going back to his armchair.

“Yes, it is six per cent. on four thousand pounds—quite a lot of money!” She spoke in a playful tone, but she was beginning to feel embarrassed and awkward. It was, after all, an odd thing for Major Guthrie to have done—to bring her the considerable sum of a hundred pounds in bank-notes without even first asking her permission to do so.

The envelope containing the notes was still lying there, close to her elbow.

“I’m afraid, Mrs. Otway, that you’re not likely to have those dividends paid you this August. All money payments from Germany to England, or from England to Germany, have of course stopped since Wednesday.”

And then, when he saw the look of utter dismay deepening into horrified surprise come over her face, he added hastily, “Of course we must hope that these moneys will be kept intact till the end of the war. Still, I doubt very much whether your bankers would allow you to draw on that probability, even if you were willing to pay a high rate of interest. German credit is likely to suffer greatly before this war is over.”

“But Major Guthrie? I don’t suppose you know what this means to me and to Rose. Why, more than half of everything we have in the world is invested in Germany!”

“I know that,” he said feelingly. “In fact, that was among the first things, Mrs. Otway, which occurred to me when I learnt that war had been declared. I expected to find you very much upset about it.”

“I never gave it a thought; I didn’t know a war could affect that sort of thing. What a fool I’ve been! Oh, if only I’d followed your advice—I mean two years ago!” She spoke with a great deal of painful agitation, and Major Guthrie felt very much distressed indeed. It was hard that he should have had to be the bearer of such ill tidings.

“I blame myself very, very much,” he said sombrely, “for not having insisted on your putting that money into English or Colonial securities.”

“Oh, but you did insist!” Even now, in the midst of her keen distress, the woman’s native honesty and generosity of nature asserted itself. “You couldn’t have said more! Don’t you remember that we nearly quarrelled over it? Short of forging my name and stealing my money and investing it properly for me, you couldn’t have done anything more than you did do, Major Guthrie.”

“That you should say that is a great comfort to me,” he said in a low voice. “But even so, I don’t feel as if I’d really done enough. You see, I was as sure—as sure as ever man was of anything—that this war was going to come either this year or next! As a matter of fact I thought it would be next year—I thought the Germans would wish to be even more ready than they are.”

“But do you really think they are ready?” she said doubtfully. “Look how badly they’ve been doing at Liége.” It was strange how Mrs. Otway’s mind had veered round in the last few minutes. She now wanted the Germans to be beaten, and beaten quickly.

He shook his head impatiently. “Wait till they get into their stride!” And then, in a different, a more diffident voice, “Then you’ll consent to relieve my mind by keeping the contents of that envelope—I mean of course by spending them? As a matter of fact I’ve a confession to make to you.” He looked at her deprecatingly. “I’ve just arranged with my London banker to make up those Hamburg dividends. He’ll send you the money in notes. He understands——” and then he got rather red. “He understands that I’m practically your trustee, Mrs. Otway.”

“But, Major Guthrie—it isn’t true! How could you say such a thing?”

She felt confused, unhappy, surprised, awkward, grateful. Of course she couldn’t take this man’s money! He was a friend, in some ways a very close friend of hers, but she hadn’t known him more than four years. If she should run short of money, why there must be a dozen people or more on whose friendship she had a greater claim, and who could, and would, help her.

And then Mary Otway suddenly ran over in secret review her large circle of old friends and acquaintances, and she realised, with a shock of pain and astonishment, that there was not one of them to whom she would wish to go for help in that kind of trouble. Of her wide circle—and like most people of her class she had a very wide circle—there was only one person, and that was the man who was now sitting looking at her with so much concern in his eyes, to whom it would even have occurred to her to confess that her income had failed through her foolish belief in the stability, and the peaceful intentions, of Germany.

Far, far quicker than it would have taken for her to utter her thoughts aloud, these painful thoughts and realisations flashed through her brain. If she had been content to put into this Hamburg Loan only the amount of the legacy she had inherited three years ago! But she had done more than that—she had sold out sound English railway stock after that interview she had had with a pleasant-speaking German business man in the big London Hamburg Loan office. He had said to her, “Madam, this is the opportunity of a lifetime!” And she had believed him. The kind German friend who had written to her about the matter had certainly acted in good faith. Of that she could rest assured. But this was very small consolation now.

“So you see, Mrs. Otway, that it’s all settled—been settled over your head, as it were. And you’ll oblige me, you’ll make me feel that you’re really treating me as a friend, if you say nothing more about it.”

And then, as she still remained silent, and as Major Guthrie could see by the expression of her face that she meant to refuse what he so generously and delicately offered her, he went on:

“I feel now that I ought to tell you something which I had meant to keep to myself.” He cleared his throat—and hum’d and hum’d a little. “I’m sure you’ll understand that every sensible man, when going on active service, makes a fresh will. I’ve already written out my instructions to my solicitor, and he will prepare a will for me to sign to-morrow.” He waited a moment, and then added, as lightly as he could: “I’ve left you a thousand pounds, which I’ve arranged you should receive immediately on my death. You see, I’m a lonely man, and all my relations are well off. I think you know, without my telling out, that I’ve become very much attached to you—to you and to Miss Rose.”

And still Mrs. Otway was too much surprised, and yes, too much moved, to speak. Major Guthrie was indeed proving himself a true friend.

“Under ordinary circumstances,” he went on slowly, “this clause in my will would be of very little practical interest to you, for I am a healthy man. But we’re up against a very big thing, Mrs. Otway——” He did not like to add that it was quite possible she would receive his legacy before she had had time to dip very far into the money he was leaving with her.

She looked at him with a troubled look. And yet? And yet, though it was not perhaps very reasonable that it should be so, somehow she did feel that the fact that Major Guthrie was leaving her—and Rose—the legacy of which he spoke, made a difference. It would make it easier, that is, to accept the money that lay there on her table. Though Major Guthrie was not, in the technical sense, a clever man, he had a far more intimate knowledge of human character than had his friend.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” she said at last.

He answered rather sharply, “I don’t want you to thank me. And Mrs. Otway? I can say now what I’ve never had the opportunity of saying, that is, how much I’ve felt honoured by your friendship—what a lot it’s meant to me.”

He said the words in a rather hard, formal voice, and she answered, with far more emotion than he had betrayed, “And it’s been a very, very great thing for me, too, Major Guthrie. Do please believe that!”

He bowed his head gravely. “Well, I must be going now,” he said, a little heavily and sadly. “Oh, and one thing more—I should be very grateful if you’d go and see my mother sometimes. During the last few days hardly a soul’s been near her. Of course I know how different you are the one from the other, but all the same——” he hesitated a moment. “My mother has fine qualities, once you get under that—well, shall I call it that London veneer? She saw a great deal of the world after she became a widow, while she was keeping house for a brother—when I was in India. She’d like to see Rose, too”—unconsciously he dropped the “Miss.” “She likes young people, especially pretty girls.”

“Of course I’ll go and see her, and so will Rose! You know I’ve always liked Mrs. Guthrie better than she liked me. I’m not ‘smart’ enough for her.” Mrs. Otway laughed without a trace of bitterness. And then with sudden seriousness she asked him a curious question: “How long d’you think you’ll be away?”

“D’you mean how long do I think the War will last?”

Somehow she had not thought of her question quite in that sense. “Yes: I suppose that is what I do mean.”

“I think it will be a long war. It will certainly last a year—perhaps a good deal longer.”

He walked over to the window nearest the door. Standing there, he told himself that he was looking perhaps for the last time on the dear, familiar scene before him: on the green across which high elms now flung their short morning shadows; on the encompassing houses, some of exceeding stateliness and beauty, others of a simpler, less distinguished character, yet each instinct with a dignity and seemliness which exquisitely harmonised it with its finer fellows; and finally on the slender Gothic loveliness of the Cathedral.

“I’m trying to learn this view by heart,” said Major Guthrie, in a queer, muffled voice. “I’ve always thought it the most beautiful view in England—the one that stands for all a man cares for, all he would fight for.”

Mrs. Otway was touched—touched and pleased too. She knew that her friend was baring to her a very secret chamber of his heart.

“It is a beautiful, peaceful outlook,” she said quietly. “I was thinking so not long before you came in—when I was sitting here, reading the strange, dreadful news in to-day’s paper.”

He turned away from the window and looked at her. She saw in the shadow that his face looked grey and strained. “Major Guthrie?” she began, a little shyly.

“Yes?” he said rather quickly. “Yes, Mrs. Otway?”

“I only want to ask if you would like me to write to you regularly with news of Mrs. Guthrie?”

“Will you really? How good of you; I didn’t like to ask you to do that! I know how busy you always are.” But he still lingered, as if loth to go away. Perhaps he was waiting on in the hope that Rose would come in.

“Do you know where you will land in France?” she asked, more to say something than for any real reason, for she knew very little of France.

“I am not sure,” he answered hesitatingly. And then, “Still, I have a very shrewd idea of where they are going to fix the British base. I think it will be Boulogne. But, Mrs. Otway? Perhaps I ought to tell you again that all I’ve told you to-day is private. I may count on your discretion, may I not?” He looked at her a little anxiously.

“Of course I won’t tell any one,” she said quickly. “You really do mean not any one—not even the Dean?”

“Yes,” he said. “I really do mean not any one. In fact I should prefer your not telling even Miss Rose.”

“Oh, let me tell Rose,” she said eagerly. “I always tell her everything. She is far more discreet than I am!” And this was true.

“Well, tell Miss Rose and no one else,” he said. “I don’t even know myself when I am going, where I am going, or how I am going.”

They were now standing in the hall.

“Then you don’t expect to be long in London?” she said.

“No. I should think I shall only be there two or three days. Of course I’ve got to get my kit, and to see people at the War Office, and so on.” He added in a low voice, “There’s not going to be any repetition of the things that went on at the time of the Boer War—no leave-takings, no regiments marching through the streets. It’s our object, so I understand, to take the Germans by surprise. Everything is going to be done to keep the fact that the Expeditionary Force is going to France a secret for the present. I had that news by the second post; an old friend of mine at the War Office wrote to me.”

He gripped her hand in so tight a clasp that it hurt. Then he turned the handle of the front door, opened it, and was gone.

Mrs. Otway felt a sudden longing for sympathy. She went straight into the kitchen. “Anna!” she exclaimed, “Major Guthrie is going back into the Army! England is sending troops over to the Continent to help the Belgians!”

“Ach!” exclaimed Anna. “To Ostend?” She had once spent a summer at Ostend in a boarding-house, where she had been hard-worked and starved. Since then she had always hated the Belgians.

“No, no,” said Mrs. Otway quickly. “Not to Ostend. To Boulogne, in France.”

CHAPTER X

In the early morning sunshine—for it was only a quarter-past seven—Rose Otway stood just within the wrought-iron gate of the Trellis House.

It was Saturday in the first week of war. She had got up very early, almost as early as old Anna herself, for, waking at five, she had found it impossible to go to sleep again.

For the first time almost in her life, Rose felt heavy-hearted. The sudden, mysterious departure of Major Guthrie had brought the War very near; and so, in quite another way, had done Lord Kitchener’s sudden, trumpet-like call, for a hundred thousand men. She knew that, in response to that call, Jervis Blake would certainly enlist, if not with the approval, at any rate with the reluctant consent, of his father; and Rose believed that this would mean the passing of Jervis out of her life.

To Rose Otway’s mind there was something slightly disgraceful in any young man’s enlistment in the British Army. The poorer mothers of Witanbury, those among whom the girl and her kind mother did a good deal of visiting and helping during the winter months, were apt to remain silent concerning the son who was a soldier. She could not help knowing that it was too often the bad boy of the family, the ne’er-do-weel, who enlisted. There were, of course, certain exceptions—such, for instance, as when a lad came of a fighting family, with father, uncles, and brothers all in the Army. As for the gentleman ranker, he was always a scapegrace.

Lord Kitchener’s Hundred Thousand would probably be drawn from a different class, for they were being directly asked to defend their country. But even so, at the thought of Jervis Blake becoming a private, Rose Otway’s heart contracted with pain, and, yes, with vicarious shame. Still, she made up her mind, there and then, that she would not give him up, that she would write to him regularly, and that as far as was possible they would remain friends.

How comforted she would have been could an angel have come and told her with what eyes England was henceforth to regard her “common soldiers.”

Rose Otway was very young, and, like most young things, very ignorant of life. But there was, as Miss Forsyth had shrewdly said, a great deal in the girl. Even now she faced life steadily, unhelped by the many pleasant illusions cherished by her mother. Rose was as naturally reserved as her mother was naturally confiding, and Mrs. Otway was therefore far more popular in their little world than her daughter.

Rose, however, was very pretty, with a finished, delicately fresh and aloof type of beauty which was singularly attractive to the intelligent and fastidious. And so there had already appeared, striking across the current of their placid lives, more than one acute observer who, divining certain hidden depths of feeling in the girl’s nature, longed to probe and rouse them. But so far such attempts, generally undertaken by men who were a good deal older than Rose Otway, had failed to inspire anything but shrinking repugnance in their object.

But Jervis Blake was different. Jervis she had known more or less always, owing to that early girlish friendship between his mother and her mother. When he had come to “Robey’s” to be coached, Mrs. Otway had made him free of her house, and though she herself, not unnaturally, did not find him an interesting companion, he soon had become part of the warp and woof of Rose’s young life. Like most only children, she had always longed for a brother or a sister; and Jervis was the nearest possession of the kind to which she had ever attained.

Yes, the War was coming very near to Rose Otway, and for more than one reason. As soon as she got up she sat down and wrote a long letter to a girl friend who was engaged to a naval officer. She had suddenly realised with a pang that this girl, of whom she was really fond, must now be feeling very miserable and very anxious. Every one seemed to think there would soon be a tremendous battle between the British and the German fleets. And the Dean, who had been to Kiel last year, believed that the German sailors would give a very good account of themselves.

The daily papers were delivered very early in Witanbury Close. And after she had helped old Anna as far as Anna would allow herself to be helped in the light housework with which she began each day, Rose went out and stood by the gate. She longed to know what news, if any, there was.

But the moments went slowly by, and with the exception of a milk cart which clattered gaily along, the Close remained deserted. Half-past seven in the morning, even on a fine August day, saw a good many people still in bed in an English country town. To-day Rose Otway, having herself risen so early, was inclined to agree with Anna that English people are very lazy, and lose some of the best part of each morning.

And then, as she stood out there in the sunshine, her mind reverted to Major Guthrie and to his sudden disappearance. Rose liked Major Guthrie, and she was sorry she had missed him yesterday morning, when out on her fruitless quest for money.

Rose had been surprised at the way her mother had spoken of Major Guthrie’s departure. Mrs. Otway had declared the fact to be a secret—a secret that must at all costs be kept. As a matter of fact the girl had already heard the news from Anna, and she had observed, smiling, “But, mother, you seem to have told Anna all about it?” And Mrs. Otway, her gentle temper for once ruffled, had answered sharply, “I don’t count Anna! Major Guthrie particularly mentioned the Dean. He did not wish the Dean to know. He said his going was to be kept secret. So I beg you, Rose, to do as I ask.”

Anna came out of the front door, and began polishing the brass knob. “Ach!” she exclaimed. “Come in, child—do! You a chill will take. If it is the postman you want, he gone by already has.”

Rose smiled. Dear old Anna had never acquired the British love of fresh air. “I’m waiting for the papers,” she said. “I can’t think why the man doesn’t begin with us, instead of going all round the other way first! But I’m going to catch him this morning.”

And Anna, grumbling, went back into the house again.

All at once Rose heard the sound of quick footsteps to her right, on the path outside. She moved back into the paved court in front of the Trellis House, and stood, a charming vision of youth and freshness, in her pale mauve cotton frock, by a huge stone jar filled with pink geraniums.

And then, a moment later, the tall figure of Jervis Blake suddenly swung into view. He was very pale, and there was an eager, absorbed, strained look on his face. In his hand was a white telegraph form.

Rose ran forward, and once more opened the gate. “Jervis!” she cried. “What is it? What’s the matter? Have you had bad news from home?”

He shook his head, and she saw that he was trying to smile. But there was still that on his face which she had never seen before—a rapt, transfigured look which made her feel—and she both disliked and resented the feeling—as if he were, for the moment, remote from herself. But he stayed his steps, and came through the gate.

For a moment he stood opposite to her without speaking. Then he took out of his breast pocket a large sheet of notepaper folded in four. He opened it, and held it out to her. It was headed “War Office, Whitehall, London,” and in it Jervis Blake, Esquire, was curtly informed that, if he still desired to enter the Army, he was at liberty to apply for a commission. But in that case he was asked to report himself as soon as possible.

Rose read the cold, formal sentences again and again, and a lump rose to her throat. How glad she was! How very, very glad! Indeed, her gladness, her joy in Jervis’s joy, surprised herself.

“And it’s all owing to you,” he exclaimed in a low voice, “that I didn’t go and make an ass of myself on Wednesday. If it hadn’t been for you, Rose, I should have enlisted. This would have come too late. It is luck to have seen you now, like this. You’re the very first I’ve told.” He was wringing her hand, his face now as flushed as it had been pale.

And as they stood there together, Rose suddenly became aware that Anna, at the kitchen window, was looking out at them both with a rather peculiar expression on her emotional German face.

A feeling of annoyance swept over the girl; she knew that to her old nurse every young man who ever came to the Trellis House was a potential lover. But even Anna might have left Jervis Blake out of the category. There was nothing silly or—or sentimental, in the real, deep friendship they two felt for one another.

And then Rose did something which surprised herself. Withdrawing her hand from his, she exclaimed, “I’ll walk with you to the corner”—and led the way out, through the gate, and so along the empty roadway.

They walked along in silence for a few moments. The Close was still deserted. Across the green, to their right, rose the noble grey mass of the Cathedral. In many of the houses the blinds were even now only beginning to be pulled up.

“I rather expected yesterday that you would come in and tell me that you were going off to be one of the hundred thousand men Lord Kitchener has asked for,” she said at last.

“Of course I meant to be, but Mr. Robey thought I ought to communicate with my father before actually joining,” he answered. “In fact, I had already written home. That’s one reason why I’m going to get this wire off so early.”

“I suppose you’ll be at Sandhurst this time next week?”

And he frowned, for the first time that morning.

“Oh no, I hope not! Mr. Robey heard last night from one of our fellows—one of those who passed last time—and he said he was being drafted at once into a regiment! You mustn’t forget how long I was in the O.T.C. It seems they’re sending all those who were in the O.T.C. straight into regiments.”

“Then by next week you’ll be second lieutenant in the Wessex Light Infantry!” she exclaimed. She knew that it was in that famous regiment that General Blake had won his early spurs, and that it had been settled, in the days when no one had doubted Jervis Blake’s ability to pass the Army Exam., that he would join his father’s old regiment, now commanded by one of that father’s very few intimates.

“Yes, I suppose I shall,” he said, flushing. “Oh, Rose, I can’t believe in my luck. It’s so much—much too good to be true!”

They had come to the corner, to the parting of their ways. To the left, through the grey stone gateway, was the street leading into the town; on the right, within a few moments’ walk, the Cathedral.

Rose suddenly felt very much moved, carried out of her reserved self. A lump rose to her throat. She knew that this was their real parting, and that she was not likely to see him again, save in the presence of her mother for a few minutes.

“I wonder,” said Jervis Blake hoarsely, “I wonder, Rose, if you would do me a great kindness? Would you go on into the Cathedral with me, just for three or four minutes? I should like to go there for the last time with you.”

“Yes,” she said; “of course I will.” Rose had inherited something of her mother’s generosity of nature. If she gave at all, she gave freely and gladly. “I do hope the door will be open,” she said, trying to regain her usual staid composure. She was surprised and disturbed by the pain which seemed to be rising, brimming over, in her heart.

They walked on in silence. Jervis Blake was looking straight before him, his face set and grim. He was telling himself that a fellow would be a cur to take advantage of such a moment to say anything, and that especially was that the case with one who might so soon be exposed to something much worse than death—such as the being blinded, the being maimed, for life. War was a very real thing to Jervis, more real certainly than to any other one of the young men who had been his comrades at Robey’s during the last two years.

But the most insidious of all tempters, Nature herself, whispered in his ear, “Why not simply tell her that you love her? No woman minds being told that she is loved! It can do no harm, and it will make her think of you kindly when you are far away. This strange, secret meeting is yet another piece of good fortune to-day—this glorious day—has brought you! Do not throw away your chance. Look again down into her face. See her dear eyes full of tears. She has never been moved as she is moved to-day, and it is you who have moved her.”

And then another, sterner voice spoke: “You have not moved her—presumptuous fool! Nay, it is the thought of England, of her country, of all you stand for to-day, that has moved her. And the next few minutes will show the stuff of which you are made—if you have the discipline, the self-restraint, essential to the man who has to lead others, or if—if you only have the other thing. You are being given now what you could never have hoped for, a quiet, intimate time with her alone; you might have had to say good-bye to her in her mother’s presence—that mother who has never really liked you, and whom you have never really liked.”

He held open the little wicket gate for her to pass through. They walked up the stone path to the wide, hospitable-looking porch which is the only part of Witanbury Cathedral that has remained much as it was in pre-Reformation days.

To Jervis Blake, suffused with poignant emotion, every perception sharpened by mingling triumph and pain, the “faire Doore” of Witanbury Cathedral had never seemed so lovely as on this still August morning. As they stepped through the exquisite outer doorway, with its deep mouldings, both dog-toothed and foliated, marking the transition from Norman to Gothic, a deep, intense joy in their dual solitude suddenly rose up in his heart like a white flame.

The interior of the porch was little larger than an ordinary room, but it was wonderfully perfect in the harmony of its proportions; and even Rose, less perceptive than her companion, and troubled and disturbed, rather than uplifted, by an emotion to which she had no clue, was moved by the delicate, shadowed beauty of the grey walls and vaulted roof now encompassing her.

For a moment they both lingered there, irresolute; and then Jervis, stepping forward, lifted the great iron handle of the black oak, nail-studded door. But the door remained shut, and he turned round with the words, “It’s still closed. We shan’t be able to get in. I’m sorry.” He looked indeed so disappointed that there came over Rose the eager determination that he should not go away baulked of his wish.

“I’m sure it opens at eight,” she exclaimed; “and it can’t be very far from eight now. Let’s wait here the few minutes! I’m in no hurry, if you can spare the time?” Rose spoke rather quickly and breathlessly. She was trying hard to behave as if this little adventure of theirs was a very conventional, commonplace happening.

He said something—she was not sure whether it was “All right” or “Very well.”

On each side of the porch ran a low and deep stone bench, from which sprang the slender columns which seemed to climb eagerly upwards to the carved ribs of the vaulted roof. But they both went on standing close to one another, companioned only by the strange sculptured creatures which grinned down from the spandrels of the arches above.

And then, after waiting for what seemed an eternity—it was really hardly more than a minute—in the deep, brooding silence which seemed to enwrap the Close, the Cathedral, and their own two selves in a mantle of stillness, Rose Otway, bursting into sobs, made a little swaying movement. A moment later she found herself in Jervis Blake’s arms, listening with a strange mingling of joy, surprise, shame, and, yes, triumph, to his broken, hoarsely-whispered words of love.

He, being a man, could only feel—she, being a woman, could also think, aye, and even question her own heart as to this amazing thing which was happening, and which had suddenly made her free of the wonderful kingdom of romance of which she had so often heard, but the existence of which she had always secretly doubted. Whence came her instinctive response to his pleading: “Oh, Rose, let me kiss you! Oh, Rose, my darling little love, this may be the last time I shall see you!”

Was it at the end of a moment, or of an æon of time, that there fell athwart their beating hearts a dull, rasping sound, that of the two great inner bolts of the huge oak door being pushed back into their rusty sockets?

They parted, reluctantly, lingeringly, the one from the other; but whoever had drawn back the bolts did not open the door, and soon they heard the sounds of heavy, shuffling feet moving slowly away.

“I expect it’s Mrs. Bent, the verger’s wife,” said Rose, in a low, trembling voice.

Jervis looked at her. There was a mute, and at once imperious and imploring demand in his eyes. But Rose had stepped across the magic barrier, she was half-way back to the work-a-day world—not very far, but still far enough to know how she would feel if Bent or Mrs. Bent surprised her in Jervis’s arms. A few moments ago she would hardly have cared.

“Let’s go into the Cathedral now,” she said, and, to break the cruelty of her silent refusal of what he asked, she held out her hand. To her surprise, and yes, her disappointment, he did not seem to see it. Instead, he stepped forward to the door, and turning the weighty iron handle, pushed it widely open.

Together, side by side, they passed through into the great, still, peaceful place, and with a delicious feeling of joy they saw that they were alone—that Mrs. Bent, having done her duty in unbolting the great door, had slipt out of a side door, and gone back to her cottage, behind the Cathedral.

Rose led the way into the nave; there she knelt down, and Jervis Blake knelt down by her, and this time, when she put out her hand, he took it in his and clasped it closely.

Rose tried to collect her thoughts. She even tried to pray. But she could only feel,—she could not utter the supplications which filled her troubled heart. And yet she felt as though they two were encompassed by holy presences, by happy spirits, who understood and sympathised in her mingled joy and grief.

If Jervis came back, if he and she both lived till the end of the War, it was here that their marriage would take place. But the girl had a strange presentiment that they two would never stand over there, where so many brides and bridegrooms had stood together, even within her short memory. It was not that she felt Jervis was going to be killed—she was mercifully spared those dread imaginings which were to come on her later. But just now, for these few moments only perhaps, Rose Otway was “fey”; she seemed to know that to-day was her cathedral marriage day, and that an invisible choir was singing her epithalamium.

The quarter past the hour chimed. She released her hand from his, and touched him on the arm with a lingering, caressing touch. He was so big and strong, so gentle too—all hers. And now, just as they had found one another, she was going to lose him. It seemed so unnatural and so cruel. “Jervis,” she whispered, and the tears ran down her face, “I think you had better go now. I’d rather we said good-bye here.”

He got up at once. “Do you mean to tell your mother?” he asked. And then, as he thought she was hesitating: “I only want to know because, if so, I will tell them at home.”

She shook her head. “No,” she said brokenly. “I’d rather we said nothing now—if you don’t mind.”

She lifted up her face to him as a child might have done; and, putting his arm round her, he bent down and kissed her, very simply and gravely. Suddenly, he took her two hands and kissed their soft palms; and then he stooped very low, and lifting the hem of her cotton frock kissed that too.

“Rose?” he cried out suddenly. “Oh, Rose, I do love you so!” And then, before she could speak he had turned and was gone.

CHAPTER XI

Rather more than an hour and a half later, Rose Otway, with bursting heart, but with dry, gleaming eyes—for she had a nervous fear of her mother’s affectionate questioning, and she had already endured Anna’s well-meant, fussy, though still unspoken sympathy—stood at the spare-room window of the Trellis House. From there she could watch, undisturbed, the signs of departure now going busily on before the big gates of the group of three Georgian houses known as “Robey’s.”

Piles of luggage, bags, suit-cases, golf sticks, and so on, were being put outside and inside the mid-Victorian fly, which was still patronised by the young gentlemen of “Robey’s,” in their goings and comings from the station. And then, even before the old cab-horse had started his ambling trot townwards, Mr. and Mrs. Robey, their two little girls, and their three boys not long back from school, all appeared together at the gate.

In their midst stood Jervis Blake, his tall figure towering above them all.

Most young men would have felt, and perhaps a little resented the fact, that the whole party looked slightly ridiculous. Not so this young man. There had never been much of the schoolboy in Jervis Blake. Now he felt very much a man, and he was grateful for the affectionate kindness which made these good people anxious to give him what one of the little girls had called “a grand send-off.”

Rose saw that there was a moment of confusion, of hesitation at the gate, and she divined that it was Jervis who suggested that they should take the rather longer way round, that which led under the elm trees and past the Cathedral. He did not wish to pass close by the Trellis House.

The girl standing by the window felt a sudden rush of understanding tenderness. How strangely, how wonderfully their minds worked the one in with the other! It would have been as intolerable to her as to him, to have seen her mother run out and stop the little party—to have been perchance summoned from upstairs “to wish good luck to Jervis Blake.”

From where she stood Rose Otway commanded the whole Close, and during the minutes which followed she saw the group of people walking with quick, steady steps, stopped by passers-by three or four times, before they disappeared out of her sight.

It had seemed to her, but that might have been only her fancy, that the pace, obviously set by Jervis, quickened rather as they swept past the little gate through which he and she had gone on their way to the porch, on their way to—to Paradise.

Half-way through the morning there came an uncertain knock at the front door of the Trellis House. It presaged a note brought by one of the young Robeys for Mrs. Otway—a note written by Jervis Blake, telling her of his good fortune, and explaining that he had not time to come and thank her in person for all her many kindnesses to him. One sentence ran: “The War Office order is that I come and report myself as soon as possible—so of course I had to take the ten-twenty-five train.” And he signed himself, as he had never done before, “Your affectionate Jervis Blake.”

Mrs. Otway felt mildly excited, and really pleased. “Rose will be very glad to hear this!” she said to herself, and at once sought out her daughter.

Rose was still upstairs, in the roomy, rather dark old linen cupboard which was the pride of Anna’s German heart.

“A most extraordinary thing has happened. Jervis Blake is to have a commission after all, darling! He had a letter from the War Office this morning. I suppose it’s due to his father’s influence.” And as Rose answered, in what seemed an indifferent voice, “I should think, mother, that it’s due to the War,” Mrs. Otway exclaimed, “Oh no. I don’t think so! What could the War have to do with it? But whatever it’s due to, I’m very, very pleased that the poor boy has attained the wish of his heart. He’s written me such a very nice note, apologising for not coming to say good-bye to us. He doesn’t mention you in his letter, but I expect you’ll hear from him in a day or two. He generally does write during the holidays, doesn’t he, Rose?”

“Yes,” said Rose quietly. “Jervis has always written to me during the holidays, up to now.”

As she spoke, the girl turned again to the shelves laden with the linen, much of which had been beautifully embroidered and trimmed with crochet lace by good old Anna’s clever hands. Mrs. Otway had a curious sensation, one she very, very seldom had—that of being dismissed. Somehow it was clear that Rose was not as interested in the piece of good news as her mother had thought she would be. And so Mrs. Otway went downstairs again, grieving a little at her child’s curious, cold indifference to the lot of one who had been so much in and out of their house during the last two years.

Eager for sympathy, she went into the kitchen. “Oh, Anna,” she exclaimed, “Mr. Blake is going into the Army after all! I’m so pleased. He is so happy!”

“Far more than Major Guthrie young Mr. Blake the figure of a good officer has,” observed Anna thoughtfully. Anna had always liked Jervis Blake. In the old days that now seemed so long ago he would sometimes come with Miss Rose into her kitchen, and talk his poor, indifferent German. Then they all three used to laugh heartily at the absurd mistakes he made.

And now, to her mistress’s astonishment, old Anna suddenly burst into loud, noisy sobs.

“Anna, what is the matter?”

“Afflicted I am——” sobbed the old woman. And then she stopped, and began again: “Afflicted I am to think, gracious lady, of that young gentleman, who to me kind has been, killing the soldiers of my country.”

“I don’t suppose he will have the chance of killing any of them,” said Mrs. Otway hastily. “You really mustn’t be so silly, Anna! Why, the War will be over long before Mr. Blake is ready to go out. They always keep the young men two years at Sandhurst. That’s the name of the officers’ training college, you know.”

Anna wiped her eyes with her apron. She was now ashamed of having cried. But it had come over her “all of a heap,” as an English person would have said.

She had had a sort of vision of that nice young gentleman, Mr. Jervis Blake, in the thick of battle, cutting down German men and youths with a sword. He was so big and strong—it made her turn sick to think of it. But her good mistress, Mrs. Otway, had of course told the truth. The War would be over long before Mr. Jervis Blake and his kind would be fit to fight.

Fighting, as old Anna knew well, though most of the people about her were ignorant of the fact, requires a certain apprenticeship, an apprenticeship of which these pleasant-spoken, strong, straight-limbed young Englishmen knew nothing. The splendidly trained soldiers of the Fatherland would have fought and conquered long before peaceful, sleepy England knew what war really meant. There was great comfort in that thought.

As that second Saturday of August wore itself away, it is not too much to say that the most interesting thing connected with the War which had happened in Witanbury Close was the fact that Jervis Blake was now going to be a soldier. When people met that day, coming and going about their business, across the lawn-like green, and along the well-kept road which ran round it, they did not discuss the little news there was in that morning’s papers. Instead they at once informed one another, and with a most congratulatory air, “Jervis Blake has heard from the War Office! He is going into the Army after all. Mr. and Mrs. Robey are so pleased. The whole family went to the station with him this morning!”

And it was quite true that the Robeys were pleased. Mr. Robey was positively triumphant. “I can’t tell you how glad I am!” he said, first to one, and then to the other, of his neighbours. “Young Blake will make a splendid company officer. It’s for the sake of the country, quite as much as for his sake, and for that of his unpleasant father, that I’m glad. What sort of book-learning had Napoleon’s marshals? Or, for the matter of that, Wellington’s officers in the Peninsula, and at Waterloo?”

As the day went on, and he began receiving telegrams from those of his young men—they were not so very many after all—who had failed to pass, containing the joyful news that now they were accepted, his wife, instead of rejoicing, began to look grave. “It seems to me, my dear, that our occupation in life will now be gone,” she said soberly. And he answered lightly enough, “Sufficient unto the day is the good thereof!” And being the high-minded, sensible fellow that he was, he would allow no selfish fear of the future to cloud his satisfaction in the present.

The only jarring note that day came from James Hayley. He had had to take a later train than he had thought to do, and he only arrived at the Trellis House, duly dressed for dinner, just before eight.

“Witanbury is certainly a most amusing place,” he observed, as he shook hands with his pretty cousin. “I met two of your neighbours as I came along. Each of them informed me, with an air of extreme delight, that young Jervis Blake had heard from the War Office that, in spite of his many failures, his services will now be welcomed by a grateful country. I didn’t like to make the obvious answer——”

“And what is the obvious answer?” asked Rose, wrenching her hand away from his. She told herself that she hated the feel of James’s cold, hard hand.

“That we must be jolly short of officers if they’re already writing round to those boys! But then, of course”—he lowered his voice, though there was no one there to hear, “we are short—short of everything, worse luck!”

But that was the only thing Cousin James said of any interest, and it did not specially interest Rose. She did not connect this sinister little piece of information with the matter that filled her heart for the moment to the exclusion of everything else. It was not Jervis who was short of anything—only Jervis’s (and her) country.

After Mrs. Otway had come down and joined them, though James talked a great deal, he yet said very little, and as the evening went on, his kind hostess could not help feeling that the War had not improved James Hayley. He seemed more supercilious, more dogmatic than usual, and at one moment he threatened to offend her gravely by an unfortunate allusion to her good old Anna’s nationality.

By that time they were sitting out in the garden, enjoying the excellent coffee Anna made so well, and as it was rather chilly, Rose had run into the house to get her mother a shawl.

“I never realised how very German your maid is,” he observed suddenly. “It made me feel quite uncomfortable while we were talking at dinner! Do you intend to keep her?”

“Yes, of course I do.” Mrs. Otway felt hurt and angry. “I shouldn’t dream of sending her away! Anna has lived in England over twenty years, and her only child is married to an Englishman.” She waited a moment, and as he said nothing, she went on: “My good old Anna is devoted to England, though of course she loves her Fatherland too.”

“I should have thought the two loves quite incompatible at the present time,” he objected drily.

Mrs. Otway flushed in the half darkness. “I find them quite compatible, James,” she exclaimed. “Of course I’m sorry that the military party should triumph in Germany—that, we all must feel, and probably many Germans do too. But, after all, you may hate the sin and love the sinner!”

“Will you feel the same when Germans have killed Englishmen?” he asked idly. He was watching the door through which Rose had vanished a few moments ago, longing with a restrained, controlled longing for her return.

As a matter of fact he himself had never had any feeling of dislike of the Germans; on the contrary, he had struck up an acquaintance which had almost become friendship with one of the younger members of the German Embassy. And suddenly Mrs. Otway remembered it.

“Why, you yourself,” she cried, “you yourself, James, have a German friend—I mean that young Von Lissing. I liked him so much that week-end you brought him down. What’s happened to him? I suppose he’s gone?”

“Gone?” He turned and looked at her in the twilight. Really, Aunt Mary was sometimes very silly. “Of course, he’s gone! As a matter of fact he left London ten days before his chief.” And then he added reflectively, perhaps with more a wish to tease her than anything else, “I’ve rather wondered this last week whether Von Lissing’s friendship with me was regarded by him as a business matter. He sometimes asked me such odd questions. Of course one has always known that Germans are singularly inquisitive—that they are always wanting to find out things. I confess it never struck me at the time that his questions meant anything more than that sort of insatiable wish to know that all Germans have.”

“What sort of things did he ask you, James?” asked Mrs. Otway curiously.

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing he said, and it astonished me very much indeed. He asked me what attitude I thought our colonies would take if we became embroiled in a European war! I reminded him of what they’d done in South Africa fourteen years ago, and he said he thought the world had altered a good deal since then, and that people had become more selfish. But he never asked me any question concerning my own special department. In those ways he quite played the game—not that it would have been of any use, because of course I shouldn’t have told him anything. But he was certainly oddly inquiring about other departments.”

Then Rose came out again, and James Hayley tried to make himself pleasant. Fortunately for himself he did not know how little he succeeded. Rose found his patronising, tutor-like manner intolerable.

CHAPTER XII

Mrs. Hegner leant her woe-begone, tear-stained little face against the centre window-pane of one of the two windows in her bedroom.

The room was a very large room. But she had never liked it, large, spacious, and airy though it was. You see, it was furnished entirely like a German bedroom, not like a nice cosy English room. Thus the place where a fireplace would naturally have been was taken up by a large china stove; and instead of a big brass double bed there were two low narrow box beds. On her husband’s bed was a huge eiderdown, and under that only a sheet—no blankets at all! Polly hoped that this horrid fact would never be known in Witanbury. It would make quite a talk.

There was linoleum on the floor instead of a carpet, and there was very little ease about the one armchair which her husband had grudgingly allowed her to have up here.

Close to his bed, at right angles to it, was a huge black and green safe. That safe, as Polly well knew, had cost a very great deal of money, enough money to have furnished this room in really first-class style, with good Wilton pile carpet all complete.

But Manfred had chosen to furnish the room in his own style, and it was a style to which Polly could never grow accustomed. It outraged all the instinctive prejudices and conventions inherited from her respectable, lower middle-class forbears. Instead of being good substantial mahogany or walnut, it was some queerly veined light-coloured wood, and decorated with the strangest coloured rectangular designs, and painted—well, with nightmare oddities, that’s what she called them! And she was not far wrong, for all down one side of the wardrobe waddled a procession of bright green ducks.

Polly could never make her husband out. He was so careful, so—so miserly in some ways, so wildly extravagant in others. All this furniture had come from Germany, and must have cost a pretty penny. It was true that he had got it, or so he assured her, with very heavy discount off—and that no doubt was correct.

The only ornaments in the room, if ornaments they could be called, were faded photographs and two oleographs in gilt frames. One of the photographs was the portrait of Manfred’s first wife, a very plain, fat woman. Then there were tiny cartes of Manfred’s father and mother—regular horrors they must have been, so Polly thought resentfully. The oleographs were views of Heidelberg and of the Kiel Canal.

Poor Polly! She had been sent up here, just as if she was a little girl in disgrace, about half an hour ago—simply for having told her own sister Jenny, who was useful maid to Miss Haworth at the Deanery, that Manfred had spent yesterday at Southampton. He had gone on smiling quite affably as long as Jenny was there, but the door had hardly closed on her before he had turned round on her, Polly, in furious anger.

“Blab! Blab! Blab!” he had snapped out. “You’ll end by hanging me before you’ve done! It won’t be any good then saying ‘Oh, I didn’t know,’ ‘Oh, I didn’t mean to!’” He mimicked with savage irony her frightened accents. And then, as she had burst into tears, he had ordered her up here, out of his sight.

Yes, Manfred had an awful temper, and since Wednesday evening he hadn’t given her one kind word or look. In fact, during the last few days Polly had felt as if she must run away from him. Not to do anything wicked, you understand—good gracious, no! She had had enough of men.

And now, resentfully, she asked herself why Manfred bothered so much about this war. After all, he had taken out his certificate; he was an Englishman now. She told herself that it was all the Dean’s fault. Stupid, interfering old gentleman—that’s what the Dean was! Manfred had gone up to the Deanery last Wednesday, and the Dean told him it was his duty to look after the Germans in Witanbury—as if Germans couldn’t look after themselves. Of course they could! They were far cleverer at that sort of thing than English people were. Polly could have told the Dean that.

As to business—business had been just as brisk, or very nearly as brisk, during the last few days as ever before, and that though they had only been able to keep the shop, so to speak, half open. It was clear this silly war wasn’t going to make any difference to them.

At first she had tried to make allowances; no doubt Manfred did feel unhappy about his son, Fritz, who was now on his way to fight the Russians. But he had hardly mentioned Fritz after the first minute. Instead of that, he had only exclaimed, at frequent intervals, that this war would ruin them. He really did believe it, too, for he had even said it in his sleep.

Why, they were made of money. Polly had the best of reasons for knowing that. They didn’t owe a penny to anybody, excepting to the builder. And no one could have acted better than that builder had done. He had hurried round the very first thing on Wednesday to tell them not to worry. In fact, even Manfred, who seldom had a good word for anybody, agreed that Mr. Smith had behaved very handsomely.

People were now beginning to walk across the Market Place, and rather more were going to evening service in the Cathedral than usual.

Polly didn’t want any one to look up and see she had been crying. So she retreated a little way into the room. Then she went over and poured some water from the queer-shaped jug into the narrow, deep basin, which was so unlike a nice big wide English basin. After that she washed her face, and dabbed her eyes with eau-de-Cologne.

Manfred, who was so economical about most things, and who even grudged her spending more than a certain sum on necessary household cleaning implements, was very fond of scent, and he had quite a row of scent-bottles and pomades on his side of the washhand-stand....

While Polly was dabbing her eyes and face she looked meditatively at the big safe in the corner.

With that safe was connected her one real bit of deceit. Manfred thought she didn’t know what was in the safe, but as a matter of fact she knew what was safely put away there as well as he did. Amazing to relate, she actually had a key to the safe of which he, her husband, knew nothing.

It had fallen out in this wise. The gentleman who had come from London to superintend the fixing of the safe had left an envelope for Manfred, or rather he had asked for an envelope, then he had popped inside it a piece of paper and something else.

“Look here, Mrs. Hegner!” he had exclaimed. “I can’t wait to see your husband, for I’ve got to get my train back to town. Will you just give him this? Many people only provide two keys to a safe, but our firm always provides three.”

She had waited till the man had gone, and then she had at once gone upstairs and locked herself into her bedroom with the new safe and the open envelope containing the receipted bill and the three keys. One of these keys she had put in her purse, and then she had placed the bill, and the two remaining keys, in a fresh envelope.

Polly didn’t consider husbands and wives ought to have any secrets from one another. But from the very first, even when Manfred was still very much in love with her—aye, and very jealous of her too, for the matter of that—he had never told her anything.

For a long time she hadn’t known just where to keep her key of the safe, and it had lain on her mind like a great big load of worry; she had felt obliged to be always changing the place where she hid it.

Then, suddenly, Manfred had presented her with an old-fashioned rosewood dressing-case he had taken from some one in part payment of a small debt. And in this dressing-case, so a friend had shown her, there was a secret place for letters. You pushed back an innocent-looking little brass inlaid knob, and the blue velvet back fell forward, leaving a space behind.

From the day she had been shown this dear little secret space, the key of the safe had lain there, excepting on the very rare occasions when she was able to take it out and use it. Of course she never did this unless she knew that Manfred was to be away for the whole day from Witanbury, and even then she trembled and shook with fright lest he should suddenly come in and surprise her. But what she had learnt made her tremors worth while.

It was pleasant, indeed, to know that a lot of money—nice golden sovereigns and crisp five-pound notes—was lying there, and that Manfred must be always adding to the store. Last time she had looked into the safe there was eight hundred pounds! Two-thirds in gold, one-third in five-pound notes. She had sometimes thought it odd that Manfred kept such a lot of gold, but that was his business, not hers.

It was very unkind of him not to have told her of all this money. After all, she helped to earn it! But she knew he believed her to be extravagant.

What sillies men were! As if the fact that he had this money put away, no doubt accumulating in order that they might pay off the mortgage quicker, would make her spend more. Why, it had actually had the effect of making her more careful.

In addition to the money in the safe, there were one or two deeds connected with little bits of house property Manfred had acquired in Witanbury during the last six years. And then, on the top shelf of the safe, there were a lot of letters—letters written in German, of which of course she could make neither head nor tail. Once a month a registered letter arrived, sometimes from Holland, sometimes from Brussels, for Manfred; and it had gradually become clear to her that it was these letters which he kept in the safe.

There came a loud impatient knock at the door. She started guiltily.

“Open!” cried her husband imperiously. “Open, Polly, at once! I have already forbidden you to lock the door.”

But she knew by the tone of his voice that he was no longer really angry with her. So, walking rather slowly, she went across and unlocked the door.

She stepped back quickly—the door opened, and a moment later she was in her husband’s arms, and he was kissing her.

“Well, little one! You’re good now, eh? Does my little sugar lamb want a treat?”

Polly knew that when he called her his little sugar lamb it meant that he was in high good-humour.

“It won’t be much of a treat to stay at home and do the civil to that old Mrs. Bauer,” she said, and looked up at him coquettishly.

There were good points about Manfred. When he was good-tempered, as he seemed to be just now, it generally meant that there would be a present for her coming along. And sure enough he pulled a little box out of one of his bulging pockets.

“Here’s a present for my little lollipop,” he said.

Eagerly she opened the box; but though she exclaimed “It’s very pretty!” she really felt a good deal disappointed. For it was only a queer, old-fashioned light gold locket. In tiny diamonds—they were real diamonds, but Polly did not know that—were set the words “Rule Britannia,” and below the words was a funny little enamel picture of a sailing-ship. Not the sort of thing she would care to wear, excepting just to please Manfred.

“You can put that on the chain I gave you,” he said. “It looks nice and patriotic. And about this evening—well, I’ve changed my mind. You need not stop in for Mrs. Bauer. Just say how-d’ye-do to her, and then go out—to the Deanery if you like. You see that I trust you, Polly;” his face stiffened, a frown came over it. “I have written a letter to the Dean for you to take; you may read it if you like.”

She drew the bit of paper out of the envelope with a good deal of curiosity. Whatever could Manfred have to write to the Dean about? True, he was fond of writing letters, and he expressed himself far better than most Englishmen of his station. Polly had quite a nice packet of his love-letters, which, at the time she had received them, had delighted her by their flowery appropriateness of language, and quaint, out-of-the-way expressions.

“Most Reverend Sir”—so ran Manfred Hegner’s letter to the Dean. “I wish to thank you for your kindness to me during the last few eventful days. I have endeavoured to deserve it in every way possible. I trust you will approve of a step I propose taking on Monday. That is, to change my name to Alfred Head. As you impressed upon me, Reverend Sir, in the interview you were good enough to grant me, I am now an Englishman, with all the duties as well as the privileges of this great nation. So it is best I have a British name. I am taking steps to have my new name painted up outside the Stores, and I am informing by circular all those whom it may concern. Your interest in me, Reverend Sir, has made me venture to tell you, before any one else, of the proposed alteration. I therefore sign myself, most Reverend Sir,
“Yours very faithfully,
“Alfred Head.”

“I think Head is a horrid name!” said his wife imprudently. “I don’t think ‘Polly Head’ is half as nice as ‘Polly Hegner.’ Why, mother used to know a horrid old man called Head. He was a scavenger, and he only cleaned himself once a year—on Christmas Day!”

Then, as she saw the thunderclouds gathering, she exclaimed in a rather frightened tone, “But don’t mind what I say, Manfred. You know best. I daresay I’ll get used to it soon!”

As they went downstairs Polly had been thinking.

“I fancy you’ve had this in your mind for some time.”

“What makes you fancy that?” he asked.

“Because we’ve so near got to the end of our stock of cards and bill-heads,” she said, “and you wouldn’t let me order any more last week.”

“You’re a sharp girl”—he laughed. “Well, yes! I have been thinking of it some time. And what’s happened now has just tipped the bucket—see?”

“Yes, I see that.”

“I’ve already written out the order for new bill-heads and new cards! and I’ve sent round the order about Monday,” he went on. “But if this dratted Bank Holiday goes on, there won’t be much work done in Witanbury on Monday! Hush! Here she comes.”

There had come a ring at the back door. Polly went out, and a moment later brought back the old German woman.

Anna was surprised to find the husband and wife alone. She had thought that the Fröhlings at least would be there.

“Well, Mrs. Bauer”—her host spoke in German—“a friend or two who were coming have failed, and you will have to put up with me, for my wife has to go up to the Deanery to see her sister. But you and I will have plenty to talk about at such a time as this. And I have got some papers from Berlin for you. I do not know how much longer they will be coming to England.”

The old woman’s face lighted up. Yes, it would be very nice to see one or two of the grand German picture papers which had been lately started in the Fatherland in imitation of those which were so popular in England.

“Do not trouble to look at them now,” he added hastily. “You can take them home with you. Mrs. Otway, she is too broad-minded a lady to mind, is she not?”

“Ach! Yes indeed,” said Anna. “Mrs. Otway, she loves the Fatherland. This foolish trouble makes not the slightest difference to her.”

Polly had been standing by rather impatiently. “Sometimes I’m quite sorry I haven’t taken the trouble to learn German,” she said.

Her husband chucked her under the chin. “How would Frau Bauer and I ever be able to talk our secrets together if you understood what we said, little woman?”

And Anna joined in the laugh with which this sally was greeted.

“So long!” said Polly brightly. “I expect I’ll be back before you’ve gone, Mrs. Bauer.”

CHAPTER XIII

“There is good news!” exclaimed Anna’s host, as soon as the door was shut behind his wife. “The British have sunk one of our little steamers, but we have blown up one of theirs—a very big, important war-vessel, Frau Bauer!”

Good old Anna’s face beamed. It was not that she disliked England—indeed, she was very fond of England. But she naturally felt that in this great game of war it was only right and fair that the Fatherland should win. It did not occur to her, and well he knew it would not occur to her, that the man who had just spoken was at any rate nominally an Englishman. She, quite as much as he did himself, regarded the naturalisation certificate as a mere matter of business. It had never made any difference to any of the Germans Anna had known in England—in fact the only German-Englishman she knew was old Fröhling, who had never taken out his certificate at all. Fröhling really did adore England, and this had sometimes made old Anna feel very impatient. To Fröhling everything English was perfect, and he had been quite pleased, instead of sorry, when his son had joined the British Army.

“So? That is good!” she exclaimed. “Very good! But we must not seem too pleased, must we, Herr Hegner?”

And he shook his head. “No, to be too pleased would not be grateful,” he said, “to good old England!” And he spoke with no sarcasm, he really meant what he said.

“It makes me sad to think of all the deaths, whether they are German or English,” went on Anna sadly. “I do not feel the same about the Russians or the French naturally.”

“Ach! How much I agree with you,” he said feelingly. “The poor English! Truly do I pity them. I am quite of your mind, Frau Bauer; though every Russian and most Frenchmen are a good riddance, I do not rejoice to think of any Englishman, however lazy, tiresome, and pigheaded, being killed.”

They both ate steadily for a few minutes, then Manfred Hegner began again. “But very few Englishmen will be killed by our brave fellows. You will have to shed no tears for any one you know in Witanbury, Frau Bauer. The English are not a fighting people. Most of their sailors will be drowned, no doubt, but at that one must not after all repine.”

“Yet the English are sending an army to Belgium,” observed Anna, thoughtfully.

“What makes you think that?” He stopped in the work on which he was engaged, that of cutting a large sausage into slices. “Have you learnt it on good authority, Frau Bauer? Has this news been told you by the young gentleman official from London who is connected with the Government—I mean he who is courting your young lady?”

Anna drew back stiffly. “How they do gossip in this town!” she exclaimed, frowning. “Courting my young lady, indeed! No, Mr. Hegner, it was not Mr. Hayley who told this. Mr. Hayley is one of those who talk a great deal without saying anything.”

“Then on whose authority do you speak?” He spoke with a certain rough directness.

“I know because Major Guthrie started for Belgium on Friday last, at two o’clock. By now he must be there, fighting our folk.”

“Major Guthrie?” He looked puzzled. “Is he a gentleman of the garrison?—surely not?”

“No, no. He has nothing to do with the garrison!” exclaimed Anna. “But you must have very often seen him, for he is constantly in the town. And he speaks German, Mr. Hegner. I should have thought he would have been in to see you.”

“You mean the son of the old lady who lives at Dorycote? They have never dealt at my Stores”—there was a tone of disappointment, of contempt, in Mr. Hegner’s voice. “But that gentleman has retired from the Army, Frau Bauer; it is not he, surely, whom they would call out to fight?”

“Still, all the same, he is going to Belgium. To France first, and then to Belgium.” She spoke very positively, annoyed at being doubted.

Mr. Hegner hesitated for a moment. He stroked his moustache. “I daresay this Major has gone back to his old regiment, for the English have mobilised their army—such as it is. But that does not mean that they are sending troops to the Continent.”

“But I even know where the Major is going to land in France.”

Mr. Hegner drew in his breath. “Ach!” he said. “That is really interesting! Do you indeed? And what is the name of the place?”

“Boulogne,” she said readily.

“But how do you know all this?” he asked slowly.

“Mrs. Otway told me. This Major is a great friend of my ladies. But though it was she who told me about Boulogne, I heard the good-byes said in the hall. Everything can be heard from my kitchen, you see.”

“Try and remember exactly what it was that this Major said. It may be of special interest to me.”

“He said”—she hesitated a moment, and then, in English, quoted the words: “He said, ‘I shall be very busy seeing about my kit before I leave England.’”

“Before I leave England?” he repeated meditatively. “Yes, if you did indeed hear him say those words they are proof positive, Frau Bauer.”

“Of course they are!” she said triumphantly.

They had a long and pleasant meal, and old Anna enjoyed every moment of it. Not since she had spent that delightful holiday in Berlin had she drunk so much beer at one sitting. And it was such nice light beer, too! Mrs. Otway, so understanding as to most things connected with Germany, had sometimes expressed her astonishment at the Germans’ love of beer; she thought it, strange to say, unhealthy, as well as unpalatable.

To this day Anna could remember the resentful pain with which she had learnt, some time after she had arrived at the Trellis House, that many English ladies allowed their servants “beer money.” Had she made a stand at the first, she too might have had “beer money.” But, alas! Mrs. Otway, when engaging her, had observed that in her household coffee and milk took the place of alcohol. Poor Anna, at that time in deep trouble, finding her eight-year-old child an almost insuperable bar to employment, would have accepted any conditions, however hard, to find a respectable roof once more over her head and that of her little Louisa.

But, as time had gone on, she had naturally resented Mrs. Otway’s peculiar rule concerning beer, and she had so far broken it as to enjoy a jug of beer—of course at her own expense—once a week. But she had only begun doing that after Mrs. Otway had raised her wages.

Host and guest talked on and on. Mr. Hegner confided to Anna his coming change of name, and he seemed pleased to know that she thought it quite a good plan.

Then suddenly he began to cross-question her about Mr. James Hayley. But unluckily she could tell him very little beyond at last admitting that he was, without doubt, in love with her young lady. There was, however, nothing very interesting in that.

Yes, Mr. Hayley was fond of talking, but, as Anna had said just now, he talked without saying anything, and she was too busy to pay much heed to what he did say. He had come to dinner yesterday, that is, Saturday, but he had had to leave Witanbury early this morning. The one thing Anna did remember having heard him remark, for he said it more than once, was that up to the last moment they had all thought, in his office, that there would be no war.

“He is not the only one. I, too, believed that the war would only come next year,” observed Anna’s host ruefully.

The old woman thought these questions quite natural, for all Germans have an insatiable curiosity concerning what may be called the gossip side of life.

At last Manfred Hegner pushed back his chair.

“Will you look at the pictures in these papers, Frau Bauer? I have to go upstairs for something. I shall not be gone for more than two or three minutes.” He opened wide a sheet showing the Kaiser presiding at fire drill on board his yacht.

Then, leaving his visitor quite happy, he hurried upstairs, and going into his bedroom, locked the door and turned on the electric light. With one of the twin tiny keys he always carried on his watch-chain he opened his safe, and in a very few moments had found what he wanted. Polly would indeed have been surprised had she seen what it was. From the back of the pile of letters she had never disturbed, he drew out a shabby little black book. It was a book of addresses written in alphabetical order, and there were the names of people, and of places, all over the Continent. This little book had been forwarded, registered, by one of its present possessor’s business friends in Holland some ten days ago, together with a covering letter explaining the value, in a grocery business, of these addresses. Mr. Hegner was not yet familiar with its contents, but he found fairly quickly the address he wanted—that of a Spanish merchant at Seville.

Taking out the block, which he always carried about with him, from his pocket, he carefully copied on it the address in question. Then he turned over the thin pages of the little black book till he came to another address. This time it was the name of a Frenchman, Jules Boutet, who lived in the Haute Ville, Boulogne. He put this name down, too, but he did not trouble about Boutet’s address. Finally he placed the book back in the safe, among the private papers which Polly never disturbed. Then, tearing off the top sheet of the block, he wrote the Spanish address out, and under it, “Father can come back on or about August 19. Boutet is expecting him.”

He hesitated for some time over the signature. And then, at last, he put the English Christian name of “Emily.”

He pushed the book back, well out of sight, then shutting the safe hastened downstairs again.

At any moment Polly might return home; they were early folk at the Deanery.

Anna had already got up. “I think I must be going home,” she observed. “My ladies will soon be back. I do not like them to find the house empty—though Mrs. Otway knows that I am here.”

“Do you ever have occasion to go to the Post Office?” he said thoughtfully.

And she answered, “Yes; I have a Savings Bank account. Do you advise me, Mr. Hegner, to take my money out of the Savings Bank just now? Will they not be taking all the money for the war?”

“I think I should take it out. Have you much in?” As he spoke, he was filling up a foreign telegraph form, printing the words in.

“Not very much,” she said cautiously. “But a little sum—yes.”

“How much?”

She hesitated uncomfortably. “I have forty pounds in the English Savings Bank,” she said.

“If I were you”—he looked at her fixedly—“I should take it all out. Make them give it you in sovereigns. And then, if you will bring it to me here, I shall be able to give you for that—let me see——” he waited a moment. “Yes, if you do not mind taking bank-notes and silver, I will give you for that gold of yours forty pounds and five shillings. Gold is useful to me in my business. Oh—and, Frau Bauer? When you do go to the Post Office I should be glad if you would send off this telegram for me. It is a business telegram, as you can see, in fact a code telegram.”

She took the piece of paper in her hand, then looked at it and at him, uncomprehendingly.

“It concerns a consignment of bitter oranges. I do not want the Witanbury Post Office to know my business.”

“Yes, I understand what you mean.”

“It is, as you see, a Spanish telegram, and it will cost”—he made a rapid calculation, then went to the sideboard and took out some silver. “It will cost five-and-sixpence. I therefore give you seven-and-sixpence, Frau Bauer. That is two shillings for your trouble. If possible, I should prefer that no one sees this telegram being despatched. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, yes. I quite understand.”

“And if you are asked who gave it you to despatch, say it is a Mrs. Smith, slightly known to you, whom you just met, and who was in too great a hurry to catch her train to come into the Post Office.”

Anna took a large purse out of her capacious pocket. In it she put the telegram and the money. “I will send it off to-morrow morning,” she exclaimed. “You may count on me.”

“Frau Bauer?”

She turned back.

“Only to wish you again a cordial good-night, and to say I hope you will come again soon!”

“Indeed, that I will,” she called out gratefully.

As he was shutting the back door, he saw his wife hurrying along across the quiet little back street.

“Hullo, Polly!” he cried, and she came quickly across. “They are in great trouble at the Deanery,” she observed, “at least, Miss Edith is in great trouble. She has been crying all to-day. They say her face is all swelled out—that she looks an awful sight! Her lover is going away to fight, and some one has told her that Lord Kitchener says none of the lot now going out will ever come back! There is even talk of their being married before he starts. But as her trousseau is not ready, my sister thinks it would be a very stupid thing to do.”

“Did the Dean get my letter?” he asked abruptly.

“Oh yes, I forgot to tell you that. I gave it to Mr. Dunstan, the butler. He says that the Dean opened it and read it. And then what d’you think the silly old thing said, Manfred?”

“You will have to get into the way of calling me Alfred,” he said calmly.

“Oh, bother!”

“Well, what did the reverend gentleman say?”

“Mr. Dunstan says that he just exclaimed, ‘I’m sorry the good fellow thinks it necessary to do that.’ So you needn’t have troubled after all. All the way to the Deanery I was saying to myself, ‘Mrs. Head—Polly Head. Polly Head—Mrs. Head.’ And no, it’s no good pretending that I like it, for I just don’t!”

“Then you’ll just have to do the other thing,” he said roughly. Still, though he spoke so disagreeably, he was yet in high good-humour. Two hours ago this information concerning Miss Haworth’s lover would have been of the utmost interest to him, and even now it was of value, as corroborating what Anna had already told him. Frau Bauer was going to be very useful to him. Alfred Head, for already he was thinking of himself by that name, felt that he had had a well-spent, as well as a pleasant, evening.

CHAPTER XIV

Had it not been for the contents of the envelope which she kept in the right-hand drawer of her writing-table, and which she sometimes took out surreptitiously, when neither her daughter nor old Anna were about, Mrs. Otway, as those early August days slipped by, might well have thought her farewell interview with Major Guthrie a dream.

For one thing there was nothing, positively nothing, in any of the daily papers over which she wasted so much time each morning, concerning the despatch of an Expeditionary Force to the Continent! Could Major Guthrie have been mistaken?

Once, when with the Dean, she got very near the subject. In fact, she ventured to say a word expressive of her belief that British troops were to be sent to France. But he snubbed her with a sharpness very unlike his urbane self. “Nonsense!” he cried. “There isn’t the slightest thought of such a thing. Any small force we could send to the Continent would be useless—in fact, only in the way!”

“Then why does Lord Kitchener ask for a hundred thousand men?”

“For home defence,” said the Dean quickly, “only for home defence, Mrs. Otway. The War Office is said to regard it as within the bounds of possibility that England may be invaded. But I fancy the Kaiser is far too truly attached to his mother’s country to think of doing anything really to injure us! I am sure that so intelligent and enlightened a sovereign understands our point of view—I mean about Belgium. The Kaiser, without doubt, was overruled by the military party. As to our sending our Army abroad—why, millions are already being engaged in this war! So where would be the good of our small army?”

That had been on Sunday, only two days after Major Guthrie had gone. And now, it being Wednesday, Mrs. Otway bethought herself that she ought to fulfil her promise with regard to his mother. Somehow she had a curious feeling that she now owed a duty to the old lady, and also—though that perhaps was rather absurd—that she would be quite glad to see any one who would remind her of her kind friend—the friend whom she missed more than she was willing to admit to herself.

But of course her friend’s surprising kindness and thought for her had made a difference to her point of view, and had brought them, in a sense, very much nearer the one to the other. In fact Mrs. Otway was surprised, and even a little hurt, that Major Guthrie had not written to her once since he went away. It was the more odd as he very often had written to her during former visits of his to London. Sometimes they had been quite amusing letters.

She put on a cool, dark-grey linen coat and skirt, and a shady hat, and then she started off for the mile walk to Dorycote.

It was a very warm afternoon. Old Mrs. Guthrie, after she had had her pleasant little after-luncheon nap, established herself, with the help of her maid, under a great beech tree in the beautiful garden which had been one of the principal reasons why Major Guthrie had chosen this house at Dorycote for his mother. The old lady was wearing a pale lavender satin gown, with a lace scarf wound about her white hair and framing her still pretty pink and white face.

During the last few days the people who composed Mrs. Guthrie’s little circle had been too busy and too excited to come and see her. But she thought it likely that to-day some one would drop in to tea. Any one would be welcome, for she was feeling a little mopish.

No, it was not this surprising, utterly unexpected, War that troubled her. Mrs. Guthrie belonged by birth to the fighting caste; her father had been a soldier in his time, and so had her husband.

As for her only son, he had made the Army his profession, and she knew that he had hoped to live and die in it. He had been through the Boer War, and was wounded at Spion Kop, so he had done his duty by his country; this being so, she could not help being glad now that Alick had retired when he had. But she had wisely kept that gladness to herself as long as he was with her. To Mrs. Guthrie’s thinking, this War was France’s war, and Russia’s war; only in an incidental sense England’s quarrel too.

Russia? Mrs. Guthrie had always been taught to mistrust Russia, and to believe that the Tsar had his eye on India. She could remember, too, and that with even now painful vividness, the Crimean War, for a man whom she had cared for as a girl, whom indeed she had hoped to marry, had been killed at the storming of the Redan. To her it seemed strange that England and Russia were now allies.

As a matter of fact, the one moment of excitement the War had brought her was in connection with Russia. An old gentleman she knew, a tiresome neighbour whose calls usually bored rather than pleased her, had hobbled in yesterday and told her, as a tremendous secret, that Russia was sending a big army to Flanders via England, through a place called Archangel of which she had vaguely heard. He had had the news from Scotland, where a nephew of his had actually seen and spoken to some Russian officers, the advance guard, as it were, of these legions!

Mrs. Guthrie was glad this war had come after the London season was over. Her great pleasure each day was reading the Morning Post, and during this last week that paper had been a great deal too full of war news. It had annoyed her, too, to learn that the Cowes Week had been given up. Of course no German yachts could have competed, but apart from that, why should not the regatta have gone on just the same? It looked as if the King (God bless him!) was taking this war too seriously. Queen Victoria and King Edward would have had a better sense of proportion. The old lady kept these thoughts to herself, but they were there, all the same.

Yes, it was a great pity Cowes had been given up. Mrs. Guthrie missed the lists of names—names which in the majority of cases, unless of course they were those of Americans and of uninteresting nouveaux riches, recalled pleasant associations, and that even if the people actually mentioned were only the children or the grandchildren of those whom she had known in the delightful days when she had kept house for her widower brother in Mayfair.

As she turned her old head stiffly round, and saw how charming her well-kept lawn and belt of high trees beyond looked to-day, she felt sorry that she had not written one or two little notes and bidden some of her Witanbury Close acquaintances come out and have tea. The Dean, for instance, might have come. Even Mrs. Otway, Alick’s friend, would have been better than nobody!

Considering that she did not like her, it was curious that Mrs. Guthrie was one of the very few women in that neighbourhood who realised that the mistress of the Trellis House was an exceptionally attractive person. More than once—in fact almost always after chance had brought the two ladies in contact, Mrs. Guthrie would observe briskly to her son, “It’s rather odd that your Mrs. Otway has never married again!” And it always amused her to notice that it irritated Alick to hear her say this. It was the Scotch bit of him which made Alick at once so shy and so sentimental where women were concerned.

Mrs. Guthrie had no idea how very often her son went to the Trellis House, but even had she known it she would only have smiled satirically. She had but little sympathy with platonic friendships, and she recognised, with that shrewd mother-sense so many women acquire late in life, that Mrs. Otway was a most undesigning widow.

Not that it would have really mattered if she had been the other sort. Major Guthrie’s own private means were small. It was true that after his mother’s death he would be quite well off, but Mrs. Guthrie, even if she had a weak heart, did not think herself likely to die for a long, long time.... And yet, as time went on, and as the old lady became, perhaps, a thought less selfish, she began to wish that her son would fancy some girl with money, and marrying, settle down. If that could come to pass, then she, Mrs. Guthrie, would be content to live on by herself, in the house which she had made so pretty, and where she had gathered about her quite a pleasant circle of admiring and appreciative, if rather dull, country friends.

But when she had said a word in that sense to Alick, he had tried to turn the suggestion off as a joke. And as she had persisted in talking about it, he had shown annoyance, even anger. At last, one day, he had exclaimed, “I’m too old to marry a girl, mother! Somehow—I don’t know how it is—I don’t seem to care very much for girls.”

“There are plenty of widows you could marry,” she said quickly. “A widow is more likely to have money than a girl.” He had answered, “But you see I don’t care for money.” And then she had observed, “I don’t see how you could marry without money, Alick.” And he had said quietly, “I quite agree. I don’t think I could.” And it may be doubted if in his loyal heart there had even followed the unspoken thought, “So long as you are alive, mother.”

Yes, Alick was a very good son, and Mrs. Guthrie did not grudge him his curious friendship with Mrs. Otway.

And then, just as she was saying this to herself, not for the first time, she heard the sound of doors opening and closing, and she saw, advancing towards her over the bright green lawn, the woman of whom she had just been thinking with condescending good-nature.

Mrs. Otway looked hot and a little tired—not quite as attractive as usual. This perhaps made Mrs. Guthrie all the more glad to see her.

“How kind of you to come!” exclaimed the old lady. “But I’m sorry you find me alone. I rather hoped my son might be back to-day. He had to go up to London unexpectedly last Friday. He has an old friend in the War Office, and I think it very likely that this man may have wanted to consult him. I don’t know if you are aware that Alick once spent a long leave in Germany. Although I miss him, I should be glad to think he is doing something useful just now. But of course I shouldn’t at all have liked the thought of his beginning again to fight—and at his time of life!”

“I suppose a soldier is never too old to want to fight,”—but even while she spoke, Mrs. Otway felt as if she were saying something rather trite and foolish. She was a little bit afraid of the old lady, and as she sat down her cheeks grew even hotter than the walking had made them, for she suddenly remembered Major Guthrie’s legacy.

“Yes, that’s true, of course! And for the first two or three days of last week I could see that Alick was very much upset, in fact horribly depressed, by this War. But I pretended to take no notice of it—it’s always better to do that with a man! It’s never the slightest use being sympathetic—it only makes people more miserable. However, last Friday, after getting a telegram, he became quite cheerful and like his old self again. He wouldn’t admit, even to me, that he had heard from the War Office. But I put two and two together! Of course, as he is in the Reserve, he may find himself employed on some form of home defence. I could see that Alick thinks that the Germans will probably try and land in England—invade it, in fact, as the Normans did.” The old lady smiled. “It’s an amusing idea, isn’t it?”

“But surely the fleet’s there to prevent that!” said Mrs. Otway. She was surprised that so sensible a man as Major Guthrie—her opinion of him had gone up very much this last week—should imagine such a thing as that a landing by the Germans on the English coast was possible.

“Oh, but he says there are at least a dozen schemes of English invasion pigeonholed in the German War Office, and by now they’ve doubtless had them all out and examined them. He has always said there is a very good landing-place within twenty miles of here—a place Napoleon selected!”

A pleasant interlude was provided by tea, and as Mrs. Guthrie, her old hand shaking a little, poured out a delicious cup for her visitor, and pressed on her a specially nice home-made cake, Mrs. Otway began to think that in the past she had perhaps misjudged Major Guthrie’s agreeable, lively mother.

Suddenly Mrs. Guthrie fixed on her visitor the penetrating blue eyes which were so like those of her son, and which were indeed the only feature of her very handsome face she had transmitted to her only child.

“I think you know my son very well?” she observed suavely.

Rather to her own surprise, Mrs. Otway grew a little pink. “Yes,” she said. “Major Guthrie and I are very good friends. He has sometimes been most kind in giving me advice about my money matters.”

“Ah, well, he does that to a good many people. You’d be amused to know how often he’s asked to be trustee to a marriage settlement, and so on. But I’ve lately supposed, Mrs. Otway, that Alick has made a kind of—well, what shall I say?—a kind of sister of you. He seems so fond of your girl, too; he always has liked young people.”

“Yes, that’s very true,” said Mrs. Otway eagerly. “Major Guthrie has always been most kind to Rose.” And then she smiled happily, and added, as if to herself, “Most people are.”

Somehow this irritated the old lady. “I don’t want to pry into anybody’s secrets,” she said—“least of all, my son’s. But I should like to be so far frank with you as to ask you if Alick has ever talked to you of the Trepells?”

“The Trepells?” repeated Mrs. Otway slowly. “No, I don’t think so. But wait a moment—are they the people with whom he sometimes goes and stays in Sussex?”

“Yes; he stayed with them just after Christmas. Then he has talked to you of them?”

“I don’t think he’s ever exactly talked of them,” answered Mrs. Otway. She was trying to remember what it was that Major Guthrie had said. Wasn’t it something implying that he was going there to please his mother—that he would far rather stay at home? But she naturally did not put into words this vague recollection of what he had said about these—yes, these Trepells. “It’s an odd name, and yet it seems familiar to me,” she said hesitatingly.

“It’s familiar to you because they are the owners of the celebrated ‘Trepell’s Polish,’” said the old lady rather sharply. “But they’re exceedingly nice people. And it’s my impression that Alick is thinking very seriously of the elder daughter. There are only two daughters—nice, old-fashioned girls, brought up by a nice, old-fashioned mother. The mother was the younger daughter of Lord Dunsmuir, and the Dunsmuirs were friends of the Guthries—I mean of my husband’s people—since the year one. Their London house is in Grosvenor Square. When I call Maisie Trepell a girl, I do not mean that she is so very much younger than my son as to make the thought of such a marriage absurd. She is nearer thirty than twenty, and he is forty-six.”

“Is she the young lady who came to stay with you some time ago?” asked Mrs. Otway.

She was so much surprised, in a sense so much disturbed, by this unexpected confidence that she really hardly knew what she was saying. She had never thought of Major Guthrie as a marrying man. For one thing, she had frequently had occasion to see him, not only with her own daughter, but with other girls, and he had certainly never paid them any special attention. But now she did remember vividly the fact that a young lady had come and paid quite a long visit here before Easter. But she remembered also that Major Guthrie had been away at the time.

“Yes, Maisie came for ten days. Unfortunately, Alick had to go away before she left, for he had taken an early spring fishing with a friend. But I thought—in fact, I rather hoped at the time—that he was very much disappointed.”

“Yes, he naturally must have been, if what you say is——” and then she stopped short, for she did not like to say “if what you say is true,” so “if what you say is likely to come to pass,” she ended vaguely.

“I hope it will come to pass.” Mrs. Guthrie spoke very seriously, and once more she fixed her deep blue eyes on her visitor’s face. “I’m seventy-one, not very old as people count age nowadays, but still I’ve never been a strong woman, and I have a weak heart. I should not like to leave my son to a lonely life and to a lonely old age. He’s very reserved—he hasn’t made many friends in his long life. And I thought it possible he might have confided to you rather than to me.”

“No, he never spoke of the matter to me at all; in fact, we have never even discussed the idea of his marrying,” said Mrs. Otway slowly.

“Well, forget what I’ve said!”

But Mrs. Guthrie’s visitor went on, a little breathlessly and impulsively: “I quite understand how you feel about Major Guthrie, and I daresay he would be happier married. Most people are, I think.”

She got up; it was nearly six—time for her to be starting on her walk back to Witanbury.

Obeying a sudden impulse, she bent down and kissed the old lady good-bye. There was no guile, no taint of suspiciousness, in Mary Otway’s nature.

Mrs. Guthrie had the grace to feel a little ashamed.

“I hope you’ll come again soon, my dear.” She was surprised to feel how smooth and how young was the texture of Mrs. Otway’s soft, generously-lipped mouth and rounded cheek.

There rose a feeling of real regret in her cynical old heart. “She likes him better than she knows, and far better than I thought she did!” she said to herself, as she watched the still light, still singularly graceful-looking figure hurrying away towards the house.

As for Mrs. Otway, she felt oppressed, and yes, a little pained, by the old lady’s confidence. That what she had just been told might not be true did not occur to her. What more natural than that Major Guthrie should like a nice girl—one, too, who was, it seemed, half Scotch? The Trepells were probably in London even now—she had seen it mentioned in a paper that every one was still staying on in town. If so, Major Guthrie was doubtless constantly in their company; and the letter she had so—well, not exactly longed for, but certainly expected, might even now be lying on the table in the hall of the Trellis House, informing her of his engagement!

She remembered now what she had heard of the Trepells. It concerned the great, the almost limitless, wealth brought in by their wonderful polish. She found it difficult to think of Major Guthrie as a very rich man. Of course, he would always remain, what he was now, a quiet, unassuming gentleman; but all the same, she, Mary Otway, did feel that somehow this piece of news made it impossible for her to accept the loan he had so kindly and so delicately forced on her.

Mrs. Otway had a lively, a too lively, imagination, and it seemed to her as if it was Miss Trepell’s money which lay in the envelope now locked away in her writing-table drawer. Indeed, had she known exactly where Major Guthrie was just now, she would have returned it to him. But supposing he had already started for France, and the registered letter came back and was opened by his mother—how dreadful that would be!

When she reached home, and walked through into her cool, quiet house, Mrs. Otway was quite surprised to find that there was no letter from Major Guthrie lying for her on the hall table.

CHAPTER XV

Rose Otway ran up to her room and locked the door. She had fled there to read her first love-letter.

“My Darling Rose,—This is only to tell you that I love you. I have been writing letters to you in my heart ever since I went away. But this is the first moment I have been able to put one down on paper. Father and mother never leave me—that sounds absurd, but it’s true. If father isn’t there, then mother is. Mother comes into my room after I am in bed, and tucks me up, just as she used to do when I was a little boy.

“It’s a great rush, for what I have so longed for is going to happen, so you must not be surprised if you do not have another letter from me for some time. But you will know, my darling love, that I am thinking of you all the time. I am so happy, Rose—I feel as if God has given me everything I ever wanted all at once.
“Your own devoted
“Jervis.”

And then there was a funny little postscript, which made her smile through her tears: “You will think this letter all my—‘I.’ But that doesn’t really matter now, as you and I are one!”

Rose soon learnt her first love-letter by heart. She made a little silk envelope for it, and wore it on her heart. It was like a bit of Jervis himself—direct, simple, telling her all she wanted to know, yet leaving much unsaid. Rose had once been shown a love-letter in which the word “kiss” occurred thirty-four times. She was glad that there was nothing of that sort in Jervis’s letter, and yet she longed with a piteous, aching longing to feel once more his arms clasping her close, his lips trembling on hers....

At last her mother asked her casually, “Has Jervis Blake written to you, my darling?” And she said, “Yes, mother; once. I think he’s busy, getting his outfit.”

“Ah, well, they won’t think of sending out a boy as young as that, even if Major Guthrie was right in thinking our Army is going to France.” And Rose to that had made no answer. She was convinced that Jervis was going on active service. There was one sentence in his letter which could mean nothing else.

Life in Witanbury, after that first week of war, settled down much as before. There was a general impression that everything was going very well. The brave little Belgians were defending their country with skill and tenacity, and the German Army was being “held up.”

The Close was full of mild amateur strategists, headed by the Dean himself. Great as had been, and was still, his admiration for Germany, Dr. Haworth was of course an Englishman first; and every day, when opening his morning paper, he expected to learn that there had been another Trafalgar. He felt certain that the German Fleet was sure to make, as he expressed it, “a dash for it.” Germany was too gallant a nation, and the Germans were too proud of their fleet, to keep their fighting ships in harbour. The Dean of Witanbury, like the vast majority of his countrymen and countrywomen, still regarded War as a great game governed by certain well-known rules which both sides, as a matter of course, would follow and abide by.

The famous cathedral city was doing “quite nicely” in the matter of recruiting. And the largest local employer of labour, a man who owned a group of ladies’ high-grade boot and shoe factories, generously decided that he would permit ten per cent. of those of his men who were of military age to enlist; he actually promised as well to keep their places open, and to give their wives, or their mothers, as the case might be, half wages for the first six months of war.

A good many people felt aggrieved when it became known that Lady Bethune was not going to give her usual August garden party. She evidently did not hold with the excellent suggestion that England should now take as her motto “Business as Usual.” True, a garden-party is not exactly business—still, it is one of those pleasures which the great ladies of a country neighbourhood find it hard to distinguish from duties.

Yes, life went on quite curiously as usual during the second week of the Great War, and to many of the more well-to-do people of Witanbury, only brought in its wake a series of agreeable “thrills” and mild excitements.

Of course this was not quite the case with the inmates of the Trellis House. Poor old Anna, for instance, very much disliked the process of Registration. Still, it was made as easy and pleasant to her as possible, and Mrs. Otway and Rose both accompanied her to the police station. There, nothing could have been more kindly than the manner of the police inspector who handed Anna Bauer her “permit.” He went to some trouble in order to explain to her exactly what it was she might and might not do.

As Anna seldom had any occasion to travel as far as five miles from Witanbury Close, her registration brought with it no hardship at all. Still, she was surprised and hurt to find herself described as “an enemy alien.” She could assure herself, even now, that she had no bad feelings against England—no, none at all!

Though neither her good faithful servant nor her daughter guessed the fact, Mrs. Otway was the one inmate of the Trellis House to whom the War, so far, brought real unease. She felt jarred and upset—anxious, too, as she had never yet been, about her money matters.

More and more she missed Major Guthrie, and yet the thought of him brought discomfort, almost pain, in its train. With every allowance made, he was surely treating her in a very cavalier manner. How odd of him not to have written! Whenever he had been away before, he had always written to her, generally more than once; and now, when she felt that their friendship had suddenly come closer, he left her without a line.

Her only comfort, during those strange days of restless waiting for news which never came, were her daily talks with the Dean. Their mutual love and knowledge of Germany had always been a strong link between them, and it was stronger now than ever.

Alone of all the people she saw, Dr. Haworth managed to make her feel at charity with Germany while yet quite confident with regard to her country’s part in the War. He did not say so in so many words, but it became increasingly clear to his old friend and neighbour, that the Dean believed that the Germans would soon be conquered, on land by Russia and by France, while the British, following their good old rule, would defeat them at sea.

Many a time, during those early days of war, Mrs. Otway felt a thrill of genuine pity for Germany. True, the Militarist Party there deserved the swift defeat that was coming on them; they deserved it now, just as the French Empire had deserved it in 1870, though Mrs. Otway could not believe that modern Germany was as arrogant and confident as had been the France of the Second Empire.

Much as she missed Major Guthrie, she was sometimes glad that he was not there to—no, not to crow over her, he was incapable of doing that, but to be proved right.

There was a great deal of talk of the mysterious passage of Russians through the country. Some said there were twenty thousand, some a hundred thousand, and the stories concerning this secret army of avengers grew more and more circumstantial. They reached Witanbury Close from every quarter. And though for a long time the Dean held out, he at last had to admit that, yes, he did believe that a Russian army was being swiftly, secretly transferred, via Archangel and Scotland, to the Continent! More than one person declared that they had actually seen Cossacks peeping out of the windows of the trains which, with blinds down, were certainly rushing through Witanbury station, one every ten minutes, through each short summer night.

All the people the Otways knew took great glory and comfort in these rumours, but Mrs. Otway heard the news with very mixed feelings. It seemed to her scarcely fair that a Russian army should come, as it were, on the sly, to attack the Germans in France—and she did not like to feel that England would for ever and for aye have to be grateful to Russia for having sent an army to her help.

It was the morning of the 18th of August—exactly a fortnight, that is, since England’s declaration of war on Germany. Coming down to breakfast, Mrs. Otway suddenly realised what a very, very long fortnight this had been—the longest fortnight in her life as a grown-up woman. She felt what she very seldom was, depressed, and as she went into the dining-room she was sorry to see that there was a sullen look on old Anna’s face.

“Good morning!” she said genially in German. And in reply the old servant, after a muttered “Good morning, gracious lady,” went on, in a tone of suppressed anger, “Did you not tell me that the English were not going to fight my people? That it was all a mistake?”

Mrs. Otway looked surprised. “Yes, I feel sure that no soldiers are going abroad,” she said quietly. “The Dean says that our Army is to be kept at home, to defend our shores, Anna.”

She spoke rather coldly; there was a growing impression in Witanbury that the Germans might try to invade England, and behave here as they were behaving in Belgium. Though Mrs. Otway and Rose tried to believe that the horrible stories of burning and murder then taking place in Flanders were exaggerated, still some of them were very circumstantial and, in fact, obviously true.

Languidly, for there never seemed any real news nowadays, she opened wide her newspaper. And then her heart gave a leap! Printed right across the page, in huge black letters, ran the words:

“BRITISH EXPEDITIONARY FORCE IN FRANCE.”

And underneath, in smaller type:

“Landed at Boulogne without a Single Casualty.”

Then Major Guthrie had been right and the Dean wrong? And this was why Anna had spoken as she had done just now, in that rather rude and injured tone?

Later in the morning, when she met the Dean, he showed himself, as might have been expected, very frank and genial about the matter.

“I have to admit that I was wrong,” he observed; “quite wrong. I certainly thought it impossible that any British troops could cross the Channel till a decisive fleet action had been fought. And, well—I don’t mind saying to you, Mrs. Otway, I still think it a pity that we have sent our Army abroad.”

Three days later Rose and her mother each received a quaint-looking postcard from “Somewhere in France.” There was neither postmark nor date. The first four words were printed, but what was really very strange was the fact that the sentences written in were almost similar in each case. But whereas Jervis Blake wrote his few words in English, Major Guthrie’s few words were written in French.

Jervis Blake’s postcard ran:

“I am quite well and very happy. This is a glorious country. I will write a letter soon.” And then “J. B.”

That of Major Guthrie:

“I am quite well.” Then, in queer archaic French, “and all goes well with me. I trust it is the same with thee. Will write soon.”

But he, mindful of the fact that it was an open postcard, with your Scotchman’s true caution, had not even added his initials.

Mrs. Otway’s only comment on hearing that Jervis Blake had written Rose a postcard from France, had been the words, said feelingly, and with a sigh, “Ah, well! So he has gone out too? He is very young to see something of real war. But I expect that it will make a man of him, poor boy.”

For a moment Rose had longed to throw herself in her mother’s arms and tell her the truth; then she had reminded herself that to do so would not be fair to Jervis. Jervis would have told his people of their engagement if she had allowed him to do so. It was she who had prevented it. And then—and then—Rose also knew, deep in her heart, that if anything happened to Jervis, she would far rather bear the agony alone. She loved her mother dearly, but she told herself, with the curious egoism of youth, that her mother would not understand.

Rose had been four years old when her father died; she thought she could remember him, but it was a very dim, shadowy memory. She did not realise, even now, that her mother had once loved, once lost, once suffered. She did not believe that her mother knew anything of love—of real love, of true love, of such love as now bound herself to Jervis Blake.

Her mother no doubt supposed Rose’s friendship with Jervis Blake to be like her own friendship with Major Guthrie—a cold, sensible, placid affair. In fact, she had said, with a smile, “It’s rather amusing, isn’t it, that Jervis should write to you, and Major Guthrie to me, by the same post?”

But neither mother nor daughter had offered to show her postcard to the other. There was so little on them that it had not seemed necessary. Of the two, it was Mrs. Otway who felt a little shy. The wording of Major Guthrie’s postcard was so peculiar! Of course he did not know French well, or he would have put what he wanted to say differently. He would have said “you” instead of “thee.” She was rather glad that her dear little Rose had not asked to see it. Still, its arrival mollified her sore, hurt feeling that he might have written before. Instead of tearing it up, as she had always done the letters Major Guthrie had written to her in the old days that now seemed so very long ago, she slipped that curious war postcard inside the envelope in which were placed his bank-notes.

CHAPTER XVI

August 23, 1914! A date which will be imprinted on the heart, and on the tablets of memory, of every Englishman and Englishwoman of our generation. To the majority of thinking folk, that was the last Sunday we any of us spent in the old, prosperous, happy, confiding England—the England who considered that might as a matter of course follows right—the England whose grand old motto was “Victory as Usual,” and to whom the word defeat was without significance.

Almost the whole population of Witanbury seemed to have felt a common impulse to attend the evening service in the cathedral. They streamed in until the stately black-gowned vergers were quite worried to find seats for the late comers. In that great congregation there was already a certain leaven of anxious hearts—not over-anxious, you understand, but naturally uneasy because those near and dear to them had gone away to a foreign country, to fight an unknown foe.

It was known that the minor canon who was on the rota to preach this evening had gracefully yielded the privilege to the Dean, and this accounted, in part at least, for the crowds who filled the great building.

When Dr. Haworth mounted the pulpit and prepared to begin his sermon, which he had striven to make worthy of the occasion, he felt a thrill of satisfaction as his eyes suddenly lighted on the man whom he still instinctively thought of by his old name of “Manfred Hegner.”

Yes, there they were, Hegner and his wife, at the end of a row of chairs, a long way down; she looking very pretty and graceful, instinctively well-dressed in her grey muslin Sunday gown and wide floppy hat—looking, indeed, “quite the lady,” as more than one of her envious neighbours had said to themselves when seeing her go by on her husband’s arm.

Because of the presence of this man who, though German-born, had elected to become an Englishman, and devote his very considerable intelligence—the Dean prided himself on his knowledge of human nature, and on his quickness in detecting humble talent—to the service of his adopted country, the sermon was perhaps a thought more fair, even cordial, to Britain’s formidable enemy, than it would otherwise have been.

The messages of the King and of Lord Kitchener to the Expeditionary Force gave the Dean a fine text for his discourse, and he paid a very moving and eloquent tribute to the Silence of the People. He reminded his hearers that even if they, in quiet Witanbury, knew nothing of the great and stirring things which were happening elsewhere, there must have been thousands—it might truly be said tens of thousands—of men and women who had known that our soldiers were leaving their country for France. And yet not a word had been said, not a hint conveyed, either privately or in the press. He himself had one who was very dear and near to his own dearest and nearest, in that Expeditionary Force, and yet not a word had been breathed, even to him.

Then he went on to a sadder and yet in its way an even more glorious theme—the loss of His Majesty’s good ship Amphion. He described the splendid discipline of the men, the magnificent courage of the captain, who, when recovering from a shock which had stretched him insensible, had rushed to stop the engines. He told with what composure the men had fallen in, and how everything had been done, without hurry or confusion, in the good old British sea way; and how, thanks to that, twenty minutes after the Amphion had struck a mine, men, officers, and captain had left the ship.

And after he had finished his address—he kept it quite short, for Dr. Haworth was one of those rare and wise men who never preach a long sermon—the whole congregation rose to their feet and sang “God Save the King.”

This golden feeling of security, of happy belief that all was, and must be, well, lasted till the following afternoon. And the first of the dwellers in Witanbury Close to have that comfortable feeling shattered—shattered for ever—was Mrs. Otway.

She was about to pay a late call on Mrs. Robey, who, after all, had not taken her children to the seaside. Rather to the amusement of his neighbours, Mr. Robey, who was moving heaven and earth to get some kind of War Office job, had bluntly declared that, however much people might believe in “business as usual,” he was not going to practice “pleasure as usual” while his country was at war.

Mrs. Otway stepped out of her gate, and before turning to the right she looked to the left, as people will. The Dean was at the corner, apparently on his way back from the town. He held an open paper in his hand, and though that was not in itself a strange thing, there suddenly came over the woman who stood looking at him a curious feeling of unreasoning fear, a queer prevision of evil. She began walking towards him, and he, after hesitating for a moment, came forward to meet her.

“There’s serious news!” he cried. “Namur has fallen!”

Now, only that morning Mrs. Otway had read in a leading article the words, “Namur is impregnable, or, if not impregnable, will certainly hold out for months. That this is so is fortunate, for we cannot disguise from ourselves that Namur is the key to France.”

“Are you sure that the news is true?” she asked quietly, and, disturbed as he was himself, the Dean was surprised to see the change which had come over his neighbour’s face; it suddenly looked aged and grey.

“Yes, I’m afraid it’s true—in fact, it’s official. Still, I don’t know that the falling of a fortress should really affect our Expeditionary Force.”

Mary Otway did not pay her proposed call on Mrs. Robey. Instead, she retraced her steps into the Trellis House, and looked eagerly through the papers of the last few days. She no longer trusted the Dean and his easy-going optimism. The fall of Namur without effect on the Expeditionary Force? As she read on, even she saw that it was bound to have—perhaps it had already had—an overwhelming effect on the fortunes of the little British Army.

From that hour onwards a heavy cloud of suspense and of fear hung over Witanbury Close: over the Deanery, where the cherished youngest daughter tried in vain to be “brave,” and to conceal her miserable state of suspense from her father and mother; over “Robey’s,” all of whose young men were in the Expeditionary Force; and very loweringly over the Trellis House.

What was now happening over there, in France, or in Flanders? People asked each other the question with growing uneasiness.

The next day, that is, on the Tuesday, sinister rumours swept over Witanbury—rumours that the British had suffered a terrible defeat at a place called Mons.

In her restlessness and eager longing for news, Mrs. Otway after tea went into the town. She had an excuse, an order to give in at the Stores, and there the newly-named Alfred Head came forward, and attended on her, as usual, himself.

“There seems to be serious news,” he said respectfully. “I am told that the English Army has been encircled, much as was the French Army at Sedan in 1870.”

As he spoke, fixing his prominent eyes on her face, Mr. Head’s customer now suddenly felt an inexplicable shrinking from this smooth-tongued German-born man.

“Oh, we must hope it is not as bad as that,” she exclaimed hastily. “Have you any real reason for believing such a thing to be true, Mr. Heg—I mean, Mr. Head?”

And he answered regretfully, “One of my customers has just told me so, ma’am. He said the news had come from London—that is my only reason for believing it. We will hope it is a mistake.”

After leaving the Stores, Mrs. Otway, following a sudden impulse, began walking rather quickly down the long street which led out of Witanbury towards the village where the Guthries lived. Why should she not go out and pay a late call on the old lady? If any of these dreadful rumours had reached Dorycote House, Mrs. Guthrie must surely be very much upset.

Her kind thought was rewarded by a sight of the letter Major Guthrie had left to be posted to his mother on the 18th of August, that is, on the day when was to be published the news that the Expeditionary Force had landed safely in France.

The letter was, like its writer, kind, thoughtful, considerate; and as she read it Mrs. Otway felt a little pang of jealous pain. She wished that he had written her a letter like that, instead of a rather ridiculous postcard. Still, as she read the measured, reassuring sentences, she felt soothed and comforted. She knew that she was not reasonable, yet—yet it seemed impossible that the man who had written that letter, and the many like him who were out there, could allow themselves to be surrounded and captured—by Germans!

“He has also sent me a rather absurd postcard,” observed the old lady casually. “I say absurd because it is not dated, and because he also forgot to put the name of the place where he wrote it. It simply says that he is quite well, and that I shall hear from him as soon as he can find time to write a proper letter.”

She waited a few moments, and then went on: “Of course I felt a little upset when I realised that Alick had really gone on active service. But I know how he would have felt being left behind.”

Then, rather to her visitor’s discomfiture, Mrs. Guthrie turned the subject away from her son, and from what was going on in France. She talked determinedly of quite other things—though even then she could not help going very near the subject.

“I understand,” she exclaimed, “that Lady Bethune is giving up her garden-party to-morrow! I’m told she feels that it would be wrong to be merrymaking while some of our men and officers may be fighting and dying. But I quite disagree, and I’m sure, my dear, that you do too. Of course it is the duty of the women of England, at such a time as this, to carry on their social duties exactly as usual.”

“I can’t quite make up my mind about that,” replied her visitor slowly.

When Mrs. Otway rose to go, the old lady suddenly softened. “You’ll come again soon, won’t you?” she said eagerly. “Though I never saw two people more unlike, still, in a curious kind of way, you remind me of Alick! That must be because you and he are such friends. I suppose he wrote to you before leaving England?” She looked rather sharply out of her still bright blue eyes at the woman now standing before her.

Mrs. Otway shook her head. “No, Major Guthrie did not write to me before leaving England.”

“Ah, well, he was very busy, and my son’s the sort of man who always chooses to do his duty before he takes his pleasure. He can write quite a good letter when he takes the trouble.”

“Yes, indeed he can,” said Mrs. Otway simply, and Mrs. Guthrie smiled.

As she walked home, Mary Otway pondered a little over the last words of her talk with Mrs. Guthrie. It was true, truer than Mrs. Guthrie knew, that she and Major Guthrie were friends. A man does not press an unsolicited loan of a hundred pounds on a woman unless he has a kindly feeling for her; still less does he leave her a legacy in his will.

And then there swept a feeling of pain over her burdened heart. That legacy, which she had only considered as a token of the testator’s present friendly feeling, had become in the last few hours an ominous possibility. She suddenly realised that Major Guthrie, before leaving England, had made what Jervis Blake had once called “a steeplechase will.”

Rumours soon grew into certainties. It was only too true that the British Army was now falling back, back, back, fighting a series of what were called by the unfamiliar name of rearguard actions; and at last there came the official statement, “Our casualties have been very heavy, but the exact numbers are not yet known.”

After that, as the days went on, Rose Otway began to wear a most ungirlish look of strain and of suspense; but no one, to her secret relief, perceived that she looked any different—all the sympathy of the Close was concentrated on Edith Haworth, for it was known that the cavalry had been terribly cut up. Still, towards the end of that dreadful week, Rose’s mother suddenly woke up to the fact that Rose had fallen into the way of walking to the station in order to get the evening paper from London half an hour before it could reach the Close.

It was their good old Anna who consoled and sustained the girl during those first days of strain and of suspense. Anna was never tired of repeating in her comfortable, cosy, easy-going way, that after all very few soldiers really get killed in battle. She, Anna, had had a brother, and many of her relations, fighting in 1870, and only one of them all had been killed.

The old woman kept her own personal feelings entirely to herself—and indeed those feelings were very mixed. Of course she did not share the now universal suspense, surprise, and grief, for to her mind it was quite right and natural that the Germans should beat the English. What would have been really most disturbing and unnatural would have been if the English had beaten the Germans!

But even so she was taken aback by the secret, fierce exultation which Manfred Hegner—she could not yet bring herself to call him Alfred Head—displayed, when he and she were left for three or four minutes alone by his wife, Polly.

Since that pleasant evening they had spent together—it now seemed a long time ago, yet it was barely a fortnight—Anna had fallen into the way of going to the Stores twice, and even three times, a week, to supper. Her host flattered her greatly by pointing out that the information she had given him concerning Major Guthrie and the Expeditionary Force, as it was oddly called, had been sound. Frankly he had exclaimed, “As the days went on and nothing was known, I thought you must have been mistaken, Frau Bauer. But you did me a good turn, and one I shall not forget! I have already sold some of the goods ordered with a view to soldier customers, for they were goods which can be useful abroad, and I hear a great many parcels will soon be sent out. For that I shall open a special department!”

To her pleased surprise, he had pressed half a crown on her; and after a little persuasion she had accepted it. After all, she had a right, under their old agreement, to a percentage on any profit she brought him! That news about Major Guthrie had thus procured a very easily earned half-crown, even more easily earned than the money she had received for sending off the telegram to Spain. Anna hoped that similar opportunities of doing Mr. Hegner a good turn would often come her way. But still, she hated this war, and with the whole of her warm, sentimental German heart she hoped that Mr. Jervis Blake would soon be back home safe and sound. He was a rich, generous young gentleman, the very bridegroom for her beloved Miss Rose.

CHAPTER XVII

Sunday, the 30th of August. But oh, what a different Sunday from that of a week ago! The morning congregation in Witanbury Cathedral was larger than it had ever been before, and over every man and woman there hung an awful pall of suspense, and yes, of fear, as to what the morrow might bring forth.

Both the post and the Sunday papers were late. They had not even been delivered by church time, and that added greatly, with some of those who were gathered there, to the general feeling of anxiety and unease.

In the sermon that he preached that day the Dean struck a stern and feeling note. He told his hearers that now not only their beloved country, but each man and woman before him, must have a heart for every fate. He, the speaker, would not claim any special knowledge, but they all knew that the situation was very serious. Even so, it would be a great mistake, and a great wrong, to give way to despair. He would go further, and say that even despondency was out of place.

Only a day or two ago he had been offered, and he had purchased, the diary of a citizen of Witanbury written over a hundred years ago, and from a feeling of natural curiosity he had looked up the entries in the August of that year. Moved and interested indeed had he been to find that Witanbury just then had been expecting a descent on the town by the French, and on one night it was rumoured that a strong force had actually landed, and was marching on the city! Yet the writer of that diary—he was only a humble blacksmith—had put in simple and yet very noble language his conviction that old England would never go down, if only she remained true to herself.

It was this fine message from the past which the Dean brought to the people of Witanbury that day. What had been true when we had been fighting a far greater man than any of those we were fighting to-day—he meant of course Napoleon—was even truer now than then. All would be, must be, ultimately well, if England to herself would stay but true.

A few of those who listened with uplifted hearts to the really inspiriting discourse, noted with satisfaction that, for the first time since the declaration of war, Dr. Haworth paid no tribute to the enemy. The word “Germany” did not even pass his lips.

And then, when at the end of the service Mrs. Otway and Rose were passing through the porch, Mrs. Otway felt herself touched on the arm. She turned round quickly to find Mrs. Haworth close to her.

“I’ve been wondering if Rose would come back with me and see Edith? I’m sorry to say the poor child isn’t at all well to-day. And so we persuaded her to stay in bed. You see”—she lowered her voice, and that though there was no one listening to them—“you see, we hear privately that the cavalry were very heavily engaged last Wednesday, and that the casualties have been terribly heavy. My poor child says very little, but it’s evident that she’s so miserably anxious that she can think of nothing else. Her father thinks she’s fretting because we would not allow—or perhaps I ought to say we discouraged the idea of—a hasty marriage. I feel sure it would do Edith good to see some one, especially a dear little friend like Rose, who has no connection with the Army, and who can look at things in a sensible, normal manner.”

And so mother and daughter, for an hour, went their different ways, and Mrs. Otway, as she walked home alone, told herself that anxiety became Mrs. Haworth, that it rendered the Dean’s wife less brusque, and made her pleasanter and kindlier in manner. Poor Edith was her ewe lamb, the prettiest of the daughters whom she had started so successfully out into the world, and the one who was going to make, from a worldly point of view, the best marriage. Yes, it would indeed be a dreadful thing if anything happened to Sir Hugh Severn.

Casualties? What an odd, sinister word! One with which it was difficult to become familiar. But it was evidently the official word. Not for the first time she reminded herself of the exact words the Prime Minister in the House of Commons had used. They had been “Our casualties are very heavy, though the exact numbers are not yet known.” Mrs. Otway wondered uneasily when they would become known—how soon, that is, a mother, a sister, a lover, and yes, a friend, would learn that the man who was beloved, cherished, or close and dear as a friend may be, had become—what was the horrible word?—a casualty.

She walked through into her peaceful, pretty house. Unless the household were all out, the front door was never locked, for there was nothing to steal, and no secrets to pry out, in the Trellis House. And then, on the hall table, she saw the belated evening paper which she had missed this morning, and two or three letters. Taking up the paper and the letters, she went straight through into the garden. It would be pleasanter to read out there than indoors.

With a restful feeling that no one was likely to come in and disturb her yet awhile, she sat down in the basket-chair which had already been put out by her thoughtful old Anna. And then, quite suddenly, she caught sight of the middle letter of the three she had gathered up in such careless haste. It was an odd-looking envelope, of thin, common paper covered with pale blue lines; but it bore her address written in Major Guthrie’s clear, small, familiar handwriting, and on the right-hand corner was the usual familiar penny stamp. That stamp was, of course, a positive proof that he was home again.

For quite a minute she simply held the envelope in her hand. She felt so relieved, and yes, so ridiculously happy, that after the first moment of heartfelt joy there came a pang of compunction. It was wrong, it was unnatural, that the safety of one human being should so affect her. She was glad that this curious revulsion of feeling, this passing from gloom and despondency to unreasoning peace and joy, should have taken place when she was by herself. She would have been ashamed that Rose should have witnessed it.

And then, with a certain deliberation, she opened the envelope, and drew out the oddly-shaped piece of paper it contained.

This is what she read:

“France, ”
Wednesday morning.

“Every letter sent by the usual channel is read and, very properly, censored. I do not choose that this letter should be seen by any eyes but mine and yours. I have therefore asked, and received, permission to send this by an old friend who is leaving for England with despatches.

“The work has been rather heavy. I have had very little sleep since Sunday, so you must forgive any confusion of thought or unsuitable expressions used by me to you. Unfortunately I have lost my kit, but the old woman in whose cottage I am resting for an hour has good-naturedly provided me with paper and envelopes. Luckily I managed to keep my fountain-pen.

“I wish to tell you now what I have long desired to tell you—that I love you—that it has long been my greatest, nay, my only wish, that you should become my wife. Sometimes, lately, I have thought that I might persuade you to let me love you.

“In so thinking I may have been a presumptuous fool. Be that as it may, I want to tell you that our friendship has meant a very great deal to me; that without it I should have been, during the last four years, a most unhappy man.

“And now I must close this hurriedly written and poorly expressed letter. It does not say a tenth—nay, it does not say a thousandth part of what I would fain say. But let me, for the first, and perhaps for the last time, call you my dearest.”

Then followed his initials “A. G.,” and a postscript: “As to what has been happening here, I will only quote to you Napier’s grand words: ‘Then was seen with what majesty the British soldier fights.’”

Mrs. Otway read the letter right through twice. Then, slowly, deliberately, she folded it up and put it back in its envelope. Uncertainly she looked at her little silk handbag. No, she could not put it there, where she kept her purse, her engagement book, her handkerchief. For the moment, at any rate, it would be safest elsewhere. With a quick furtive movement she thrust it into her bodice, close to her beating heart.

Mrs. Otway looked up to a sudden sight of Rose—of Rose unusually agitated.

“Oh, mother,” she cried, “such a strange, dreadful, extraordinary thing has happened! Old Mrs. Guthrie is dead. The butler telephoned to the Deanery, and he seems in a dreadful state of mind. Mrs. Haworth says she can’t possibly go out there this morning, and they were wondering whether you would mind going. The Dean says he was out there only yesterday, and that Mrs. Guthrie spoke as if you were one of her dearest friends. Wasn’t that strange?”

Rose looked very much shocked and distressed—curiously so, considering how little she had known Mrs. Guthrie. But there is something awe-inspiring to a young girl in the sudden death of even an old person. Only three days ago Mrs. Guthrie had entertained Rose with an amusing account of her first ball—a ball given at the Irish Viceregal Court in the days when, as the speaker had significantly put it, it really was a Court in Dublin. And when Rose and her mother had said good-bye, she had pressed them to come again soon; while to the girl: “I don’t often see anything so fresh and pretty as you are, my dear!” she had exclaimed.

Mrs. Otway heard Rose’s news with no sense of surprise. She felt as if she were living in a dream—a dream which was at once poignantly sad and yet exquisitely, unbelievably happy. “I have been there several times lately,” she said, in a low voice, “and I had grown quite fond of her. Of course I’ll go. Will you telephone for a fly? I’d rather be alone there, my dear.”

Rose lingered on in the garden for a moment. Then she said slowly, reluctantly: “And mother? I’m afraid there’s rather bad news of Major Guthrie. It came last night, before Mrs. Guthrie went to bed. The butler says she took it very bravely and quietly, but I suppose it was that which—which brought about her death.”

“What is the news?”

Mrs. Otway’s dream-impression vanished. She got up from the basket-chair in which she had been sitting, and her voice to herself sounded strangely loud and unregulated.

“What is it, Rose? Why don’t you tell me? Has he been killed?”

“Oh, no—it’s not as bad as that! Oh! mother, don’t look so unhappy—it’s only that he’s ‘wounded and missing.’”

CHAPTER XVIII

“No, ma’am, there was nothing, ma’am, to act, so to speak, in the nature of a warning. Mrs. Guthrie had much enjoyed your visit, and, if I may say so, ma’am, the visit of your young lady, last Thursday. Yesterday she was more cheerful-like than usual, talking a good bit about the Russians. She said that their coming to our help just now in the way they had done had quite reconciled her to them.”

Howse, Major Guthrie’s butler, his one-time soldier-servant, was speaking. By his side was Mrs. Guthrie’s elderly maid, Ponting. Mrs. Otway was standing opposite to them, and they were all three in the middle of the pretty, cheerful morning-room, where it seemed but a few hours ago since she and her daughter had sat with the old lady.

With the mingled pomp, enjoyment, and grief which the presence of death creates in a certain type of mind, Howse went on speaking: “She made quite a hearty tea for her—two bits of bread and butter, and a little piece of tea-cake. And then for her supper she had a sweetbread—a sweetbread and bacon. It’s a comfort to Cook now, ma’am, to remember as how Mrs. Guthrie sent her a message, saying how nicely she thought the bacon had been done. Mrs. Guthrie always liked the bacon to be very dry and curly, ma’am.”

He stopped for a moment, and Mrs. Otway’s eyes filled with tears for the first time.

On entering the house, she had at once been shown the War Office telegram stating that Major Guthrie was wounded and missing, and she had glanced over it with shuddering distress and pain, while her brain kept repeating “wounded and missing—wounded and missing.” What exactly did those sinister words signify? How, if he was missing, could they know he was wounded? How, if he had been wounded, could he be missing?

But soon she had been forced to command her thoughts, and to listen, with an outward air of calmness and interest, to this detailed account of the poor old lady’s last hours.

With unconscious gusto, Howse again took up the sad tale, while the maid stood by, with reddened eyelids, ready to echo and to supplement his narrative.

“Perhaps Mrs. Guthrie was not quite as well as she seemed to be, ma’am, for she wouldn’t take any dessert, and after she had finished her dinner she didn’t seem to want to sit up for a while, as she sometimes did. When she became so infirm, a matter of two years ago, the Major arranged that his study should be turned into a bedroom for her, ma’am, so we wheeled her in there after dinner.”

After a pause, he went on with an added touch of gloom: “She gazed her last upon the dining-room, and on this ’ere little room, which was, so to speak, ma’am, her favourite sitting-room. Isn’t that so, Ponting?” The maid nodded, and Howse said sadly: “Ponting will now tell you what happened after that, ma’am.”

Ponting waited a moment, and then began: “My mistress didn’t seem inclined to go to bed at once, so I settled her down nicely and comfortably with her reading-lamp and a copy of The World newspaper. She found the papers very dull lately, poor old lady, for you see, ma’am, there was nothing in them but things about the war, and she didn’t much care for that. But she can’t have been reading more than five minutes when there came the telegram.”

Howse held up his hand, for it was here that he again came on the scene.

“The minute the messenger boy handed me the envelope,” he exclaimed, “I says to myself, ‘That’s bad news—bad news of the Major!’ I sorely felt tempted to open it. But there! I knew if I did so it would anger Mrs. Guthrie. She was a lady, ma’am, who always knew her own mind. It wasn’t even addressed ‘Guthrie,’ you see, but ‘Mrs. Guthrie,’ as plain as plain could be. The boy ’ad brought it to the front door, and as we was having our supper I didn’t want to disturb Ponting. So I just walked along to Mrs. Guthrie’s bedroom, and knocked. She calls out, ‘Come in!’ And I answers, ‘There’s a telegram for you, ma’am. Would you like me to send Ponting in with it?’ And she calls out, ‘No, Howse. Bring it in yourself.’

“I shall never forget seeing her open it, poor old lady. She did it quite deliberate-like; then, after just reading it over, she looked up straight at me. ‘I know you’ll be sorry to hear, Howse, as how Major Guthrie is wounded and missing,’ she said, and then, ‘I need not tell you, who are an old soldier, Howse, that such are the fortunes of war.’ Those, ma’am, were her exact words. Of course I explained how sorry I was, and I did my very best to hide from her how bad I took the news to be. ‘I think I would like to be alone now, Howse,’ she says, ‘just for a little while.’ And then, ‘We must hope for better news in the morning.’ I asked her, ‘Would you like me to send Ponting up to you, ma’am?’ But she shook her head: ‘No, Howse, I would rather be by myself. I will ring when I require Ponting. I do not feel as if I should care to go to bed just yet,’ she says quite firmly.

“Well, ma’am, we had of course to obey her orders, but we all felt very uncomfortable. And as a matter of fact in about half an hour Ponting did make an excuse to go into the room”—he looked at the woman by his side. “You just tell Mrs. Otway what happened,” he said, in a tone of command.

Ponting meekly obeyed.

“I just opened the door very quietly, and Mrs. Guthrie did not turn round. Without being at all deaf, my mistress had got a little hard of hearing, lately. I went a step forward, and then I saw that she was reading the Bible. I was very much surprised, madam, for it was the first time I had ever seen her do such a thing—though of course there was always a Bible and a Prayer Book close to her hand. She was wheeled into church each Sunday—when it was fine, that is. The Major saw to that.... I couldn’t help feeling sorry she hadn’t rung and asked me to move the Book for her, for it is a big Bible, with very clear print. She was following the words with her finger, and that was a thing I had never seen her do before with any book. As she did not turn round, I said to myself that it was better not to disturb her. So I just backed very quietly out of the door again. I shall always be glad,” she said, in a lower tone, “that I saw her like that.”

“And then,” interposed Howse, “quite a long time went on, ma’am, and we all got to feel very uneasy. We none of us liked to go up—not one of us. But at last three of us went up together—Cook, me, and Ponting—and listened at the door. But try our hardest, as we did, we could hear nothing. It was the stillness of death!”

“Yes,” said Ponting, her voice sinking to a whisper, “that’s what it was. For when at last I opened the door, there lay my poor mistress all huddled up in the chair, just as she had fallen back. We sent for the doctor at once, but he said there was nothing to be done—that her heart had just stopped. He said it might have happened any time in the last two years, or she might have lived on for quite a long time, if all had gone on quiet and serene.”

“We’ve left the Bible just as it was,” said Howse slowly. “It’s just covered over, so that the Major, if ever he should come home again, though I fear that’s very unlikely”—he dolefully shook his head—“may see what it was her eyes last rested on. Major Guthrie, if you would excuse me for saying so, ma’am, has always been a far more religious gentleman than his mother was a religious lady. I feel sure it would comfort him to know that just before her end she was reading the Book.”

“It was open at the twenty-second Psalm,” added Ponting, “and when I came in that time and saw her without her seeing me, she must have been just reading the verse about the dog.”

“The dog?” said Mrs. Otway, surprised.

“Yes, madam. ‘Deliver my soul from the sword: my darling from the power of the dog.’”

Howse here chimed in, “Her darling, that’s the Major, and the dog is the enemy, ma’am.”

He paused, and then went on, in a brisker, more cheerful tone:

“I telegraphed the very first thing to Mr. Allen—that’s Major Guthrie’s lawyer, ma’am. The Major told me I was to do that, if anything awkward happened. Then it just occurred to me that I would telephone to the Deanery. The Dean was out here yesterday afternoon, ma’am, and Mrs. Guthrie liked him very much. Long ago, when she lived in London, she used to know the parents of the young gentleman to whom Miss Haworth is engaged to be married. They had quite a long pleasant talk about it all. I had meant, ma’am, if you’ll excuse my telling you, to telephone to you next, and then I heard as how you were coming here. The Major did tell me the morning he went away that if Mrs. Guthrie seemed really ailing, I was to ask you to be kind enough to come and see her. Of course I knew where he was going, and that he’d be away for a long time, though he didn’t say anything to me about it. But he knew that I knew, right enough!”

“Had Mrs. Guthrie no near relation at all—no sister, no nieces?” asked Mrs. Otway, in a low voice. Again she felt she was living in a dreamland of secret, poignant emotions shadowed by a great suspense and fear.

“No. Nothing of the kind,” said Howse confidently. “And on Major Guthrie’s side there was only distant cousins. It’s a peculiar kind of situation altogether, ma’am, if I may say so. Quite a long time may pass before we know whether the Major is alive or dead. ‘Wounded and missing’? We all knows as how there is only one thing worse that could be than that—don’t we, ma’am?”

“I don’t quite know what you mean, Howse.”

“Why, the finding and identifying of the Major’s body, ma’am.”

Through the still, silent house there came a loud, long, insistent ringing—that produced by an old-fashioned front door bell.

“I expect it’s Mr. Allen,” exclaimed Howse. “He wired as how he’d be down by two o’clock.” And a few moments later a tall, dark, clean-shaven man was shaking hands, with the words, “I think you must be Mrs. Otway?”

There was little business doing just then among London solicitors, and so Mr. Allen had come down himself. He had a very friendly regard for his wounded and missing client, and his recollection of the interview which had taken place on the day before Major Guthrie had sailed with the First Division of the Expeditionary Force was still very vivid in his mind.

His client had surprised him very much. He had thought he knew everything about Major Guthrie and Major Guthrie’s business, but before receiving the latter’s instructions about his new will he had never heard of Mrs. Otway and her daughter. Yet, if Major Guthrie outlived his mother, as it was of course reasonable, even under the circumstances, to suppose that he would do, a considerable sum of money was to pass under his will to Mrs. Otway, and, failing her, to her only child, Rose Otway.

Strange confidences are very often made to lawyers, quite as often as to doctors. But Major Guthrie, when he came to sign his will, the will for which he had sent such precise and detailed instructions a few days before, made no confidences at all.

Even so, the solicitor, putting two and two together, had very little doubt as to the relations of his client and of the lady whom he had made his residuary legatee. He felt sure that there was an understanding between them that either after the war, or after Mrs. Guthrie’s death—he could not of course tell which—they intended to make one of those middle-aged marriages which often, strange to say, turn out more happily than earlier marriages are sometimes apt to do.

The lawyer naturally kept his views to himself during the afternoon he spent at Dorycote House, and he simply treated Mrs. Otway as though she had been a near relation of the deceased lady. What, however, increased his belief that his original theory was correct, was the fact that there was no mention of Mrs. Otway’s name in Mrs. Guthrie’s will. The old lady, like so many women, had preferred to keep her will in her own possession. It had been made many years before, and in it she had left everything to her son, with the exception of a few trinkets which were to be distributed among certain old friends and acquaintances, fully half of whom, it was found on reference to Ponting, had predeceased the testator.

As the hours went on, Mr. Allen could not help wondering if Mrs. Otway was aware of the contents of Major Guthrie’s will. He watched her with considerable curiosity. She was certainly attractive, and yes, quite intelligent; but she hardly spoke at all, and there was a kind of numbness in her manner which he found rather trying. She did not once mention Major Guthrie of her own accord. She always left such mention to him. He told himself that doubtless it was this quietude of manner which had attracted his reserved client.