Good Old Anna: Historical Thriller. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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