Good Old Anna Part 13

Together, side by side, they pa.s.sed 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 encompa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sers-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 ap.r.o.n. 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 pa.s.s, 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.