Good Old Anna Part 14

"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 Emba.s.sy. 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 att.i.tude 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, s.p.a.cious, 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 bra.s.s 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-cla.s.s 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-cla.s.s 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 a.s.sured 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 Ca.n.a.l.

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 bra.s.s inlaid k.n.o.b, and the blue velvet back fell forward, leaving a s.p.a.ce behind.

From the day she had been shown this dear little secret s.p.a.ce, 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 acc.u.mulating 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.