Good Old Anna Part 31

"Yours very truly,

"ANNABEL GAUNT.

"P.S.--Any letters you write in answer must be left open."

The envelope enclosed by Mrs. Gaunt, which bore the Censor's stamp, had come from Switzerland, and had been forwarded by favour of the Geneva Red Cross.

With an indescribable feeling of suspense, of longing, and of relief, Mrs. Otway drew out the sheet of paper. It was closely covered with the cramped German characters with which she was, of course, familiar.

"MINDEN,

"_15 December, 1914._

"DEAR MADAM,

"As Medical Superintendent of the Field Lazarette at Minden, I write on behalf of a British prisoner of war, Major Guthrie, who has now been under my care for fourteen weeks.

"I wish to a.s.sure you that he has had the very highest medical skill bestowed on him since he came here. Owing to the exceptional exigencies and strain put on our Medical Service at the Front, he did not perhaps obtain the care to which he was ent.i.tled by our merciful and humane usages of war, as soon as would have been well. He received a most serious wound in the shoulder. That wound, I am pleased to tell you, is in as good a state as possible, and will leave no ill-effects.

"But I regret to tell you, Madam, that Major Guthrie has lost his eyesight. He bears this misfortune with remarkable fort.i.tude. As a young man I myself spent a happy year in Edinburgh, and so we have agreeable subjects of conversation.

He tells me you are quite familiar with my language, or I should of course have written to you in English.

"Believe me, Madam,

"To remain with the utmost respect,

"Yours faithfully,

"KARL BRECHT."

Underneath the signature of the doctor was written in hesitating, strange characters the words in English, "G.o.d bless you.--ALEXANDER GUTHRIE."

And then, under these five words, came another sentence in German:

"I may tell you for your consolation that it is extremely probable that Major Guthrie will be exchanged in the course of the next few weeks. But I have said nothing of that to him, for it will depend on the good-will of the British Government, and it is a good-will which we Germans have now learnt to distrust."

She read the letter through again. There came over her a feeling of agony such as she never imagined any human being could suffer.

During the past weeks of suspense, she had faced in her own mind many awful possibilities, but of this possibility she had not thought.

Now she remembered, with piteous vividness, the straight, kindly gaze in his bright blue eyes--eyes which had had a pleasant play of humour in them. Sight does not mean the same to all men, but she knew that it meant a very great deal to the man she loved. He had always been an out-door man, a man who cared for everything that concerned open-air life--for birds, for trees, for flowers, for shooting, fishing, and gardening.

Ever since she had known that Major Guthrie was alive and wounded, a prisoner in Germany, she had allowed her thoughts to dwell on the letters she would write to him when she received his address. She had composed so many letters in her mind--alternative letters--letters which should somehow make clear to him all that was in her heart, while yet concealing it first from the British Censors and then from his German jailers.

But now she did not give these Censors and jailers a thought. She sat down and wrote quite simply and easily the words which welled up out of her heart:

"MY DEAREST,

"To-day is New Year's Day, and I have had the great joy of receiving news of you. Also your blessing, which has already done me good. I wish you to get this letter quickly, so I will not make it long.

"I am forbidden to give you any news, so I will only say that Rose and I are well. That I love you and think of you all the time, and look forward to being always with you in G.o.d's good time."

She hesitated a moment as to how she would sign herself, and then she wrote:

"Your own

"MARY."

She looked over the letter, wondering if she could say any more, and then a sudden inspiration came to her. She added a postscript:

"I am spending the money you left with me. It is a great comfort."

This was not strictly true, but she made up her mind that it should become true before the day was out.

Far longer did she take over her letter to the German doctor--indeed, she made three drafts of it, being so pitifully anxious to say just the right thing, neither too much nor too little, which might favourably incline him to his prisoner patient.

All the time she was writing this second letter she felt as if the Censors were standing by her, frowning, picking out a sentence here, a sentence there. She would have liked to say something of the time she had spent at Weimar, but she dared not do so; perhaps if she said anything of the kind her letter might not get through.

There was nothing Mrs. Otway desired to say which the sternest Censor could have found fault with in either country, but the poor soul did not know that. Still, even so, she wrote a very charming letter of grat.i.tude--so charming, indeed, and so admirably expressed, that when the Medical Superintendent at last received it, he said to himself, "The gracious lady writer of this letter must be partly German. No Englishwoman could have written like this!"

There was one more letter to write, but Mrs. Otway found no difficulty in expressing in few sentences her warm grat.i.tude to her new friend at Arlington Street.

She put the three letters in a large envelope--the one for the German hospital carefully addressed according to the direction at the top of the Medical Superintendent's letter, but open as she had been told to leave it. On chance, for she was quite ignorant whether the postage should be prepaid, she put a twopenny-halfpenny stamp on the letter, and then, having done that, fastened down the big envelope and addressed it to Mrs. Gaunt, at 20, Arlington Street.

Then she took another envelope out of her drawer--that containing Major Guthrie's bank-notes. There, in with them, was still the postcard he had written to her from France, immediately after the landing of the Expeditionary Force. She looked at the clearly-written French sentence--the sentence in which the writer maybe had tried to convey something of his yearning for her. Taking the india-rubber band off the notes, she put one into her purse. She was very sorry now that she hadn't done as he had asked her--spent this money when, as had happened more than once during the last few weeks, she had been disagreeably short.

And then she went out, walking very quietly through the hall. She did not feel as if she wanted old Anna to know that she had heard from Germany. It would be hard enough to have to tell Rose the dreadful thing which, bringing such anguish to herself, could only give the girl, absorbed in her own painful ordeal, a pa.s.sing pang of sympathy and regret.

Poor old Anna! Mrs. Otway was well aware that as the days went on Anna became less and less pleasant to live with.

Not for the first time of late, she wondered uneasily if Miss Forsyth had been right, on that August day which now seemed so very long ago.

Would it not have been better, even from Anna's point of view, to have sent her back to her own country, to Berlin, to that young couple who seemed to have so high an opinion of her, and with whom she had spent so successful a holiday three years ago? At the time it had seemed unthinkable, a preposterous notion, but now--Mrs. Otway sighed--now it was only too clear that old Anna was not happy, and that she bitterly resented the very slight changes the War had made in her own position.

Anna was even more discontented and unhappy than her mistress knew.

True, both Mrs. Otway and Rose had given her their usual Christmas gifts, and one of these gifts had been far more costly than ever before.

But there had been no heart for the pretty Tree which, as long as Rose could remember anything, had been the outstanding feature of each twenty-fifth of December in her young life.

Yes, it had indeed been a dull and dreary Christmas for Anna! Last year she had received a number of delightful presents from Berlin. These had included a marzipan sausage, a marzipan turnip, and a wonderful toy Zeppelin made of sausage--a real sausage fitted with a real screw, a rudder, and at each end a flag.

But this autumn, as the weeks had gone by without bringing any answer to her affectionate letters, she had told herself that Minna, or if not Minna then Willi, would surely write for Christmas. And most bitterly disappointed had Anna felt when the Christmas week went by bringing no letter.

In vain Mrs. Otway told her that perhaps Willi and Minna felt, as so many Germans were said to do, such hatred of England that they did not care even to send a letter to someone living there. To Anna this seemed quite impossible. It was far more likely that the cruel English Post Office had kept back the letter because it came from Germany.

Now it was New Year's Day, and after having heard her mistress go out, Anna, sore at heart, reminded herself that were she now in service in Germany she would have already received this morning a really handsome money gift, more a right than a perquisite, from her mistress. She did not remind herself that this yearly benefaction is always demanded back by a German employer of his servant, if that servant is discharged, owing to her own fault, within a year.

Yes, England was indeed an ill-organized country! How often had she longed in the last eighteen years to possess the privilege of a wish-ticket--that delightful _Wunschzettel_ which enables so many happy people in the Fatherland to make it quite plain what it is they really want to have given them for a birthday or a Christmas present. Strange to say--but Anna did not stop to think of that now--this wonderful bit of organisation does not always work out quite well. Evil has been known to come from a wish-ticket, for a modest person is apt to ask too little, and then is bitterly disappointed at not getting more than he asks for, while the grasping ask too much, and are angered at getting less!