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 circ.u.mstances," 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 encompa.s.sing 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, m.u.f.fled 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 repet.i.tion 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 pa.s.sing 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 cla.s.s, 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.