She was about to pay a late call on Mrs. Robey, who, after all, had not taken her children to the seaside. Rather to the amus.e.m.e.nt of his neighbours, Mr. Robey, who was moving heaven and earth to get some kind of War Office job, had bluntly declared that, however much people might believe in "business as usual," he was not going to practice "pleasure as usual" while his country was at war.
Mrs. Otway stepped out of her gate, and before turning to the right she looked to the left, as people will. The Dean was at the corner, apparently on his way back from the town. He held an open paper in his hand, and though that was not in itself a strange thing, there suddenly came over the woman who stood looking at him a curious feeling of unreasoning fear, a queer prevision of evil. She began walking towards him, and he, after hesitating for a moment, came forward to meet her.
"There"s serious news!" he cried. "Namur has fallen!"
Now, only that morning Mrs. Otway had read in a leading article the words, "Namur is impregnable, or, if not impregnable, will certainly hold out for months. That this is so is fortunate, for we cannot disguise from ourselves that Namur is the key to France."
"Are you sure that the news is true?" she asked quietly, and, disturbed as he was himself, the Dean was surprised to see the change which had come over his neighbour"s face; it suddenly looked aged and grey.
"Yes, I"m afraid it"s true--in fact, it"s official. Still, I don"t know that the falling of a fortress should really affect our Expeditionary Force."
Mary Otway did not pay her proposed call on Mrs. Robey. Instead, she retraced her steps into the Trellis House, and looked eagerly through the papers of the last few days. She no longer trusted the Dean and his easy-going optimism. The fall of Namur without effect on the Expeditionary Force? As she read on, even she saw that it was bound to have--perhaps it had already had--an overwhelming effect on the fortunes of the little British Army.
From that hour onwards a heavy cloud of suspense and of fear hung over Witanbury Close: over the Deanery, where the cherished youngest daughter tried in vain to be "brave," and to conceal her miserable state of suspense from her father and mother; over "Robey"s," all of whose young men were in the Expeditionary Force; and very loweringly over the Trellis House.
What was now happening over there, in France, or in Flanders? People asked each other the question with growing uneasiness.
The next day, that is, on the Tuesday, sinister rumours swept over Witanbury--rumours that the British had suffered a terrible defeat at a place called Mons.
In her restlessness and eager longing for news, Mrs. Otway after tea went into the town. She had an excuse, an order to give in at the Stores, and there the newly-named Alfred Head came forward, and attended on her, as usual, himself.
"There seems to be serious news," he said respectfully. "I am told that the English Army has been encircled, much as was the French Army at Sedan in 1870."
As he spoke, fixing his prominent eyes on her face, Mr. Head"s customer now suddenly felt an inexplicable shrinking from this smooth-tongued German-born man.
"Oh, we must hope it is not as bad as that," she exclaimed hastily.
"Have you any real reason for believing such a thing to be true, Mr.
Heg--I mean, Mr. Head?"
And he answered regretfully, "One of my customers has just told me so, ma"am. He said the news had come from London--that is my only reason for believing it. We will hope it is a mistake."
After leaving the Stores, Mrs. Otway, following a sudden impulse, began walking rather quickly down the long street which led out of Witanbury towards the village where the Guthries lived. Why should she not go out and pay a late call on the old lady? If any of these dreadful rumours had reached Dorycote House, Mrs. Guthrie must surely be very much upset.
Her kind thought was rewarded by a sight of the letter Major Guthrie had left to be posted to his mother on the 18th of August, that is, on the day when was to be published the news that the Expeditionary Force had landed safely in France.
The letter was, like its writer, kind, thoughtful, considerate; and as she read it Mrs. Otway felt a little pang of jealous pain. She wished that he had written _her_ a letter like that, instead of a rather ridiculous postcard. Still, as she read the measured, rea.s.suring sentences, she felt soothed and comforted. She knew that she was not reasonable, yet--yet it seemed impossible that the man who had written that letter, and the many like him who were out there, could allow themselves to be surrounded and captured--by Germans!
"He has also sent me a rather absurd postcard," observed the old lady casually. "I say absurd because it is not dated, and because he also forgot to put the name of the place where he wrote it. It simply says that he is quite well, and that I shall hear from him as soon as he can find time to write a proper letter."
She waited a few moments, and then went on: "Of course I felt a little upset when I realised that Alick had really gone on active service. But I know how he would have felt being left behind."
Then, rather to her visitor"s discomfiture, Mrs. Guthrie turned the subject away from her son, and from what was going on in France. She talked determinedly of quite other things--though even then she could not help going very near the subject.
"I understand," she exclaimed, "that Lady Bethune is giving up her garden-party to-morrow! I"m told she feels that it would be wrong to be merrymaking while some of our men and officers may be fighting and dying. But I quite disagree, and I"m sure, my dear, that you do too. Of course it is the duty of the women of England, at such a time as this, to carry on their social duties exactly as usual."
"I can"t quite make up my mind about that," replied her visitor slowly.
When Mrs. Otway rose to go, the old lady suddenly softened. "You"ll come again soon, won"t you?" she said eagerly. "Though I never saw two people more unlike, still, in a curious kind of way, you remind me of Alick!
That must be because you and he are such friends. I suppose he wrote to you before leaving England?" She looked rather sharply out of her still bright blue eyes at the woman now standing before her.
Mrs. Otway shook her head. "No, Major Guthrie did not write to me before leaving England."
"Ah, well, he was very busy, and my son"s the sort of man who always chooses to do his duty before he takes his pleasure. He can write quite a good letter when he takes the trouble."
"Yes, indeed he can," said Mrs. Otway simply, and Mrs. Guthrie smiled.
As she walked home, Mary Otway pondered a little over the last words of her talk with Mrs. Guthrie. It was true, truer than Mrs. Guthrie knew, that she and Major Guthrie were friends. A man does not press an unsolicited loan of a hundred pounds on a woman unless he has a kindly feeling for her; still less does he leave her a legacy in his will.
And then there swept a feeling of pain over her burdened heart. That legacy, which she had only considered as a token of the testator"s present friendly feeling, had become in the last few hours an ominous possibility. She suddenly realised that Major Guthrie, before leaving England, had made what Jervis Blake had once called "a steeplechase will."
Rumours soon grew into certainties. It was only too true that the British Army was now falling back, back, back, fighting a series of what were called by the unfamiliar name of rearguard actions; and at last there came the official statement, "Our casualties have been very heavy, but the exact numbers are not yet known."
After that, as the days went on, Rose Otway began to wear a most ungirlish look of strain and of suspense; but no one, to her secret relief, perceived that she looked any different--all the sympathy of the Close was concentrated on Edith Haworth, for it was known that the cavalry had been terribly cut up. Still, towards the end of that dreadful week, Rose"s mother suddenly woke up to the fact that Rose had fallen into the way of walking to the station in order to get the evening paper from London half an hour before it could reach the Close.
It was their good old Anna who consoled and sustained the girl during those first days of strain and of suspense. Anna was never tired of repeating in her comfortable, cosy, easy-going way, that after all very few soldiers _really_ get killed in battle. She, Anna, had had a brother, and many of her relations, fighting in 1870, and only one of them all had been killed.
The old woman kept her own personal feelings entirely to herself--and indeed those feelings were very mixed. Of course she did not share the now universal suspense, surprise, and grief, for to her mind it was quite right and natural that the Germans should beat the English. What would have been really most disturbing and unnatural would have been if the English had beaten the Germans!
But even so she was taken aback by the secret, fierce exultation which Manfred Hegner--she could not yet bring herself to call him Alfred Head--displayed, when he and she were left for three or four minutes alone by his wife, Polly.
Since that pleasant evening they had spent together--it now seemed a long time ago, yet it was barely a fortnight--Anna had fallen into the way of going to the Stores twice, and even three times, a week, to supper. Her host flattered her greatly by pointing out that the information she had given him concerning Major Guthrie and the Expeditionary Force, as it was oddly called, had been sound. Frankly he had exclaimed, "As the days went on and nothing was known, I thought you must have been mistaken, Frau Bauer. But you did me a good turn, and one I shall not forget! I have already sold some of the goods ordered with a view to soldier customers, for they were goods which can be useful abroad, and I hear a great many parcels will soon be sent out. For that I shall open a special department!"
To her pleased surprise, he had pressed half a crown on her; and after a little persuasion she had accepted it. After all, she had a right, under their old agreement, to a percentage on any profit she brought him! That news about Major Guthrie had thus procured a very easily earned half-crown, even more easily earned than the money she had received for sending off the telegram to Spain. Anna hoped that similar opportunities of doing Mr. Hegner a good turn would often come her way. But still, she hated this war, and with the whole of her warm, sentimental German heart she hoped that Mr. Jervis Blake would soon be back home safe and sound.
He was a rich, generous young gentleman, the very bridegroom for her beloved Miss Rose.
CHAPTER XVII
Sunday, the 30th of August. But oh, what a different Sunday from that of a week ago! The morning congregation in Witanbury Cathedral was larger than it had ever been before, and over every man and woman there hung an awful pall of suspense, and yes, of fear, as to what the morrow might bring forth.
Both the post and the Sunday papers were late. They had not even been delivered by church time, and that added greatly, with some of those who were gathered there, to the general feeling of anxiety and unease.
In the sermon that he preached that day the Dean struck a stern and feeling note. He told his hearers that now not only their beloved country, but each man and woman before him, must have a heart for every fate. He, the speaker, would not claim any special knowledge, but they all knew that the situation was very serious. Even so, it would be a great mistake, and a great wrong, to give way to despair. He would go further, and say that even despondency was out of place.
Only a day or two ago he had been offered, and he had purchased, the diary of a citizen of Witanbury written over a hundred years ago, and from a feeling of natural curiosity he had looked up the entries in the August of that year. Moved and interested indeed had he been to find that Witanbury just then had been expecting a descent on the town by the French, and on one night it was rumoured that a strong force had actually landed, and was marching on the city! Yet the writer of that diary--he was only a humble blacksmith--had put in simple and yet very n.o.ble language his conviction that old England would never go down, _if only she remained true to herself_.
It was this fine message from the past which the Dean brought to the people of Witanbury that day. What had been true when we had been fighting a far greater man than any of those we were fighting to-day--he meant of course Napoleon--was even truer now than then. All would be, must be, ultimately well, if England to herself would stay but true.
A few of those who listened with uplifted hearts to the really inspiriting discourse, noted with satisfaction that, for the first time since the declaration of war, Dr. Haworth paid no tribute to the enemy.
The word "Germany" did not even pa.s.s his lips.