He was such a thoroughly good fellow, he was so useful to her husband in keeping order among the wilder spirits, and that without having about him a touch of the prig!
Rose looked up and smiled as the tall young man came forward and shook hands with her, saying as he did so, "I hope I"m not too early? The truth is, I"ve a good many calls to pay this afternoon. I"ve come to say good-bye."
"I"m sorry. I thought you weren"t going away till Sat.u.r.day." Rose really did feel sorry--in fact, she was herself surprised at her rather keen sensation of regret. She had always liked Jervis Blake very much--liked him from the first day she had seen him. He had a certain claim on the kindness of the ladies of the Trellis House, for his mother had been a girl friend of Mrs. Otway"s.
Most people, as Rose was well aware, found his conversation boring. But it always interested her. In fact Rose Otway was the one person in Witanbury who listened with real pleasure to what Jervis Blake had to say. Oddly enough, his talk almost always ran on military matters. Most soldiers--and Rose knew a good many officers, for Witanbury is a garrison town--would discuss, before the Great War, every kind of topic except those connected with what they would have described as "shop."
But Jervis Blake, who, owing to his bad luck, seemed fated never to be a soldier, thought and talked of nothing else. It was thanks to him that Rose knew so much about the great Napoleonic campaigns, and was so well "up" in the Indian Mutiny.
And now, on this 4th of August, 1914, Jervis Blake sat down by Rose Otway, and began tracing imaginary patterns on the gra.s.s with his stick.
"I"m not going to tell any one else, but there"s something I want to tell you." He spoke in a rather hard, set voice, and he did not look up, as he spoke, at the girl by his side.
"Yes," she said. "Yes, Jervis? What is it?" There was something very kind, truly sympathetic, in her accents.
"I"m going to enlist."
Rose Otway was startled--startled and sorry.
"Oh, no, you mustn"t do that!"
"I"ve always thought I should _like_ to do it, if--if I failed this last time. But of course I knew it was out of the question--because of my father. But now--everything"s different! Even father will see that I have no other course open to me."
"I--I don"t understand what you mean," she answered, and to her surprise there came a queer lump in her throat. "Why is everything different now?"
He looked round at her with an air of genuine surprise, and, yes, of indignation, in his steady grey eyes. And under that surprised and indignant look, so unlike anything there had ever been before from him to her, the colour flushed all over her face.
"You mean," she faltered, "you mean because--because England is at war?"
He nodded.
"But I thought--of course I don"t know anything about it, Jervis, and I daresay you"ll think me very ignorant--but from what the Dean said this morning I thought that only our fleet is to fight the Germans."
"The Dean is an old----" and then they both laughed. Jervis Blake went on: "If we don"t go to the help of the French and the Belgians, then England"s disgraced. But of course we"re going to fight!"
Rose Otway was thinking--thinking hard. She knew a good deal about Jervis, and his relations with the father he both loved and feared.
"Look here," she said earnestly. "We"ve always been friends, you and I, haven"t we, Jervis?"
And again he simply nodded in answer to the question.
"Well, I want you to promise me something!"
"I can"t promise you I won"t enlist."
"I don"t want you to promise me that. I only want you to promise me to wait just a few days--say a week. Of course I don"t know anything about how one becomes a soldier, but you"d be rather sold, wouldn"t you, if you enlisted and then if your regiment took no part in the fighting--if there"s really going to be fighting?"
Rose Otway stopped short. She felt a most curious sensation of fatigue; it was as though she had been speaking an hour instead of a few moments.
But she had put her whole heart, her whole soul, into those few simple words.
There was a long, long pause, and her eyes filled with tears. Those who knew her would have told you that Rose Otway was quite singularly self-possessed and unemotional. In fact she could not remember when she had cried last, it was so long ago. But now there came over her a childish, irresistible desire to have her way--to save poor, poor Jervis from himself. And suddenly the face of the young man looking at her became transfigured.
"Rose," he cried--"Rose, do you really care, a little, what happens to me? Oh, if you only knew what a difference that would make!"
And then she pulled herself together. Jervis mustn"t become what she in her own mind called "silly." Young men, ay, and older men too, had a way of becoming "silly" about Rose Otway. And up to now she had disliked it very much. But this afternoon she was touched rather than displeased.
"I care very much," she said quietly. She knew the battle was won, and it was very collectedly that she added the words, "Now, I have your promise, Jervis? You"re not to do anything foolish----" Then she saw she had made a mistake. "No, no!" she cried hastily; "I don"t mean that--I don"t mean that a man who becomes a soldier in time of war is doing anything foolish! But I do think that you ought to wait just a few days. Everything is different now." For the first time she felt that everything was indeed different in England--in this new strange England which was at war. It was odd that Jervis Blake should have brought that knowledge home to her.
"Very well," he said slowly. "I"ll wait. I can"t wait a whole week, but I"ll wait till after Sunday."
"The Robeys are going to the seaside on Monday, aren"t they?" She was speaking now quite composedly, quite like herself.
"Yes, and they kindly asked me to stay on till then."
He got up. "Well," he said, looking down at her--and she couldn"t help telling herself what a big, manly fellow he looked, and what a fine soldier he would make--"well, Rose, so it isn"t good-bye, after all?"
"No, I"m glad to say it isn"t." She gave him a frank, kindly smile.
"Surely you"ll stay and have some tea?"
"No, thank you. Jack Robey is feeling a little above himself to-day. You see it"s the fourth day of the holidays. I think I"ll just go straight back, and take him out for a walk. I rather want to think over things."
As he made his way across the lawn and through the house, feeling somehow that the whole world had changed for the better, though he could not have told you exactly why, Jervis Blake met Mrs. Otway.
"Won"t you stay and have some tea?" she asked, but she said it in a very different voice from that Rose had used--Rose had meant what she said.
"Thanks very much, but I"ve got to get back. I promised Mrs. Robey I"d be in to tea; the boys are back from school, you know."
"Oh, yes, of course! I suppose they are. Well, you must come in some other day before you leave Witanbury."
She hurried through into the garden.
"I hope Jervis Blake hasn"t been here very long, darling," she said fondly. "Of course I know he"s your friend, and that you"ve always liked him. But I"m afraid he would rather jar on one to-day. He"s always _so_ disliked the Germans! Poor fellow, how he must feel out of it, now that the war he"s always been talking about has actually come!"
"Well, mother, Jervis was right after all. The Germans _were_ preparing for war."
But Mrs. Otway went on as if she had not heard the interruption. It was a way she had, and sometimes both Rose and old Anna found it rather trying. "This morning Miss Forsyth was saying she thought young Blake would enlist--that she"d enlist if she were in his place! It"s odd what nonsense she sometimes talks."
Rose remained silent and her mother continued. "I"ve so many things to tell you I hardly know where to begin. It was a very interesting committee, more lively than usual. There seemed a notion among some of the people there that there will be war work of some kind for us to do.
Lady Bethune thought so--though I can"t see how the war can affect any of _us_, here, in Witanbury. But just as we were breaking up, Lady Bethune told us some interesting things. There are, she says, two parties in the Government--one party wants us to send out troops to help Belgium, the other party thinks we ought to be content with letting the fleet help the French. I must say I agree with the Blue Water school."
"I don"t," said Rose rather decidedly. "If we really owe so much to Belgium that we have gone to war for her sake, then it seems to me we ought to send soldiers to help her."
"But then we have such a small army," objected Mrs. Otway.
"It may grow bigger," observed her daughter quietly, "especially if people like Jervis Blake think of enlisting."
"But it wasn"t Jervis Blake, darling child--it was Miss Forsyth who said that to me."