Rose Otway sat in the garden of the Trellis House, under the
wide-branched cedar of Lebanon which was, to the thinking of most people
in the Close, that garden's only beauty. For it was just a wide lawn,
surrounded on three sides by a very high old brick wall, under which ran
an herbaceous border to which Rose devoted some thought and a good deal
of time.
The great cedar rose majestically far above its surroundings; and when
you stood at one of the windows of the Trellis House, and saw how wide
the branches of the tree spread, you realised that the garden was a good
deal bigger than it appeared at first sight.
Rose sat near a low wicker table on which in an hour or so Anna would
come out and place the tea-tray. Spread out across the girl's knee was a
square of canvas, a section of a bed-spread, on which was traced an
intricate and beautiful Jacobean design. Rose had already been working
at it for six months, and she hoped to have finished it by the 14th of
December, her mother's birthday. She enjoyed doing this beautiful work,
of which the pattern had been lent to her by a country neighbour who
collected such things.
How surprised Rose would have been on this early August afternoon could
she have foreseen that this cherished piece of work, on which she had
already lavished so many hours of close and pleasant toil, would soon
be put away for an indefinite stretch of time; and that knitting, which
she had always disliked doing, would take its place!
But no such thought, no such vision of the future, came into her mind as
she bent her pretty head over her work.
She felt rather excited, a thought more restless than usual. England at
war, and with Germany! Dear old Anna's Fatherland--the great country to
which Rose had always been taught by her mother to look with peculiar
affection, as well as respect and admiration.
Rose and Mrs. Otway had hoped to go to Germany this very autumn. They
had saved up their pennies--as Mrs. Otway would have put it--for a
considerable time, in order that they might enjoy in comfort, and even
in luxury, what promised to be a delightful tour. Rose could hardly
realise even yet that their journey, so carefully planned out, so often
discussed, would now have to be postponed. They were first to have gone
to Weimar, where Mrs. Otway had spent such a happy year in her girlhood,
and then to Munich, to Dresden, to Nuremberg--to all those dear old
towns with whose names Rose had always been familiar. It seemed such a
pity that now they would have to wait till after the war to go to
Germany.
After the war? Fortunately the people she had seen that day--and there
had been a good deal of coming and going in the Close--all seemed to
think that the war would be over very soon, and this pleasant view had
been confirmed in a rather odd way.
Rose's cousin, James Hayley, had rung her up on the telephone from
London. She had been very much surprised, for a telephone message from
London to Witanbury costs one-and-threepence, and James was careful
about such things. When he did telephone, which was very seldom, he
always waited to do so till the evening, when the fee was halved. But
to-day James had rung up just before luncheon, and she had heard his
voice almost as though he were standing by her side.
"Who's there? Oh, it's you, is it, Rose? I just wanted to say that I
shall probably be down Saturday night. I shan't be able to be away more
than one night, worse luck. I suppose you've heard what's happened?"
And then, as she had laughed--she had really not been able to help it
(how very odd James was! He evidently thought Witanbury _quite_ out of
the world), he had gone on, "It's a great bore, for it upsets everything
horribly. The one good point about it is that it won't last long."
"How long?" she had called out.
And he had answered rather quickly, "You needn't speak so loud. I hear
you perfectly. How long? Oh, I think it'll be over by October--may be a
little before, but I should say October."
"Mother thinks there'll be a sort of Trafalgar!"
And then he had answered, speaking a little impatiently for he was very
overworked just then, "Nothing of the sort! The people who will win this
war, and will win it quickly, are the Russians. We have information that
they will mobilise quickly--much more quickly than most people think.
You see, my dear Rose,"--he was generally rather old-fashioned in his
phraseology--"the Russians are like a steam roller"; she always
remembered that she had heard that phrase from him first. "We have
reason to believe that they can put ten million men into their fighting
line every year for fifty years!"
Rose, in answer, said the first silly thing she had said that day: "Oh,
I do _hope_ the war won't last as long as that!"
And then she had heard, uttered in a strange voice, the words, "Another
three minutes, sir?" and the hasty answer at the other end, "No,
certainly not! I've quite done." And she had hung up the receiver with a
smile.
And yet Rose, if well aware of his little foibles, liked her cousin well
enough to be generally glad of his company. During the last three months
he had spent almost every week-end at Witanbury. And though it was true,
as her mother often observed, that James was both narrow-minded and
self-opinionated, yet even so he brought with him a breath of larger
air, and he often told the ladies at the Trellis House interesting
things.
* * * * *
While Rose Otway sat musing over her beautiful work in the garden, good
old Anna came and went in her kitchen. She too still felt restless and
anxious, she too wondered how long this unexpected war would last. But
whereas Rose couldn't have told why she was restless and anxious, her
one-time nurse knew quite well what ailed herself this afternoon.
Anna had a very good reason for feeling worried and depressed, but it
was one she preferred to keep to herself. For the last two days she had
been expecting some money from Germany, and since this morning she had
been wondering, with keen anxiety, whether that money would be stopped
in the post.
What made this possibility very real to her was the fact that an uncle
of Anna's, just forty-four years ago, that is, in the August of 1870,
had been ruined owing to the very simple fact that a sum of money owing
him from France had not been able to get through! It was true that she,
Anna, would not be ruined if the sum due to her, which in English money
came to fifty shillings exactly, were not to arrive. Still, it would be
very disagreeable, and the more disagreeable because she had foolishly
given her son-in-law five pounds a month ago. She knew it would have to
be a gift, though he had pretended at the time that it was only a loan.
Anna wondered how she could find out whether money orders were still
likely to come through from Germany. She did not like to ask at the Post
Office, for her Berlin nephew, who transmitted the money to her
half-yearly, always had the order made out to some neighbouring town or
village, not to Witanbury. In vain Anna had pointed out that this was
quite unnecessary, and indeed very inconvenient; and that when she had
said she did not wish her mistress to know, she had not meant _that_. In
spite of her protests Willi had persisted in so sending it.
Suddenly her face brightened. How easy it would be to find out all that
sort of thing at the meeting to-night! Such a man as Manfred Hegner
would be sure to know.
There came a ring at the front door of the Trellis House, and Anna got
up reluctantly from her easy chair and laid down her crochet. She was
beginning to feel old, so she often told herself regretfully--older than
the Englishwomen of her own age seemed to be. But none of them had
worked as hard as she had always worked. Englishwomen, especially
English servants, were lazy good-for-nothings!
Poor old Anna; she did not feel happy or placid to-day, and she hated
the thought of opening the door to some one who, maybe, would condole
with her on to-day's news. All Mrs. Otway's friends knew Anna, and
treated her as a highly respected institution. Those who knew a little
German were fond of trying it on her.
It was rather curious, considering how long Anna had been in England,
that she still kept certain little habits acquired in the far-off days
when she had been the young cook of a Herr Privy Councillor. Thus never
did she open the front door with a cheerful, pleasant manner. Also,
unless they were very intimately known to her and to her mistress, she
always kept visitors waiting in the hall. She would forget, that is, to
show them straight into the pretty sitting-room which lay just opposite
her kitchen. She often found herself regretting that the heavy old
mahogany door of the Trellis House lacked the tiny aperture which in
Berlin is so well named a "stare-hole," and which enables the person
inside the front door to command, as it were, the position outside.
But to-day, when she saw who it was who stood on the threshold, her face
cleared a little, for she was well acquainted with the tall young man
who was looking at her with so pleasant a smile. His name was Jervis
Blake, and he came very often to the Trellis House. For two years he
had been at "Robey's," the Army coaching establishment which was, in a
minor degree, one of the glories of Witanbury, and which consisted of a
group of beautiful old Georgian houses spreading across the whole of one
of the wide corners of the Close.
Some of the inhabitants of the Close resented the fact of "Robey's." But
Mr. Robey was the son of a former Bishop of Witanbury, the Bishop who
had followed Miss Forsyth's father.
Bishop Robey had had twin sons, who, unlike most twins, were very
different. The elder, whom some of the oldest inhabitants remembered as
an ugly, eccentric little boy, with a taste for cutting up dead animals,
had insisted on becoming a surgeon. To the surprise of his father's old
friends, he had made a considerable reputation, which had been, so to
speak, officially certified with a knighthood. The professional life of
a great surgeon is limited, and Sir Jacques Robey, though not much over
fifty and still a bachelor, had now retired.
The younger twin, Orlando, was the Army coach. He had been, even as a
little boy, a great contrast to his brother, being both good looking and
anything but eccentric. The brothers were only alike in the success they
had achieved in their several professions, but they had for one another
in full measure that curiously understanding sympathy and affection
which seem to be the special privilege of twins.
Mr. Robey was popular and respected, and those dwellers in the Close who
had daughters were pleased with the life and animation which the
presence of so many young men gave to the place. The more thoughtful
were also glad to think that the shadow of their beloved cathedral
rested benignantly over the temporary home of those future officers and
administrators of the Empire. And of all those who had been coached at
"Robey's" during the last two years, there was none better liked, though
there had been many more popular, than the young man who now stood
smiling at old Anna.
During the first three months of his sojourn in the Close, Jervis Blake
had counted very little, for it had naturally been supposed that he
would soon go off to Sandhurst or Woolwich. Then he had failed to pass
the Army Entrance Examination, not once, as so many did, but again and
again, and the good folk of Witanbury, both gentle and simple, had grown
accustomed to see him coming and going in their midst.
Unfortunately for Jervis Blake, his father, though a distinguished
soldier, was a very peculiar man, one who had owed nothing in his hard
laborious youth to influence; and he had early determined that his only
son should tread the path he had himself trod.
And now poor young Blake had reached the age limit, and failed for the
last time. Every one had been sorry, but no one had been surprised in
Witanbury Close, when the result of the May Army Exam. had been
published in July.
One person, Mr. Robey himself, had been deeply concerned. Indeed, the
famous coach muttered to one or two of his old friends, "It's a pity,
you know! Although I make my living by it, I often think there's a good
deal to be said against a system which passes in--well, some boys whose
names I could give you, and which keeps out of the Army a lad like
Jervis Blake! He'd make a splendid company officer--conscientious,
honest, unselfish, keen about his work, and brave--well, brave as only a
man----"
And one of those to whom he said it, seeing him hesitate, had broken in,
with a slight smile, "Brave as only a man totally lacking in imagination
can be, eh, Robey?"
"No, no, I won't have you say that! Even an idiot has enough imagination
to be afraid of danger! There's something fine about poor Jervis."
They'd gradually all got to call young Blake "Jervis" in that household.
Perhaps Mrs. Robey alone of them all knew how much they would miss him.
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 Saturday." 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 grass 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."
"So it was! How stupid I am!" Rose turned a little pink. She did not
wish to deceive her mother. But Mrs. Otway was so confiding, so sure
that every one was as honourable as herself, that she could not always
be trusted to keep secrets.