It was late afternoon in the same day, a bright, sunny golden afternoon,
more like a warm May day than a day in March.
The bride and bridegroom, each feeling more than a little shy, had
enjoyed their late luncheon, the first they had ever taken alone
together. And Major Guthrie had been perhaps rather absurdly touched to
learn, from a word dropped by Howse, that the new mistress had herself
carefully arranged that this first meal should consist of dishes which
Howse had told her his master particularly liked. And as they sat there,
side by side, in their pleasant dining-room--for he had not cared to
take the head of the table--the bridegroom hoped his bride would never
know that since his blindness he had retained very little sense of
taste.
After luncheon they had gone out into the garden, and she had guided his
footsteps along every once familiar path. Considering how long he had
been away, everything was in very fair order, and she was surprised to
find how keen he was about everything. He seemed to know every shrub and
plant there, and she felt as if in that hour he taught her more of
practical gardening than she had ever known.
And then, at last, they made their way to the avenue which was the chief
glory of the domain, and which had certainly been there in the days when
the house had stood in a park, before the village of which it was the
Manor had grown to be something like a suburb of Witanbury.
There they had paced up and down, talking of many things; and it was he
who, suggesting that she must be tired, at last made her sit down on the
broad wooden bench, from where she could see without being seen the
long, low house and wide lawn.
They both, in their very different ways, felt exquisitely at peace. To
his proud, reticent nature, the last few days had proved
disagreeable--sometimes acutely unpleasant. He had felt grateful for,
but he had not enjoyed, the marks of sympathy which had been so freely
lavished on him and on his companions in Holland, on the boat, and since
his landing in England.
In those old days which now seemed to have belonged to another
existence, Major Guthrie had thought his friend, Mrs. Otway, if
wonderfully kind, not always very tactful. It is a mistake to think that
love is blind as to those matters. But of all the kind women he had seen
since he had left Germany, she was the only one who had not spoken to
him of his blindness, who had made no allusion to it, and who had not
pressed on him painful, unsought sympathy. From the moment they had been
left alone for a little while in that unknown London house, where he had
first been taken, she had made him feel that he was indeed the natural
protector and helper of the woman he loved; and of the things she had
said to him, in those first moments of emotion, what had touched and
pleased him most was her artless cry, "Oh, you don't know how I have
missed you! Even quite at first I felt so miserable without you!"
It was Rose who had suggested an immediate marriage; Rose who
had--well, yes, there was no other word for it--coaxed them both into
realizing that it was the only thing to do.
Even now, on this their wedding day, they felt awkward, and yes, very
shy the one with the other. And as he sat there by her side, wearing a
rough grey suit he had often worn last winter when calling on her in the
Trellis House, her cheeks grew hot when she remembered the letter she
had written to him. Perhaps he had thought it an absurdly sentimental
letter for a woman of her age to write.
The only thing that reassured her was the fact that once, at luncheon,
he had clasped her hand under the table; but the door had opened, and
quickly he had taken his hand away, and even moved his chair a little
farther off. It was true that Howse had put the chairs very close
together.
* * * * *
Now she was telling him of all that had happened since he had gone away,
and he was listening with the eager sympathy and interest he had always
shown her, that no one else had ever shown her in the same degree, in
those days that now seemed so long ago, before the War.
So she went on, pouring it all out to him, till she came to the amazing
story of her daughter Rose, and of Jervis Blake. She described the
strange, moving little marriage ceremony; and the man sitting by her
side sought and found the soft hand which was very close to his, and
said feelingly, "That must have been very trying for _you_."
Yes, it had been trying for her, though no one had seemed to think so at
the time. But he, the speaker of these kind understanding words, had
always known how she felt, and sympathised with her.
She wished he would call her "Mary"--if only he would begin, she would
soon find it quite easy to call him "Alick...."
Suddenly there came on his sightless face a slight change. He had heard
something which her duller ears had failed to hear.
"What's that?" he asked uneasily.
"It's only a motor-car coming round to the front door. I hope they will
send whoever it is away," the colour rushed into her face.
"Oh, surely Howse will do that to-day----"
And then she saw the man-servant come out of the house and advance
towards them. There was a salver in his hand, and on the salver a note.
"The gentleman who brought this is waiting, ma'am, to see you."
She took up the envelope and glanced down at it. Her new name looked so
odd in Dr. Haworth's familiar writing--it evoked a woman who had been so
very different from herself, and yet for whom she now felt a curious
kind of retrospective tenderness.
She opened the note with curiosity.
"DEAR MRS. GUTHRIE,
"The bearer of this, Mr. Reynolds of the Home Office, will
explain to you why we are anxious that you should come into
Witanbury for an hour this afternoon. I am sure Major Guthrie
would willingly spare you if he knew how very important and
how delicate is the business in question. Please tell him that
we will keep you as short a time as possible. In fact, it is
quite probable that you will be back within an hour.
"Very truly yours,
"EDMUND HAWORTH."
She looked down at the letter with feelings of surprise and of
annoyance. Uncaring of Howse's discreet presence, she read it aloud.
"It's very mysterious and queer, isn't it? But I'm afraid I shall have
to go."
"Yes, of course you will. It would have been better under the
circumstances for the Dean to have told you what they want to see you
about."
In the old days, Major Guthrie had never shared Mrs. Otway's admiration
for Dr. Haworth, and now he felt rather sharply disturbed. The Home
Office? The words bore a more ominous sound to him than they did,
fortunately, to her. Was it possible that she had been communicating, in
secret, with some of her German friends? He rose from the bench on which
they had been sitting: "Is the gentleman in the motor, Howse?"
"Yes, sir. He wouldn't come in."
"Go and tell him that we are coming at once."
And then, after a moment, he said quietly, "I'm coming, too."
"Oh, but----" she exclaimed.
"I don't choose to have my wife's presence commanded by the Dean of
Witanbury, or even, if it comes to that, by the Home Office."
She seized his arm, and pressed close to him. "I do believe," she cried,
"that you suspect me of having got into a scrape! Indeed, indeed I have
done nothing!" She was smiling, though moved almost to tears by the way
he had just spoken. It was a new thing to her to be taken care of, to
feel that there was someone ready, aye, determined, to protect her, and
take her part. Also, it was the first time he had called her his wife.
* * * * *
A few minutes later they were sitting side by side in a large, open
motor-car. Mr. Reynolds was a pleasant, good-looking man of about
thirty, and he had insisted on giving up his seat to Major Guthrie.
There would have been plenty of room for the three of them leaning back,
but he had preferred to sit opposite to them, and now he was looking,
with a good deal of sympathy, interest, and respect at the blind
soldier, and with equal interest, but with less liking and respect, at
Major Guthrie's wife.
Mr. Reynolds disliked pro-Germans and spy-maniacs with almost equal
fervour; his work brought him in contact with both. From what he had
been able to learn, the lady sitting opposite to him was to be numbered
among the first category.
"And now," said Major Guthrie, leaning his sightless face forward, "will
you kindly inform me for what reason my wife has been summoned to
Witanbury this afternoon? The Dean's letter--I do not know if you have
read it--is expressed in rather mysterious and alarming language."
The man he addressed waited for a moment. He knew that the two people
before him had only been married that morning.
"Yes, that is so," he said frankly. "I suppose the Dean thought it best
that I should inform Mrs. Guthrie of the business which brought me to
Witanbury three hours ago. It chanced that I was in the neighbourhood,
so when the Witanbury police telephoned to London, I, being known to be
close here, was asked to go over."
"The police?" repeated both his hearers together.
"Yes, for I'm sorry to tell you"--he looked searchingly at the lady as
he spoke--"I'm sorry to tell you, Mrs. Guthrie, that a considerable
number of bombs have been found in your house. I believe it to be the
fact that you hold the lease of the Trellis House in Witanbury Close?"
She looked at him too much surprised and too much bewildered to speak.
Then, "Bombs?" she echoed incredulously. "There must be some mistake!
There has never been any gunpowder in my possession. I might almost go
so far as to say that I have never seen a gun or a pistol at close
quarters----"
She felt a hand groping towards her, and at last find and cover in a
tight grip her fingers. "You do not fire bombs from a gun or from a
pistol, my dearest." There was a great tenderness in Major Guthrie's
voice.
Even in the midst of her surprise and disarray at the extraordinary
thing she had just heard, Mrs. Guthrie blushed so deeply that Mr.
Reynolds noticed it, and felt rather puzzled. He told himself that she
was a younger woman than he had at first taken her to be.
In a very different tone Major Guthrie next addressed the man he knew to
be sitting opposite to him: "May I ask how and where and when bombs were
found in the Trellis House?" To himself he was saying, with anguished
iteration, "Oh, God, if only I could see! Oh, God, if only I could see!"
But he spoke, if sternly, yet in a quiet, courteous tone, his hand still
clasping closely that of his wife.
"They were found this morning within half an hour, I understand, of your
wedding. And it was only owing to the quickness of a lady named Miss
Forsyth--assisted, I am bound to say, by Mr. Hayley of the Foreign
Office, who is, I believe, a relation of Mrs. Guthrie--that they were
found at all. The man who came to fetch them away did get off scot
free--luckily leaving them, and his motor, behind him."
"The man who came to fetch them away?" The woman sitting opposite to the
speaker repeated the words in a wondering tone--then, very decidedly,
"There has been some extraordinary mistake!" she exclaimed. "I know
every inch of my house, and so I can assure you"--she bent forward a
little in her earnestness and excitement--"I can assure you that it's
quite _impossible_ that there was anything of the sort in the Trellis
House without my knowing it!"
"Did you ever go into your servant's bedroom?" asked Mr. Reynolds
quietly.
Major Guthrie felt the hand he was holding in his suddenly tremble, and
his wife made a nervous movement, as if she wanted to draw it away from
his protecting grasp.
A feeling of terror--of sheer, unreasoning terror--had swept over her.
_Anna?_
"No," she faltered, but her voice was woefully changed. "No, I never had
occasion to go into my old servant's bedroom. But oh, I cannot
believe----" and then she stopped. She had remembered Anna's curious
unwillingness to leave the Trellis House this morning, even to attend
her beloved mistress's wedding. She, and Rose too, had been hurt, and
had shown that they were hurt, at old Anna's obstinacy.
"We have reason to suppose," said Mr. Reynolds slowly, "that the
explosives in question have been stored for some considerable time in a
large roomy cupboard which is situated behind your servant's bed. As a
matter of fact, the man who had come to fetch them away was already
under observation by the police. He has spent all the winter in a
village not far from Southampton, and he is registered as a Spaniard,
though he came to England from America just before the War broke out. Of
course, these facts have only just come to my knowledge. But both this
Miss Forsyth and your cousin, Mr. Hayley, declare that they have long
suspected your servant of being a spy."
"Suspected my servant? Suspected Anna Bauer?" repeated Mrs. Guthrie, in
a bewildered tone.
"Then you," went on Mr. Reynolds, "have never suspected her at all, Mrs.
Guthrie? I understand that but for the accidental fact that Witanbury is
just, so to speak, over the border of the prohibited area for aliens,
she would have _had_ to leave you?"
"Yes, I know that. But she has been with me nearly twenty years, and I
regarded her as being to all intents and purposes an Englishwoman."
"Did you really?" he observed drily.
"Her daughter is married to an Englishman."
Mr. Reynolds, in answer to that statement, remained silent, but a very
peculiar expression came over his face. It was an expression which would
perchance have given a clue to Major Guthrie had Major Guthrie been able
to see.
Mrs. Guthrie's face had gone grey with pain and fear; her eyes had
filled with tears, which were now rolling down her cheeks. She looked
indeed different from the still pretty, happy, charming-looking woman
who had stepped into the car a few minutes ago.
"I should not have ventured to disturb you to-day--to-morrow would have
been quite time enough----" said Mr. Reynolds, speaking this time really
kindly, "were it not that we attach the very greatest importance to
discovering whether this woman, your ex-servant, forms part of a
widespread conspiracy. We suspect that she does. But she is in such a
state of pretended or real agitation--in fact, she seems almost
distraught--that none of us can get anything out of her. I myself have
questioned her both in English and in German. All she keeps repeating is
that she is innocent, quite innocent, and that she was unaware of the
nature of the goods--she describes them always as goods, when she speaks
in English--that she was harbouring in your house. She declares she
knows nothing about the man who came for them, though that is false on
the face of it, for she was evidently expecting him. We think that he
has terrorised her. She even refuses to say where she obtained these
'goods' of hers, or how long she has had them. You see, we have reason
to believe"--he slightly lowered his voice in the rushing wind--"we have
reason to believe," he repeated, "that the Germans may be going to try
their famous plan of invasion within the next few days. If so, it is
clear that these bombs were meant to play a certain part in the
business, and thus it is extremely important that we should know if
there are any further stores of them in or about Witanbury."