Good Old Anna Part 12

But the moments went slowly by, and with the exception of a milk cart which clattered gaily along, the Close remained deserted. Half-past seven in the morning, even on a fine August day, saw a good many people still in bed in an English country town. To-day Rose Otway, having herself risen so early, was inclined to agree with Anna that English people are very lazy, and lose some of the best part of each morning.

And then, as she stood out there in the suns.h.i.+ne, her mind reverted to Major Guthrie and to his sudden disappearance. Rose liked Major Guthrie, and she was sorry she had missed him yesterday morning, when out on her fruitless quest for money.

Rose had been surprised at the way her mother had spoken of Major Guthrie's departure. Mrs. Otway had declared the fact to be a secret--a secret that must at all costs be kept. As a matter of fact the girl had already heard the news from Anna, and she had observed, smiling, "But, mother, you seem to have told Anna all about it?" And Mrs. Otway, her gentle temper for once ruffled, had answered sharply, "I don't count Anna! Major Guthrie particularly mentioned the Dean. He did not wish the Dean to know. He said his going was to be kept secret. So I beg you, Rose, to do as I ask."

Anna came out of the front door, and began polis.h.i.+ng the bra.s.s k.n.o.b.

"Ach!" she exclaimed. "Come in, child--do! You a chill will take. If it is the postman you want, he gone by already has."

Rose smiled. Dear old Anna had never acquired the British love of fresh air. "I'm waiting for the papers," she said. "I can't think why the man doesn't begin with us, instead of going all round the other way first!

But I'm going to catch him this morning."

And Anna, grumbling, went back into the house again.

All at once Rose heard the sound of quick footsteps to her right, on the path outside. She moved back into the paved court in front of the Trellis House, and stood, a charming vision of youth and freshness, in her pale mauve cotton frock, by a huge stone jar filled with pink geraniums.

And then, a moment later, the tall figure of Jervis Blake suddenly swung into view. He was very pale, and there was an eager, absorbed, strained look on his face. In his hand was a white telegraph form.

Rose ran forward, and once more opened the gate. "Jervis!" she cried.

"What is it? What's the matter? Have you had bad news from home?"

He shook his head, and she saw that he was trying to smile. But there was still that on his face which she had never seen before--a rapt, transfigured look which made her feel--and she both disliked and resented the feeling--as if he were, for the moment, remote from herself. But he stayed his steps, and came through the gate.

For a moment he stood opposite to her without speaking. Then he took out of his breast pocket a large sheet of notepaper folded in four. He opened it, and held it out to her. It was headed "War Office, Whitehall, London," and in it Jervis Blake, Esquire, was curtly informed that, if he still desired to enter the Army, he was at liberty to apply for a commission. But in that case he was asked to report himself as soon as possible.

Rose read the cold, formal sentences again and again, and a lump rose to her throat. How glad she was! How very, very glad! Indeed, her gladness, her joy in Jervis's joy, surprised herself.

"And it's all owing to you," he exclaimed in a low voice, "that I didn't go and make an a.s.s of myself on Wednesday. If it hadn't been for you, Rose, I should have enlisted. This would have come too late. It _is_ luck to have seen you now, like this. You're the very first I've told."

He was wringing her hand, his face now as flushed as it had been pale.

And as they stood there together, Rose suddenly became aware that Anna, at the kitchen window, was looking out at them both with a rather peculiar expression on her emotional German face.

A feeling of annoyance swept over the girl; she knew that to her old nurse every young man who ever came to the Trellis House was a potential lover. But even Anna might have left Jervis Blake out of the category.

There was nothing silly or--or sentimental, in the real, deep friends.h.i.+p they two felt for one another.

And then Rose did something which surprised herself. Withdrawing her hand from his, she exclaimed, "I'll walk with you to the corner"--and led the way out, through the gate, and so along the empty roadway.

They walked along in silence for a few moments. The Close was still deserted. Across the green, to their right, rose the n.o.ble grey ma.s.s of the Cathedral. In many of the houses the blinds were even now only beginning to be pulled up.

"I rather expected yesterday that you would come in and tell me that you were going off to be one of the hundred thousand men Lord Kitchener has asked for," she said at last.

"Of course I meant to be, but Mr. Robey thought I ought to communicate with my father before actually joining," he answered. "In fact, I had already written home. That's one reason why I'm going to get this wire off so early."

"I suppose you'll be at Sandhurst this time next week?"

And he frowned, for the first time that morning.

"Oh no, I hope not! Mr. Robey heard last night from one of our fellows--one of those who pa.s.sed last time--and he said he was being drafted at once into a regiment! You mustn't forget how long I was in the O.T.C. It seems they're sending all those who were in the O.T.C.

straight into regiments."

"Then by next week you'll be second lieutenant in the Wess.e.x Light Infantry!" she exclaimed. She knew that it was in that famous regiment that General Blake had won his early spurs, and that it had been settled, in the days when no one had doubted Jervis Blake's ability to pa.s.s the Army Exam., that he would join his father's old regiment, now commanded by one of that father's very few intimates.

"Yes, I suppose I shall," he said, flus.h.i.+ng. "Oh, Rose, I can't believe in my luck. It's so much--much too good to be true!"

They had come to the corner, to the parting of their ways. To the left, through the grey stone gateway, was the street leading into the town; on the right, within a few moments' walk, the Cathedral.

Rose suddenly felt very much moved, carried out of her reserved self. A lump rose to her throat. She knew that this was their real parting, and that she was not likely to see him again, save in the presence of her mother for a few minutes.

"I wonder," said Jervis Blake hoa.r.s.ely, "I wonder, Rose, if you would do me a great kindness? Would you go on into the Cathedral with me, just for three or four minutes? I should like to go there for the last time with you."

"Yes," she said; "of course I will." Rose had inherited something of her mother's generosity of nature. If she gave at all, she gave freely and gladly. "I do hope the door will be open," she said, trying to regain her usual staid composure. She was surprised and disturbed by the pain which seemed to be rising, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over, in her heart.

They walked on in silence. Jervis Blake was looking straight before him, his face set and grim. He was telling himself that a fellow would be a cur to take advantage of such a moment to say anything, and that especially was that the case with one who might so soon be exposed to something much worse than death--such as the being blinded, the being maimed, for life. War was a very real thing to Jervis, more real certainly than to any other one of the young men who had been his comrades at Robey's during the last two years.

But the most insidious of all tempters, Nature herself, whispered in his ear, "Why not simply tell her that you love her? No woman minds being told that she is loved! It can do no harm, and it will make her think of you kindly when you are far away. This strange, secret meeting is yet another piece of good fortune to-day--this glorious day--has brought you! Do not throw away your chance. Look again down into her face. See her dear eyes full of tears. She has never been moved as she is moved to-day, and it is you who have moved her."

And then another, sterner voice spoke: "_You_ have not moved her--presumptuous fool! Nay, it is the thought of England, of her country, of all you stand for to-day, that has moved her. And the next few minutes will show the stuff of which you are made--if you have the discipline, the self-restraint, essential to the man who has to lead others, or if--if you only have the other thing. You are being given now what you could never have hoped for, a quiet, intimate time with her alone; you might have had to say good-bye to her in her mother's presence--that mother who has never really liked you, and whom you have never really liked."

He held open the little wicket gate for her to pa.s.s through. They walked up the stone path to the wide, hospitable-looking porch which is the only part of Witanbury Cathedral that has remained much as it was in pre-Reformation days.

To Jervis Blake, suffused with poignant emotion, every perception sharpened by mingling triumph and pain, the "faire Doore" of Witanbury Cathedral had never seemed so lovely as on this still August morning. As they stepped through the exquisite outer doorway, with its deep mouldings, both dog-toothed and foliated, marking the transition from Norman to Gothic, a deep, intense joy in their dual solitude suddenly rose up in his heart like a white flame.

The interior of the porch was little larger than an ordinary room, but it was wonderfully perfect in the harmony of its proportions; and even Rose, less perceptive than her companion, and troubled and disturbed, rather than uplifted, by an emotion to which she had no clue, was moved by the delicate, shadowed beauty of the grey walls and vaulted roof now encompa.s.sing her.

For a moment they both lingered there, irresolute; and then Jervis, stepping forward, lifted the great iron handle of the black oak, nail-studded door. But the door remained shut, and he turned round with the words, "It's still closed. We shan't be able to get in. I'm sorry."

He looked indeed so disappointed that there came over Rose the eager determination that he should not go away baulked of his wish.

"I'm sure it opens at eight," she exclaimed; "and it can't be very far from eight now. Let's wait here the few minutes! I'm in no hurry, if you can spare the time?" Rose spoke rather quickly and breathlessly. She was trying hard to behave as if this little adventure of theirs was a very conventional, commonplace happening.

He said something--she was not sure whether it was "All right" or "Very well."

On each side of the porch ran a low and deep stone bench, from which sprang the slender columns which seemed to climb eagerly upwards to the carved ribs of the vaulted roof. But they both went on standing close to one another, companioned only by the strange sculptured creatures which grinned down from the spandrels of the arches above.

And then, after waiting for what seemed an eternity--it was really hardly more than a minute--in the deep, brooding silence which seemed to enwrap the Close, the Cathedral, and their own two selves in a mantle of stillness, Rose Otway, bursting into sobs, made a little swaying movement. A moment later she found herself in Jervis Blake's arms, listening with a strange mingling of joy, surprise, shame, and, yes, triumph, to his broken, hoa.r.s.ely-whispered words of love.

He, being a man, could only feel--she, being a woman, could also think, aye, and even question her own heart as to this amazing thing which was happening, and which had suddenly made her free of the wonderful kingdom of romance of which she had so often heard, but the existence of which she had always secretly doubted. Whence came her instinctive response to his pleading: "Oh, Rose, let me kiss you! Oh, Rose, my darling little love, this may be the last time I shall see you!"

Was it at the end of a moment, or of an aeon of time, that there fell athwart their beating hearts a dull, rasping sound, that of the two great inner bolts of the huge oak door being pushed back into their rusty sockets?

They parted, reluctantly, lingeringly, the one from the other; but whoever had drawn back the bolts did not open the door, and soon they heard the sounds of heavy, shuffling feet moving slowly away.

"I expect it's Mrs. Bent, the verger's wife," said Rose, in a low, trembling voice.

Jervis looked at her. There was a mute, and at once imperious and imploring demand in his eyes. But Rose had stepped across the magic barrier, she was half-way back to the work-a-day world--not very far, but still far enough to know how she would feel if Bent or Mrs. Bent surprised her in Jervis's arms. A few moments ago she would hardly have cared.

"Let's go into the Cathedral now," she said, and, to break the cruelty of her silent refusal of what he asked, she held out her hand. To her surprise, and yes, her disappointment, he did not seem to see it.

Instead, he stepped forward to the door, and turning the weighty iron handle, pushed it widely open.