“I suppose,” he said at last, “that we must presume that Major Guthrie is alive till we have an official statement to the contrary?” And then he was startled to see the vivid expression of pain, almost of anguish, which quivered over her eyes and mouth. Then she did care, after all.
“Howse tells me,” she said slowly, “that Major Guthrie is probably a prisoner. He says, he says——” and then she stopped abruptly—it was as if she could not go on with her sentence, and Mr. Allen exclaimed, “I heard what he said, Mrs. Otway. Of course he is right in stating that an effort is always made to find and bring in the bodies of dead officers. But I fear that this war is not at all like the only war of which Howse has had any first-hand knowledge. This last week has been a very bad business. Still, I quite agree that we must not give up hope. I have been wondering whether you would like me to make inquiries at the War Office, or whether you have any better and quicker—I mean of course by that any private—means of procuring information?”
“No,” she said hopelessly; “I have no way of finding out anything. And I should be very grateful indeed, Mr. Allen, if you would do what you can.” For the first time she spoke as if she had a direct interest in Major Guthrie’s fate. “Perhaps”—she fixed her eyes on him appealingly, and he saw them slowly fill up and brim over with tears—“Perhaps if you should hear anything, you would not mind telegraphing to me direct? I think you have my address.”
And then, bursting into bitter sobs, she suddenly got up and ran out of the room.
So she did know about Major Guthrie’s will. In what other way could he, the man to whom she was speaking, know her address? Mr. Allen also told himself, with some surprise, that he had been mistaken—that Mrs. Otway, after all, was not the quiet, passionless woman he had supposed her to be.
When she reached the Trellis House late that Sunday afternoon, Mrs. Otway was met at the door by Rose, and the girl, with face full of mingled awe and pain, told her that the blow on the Deanery had fallen. Edith Haworth had received the news that Sir Hugh Severn was dead—killed at the head of his men in a great cavalry charge.
CHAPTER XIX
There are times in life when everything is out of focus, when events take on the measure, not of what they really are, but of the mental state of the people affected by them. Such a time had now come to the mistress of the Trellis House. For a while Mrs. Otway saw everything, heard everything, read everything, through a mist of aching pain and of that worst misery of all—the misery of suspense.
The passion of love, so hedged about with curious and unreal conventions, is a strangely protean thing. The dear old proverb, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” is far truer than those who believe its many cynical counterparts would have us think, and especially is this true of an impulsive and imaginative nature.
It was the sudden, dramatic withdrawal of Major Guthrie from her life which first made the woman he had dumbly loved realise all that his constant, helpful presence had meant to her. And then his worldly old mother’s confidences had added just that touch of jealousy which often sharpens love. Lastly, his letter, so simple, so direct, and yet, to one who knew his quiet, reserved nature, so deeply charged with feeling, had brought the first small seed to a blossoming which quickened every pulse of her nature into ardent, sentient life. This woman, who had always been singularly selfless, far more interested in the lives of those about her than in her own, suddenly became self-absorbed.