Good Old Anna

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

She looked back with a kind of wonder to her old happy, satisfied, and yes, unawakened life. She had believed herself to be a woman of many friends, and yet there was now not one human being to whom she felt even tempted to tell her wonderful secret.

Busily occupied with the hundred and one trifles, and the eager, generally successful little excursions into philanthropy—for she was an exceptionally kind, warm-hearted woman—which had filled her placid widowhood, she had yet never made any real intimate. The only exception had been Major Guthrie; it was he who had drawn her into what had seemed for so long their pleasant, quiet garden of friendship.

And now she realised that were she to tell any of the people about her of the marvellous change which had taken place in her heart, they would regard her with great surprise, and yes, even with amusement. All the world loves a young lover, but there is not much sympathy to spare in the kind of world to which Mary Otway belonged by birth, position, and long association, for the love which appears, and sometimes only attains full fruition, later in life.

As the days went on, each bringing its tale of exciting and momentous events, there came over Mrs. Otway a curious apathy with regard to the war, for to her the one figure which had counted in the awful drama now being enacted in France and Flanders had disappeared from the vast stage where, as she now recognised, she had seen only him. True, she glanced over a paper each day, but she only sufficiently mastered its contents to be able to reply intelligently to those with whom her daily round brought her in contact.

And soon, to her surprise, and ever-growing discomfort, Anna Bauer—her good, faithful old Anna, for whom she had always had such feelings of affection, and yes, of gratitude—began to get on her nerves. It was not that she associated Anna with the War, and with all that the War had brought to her personally of joy and of grief. Rather was it the sudden perception that her own secret ideals of life and those of the woman near whom she had lived for close on eighteen years, were utterly different, and, in a deep sense, irreconcilable.

Mrs. Otway grew to dislike, with a nervous, sharp distaste, the very sight of Anna’s favourite motto, “Arbeit macht das Leben süss, und die Welt zum Paradies” (“Work makes life sweet and the world a paradise”). Was it possible that in the old days she had admired that lying sentiment? Lying? Yes, indeed! Work did not make life sweet, or she, Mary Otway, would now be happier than ever, for she had never worked as hard as she was now working—working to destroy thought—working to dull the dreadful aching at her heart, throwing herself, with a feverish eagerness which surprised those about her, into the various war activities which were now, largely owing to the intelligence and thoroughness of Miss Forsyth, being organised in Witanbury.

Mrs. Otway also began to hate the other German mottoes which Anna had put all about the Trellis House, especially in those rooms which might be regarded as her own domain—the kitchen, the old nursery, and Rose’s bedroom. There was something of the kind embroidered on every single article which would take a Spruch, and Anna’s mistress sometimes felt as if she would like to make a bonfire of them all!

Every time she went into her kitchen she also longed to tear down, with violent hands, the borders of fine crochet work, the Kante, with which each wooden shelf was edged, and of which she had been almost as proud as had been Anna. This crochet work seemed to haunt her, for wherever it could be utilised, Anna, during those long years of willing service, had sewn it proudly on, in narrow edgings and in broad bands.

Not only were all Mrs. Otway’s and Rose’s under-clothing trimmed with it, but it served as insertion for curtains, ran along the valance of each bed, and edged each pillow and cushion. Anna had worked miles of it since she first came to the Trellis House, for there were balls of crochet work rolled up in all her drawers, and when she was not occupied in doing some form of housework she was either knitting or crocheting. The old German woman never stirred without her little bag, itself gaily embroidered, to hold her Hand Arbeit; and very heartily, as Mrs. Otway knew well, did she despise the average Englishwoman for being able to talk without a crochet-hook or a pair of knitting-needles in her hands.

Something—not much, but just a little—of what her mistress was feeling with regard to Major Guthrie gradually reached Anna’s perceptions, and made her feel at once uncomfortable, scornful, and angry.