Good Old Anna

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Anna felt the deepest sympathy for her darling nursling, Miss Rose; for it was natural, warming-to-the-heart, that a young girl should feel miserable about a young man. In fact, Rose’s lack of interest in marriage and in the domesticities had disturbed and puzzled good old Anna, and to her mind had been a woeful lack in the girl.

So she had welcomed, with great sympathy, the sudden and surprising change. Anna shrewdly suspected the truth, namely, that Rose was Jervis Blake’s secret betrothed. She felt sure that something had happened on the morning young Mr. Blake had gone away, during the long half-hour the two young people had spent together. On that morning, immediately after her return home, Rose had gone up to her room, declaring that she had had breakfast—though she, Anna, knew well that the child had only had an early cup of tea....

But if Anna sympathised with and understood the feelings of the younger of her two ladies, she had but scant toleration for Mrs. Otway’s restless, ill-concealed unhappiness. Even in the old days Anna had disapproved of Major Guthrie, and she had thought it very strange indeed that he came so often to the Trellis House. To her mind such conduct was unfitting. What on earth could a middle-aged man have to say to the mother of a grown-up daughter?

Of course Anna knew that marriages between such people are sometimes arranged; but to her mind they are always marriages of convenience, and in this case such a marriage would be very inconvenient to everybody, and would thoroughly upset all her, Anna’s, pleasant, easy way of life. A widower with children has naturally to find a woman to look after his house; and a poor widow is as a rule only too pleased to meet with some one who will marry her, especially if the some one be better off than herself. But on any betrayal of sentiment between two people past early youth Anna had very scant mercy.

She had also noticed lately, with mingled regret and contempt, that Mrs. Otway now had a few grey threads in her fair, curling hair. If the gracious lady were not careful, she would look quite old and ugly by the time Major Guthrie came back!

At intervals, indeed every few days, Rose received a short, and of course read-by-the-censor letter from Jervis Blake. He had missed the first onrush of the German Army and the Great Retreat, for he had been what they called “in reserve,” kept for nearly three full weeks close to the French port where he had landed. Then there came a long, trying silence, till a letter written by his mother to Mrs. Otway revealed the fact that he was at last in the fighting-line, on the river Aisne.

“You have always been so kind to my dear boy that I know you will be interested to learn that lately he has been in one or two very dangerous ‘scraps,’ as they seem to be called. They are not supposed to tell one anything in their letters, and Jervis as a matter of fact no longer even writes postcards. But my husband knows exactly where he is, and we can but hope and pray, from day to day, that he is safe.”

It was on the very day that Mrs. Otway read to Rose this letter from Lady Blake that there arrived at the Trellis House a telegram signed Robert Allen: “Have ascertained that Major Guthrie is alive and prisoner in Germany. Letter follows.”

But when the letter came it told tantalisingly little, for it merely conveyed the fact that the name of Major Guthrie had come through in a list of wounded prisoners supplied to the Geneva Red Cross. There was no clue as to where he was, or as to his condition, and Mr. Allen ended with the words: “I am trying to get in touch with the American Embassy in Berlin. I am told that it is the best, in fact the only, medium for getting authentic news of wounded prisoners.”

“The gracious lady sees that I was right. Never did I believe the Major to be dead! Officers are always behind their soldiers. They are in the safe place.” Such were the words, uttered of course in German, with which Anna greeted the great news.