The walls of that quaint, low-roofed apartment were gay with oleographs, several being scenes from Faust, and one, which Anna had had given to her nearly forty years ago, showed the immortal Charlotte, still cutting bread and butter.
On the dressing-table, one at each end, were a pair of white china busts of Bismarck and von Moltke. Anna had brought these back from Berlin three years before. Of late she had sometimes wondered whether it would be well to put them away in one of the three large, roomy cupboards built into the wall behind her bed. One of these cupboards already contained several securely packed parcels which, as had been particularly impressed on Anna, must on no account be disturbed, but there was plenty of room in the two others. Still, no one ever came into her oddly situated bedroom, and so she left her heroes where they were.
After taking off her things, she extracted the two-shilling piece out of the pocket where it had lain loosely, and added it to the growing store of silver in the old-fashioned tin box where she kept her money. Then she put on her apron and hurried out, with the cheese and the butter in her hands, to the beautifully arranged, exquisitely clean meat safe, which had been cleverly fixed to one of the windows of the scullery soon after her arrival at the Trellis House.
The next morning Mrs. Otway came home, and within an hour of her arrival the mother and daughter had told one another their respective secrets. The revelation came about as such things have a way of coming about when two people, while caring deeply for one another, are yet for the moment out of touch with each other’s deepest feelings. It came about, that is to say, by a chance word uttered in entire ignorance of the real state of the case.
Rose, on hearing of her mother’s expedition to Arlington Street, had shown surprise, even a little vexation: “You’ve gone and tired yourself out for nothing—a letter would have done quite as well!”
And, as her mother made no answer, the girl, seeing as if for the first time how sad, how worn, that same dear mother’s face now looked, came close up to her and whispered, “I think, mother—forgive me if I’m wrong—that you care for Major Guthrie as I care for Jervis Blake.”
CHAPTER XXII
The days that followed Mrs. Otway’s journey to London, the easy earning by good old Anna of a florin for Alfred Head’s brief sight of Jervis Blake’s letter, and the exchange of confidences between the mother and daughter, were comparatively happy, peaceful days at the Trellis House.
Her visit to 20, Arlington Street, had greatly soothed and comforted Mrs. Otway. She felt sure somehow that those kind, capable people, and especially the unknown woman who had been so very good and—and so very understanding, would soon send her the tidings for which she longed. For the first time, too, since she had received Major Guthrie’s letter she forgot herself, and in a measure even the man she loved, in thought for another. Rose’s confession had moved her greatly, stirred all that was maternal in her heart. But she was far more surprised than she would have cared to admit, for she had always thought that Rose, if she married at all, would marry a man considerably older than herself. With a smile and a sigh, she told herself that the child must be in love with love!
Jervis and the girl were both still so very young—though Rose was in a sense much the older of the two, or so the mother thought. She was secretly glad that there could be no talk of marriage till the end of the War. Even then they would probably have to wait two or three years. True, General Blake was a wealthy man, but Jervis was entirely dependent on his father, and his father might not like him to marry yet.