Good Old Anna

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

The fact that Rose had told her mother of her engagement had had another happy effect. It had restored, in a measure, the good relations between Mrs. Otway and her faithful old servant, Anna Bauer. Anna kept to herself the fact that she had guessed the great news long before it had become known to the mother, and so she and her mistress rejoiced together in the beloved child’s happiness.

And Rose was happy too—far happier than she had yet been since the beginning of the War. Twice in recent letters to her Jervis had written, “I wish you would allow me to tell my people—you know what!” and now she was very, very glad to release him from secrecy. She was too modest to suppose that General and Lady Blake would be pleased with the news of their only son’s engagement. But she felt it their due that they should know how matters stood betwixt her and Jervis. If they did not wish him to marry soon, she and Jervis, so she assured herself, would be quite content to wait.

Towards the end of that peaceful week there came quite an affectionate telegram from Lady Blake, explaining that the great news had been sent to her and to her husband by their son. The telegram was followed by a long loving letter from the mother, inviting Rose to stay with them.

Mrs. Otway would not acknowledge even to herself how relieved she felt. She had been afraid that General Blake would regard his son’s engagement as absurd, and she was surprised, knowing him slightly and not much liking what little she knew of him, at the kindness and warmth with which he wrote to her.

“Under ordinary circumstances I should not have approved of my son’s making so early a marriage, but everything is now changed. And though I suppose it would not be reasonable to expect such a thing, I should be, for my part, quite content were they to be married during the leave to which I understand he will shortly be entitled.”

But on reading these words, Mrs. Otway had shaken her head very decidedly. What an odd, very odd, man General Blake must be! She felt sure that neither Jervis nor Rose would think of doing such a thing. It was, however, quite natural that Jervis’s parents should wish to have Rose on a visit; and of course Rose must go soon, and try to make good friends with them both—not an over-easy matter, for they were very different and, as Mrs. Otway knew, not on really happy terms the one with the other.

There was some little discussion as to who in Witanbury should be told of Rose’s engagement. It seemed hopeless to keep the affair a secret. For one thing, the officials at the Post Office knew—they had almost shown it by their funny, smiling manner when Rose had gone in to send her answer to Lady Blake’s telegram. But the first to be informed officially, so to speak, must of course be the Dean and the Robeys.

Dr. Haworth had aged sadly during the last few weeks. Edith was going to nurse in a French hospital, and she and her mother had gone away for a little change first. And so, as was natural, the Dean came very often to the Trellis House; and though, when he was told of Rose’s engagement, he sighed wearily, still he was most kind and sympathetic—though he could not help saying, in an aside to Mrs. Otway, “I should never have thought Rose would become the heroine of a Romeo and Juliet affair! They both seem to me so very young. Luckily there’s no hurry. It looks as if this war was going to be a long, long war——” and he had shaken his head very mournfully.

Poor Dr. Haworth! An imprudent passage uttered in the first sermon he had delivered after the declaration of war had been dragged out of its context, and had figured, weeks later, in the London papers. As a result he had had many cruel anonymous letters, and, what had been harder to bear, reproaches from old and tried friends.

But what was far, far worse to the Dean than these mosquito bites was the fact that his own darling child, Edith, could not forgive him for having had so many German friends in the old days. Her great loss, which in theory should have softened her, had had just the opposite effect. It had made her bitter, bitter; and during the weeks which had followed the receipt of the fatal news she had hardly spoken to her father. This was the more unreasonable—nay, the more cruel—of her inasmuch as it had been her mother, to whom she now clung, who had so decidedly set her face against the hasty marriage which poor Edith was now always regretting had not taken place.