Good Old Anna

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

As that second Saturday of August wore itself away, it is not too much to say that the most interesting thing connected with the War which had happened in Witanbury Close was the fact that Jervis Blake was now going to be a soldier. When people met that day, coming and going about their business, across the lawn-like green, and along the well-kept road which ran round it, they did not discuss the little news there was in that morning’s papers. Instead they at once informed one another, and with a most congratulatory air, “Jervis Blake has heard from the War Office! He is going into the Army after all. Mr. and Mrs. Robey are so pleased. The whole family went to the station with him this morning!”

And it was quite true that the Robeys were pleased. Mr. Robey was positively triumphant. “I can’t tell you how glad I am!” he said, first to one, and then to the other, of his neighbours. “Young Blake will make a splendid company officer. It’s for the sake of the country, quite as much as for his sake, and for that of his unpleasant father, that I’m glad. What sort of book-learning had Napoleon’s marshals? Or, for the matter of that, Wellington’s officers in the Peninsula, and at Waterloo?”

As the day went on, and he began receiving telegrams from those of his young men—they were not so very many after all—who had failed to pass, containing the joyful news that now they were accepted, his wife, instead of rejoicing, began to look grave. “It seems to me, my dear, that our occupation in life will now be gone,” she said soberly. And he answered lightly enough, “Sufficient unto the day is the good thereof!” And being the high-minded, sensible fellow that he was, he would allow no selfish fear of the future to cloud his satisfaction in the present.

The only jarring note that day came from James Hayley. He had had to take a later train than he had thought to do, and he only arrived at the Trellis House, duly dressed for dinner, just before eight.

“Witanbury is certainly a most amusing place,” he observed, as he shook hands with his pretty cousin. “I met two of your neighbours as I came along. Each of them informed me, with an air of extreme delight, that young Jervis Blake had heard from the War Office that, in spite of his many failures, his services will now be welcomed by a grateful country. I didn’t like to make the obvious answer——”

“And what is the obvious answer?” asked Rose, wrenching her hand away from his. She told herself that she hated the feel of James’s cold, hard hand.

“That we must be jolly short of officers if they’re already writing round to those boys! But then, of course”—he lowered his voice, though there was no one there to hear, “we are short—short of everything, worse luck!”

But that was the only thing Cousin James said of any interest, and it did not specially interest Rose. She did not connect this sinister little piece of information with the matter that filled her heart for the moment to the exclusion of everything else. It was not Jervis who was short of anything—only Jervis’s (and her) country.

After Mrs. Otway had come down and joined them, though James talked a great deal, he yet said very little, and as the evening went on, his kind hostess could not help feeling that the War had not improved James Hayley. He seemed more supercilious, more dogmatic than usual, and at one moment he threatened to offend her gravely by an unfortunate allusion to her good old Anna’s nationality.

By that time they were sitting out in the garden, enjoying the excellent coffee Anna made so well, and as it was rather chilly, Rose had run into the house to get her mother a shawl.