“It’s a great rush, for what I have so longed for is going to happen, so you must not be surprised if you do not have another letter from me for some time. But you will know, my darling love, that I am thinking of you all the time. I am so happy, Rose—I feel as if God has given me everything I ever wanted all at once.
“Your own devoted
“Jervis.”
And then there was a funny little postscript, which made her smile through her tears: “You will think this letter all my—‘I.’ But that doesn’t really matter now, as you and I are one!”
Rose soon learnt her first love-letter by heart. She made a little silk envelope for it, and wore it on her heart. It was like a bit of Jervis himself—direct, simple, telling her all she wanted to know, yet leaving much unsaid. Rose had once been shown a love-letter in which the word “kiss” occurred thirty-four times. She was glad that there was nothing of that sort in Jervis’s letter, and yet she longed with a piteous, aching longing to feel once more his arms clasping her close, his lips trembling on hers....
At last her mother asked her casually, “Has Jervis Blake written to you, my darling?” And she said, “Yes, mother; once. I think he’s busy, getting his outfit.”
“Ah, well, they won’t think of sending out a boy as young as that, even if Major Guthrie was right in thinking our Army is going to France.” And Rose to that had made no answer. She was convinced that Jervis was going on active service. There was one sentence in his letter which could mean nothing else.
Life in Witanbury, after that first week of war, settled down much as before. There was a general impression that everything was going very well. The brave little Belgians were defending their country with skill and tenacity, and the German Army was being “held up.”
The Close was full of mild amateur strategists, headed by the Dean himself. Great as had been, and was still, his admiration for Germany, Dr. Haworth was of course an Englishman first; and every day, when opening his morning paper, he expected to learn that there had been another Trafalgar. He felt certain that the German Fleet was sure to make, as he expressed it, “a dash for it.” Germany was too gallant a nation, and the Germans were too proud of their fleet, to keep their fighting ships in harbour. The Dean of Witanbury, like the vast majority of his countrymen and countrywomen, still regarded War as a great game governed by certain well-known rules which both sides, as a matter of course, would follow and abide by.
The famous cathedral city was doing “quite nicely” in the matter of recruiting. And the largest local employer of labour, a man who owned a group of ladies’ high-grade boot and shoe factories, generously decided that he would permit ten per cent. of those of his men who were of military age to enlist; he actually promised as well to keep their places open, and to give their wives, or their mothers, as the case might be, half wages for the first six months of war.
A good many people felt aggrieved when it became known that Lady Bethune was not going to give her usual August garden party. She evidently did not hold with the excellent suggestion that England should now take as her motto “Business as Usual.” True, a garden-party is not exactly business—still, it is one of those pleasures which the great ladies of a country neighbourhood find it hard to distinguish from duties.
Yes, life went on quite curiously as usual during the second week of the Great War, and to many of the more well-to-do people of Witanbury, only brought in its wake a series of agreeable “thrills” and mild excitements.