“And now I must close this hurriedly written and poorly expressed letter. It does not say a tenth—nay, it does not say a thousandth part of what I would fain say. But let me, for the first, and perhaps for the last time, call you my dearest.”
Then followed his initials “A. G.,” and a postscript: “As to what has been happening here, I will only quote to you Napier’s grand words: ‘Then was seen with what majesty the British soldier fights.’”
Mrs. Otway read the letter right through twice. Then, slowly, deliberately, she folded it up and put it back in its envelope. Uncertainly she looked at her little silk handbag. No, she could not put it there, where she kept her purse, her engagement book, her handkerchief. For the moment, at any rate, it would be safest elsewhere. With a quick furtive movement she thrust it into her bodice, close to her beating heart.
Mrs. Otway looked up to a sudden sight of Rose—of Rose unusually agitated.
“Oh, mother,” she cried, “such a strange, dreadful, extraordinary thing has happened! Old Mrs. Guthrie is dead. The butler telephoned to the Deanery, and he seems in a dreadful state of mind. Mrs. Haworth says she can’t possibly go out there this morning, and they were wondering whether you would mind going. The Dean says he was out there only yesterday, and that Mrs. Guthrie spoke as if you were one of her dearest friends. Wasn’t that strange?”
Rose looked very much shocked and distressed—curiously so, considering how little she had known Mrs. Guthrie. But there is something awe-inspiring to a young girl in the sudden death of even an old person. Only three days ago Mrs. Guthrie had entertained Rose with an amusing account of her first ball—a ball given at the Irish Viceregal Court in the days when, as the speaker had significantly put it, it really was a Court in Dublin. And when Rose and her mother had said good-bye, she had pressed them to come again soon; while to the girl: “I don’t often see anything so fresh and pretty as you are, my dear!” she had exclaimed.
Mrs. Otway heard Rose’s news with no sense of surprise. She felt as if she were living in a dream—a dream which was at once poignantly sad and yet exquisitely, unbelievably happy. “I have been there several times lately,” she said, in a low voice, “and I had grown quite fond of her. Of course I’ll go. Will you telephone for a fly? I’d rather be alone there, my dear.”
Rose lingered on in the garden for a moment. Then she said slowly, reluctantly: “And mother? I’m afraid there’s rather bad news of Major Guthrie. It came last night, before Mrs. Guthrie went to bed. The butler says she took it very bravely and quietly, but I suppose it was that which—which brought about her death.”
“What is the news?”
Mrs. Otway’s dream-impression vanished. She got up from the basket-chair in which she had been sitting, and her voice to herself sounded strangely loud and unregulated.