"You just tell Mrs. Otway what happened," he said, in a tone of command.

Ponting meekly obeyed.

"I just opened the door very quietly, and Mrs. Guthrie did not turn round. Without being at all deaf, my mistress had got a little hard of hearing, lately. I went a step forward, and then I saw that she was reading the Bible. I was very much surprised, madam, for it was the first time I had ever seen her do such a thing--though of course there was always a Bible and a Prayer Book close to her hand. She was wheeled into church each Sunday--when it was fine, that is. The Major saw to that.... I couldn't help feeling sorry she hadn't rung and asked me to move the Book for her, for it is a big Bible, with very clear print. She was following the words with her finger, and that was a thing I had never seen her do before with any book. As she did not turn round, I said to myself that it was better not to disturb her. So I just backed very quietly out of the door again. I shall always be glad," she said, in a lower tone, "that I saw her like that."

"And then," interposed Howse, "quite a long time went on, ma'am, and we all got to feel very uneasy. We none of us liked to go up--not one of us. But at last three of us went up together--Cook, me, and Ponting--and listened at the door. But try our hardest, as we did, we could hear nothing. It was the stillness of death!"

"Yes," said Ponting, her voice sinking to a whisper, "that's what it was. For when at last I opened the door, there lay my poor mistress all huddled up in the chair, just as she had fallen back. We sent for the doctor at once, but he said there was nothing to be done--that her heart had just stopped. He said it might have happened any time in the last two years, or she might have lived on for quite a long time, if all had gone on quiet and serene."

"We've left the Bible just as it was," said Howse slowly. "It's just covered over, so that the Major, if ever he _should_ come home again, though I fear that's very unlikely"--he dolefully shook his head--"may see what it was her eyes last rested on. Major Guthrie, if you would excuse me for saying so, ma'am, has always been a far more religious gentleman than his mother was a religious lady. I feel sure it would comfort him to know that just before her end she was reading the Book."

"It was open at the twenty-second Psalm," added Ponting, "and when I came in that time and saw her without her seeing me, she must have been just reading the verse about the dog."

"The dog?" said Mrs. Otway, surprised.

"Yes, madam. 'Deliver my soul from the sword: my darling from the power of the dog.'"

Howse here chimed in, "Her darling, that's the Major, and the dog is the enemy, ma'am."

He paused, and then went on, in a brisker, more cheerful tone:

"I telegraphed the very first thing to Mr. Allen--that's Major Guthrie's lawyer, ma'am. The Major told me I was to do that, if anything awkward happened. Then it just occurred to me that I would telephone to the Deanery. The Dean was out here yesterday afternoon, ma'am, and Mrs.

Guthrie liked him very much. Long ago, when she lived in London, she used to know the parents of the young gentleman to whom Miss Haworth is engaged to be married. They had quite a long pleasant talk about it all.

I had meant, ma'am, if you'll excuse my telling you, to telephone to you next, and then I heard as how you were coming here. The Major did tell me the morning he went away that if Mrs. Guthrie seemed really ailing, I was to ask you to be kind enough to come and see her. Of course I knew where he was going, and that he'd be away for a long time, though he didn't say anything to me about it. But he knew that I knew, right enough!"

"Had Mrs. Guthrie no near relation at all--no sister, no nieces?" asked Mrs. Otway, in a low voice. Again she felt she was living in a dreamland of secret, poignant emotions shadowed by a great suspense and fear.

"No. Nothing of the kind," said Howse confidently. "And on Major Guthrie's side there was only distant cousins. It's a peculiar kind of situation altogether, ma'am, if I may say so. Quite a long time may pa.s.s before we know whether the Major is alive or dead. 'Wounded and missing'? We all knows as how there is only one thing worse that could be than that--don't we, ma'am?"

"I don't quite know what you mean, Howse."

"Why, the finding and identifying of the Major's body, ma'am."

Through the still, silent house there came a loud, long, insistent ringing--that produced by an old-fashioned front door bell.

"I expect it's Mr. Allen," exclaimed Howse. "He wired as how he'd be down by two o'clock." And a few moments later a tall, dark, clean-shaven man was shaking hands, with the words, "I think you must be Mrs. Otway?"

There was little business doing just then among London solicitors, and so Mr. Allen had come down himself. He had a very friendly regard for his wounded and missing client, and his recollection of the interview which had taken place on the day before Major Guthrie had sailed with the First Division of the Expeditionary Force was still very vivid in his mind.

His client had surprised him very much. He had thought he knew everything about Major Guthrie and Major Guthrie's business, but before receiving the latter's instructions about his new will he had never heard of Mrs. Otway and her daughter. Yet, if Major Guthrie outlived his mother, as it was of course reasonable, even under the circ.u.mstances, to suppose that he would do, a considerable sum of money was to pa.s.s under his will to Mrs. Otway, and, failing her, to her only child, Rose Otway.

Strange confidences are very often made to lawyers, quite as often as to doctors. But Major Guthrie, when he came to sign his will, the will for which he had sent such precise and detailed instructions a few days before, made no confidences at all.

Even so, the solicitor, putting two and two together, had very little doubt as to the relations of his client and of the lady whom he had made his residuary legatee. He felt sure that there was an understanding between them that either after the war, or after Mrs. Guthrie's death--he could not of course tell which--they intended to make one of those middle-aged marriages which often, strange to say, turn out more happily than earlier marriages are sometimes apt to do.

The lawyer naturally kept his views to himself during the afternoon he spent at Dorycote House, and he simply treated Mrs. Otway as though she had been a near relation of the deceased lady. What, however, increased his belief that his original theory was correct, was the fact that there was no mention of Mrs. Otway's name in Mrs. Guthrie's will. The old lady, like so many women, had preferred to keep her will in her own possession. It had been made many years before, and in it she had left everything to her son, with the exception of a few trinkets which were to be distributed among certain old friends and acquaintances, fully half of whom, it was found on reference to Ponting, had predeceased the testator.

As the hours went on, Mr. Allen could not help wondering if Mrs. Otway was aware of the contents of Major Guthrie's will. He watched her with considerable curiosity. She was certainly attractive, and yes, quite intelligent; but she hardly spoke at all, and there was a kind of numbness in her manner which he found rather trying. She did not once mention Major Guthrie of her own accord. She always left such mention to him. He told himself that doubtless it was this quietude of manner which had attracted his reserved client.

"I suppose," he said at last, "that we must presume that Major Guthrie is alive till we have an official statement to the contrary?" And then he was startled to see the vivid expression of pain, almost of anguish, which quivered over her eyes and mouth. Then she did care, after all.

"Howse tells me," she said slowly, "that Major Guthrie is probably a prisoner. He says, he says----" and then she stopped abruptly--it was as if she could not go on with her sentence, and Mr. Allen exclaimed, "I heard what he said, Mrs. Otway. Of course he is right in stating that an effort is always made to find and bring in the bodies of dead officers.

But I fear that this war is not at all like the only war of which Howse has had any first-hand knowledge. This last week has been a very bad business. Still, I quite agree that we must not give up hope. I have been wondering whether you would like me to make inquiries at the War Office, or whether you have any better and quicker--I mean of course by that any private--means of procuring information?"

"No," she said hopelessly; "I have no way of finding out anything. And I should be very grateful indeed, Mr. Allen, if you would do what you can." For the first time she spoke as if she had a direct interest in Major Guthrie's fate. "Perhaps"--she fixed her eyes on him appealingly, and he saw them slowly fill up and brim over with tears--"Perhaps if you _should_ hear anything, you would not mind telegraphing to me direct? I think you have my address."

And then, bursting into bitter sobs, she suddenly got up and ran out of the room.

So she did know about Major Guthrie's will. In what other way could he, the man to whom she was speaking, know her address? Mr. Allen also told himself, with some surprise, that he had been mistaken--that Mrs. Otway, after all, was not the quiet, pa.s.sionless woman he had supposed her to be.

When she reached the Trellis House late that Sunday afternoon, Mrs.

Otway was met at the door by Rose, and the girl, with face full of mingled awe and pain, told her that the blow on the Deanery had fallen.

Edith Haworth had received the news that Sir Hugh Severn was dead--killed at the head of his men in a great cavalry charge.

CHAPTER XIX

There are times in life when everything is out of focus, when events take on the measure, not of what they really are, but of the mental state of the people affected by them. Such a time had now come to the mistress of the Trellis House. For a while Mrs. Otway saw everything, heard everything, read everything, through a mist of aching pain and of that worst misery of all--the misery of suspense.

The pa.s.sion of love, so hedged about with curious and unreal conventions, is a strangely protean thing. The dear old proverb, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder," is far truer than those who believe its many cynical counterparts would have us think, and especially is this true of an impulsive and imaginative nature.

It was the sudden, dramatic withdrawal of Major Guthrie from her life which first made the woman he had dumbly loved realise all that his constant, helpful presence had meant to her. And then his worldly old mother's confidences had added just that touch of jealousy which often sharpens love. Lastly, his letter, so simple, so direct, and yet, to one who knew his quiet, reserved nature, so deeply charged with feeling, had brought the first small seed to a blossoming which quickened every pulse of her nature into ardent, sentient life. This woman, who had always been singularly selfless, far more interested in the lives of those about her than in her own, suddenly became self-absorbed.

She looked back with a kind of wonder to her old happy, satisfied, and yes, unawakened life. She had believed herself to be a woman of many friends, and yet there was now not one human being to whom she felt even tempted to tell her wonderful secret.

Busily occupied with the hundred and one trifles, and the eager, generally successful little excursions into philanthropy--for she was an exceptionally kind, warm-hearted woman--which had filled her placid widowhood, she had yet never made any real intimate. The only exception had been Major Guthrie; it was he who had drawn her into what had seemed for so long their pleasant, quiet garden of friendship.

And now she realised that were she to tell any of the people about her of the marvellous change which had taken place in her heart, they would regard her with great surprise, and yes, even with amus.e.m.e.nt. All the world loves a young lover, but there is not much sympathy to spare in the kind of world to which Mary Otway belonged by birth, position, and long a.s.sociation, for the love which appears, and sometimes only attains full fruition, later in life.

As the days went on, each bringing its tale of exciting and momentous events, there came over Mrs. Otway a curious apathy with regard to the war, for to her the one figure which had counted in the awful drama now being enacted in France and Flanders had disappeared from the vast stage where, as she now recognised, she had seen only him. True, she glanced over a paper each day, but she only sufficiently mastered its contents to be able to reply intelligently to those with whom her daily round brought her in contact.

And soon, to her surprise, and ever-growing discomfort, Anna Bauer--her good, faithful old Anna, for whom she had always had such feelings of affection, and yes, of grat.i.tude--began to get on her nerves. It was not that she a.s.sociated Anna with the War, and with all that the War had brought to her personally of joy and of grief. Rather was it the sudden perception that her own secret ideals of life and those of the woman near whom she had lived for close on eighteen years, were utterly different, and, in a deep sense, irreconcilable.

Mrs. Otway grew to dislike, with a nervous, sharp distaste, the very sight of Anna's favourite motto, "_Arbeit macht das Leben suss, und die Welt zum Paradies_" ("Work makes life sweet and the world a paradise").

Was it possible that in the old days she had admired that lying sentiment? Lying? Yes, indeed! Work did _not_ make life sweet, or she, Mary Otway, would now be happier than ever, for she had never worked as hard as she was now working--working to destroy thought--working to dull the dreadful aching at her heart, throwing herself, with a feverish eagerness which surprised those about her, into the various war activities which were now, largely owing to the intelligence and thoroughness of Miss Forsyth, being organised in Witanbury.

Mrs. Otway also began to hate the other German mottoes which Anna had put all about the Trellis House, especially in those rooms which might be regarded as her own domain--the kitchen, the old nursery, and Rose's bedroom. There was something of the kind embroidered on every single article which would take a _Spruch_, and Anna's mistress sometimes felt as if she would like to make a bonfire of them all!

Every time she went into her kitchen she also longed to tear down, with violent hands, the borders of fine crochet work, the _Kante_, with which each wooden shelf was edged, and of which she had been almost as proud as had been Anna. This crochet work seemed to haunt her, for wherever it could be utilised, Anna, during those long years of willing service, had sewn it proudly on, in narrow edgings and in broad bands.

Not only were all Mrs. Otway's and Rose's under-clothing trimmed with it, but it served as insertion for curtains, ran along the valance of each bed, and edged each pillow and cushion. Anna had worked miles of it since she first came to the Trellis House, for there were b.a.l.l.s of crochet work rolled up in all her drawers, and when she was not occupied in doing some form of housework she was either knitting or crocheting.

The old German woman never stirred without her little bag, itself gaily embroidered, to hold her _Hand Arbeit_; and very heartily, as Mrs. Otway knew well, did she despise the average Englishwoman for being able to talk without a crochet-hook or a pair of knitting-needles in her hands.