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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.
What was now happening over there, in France, or in Flanders? People asked each other the question with growing uneasiness. The next day, that is, on the Tuesday, sinister rumours swept over Witanbury rumours that the British had suffered a terrible defeat at a place called Mons. In her restlessness and eager longing for news, Mrs. Otway after tea went into the town.
Guthrie; but the two ladies seldom had occasion to meet the Guthries lived in a pretty old house in Dorycote, a village two miles from Witanbury. Also Mrs. Guthrie was more or less chair-ridden, and Mrs. Otway had no carriage. The bells of the cathedral suddenly broke across her troublesome, disconnected thoughts. Mrs.
There was plenty of hard work to do that winter in Witanbury, and, in spite of her supposed lack of interest in the War, Mrs. Otway had a wonderful way with soldiers' wives and mothers, so much so that in time all the more difficult cases were handed over to her. "This is to warn you that you are being watched.
Reynolds disliked pro-Germans and spy-maniacs with almost equal fervour; his work brought him in contact with both. From what he had been able to learn, the lady sitting opposite to him was to be numbered among the first category. "And now," said Major Guthrie, leaning his sightless face forward, "will you kindly inform me for what reason my wife has been summoned to Witanbury this afternoon?
Almost the whole population of Witanbury seemed to have felt a common impulse to attend the evening service in the cathedral. They streamed in until the stately black-gowned vergers were quite worried to find seats for the late comers.
Just now Rose was enjoying half an hour of pleasant solitude with her lover, after what had been a trying morning for him. Sir Jacques Robey had asked down an old friend of his own, a surgeon too, to see Jervis, and they had spent quite a long time pulling the injured foot about. Sir John Blake had also come down to spend the day at Witanbury.
Improvised flares and two electric reading-lamps, brought hurriedly through the windows of the drawing-room, shone on the group of waiting people nurses ready to step forward when wanted; Sir Jacques Robey and a young surgeon who had come up from the Witanbury Cottage Hospital; Lady Blake trembling with cold and excitement close to Mrs.
Robey was the son of a former Bishop of Witanbury, the Bishop who had followed Miss Forsyth's father. Bishop Robey had had twin sons, who, unlike most twins, were very different. The elder, whom some of the oldest inhabitants remembered as an ugly, eccentric little boy, with a taste for cutting up dead animals, had insisted on becoming a surgeon.
Moved and interested indeed had he been to find that Witanbury just then had been expecting a descent on the town by the French, and on one night it was rumoured that a strong force had actually landed, and was marching on the city!
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