Good Old Anna | Page 7

come in during the five minutes that
followed, the whole of the little congregation finally collected in the
stalls nearest the altar. And it was not from the ornate white stone
pulpit, but from the steps of the altar, that the Dean, after the short
service was over, delivered his address.
For what seemed a long time--it was really only a very few
moments--Dr. Haworth stood there, looking thoughtfully at this little
gathering of his fellow-countrymen and countrywomen. Then he began
speaking. With great simplicity and directness he alluded to the
awesome news which this morning had brought to them, to England.
England's declaration of war against their great neighbour,
Germany--their great neighbour, and they should never forget, the only
other great European nation which shared with them the blessings, he
was willing to admit the perhaps in some ways doubtful blessings,
brought about by the Reformation.
On hearing these words, three or four of his hearers moved a little
restlessly in their seats, but soon even they settled themselves down to
take in, and to approve, what he had to say.
England was going to war, however, in a just cause, to make good her

promise to a small and weak nation. She had often drawn her sword on
behalf of the oppressed, and never more rightly than now. But it would
be wrong indeed for England to allow her heart to be filled with
bitterness. It was probable that even at this moment a large number of
Germans were ashamed of what had happened last Monday--he alluded
to the Invasion of Belgium. Frederick the Great had once said that God
was always on the side of the big battalions; in so saying he had been
wrong. Even in the last two or three days they had seen how wrong.
Belgium was putting up a splendid defence, and the time might
come--he, the speaker, hoped it would be very soon--when Germany
would realise that Might is not Right, when she would confess, with the
large-hearted chivalry possible to a great and powerful nation, that she
had been wrong.
Meanwhile the Dean wished to impress on his hearers the need for a
generous broad-mindedness in their attitude towards the foe. England
was a great civilised nation, and so was Germany. The war would be
fought in an honourable, straightforward manner, as between
high-souled enemies. Christian charity enjoined on us to be especially
kind and considerate to those Germans who happened to be caught by
this sad state of things, in our midst. He had heard these people spoken
of that morning as "alien enemies." For his part he would not care to
describe by any such offensive terms those Germans who were settled
in England in peaceful avocations. The war was not of their making,
and those poor foreigners were caught up in a terrible web of tragic
circumstance. He himself had many dear and valued friends in
Germany, professors whose only aim in life was the spread of "Kultur,"
not perhaps quite the same thing as we meant by the word culture, for
the German "Kultur" meant something with a wider, more universal
significance. He hoped the time would come, sooner perhaps than
many pessimists thought possible, when those friends would
acknowledge that England had drawn her sword in a righteous cause
and that Germany had been wrong to provoke her.
CHAPTER III
While Mrs. Otway had been thinking over the now rather painful

problem of her good old Anna, the subject of her meditations, that is
Anna herself, from behind the pretty muslin curtain which hid her
kitchen from the passers-by, was peeping out anxiously on the
lawn-like stretch of green grass, bordered on two sides by high elms,
which is so pleasant a feature of Witanbury Close.
Her knitting was in her hands, for Anna's fingers were never idle, but
just now the needles were still.
When your kitchen happens to be one of the best rooms on the ground
floor, and one commanding not only the gate of your domain but the
road beyond, it becomes important that it should not be quite like other
people's kitchens. It was Mrs. Otway's pride, as well as Anna's, that at
any moment of the day a visitor who, after walking into the hall,
opened by mistake the kitchen door, would have found everything there
in exquisite order. The shelves, indeed, were worth going some way to
see, for each shelf was edged with a beautiful "Kante" or border of
crochet-work almost as fine as point lace. In fact, the kitchen of the
Trellis House was more like a stage kitchen than a kitchen in an
ordinary house, and the way in which it was kept was the more
meritorious inasmuch as Anna, even now, when she had become an old