Good Old Anna | Page 8

woman, would have nothing of what is in England called "help." She
had no wish to see a charwoman in her kitchen. Fortunately for her,
there lay, just off and behind the kitchen, a roomy scullery, where most
of the dirty, and what may be called the smelly, work connected with
cooking was done.
To the left of the low-ceilinged, spacious, rather dark scullery was
Anna's own bedroom. Both the scullery and the servant's room were
much older than the rest of the house, for the picturesque gabled bit of
brown and red brick building which projected into the garden, at the
back of the Trellis House, belonged to Tudor days, to those spacious
times when the great cathedral just across the green was a new pride
and joy to the good folk of Witanbury.
As Anna stood at one of the kitchen windows, peeping out at the quiet
scene outside, but not drawing aside the curtain--for that she knew was
forbidden to her, and Anna very seldom consciously did anything she

knew to be forbidden--she felt far more unhappy and far more disturbed
than did Mrs. Otway herself.
This morning's news had stirred poor old Anna--stirred her more
profoundly than even her kind mistress guessed. Mrs. Otway would
have been surprised indeed had it been revealed to her that ever since
breakfast Anna had spent a very anxious time thinking over her own
immediate future, wondering with painful indecision as to whether it
were not her duty to go back to Germany. But whereas Mrs. Otway had
the inestimable advantage of being quite sure that she knew what it was
best for Anna to do, the old German woman herself was cruelly torn
between what was due to her mistress, to her married daughter, and, yes,
to herself.
How unutterably amazed Mrs. Otway would have been this morning
had she known that more than a month ago Anna had received a word
of warning from Berlin. But so it was: her niece had written to her, "It
is believed that war this summer there is to be. Willi has been warned
that something shortly will happen."
And now, as Anna stood there anxiously peeping out at the figure of
her mistress pacing up and down under the avenue of high elms across
the green, she did not give more than a glancing thought to England's
part in the conflict, for her whole heart was absorbed in the dread
knowledge that Germany was at war with terrible, barbarous Russia,
and with prosperous, perfidious France.
England, so Anna firmly believed, had no army to speak of--no real
army. She remembered the day when France had declared war on
Germany in 1870. How at once every street of the little town in which
she had lived had become full of soldiers--splendid, lion-hearted
soldiers going off to fight for their beloved Fatherland. Nothing of the
sort had taken place here, though Witanbury was a garrison town. The
usual tradesmen, strong, lusty young men, had called for orders that
morning. They had laughed and joked as usual. Not one of them
seemed aware his country was at war. The old German woman's lip
curled disdainfully.

For the British, as a people, Anna Bauer cherished a tolerant affection
and kindly contempt. It was true that, all unknowing to herself, she also
had a great belief in British generosity and British justice. The idea that
this war, or rather the joining in of England with France against
Germany, could affect her own position or condition in England would
have seemed to her absurd.
Germany and England? A contrast indeed! In Germany her son-in-law,
that idle scamp George Pollit, would by now be marching on his way to
the French or Russian frontier. But George, being English, was quite
safe--unfortunately. The only difference the war would make to him
would be that it would provide him with an excuse for trying to get at
some of Anna's carefully-hoarded savings.
If good old Anna had a fault--and curiously enough it was one of which
her mistress was quite unaware, though Rose had sometimes
uncomfortably suspected the fact--it was a love of money.
Anna, in spite of her low wages, had saved far more than an English
servant earning twice as much would have done. Her low wage? Yes,
still low, though she had been raised four pounds a year when her
mistress had come into a better income. Before then Anna had been
content with sixteen pounds a year. She now received twenty pounds,
but she was ruefully aware that she was worth half as much again. In
fact thirty pounds a year had actually been offered to her, in a
roundabout way, by a lady who had come as a visitor to a house in the
Close. But the