The Summer Before the War (39 page)

There was silence for a few moments. Mrs. Sidley gazed into the unlit pile of paper and coal as if looking at a puzzle.

“Could you put a match to the fire?” she asked, at last. “Abigail is working and my husband when he gets into the shoeing, he forgets to come and light it for me.”

“Of course,” said Beatrice. She took a long match from a brass cup on the mantel and knelt to strike it against the fender.

“They don't mean to forget me, you know,” she said. “It's hard to remember an invalid all the time. I don't want to be a drag on their hopes.” She coughed blood into a lace handkerchief. Beatrice averted her eyes to give the woman some privacy.

“Where is your son?” asked Beatrice.

“I don't want to be a drag on his hopes neither,” said his mother. “But it was awful hard to let him go. Thought I was like to up and die from the pain in my heart right then when he left.”

“Did he really enlist?” asked Beatrice.

“Begged his father for a week to sign the paper,” said Mrs. Sidley. “Said he'd run off and enlist anyways if he said no.”

“But he needs his schooling,” said Beatrice. “He can do very well.”

“Said he heard it himself the school had no more use for him,” said the invalid, gazing drowsily at the now licking flame. “Not allowed to sit the Latin Scholarship on account of they still hold his father's family against him.” She looked at Beatrice and gave her a small smile. “Soon as I saw my husband, I forgot it mattered,” she added. “All that nonsense—I could see nothing in his eyes but how he worshiped me.”

“Not everyone can— There are many requirements beyond the academic,” said Beatrice, but she blushed to say it and the words stuck in her throat. She hung her head and added, “There are people who do not want to see your son give up on his studies.”

“Very practical, my children,” said Mrs. Sidley. “Abigail up and tells me blunt like that she don't want to be stuck home after I'm dead, doing for her father and having no life and no children of her own.” She paused to put the handkerchief to her lips again and take several labored breaths before going on. “Still, she comes home every night and starts in on the cleaning here,” she said. “Never says anything about it—just gets on with it like a good girl.”

“I live at Mrs. Turber's house,” said Beatrice.

“Oh, I know who you are,” said Mrs. Sidley. “My Dickie thinks the world of you, Miss Nash. Says you would've stuck up for him more only they don't have so much use for you either there; so you have to be careful, Dickie says.”

“Your children are old souls, Mrs. Sidley,” said Beatrice. She felt faint with shame that the boy would make excuses for her own weakness.

“They come from old blood,” said the invalid. “My father's family has been farriers and smiths about these parts for generations. And my husband's family has been coming through this county same time every year for over five hundred years.”

“That is astonishing, Mrs. Sidley,” said Beatrice, ashamed that she had not thought of Maria Stokes's people as anything but ephemeral.

“They got all the stories,” she said. “Course they don't tell 'em to nobody outside the family.” She paused and then added, “My husband's grandmother Mrs. Stokes has a Bible three feet tall with all the records penciled in it.”

“I know Mrs. Stokes,” said Beatrice. Then she hurriedly added, “Mrs. Kent took me to visit her.”

“Good woman, that Mrs. Kent,” she said. “Often comes by with some of her beef tea for me.”

“Seeing as you are so sick, I wonder that you let your son go away,” said Beatrice. “Won't you miss him?” Snout's mother did not cry, but she seemed to turn a little grayer and worked her dry, wrinkled hands together as if she were weeping. “I didn't mean to upset you,” added Beatrice. “I just hate to see him leave school.”

“He is too tender an age to be a soldier,” said his mother.

“But he made his case, didn't he?” said a voice, and Beatrice jumped to see the farrier, a man with a face black from the soot of the fire and shoulders thick from a life of hammering and lifting iron, coming in from the scullery with his arm around his son. Snout blushed as he twisted a new army cap in his hand. His uniform was big for his frame and seemed to be tied to him by its belt like a laundry bundle tied with string. “Who's to naysay his goin'?” said Mr. Sidley.

“I'm Beatrice Nash,” said Beatrice, standing up to show she was not afraid. “I teach your son Latin?”

“And ye taught him in the summer,” said Mr. Sidley. His Sussex brogue was much thicker than those of most of the townspeople and pegged him as a country man. His eyes wrinkled in the same manner as Mrs. Stokes's, and his sharp chin was the image of his son's. “And he were grateful for it, weren't you, Son? Though like enough he didn't say nothing?”

“He brought me a rabbit once,” said Beatrice. “It made Mrs. Turber scream, but she enjoyed the rabbit stew.”

“It weren't nothing,” said Snout, shrugging.

“You're a good lad,” said his mother.

“He's a lad knows his own business,” said Mr. Sidley. “He came and told me how it is in that school and how much better off he'd be seeing a bit o' the Continent and learning soldiering.”

“He's very bright,” said Beatrice. “He belongs in school.”

“I was working at eleven, as was my father, and beholden to no man,” said Snout's father. “So when he come and asked me, I gave him my blessing, my best bone-handled knife, and two gold sovereigns; and I told him to go show the buggers that the Sidleys are as patriotic as any other Englishmen and better than most.” He gave Snout a slap on the back that seemed liable to knock the boy over. Snout's mother turned her head away, her crumpled handkerchief pressed to her mouth. “Plenty boys his age working and married an' all,” added the farrier.

“I thought maybe you had run off without permission, Snout,” said Beatrice. “I see I was wrong, so I'll not trouble you or your family any further.”

“If you please, miss, I'm grateful for everything you did for me,” said Snout. “No one ever talked to me like you did, like I was a real person.”

“I wish you would reconsider,” said Beatrice, her voice urgent. “If you come back, I promise I will fight harder.”

“I'll always remember what you did for me, but I'm glad to be a soldier now, not a schoolboy,” said Snout, squaring his shoulders.

There seemed nothing more to say. She fumbled in her satchel and produced at last her father's copy of Virgil's
Aeneid.

“Something of comfort on your long quest,” she said. He bit his lip hard to keep from any display of weakness, but as he took it from her, his voice trembled.

“
Audentis fortuna iuvat,
miss.”

“I pray that fortune does indeed favor you, Snout,” she said. How hard it was to hear the famous quote, spoken by a warrior destined to die, dropped from the lips of this boy in an ill-fitting man's uniform.

“We'll be off to the train, miss,” said the farrier. “He's due back in camp by supper.”

As Snout left, his father's arm again about his shoulders, Beatrice stayed in the doorway to offer her arm to his gently weeping mother.

“He would've run off if we'd said no,” said Mrs. Sidley. She sank against the doorframe, and it was all Beatrice could do to keep her on her feet. “Our hearts are plenty heavy, miss, but at least this way his poor sister and I will get a postcard now and then.”

The death of Lieutenant
Lancelot Chalfont North, Viscount Craigmore, First Battalion, Royal Flying Corps, only son of Earl North, was announced with solemnity in all the newspapers. Since there seemed no reason to single out his titled family amid a steady trickle of aristocratic deaths, and as the death was not part of a major battle or act of heroism, Hugh was left to conclude that the interest lay more in their ability to accompany the news with a dashing photograph of Craigmore in full flying gear and white scarf, waving from the cockpit of his Farman trainer.

The service in London was to be private and there was a rush to obtain invitations. The saddest of occasions became a social prize and, with the whisper that a member of the royal family might attend, the maneuverings among London hostesses were fierce. Colonel Wheaton and Lady Emily had received an invitation, and Aunt Agatha reported that Mr. Tillingham had written a letter of condolence running to three pages of praise for the youth—in whose company he had spent such a delightful evening as could never fade from the mind—and had been rewarded with a black-edged envelope.

When Hugh went to tea with Lucy, prepared to apologize again for abandoning her at the dance in Rye, she had been more eager to ask about whether he planned to attend the funeral of his cousin's good friend and whether she might support him with her presence. He tried to answer in a vague manner. He would have been glad to support his cousin, Daniel, if asked, but he could not tell Lucy that Daniel had not received an invitation.

“If we need to be officially engaged…” she said, looking demure. From this Hugh understood she would trade much for an invitation.

“I do not expect to be invited,” he said curtly and begged her pardon for leaving early to look after his grieving cousin.

Daniel had obtained leave and come to London, but having sent a note of condolence in which he begged to be called upon to do whatever service the family might need, he had received no communication, not at his father's house, where he went each day to check the post, or at Hugh's lodging. When he was not keeping busy at the offices of
The Poetry Review,
which had agreed to publish his David poem in honor of the young son of Lord North, Daniel lay for hours in a grieving stupor on the cot in Hugh's dressing room and caused Hugh's landlady to weep for “the poor young man” and his dead friend.

On the evening before the funeral, Hugh came home from a day of field medicine training and drilling exercises to find Daniel sitting on the doorstep of his building, counting pigeons on an opposite rooftop.

“I am shut out,” said Daniel, in response to Hugh's greeting.

Hugh sighed. After a long day, it was sometimes hard to be patient with Daniel, who was as fragile as a pierced and blown eggshell. “Isn't the landlady home? Must you sit on the step like a vagrant?” he asked.

“I went to Craigmore's home, only to find I am barred,” said Daniel.

“What did they say?” asked Hugh. With some concern for his uniform, Hugh squeezed in alongside his cousin, hitching his trousers at the knees and splaying his feet out from the low step. It was an undignified but, he hoped, supportive gesture.

“I was refused entry by the footman, but I stood fast at the door of the gatehouse, even when they threatened to call the constable,” said Daniel. “Finally, Craigmore's sister beckoned me from a side door in the long wall and came out into the street to talk to me.”

“You thought her a bland miss, I seem to remember,” said Hugh.

“Only she had the courage to face me,” said Daniel, “to let me know that I am blamed for Craigmore's death.”

“That's ridiculous,” said Hugh.

“They settled on the Flying Corps to get him away from my bad influence,” said Daniel. “He had refused all urging to join his father's old regiment, but he could not resist the lure of flying, and his father offered him a commission to give me up.”

“Preposterous!” said Hugh, knowing in his heart it was true. “Even so, you cannot be held responsible for what happened.”

“A father's loss, a mother's grief,” said Daniel. “I am to be the sacrificial goat that is to carry all our sins into the desert.”

“And the funeral?”

“I am not wanted,” said Daniel. “Twenty-four college friends and professors will follow the coffin in cap and gown, but I am asked to stay away.”

“It is cruel,” said Hugh.

“She offered me a ticket for a balcony seat reserved for former tutors, retired retainers, and so on,” said Daniel. He did not look offended, but more astonished. “She risked the wrath of her parents and injury to her reputation, and apologized because it was all she could do for me.”

“At least you can attend then,” said Hugh.

“I refused, of course,” said Daniel.

“Why?” asked Hugh. “At least you would be in the church!”

“What's a funeral but pageantry and sentimental hymns, and ladies fanning themselves through the prayers while comparing hats?” To Hugh's relief, he stood up and rubbed a hand across his forehead as if to wake his brain. “I have made my eulogy in the form of a poem. I shall stand in the street in the rain and watch my friend pass one last time.”

“How do you know it will rain?” asked Hugh, making a mental note to make sure he had two umbrellas at his lodging.

“God would not be so cruel as to taunt us with sunshine,” said Daniel. “Grief begs for dark skies.”

It rained as Daniel wished, a chill, persistent rain that wilted ladies' hats and lingered in wool coats to chill the watchers in the street and the funeral guests in the cold stone of the church. A large crowd gathered on the roadside to watch the cortège pass. Some came to salute the dead; old soldiers in their medals, and a few Chelsea pensioners in their scarlet coats. Many more, whipped into a frenzy of maudlin fascination by the illustrated papers, had come to point and exclaim over the parade of notables and to scan the carriages for any royal guests.

The yellow press had continued to fill their pages with photographic arrays: Craigmore as a child, Craigmore in a rowing blue with an oar over the shoulder, a misty panorama of his family's estate. A newly commissioned photograph showed his sister and his fiancée, weeping around an elaborate fountain in flowing black crepe and drooping feathers, the one holding a Bible and the other a sword in its scabbard. Even
The Times
had published the funeral program this morning, and featured an excerpt from a eulogizing poem. To Hugh's slow-dawning astonishment, as he read lines that seemed strangely familiar, the excerpt was from Daniel's “Ode to the ‘David of Florence,' ” reprinted from
The Poetry Review
.

In a street near the church, Hugh and Daniel took up a position in a doorway where they could see the procession from an elevated step and keep off some of the rain. Daniel, who had expressed no elation at being in
The
Times,
and who had objected to Hugh running out to buy extra copies, was shivering in his wool coat, with the collar turned up, a copy of
The Poetry Review
stuffed in one pocket. He insisted on being bareheaded, and his hair was already plastered to his face. Hugh thought this a ritualistic affectation liable to bring on bronchitis or worse.

The sound of bagpipes and drums signaled the coming of the glass-sided hearse, drawn by four black horses. Their feet were muffled in canvas bags, and they wore heavy purple plumes and large black blinkers to shield their eyes from their somber task. Two footmen rode on the back step and six outriders to either side. The oak coffin, much set with bronze ornaments and heavy bronze rails, was topped with a flag of the family crest and a blanket of red roses.

As the coffin passed, Hugh gripped Daniel's elbow but said nothing. His cousin only shivered and followed the hearse with his eyes, reaching out a hand as it passed down the street. He stared after it for a long time, as if he could see the hearse now turning in to the street in front of the church, now see the long procession of clergy and acolytes with their swinging thuribles of incense and shining brass crucifix, now see Craigmore's coffin placed, with gentle finality, at the foot of the altar.

“We should get out of this rain,” said Hugh. The carriages had long passed and the street was empty now.

“Give me a moment,” said Daniel. Waiting for a lone omnibus to pass, he walked into the road to retrieve a single purple ostrich feather fallen from one of the horses. It was muddy and bedraggled, but he shook it briefly and pressed it inside his jacket, to dry against his shirtfront. Then he allowed Hugh to take his arm and together they walked home in the rain.