“It’s just that he comes with a daughter,” said Agatha, indicating the pale girl Beatrice had noticed in the street. She was still sitting among the peasant family, holding the baby while his mother drank tea. As her fingers played with a tiny hand and the baby reached for her pale hair, Beatrice saw on her white face the same faint smile as in a Bellini painting of the Madonna. It was a look of grace that Beatrice had always thought came from knowledge of events to come but which she now saw more simply as a temporary moment of quiet solace on a refugee’s journey.
“I’m not sure a bachelor household is at all suitable for a young woman,” Mr. Tillingham was saying. He seemed quite agitated at the thought, as if a young woman would be sure to leave stockings drying in the parlor and walk about in her chemise, shedding hairpins on the carpets.
“If you wish to withdraw, we have others willing to step in,” said Agatha.
“No, no, I am called to leadership on this issue on the national stage,” said Mr. Tillingham. “I must have my refugee.”
“Well, I’m sure your housekeeper can cope with one extra girl,” said Agatha. “And Miss Nash is just down the street. I’m sure she would be happy to be invited to entertain the young woman.”
At this suggestion Mr. Tillingham seemed to brighten up. “Perhaps a different solution is before us,” he said. “Perhaps the young lady can stay with Miss Nash and the professor with me?”
“Again, they want to stay together,” said Agatha.
“But in this case, we are the nearest of neighbors,” said Mr. Tillingham. “Why, we might view Miss Nash’s quarters as an annex to the garden, and the young ladies would of course be free to trip back and forth across the lawn as they please.” With a wave of the hand he thus disposed of the twelve-foot-high brick wall that shut all trace of his sylvan landscape from the street.
“I fear I am not the mistress of my own home,” said Beatrice, torn between wishing to chide Mr. Tillingham for his high-handed approach and the promise of the doors to his home being thrown open to her at last.
“You and the young lady would also be welcome to the full use of my small library if you so wish,” he said, as if the offer were a casual afterthought. But she knew it was a deliberate inducement, and she also knew she could not resist.
“I would be honored to do my part, of course,” she said.
“Mrs. Turber shall be compensated from my own narrow pocket if necessary,” said Mr. Tillingham. “Though I believe large amounts of funds are being raised?” he added, looking with barely disguised eagerness at Agatha.
“Your generosity will show us all the way, Mr. Tillingham,” said Agatha. “Let us go and talk to the Professor.”
“Our Mr. Tillingham does like to insist publicly on his own penury,” said Hugh. “I believe his sighing garners him three or four dinner invitations a week.”
“I suppose the greatest writers are by definition too true to their art to become as wealthy as those who write entertaining rubbish,” said Beatrice. “Only he does seem to have one of the nicest houses in town.”
“He does not stint himself alone at home,” said Hugh. “He is as fond of good claret as the next man. Only when he has guests to dinner he invariably feeds them mutton and cheap Spanish wine.”
“I look forward to that,” said Beatrice. “I have a feeling he and Mrs. Turber may compete to feed us badly. Perhaps I will start saving my bread crusts.”
“If you become malnourished, I shall undertake to escort you and the young lady to a suitably respectable tea shop and feed you up on scones and cream,” said Hugh.
“How gallant of you,” said Beatrice. “I imagine the same invitation would be forthcoming even if the young lady were less than beautiful.”
“You must admit she is quite the damsel in distress,” he said. “My cousin Daniel will no doubt fling himself at her feet, parchment in hand.” Hugh seemed gloomy at this prospect, and Beatrice laughed at him. “Not to suggest that you are in any way not worthy of a poem or two,” he added. “I didn’t mean to imply…”
“I am quite beyond such foolishness and therefore cannot take offense,” said Beatrice.
“Nonsense,” said Hugh. “No lady is too old for a sonnet, which is why Daniel still writes them to Aunt Agatha’s cook and always thereby receives the largest slice of Victoria sponge.”
“Victory is ours,” said Mr. Tillingham, returning with Agatha. “The Professor makes no objection to the arrangement.”
“And Mrs. Turber is more than agreeable to being compensated for a second tenant,” said Agatha. “So the burden falls on you, Miss Nash. Are you sure you won’t mind?”
“She can sleep in my writing corner,” said Beatrice. “I can squeeze my desk into my bedroom.”
“I am deep in your debt, young lady,” said Mr. Tillingham. “You must bring your guest tomorrow to see her father. Not too early, of course. I work in the mornings. I think we should meet for tea, and I will make arrangements for the green parlor to be set aside for father and daughter to meet quietly at any hour.” He looked at his watch and repeated, “Not any hour, of course. I must be able to work.” With that he swept away to carry off the Professor. Beatrice watched Mr. Tillingham, solicitous, and the Professor, a little more cheerful, offer a brief farewell to the girl. The girl said nothing but merely watched her father leave, her hands at her sides, her body leaning slightly, as if invisibly pulled after him, and all the light gone from her face.
—
As the birds announced dawn, the girl in the upstairs cottage bedroom began calling for her papa. Beatrice woke to find her cheek pressed to a floorboard, her arms and legs stiff from sleeping on the parlor rug. She had given the exhausted girl her own bed, helping to remove her ruined boots and then merely loosening buttons and stays before pulling the clean sheets and blankets over the girl’s filthy dress and tucking her in as she might do for an invalid. She had then taken a quilt and retired to the parlor to sleep on the floor. Now the cottage was cold and dark, her quilt warm. It felt easier not to move, but another moan from above led her to unwrap herself and stumble to her feet. She gathered the quilt around her shoulders like a shawl and crept upstairs. The girl was deep in sleep, but twisted in her sheets, moaning and plucking at the covers with her fingers and muttering in French. Abigail the maid was crouched at the bedside, smoothing her hair and trying to straighten the bed linen with one hand.
“There, now, you lie still,” Abigail was repeating quietly. “You’re safe now and Papa’s safe too.”
“Does she need a doctor?” asked Beatrice, tiptoeing across the room in her stockinged feet.
“She’ll be fine, miss,” said Abigail. “My mum has bad dreams sometimes. If you just speak to ’em like they’re awake it seems to calm ’em right down.”
“I don’t know that she speaks English,” said Beatrice.
“I don’t think it matters, do it now, miss?” said Abigail, leaning in to pat the girl’s shoulder. “Just a kind voice in the dark is all we want most times.” The girl gave a sigh and settled more peacefully on her pillow, her face relaxing. Abigail patted her hand, and the fingers stopped clawing.
“You have the touch, Abigail,” whispered Beatrice. “Can you sit with her awhile?”
“I could stay a bit, miss,” said Abigail. “But I need to get the stove lit soon. I’m thinking you’ll be wanting a fire laid under the copper for some bathwater, even though it’s not bath day?”
“Yes, perhaps you’d better run along and get the copper going before Mrs. Turber wakes up,” said Beatrice. “That way we don’t have to disturb her morning with all this added generosity.”
“I’ll bring you some tea, miss,” said Abigail. “If the lady cries out again, just hold her hand.”
The girl’s hands lay on the covers like fledgling birds. Beatrice remembered how her father’s hands, similarly naked and blue-veined, had withered under her touch, and how she had felt the warmth retreat from them even before her father took his last breath. It seemed to Beatrice, in the chilly half-light of dawn, that this moaning girl had come out of that same place of death, bringing its smell and its fear with her, and Beatrice shrank from touching her. She slumped to the floor by the bed, drew the quilt tight around her, and looked hard at the window as if by staring she might urge the sun to quicker life.