“Thank you, Mr. Poot,” she said. “Two pounds will be most satisfactory and I shall preserve myself in all patience for the rest.” Trying to leave the gardens with an appearance of dignity she did not feel, Beatrice felt a brief pang for her old life, in which she and her father would never have lowered their integrity to haggle for coinage. The world seemed a little less black-and-white than it had been in the sheltering presence of her father. But perhaps, she thought, it had always been gray, and she merely na?ve?
She walked along the high street, towards the ancient stone gate at the eastern edge of the town, where the shops gave way to a pleasant stretch of cliff-top promenade high above the town Salts, with the river below and the sweep of marshes beyond. Here, Beatrice was surprised to see Mr. Tillingham standing at the black iron railings. He stood so immobile that he seemed to slow the feet of those who passed, and yet his stillness discouraged the usual friendly tipping of hats and nodding pleasantries; he did not so much as move his head as the people of Rye stepped around his bulk and went on their way. Beatrice would not have spoken to him, but his fixed stare, and his hand gripping an iron finial as if for more support than his silver-tipped walking stick could provide, caused her a rush of concern. She stepped forward and placed a hand on his arm.
“Mr. Tillingham, are you all right?” she asked. He started and then turned as if from sleep and blinked his hooded eyes at her. “Are you quite well?” she added.
“They do not know what is to come,” he said in a slow voice, as if committing the words to memory as he spoke. “The enchantment of this fixed and ancient land, this town, is but a fragile scrim.”
“Do you need to sit down?” There was a wooden bench nearby, sheltered under a large potted tree, and Beatrice gestured. “May we sit a moment, Mr. Tillingham?”
“Do forgive me,” he said, giving his head a slow shake, as a large dog might toss its ears upon waking. He offered her his arm and led her to the bench. “I was composing a few lines for an essay and I became completely lost in my thoughts. I am quite rude when I’m thinking.” Beatrice bit her lip to keep from smiling and sat down, shading her eyes with her hand to gaze out over the marsh as Mr. Tillingham had been doing.
“It is a lovely view,” she said. “The sea’s retreat through time cleanly measured and recorded in the cutting of dykes.”
“Well observed, Miss Nash,” he said. He fumbled his fingers along his watch chain as if counting rosary beads. “Yet I think there is a danger of complacency under the illusion of our ever-expanding green buffer. Perhaps we are like King Canute watching the tide go out and thinking we have triumphed over nature.”
“You are a pessimist today, Mr. Tillingham,” she said.
“I have been remembering the great American conflict of my youth,” he said. “Not a hundred years from gaining our independence, we tore each other apart—brother against brother, patriot against patriot—the wheat fields dressed in the blood of young farm boys, towns burned to the ground by neighbors.” He took out a large silk handkerchief and pressed it to his forehead. “Most of all I remember that what begins with drums and fife, flags and bunting, becomes too swiftly a long and gray winter of the spirit.”
“It is hard to imagine war on such a glorious day,” said Beatrice.
“Yet it is ablaze just beyond the rim of the horizon there,” said Mr. Tillingham, gesturing with his stick. “I am asked to compose a rousing essay to urge America to our glorious cause.”
She was cautious in choosing her words, eager not to disturb the rare opportunity to hear the writer’s expression of his thoughts. “What will you tell them?”
“I do not have my thoughts around the words just yet,” said Mr. Tillingham. “I fear my premonition—that England, dreaming under summer skies and wrapped in her mantle of marshes and calm channel waters, is to face a long darkness of the soul—will not be enough to inspire action.” He fiddled with his watch chain and moved his great jaw as if chewing on his own thoughts. “Some argument must be made as to whether America, if it stands by while all that is fine and ancient in the civilized world is put to the sword, can still hope to build its own shining city.”
“Perhaps a less philosophical approach?” asked Beatrice, fearing that Mr. Tillingham’s fondness for lengthy sentences, and multiple ellipses, might not serve a call to war. “The newspapers are full of stories of bayoneted infants and murdered peasants.”
“We cannot win by meeting the German bloodlust and savagery with cheap propaganda,” he said. “We must be strong in our convictions and girded about with reason, else we will lose honor even in winning the action. I must make my case for protecting innocent Belgium and ancient England as the crucible of all settled civilization.”
“A noble vision,” said Beatrice. “I think it very fine.”
Mr. Tillingham peered at her as if she had just offered him a veiled insult. “Always tricky to be embraced by the ladies,” he said. “The risk of dismissal by serious minds. The label of romantic chivalry. One strives for a sterner reading.”
“We are not all just flighty readers of English novels,” said Beatrice.
“And on the other hand, it is the ladies who seem able to whip up a frenzy for some idea,” he mused. “One would prefer to make one’s main idea simple enough for the female eye to catch it up and make it the talk of the town.”
“Surely we can all embrace this particular cause?” asked Beatrice.
“And I’m sure all will just as soon as I do some more fleshing out,” said Mr. Tillingham. He thought for a moment and added, to himself, “I must ask young Daniel to dinner and get the younger generation’s view.”
Beatrice could only look away over the marsh to hide a flush of disappointment. His thoughtlessness evaporated her previous sense of concern, and she decided to ask him about the matter of her father’s letters.
“Work of such importance must take up all your time, Mr. Tillingham,” she said. “Do you regret having to set aside your own writing to serve?”
“We are all called upon to sacrifice,” he said. “I have one or two small projects, just enough to keep body and soul together, though I have never subscribed to the idea that austerity of the body is good for the soul, or for the muse.”
“I had hoped to publish a small book of my own,” said Beatrice. “Letters of my father’s with my own introduction.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Tillingham, and he peered with great concentration at a sailing barge, negotiating the river below.
“My father’s publisher has asked another writer to undertake the project instead,” she said.
“Have they indeed?” he said. The barge was very low in the waterline under a heavy cargo of coal and seemed to require Mr. Tillingham’s absolute focus to make the turn under the bridge.
“They have kept my manuscript,” she added. “But I am expected to make no further contribution.”
“Impossible to share the writing of books, you know,” he said. “I tried it once or twice with friends, quite popular published writers in their own right, but it was injurious to our friendship.”
They sat in silence for a moment, and then Mr. Tillingham gave a big sigh. “Look here, it may be that I am the writer in question,” he admitted.
“What a strange coincidence,” she said. “I’m sure you would have mentioned it to me, had you not been so busy?”
“It slipped my mind,” he said. “I was approached about just such a project, and now I recollect your father’s name may have been attached. Yes, I would normally not have considered it, but you had led me to pull out that little book of his, and so I must have been in a sympathetic place when the publisher wrote to me.”
“It should be my book to write, Mr. Tillingham,” she said. “They had no right to ask another writer.”
“Another writer, you say, Miss Nash?” He raised an eyebrow, and she felt the crush of his sarcasm.