—
The walk up the hill to Agatha Kent’s home did much to restore Beatrice to good humor. Mrs. Kent had not been seen about town much the past few days and it was rumored she was under the weather, which was of great surprise and interest to the town, where she was declared to be usually “stout as a horse” and “strong as a dreadnought” and other such phrases, filled with goodwill if not flowering with femininity. Beatrice had volunteered to take the minutes at the Belgian Relief Committee in Agatha’s absence, and now that she had transcribed and edited them into a neat report, she planned to deliver it to Agatha’s home. With the start of a new term looming next week, she hoped that Agatha would ask her to stay to tea so she might acquire some last-minute advice and reassurance on navigating the treacherous waters of school life.
The maid, Jenny, opened the door and looked relieved to see Beatrice. It was not the look usually offered an unannounced visitor and led her to ask: “Is everything all right, Jenny?”
“I’m glad you’ve come, miss,” said the girl, stepping back to welcome her into the front hall. “Mrs. Kent hasn’t been home to any visitors at all these past few days. But she likes you.”
“I don’t want to intrude,” said Beatrice. “I just needed to deliver some papers.”
“No, no, come in, come in,” said Jenny. “Cook and I are at our wit’s end how to cheer her up. Cook will tell you herself.” She beckoned, and Mrs. Kent’s cook slipped from behind the door to the back kitchen and came hurrying up the hall, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Glad to see you, miss,” said the cook.
“I heard Mrs. Kent is sick?” asked Beatrice.
“Not so as you’d call the doctor, I don’t think,” said Jenny. “But she keeps to her room and such. Doesn’t really get dressed.”
“Yesterday she had all her meals on a tray and hardly touched the steak pudding,” whispered Cook. “Imagine that! Mrs. Kent turning up her nose at my steak pudding? You know she’s not herself.”
“I wondered if we should telephone to Mr. Kent,” said Jenny. “But we didn’t like to call him, seeing as how he’s so busy.”
“What with the war and everything,” added Cook.
“And the young gentlemen are both away,” said Jenny.
“You show Miss Nash up to her study, direct like, and I’ll bring the tea tray right on up behind you,” said Cook to Jenny. “That way she can’t say no to the visit.”
“I don’t like to intrude,” said Beatrice again.
“Nonsense,” said Cook. “You’ll be a sight for sore eyes. Now just make sure you make her take a sandwich or two, miss.”
Upstairs at the study door, Jenny and Cook gave their mistress no chance to demur. After the briefest of knocks, Jenny announced Beatrice in a cheerful tone, as if she were expected, and Cook almost pushed Beatrice into the small windowed sunporch off Agatha’s bedroom, elbowing her from behind with the heavy tea tray.
“I’ll just put the tea right here, madam,” said Cook, not phrasing it as a question. She dumped the loaded tray with a clatter on a low table without regard for the papers and magazines strewn across the surface. “Now you be sure and try the blackberry tarts, miss, they just come out of the oven.” With that both servants bustled loudly from the room and Beatrice was left alone to face her reluctant hostess.
Agatha was tucked among pillows on the window seat of her porch, wearing the wrapper she had once loaned to Beatrice. Her hair was casually pulled into a loose braid and her legs were bare, her feet tucked into a pair of soft embroidered slippers. Periodicals and newspapers lay on the seat and had slipped or been tossed onto the floor. A pair of stockings on a chair back and a comb left on the table suggested an incongruous air of carelessness. Agatha raised a quizzical eyebrow, but her face stayed slack and she could not seem to find the energy to speak.
“I’m so sorry to intrude,” said Beatrice. “I came to bring you the committee minutes and your staff seemed to think you might be in need of cheerful company?”
“Cheerful company is as welcome to melancholy as lemon juice on a burn,” said Agatha. “But if you promise not to smile and prattle at me, you may stay and pour the tea. I fear I have not even the energy to lift the teapot this afternoon.”
“Are you unwell?” asked Beatrice, pouring tea. “You seem”—she looked around the room again—“not quite yourself?”
“You’ll forgive my appearance, I hope,” said Agatha, smoothing her hair. “I was not aware I was entertaining.” She accepted a cup of tea and leaned to close her eyes and inhale the fragrant steam of the cup. “I am indeed not myself these days. But who can be in these dreadful times?”
“We missed you at the committee meeting,” said Beatrice. “Lady Emily cannot control her disdain for Mrs. Fothergill in your absence.”
“I had the vague sort of hope that if I curled up in here, it all might stop,” said Agatha, “as if it were a bad dream.”
“Did you mean to will Mrs. Fothergill out of existence?” asked Beatrice. “I would have enjoyed seeing her disappear from the committee room in a puff of smoke.”
“I mean the war, of course,” said Agatha. “It is a bad dream, is it not? We are all so caught up in the work of it and the excitement and the urge to do important things, and we have not stopped to see the true nature of it.”
“Celeste and I enjoyed a lovely tea at Amberleigh de Witte’s cottage,” said Beatrice, hoping to shock Agatha Kent into some rebuke. Agatha was a compass by which Beatrice had set her course, and this pale, lethargic creature with the strange ideas seemed to have stolen her mind.
“I have been reading over my periodicals,” said Agatha, not appearing to hear her. She balanced her saucer on the bench beside her and picked up a copy of the weekly Gentlewoman. “I had not noticed, you see, how the war has slipped into our lives.” She began to turn the pages slowly in her lap. “I always liked the social column, the engagements and marriages, such cheerful news of our brightest young things starting their lives…”
“At my aunt’s house I always read the Positions Available for governesses and parlor maids,” said Beatrice, offering Agatha the small plate of finger sandwiches. “Not that I planned a career as a parlor maid, but it was reassuring to see that one might manage in a pinch.”
“At first it was just the King canceling the visit to Cowes,” said Agatha, referring to the August sailing regatta. She waved away the sandwiches. “Then it was the military commissions added to the names in the notices…‘Second Lieutenant Viscount Lindsey, of the King’s Own, is happy to report his engagement to…’ and so on.” She paused, and as she sighed she seemed to slowly deflate into the cushions that supported her. “Then the cancellations…‘The Viscount and his fiancée were to have been married at St. George’s Parish Church…’ First just one or two amid the weddings, then more canceled than announced. And now the lists run with the names of all the finest young men of Britain, their deaths announced in place of their marriages, their lives ended before they can begin.”
“It is awful,” said Beatrice. “I expect some very ancient families will lose their heirs and their family lines be cut off on both sides of the conflict.”