“If the scions of the greatest families are not protected, it makes it very clear to me that mothers everywhere are to lose their sons.” She turned her head away and raised a hand to pinch her nose as if to keep tears from coming. Beatrice was silent. Outside, the trees tossed their heads and tapped their branches on the windows, the sun danced on the lawns below, and in the distance the sea glittered; nature seemed for a moment to mock man’s frailty with its permanence.
“You must be worried about your nephew Hugh?” said Beatrice. As she said it, she felt a moment of pain, as if Agatha’s worries were contagious. She remembered Mr. Tillingham’s grave premonitions and felt a rising concern that Hugh was as likely to be in danger as anyone. “But won’t the doctors be far behind the lines?” she asked and was surprised to find a catch in her throat.
“With Hugh’s skills, we expect him to be in a base hospital or no closer than a clearing station,” said Agatha. “It’s still very dangerous, but he’s so sensible and we are very proud of him.” She was weeping now, even as she spoke in a measured tone. Tears trickled down the folds beside her cheeks and dripped from her chin. She did not seem to feel them.
“What can I do for you?” said Beatrice. She went to sink on her knees at Agatha’s side and put her arms around her. She was bewildered to see the strength gone from a woman on whom she now depended. Self-interest and concern vied equally as she cried, “Please, please help me understand what is wrong.”
Agatha wiped the tears from her face with the backs of her hands, and then looked at them for a moment before seeming to remember that she had a handkerchief in her wrapper. She took it out and wiped her face. Finally she took a deep breath, as if to help in squeezing out her words.
“Daniel has enlisted too,” she said, her voice faint. “And he will not be a doctor but is training to be an officer, and all I can see in these pages is his name in all the announcements of the dead.” She looked Beatrice full in the face, and her tears welled again and fell unheeded.
Beatrice could not think of a reassuring reply. Unwanted tears came to her own eyes, and she blinked hard so that she might retain her composure in this moment of need for Agatha. “I’m sure training must take a long time, and perhaps the war will end sooner than we think?” she managed. She did not believe it, for Agatha’s own husband had said otherwise. As Agatha nodded and clutched her hand, Beatrice knew they were both foolish to take comfort in the easy lie.
“I was so quick to push my own work and call others to rally, and so full of my own importance,” said Agatha. “It’s only now I realize how easy it was to do so on the backs of other women’s sons.”
“For Daniel’s and Hugh’s sake you must not fall apart,” said Beatrice. “Now that you see so clearly what is at stake, your work is all the more important. You must continue to lead this town, Mrs. Kent. If you retreat, I fear for our efforts.”
“That is exactly what my husband said,” said Agatha. “But he at least got to see Daniel before he went away to enlist. They did not tell me until Daniel was gone. Why do men presume to know what is best for us?”
“Your husband is a good man” was all Beatrice could say, though she was thinking of how her own father had put her money in trust and neglected even to tell her, and how he had allowed her to believe in her own independence, but at the end had treated her as a helpless woman. Such instincts, she realized now, might be ingrained in even the best of men.
“No doubt he feared that I would become impossibly self-indulgent and make a scene,” said Agatha. She sighed again, but some color came back into her cheeks and she sat up. “As I believe I have been doing these last few days, foolishly thinking I could just withdraw from the world and make it go away.”
“I’m sure it would be a relief to Mr. Kent to know you were up and about again,” said Beatrice. “You are our center.”
“I’m not sure where to start,” said Agatha. She looked around her little room and grimaced, as if seeing the disarray for the first time. Beatrice thought a bath and a good hair brushing might be in order, but she settled for holding out a plate of cakes.
“First, have a blackberry tart,” she said. “Cook’s orders.”
“Thank you for coming to pull me from my slough of despond,” said Agatha. “Now, while I eat, perhaps you can try to explain to me why our respected Latin mistress would be so careless of her reputation and mine as to visit the de Witte woman.”
The first day of school was a relief to Beatrice. The schoolroom called to her as if it were the sweet voice of civilization itself, summoning her to the white marble halls where poetry and mathematics, painting and song all echoed together in peaceful harmony. As she descended the hill, skirted the busy railway yard, and approached the neat school with its red-tiled gables and bright window boxes, a hope swelled within her that the innocence of schoolchildren might sweep the war from her eyes on this bright September day, and from the earth tomorrow.
A large clod of grass hit her skirt as she entered the school gates, and she had a brief vision of boys throwing clods and stones and even an old shoe at one another from two sides of a hedge before a voice split the air with a high-pitched shout.
“Teacher! Leg it!” and a scrum of figures ran away towards the side of the school, keeping their faces averted and their identities undistinguishable in matching boaters and brown blazers.
“Are you all right, miss?” asked a girl in a similar brown jacket, her hair scraped back tight enough to pull the skin from her face. She held a stack of books and a hat in her hands. “I can give you all their names, miss, if you like?”
“Not at this time, but if it happens again, I may be forced to ask,” said Beatrice, frowning to discourage such easy telling of tales. The girl looked crestfallen, so Beatrice softened her gaze, brushed the dirt from her skirt with a glove, and asked, “What is your name?”
“Jane, miss,” said the girl, with enthusiasm. “Those boys are always playing war, throwing things at each other. Then if they hit someone, they call out ‘Got the Hun’ and they run away like they’re all on one side again. Who would want to play such a stupid game, anyway?” From this comment Beatrice understood that the girl would dearly love to be invited.
Two boys carrying long sticks across their bodies came running around the front of the building, pointing and making the sound of rifle shots at each other. Other boys, cantering on imaginary horses with wooden swords aloft, charged them from behind with bloodcurdling screams and oaths.
“Oy! No running in the front court,” said a man’s voice, and Mr. Dimbly, the gymnastics master, came hurrying from the front door.
“Sorry, sir,” called one of the boys, but neither they nor the horsemen slackened their pace one bit as they all disappeared towards the tennis courts.
“Miss Nash, welcome to the second Western Front,” said Mr. Dimbly, his academic gown flying from his shoulders as he strode out to greet her. “Run along, Miss Jane. No pupils through the front door, as you know.”
“Yes, sir,” said Jane, and she hurried off to find the girls’ side entrance, shoulders hunched as if under expectation of further humiliations to come.
“Hard to keep the girls in their own area before and after school,” said Mr. Dimbly. “Wouldn’t do to have some girl pushed down but can’t keep these boys from their war games, these days. All the excitement in the air—makes them more boisterous than usual.”
“You sound as if you almost approve, Mr. Dimbly?” said Beatrice.
“Boys who think they’re soldiers try that much harder in the gymnasium,” he said. “Of course it makes it dashed hard for ’em to keep quiet in the Latin classroom, but that’s not my problem anymore, is it?” He smiled in a way that took any suggestion of malice from his words.
“I shall have to hope Latin comes before gymnastics in the school day,” said Beatrice.