“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.”