A Nightingale in Winter

by Margaret K Johnson

  “Do you think for one moment those guys up in the wards would begrudge you one evening of harmless pleasure?” Dirk asked. “Or the chance to let your hair down? Literally.”

  There was laughter in his voice by the end, and Eleanor realized her hood had fallen back and her hair was tumbling all around her shoulders. She reached to pull the hood back up, but he stopped her.

  “No, please leave it. You look…It looks good.”

  Eleanor let her hand drop, and they walked on. “It does feel…free like this,” she confessed. “And I’d forgotten what it was like to wear anything else but my uniform.”

  “That color really suits you,” he told her casually.

  “Thank you.”

  From somewhere up ahead there was the sound of laughter. Megan and the other girls were in high spirits, and it was infectious.

  “And white suits you,” she teased him, and his own laugh rang out beneath the trees, soon joined by her own.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said. When their laughter died down, they walked on without speaking. The silence was companionable, and she knew suddenly that for this moment she was truly happy.

  “Eleanor?” Dirk said softly to her after a while. As she turned to him, she realized she could no longer hear the others ahead.

  “Yes?”

  But before he could continue, a bird began to sing, the beauty of its song bursting into the silence of the moon-filled wood.

  “Oh, what bird is that?” Eleanor asked, entranced.

  “A nightingale,” he told her softly. “I think it’s a nightingale.”

  The moonlight, the song of the nightingale, and the sweet scent of the lily of the valley all around them were too much for Dirk. As slowly as was humanly possible, he moved toward Eleanor, half expecting her to take fright and run off into the woods like a startled deer.

  Her eyes were wide pools in the moonlight, but he bent his head to plant the gentlest of kisses on her upturned face. First he kissed her cheeks and then the white column of her neck, his hands carefully cupping her head beneath the sort luxury of her hair, his body trembling as he denied the instinct to be as close to her as it was possible to be. If he were an artist, like that Cartwright fellow, this is how he would want to portray her—so very beautiful, so pure. Finally, he kissed her mouth, the merest brushing of his lips against hers, drawing away almost before she could register it. Before there was a chance for her to become frightened.

  “I’ve told you so much about myself,” he said softly. “Sometimes after I’ve mailed a letter to you, I think to myself, ‘Dirk, why did you ramble on like that? Poor Eleanor, having to read all your ravings.’”

  “No,” she smiled. “I don’t think any such thing.”

  He stroked her face. “You’re far too polite to ever admit it,” he said. “But anyway, with all I’ve told you, there’s still one thing you don’t know. The most important thing of all.”

  “What’s that?” she asked softly, her eyes huge as she looked up at him.

  He saw the nervousness there and knew he ought to back off again. He should say something light-hearted to take the heat out of the moment, but he wasn’t sure he was capable of doing so.

  Reaching up, he stroked a hand down the glorious soft length of her hair, trembling as, from somewhere, he found the strength to bite back the intense words of love he longed to express, offering her something much lighter instead, his tone of voice as casual as he was capable of making it.

  “Why, how much I care for you, of course,” he said.

  Leo stood in Liverpool Street Station, wondering where to go. He was here to fully recover from his injuries, but the prospect of paying Rose a visit wasn’t in the least appealing. The very last thing she would offer him was compassion or care. As he stood, uncertain what to do, a place name of the station departure’s board caught Leo’s eye. Hertford. It was where Pryce had said Eleanor was from, wasn’t it? Yes, he was certain it was. Eleanor had denied it so strongly, and why should she lie about such a thing? And yet Leo could still recall the strained expression on her face, and the way her hands had shaken when she’d poured him a glass of water. Pryce and his words had unsettled her, there could be no doubt about that. The whole affair was still a mystery and one Leo had wanted to clear up by asking Eleanor about it. Except that he hadn’t seen her again.

  There were five minutes to go until the Hertford train was due to depart. What was the church the Pryce fellow had spoken of? St Mark’s? Yes, he would do it. Why not? He didn’t have any other plans. At the very least, it would pass the time, and it was a way of feeling connected to Eleanor. Grimacing at how pathetic such a thought sounded, even in his own mind, Leo bought a ticket and got on the train.

  Leo’s head was throbbing when the train finally reached Hertford. It had been a torturously slow journey in a compartment with a nursemaid and her two blustery charges, and he was beginning to regret his impulsive decision. The chances were, Pryce was just a misguided fool, and Leo wouldn’t find any trace of either Eleanor or her family. Surely his top priority—his only priority—should be to get hold of some oil paint and canvas to record his impressions of the war in color, shouldn’t it?

  And yet…Eleanor had truly got under his skin, and as Leo walked from the station, a vivid image of her filled his mind—not draped in clinging fabric this time, but as she was, in her starched uniform, with her blond hair scraped back so severely from her face it stretched her skin taut. Eleanor seemed to do anything to make herself less attractive. While some of the other VADs shortened their frumpy uniforms a little, Eleanor’s skirts dragged on the floor. There would never be the slightest hope of seeing her ankles. Of course, none of those measures worked, Leo thought, since she was so naturally pretty.

  It wasn’t difficult to find St Mark’s. Barely half an hour after leaving the station, Leo was standing outside the vicarage front door, smoothing down his uniform before he knocked.

  After a moment, a middle-aged woman in uniform, who Leo took to be the housekeeper, opened the door.

  “Yes? Can I help you?” she asked, her expression not particularly friendly.

  Leo smiled at her. “I’m certain that you can. I’d like to see Reverend Martin, if it’s convenient.”

  The housekeeper hesitated. “The Reverend’s writing his sermon at the moment.”

  His heart leapt. Pryce had been right after all. “Oh, I see.” Leo carefully put a crestfallen edge to his voice. “Of course, I wouldn’t normally dream of inconveniencing him, only…” He paused for dramatic effect. “It’s about his daughter. It’s about Eleanor.”

  The housekeeper looked at him. “You’d better come in.”

  “Thank you,” Leo said and stepped over the threshold.

  When Eleanor awoke at Royaumont the next morning, she allowed herself the luxury of a few more minutes in bed, surrendering herself to thoughts of the previous evening’s magical walk in the moonlight. It was like a dream, except that there was a stem of lily of the valley pressed between the pages of a book lying next to her bed, and she could remember absolutely every detail, and every single word that had passed between herself and Dirk.

  They had walked for hours, her hand linked in his arm, and Dirk told her how he’d felt as if he didn’t know who he was any more after the discovery of his being adopted.

  “It wasn’t until a year or so ago that I finally realized you have to decide for yourself who you are and who you want to be,” he said. “It isn’t about your background or your upbringing at all.”

  Now, in bed, Eleanor could hear his voice as clearly as if he were in the room with her. She saw herself walking along the moonlit path with him, haltingly confiding in him about her cold, distant life with her father, and of how much happier she was here in France. They were simple facts, but facts that had taken her a huge leap of faith to disclose. In coming to France, she had wanted to make a completely new start, to leave the past and its hurts behind her forever. Yet somehow, she
had come to trust Dirk enough to begin to let her guard down, to let him have a glimpse of the person she really was.

  After their walk, they had returned to the abbey buildings in the early hours of the morning. Dirk had stood smiling down at her in the darkness for a long while.

  “I don’t know if I shall see you very much before we leave,” he told her softly. “Dr. Ivens wants me to finish my article on Royaumont so she can comment on it. I think she’s going to keep me pretty busy. But I’ll write to you very soon, just as soon as I get back.”

  Then he brushed her mouth with a final kiss and wished her goodnight, leaving her to make her way to her monk’s cell as if she were walking on air.

  Eleanor smiled to herself, remembering his very first letter to her, and how apprehensive it had made her feel. But now it was different. Last night he’d told her he cared for her, and she knew that after she returned to Revigny, she would wait in a fever of impatience to hear from him again.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “IT IS MY BELIEF that man has grown so ashamed of what he has become that he instinctively chooses to be as similar to animals as it is possible for him to be in his behavior.”

  Leo had been in the reverend’s study for a good half hour according to the loudly ticking clock on the mantelpiece, and still Eleanor’s name hadn’t been mentioned by either of them.

  Leo had been ushered in by the housekeeper and subjected to a rigorous scrutiny from the white-haired man seated at the desk by the window. The reverend got to his feet to greet him, his handshake firm, his gaze direct. He was, Leo decided, an attractive man for his age.

  Seats were taken, tea brought, and questions asked about his regiment and the current news from the Front. But not one inquiry about Eleanor or Leo’s business there.

  Leo was intrigued but not impatient. Pryce had obviously got his facts right, and in the meantime, the room with its plants, books, and brown leather upholstered chairs pleased him. Indeed, after the conditions at the Front and the appalling train journey here, it was paradise. Moreover, Leo was enjoying listening to the confidently pronounced opinions of Eleanor’s father. It was a great pity that a man with such a mind should waste it by devoting his life to God. Such a man should be debating the philosophy and theories of art with Severini, as Leo himself never felt he could adequately do.

  The thought brought him up short, causing him to blink as he recognized its truth. He was not an equal to Severini in intellectual debate. But by God, he would be as an artist. No, not an equal, a better. One who was followed, rather than a follower.

  Suddenly, the old man’s pontificating felt tedious to him. He wanted to paint. He wanted to find out what he’d come here to find out, but it was time to hurry the reverend along.

  “What is your profession when you aren’t soldiering?” Reverend Martin asked.

  The question surprised Leo, and he sat up in his chair. “I’m an artist.”

  The reverend looked unimpressed. “A precarious occupation.”

  “It can be,” Leo said, realizing now that Reverend Martin had assumed Leo was courting his Eleanor. A glow went through Leo’s body at the thought and, all at once, there was nothing he wanted more than to be married to her. Leo and Eleanor. It sounded good, even better than Severini and Jeanne.

  “However, I’m fortunate in that my work sells regularly,” Leo continued, barely suppressing a smile. This was a barefaced lie, since he had never been prepared to compromise his style to give his paintings a more popular appeal. No great artist did, and Leo intended to be a very great artist indeed.

  “You needn’t worry, sir,” he said. “I shall be able to support you daughter without difficulty.”

  There was a small pause. Leo could hear two locks ticking at different times. Bird song drifted in through an open window.

  “You’ll have your reasons for wanting to marry Eleanor, I’m sure,” Reverend Martin said at last. “I’m not blind. No doubt her shapely figure recommends itself to a young man such as yourself.” He surveyed Leo thoughtfully, steepling his hands beneath his chin.

  Leo imagined him in such a posture in front of his congregation on a Sunday. Only then, he would be talking of loaves and fishes or something similar instead of alluding to the fullness of his daughter’s breasts and the curve of her hips.

  “You wouldn’t be the first young man to have his head turned by such attributes,” he continued.

  “Eleanor is certainly very attractive,” Leo agreed.

  “Indeed,” the reverend said. “But you have to ask yourself whether that in itself is enough. You must, after all, have known her for a very short time. Perhaps your injury has made you aware of your mortality, as only a bullet skimming past one’s brain is able to do?”

  The reverend’s words painted a vivid picture. Leo’s mouth felt dry, and his nostrils detected the smells of sulfur and mud.

  “Keep up on the left there!” He seemed to hear Montague’s voice, and perspiration formed on his forehead. He could still see the reverend watching him, but it was if he were seeing him through the battlefield smoke.

  “I am sorry,” the reverend said. “I’ve reminded you of it all, haven’t I?”

  Leo returned to the arm-chaired study with a blink. There had been undisguised satisfaction in the other man’s voice, and Leo surmised that the reverend had wanted to upset him. Since this was hardly a Christian instinct, Leo’s interest gathered momentum. Perhaps he had more in common with the Reverend than he’d first thought. “It takes one to know one,” Edie would say, and it was true.

  “Not at all,” Leo replied.

  The reverend smiled, unconvinced. “Eleanor’s a quiet creature, is she not? You have, I suppose, known her for long enough to notice that?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “A man could tire of that after time has turned flesh slack. Perhaps even before.”

  The Reverend Martin was a very surprising man indeed. He seemed to be warning Leo off his daughter. That in itself was not unusual, but his methods of doing so certainly were.

  “She talks to me,” Leo said, remembering their conversations about his drawings.

  “Then you are fortunate indeed,” the reverend said, and it occurred to Leo suddenly that the man did not actually like his own daughter. “Eleanor has always been quiet. She was a quiet child, and she grew up to be a quiet young woman. A disappointment, if I’m entirely honest about it. An irritation at times. She is a mouse-like creature with no opinions of her own on any subject. In fact, I would go so far as to say that at times it has been like having a stranger in the house.” The gray eyes latched onto Leo’s even more firmly. “And then, of course, for two years, she barely spoke at all. But then you’ll know all about that, since, as you say, she talks to you.”

  Two years? What was the man talking about?

  The reverend smiled in a way that indicated Leo hadn’t successfully managed to hide his surprise and confusion. Bluffing now would serve no purpose at all; honesty would be more effective.

  “Actually, sir,” he said with as much baffled humility as he could summon, “Eleanor hasn’t mentioned any such thing to me. I have to admit that it concerns me greatly to hear of it. Tell me, was her long period of silence the result of an illness?”

  The reverend shook his head. “Not a physical illness, no, not as such.”

  “Then…?”

  “Come with me,” the reverend bade him. “There’s something I should like you to see.”

  The woman in the painting who smiled so boldly out from the picture was clearly of a very different personality type than Eleanor.

  “This is my second wife, Charlotte. Eleanor’s stepmother,” the reverend told him.

  They stood side by side in front of the portrait.

  “She’s very beautiful,” Leo said.

  “Indeed.” The reverend was absorbed by the portrait.

  His face gave no clues as to his thoughts. Leo decided to take a gamble. “I understand she passed away?
”

  The reverend instantly looked his way. “That is what she would tell you! Now, let me see, what did she say it was? Measles? Influenza? An ailing heart?”

  A fine spray of the man’s indignant spittle fell onto Leo’s chin. As surreptitiously as possible, Leo reached up to wipe it away. Things were suddenly getting very interesting indeed.

  “I’m afraid I don’t recall,” he said at last, watching as the reverend stabbed his finger in the direction of a second portrait that hung next to that of his wife. It was of a young man.

  “And tell me,” the reverend demanded, “do you happen to recall what fate she said had befallen her stepbrother? Hmm? An epidemic, was it? One convenient illness that took both mother and son in one fell swoop?”

  Leo waited, sensing that silence was the best policy.

  “Well, whatever she may have said, I tell you it is lies, all of it. Oh, she may well have conveniently convinced herself of its truth, but I assure you that both my wife and my son are very much alive. And now…” He stepped closer to Leo. “I should like to know why you have come here.”

  Leo opened his mouth but didn’t get the chance to speak.

  “And don’t try to tell me it was to ask for Eleanor’s hand, unless you’ve done so without her knowledge. My daughter sneaked away from here without so much as a goodbye. Such an act made it perfectly clear to me that she had no intention of ever returning.” He paused for a moment before continuing more calmly, his voice filled now with something akin to scorn. “Eleanor is afraid of me, and because of this, I do not expect to see her again now that she has left. Which is why I’m quite certain that she would not have sent you here to ask my permission to marry her.”

  The man had a point. “The thing is,” Leo said, “Eleanor doesn’t know I’m here. I felt I couldn’t marry her without knowing something of her background, and she was, shall we say, reticent on the subject. Then, by chance, I met a soldier who recognized her, and he told me where you lived.”