A Duty to the Dead

by Charles Todd

  The early dark caught up with me long before I’d reached my destination, but through the rain-wet windows I could see rolling downs, the lights of farms, and the houses of villages through which we passed with only the briefest of stops.

  The fruit trees were bare, but I had seen clouds of blossoms, coming up from Dover the spring we arrived in England from the Colonel’s last posting in India, and their beauty had taken my breath away after the dry featureless expanse of the Northwest Frontier. Now the hop fields were flat and hardly recognizable save for the oast houses, like broken windmills. In one pasture, sheep huddled, backs to the wind and almost invisible in the shelter of a stone wall. A man in a cart crouched wretchedly under his umbrella as he waited for the train to thunder past a crossing. I think my resolution dropped with the weather and I wished myself home again, sitting by the fire in comfort.

  In his letter, Jonathan Graham had told me that I would be met. But when the train pulled into Tonbridge the winter dusk had turned to darkness, and there was no one waiting as I stepped out onto the windswept platform. For a mercy the rain had stopped. I could see the station master talking with the engineer, and so I walked into the booking office where it was warmer. It too was as empty. Then through the front window I saw the flicker of a lamp in the street beyond and heard the sound of a horse being turned. I went through to find a small dogcart there, and a driver muffled to the teeth against the cold.

  “Miss Crawford?”

  “Yes, I’m Miss Crawford.”

  He grudgingly got down to fetch my valise and my small case from the platform, then returned to hand me up into the cart. But I shook my head. “I’ll ride with you, instead.” Reaching for the blanket folded on a seat, I realized that it was colder than I was.

  Without a word he settled me into the seat next to him. As he climbed up to join me, his bulk blocked the worst of the wind. I huddled beside him and set my teeth to stop them from chattering. In the cold air, my arm ached. Broken bones tend to do that.

  The horse snorted and began to walk on, and I said to the man holding the reins, “What is your name, please?”

  “Robert.”

  It was all the information I got for several miles as we left the lights of Tonbridge behind and the darkness settled around us like a cloak. The blanket across my knees began to unthaw and I kept my gloved fingers cradled in an edge of it. I watched houses and then the occasional farm pass by, windows lit, people no doubt just sitting down to their tea. I felt remarkably alone, and even unwanted. I could sense Robert’s hostility and in a way understood it—it was my fault he’d had to drive out on a night like this.

  We must have traveled five miles or more beyond the last village when we came to a large, rambling house set back in the trees behind a high wall. It was brick, and every window seemed to be blazing with light. At first I thought it must be my destination, ready to welcome me, but as we passed by, Robert must have sensed my surprise.

  “The asylum,” he said, and fell silent again.

  The horse trotted on, the sound of his hooves and the cart wheels filling the night.

  Robert reached behind him into the cart and brought out a rug I hadn’t seen in the darkness at the station. He thrust it toward me, and I took it, gratefully wrapping it over my shoulders. The wind seemed to cut straight through my traveling coat, touching my skin with sharp fingers.

  Some time later, the cart’s nearside wheels dropped off the road into a deep rut. The jolt caught me off guard, and I was nearly thrown from my seat onto the verge.

  Robert’s hand came out in the nick of time and caught me, holding me back as the horse regained the road and the cart stopped rocking wildly. I hadn’t even had time to cry out, it had all happened so fast. But for the quickness of the man beside me, I’d have been pitched out on my head. Or worse, perhaps, on my still-healing arm.

  I shuddered at the close call, and Robert said, “Beg pardon. I must have dozed off.”

  My heart was racing, and I could still feel his fingers in that bruising grip.

  I’d have been happy to see a stoat or a fox along the road, any living thing, by the time I could glimpse the lights of another village ahead of us.

  Cottages, houses, then a pub, The Bells, its sign swinging in the wind, a cricket pitch on the other side of the road, and then the tall silhouette of a church set on a slight rise behind a low stone wall. To one side was what must have been the rectory, a lovely tall black and white Tudor house, and through the mullioned windows I could see a comfortable parlor done up in blue and cream, with a pair of china dogs set on the windowsill, their backs to the stormy night.

  We turned the other way, under the sheltering limbs of two great trees overhanging the wall, and then another turning brought us into a lane with four or five houses in a row. The largest of them was Georgian and backed up to the far side of the churchyard. Gardens that must have been colorful in summer lay in the shadow of an iron fence, and a gate set into it led up the walk to an elegant door.

  A single lamp burned above it, and the horse drew to a halt, as if he knew he had come home.

  Robert got down and came around to help me, taking the rugs from me. Then he opened the iron gate for me and carried my valise and case up the walk before lifting the knocker.

  A maid answered the summons almost at once, opening the door wide and welcoming me inside. Robert set down my bags, then disappeared into the night as the door shut on him.

  “Mrs. Graham asked me to show you directly to your room, Miss Crawford. There’s dinner in half an hour. I’ll come for you to show you the way.”

  “And you are?”

  “Susan, Miss.” She bobbed a curtsey, smiling in welcome.

  “Thank you, Susan.” I was glad not to have to present myself to Arthur’s mother travel worn and with muddy hems.

  The hall floor was patterned parquet, and on a gateleg table between two doorways stood a vase with dried flowers arranged in it. Above it was a fine oil painting of a black horse, and I wondered if this was Merlin the Wise. As I followed Susan up the lovely curving stairs and down a wide passage, I thought of my mother’s last words of advice.

  If you wish to make an impression, my dear, wear the blue gown.

  As always, she was right. The blue gown suited this house very well.

  There was a fire on the hearth of the room I was taken to, and warm water in the pitcher on the stand. I washed my face and hands, then changed my clothes. I was just tidying my hair when Susan came to collect me.

  We went down to a dining room where only one end of the long table had been set. A woman was standing near it, waiting for me. Arthur’s mother.

  She was not at all as I’d pictured her in my mind. Somehow the words “I did it for Mother’s sake” had prepared me for someone small and fragile and perhaps more than a little domineering.

  Instead she was younger than I’d expected, and tall, with graying dark hair, blue eyes, and a confident carriage that spoke of years of managing her family on her own after her husband’s death. I looked for any resemblance to her son and decided it was in the height, the dark hair, the strong chin.

  She greeted me with a warm smile of welcome, but I knew very well she’d been examining me even as I examined her.

  “Hello, my dear! Robert tells me you came close to a nasty fall. Are you all right? Should I send for Dr. Philips?”

  “No harm done,” I said lightly. “Thank you for asking.”

  Her eyes were searching my face. “You knew Arthur well, did you?”

  I’d met that look before, from mothers and sisters and wives wanting to know how their dear boy had gone to his death, wanting some crumb of comfort and love to fill the emptiness that lay ahead of them.

  “He was very brave,” I said. “When he was wounded, he took it well. I often read to him and a few of the others, when I had time. Or wrote letters for them. I wrote his last one to you. He couldn’t hold a pen, you see, and he wanted desperately to tell you how much he cared.
”

  “Yes, I’ve cherished that letter. A fine young man. I think in many ways he was my favorite. Though a mother shouldn’t say that, should she?”

  “He was a man any mother could be proud of,” I answered with sincerity, though I had said it many times in many letters to women I would never meet.

  “Yes. Yes, he was.” Remembering her manners, she said, “Please, sit here by me. Jonathan will be down before long. He’s here on convalescent leave.”

  “Arthur told me he had three brothers. Are they all in the Army?”

  Her face clouded. “Timothy isn’t serving—he wasn’t allowed to join the army, you know. He was born with a clubfoot, and although he walks very well, he was considered unsuitable. He feels rather cut up about that, with everyone else enlisting or already at the Front.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t be! To tell you the truth, it’s one less worry for me. I’ve suffered enough with Arthur and Johnnie.”

  Before she could tell me about the last son, Jonathan walked in. I knew him at once because of his wound. He was a paler version of Arthur, his hair a lighter brown, his eyes a less vibrant shade of blue.

  He had a terrible scar across his face. Shrapnel, at a guess. It was still half covered by bandages, but I could see where the wound began high on his forehead near the hairline, and then the last thin line of it passing down his jaw and back to his chin. His mother made the introductions, and he shook my hand.

  “Where were you wounded?” I asked before I thought. But I was used to talking to bandaged men, and more often than not they wanted it known where they had served.

  “Mons,” he said shortly, and went to kiss his mother’s cheek. She turned to him with a softness that spoke of her love for him, and I glanced away. It was such a private moment, and touching.

  Another man, leaning on his cane, came in at that moment. He was fairer than either of his brothers, with gray-blue eyes.

  Again I was introduced, this time to Timothy, and he said at once, “Mother tells me you knew Arthur?”

  “I was his nurse for some time, yes.”

  He nodded. “We were grateful for your letter afterward. It’s hard to think of him dying so far away. We expect him to walk through the door any day, smiling, calling to one of us.”

  They spoke of Arthur with such warmth, almost as if he were still alive.

  It occurred to me that under different circumstances, I might have been brought here after the war, Arthur’s arm linked with mine as he presented me to his family. What would they have thought of me, then? Not as Florence Nightingale, who had nursed their brother, but as someone who mattered to him? Arthur had asked me to marry him, before he lost his leg. He’d been in high spirits after the doctor moved him from guarded to satisfactory condition, believing he’d heal now. I’d smiled and lightly given my usual response to impetuous proposals. “You must speak to my father first. He outranks you, you see.”

  It hadn’t put him off, as I’d expected. On the contrary, he’d wanted to write to the Colonel directly, but nothing more had been said about that after the amputation.

  Susan appeared with the first course as we were sitting down. As she served us, we talked about people we might know in common, about London, about the sinking of Britannic. I found myself thinking that this was a family like so many others in Britain tonight, trying to pretend that life was going on as it had before, despite the empty chair at the table and the shadow hanging over Jonathan’s future.

  The door opened again, and I thought that the third son must be making his appearance at last, but it was an older man who stepped into the room and nodded to Mrs. Graham. He was tall, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest, a handsome man with thick fair hair that was graying. I realized all at once that this was Robert. I hadn’t seen him clearly in the dark, muffled as he was in scarves, his hat pulled down against the wind.

  There was an air of impatience about him, and his manner was very different from that of the man in the cart.

  Hardly a servant, was my first thought. Yet he’d been sent to fetch me.

  “If you need me, I’ll be in my room,” he said, and was gone.

  Mrs. Graham turned to me. “I don’t know if Arthur told you about Robert. He’s a Douglas, a cousin on my father’s side. He was such a blessing to us when my husband died. There was no one to take my sons in hand, and Robert saw to it that they were given the opportunities my husband would have wished. Robert taught them to ride and to shoot and to be men.”

  Arthur had said nothing at all about him. But I made polite noises, and she turned to another subject, the journey from Somerset.

  I could see that I wouldn’t have an opportunity tonight to speak to Jonathan privately. Tomorrow, I thought, would be best. I had the feeling as the evening wore on that Arthur’s mother was anxious, as if she’d wanted me to come here and, now that I was under her roof, wasn’t certain how to entertain me. She was often silent as Jonathan and Timothy talked to me about the war, and I tried several times to change the subject for her sake.

  We finished our meal and went into the parlor where the tea tray had been taken. After another hour or more of polite conversation, I excused myself, saying that the journey had been tiring, and went up to bed.

  I carried with me the picture of a close family still grieving for their loss.

  In the morning, Susan tapped lightly on my door and took me down to the dining room where breakfast was waiting.

  Jonathan and Timothy must have come and gone, judging from two empty cups and saucers on the table. Mrs. Graham was just helping herself to a dish of eggs from the sideboard.

  I filled my own plate and sat down, taking up my cup. Mornings aren’t my best time, and I let the tea flow through me, waking me up. Mrs. Graham was cheerful and the conversation general until we’d finished eating.

  And then she said, setting her knife and fork across her plate, “You have a message, you said. From Arthur.”

  I set down my knife and fork as well, though I hadn’t finished eating. “The message is for Jonathan, Mrs. Graham. Though Arthur sent you his dearest love.”

  “Yes, I understand. But surely you could share it with me?”

  “I’m—I’m not sure that was what Arthur wished me to do. But I think Jonathan should be the one to answer that.”

  She was frowning at me, her back straight, her shoulders squared, as if bracing herself for an argument. And then she relaxed.

  “Of course. You’re right, my dear. It’s just that I’m hungry for any crumb of comfort. You can’t imagine what it is like to know your child is buried at sea in a foreign place, and will never come home again. I haven’t been able to believe he’s gone forever. I tell myself, and then I slip into the habit of putting it out of my mind.”

  I thought she was cajoling me. But I was saved from an answer when Jonathan came into the room and said, “Miss Crawford? If you’ve finished your breakfast, perhaps you’d like to see the memorial to Arthur in the church.”

  “Yes,” I said—not too quickly, I fervently hoped. But my relief must have been plain on my face. “I would like that.”

  “I’ll ask Susan to fetch your cloak, while you finish your toast.”

  “Thank you.”

  While Mrs. Graham watched with a mixture of frustration and worry, I drained my cup and rose to leave the room.

  As I reached the door, she said, “Forgive me for pressing, won’t you?”

  “Yes, of course, I’m sorry to have made you uncomfortable.”

  And I was gone, hurrying to the hall, where Susan was just bringing down my cloak. Jonathan was standing there, his face unreadable, but one hand was clenching and unclenching, as if he dreaded what was to come.

  I wondered fleetingly if he already knew about the girl…or was she merely a figment of my own runaway imagination? I was beginning to think she was. Certainly Susan, who must have been closer to forty than thirty, wasn’t a likely candidate for Arthur’s affections. />
  We went down the front steps and turned toward the churchyard. The wind had dropped, and the air was crisp. I said, as we walked, “I’m afraid I’ve upset your mother. But Arthur was still very much in command of his faculties when he asked me to speak directly to you. I don’t think he intended—” I broke off.

  “We were close,” Jonathan said, but somehow I hadn’t got that impression from Arthur. He’d not spoken of his brothers except in passing. I knew very little about any of them.

  We opened the iron gate and walked through it into the churchyard, my boots crunching in the cold, dead grass. Above us the golden stone of the church apse led the eye upward to the pinnacles gracing the top. Against the blue-gray sky, they stood out like sentinels.

  The church door was not locked, and we went inside, where the cold stone seemed to hold on to the stormy chill of last night. I pulled my cloak around me as Jonathan led me to the brass plaque that had been set in the wall between two windows. The stained glass spilled color onto the floor at my feet, and I looked up to the figures of saints high above my head before I could bring myself to look directly at Arthur’s memorial.

  He was gone.

  There was a finality to that as I read the name and dates engraved into the brass. Beneath them were the words Beloved son and brother in graceful script.

  I very much wanted to reach out and touch it. But not with Jonathan there.

  I had not been at the service when his body was committed to the sea. I had been standing in the operating theater fighting to save another life. I had felt the ship slow, then resume her speed, and not allowed myself to think why.

  I swallowed my tears and said as steadily as I could, “He would have been pleased.”

  “Yes.”

  We turned away without another word and walked back into the sunlight. Standing in the shadows of the west door, Jonathan said, “I expect I’ll be as ready now as I ever will be. What was it Arthur entrusted to you to say to me?”