Charles Todd - A Duty to the Dead

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.”