No Graves As Yet

“You all knew them. You met in the street day by day, at the post office, at the shops, over the garden wall. And most of all you met here. They were good people, and we are hurt and diminished by their going.”

He stopped for a moment, then began again. “We shall miss my mother’s patience, her spirit of hope that was never just easy words, never denial of evil or suffering, but the quiet faith that they could be overcome, and the trust that the future would be bright. We must not fail her by forgetting what she taught us. We should be grateful for every life that has given us happiness, and gratitude is the treasuring of the gift, the nourishing of it, the use, and then to pass it on bright and whole to others.”

He saw a movement, a nodding, a hundred familiar faces turned toward him, somber and bruised with the suddenness of grief, each one hurt by its own private memory.

“My father was different,” he continued. “His mind was brilliant, but his heart was simple. He knew how to listen to others without leaping to conclusions. He could tell a longer, funnier, more rambling joke than anyone else I know, and they were never grubby or unkind. For him, unkindness was the great sin. You could be brave and honest, obedient and devout, but if you could not be kind, then you had failed.”

He found himself smiling as he spoke, even though his voice was so thick with tears it was hard to make his words clear. “He did not care for organized religion. I have known him to fall asleep in church and wake up applauding because he thought for an instant that he was in a theater. He could not bear intolerance, and he thought those who confessed religious faith could be among the worst at this. But he would have defended St. Paul with his own life for his words on love: ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am nothing.’

“He was not perfect, but he was kind. He was gentle with others’ weaknesses. I would gladly labor all my life that you would be able to say the same of me when I, too, come to say goodbye—for the time being.”

He was shaking with relief as he returned to his seat beside Hannah and felt her hand close over his. But he knew that under her veil she was weeping and would not look at him.

Hallam Kerr took the pulpit, his words sonorous and sure but curiously lacking in conviction, as if he, too, had been swept out of his depth. He continued the service in the familiar way, the words and music woven like a bright thread through the history of life in the village. It was as certain and as rich as the passing seasons, barely changing from year to year down the centuries.

Afterward Joseph again chose the part that was in a way the most harrowing, standing by the church door and shaking hands with people as they fumbled for words, trying to express their grief and support, and few of them knowing how to. In some way the service had not been enough; something was still unsaid. There was a hunger, a need unmet, and Joseph was aware of it as a hollowness within himself. Now, when he needed it most, his words had lost their consuming power. The last shred of certainty in himself melted in his grasp.

Judith and Hannah stood together, still in the shadow of the arched doorway. Matthew had not yet come out. Joseph moved into the sun to speak to Shanley Corcoran, who waited a few yards away. He was not a tall man, and yet the power of his character, the vitality within him, commanded a respect so that no one crowded to him, although most did not even know who he was, let alone the brilliance of his achievements, nor would they have understood had they been told. The word scientist would have had to suffice.

He came forward to Joseph now, holding out both his hands, his face crumpled in grief.

“Joseph,” he said simply.

Joseph found the warmth of touch and the emotion it evoked almost unbearable. The familiarity of such a close friend was overwhelming. He was unable to speak.

It was Orla Corcoran who rescued him. She was a beautiful woman with a dark, exotic face, and her black silk dress with its elegant waist, flowing jacket to below the hip, and slender skirt beneath was the perfect complement to her delicate bones.

“Joseph knows our grief, my dear,” she said, laying her gloved hand on her husband’s arm. “We should not struggle to say that for which there can be no words. The village is waiting. This is their turn, and the sooner this duty is accomplished, the sooner the family can go back home and be alone.” She looked at Joseph. “Perhaps in a few days we may call and visit with you for a little longer?”

“Of course,” Joseph answered impulsively. “Please do. I shall not go back to Cambridge until the end of the week at least. I don’t know about Matthew—we haven’t discussed it. We just wanted to get today over.”

“Naturally,” Corcoran agreed, letting go of Joseph’s hand at last. “And Hannah will go back to Portsmouth, no doubt.” There was a pucker of anxiety between his brows. “I assume Archie is at sea, or he would be here now?”

Joseph nodded. “Yes. But they may grant him compassionate leave when he is next in port.” There was nothing he could do for Hannah. She must now face the ordeal of helping her children recover from the pain of their grandparents’ death. It was the first big loss in their lives, and they would need her. She had already been away for the larger part of a week.

“Of course, if it’s possible,” Corcoran acquiesced, still looking at Joseph with the slight frown, his eyes troubled.

“Why should it not be possible?” Joseph said a trifle sharply. “For heaven’s sake, his wife has just lost both her parents!”

“I know, I know,” Corcoran said gently. “But Archie is a serving officer. I dare say you have been too busy with your own grief to read much of the world news, and that is perfectly natural. However, this assassination in Sarajevo is very ugly.”

“Yes,” Joseph agreed uncomprehendingly. “They were shot, weren’t they?” Did it really matter now? Why was Corcoran even thinking about it—today, of all days? “I’m sorry, but . . .”

Corcoran looked a little stooped. It was so slight as to be indefinable, but the shadow in him was more than grief; there was something yet to come that he feared.

“It wasn’t a single lunatic with a gun,” he said gravely. “It’s far deeper than that.”

“Is it?” Joseph said without belief or comprehension.

“There were several assassins,” Corcoran said gravely. “The first did nothing. The second threw a bomb, but the chauffeur saw it coming and managed to speed up and around it.” His lips tightened. “The man who threw the bomb took some sort of poison, then jumped into the river, but he was pulled out and lived. The bomb exploded and injured several people. They were taken to hospital.” His voice was very low, as if he did not want the rest of the people standing in the graveyard to hear, even though it must be public knowledge. Perhaps they had not grasped the meaning of it.

“The archduke continued with his day’s agenda,” he went on, ignoring Orla’s frown. “He spoke to people in the town hall, and later he decided to go and visit the injured, but his chauffeur took a wrong turn and came face- to-face with the final assassin, who leaped on the running board of the car and shot the archduke in the neck and the duchess in the stomach. Both died within minutes.”

“I’m sorry.” Joseph winced. He could picture it, but the moment he did, their faces changed to those of John and Alys, and the death of two Austrian aristocrats a thousand miles away melted into unimportance.

Corcoran’s hand gripped his arm again, and the strength of him seemed to surge through it. “It was chaotically done, but it comes from a groundswell of feeling, Joseph. It could lead to an Austro-Serbian war,” he said quietly. “And then Germany might become involved. The kaiser reasserted his alliance with Austria-Hungary yesterday.”

It rose to Joseph’s lips to argue that it was too unlikely to consider, but he saw in Corcoran’s eyes how intensely he meant it. “Really?” he said with puzzlement. “Surely it will just be a matter of punishment, reparation, or something? It is an internal matter for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, isn’t it?”

Corcoran nodded, withdrawing his hand. “Perhaps. If there is any sanity in the world, it will.”

“Of course it will!” Orla said firmly. “It will be miserable for the Serbs, poor creatures, but it doesn’t concern us. Don’t alarm Joseph with such thoughts, Shanley.” She smiled as she said it. “We have enough grief of our own without borrowing other people’s.”

He was prevented from replying to her by the arrival of Gerald and Mary Allard, close friends of the family whom Joseph had known for many years. Elwyn was their younger son, but their elder, Sebastian, was a pupil of Joseph’s, a young man of remarkable gifts. He seemed to master not only the grammar and the vocabulary of foreign languages but the music of them, the subtlety of meaning and the flavor of the cultures that had given them birth.

It was Joseph who had seen the promise in him and encouraged him to seek a place at Cambridge to study