A Duty to the Dead

“I don’t see there’s been any harm done, waiting until now to pass it on to his brother,” he replied slowly. “But you have a responsibility not to put it off again. A duty to the dead is sacred, I needn’t tell you that.”

I lied. I did it for Mother’s sake. I repeated the words in my head. I couldn’t tell my father that with time those words had become sinister. It was only my imagination running rampant, of course. Still, I was relieved that he’d found them unremarkable.

“It’s not your place to sit in judgment, you know.” And there it was again, that sixth sense that told him what I was thinking. “There must be a dozen explanations. Perhaps he tried to make himself seem braver than he was. Or safer than he was. Or perhaps there’s a girl involved. Someone his mother had hoped he might marry one day. And he’d lied about how he felt toward her. Men do strange things in the excitement of going off to war. Make promises they can’t keep, get themselves involved more deeply than they might have done otherwise. If Arthur Graham had wanted you to know more, he’d have explained why his message mattered so much. For whatever reason, he didn’t.”

And that was the crux of it. Arthur had never told me anything. And I’d been afraid that it meant there had been someone else…

It wasn’t merely vanity.

I had listened to too many men in pain, in delirium, on the point of being sent home, dying. The dying often regretted a hasty marriage that would leave the girl a widow. Sometimes they regretted not marrying. And how many letters had I written to girls who had just told the wounded man that she was expecting his child, and he would turn his head to the wall. “It can’t be mine,” they sometimes murmured in despair. Or they were in a fever to find a way to marry her before the baby came. War and women. They seemed to go together.

There were other worries facing the wounded, of course. Debt, a family’s need, a mother’s illness, how to live with one arm or without sight. But Arthur had said, It has to be set right…

I heaved a sigh, not of relief but of self-knowledge. Arthur Graham had confided a responsibility to me. I’d made a promise to carry that through. And there was an end to it. His past was never mine to judge, and caring hadn’t altered that.

I must go to Kent. I’d done both Arthur and his family a disservice by putting off doing what I’d sworn to do. If nothing else, they should have a chance to carry out Arthur’s last wish. Their duty. And not mine.

Honor above all things. I’d heard my father drum that into his subalterns and his younger lieutenants.

What I needed now was to hear my father say that it wasn’t selfishness that had held me back after all, it had been a matter of another duty, and I’d had to answer that call first. That Arthur hadn’t misplaced his trust.

To put it bluntly, I wanted comforting.

But he didn’t answer that need. And I couldn’t ask.

My own guilty conscience nattered at me instead. And the Colonel was right, there was no excuse for failing in one’s duty. No comfort to be given. I thought bitterly, whatever I discovered in Kent would teach me that dying heroes sometimes had feet of clay.

Then my father said gently, “Bess. If you’d gone down with Britannic, there would have been no one to deliver his message.”

Which brought me back to the nightmare that had haunted me on my long journey home. Full circle.

“I can’t go now-” I gestured to my arm.

“You aren’t fit enough to travel again just now, and you must write to this brother first and ask if the family will receive you. Your mother would tell you that war or no war, the rules of courtesy haven’t changed.” He smiled. “You do know how to reach the Grahams?”

“He made me memorize the address as well.”

My father studied my face. I wanted to squirm, as I’d done as a child when I’d got caught in a mischief. He said, “It’s not wise to get close to a soldier, Bess. Ask your mother.”

I wanted to cry, but I forced myself to smile, for his sake. “Yes, so you’ve told me. A solicitor, a banker, a merchant prince. But never a soldier.”

But in my mind I could still see Arthur’s face. The worst of it was, I knew very well he’d have done everything in his power to carry out my last wishes. How could I have let him down?

Besides, I would probably have never known about that other girl, if he’d lived.

CHAPTER THREE

Somerset, Late December 1916

MY ARM WAS stubborn and refused to heal properly. By Christmas, I still couldn’t brush my hair with that hand, it was so weak.

Dr. Price fretted over it, threatening to send me to a specialist in London.

My mother urged me to go anyway, to see what could be done. “You’re lucky there’s been no infection, what with the cut. There will be a scar, I’m afraid. We’ll ask Nora for some lotion or ointment to make it look a little less angry.” The gash had gone deep, very deep. The scar was raised and ugly still.

“I’m not worried, Mother. Bones take their time, you know. Let’s wait another week.”

But it was the duty of mothers to fuss, and truth was, I was glad to be home for a bit, leaving decisions to others. My father, on the other hand, was after me to exercise my arm.

“They’ll not take you back again until it’s strong enough,” he warned me. “You can’t swim in this weather, worst luck, but we can have you sit by the bath and move your arm back and forth in warm water. That should help. It’s what they did for my leg in India.”

He’d broken it playing polo.

“I’ll try,” I promised, and did. I also had my own ways of keeping the arm working. Exercises I’d learned aboard Britannic, listening to doctors instruct wounded men.

“Muscles atrophy without use,” they’d explained. “Leave a limb in a cast too long, and it will be worthless. A baby could knock you over. But this-”

And men had done their best, crying sometimes from the pain or the frustration as they worked. I’d learned an entirely new vocabulary from my patients. Most of it unacceptable, even to tease my father.

I found myself thinking at one point that in coming home wounded, I’d somehow stepped back into the old pattern of parent and child. It was strange, after being responsible for life-and-death decisions in a hospital ward. I’d grown used to responsibility and consequences, to holding back my own emotions in order to give comfort to someone else, to handling recalcitrant patients or men so far gone in delirium they thought they were still fighting the Germans. Now I was tucked up in bed with a glass of warm milk, just as I’d been at seven when I had measles.

The truth dawned on me slowly: my mother and father missed the old Bess, and they were still recovering from the shock of Britannic going down. It must have been days before they had had news of me, whether I was alive or drowned. And so I drank the milk without complaint and let them heal too.

One day my father stopped by my chair in the small parlor where I was trying to read.

“Have you done anything more about your promise?”

“I wrote to Jonathan Graham. I asked to meet him, adding that it concerned his late brother.”

“You want to see this girl for yourself, I think. The one Arthur abandoned.” He was half teasing, half serious.

“Not at all,” I answered with more heat than I wanted to hear in my voice. “I must deliver my message in person. It’s what I was asked to do. Arthur told me over and over again-a letter was useless, I had to speak to Jonathan face-to-face.”

“Jonathan may be at the Front.”

“No, I’ve asked friends. Apparently he’s at home as well, convalescing.”

“Then go before your leave is up.”

“Yes. I shall.”

He said nothing more. But a week later he brought me a letter from the post and dropped it in my lap.

I took it up, dreading it, thinking it must be my orders.