Phoenix and Ashes

He looked up, and at least he didn't try to smile. "I don't know how any of us can get through the course of a day without being reminded," he said, quietly. "You have to be lying to yourself, I suppose, or purposefully blinding yourself. Like the people who can't seem to find anything to talk about except how hard it is to find a good servant or the impossibility of getting a good chop. Anything except about what's across the Channel."

"But there are good things left, still," she replied, forcing herself to rally, and trying harder now to give him some sense of hope. "I can't see that it's wrong to remember that. Pretending the bleak things don't exist is wrong, and not trying to do something about them is worse yet, but it can't be wrong to also remember that there is still joy, still a little peace, still things to laugh about, and still love." She felt her voice faltering, but forced herself to carry on, hoping that she didn't sound too maudlin. "If we forget that, we'll lose hope, too."

"Ah, hope," he said, his voice growing a little lighter. And he did manage a smile. "Hope, the last spirit left in Pandora's jar, after she let all the troubles and plagues of the world out."

"And she let hope fly free, too," Eleanor said softly. "Because when all is said and done, hope is sometimes all that keeps us from surrendering to despair."

He heaved a great sigh, and nodded. "That is as true a thing as I think you have ever said," he told her. "You're quite right, and right to remind me. No, we mustn't lose hope; if we do that—"

He looked off into the distance again, but this time as if he was actually looking for something, and not to avoid her gaze.

Perhaps—hope?

"If we do that," he repeated, quietly, as if he was telling himself a great truth "We really shall be utterly lost, and there will be no turning back for any of us."

She shivered. Because that had sounded altogether less like an aphorism, and far more like a prophecy.

19

May 2, 1917

Broom, Warwickshire

LITTLE ELEANOR DID HER DISAPPEARING act not long after the quarrel had foundered and crashed, leaving Reggie alone in the meadow, staring glumly after her. The stupid words he'd said, the bitter ones she had responded with, still hung in the air. Nothing was resolved, except, perhaps, she seemed genuinely sorry she had thrown him into a mental funk, and he was genuinely sorry he hadn't thought before he'd spoken.

In fact, in retrospect, he hadn't been at all observant. He'd been so preoccupied with his own thoughts—well, that was a kind way of saying he'd been paying no attention to anything outside of himself. It should have been obvious that her circumstances were changed, drastically, from the last time he had seen her, before the war—her clothing alone should have told him that.

He gulped, as something else occurred to him. Oh, hell. I've put my foot in it, well and truly. She had every intention, the last time he saw her, of going to Oxford, and her father had clearly had the means to send her. Her clothing had been good, she had mentioned tutors and special studies in order to pass the entrance qualifications, so although all Reggie knew about her father was that he was a well-off manufacturer, there was certainly money to spare in their household. But her father had been an early casualty of the war, and where had that left her? Had his businesses gone to pieces? So many businesses had—either wrecked without a supervisory hand on the tiller, or collapsed because the war effort siphoned off more and more in the way of manpower and resources until there was no way to keep going.

So—now she was poor. Having to work for a living—that much was obvious from her clothing and her hands. Probably she was a maid somewhere in the village or the surrounding farms—the servant of one of those shopkeepers' or farmers' daughters whose intelligence and expectations he had so maligned.

And he had babbled on about scholarships for the boys, when she, so quick, so intelligent, with all of her dreams and expectations blighted, had sat there and let him blather fatuously about what he was going to do for boys he didn't even know—

And he had thought that he was being her friend. She assuredly was his—and look how he had treated her! Oh, very clever, Reg. Take a juicy chop and dangle it in front of someone who's been dining on crusts, then tell her she can't have it. He felt sick, absolutely sick as a cat. No wonder she'd blown up at him. He could not possibly have managed anything more cruel if he'd set out to torture her on purpose.