All of this was very interesting, but after being gone for more than four hours, was that all he had learned?
“No, there’s a lot more, but it’s mostly about the war. Do you really want to hear about it?” I could tell by the change in Rob’s voice I probably didn’t want to hear anything else.
“No, not now.” I wanted to think of it as being Christmas 1914 with Beth playing the piano while her family and all the servants sang carols. It was to be their last Christmas together.
Putting his arm around my shoulders, Rob pulled me close to him and asked, “Now, what’s the deal with Michael Crowell?”
Chapter 17
The weather was beautiful now that spring had arrived. Rob and I could open the window in his tiny flat, and when there was a breeze, the room was almost bearable. I wanted to talk about something that didn’t involve my returning to Minooka or Rob’s going to Atlanta. I asked what else Jack had said at the Engineer’s Club, and he told me about how Jack and Beth had first gotten together. It would be interesting to hear the story from Jack’s point of view.
“This is what Jack said happened. ‘I was walking home from the train station after finishing a term at The Tech, and Beth was out riding. Now, Beth and I had been flirting with each other for a while, but when she saw me that day, she jumped off her horse, ran up to me, and threw her arms around my neck. Naturally, I kissed her. This is the hard part to believe; I pushed off on her. This is 1913. It was not possible for the son of a butler, no matter how respected, to have any kind of a relationship with someone of Beth’s class.’ Jack said he was more afraid of his father finding out than the Laceys. ‘My dad would have thrown me off the property. I’ve no doubt of it.’
“Jack knew he had hurt Beth’s feelings, but he wasn’t going to embarrass himself by chasing after a girl who was beyond his reach. He tried to get out of being Reed and Beth’s chauffeur for that 1913 motor tour, but Lady Lacey told him, ‘I wasn’t really asking, Jack. The children want to do this, and they can’t if they don’t have an experienced driver and mechanic.’ He said he never felt more like a servant than he did at that moment. He also said, ‘That was an example of how the household worked. You did what you were told, when you were told, but it was always put to you in a nice way.’”
While I was listening to Rob, I had been standing near the window in my slip, and he started singing “You Can’t Say No to a Soldier.” “But I can say ‘no’ to a civilian. Can we get back to the story?” Did all men think this much about sex?
“After a rough start, they had a blast on that trip. When they finally found the Edwards/Garrison farm, they were sitting in the car just laughing their heads off. Mrs. Edwards came out and asked what they were doing in her drive laughing like school children. Beth explained that they were looking for her ancestors — the ones Jane Austen wrote about in Pride and Prejudice, and Mrs. Edwards said, ‘Oh, Lord, not another one.’ Seems other people had figured it out, too.
“When Beth told Mrs. Edwards she was a blood relation of the Garrisons, she invited them in for tea and said that she had ‘never owned to it before. You read that book and you’d think running a farm was like going on a picnic. We work from dawn to dusk here. And Lucy! The one Jane Austen called Lydia. Do you think my husband wants to admit that his great, great, however many greats, had knowledge of a man before they were married?’ After lunch, Mrs. Edwards told them to go up to the attic and take whatever they wanted, and they packed up a ton of stuff.”
“That was 1913. They didn’t get married until 1916. What happened in between?” I asked.
“After the car trip, Jack told Beth that things had to go back to the way they were before the trip because it would have been a disaster for both of them if they were found out. The next summer, Jack was working on a school project in the Highlands, and Beth was back on the marriage circuit. By the end of the 1914 season, Beth’s suitors had been narrowed to Ginger Bramfield and Colin Matheson, the Irish guy. Because Beth and Ginger had been friends since they were kids, Jack couldn’t see Beth marrying him. He figured she’d end up with Matheson.
“When the war started in 1914, Jack realized if it went on for any length of time he would end up in the Army. He saw it as a way to get away from Montclair and Beth because he was convinced her engagement to Matheson would be announced at Christmas, and it was.”
My jaw dropped. At no time, in our many conversations about the obstacles that she and Jack had faced, did Beth mention she had been involved with anyone other than Jack.
“What happened? Did she call it off? I wonder if he got killed?”
“Jack didn’t say another word about it, but it accounts for all of those missing months. But if Matheson was in the Army, and it’s almost guaranteed that he was, then he may have gotten killed. Obviously, we’re now into the war years, and with the exception of their marriage, nothing good happened.” Looking at me, he said, “Do you want to hear it anyway?”
I nodded. “I care so much about them now that I have to know what happened.”
“All right then. The war broke out in August 1914, and in September, some general raised a battalion of London stockbrokers, and Trevor volunteered and ended up serving in the Royal Fusiliers. While he was in training, the regular British army was nearly destroyed in Belgium. From that point on, most of the men who fought on the Western Front were raw recruits who were rushed in to fill the depleted ranks of the professional soldiers. Trevor was wounded at Loos in September 1915. His sergeant got him back behind the British lines, but he died at a clearing station.” With a grim face, Rob said, “The British used gas at Loos, but it blew back on their own troops. There is the possibility Trevor was gassed by his own guys.
“When the telegram arrived at Montclair, Mrs. Crowell sent for Jack, who was at school in Manchester, and had him go out to Cambridge. So it was Jack who told Beth that her brother had been killed. He said it was one of the saddest moments of his life. When she came into the visitors’ room and saw him, she looked as happy as he’d ever seen her. But then she asked him what he was doing there. Jack said, ‘I didn’t say anything, but she knew, and the tears just poured out of her.’
“Jack and Beth went to the camp where Matt was training and said Matt wasn’t surprised because word had reached the camp of the disaster at Loos. Sir Edward went down to Henley and took Reed out of school, and that was the end of his education. Jack said that was a big mistake. If he had stayed at Henley, Reed probably wouldn’t have been called up. But he didn’t explain how that would have kept him out of the Army seeing how he was old enough to fight.
“Matt’s leadership abilities were obvious from the start, and he was quickly promoted to captain. Tom Crowell served under him, and because Tom and Matt were so close, Jack assumed that Matt would want his brother for his assistant, what the Brits call a batman. But Matt told Jack, ‘I’ve never treated your brother as a servant, and I’m not going to start now.’
“Matt wanted his men to have every advantage possible, so he kept after them to stay in shape and did lots of inspections. He had his men scrounge around farms and villages looking for better food, which he paid for out of his own pocket. Matt was mentioned in dispatches to headquarters, which in the British Army is an official commendation for an act of bravery. It sounds like the guy was a born leader, and he had guts.
“Jack said that people have a misconception about the war, thinking the men were in frontline trenches all of the time. The way it worked was the troops were rotated from the first line of trenches to reserve trenches. After that, they went to the rear for light duty so they could rest up and get ready mentally and physically for the next push. They played football and had cricket matches and went into nearby villages for dinner. In Jack’s case, he’d sneak in a visit with Beth.