“Are you afraid she’ll suffer a paper cut?”
Kate swept her hairbrush, hair receiver, and book of hairpins into her bag. “I’m afraid she’ll suffer something. You know how impressionable Emmie can be. He’s so—well, British. And he has a highly dubious mustache.”
“A dubious mustache?” Julia’s blond brows rose.
Put that way, it did sound rather ridiculous. But Julia was looking more human than she had in weeks.
“Look, are you coming or not?” Kate demanded.
Julia swung her legs off the side of the bed, moving reluctantly, but moving all the same. “We’re going to be sent back, you know.”
“You never know until you try,” said Kate, shoving Julia’s jacket at her. “Do you remember the story of the kings of Phrygia’s oxcart?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
For livestock, there’s not much change around here. We have eight cows, nine goats, and never enough chickens. We’ve been trying to make sure that in each village the small fields, the fields too small to be plowed by government tractors but too large to be turned over with spades by the old men and women who have to work them, are plowed and made ready to plant. . . . The Unit bought several plows and harrows and others have been loaned by the French Service Agricole.
I thought at first we might be able to go out, two or three of us, and do quite a bit ourselves, but as I realized how much there was, and that multiplied by fifteen villages, I started a hunt for help. For a week, I went from one military authority to another, and at last found a wonderful quartermaster general who, instead of looking at me as though I were mad, immediately said, “How many horses and men do you want and where shall I send them?”
In a number of villages the work is well under way and within a week should be begun everywhere. I hope we can see it through. . . . The war has been “hotting up” as they say—but I’m not meant to be writing about any of that. （Will the censor strike that through, I wonder?） No matter. You’ll read about it in the New York Times well before you get this letter.
I have been so thoroughly enjoying my work, my play, my friends, and the weather, that I feel as though I should throw a ring into the sea to placate local deities—or is that only Venice?
—Miss Florence Lewes, ’01, to her brother, Mr. Thomas Lewes
March 1918
Grécourt, France
“It was three days before we could get a train and how those hens cackled.”
It was an utter cacophony in the living room of the new house. They’d just finished supper when Kate and Julia appeared out of nowhere, tugging three crates of hens between them. Anne had rushed to find some food to feed the prodigals, Florence was on her knees in front of the crates, inspecting the chickens, while Mrs. Barrett was looking on with an expression somewhere between apprehension and amusement, begging the chickens to spare the rug, which was only on loan.
It was amazing, thought Emmie, how very full the room felt with just two more people in it. She should be delighted, she knew. But instead, she felt vaguely apprehensive. Ever since the proposal to propose, she’d been living in a springtime sort of dream, all new grass and fluffy clouds. But Kate and Julia were—well, they weren’t the dreaming sort. It didn’t matter to Emmie that she wasn’t entirely sure whether she was engaged or engaged to be engaged. All that mattered was that there was Will DeWitt in the world, holding the line, writing her letters that ended with Yours to be yours.
But Kate would think it mattered, she knew. Kate would question his intentions and ask questions about the future—and they had discussed the future, they had; it was couched in poetry and daydream.
Had we but world enough and time . . . We would sit down, and think which way / To walk and pass our long love’s day.
Will was particularly fond of the metaphysical poets.
When they had world enough and time. That was one of their abiding preoccupations. Once the war was over, once they had world enough and time, what would they do with it? It was like a children’s game, playing house in absentia. Walks, he suggested. Amateur theatricals. He’d played Titania in a wig and someone’s sister’s frock at Harrow, and Emmie had teased him about it by return post. Oh Will, how thou art translated!
It was Shakespeare, and therefore against the rules, but he’d brought it on himself.
It was all very silly and the censors probably thought they were off their heads—or engaging in the most Byzantine sort of cipher known to man—but Emmie had never been happier, had never imagined being so happy, even if she knew that it was a fool’s paradise, that at any moment a German sniper or bomber could end it all with one well-placed missile. But they weren’t to think of that; they’d promised each other. Like an old-fashioned sundial, they would count only the happy hours.