Edith Wharton - Novel 14

by A Son at the Front (v2. 1)

  “No”

  “What on earth are all those books?”

  “Provender. It appears we may rot at the depot for weeks. I’ve just seen a chap who’s in my regiment.”

  Campton felt a sudden relief. The purchase of the books proved that George was fairly sure he would not be sent to the front. His father went up to him and tapped him on the chest.

  “How about this?” He wanted to add: “I’ve just seen Fortin, who says he’ll get you off”; but though George’s eye was cool and unenthusiastic it did not encourage such confidences.

  “Oh—lungs? I imagine I’m sound again.” He paused, and stooped to turn over the books. Carelessly, he added: “But then the stethoscope may think differently. Nothing to do but wait and see.”

  “Of course,” Campton agreed.

  It was clear that the boy hated what was ahead of him; and what more could his father ask? Of course he was not going to confess to a desire to shirk his duty; but it was easy to see that his whole lucid intelligence repudiated any sympathy with the ruinous adventure.

  “Have you seen Adele?” Campton enquired, and George replied that he had dropped in for five minutes, and that Miss Anthony wanted to see his father.

  “Is she—nervous?”

  “Old Adele? I should say not: she’s fighting mad. La Revanche and all the rest of it. She doesn’t realize—sancta simplicitas!”

  “Oh, I can see Adele throwing on the faggots!”

  Father and son were silent, both busy lighting cigarettes. When George’s was lit he remarked: “Well, if we’re not called at once it’ll be a good chance to read ‘The Golden Bough’ right through.”

  Campton stared, not knowing the book even by name. What a queer changeling the boy was! But George’s composure, his deep and genuine indifference to the whole political turmoil, once more fortified his father.

  “Have they any news—?” he ventured. “They,” in their private language, meant the Brants.

  “Oh, yes, lots: Uncle Andy was stiff with it. But not really amounting to anything. Of course there’s no doubt there’ll be war.”

  “How about England?”

  “Nobody knows; but the bankers seem to think England’s all right.” George paused, and finally added: “Look here, dear old boy—before she leaves I think mother wants to see you.”

  Campton hardened instantly. “She has seen me—yesterday.”

  “I know; she told me.”

  The son began to cut the pages of one of his books with a visiting-card he had picked up, and the father stood looking out on the Place de la Concorde through the leafy curtain of the terrace.

  Campton knew that he could not refuse his son’s request; in his heart of hearts he was glad it had been made, since it might mean that “they” had found a way—perhaps through the Ambassador.

  But he could never prevent a stiffening of his whole self at any summons or suggestion from the Brants. He thought of the seeming unity of the Fortin-Lescluze couple, and of the background of peaceful family life revealed by the scene about the checkered tablecloth. Perhaps that was one of the advantages of a social organization which still, as a whole, ignored divorce, and thought any private condonation better than the open breaking-up of the family.

  “All right; I’ll go” he agreed. “Where are we dining?”

  “Oh, I forgot—an awful orgy. Dastrey wants us at the Union. Louis Dastrey is dining with him, and he let me ask Boylston”

  “Boylston?”

  “You don’t know him. A chap who was at Harvard with me. He’s out here studying painting at the Beaux-Arts. He’s an awfully good sort, and he wanted to see me before I go.”

  The father’s heart sank. Only one whole day more with his boy, and this last evening but one was to be spent with poor embittered Dastrey, and two youths, one unknown to Campton, who would drown them in stupid war-chatter? But it was what George wanted; and there must not be a shade, for George, on these last hours.

  “All right! You promised me something awful for to-night,” Campton grinned sardonically.

  “Do you mind? I’m sorry.”

  “It’s only Dastrey’s damned chauvinism that I mind. Why don’t you ask Adele to join the chorus?”

  “Well—you’ll like Boylston,” said George.

  Dastrey, after all, turned out less tragic and aggressive than Campton had feared. His irritability had vanished, and though he was very grave he seemed preoccupied only with the fate of Europe, and not with his personal stake in the affair.

  But the older men said little. The youngsters had the floor, and Campton, as he listened to George and young Louis Dastrey, was overcome by a sense of such dizzy unreality that he had to grasp the arms of his ponderous leather armchair to assure himself that he was really in the flesh and in the world.

  What! Two days ago they were still in the old easy Europe, a Europe in which one could make plans, engage passages on trains and steamers, argue about pictures, books, theatres, ideas, draw as much money as one chose out of the bank, and say: “The day after tomorrow I’ll be in Berlin or Vienna or Belgrade.” And here they sat in their same evening clothes, about the same shining mahogany writing-table, apparently the same group of free and independent youths and elderly men, and in reality prisoners, every one of them, hand-cuffed to this hideous masked bully of “War”!

  The young men were sure that the conflict was inevitable—the evening papers left no doubt of it—and there was much animated discussion between young Dastrey and George.

  Already their views diverged; the French youth, theoretically at one with his friend as to the senselessness of war in general, had at once resolutely disengaged from the mist of doctrine the fatal necessity of this particular war.

  “It’s the old festering wound of Alsace-Lorraine: Bismarck foresaw it and feared it—or perhaps planned it and welcomed it: who knows? But as long as the wound was there, Germany believed that France would try to avenge it, and as long as Germany believed that, she had to keep up her own war-strength; and she’s kept it up to the toppling-over point, ruining herself and us. That’s the whole thing, as I see it. War’s rot; but to get rid of war forever we’ve got to fight this one first.”

  It was wonderful to Campton that this slender learned youth should already have grasped the necessity of the conflict and its deep causes. While his own head was still spinning with wrath and bewilderment at the bottomless perversity of mankind, Louis Dastrey had analyzed and accepted the situation and his own part in it. And he was not simply resigned; he was trembling with eagerness to get the thing over. “If only England is with us we’re safe—it’s a matter of weeks,” he declared.

  “Wait a bit—wait a bit; I want to know more about a whole lot of things before I fix a date for the fall of Berlin,” his uncle interposed; but Louis flung him a radiant look. “We’ve been there before, my uncle!”

  “But there’s Russia too” said Boylston explosively. He had not spoken before.

  “‘Nous l’avons eu, votre Rhin allemand,’” quoted George, as he poured a golden Hock into his glass.

  He was keenly interested, that was evident; but interested as a looker-on, a dilettante. He had neither Valmy nor Sedan in his blood, and it was as a sympathizing spectator that he ought by rights to have been sharing his friend’s enthusiasm, not as a combatant compelled to obey the same summons. Campton, glancing from one to another of their brilliant faces, felt his determination harden to save George from the consequences of his parents’ stupid blunder.

  After dinner young Dastrey proposed a music-hall. The audience would be a curious sight: there would be wild enthusiasm, and singing of the Marseillaise. The other young men agreed, but their elders, after a tacitly exchanged glance, decided to remain at the club, on the plea that some one at the Ministry of War had promised to telephone if there were fresh news.

  Campton and Dastrey, left alone, stood on the balcony watching the Boulevards. The streets, so deserted during the day, had become suddenly and dens
ely populated. Hardly any vehicles were in sight: the motor omnibuses were already carrying troops to the stations, there was a report abroad that private motors were to be requisitioned, and only a few taxis and horse-cabs, packed to the driver’s box with young men in spick-and-span uniforms, broke through the mass of pedestrians which filled the whole width of the Boulevards. This mass moved slowly and vaguely, swaying this way and that, as though it awaited a portent from the heavens. In the glare of electric lamps and glittering theatre-fronts the innumerable faces stood out vividly, grave, intent, slightly bewildered. Except when the soldiers passed no cries or songs came from the crowd, but only the deep inarticulate rumour which any vast body of people gives forth.

  “Queer! How silent they are: how do you think they’re taking it?” Campton questioned.

  But Dastrey had grown belligerent again. He saw the throngs before him bounding toward the frontier like the unchained furies of Rude’s “Marseillaise”; whereas to Campton they seem full of the dumb wrath of an orderly and laborious people upon whom an unrighteous quarrel has been forced. He knew that the thought of Alsace-Lorraine still stirred in French hearts; but all Dastrey’s eloquence could not convince him that these people wanted war, or would have sought it had it not been thrust on them. The whole monstrous injustice seemed to take shape before him, and to brood like a huge sky-filling dragon of the northern darknesses over his light-loving, pleasure-loving, labour-loving France.

  George came home late.

  It was two in the morning of his last day with his boy when Campton heard the door open, and saw a flash of turned-on light.

  All night he had lain staring into the darkness, and thinking, thinking: thinking of George’s future, George’s friends, George and women, of that unknown side of his boy’s life which, in this great upheaval of things, had suddenly lifted its face to the surface. If war came, if George were not discharged, if George were sent to the front, if George were killed, how strange to think that things the father did not know of might turn out to have been the central things of his son’s life!

  The young man came, and Campton looked at him as though he were a stranger.

  “Hullo, Dad—any news from the Ministry?” George, tossing aside his hat and stick, sat down on the bed. He had a crumpled rose in his button-hole, and looked gay and fresh, with the indestructible freshness of youth.

  “What do I really know of him?” the father asked himself.

  Yes: Dastrey had had news. Germany had already committed acts of overt hostility on the frontier: telegraph and telephone communications had been cut, French locomotives seized, troops massed along the border on the specious pretext of the “Kriegsgefahrzustand.” It was war.

  “Oh, well,” George shrugged. He lit a cigarette, and asked: “What did you think of Boylston?”

  “Boylston?”

  “The fat brown chap at dinner.”

  “Yes—yes—of course.” Campton became aware that he had not thought of Boylston at all, had hardly been aware of his presence. But the painter’s registering faculty was always latently at work, and in an instant he called up a round face, shyly jovial, with short-sighted brown eyes as sharp as needles, and dark hair curling tightly over a wide watchful forehead.

  “Why—I liked him.”

  “I’m glad, because it was a tremendous event for him, seeing you. He paints, and he’s been keen on your things for years.”

  “I wish I’d known… Why didn’t he say so? He didn’t say anything, did he?”

  “No: he doesn’t, much, when he’s pleased. He’s the very best chap I know,” George concluded.

  

  VIII.

  That morning the irrevocable stared at him from the head-lines of the papers. The German Ambassador was recalled. Germany had declared war on France at 6:40 the previous evening; there was an unintelligible allusion, in the declaration, to French aeroplanes throwing bombs on Nuremberg and Wesel. Campton read that part of the message over two or three times.

  Aeroplanes throwing bombs? Aeroplanes as engines of destruction? He had always thought of them as a kind of giant kite that fools went up in when they were tired of breaking their necks in other ways. But aeroplane bombardment as a cause for declaring war? The bad faith of it was so manifest that he threw down the papers half relieved. Of course there would be a protest on the part of the allies; a great country like France would not allow herself to be bullied into war on such a pretext.

  The ultimatum to Belgium was more serious; but Belgium’s gallant reply would no doubt check Germany on that side. After all, there was such a thing as international law, and Germany herself had recognized it… So his mind spun on in vain circles, while under the frail web of his casuistry gloomed the obstinate fact that George was mobilised, that George was to leave the next morning.

  The day wore on: it was the shortest and yet most interminable that Campton had ever known. Paris, when he went out into it, was more dazzlingly empty than ever. In the hotel, in the hall, on the stairs, he was waylaid by flustered compatriots—“Oh, Mr. Campton, you don’t know me, but of course all Americans know you!”—who appealed to him for the very information he was trying to obtain himself: how one could get money, how one could get hold of the concierges, how one could send cables, if there was any restaurant where the waiters had not all been mobilised, if he had any “pull” at the Embassy, or at any of the steamship offices, or any of the banks. One disordered beauty blurted out: “Of course, with your connection with Bullard and Brant”—and was only waked to her mistake by Campton’s indignant stare, and his plunge past her while she called out excuses.

  But the name acted as a reminder of his promise to go and see Mrs. Brant, and he decided to make his visit after lunch, when George would be off collecting last things. Visiting the Brants with George would have been beyond his capacity.

  The great drawing-rooms, their awnings spread against the sun, their tall windows wide to the glow of the garden, were empty when he entered; but in a moment he was joined by a tall angular woman with a veil pushed up untidily above her pink nose. Campton reflected that he had never seen Adele Anthony in the daytime without a veil pushed up above a flushed nose, and dangling in irregular wisps from the back of a small hard hat of which the shape never varied.

  “Julia will be here in a minute. When she told me you were coming I waited.”

  He was glad to have a word with her before meeting Mrs. Brant, though his impulse had been almost as strong to avoid the one as the other. He dreaded belligerent bluster as much as vain whimpering, and in the depths of his soul he had to own that it would have been easier to talk to Mr. Brant than to either of the women.

  “Julia is powdering her nose,” Miss Anthony continued. “She had an idea that if you see she’s been crying you’ll be awfully angry.”

  Campton made an impatient gesture. “If I were—much it would matter!”

  “Ah, but you might tell George; and George is not to know.” She paused, and then bounced round on him abruptly. She always moved and spoke in explosions, as if the wires that agitated her got tangled, and then were too suddenly jerked loose.

  “Does George know?”

  “About his mother’s tears?”

  “About this plan you’re all hatching to have him discharged?”

  Campton reddened under her lashless blue gaze, and the consciousness of doing so made his answer all the curter.

  “Probably not—unless you’ve told him!”

  The shot appeared to reach the mark, for an answering blush suffused her sallow complexion. “You’d better not put ideas into my head!” she laughed. Something in her tone reminded him of all her old dogged loyalties, and made him ashamed of his taunt.

  “Anyhow,” he grumbled, “his place is not in the French army.”

  “That was for you and Julia to decide twenty-six years ago, wasn’t it? Now it’s up to him.”

  Her capricious adoption of American slang, fitted anyhow into her old-fashioned and punct
ilious English, sometimes amused but oftener exasperated Campton.

  “If you’re going to talk modern slang you ought to give up those ridiculous stays, and not wear a fringe like a mid-Victorian royalty,” he jeered, trying to laugh off his exasperation.

  She let this pass with a smile. “Well, I wish I could find the language to make you understand how much better it would be to leave George alone. This war will be the making of him.”

  “He’s made quite to my satisfaction as it is, thanks. But what’s the use of talking? You always get your phrases out of books.”

  The door opened, and Mrs. Brant came in.

  Her appearance answered to Miss Anthony’s description. A pearly mist covered her face, and some reviving liquid had cleared her congested eyes. Her poor hands had suddenly grown so thin and dry that the heavy rings, slipping down to the joints, slid back into place as she shook hands with Campton.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said.

  “Oh” he protested, helpless, and disturbed by Miss Anthony’s presence. At the moment his former wife’s feelings were more intelligible to him than his friend’s: the maternal fibre stirred in her, and made her more appealing than any elderly virgin on the war-path.

  “I’m off, my dears,” said the elderly virgin, as if guessing his thought. Her queer shallow eyes included them both in a sweeping glance, and she flung back from the threshold: “Be careful of what you say to George.”

  What they had to say to each other did not last many minutes. The Brants had made various efforts, but had been baffled on all sides by the general agitation and confusion. In high quarters the people they wanted to see were inaccessible; and those who could be reached lent but a distracted ear. The Ambassador had at once declared that he could no nothing; others vaguely promised they “would see”—but hardly seemed to hear what they were being asked.

  “And meanwhile time is passing—and he’s going!” Mrs. Brant lamented.

  The reassurance that Campton brought from Fortin-Lescluze, vague though it was, came to her as a miraculous promise, and raised Campton suddenly in her estimation. She looked at him with a new confidence, and he could almost hear her saying to Brant, as he had so often heard her say to himself: “You never seem able to get anything done. I don’t know how other people manage.”