Edith Wharton - Novel 14

by A Son at the Front (v2. 1)

  Her gratitude gave him the feeling of having been engaged in something underhand and pusillanimous. He made haste to take leave, after promising to pass on any word he might receive from the physician; but he reminded her that he was not likely to hear anything till George had been for some days at his base.

  She acknowledged the probability of this, and clung to him with trustful eyes. She was much disturbed by the preposterous fact that the Government had already requisitioned two of the Brant motors, and Campton had an idea that, dazzled by his newly-developed capacity to “manage,” she was about to implore him to rescue from the clutches of the authorities her Rolls-Royce and Anderson’s Delaunay.

  He was hastening to leave when the door again opened. A rumpled-looking maid peered in, evidently perplexed, and giving way doubtfully to a young woman who entered with a rush, and then paused as if she too were doubtful. She was pretty in an odd dishevelled way, and with her elaborate clothes and bewildered look she reminded Campton of a fashion-plate torn from its page and helplessly blown about the world. He had seen the same type among his compatriots any number of times in the last days.

  “Oh, Mrs. Brant—yes, I know you gave orders that you were not in to anybody, but I just wouldn’t listen, and it’s not that poor woman’s fault,” the visitor began, in a plaintive staccato which matched her sad eyes and her fluttered veils.

  “You see, I simply had to get hold of Mr. Brant, because I’m here without a penny—literally!” She dangled before them a bejewelled mesh-bag. “And in a hotel where they don’t know me. And at the bank they wouldn’t listen to me, and they said Mr. Brant wasn’t there, though of course I suppose he was; so I said to the cashier: “Very well, then, I’ll simply go to the Avenue Marigny and batter in his door—unless you’d rather I jumped into the Seine?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Talkett” murmured Mrs. Brant.

  “Really: it’s a case of my money or my life!” the young lady continued with a studied laugh. She stood between them, artificial and yet so artless, conscious of intruding but evidently used to having her intrusions pardoned; and her large eyes turned interrogatively to Campton.

  “Of course my husband will do all he can for you. I’ll telephone,” said Mrs. Brant; then, perceiving that her visitor continued to gaze at Campton, she added: “Oh, no, this is not… this is Mr. Campton.”

  “John Campton? I knew it!” Mrs. Talkett’s eyes became devouring and brilliant. “Of course I ought to have recognised you at once—from your photographs. I have one pinned up in my room. But I was so flurried when I came in.” She detained the painter’s hand. “Do forgive me! For years I’ve dreamed of your doing me … you see, I paint a little myself … but it’s ridiculous to speak of such things now.” She added, as if she were risking something: “I knew your son at St. Moritz. We saw a great deal of him there, and in New York last winter.”

  “Ah” said Campton, bowing awkwardly.

  “Cursed fools—all women,” he anathematized her on the way downstairs.

  In the street, however, he felt grateful to her for reducing Mrs. Brant to such confusion that she had made no attempt to detain him. His way of life lay so far apart from his former wife’s that they had hardly ever been exposed to accidents of the kind, and he saw that Julia’s embarrassment kept all its freshness.

  The fact set him thinking curiously of what her existence had been since they had parted. She had long since forgotten her youthful art-jargon to learn others more consonant to her tastes. As the wife of the powerful American banker she dispensed the costliest hospitality with the simple air of one who has never learnt that human life may be sustained without the aid of orchids and champagne. With guests either brought up in the same convictions or bent on acquiring them she conversed earnestly and unweariedly about motors, clothes and morals; but perhaps her most stimulating hours were those brightened by the weekly visit of the Rector of her parish. With happy untrammelled hands she was now free to rebuild to her own measure a corner of the huge wicked welter of Paris; and immediately it became as neat, as empty, as air-tight as her own immaculate drawing-room.

  There he seemed to see her, throning year after year in an awful emptiness of wealth and luxury and respectability, seeing only dull people, doing only dull things, and fighting feverishly to defend the last traces of a beauty which had never given her anything but the tamest and most unprofitable material prosperity.

  “She’s never even had the silly kind of success she wanted—poor Julia!” he mused, wondering that she had been able to put into her life so few of the sensations which can be bought by wealth and beauty. “And now what will be left—how on earth will she fit into a war?”

  He was sure all her plans had been made for the coming six months: her week-end sets of heavy millionaires secured for Deauville, and after that for the shooting at the big château near Compiègne, and three weeks reserved for Biarritz before the return to Paris in January. One of the luxuries Julia had most enjoyed after her separation from Campton (Adele had told him) had been that of planning things ahead: Mr. Brant, thank heaven, was not impulsive. And now here was this black bolt of war falling among all her carefully balanced arrangements with a crash more violent than any of Campton’s inconsequences!

  As he reached the Place de la Concorde a newsboy passed with the three o’clock papers, and he bought one and read of the crossing of Luxembourg and the invasion of Belgium. The Germans were arrogantly acting up to their menace: heedless of international law, they were driving straight for France and England by the road they thought the most accessible…

  In the hotel he found George, red with rage, devouring the same paper: the boy’s whole look was changed.

  “The howling blackguards! The brigands! This isn’t war—it’s simple murder!”

  The two men stood and stared at each other. “Will England stand it?” sprang to their lips at the same moment.

  Never—never! England would never permit such a violation of the laws regulating the relations between civilized peoples. They began to say both together that after all perhaps it was the best thing that could have happened, since, if there had been the least hesitation or reluctance in any section of English opinion, this abominable outrage would instantly sweep it away.

  “They’ve been too damned clever for once!” George exulted. “France is saved—that’s certain anyhow!”

  Yes; France was saved if England could put her army into the field at once. But could she? Oh, for the Channel tunnel at this hour! Would this lesson at last cure England of her obstinate insularity? Belgium had announced her intention of resisting; but what was that gallant declaration worth in face of Germany’s brutal assault? A poor little country pledged to a guaranteed neutrality could hardly be expected to hold her frontiers more than forty-eight hours against the most powerful army in Europe. And what a narrow strip Belgium was, viewed as an outpost of France!

  These thoughts, racing through Campton’s mind, were swept out of it again by his absorbing preoccupation. What effect would the Belgian affair have on George’s view of his own participation in the war? For the first time the boy’s feeling were visibly engaged; his voice shook as he burst out: “Louis Dastrey’s right: this kind of thing has got to stop. We shall go straight back to cannibalism if it doesn’t.—God, what hounds!”

  Yes, but—Campton pondered, tried to think up Pacifist arguments, remembered his own discussion with Paul Dastrey three days before. “My dear chap, hasn’t France perhaps gone about with a chip on her shoulder? Saverne, for instance: some people think”

  “Damn Saverne! Haven’t the Germans shown us what they are now? Belgium sheds all the light I want on Saverne. They’re not fit to live with white people, and the sooner they’re shown it the better.”

  “Well, France and Russia and England are here to show them.”

  George laughed. “Yes, and double quick.”

  Both were silent again, each thinking his own thoughts. They were apparently the same, for just as Campto
n was about to ask where George had decided that they should take their last dinner, the young man said abruptly: “Look here, Dad; I’d planned a little tête-à-tête for us this evening.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well—I can’t. I’m going to chuck you.” He smiled a little, his colour rising nervously. “For some people I’ve just run across—who were awfully kind to me at St. Moritz—and in New York last winter. I didn’t know they were here till … till just now. I’m awfully sorry; but I’ve simply got to dine with them.”

  There was a silence. Campton stared out over his son’s shoulder at the great sunlit square. “Oh, all right,” he said briskly.

  This—on George’s last night!

  ‘You don’t mind much, do you? I’ll be back early, for a last powwow on the terrace.” George paused, and finally brought out: “You see, it really wouldn’t have done to tell mother that I was deserting her on my last evening because I was dining with you!”

  A weight was lifted from Campton’s heart, and he felt ashamed of having failed to guess the boy’s real motive.

  “My dear fellow, naturally … quite right. And you can stop in and see your mother on the way home. You’ll find me here whenever you turn up.”

  George looked relieved. “Thanks a lot—you always know. And now for my adieux to Adele.”

  He went off whistling the waltz from the Rosenkavalier, and Campton returned to his own thoughts.

  H e was still revolving them when he went upstairs after a solitary repast in the confused and servantless dining-room. Adele Anthony had telephoned to him to come and dine—after seeing George, he supposed; but he had declined. He wanted to be with his boy, or alone.

  As he left the dining-room he ran across Adamson, the American newspaper correspondent, who had lived for years in Paris and was reputed to have “inside information.” Adamson was grave but confident. In his opinion Russia would probably not get to Berlin before November (he smiled at Campton’s astonished outcry); but if England—oh, they were sure of England!—could get her army over without delay, the whole business would very likely be settled before that, in one big battle in Belgium. (Yes—poor Belgium, indeed!) Anyhow, in the opinion of the military experts the war was not likely to last more than three or four months; and of course, even if things went badly on the western front, which was highly unlikely, there was Russia to clench the business as soon as her huge forces got in motion. Campton drew much comfort from this sober view of the situation, midway between that of the optimists who knew Russia would be in Berlin in three weeks, and of those who saw the Germans in Calais even sooner. Adamson was a level-headed fellow, who weighed what he said and pinned his faith to facts.

  Campton managed to evade several people whom he saw lurking for him, and mounted to his room. On the terrace, alone with the serene city, his confidence grew, and he began to feel more and more sure that, whatever happened, George was likely to be kept out of the fighting till the whole thing was over. With such formidable forces closing in on her it was fairly obvious that Germany must succumb before half or even a quarter of the allied reserves had been engaged. Sustained by the thought, he let his mind hover tenderly over George’s future, and the effect on his character of this brief and harmless plunge into a military career.

  

  IX.

  George was gone.

  When, with a last whistle and scream, his train had ploughed its way out of the clanging station; when the last young figures clinging to the rear of the last carriage had vanished, and the bare rails again glittered up from the cindery tracks, Campton turned and looked about him.

  All the platforms of the station were crowded as he had seldom seen any place crowded, and to his surprise he found himself taking in every detail of the scene with a morbid accuracy of observation. He had discovered, during these last days, that his artist’s vision had been strangely unsettled. Sometimes, as when he had left Fortin’s house, he saw nothing: the material world, which had always tugged at him with a thousand hands, vanished and left him in the void. Then again, as at present, he saw everything, saw it too clearly, in all its superfluous and negligible reality, instead of instinctively selecting, and disregarding what was not to his purpose.

  Faces, faces—they swarmed about him, and his overwrought vision registered them one by one. Especially he noticed the faces of the women, women of all ages, all classes. These were the wives, mothers, grandmothers, sisters, mistresses of all those heavily laden trainfuls of French youth. He was struck with the same strong cheerfulness in all: some pale, some flushed, some serious, but all firmly and calmly smiling.

  One young woman in particular his look dwelt on—a dark girl in a becoming dress—both because she was so pleasant to see, and because there was such assurance in her serenity that she did not have to constrain her lips and eyes, but could trust them to be what she wished. Yet he saw by the way she clung to the young artilleryman from whom she was parting that hers were no sisterly farewells.

  An immense hum of voices filled the vast glazed enclosure. Campton caught the phrases flung up to the young faces piled one above another in the windows—words of motherly admonishment, little jokes, tender names, mirthful allusions, last callings out: “Write often! Don’t forget to wrap up your throat… Remember to send a line to Annette… Bring home a Prussian helmet for the children! On les aura, pas, mon vieux?” It was all bright, brave and confident. “If Berlin could only see it!” Campton thought.

  He tried to remember what his own last words to George had been, but could not; yet his throat felt dry and thirsty, as if he had talked a great deal. The train vanished in a roar, and he leaned against a pier to let the crowd flood by, not daring to risk his lameness in such a turmoil.

  Suddenly he heard loud sobs behind him. He turned, and recognized the hat and hair of the girl whose eyes had struck him. He could not see them now, for they were buried in her hands and her whole body shook with woe. An elderly man was trying to draw her away—her father, probably.

  “Come, come, my child”

  “Oh—oh—oh,” she hiccoughed, following blindly.

  The people nearest stared at her, and the faces of other women grew pale. Campton saw tears on the cheeks of an old body in a black bonnet who might have been his own Mme. Lebel. A pale lad went away weeping.

  But they were all afraid, then, all in immediate deadly fear for the lives of their beloved! The same fear grasped Campton’s heart, a very present terror, such as he had hardly before imagined. Compared to it, all that he had felt hitherto seemed as faint as the sensations of a looker-on. His knees failed him, and he grasped a transverse bar of the pier.

  People were leaving the station in groups of two or three who seemed to belong to each other; only he was alone. George’s mother had not come to bid her son goodbye; she had declared that she would rather take leave of him quietly in her own house than in a crowd of dirty people at the station. But then it was impossible to conceive of her being up and dressed and at the Gare de l’Est at five in the morning—and how could she have got there without her motor? So Campton was alone, in that crowd which seemed all made up of families.

  But no—not all. Ahead of him he saw one woman moving away alone, and recognized, across the welter of heads, Adele Anthony’s adamantine hat and tight knob of hair.

  Poor Adele! So she had come too—and had evidently failed in her quest, not been able to fend a way through the crowd, and perhaps not even had a glimpse of her hero. The thought smote Campton with compunction: he regretted his sneering words when they had last met, regretted refusing to dine with her. He wished the barrier of people between them had been less impenetrable; but for the moment it was useless to try to force a way through it. He had to wait till the crowd shifted to other platforms, whence other trains were starting, and by that time she was lost to sight.

  At last he was able to make his way through the throng, and as he came out of a side entrance he saw her. She appeared to be looking for a taxi—s
he waved her sunshade aimlessly. But no one who knew the Gare de l’Est would have gone around that corner to look for a taxi; least of all the practical Adele. Besides, Adele never took taxis: she travelled in the bowels of the earth or on the dizziest omnibus tops.

  Campton knew at once that she was waiting for him. He went up to her and a guilty pink suffused her nose.

  “You missed him after all?” he said.

  “I—oh, no, I didn’t.”

  ‘You didn’t? But I was with him all the time. We didn’t see you”

  “No, but I saw—distinctly. That was all I went for,” she jerked back.

  He slipped his arm through hers. “This crowd terrifies me. I’m glad you waited for me,” he said.

  He saw her pleasure, but she merely answered: “I’m dying of thirst, aren’t you?”

  “Yes—or hunger, or something. Could we find a laiterie?”

  They found one, and sat down among early clerks and shop-girls, and a few dishevelled women with swollen faces whom Campton had noticed in the station. One of them, who sat opposite an elderly man, had drawn out a pocket mirror and was powdering her nose.

  Campton hated to see women powder their noses—one of the few merits with which he credited Julia Brant was that of never having adopted these dirty modern fashions, of continuing to make her toilet in private “like a lady,” as people used to say when he was young. But now the gesture charmed him, for he had recognized the girl who had been sobbing in the station.

  “How game she is! I like that. But why is she so frightened?” he wondered. For he saw that her chocolate was untouched, and that the smile had stiffened on her lips.

  Since his talk with Adamson he could not bring himself to be seriously alarmed. Fear had taken him by the throat for a moment in the station, at the sound of the girl’s sobs; but already he had thrown it off. Everybody agreed that the war was sure to be over in a few weeks; even Dastrey had come round to that view; and with Fortin’s protection, and the influences Anderson Brant could put in motion, George was surely safe—as safe at his depot as anywhere else in the precarious world. Campton poured out Adele’s coffee, and drank off his own as if it had been champagne.