Edith Wharton - Novel 14

by A Son at the Front (v2. 1)

  When he did, it was to say with a businesslike accent: “We’re trying to get up an auction of pictures and sketches—and if we could lead off with this…”

  It was Campton’s turn to redden. The possibility was one he had not thought of. If the picture were sold at auction, Anderson Brant would be sure to buy it! But he could not say this to Boylston. He hesitated, and the other, who seemed quick at feeling his way, added at once: “But perhaps you’d rather sell it privately? In that case we should get the money sooner.”

  It was just the right thing to say: and Campton thanked him and picked up his sketch. At the door he hesitated, feeling that it became a member of the honorary committee to add something more.

  “How are you getting on? Getting all the help you need?”

  Boylston smiled. “We need such a lot. People have been very generous: we’ve had several big sums. But look at those ridiculous clothes down-stairs—we get boxes and boxes of such rubbish! And there are so many applicants, and such hard cases. Take those poor Davrils, for instance. The lame Davril girl has a talent for music: plays the violin. Well, what good does it do her now? The artists are having an awful time. If this war goes on much longer, it won’t be only at the front that they’ll die.”

  “Ah” said Campton. “Well, I’ll take this to a dealer”

  On the way down he turned in to greet Miss Anthony. She looked up in surprise, her tired face haloed in tumbling hairpins; but she was too busy to do more than nod across the group about her desk.

  At his offer to take her home she shook her head. “I’m here till after seven. Mr. Boylston and I are nearly snowed under. We’ve got to go down presently and help unpack and after that I’m due at my refugee canteen at the Nord. It’s my night shift.”

  Campton, on the way back to Montmartre, fell to wondering if such excesses of altruism were necessary, or a mere vain overflow of energy. He was terrified by his first close glimpse of the ravages of war, and the efforts of the little band struggling to heal them seemed pitifully ineffectual. No doubt they did good here and there, made a few lives less intolerable; but how the insatiable monster must laugh at them as he spread his red havoc wider!

  On reaching home, Campton forgot everything at sight of a letter from George. He had not had one for two weeks, and this interruption, just as the military mails were growing more regular, had made him anxious. But it was the usual letter: brief, cheerful, inexpressive. Apparently there was no change in George’s situation, nor any wish on his part that there should be. He grumbled humorously at the dulness of his work and the monotony of life in a war-zone town; and wondered whether, if this sort of thing went on, there might not soon be some talk of leave. And just at the end of this affectionate and unsatisfactory two pages, Campton lit on a name that roused him.

  “I saw a fellow who’d seen Benny Upsher yesterday on his way to the English front. The young lunatic looked very fit. You know he volunteered in the English army when he found he couldn’t get into the French. He’s likely to get all the fighting he wants.” It was a relief to know that someone had seen Benny Upsher lately. The letter was but four days old, and he was then on his way to the front. Probably he was not yet in the fighting he wanted, and one could, without remorse, call up an unmutilated face and clear blue eyes.

  Campton, re-reading the postscript, was struck by a small thing. George had originally written: “I saw Benny Upsher yesterday,” and had then altered the phrase to “I saw a fellow who’d seen Benny Upsher.” There was nothing out of the way in that: it simply showed that he had written in haste and revised the sentence. But he added: “The young lunatic looked very fit.” Well: that too was natural. It was “the fellow” who reported Benny as looking fit; the phrase was rather elliptic, but Campton could hardly have said why it gave him the impression that it was George himself who had seen Upsher. The idea was manifestly absurd, since there was the length of the front between George’s staff-town and the fiery pit yawning for his cousin. Campton laid aside the letter with the distinct wish that his son had not called Benny Upsher a young lunatic.

  

  XIV.

  When Campton took his sketch of George to Leonce Black, the dealer who specialized in “Camptons,” he was surprised at the magnitude of the sum which the great picture-broker, lounging in a glossy War Office uniform among his Gauguins and Vuillards, immediately offered.

  Leonce Black noted his surprise and smiled. “You think there’s nothing doing nowadays? Don’t you believe it, Mr. Campton. Now that the big men have stopped painting, the collectors are all the keener to snap up what’s left in their portfolios.” He placed the cheque in Campton’s hand, and drew back to study the effect of the sketch, which he had slipped into a frame against a velvet curtain. “Ah” he said, as if he were tasting an old wine.

  As Campton turned to go the dealer’s enthusiasm bubbled over. “Haven’t you got anything more? Remember me if you have.”

  “I don’t sell my sketches,” said Campton. “This was exceptional—for a charity…”

  “I know, I know. Well, you’re likely to have a good many more calls of the same sort before we get this war over,” the dealer remarked philosophically. “Anyhow, remember I can place anything you’ll give me. When people want a Campton it’s to me they come. I’ve got standing orders from two clients … both given before the war, and both good today.”

  Campton paused in the doorway, seized by his old fear of the painting’s passing into Anderson Brant’s possession.

  “Look here: where is this one going?”

  The dealer cocked his handsome grey head and glanced archly through plump eyelids. “Violation of professional secrecy? Well … Well … under constraint I’ll confess it’s to a young lady: great admirer, artist herself. Had her order by cable from New York a year ago. Been on the lookout ever since.”

  “Oh, all right,” Campton answered, repocketing the money.

  He set out at once for “The Friends of French Art,” and Leonce Black, bound for the Ministry of War, walked by his side, regaling him alternately with the gossip of the Ministry and with racy anecdotes of the dealers’ world. In M. Black’s opinion the war was an inexcusable blunder, since Germany was getting to be the best market for the kind of freak painters out of whom the dealers who “know how to make a man ‘foam’” can make a big turn-over. “I don’t know what on earth will become of all those poor devils now: Paris cared for them only because she knew Germany would give any money for their things. Personally, as you know, I’ve always preferred sounder goods: I’m a classic, my dear Campton, and I can feel only classic art,” said the dealer, swelling out his uniformed breast and stroking his Assyrian nose as though its handsome curve followed the pure Delphic line. “But, as long as things go on as they are at present in my department of the administration, the war’s not going to end in a hurry,” he continued. “And now we’re in for it, we’ve got to see the thing through.”

  Campton found Boylston, as usual, in his melancholy cabinet particulier. He was listening to the tale of a young woman with streaming eyes and an extravagant hat. She was so absorbed in her trouble that she did not notice Campton’s entrance, and behind her back the painter made a sign to say that she was not to be interrupted.

  He was as much interested in the suppliant’s tale as in watching Boylston’s way of listening. That modest and commonplace-looking young man was beginning to excite a lively curiosity in Campton. It was not only that he remembered George’s commendation, for he knew that the generous enthusiasms of youth may be inspired by trifles imperceptible to the older. It was Boylston himself who interested the painter. He knew no more of the young man than the scant details Miss Anthony could give. Boylston, it appeared, was the oldest hope of a well-to-do Connecticut family. On his leaving college a place had been reserved for him in the paternal business; but he had announced good-humouredly that he did not mean to spend his life in an office, and one day, after a ten minutes’ conversation with his father,
as to which details were lacking, he had packed a suitcase and sailed for France. There he had lived ever since, in shabby rooms in the rue de Verneuil, on the scant allowance remitted by an irate parent: apparently never running into debt, yet always ready to help a friend.

  All the American art-students in Paris knew Boylston; and though he was still in the early thirties, they all looked up to him. For Boylston had one quality which always impresses youth: Boylston knew everybody. Whether you went with him to a smart restaurant in the rue Royale, or to a wine-shop of the Left Bank, the patron welcomed him with the same cordiality, and sent the same emphatic instructions to the cook. The first fresh peas and the tenderest spring chicken were always for this quiet youth, who, when he was alone, dined cheerfully on veal and vin ordinaire. If you wanted to know where to get the best Burgundy, Boylston could tell you; he could also tell you where to buy an engagement ring for your girl, a Ford run-about going at half-price, or the papier timbre on which to address a summons to a recalcitrant laundress.

  If you got into a row with your landlady you found that Boylston knew her, and that at sight of him she melted and withdrew her claim; or, failing this, he knew the solicitor in whose office her son was a clerk, or had other means of reducing her to reason. Boylston also knew a man who could make old clocks go, another who could clean flannels without their shrinking, and a third who could get you old picture-frames for a song; and, best of all, when any inexperienced American youth was caught in the dark Parisian cobweb (and the people at home were on no account to hear about it) Boylston was found to be the friend and familiar of certain occult authorities who, with a smile and a word of warning, could break the mesh and free the victim.

  The mystery was, how and why all these people did what Boylston wanted; but the reason began to dawn on Campton as he watched the young woman in the foolish hat deliver herself of her grievance. Boylston was simply a perfect listener—and most of his life was spent in listening. Everything about him listened: his round forehead and peering screwed-up eyes, his lips twitching responsively under the close-clipped moustache, and every crease and dimple of his sagacious and humorous young countenance; even the attitude of his short fat body, with elbows comfortably bedded in heaped-up papers, and fingers plunged into his crinkled hair. There was never a hint of hurry or impatience about him: having once asserted his right to do what he liked with his life, he was apparently content to let all his friends prey on it. You never caught his eye on the clock, or his lips shaping an answer before you had turned the last corner of your story. Yet when the story was told, and he had surveyed it in all its bearings, you could be sure he would do what he could for you, and do it before the day was over.

  “Very well, Mademoiselle,” he said, when the young woman had finished. “I promise you I’ll see Mme. Beausite, and try to get her to recognize your claim.”

  “Mind you, I don’t ask charity—I won’t take charity from your committee!” the young lady hissed, gathering up a tawdry hand-bag.

  “Oh, we’re not forcing it on any one,” smiled Boylston, opening the door for her.

  When he turned back to Campton his face was flushed and frowning. “Poor thing! She’s a nuisance, but I’ll fight to the last ditch for her. The chap she lives with was Beausite’s secretary and understudy, and devilled for him before the war. The poor fellow has come back from the front a complete wreck, and can’t even collect the salary Beausite owes him for the last three months before the war. Beausite’s plea is that he’s too poor, and that the war lets him out of paying. Of course he counts on our doing it for him.”

  “And you’re not going to?”

  “Well,” said Boylston humorously, “I shouldn’t wonder if he beat us in the long run. But I’ll have a try first; and anyhow the poor girl needn’t know. She used to earn a little money doing fashion-articles, but of course there’s no market for that now, and I don’t see how the pair can live. They have a little boy, and there’s an infirm mother, and they’re waiting to get married till the girl can find a job.”

  “Good Lord!” Campton groaned, with a sudden vision of the countless little trades and traffics arrested by the war, and all the industrious thousands reduced to querulous pauperism or slow death.

  “How do they live—all these people?”

  “They don’t—always. I could tell you”

  “Don’t, for God’s sake; I can’t stand it.” Campton drew out the cheque. “Here: this is what I’ve got for the Davrils.”

  “Good Lord!” said Boylston, staring with round eyes.

  “It will pull them through, anyhow, won’t it?”

  “Well” said Boylston. “It will if you’ll endorse it,” he added, %smiling. Campton laughed and took up a pen.

  A. day or two later Campton, returning home one afternoon, overtook a small black-veiled figure with a limp like his own. He guessed at once that it was the lame Davril girl, come to thank him; and his dislike of such ceremonies caused him to glance about for a way of escape. But as he did so the girl turned with a smile that put him to shame. He remembered Adele Anthony’s saying, one day when he had found her in her refugee office patiently undergoing a like ordeal: “We’ve no right to refuse the only coin they can repay us in.”

  The Davril girl was a plain likeness of her brother, with the same hungry flame in her eyes. She wore the nondescript black that Campton had remarked at the funeral; and knowing the importance which the French attach to every detail of conventional mourning, he wondered that mother and daughter had not laid out part of his gift in crape. But doubtless the equally strong instinct of thrift had caused Mme. Davril to put away the whole sum.

  Mile. Davril greeted Campton pleasantly, and assured him that she had not found the long way from Villejuif to Montmartre too difficult.

  “I would have gone to you,” the painter protested; but she answered that she wanted to see with her own eyes where her brother’s friend lived.

  In the studio she looked about her with a quick searching glance, %said “Oh, a piano” as if the fact were connected with the object of her errand—and then, settling herself in an armchair, unclasped her shabby hand-bag.

  “Monsieur, there has been a misunderstanding; this money is not ours.” She laid Campton’s cheque on the table.

  A flush of annoyance rose to the painter’s face. What on earth had Boylston let him in for? If the Davrils were as proud as all that it was not worth while to have sold a sketch it had cost him such a pang to part with. He felt the exasperation of the would-be philanthropist when he first discovers that nothing complicates life as much as doing good.

  “But, Mademoiselle”

  “This money is not ours. If Rene had lived he would never have sold your picture; and we would starve rather than betray his trust.”

  When stout ladies in velvet declare that they would starve rather than sacrifice this or that principle, the statement has only the cold beauty of rhetoric; but on the drawn lips of a thinly-clad young woman evidently acquainted with the process, it becomes a fiery reality.

  “Starve—nonsense! My dear young lady, you betray him when you talk like that,” said Campton, moved.

  She shook her head. “It depends, Monsieur, which things matter most to one. We shall never—my mother and I—do anything that Rene would not have done. The picture was not ours: we brought it back to you”

  “But if the picture’s not yours it’s mine,” Campton interrupted; “and I’d a right to sell it, and a right to do what I choose with the money.”

  His visitor smiled. “That’s what we feel; it was what I was coming to.” And clasping her threadbare glove-tips about the arms of the chair Mile. Davril set forth with extreme precision the object of her visit.

  It was to propose that Campton should hand over the cheque to “The Friends of French Art,” devoting one-third to the aid of the families of combatant painters, the rest to young musicians and authors. “It doesn’t seem right that only the painters’ families should benefit by what
your committee are doing. And Rene would have thought so too. He knew so many young men of letters and journalists who, before the war, just managed to keep their families alive; and in my profession I could tell you of poor music-teachers and accompanists whose work stopped the day war broke out, and who have been living ever since on the crusts their luckier comrades could spare them. Rene would have let us accept from you help that was shared with others: he would have been so glad, often, of a few francs to relieve the misery we see about us. and this great sum might be the beginning of a co-operative work for artists ruined by the war.”

  She went on to explain that in the families of almost all the young artists at the front there was at least one member at home who practised one of the arts, or who was capable of doing some kind of useful work. The value of Campton’s gift, Mile. Davril argued, would be tripled if it were so employed as to give the artists and their families occupation: producing at least the illusion that those who could were earning their living, or helping their less fortunate comrades. “It’s not only a question of saving their dignity: I don’t believe much in that. You have dignity or you haven’t—and if you have, it doesn’t need any saving,” this clear-toned young woman remarked. “The real question, for all of us artists, is that of keeping our hands in, and our interest in our work alive; sometimes, too, of giving a new talent its first chance. At any rate, it would mean work and not stagnation; which is all that most charity produces.”

  She developed her plan: for the musicians, concerts in private houses (hence her glance at the piano); for the painters, small exhibitions in the rooms of the committee, where their pictures would be sold with the deduction of a percentage, to be returned to the general fund; and for the writers—well, their lot was perhaps the hardest to deal with; but an employment agency might be opened, where those who chose could put their names down and take such work as was offered. Above all, Mile. Davril again insisted, the fund created by Campton’s gift was to be spent only in giving employment, not for mere relief.