Edith Wharton - Novel 14

by A Son at the Front (v2. 1)

  He was less surprised at her intrusion than annoyed at being torn from his picture. “Didn’t you see a sign on the door? ‘No admission before twelve’” he growled.

  “Oh, yes,” she said; “that’s how I knew you were in.”

  “But I’m not in; I’m working. I can’t allow”

  Her large bosom rose. “I know, my heart! I remember how stern you always were. ‘Work—work—my work!’ It was always that, even in the first days. But I come to you on my knees: Juanito, imagine me there!” She sketched a plunging motion of her vast body, arrested it in time by supporting herself on the table, and threw back her head entreatingly, so that Campton caught a glint of the pearls in a crevasse of her quaking throat. He saw that her eyes were red with weeping.

  “What can I do? You’re in trouble?”

  “Oh, such trouble, my heart—such trouble!” She leaned to him, absorbing his hands in her plump muscular grasp. “I must have news of my son; I must! The young man—you saw him that day you came with your wife? Yes—he looked in at the door: beautiful as a god, was he not? That was my son Pepito!” And with a deep breath of pride and anguish she unburdened herself of her tale.

  Two or three years after her parting with Campton she had married a clever French barber from the Pyrénées. He had brought her to France, and they had opened a “Beauty Shop” at Biarritz and had prospered. Pepito was born there and soon afterward, alas, her clever husband, declaring that he “hated grease in cooking or in woman” (“and after my Pepito’s birth I became as you now see me”), had gone off with the manicure and all their savings. Mme. Olida had had a struggle to bring up her boy; but she had kept on with the Beauty Shop, had made a success of it, and not long before the war had added fortune-telling to massage and hair-dressing.

  “And my son, Juanito; was not my son an advertisement for a Beauty Shop, I ask you? Before he was out of petticoats he brought me customers; before he was sixteen all the ladies who came to me were quarreling over him. Ah, there were moments when he crucified me … but lately he had grown more reasonable, had begun to see where his true interests lay, and we had become friends again, friends and business partners. When the war broke out I came to Paris; I knew that all the mothers would want news of their sons. I have made a great deal of money; and I have had wonderful results—wonderful! I could give you instances—names that you know—where I have foretold everything! Oh, I have the gift, my heart, I have it!”

  She pressed his hands with a smile of triumph; then her face clouded again.

  “But six months ago my darling was called to his regiment—and for three months now I’ve had no news of him, none, none!” she sobbed, the tears making dark streaks through her purplish powder.

  The upshot of it was that she had heard that Campton was “all-powerful”; that he knew Ministers and Generals, knew great financiers like Jorgenstein (who were so much more powerful than either Generals or Ministers), and could, if he chose, help her to trace her boy, who, from the day of his departure for the front, had vanished as utterly as if the earth had swallowed him.

  “Not a word, not a sign—to me, his mother, who have slaved and slaved for him, who have made a fortune for him!”

  Campton looked at her, marvelling. “But your gift as you call it… your powers … you can’t use them for yourself?”

  She returned his look with a tearful simplicity: she hardly seemed to comprehend what he was saying. “But my son! I want news of my son, real news; I want a letter; I want to see some one who has seen him! To touch a hand that has touched him! Oh, don’t you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand,” he said; and she took up her desperate litany, clinging about him with soft palms like medusa-lips, till by dint of many promises he managed to detach himself and steer her gently to the door.

  On the threshold she turned to him once more. “And your own son, Juanito—I know he’s at the front again. His mother came the other day—she often comes. And I can promise you things if you’ll help me. No, even if you don’t help me—for the old days’ sake, I will! I know secrets … magical secrets that will protect him. There’s a Moorish salve, infallible against bullets … handed down from King Solomon … I can get it…”

  Campton, guiding her across the sill, led her out and bolted the door on her; then he went back to his easel and stood gazing at the sketch of George. But the spell was broken: the old George was no longer there. The war had sucked him back into its awful whirlpool—once more he was that dark enigma, a son at the front…

  In the heavy weeks which followed, a guarded allusion of Campton’s showed him one day that Boylston was aware of there being “something between” George and Madge Talkett.

  “Not that he’s ever said anything—or even encouraged me to guess anything. But she’s got a talking face, poor little thing; and not much gift of restraint. And I suppose it’s fairly obvious to everybody—except perhaps to Talkett—that she’s pretty hard hit.”

  “Yes. And George?”

  Boylston’s round face became remote and mysterious. “We don’t really know—do we, sir?—exactly how any of them feel? Any more than if they were” He drew up sharply on the word, but Campton faced it.

  “Dead?”

  “Transfigured, say; no, transwhat’s the word in the theology books? A new substance … somehow…”

  “Ah, you feel that too?” the father exclaimed.

  “Yes. They don’t know it themselves, though—how far they are from us. At least I don’t think they do.”

  Campton nodded. “But George, in the beginning, was—frankly indifferent to the war, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes; intellectually he was. But he told me that when he saw the first men on their way back from the front—with the first mud on them—he knew he belonged where they’d come from. I tried hard to persuade him when he was here that his real job was on a military mission to America—and it was. Think what he might have done out there! But it was no use. His orderly’s visit did the trick. It’s the thought of their men that pulls them all back. Look at Louis Dastrey—they couldn’t keep him in America. There’s something in all their eyes: I don’t know what. Dulce et decorum, perhaps”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause before Campton questioned: “And Talkett?”

  “Poor little ass—I don’t know. He’s here arguing with me nearly every day. She looks over his shoulder, and just shrugs at me with her eyebrows.”

  “Can you guess what he thinks of George’s attitude?”

  “Oh, something different every day. I don’t believe she’s ever really understood. But then she loves him, and nothing else counts.”

  M rs. Brant continued to face life with apparent serenity. She had returned several times to Mme. Olida’s, and had always brought away the same reassuring formula: she thought it striking, and so did her friends, that the clairvoyante’s prediction never varied.

  There was reason to believe that George’s regiment had been sent to Verdun, and from Verdun the news was growing daily more hopeful. This seemed to Mrs. Brant a remarkable confirmation of Olida’s prophecy. Apparently it did not occur to her that, in the matter of human life, victories may be as ruinous as defeats; and she triumphed in the fact—it had grown to be a fact to her—that her boy was at Verdun, when he might have been in the Somme, where things, though stagnant, were on the whole going less well. Mothers prayed for “a quiet sector”—and then, she argued, what happened? The men grew careless, the officers were oftener away; your son was ordered out to see to the repairs of a barbed-wire entanglement, and a sharp-shooter picked him off while you were sitting reading one of his letters, and thinking: “Thank God he’s out of the fighting.” And besides, Olida was sure, and all her predictions had been so wonderful…

  Campton began to dread his wife’s discovering Mme. Olida’s fears for her own son. Every endeavour to get news of Pepito had been fruitless; finally Campton and Boylston concluded that the young man must be a prisoner. The painter had a s
econd visit from Mme. Olida, in the course of which he besought her (without naming Julia) to be careful not to betray her private anxiety to the poor women who came to her for consolation; and she fixed her tortured velvet eyes on him reproachfully.

  “How could you think it of me, Juanito? The money I earn is for my boy! That gives me the strength to invent a new lie every morning.”

  He took her fraudulent hand and kissed it.

  The next afternoon he met Mrs. Brant walking down the Champs Elysées with her light girlish step. She lifted a radiant face to him. “A letter from George this morning! And, do you know, Olida prophesied it? I was there again yesterday; and she told me that he would soon be back, and that at that very moment she could see him writing to me. You’ll admit it’s extraordinary? So many mothers depend on her—I couldn’t live without her. And her messages from her own son are so beautiful”

  “From her own son?”

  ‘Yes: didn’t I tell you? He says such perfect things to her. And she confessed to me, poor woman, that before the war he hadn’t always been kind: he used to take her money, and behave badly. But now every day he sends her a thought-message—such beautiful things! She says she wouldn’t have the courage to keep us all up if it weren’t for the way that she’s kept up by her boy. And now,” Julia added gaily, “I’m going to order the cakes for my bridge-tea this afternoon. You know I promised Georgie I wouldn’t give up my bridge-teas.”

  Now and then Campton returned to his latest portrait of his son; but in spite of George’s frequent letters, in spite of the sudden drawing together of father and son during their last moments at the station, the vision of the boy George, the careless happy George who had ridiculed the thought of war and pursued his millennial dreams of an enlightened world—that vision was gone. Sometimes Campton fancied that the letters themselves increased this effect of remoteness. They were necessarily more guarded than the ones written, before George’s wounding, from an imaginary H.Q.; but that did not wholly account for the difference. Campton, in the last analysis, could only say that as in the moment when George had comforted Mme. Lebel, or greeted his orderly, or when he had said those last few broken words at the station—he seemed nearer than ever, seemed part and substance of his father; or else he became again that beautiful distant apparition, the winged sentry guarding the Unknown.

  The weeks thus punctuated by private anxieties rolled on dark with doom. At last, in December, came the victory of Verdun. Men took it reverently but soberly. The price paid had been too heavy for rejoicing; and the horizon was too ominous in other quarters. Campton had hoped that the New Year would bring his son back on leave; but still George did not speak of coming. Meanwhile Boylston’s face grew rounder and more beaming. At last America was stirring in her sleep. “Oh, if only George were out there!” Boylston used to cry, as if his friend had been an army. His faith in George’s powers of persuasion was almost mystical. And not long afterward Campton had the surprise of a visit which seemed, in the most unforeseen way, to confirm this belief. Returning to his studio one afternoon he found it tenanted by Mr. Roger Talkett.

  The young man, as carefully brushed and equipped as usual, but pale with emotion, clutched the painter’s hand in a moist grasp.

  “My dear Master, I had to see you—to see you alone and immediately.”

  Campton looked at him with apprehension. What was the meaning of his “alone”? Had Mrs. Talkett lost her head, and betrayed her secret—or had she committed some act of imprudence of which the report had come back to her husband?

  “Do sit down,” said the painter weakly.

  But his visitor, remaining sternly upright, shook his head and glanced at his wrist-watch. “My moments,” he said, “are numbered—literally; all I have time for is to implore you to look after my wife.” He drew a handkerchief from his glossy cuff, and rubbed his eyeglasses.

  “Your wife?” Campton echoed, dismayed.

  “My dear sir, haven’t you guessed? It’s George’s wonderful example … his inspiration … I’ve been converted! We men of culture can’t stand by while the ignorant and illiterate are left to die for us. We must leave that attitude to the Barbarian. Our duty is to set an example. I’m off to-night for America—for Plattsburg.”

  “Oh” gasped Campton, wringing his hand.

  Boylston burst into the studio the next day. “What did I tell you, sir? George’s influence—it wakes up everybody. But Talkett—IH be hanged if I should have thought it! And have you seen his wife? She’s a war-goddess! I went to the station with them: their farewells were harrowing. At that minute, you know, I believe she’d forgotten that George ever existed!”

  “Well, thank god for that,” Campton cried.

  “Yes. Don’t you feel how we’re all being swept into it?” panted Boylston breathlessly. His face had caught the illumination. “Sealed, as George says—we’re sealed to the job every one of us! Even I feel that, sitting here at a stuffy desk…” He flushed crimson and his eyes filled. “We’ll be in it, you know; America will—in a few weeks now, I believe! George was as sure of it as I am. And, of course, if the war goes on, our army will have to take short-sighted officers; won’t they, sir? As England and France did from the first. They’ll need the men; they’ll need us all, sir!”

  “They’ll need you, my dear chap; and they’ll have you, to the full, whatever your job is,” Campton smiled; and Boylston, choking back a sob, dashed off again.

  Yes, they were all being swept into it together—swept into the yawning whirlpool. Campton felt that as clearly as all these young men; he felt the triviality, the utter unimportance, of all their personal and private concerns, compared with this great headlong outpouring of life on the altar of conviction. And he understood why, for youths like George and Boylston, nothing, however close and personal to them, would matter till the job was over. “And not even for poor Talkett!” he reflected whimsically.

  That afternoon, curiously appeased, he returned once more to his picture of his son. He had sketched the boy leaning out of the train window, smiling back, signalling, saying goodbye, while his destiny rushed him out into darkness as years ago the train used to rush him back to school. And while Campton worked he caught the glow again; it rested on brow and eyes, and spread in sure touches under his happy brush.

  One day, as the picture progressed, he wavered over the remembrance of some little detail of the face, and went in search of an old portfolio into which, from time to time, he had been in the habit of thrusting his unfinished studies of George. He plunged his hand into the heap, and Georges of all ages looked forth at him: round baby-Georges, freckled schoolboys, a thoughtful long-faced youth (the delicate George of St. Moritz); but none seemed quite to serve his purpose and he rummaged on till he came to a page torn from an old sketch-book. It was the pencil study he had made of George as the lad lay asleep at the Crillon, the night before his mobilisation.

  Campton threw the sketch down on the table; and as he sat staring at it he relived every phase of the emotion out of which it had been born. How little he had known then—how little he had understood! he could bear to look at the drawing now; could bear even to rethink the shuddering thoughts with which he had once flung it away from him. Was it only because the atmosphere was filled with a growing sense of hope? Because, in spite of everything, the victory of Verdun was there to show the inexhaustible strength of France, because people were more and more sure that America was beginning to waken … or just because, after too long and fierce a strain, human nature always instinctively contrives to get its necessary whiff of moral oxygen? Or was it that George’s influence had really penetrated him, and that this strange renewed confidence in life and in ideals was his son’s message of reassurance?

  Certainly the old George was there, close to him, that morning; and somewhere else—in scenes how different—he was sure that the actual George, at that very moment, was giving out force and youth and hope to those about him.

  “I couldn’t be doing thi
s if I didn’t understand—at last,” Campton thought as he turned back to the easel The little pencil sketch had given him just the hint he needed, and he took up his palette with a happy sigh.

  A knock broke in on his rapt labour, and without turning he called out: “Damn it, who are you? Can’t you read the sign? Not in!”

  The door opened and Mr. Brant entered.

  He appeared not to have heard the painter’s challenge; his eyes, from the threshold, sprang straight to the portrait, and remained vacantly fastened there. Campton, long afterward, remembered thinking, as he followed the glance: “He’ll be trying to buy this one too!”

  Mr. Brant moistened his lips, and his gaze, detaching itself from George’s face, moved back in the same vacant way to Campton’s. The two men looked at each other, and Campton jumped to his feet.

  “Not—not?”

  Mr. Brant tried to speak, and the useless effort contracted his mouth in a pitiful grimace.

  “My son?” Campton shrieked, catching him by the arm. The little man dropped into a chair.

  “Not dead … not dead… Hope … hope …” was shaken out of him in jerks of anguish.

  The door burst open again, and Boylston dashed in beaming. He waved aloft a handful of morning papers.

  “America! You’ve seen? They’ve sacked Bernstorff! Broken off diplomatic”

  His face turned white, and he stood staring incredulously from one of the two bowed men to the other.

  

  XXXV.

  Campton once more stood leaning in the window of a Paris hospital.

  Before him, but viewed at another angle, was spread that same great spectacle of the Place de la Concorde that he had looked down at from the Crillon on the eve of mobilisation; behind him, in a fresh white bed, George lay in the same attitude as when his father had stood in the door of his room and sketched him while he slept.

  All day there had run through Campton’s mind the clairvoyante’s promise to Julia: “Your son will come back soon, and will never be sent to the front again.”