“A son in the war——”
The words followed Campton down the stairs. What did it mean, and what must it feel like, for parents in this safe denationalized modern world to be suddenly saying to each other with white lips: A son in the war?
He stood on the kerbstone, staring ahead of him and forgetting whither he was bound. The world seemed to lie under a spell, and its weight was on his limbs and brain. Usually any deep inward trouble made him more than ever alive to the outward aspect of things; but this new world in which people talked glibly of sons in the war had suddenly become invisible to him, and he did not know where he was, or what he was staring at. He noted the fact, and remembered a story of St. Bernard—he thought it was—walking beside a beautiful lake in supersensual ecstasy, and saying afterward: “Was there a lake? I didn’t see it.”
On the way back to the hotel he passed the American Embassy, and had a vague idea of trying to see the Ambassador and find out if the United States were not going to devise some way of evading the tyrannous regulation that bound young Americans to France. “And they call this a free country!” he heard himself exclaiming.
The remark sounded exactly like one of Julia’s, and this reminded him that the Ambassador frequently dined at the Brants’. They had certainly not left his door untried; and since, to the Brant circles, Campton was still a shaggy Bohemian, his appeal was not likely to fortify theirs.
His mind turned to Jorgenstein, and the vast web of the speculator’s financial relations. But, after all, France was on the verge of war, if not in it; and following up the threads of the Jorgenstein web was likely to land one in Frankfort or Vienna.
At the hotel he found his sitting-room empty; but presently the door opened and George came in laden with books, fresh yellow and grey ones in Flammarion wrappers.
“Hullo, Dad,” he said; and added: “So the silly show is on.”
“Mobilisation is not war——,” said Campton.
“No——”
“What on earth are all those books?”
“Provender. It appears we may rot at the depotfor 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 Revancheand 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. “Shehasseen 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 beenmade, 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 table-cloth. 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 to-morrow 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 ofthem, 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; hewas 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 densely 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 seemed 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 himthat 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 in, 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 “Kriegsgefahr-zustand.” 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 knowyou!”—who appealed to him for the very information he was trying to obtain for himself: how one could get money, how one could get hold of the concierge, 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. Camptonreflected 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 has 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.
“DoesGeorge 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 punctilious 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 do 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.”
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 toowere 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, Iknowyou 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,thisis not ... this is Mr. Campton.”
“John Campton? I knew it!” Mrs. Talkett’s eyes became devouring and brilliant. “Of course I ought to have recognized 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! ForyearsI’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 costliesthospitality 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 threeweeks 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 feelings 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’tFrance 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 lightIwant 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 Campton 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 littletête-à-têtefor 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 mindmuch, do you? I’ll be back early, for a last pow-wow 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.
He 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 wholebusiness 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 levelheaded 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 withthe 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? SoCampton 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—she 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, butIsaw—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 alaiterie?”
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 chocolatewas 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 this precarious world. Campton poured out Adele’s coffee, and drank off his own as if it had been champagne.
“Do you know anything about the people George was dining with last night?” he enquired abruptly.
Miss Anthony knew everything and everybody in the American circle in Paris; she was a clearing-house of Franco-American gossip, and it was likely enough that if George had special reasons for wishing to spend his last evening away from his family she would know why. But the chance of her knowing what had been kept from him made Campton’s question, as soon as it was put, seem indiscreet, and he added hastily: “Not that I want——”
She looked surprised. “No: he didn’t tell me. Some young man’s affair, I suppose....” She smirked absurdly, her lashless eyes blinking under the pushed-back veil.
Campton’s mind had already strayed from the question. Nothing bored him more than Adele doing the “sad dog,” and he was vexed at having given her such a chance to be silly. What he wanted to know was whether George had spoken to his old friend about his future—about his own idea of his situation, and his intentions and wishes in view of the grim chance which people, with propitiatory vagueness, call “anything happening.” Had the boy left any word, any message with her for any one? But it was useless to speculate, for if he had, the old goose, true as steel, would never betray it by as much as a twitch of her lids. She could look, when it was a question of keeping a secret, like such an impenetrable idiot that one could not imagine any one’s having trusted a secret to her.
Campton had no wish to surprise George’s secrets, if the boy had any. But their parting had been so hopelessly Anglo-Saxon, so curt and casual, that he would have liked to think his son had left, somewhere, a message for him, a word, a letter, in case ... in case there was anything premonitory in the sobbing of that girl at the next table.
But Adele’s pink nose confronted him, as guileless as a rabbit’s, and he went out with her unsatisfied. They parted at the door of the restaurant, and Campton went to the studio to see if there were any news of his maid-servant Mariette. He meant to return to sleep there that night, and even his simple housekeepingwas likely to be troublesome if Mariette should not arrive.
On the way it occurred to him that he had not yet seen the morning papers, and he stopped and bought a handful.
Negotiations, hopes, fears, conjectures—but nothing new or definite, except the insolent fact of Germany’s aggression, and the almost-certainty of England’s intervention. When he reached the studio he found Mme. Lebel in her usual place, paler than usual, but with firm lips and bright eyes. Her three grandsons had left for their depots the day before: one was in theChasseurs Alpins, and probably already on his way to Alsace, another in the infantry, the third in the heavy artillery; she did not know where the two latter were likely to be sent. Her eldest son, their father, was dead; the second, a man of fifty, and a cabinetmaker by trade, was in the territorials, and was not to report for another week. He hoped, before leaving, to see the return of his wife and little girl, who were in the Ardennes with the wife’s people. Mme. Lebel’s mind was made up and her philosophy ready for immediate application.
“It’s terribly hard for the younger people; but it had to be. I come from Nancy, Monsieur: I remember the German occupation. I understand better than my daughter-in-law....”
There was no news of Mariette, and small chance of having any for some days, much less of seeing her.No one could tell how long civilian travel would be interrupted. Mme. Lebel, moved by her lodger’s plight, promised to “find some one”; and Campton mounted to the studio.
He had left it only two days before, on the day when he had vainly waited for Fortin and his dancer; and an abyss already divided him from that vanished time. Then his little world still hung like a straw above an eddy; now it was spinning about in the central vortex.
The pictures stood about untidily, and he looked curiously at all those faces which belonged to the other life. Each bore the mark of its own immediate passions and interests; not one betrayed the least consciousness of coming disaster except the face of poor Madame de Dolmetsch, whose love had enlightened her. Campton began to think of the future from the painter’s point of view. What a modeller of faces a great war must be! What would the people who came through it look like, he wondered.
His bell tinkled, and he turned to answer it. Dastrey, he supposed ... he had caught a glimpse of his friend across the crowd at the Gare de l’Est, seeing off his nephew, but had purposely made no sign. He still wanted to be alone, and above all not to hear war-talk. Mme. Lebel, however, had no doubt revealed his presence in the studio, and he could not risk offending Dastrey.
When he opened the door it was a surprise to seethere, instead of Dastrey’s anxious face, the round rosy countenance of a well-dressed youth with a shock of fair hair above eyes of childish candour.
“Oh—come in,” Campton said, surprised, but divining a compatriot in a difficulty.
The youth obeyed, blushing his apologies.
“I’m Benny Upsher, sir,” he said, in a tone modest yet confident, as if the name were an introduction.
“Oh——” Campton stammered, cursing his absent-mindedness and his unfailing faculty for forgetting names.
“You’re a friend of George’s, aren’t you?” he risked.
“Yes—tremendous. We were at Harvard together—he was two years ahead of me.”
“Ah—then you’re still there?”
Mr. Upsher’s blush became a mask of crimson. “Well—I thought I was, till this thing happened.”
“What thing?”
The youth stared at the older man with a look of celestial wonder.
“This war.—George has started already, hasn’t he?”
“Yes. Two hours ago.”
“So they said—I looked him up at the Crillon. I wanted most awfully to see him; if I had, of course I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
“My dear young man, you’re not bothering me. But what can I do?”
Mr. Upsher’s composure seemed to be returning asthe necessary preliminaries were cleared away. “Thanks a lot,” he said. “Of course what I’d like best is to join his regiment.”
“Join his regiment—you!” Campton exclaimed.
“Oh, I know it’s difficult; I raced up from Biarritz quick as I could to catch him.” He seemed still to be panting with the effort. “I want to be in this,” he concluded.
Campton contemplated him with helpless perplexity. “But I don’t understand—there’s no reason, in your case. With George it was obligatory—on account of his being born here. But I suppose you were born in America?”
“Well, I guess so: in Utica. My mother was Madeline Mayhew. I think we’re a sort of cousins, sir, aren’t we?”
“Of course—of course. Excuse my not recalling it—just at first. But, my dear boy, I still don’t see——”
Mr. Upsher’s powers of stating his case were plainly limited. He pushed back his rumpled hair, looked hard again at his cousin, and repeated doggedly: “I want to beinthis.”
“This war?”
He nodded.
Campton groaned. What did the boy mean, and why come to him with such tomfoolery? At that moment he felt even more unfitted than usual to deal with practical problems, and in spite of the forgottencousinship it was no affair of his what Madeline Mayhew’s son wanted to be in.
But there was the boy himself, stolid, immovable, impenetrable to hints, and with something in his wide blue eyes like George—and yet so childishly different.
“Sit down—have a cigarette, won’t you?—You know, of course,” Campton began, “that what you propose is almost insuperably difficult?”
“Getting into George’s regiment?”
“Getting into the French army at all—for a foreigner, a neutral ... I’m afraid there’s really nothing I can do.”
Benny Upsher smiled indulgently. “I can fix that up all right; getting into the army, I mean. The only thing that might be hard would be getting into his regiment.”
“Oh, as to that—out of the question, I should think.” Campton was conscious of speaking curtly: the boy’s bland determination was beginning to get on his nerves.
“Thank you no end,” said Benny Upsher, getting up. “Sorry to have butted in,” he added, holding out a large brown hand.
Campton followed him to the door perplexedly. He knew that something ought to be done—but what? On the threshold he laid his hand impulsively on the youth’s shoulder. “Look here, my boy, we’re cousins, as you say, and if you’re Madeline Mayhew’s boy you’re an only son. Moreover you’re George’s friend—whichmatters still more to me. I can’t let you go like this. Just let me say a word to you before——”
A gleam of shrewdness flashed through Benny Upsher’s inarticulate blue eyes. “A word or twoagainst, you mean? Why, it’s awfully kind, but not the least earthly use. I guess I’ve heard all the arguments. But all I see is that hulking bully trying to do Belgium in. England’s coming in, ain’t she? Well, then why ain’t we?”
“England? Why—why, there’s no analogy——”
The young man groped for the right word. “I don’t know. Maybe not. Only in tight places we alwaysdoseem to stand together.”
“You’re mad—this is not our war. Do you really want to go out and butcher people?”
“Yes—this kind of people,” said Benny Upsher cheerfully. “You see, I’ve had all this talk from Uncle Harvey Mayhew a good many times on the way over. We came out on the same boat: he wanted me to be his private secretary at the Hague Congress. But I was pretty sure I’d have a job of my own to attend to.”
Campton still contemplated him hopelessly. “Where is your uncle?” he wondered.
Benny grinned. “On his way to the Hague, I suppose.”
“He ought to be here to look after you—some one ought to!”
“Then you don’t see your way to getting me into George’s regiment?” Benny simply replied.
An hour later Campton still seemed to see him standing there, with obstinate soft eyes repeating the same senseless question. It cost him an effort to shake off the vision.
He returned to the Crillon to collect his possessions. On his table was a telegram, and he seized it eagerly, wondering if by some mad chance George’s plans were changed, if he were being sent back, if Fortin had already arranged something....
He tore open the message, and read: “Utica July thirty-first. No news from Benny please do all you can to facilitate his immediate return to America dreadfully anxious your cousin Madeline Upsher.”
“Good Lord!” Campton groaned—“and I never even asked the boy’s address!”