Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (21 page)

 
          
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.

 
          
Campton
listened with growing attention. Nothing hitherto had been less in the line of
his interests than the large schemes of general amelioration which were coming
to be classed under the transatlantic term of “Social Welfare.” If questioned
on the subject a few months earlier he would probably have concealed his
fundamental indifference under the profession of an extreme individualism, and
the assertion of every man’s right to suffer and starve in his own way. Even
since Rene Davril’s death had brought home to him the boundless havoc of the
war, he had felt no more than the impulse to ease his own pain by putting his
hand in his pocket when a particular case was too poignant to be ignored.

 
          
Yet
here were people who had already offered their dearest to
France
, and were now pleading to be allowed to
give all the rest; and who had had the courage and wisdom to think out in
advance the form in which their gift would do most good. Campton had the awe of
the unpractical man for anyone who knows how to apply his ideas. He felt that
there was no use in disputing Mile. Davril’s plan: he must either agree to it
or repocket his cheque.

 
          
“I’ll
do as you want, of course; but I’m not much good about details. Hadn’t you
better consult some one else?” he suggested.

 
          
Oh,
that was already done: she had outlined her project to Miss Anthony and Mr.
Boylston, who approved. All she wanted was Campton’s consent; and this he gave
the more cordially when he learned that, for the present at least, nothing more
was expected of him. First steps in beneficence, he felt, were unspeakably
terrifying; yet he was already aware that, resist as he might, he would never
be able to keep his footing on the brink of the abyss.

 
          
Into
it, as the days went by, his gaze was oftener and oftener plunged. He had begun
to feel that pity was his only remaining link with his kind, the one barrier
between himself and the dreadful solitude which awaited him when he returned to
his studio. What would there have been to think of there, alone among his
unfinished pictures and his broken memories, if not the wants and woes of
people more bereft than himself?
His own
future was
not a thing to dwell on. George was safe: but what George and he were likely to
make of each other after the ordeal was over was a question he preferred to put
aside. He was more and more taking George and his safety for granted, as a
solid standing-ground from which to reach out a hand to the thousands
struggling in the depths. As long as the world’s fate was in the balance it was
every man’s duty to throw into that balance his last ounce of brain and muscle.
Campton wondered how he had ever thought that an accident of birth,
a remoteness
merely geographical, could justify, or even
make possible, an attitude of moral aloofness. Harvey Mayhew’s reasons for
wishing to annihilate
Germany
began to seem less grotesque than his own
for standing aside.

 
          
In
the heat of his conversion he no longer grudged the hours given to Mr. Mayhew.
He patiently led his truculent relative from one government office to another,
everywhere laying stress on Mr. Mayhew’s sympathy with
France
and his desire to advocate her cause in the
United
States
, and trying to curtail his enumeration of his grievances by a glance at
the clock, and the reminder that they had another Minister to see. Mr. Mayhew
was not very manageable. His adventure had grown with repetition, and he was
increasingly disposed to feel that the retaliation he called down on
Germany
could best be justified by telling every
one what he had suffered from her. Intensely aware of the value of time in
Utica, he was less sensible of it in Paris, and seemed to think that, since he
had left a flourishing business to preach the Holy War, other people ought to
leave their affairs to give him a hearing. But his zeal and persistence were
irresistible, and doors which Campton had seen barred against the most
reasonable appeals flew open at the sound of Mr. Mayhew’s trumpet. His pink
face and silvery hair gave him an apostolic air, and circles to which
America
had hitherto been a mere speck in space
suddenly discovered that he represented that legendary character, the Typical
American.

 
          
The
keen Boylston, prompt to note and utilize the fact, urged Campton to interest
Mr. Mayhew in “The Friends of French Art,” and with considerable flourish the
former Peace Delegate was produced at a committee meeting and given his head.
But his interest flagged when he found that the “Friends” concerned themselves
with Atrocities only in so far as any act of war is one, and that their
immediate task was the humdrum one of feeding and clothing the families of the
combatants and sending “comforts” to the trenches. He served up, with a
somewhat dog-eared eloquence, the usual account of his own experiences, and
pressed a modest gift upon the treasurer; but when he departed, after wringing
everybody’s hands, and leaving the French members bedewed with emotion, Campton
had the conviction that their quiet weekly meetings would not often be
fluttered by his presence.

 
          
Campton
was spending an increasing amount of time in the Palais Royal restaurant, where
he performed any drudgery for which no initiative was required. Once or twice,
when Miss Anthony was submerged by a fresh influx of refugees, he lent her a
hand too; and on most days he dropped in late at the office, waited for her to
sift and dismiss the last applicants, and saw her home through the incessant
rain. It interested him to note that the altruism she had so long wasted on
pampered friends was developing into a wise and orderly beneficence. He had
always thought of her as an eternal schoolgirl; now she had grown into a woman.
Sometimes he fancied the change dated from the moment when their eyes had met
across the station, the day they had seen George off. He wondered whether it
might not be interesting to paint her new face, if ever painting became again
thinkable.

 
          
“Passion—I
suppose the great thing is a capacity for passion,” he mused.

 
          
In
himself he imagined the capacity to be quite dead. He loved his son: yes—but he
was beginning to see that he loved him for certain qualities he had read into
him, and the perhaps after all. Well, %perhaps after all the sin for which he
was now atoning in loneliness was that of having been too exclusively an
artist, of having cherished George too egotistically and self-indulgently, too
much as his own most beautiful creation. If he had loved him more humanly, more
tenderly and recklessly, might he have not put into his son the tenderness and
recklessness which were beginning to seem to him the qualities most supremely
human?

 
          
  

 
          
A
week or two later, coming home late from a long day’s work at the office,
Campton saw Mme. Lebel awaiting him.

 
          
He
always stopped for a word now; fearing each time that there was bad news of
Jules Lebel, but not wishing to seem to avoid her.

 
          
Today,
however, Mme. Lebel, though mysterious, was not anxious.

 
          
“Monsieur
will find the studio open. There’s a lady: she insisted on going up.”

 
          
“A lady?
Why did you let her in? What kind of a lady?”

 
          
“A
lady—well, a lady with such magnificent furs that one couldn’t keep her out in
the cold,” Mme. Lebel answered with simplicity.

 
          
Campton
went up apprehensively. The idea of unknown persons in possession of his studio
always made him nervous. Whoever they were, whatever errands they came on, they
always—especially women—disturbed the tranquil course of things, faced him with
unexpected problems, unsettled him in one way or another. Bouncing in on people
suddenly was like dynamiting fish: it left him with his mind full of fragments
of dismembered thoughts.

 
          
As
he entered he perceived from the temperate atmosphere that Mme. Lebel had not
only opened the studio but made up the fire. The lady’s furs must indeed be
magnificent.

 
          
She
sat at the farther end of the room, in a high-backed chair near the stove, and
when she rose he recognized his former wife. The long sable cloak, which had
slipped back over the chair, justified Mme. Lebel’s description, but the dress
beneath it appeared to Campton simpler than Mrs. Brant’s habitual raiment. The
lamplight, striking up into her powdered face, puffed out her underlids and
made harsh hollows in her cheeks. She looked frightened, ill and yet
determined.

 
          
“John”
she began, laying her hand on his sleeve.

 
          
It
was the first time she had ever set foot in his shabby quarters, and in his
astonishment he could only stammer out: “Julia”

 
          
But
as he looked at her he saw that her face was wet with tears. “Not—bad news?” he
broke out.

 
          
She
shook her head and, drawing a handkerchief from a diamond-monogrammed bag,
wiped away the tears and the powder. Then she pressed the handkerchief to her
lips, gazing at him with eyes as helpless as a child’s.

 
          
“Sit
down,” said Campton.

 
          
As
they faced each other across the long table, with papers and paint-rags and
writing materials pushed aside to make room for the threadbare napkin on which
his plate and glass, and bottle of vin ordinaire, were set out, he wondered if
the scene woke in her any memory of their first days of gaiety and poverty, or
if she merely pitied him for still living in such squalor. And suddenly it
occurred to him that when the war was over, and George came back, it would be
pleasant to hunt out a little apartment in an old house in the Faubourg St.
Germain, put some good furniture in it, and oppose the discreeter charm of such
an interior to the heavy splendours of the Avenue Marigny. How could he expect
to hold a luxury-loving youth if he had only this dingy studio to receive him
in?

 
          
Mrs.
Brant began to speak.

 
          
“I
came here to see you because I didn’t wish any one to know; not Adele,
nor
even Anderson.” Leaning toward him she went on in short
breathless sentences: “I’ve just left Madge Talkett: you know her, I think?
She’s at Mme. de Dolmetsch’s hospital. Something dreadful has happened … too
dreadful. It seems that Mme. de Dolmetsch was very much in love with Ladislas
Isador; a writer, wasn’t he? I don’t know his books, but Madge tells me they’re
wonderful … and of course men like that ought not to be sent to the front…”