Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (32 page)

 
          
“Yes—at
the very first, I know: it’s always like that. But the first thing after you
began to feel anything?”

 
          
He
considered, and then said slowly: “The difference.”

 
          
“The difference in him?”

 
          
“In him—in life—in everything.”

 
          
Miss
Anthony, who understood as a rule, was evidently puzzled. “What kind of a
difference?”

 
          
“Oh, a complete difference.”
With that she had to be
content.

 
          
The
sense of it had first come to Campton when the bearded man, raising his lids,
looked at him from far off with George’s eyes, and touched him, very feebly,
with George’s hand. It was in the moment of identifying his son that he felt
the son he had known to be lost to him forever.

 
          
George’s
lips were moving, and the father laid his ear to them; perhaps these were last
words that his boy was saying.

 
          
“Old Dad—in a motor?”

 
          
Campton
nodded.

 
          
The
fact seemed faintly to interest George, who continued to examine him with those
distant eyes.

 
          
“Uncle Andy’s?”

 
          
Campton
nodded again.

 
          
“Mother?”

 
          
“She’s
coming too—very soon.”

 
          
George’s
lips were screwed into a whimsical smile. “I must have a shave first,” he said,
and drowsed off again, his hand in Campton’s…

 
          
“The
other gentleman—?” the nurse questioned the next morning.

 
          
Campton
had spent the night in the hospital, stretched on the floor at his son’s
threshold. It was a breach of rules, but for once the major had condoned it. As
for Mr. Brant, Campton had forgotten all about
him,
and at first did not know what the nurse meant. Then he woke with a start to
the consciousness of his fellow-traveller’s nearness. Mr. Brant, the nurse
explained, had come to the hospital early, and had been waiting below for the
last two hours. Campton, almost as gaunt and unshorn as his son, pulled himself
to his feet and went down. In the hall the banker, very white, but smooth and
trim as ever, was patiently measuring the muddy flags.

 
          
“Less
temperature this morning,” Campton called from the last flight.

 
          
“Oh,”
stammered Mr. Brant, red and pale by turns.

 
          
Campton
smiled haggardly and pulled himself together in an effort of communicativeness.
“Look here—he’s asked for you; you’d better go up. Only for a few minutes,
please; he’s awfully weak.”

 
          
Mr.
Brant, speechless, stood stiffly waiting to be conducted. Campton noticed the
mist in his eyes, and took pity on him.

 
          
“I
say—where’s the hotel?
Just a step away?
I’ll go
around, then, and get a shave and a wash while you’re with him,” the father
said, with a magnanimity which he somehow felt the powers might take account of
in their subsequent dealings with George. If the boy was to live Campton could
afford to be generous; and he had decided to assume that the boy would live,
and to order his behaviour accordingly.

 
          
“I—thank
you,” said Mr. Brant, turning toward the stairs.

 
          
“Five
minutes at the outside!” Campton cautioned him, and hurried out into the
morning air through which the guns still crashed methodically.

 
          
When
he got back to the hospital, refreshed and decent, he was surprised, and for a
moment alarmed, to find that Mr. Brant had not come down.

 
          
“Sending
up his temperature, of course—damn him!” Campton raged
,
scrambling up the stairs as fast as his stiff leg permitted. But outside of
George’s door he saw a small figure patiently mounting guard.

 
          
“I
stayed with him less than five minutes; I was merely waiting to thank you.”

 
          
“Oh,
that’s all right.” Campton paused, and then made his supreme effort. “How does
he strike you?”

 
          
“Hopefully—hopefully.
He had his joke as usual,” Mr. Brant
said with a twitching smile.

 
          
“Oh,
that! But his temperature’s decidedly lower. Of course they may have to take
the ball out of the lung; but perhaps before they do it he can be moved from
this hell.”

 
          
The
two men were silent, the same passion of anxiety consuming them, and no means
left of communicating it to each other.

 
          
“I’ll
look in again later. Shall I have something to eat sent round to you from the
hotel?” Mr. Brant suggested.

 
          
“Oh,
thanks—if you would.”

 
          
Campton
put out his hand and crushed Mr. Brant’s dry fingers. But for this man he might
not have got to his son in time; and this man had not once made use of the fact
to press his own claim on George. With pity in his heart, the father,
privileged to remain at his son’s
bedside
, watched Mr.
Brant’s small figure retreating alone. How ghastly to sit all day in that
squalid hotel, his eyes on his watch, with nothing to do but to wonder and
wonder about the temperature of another man’s son!

 
          
The
next day was worse; so much worse that everything disappeared from Campton’s
view but the present agony of watching, hovering, hanging helplessly on the
words of nurse and doctor, and spying on the glances they exchanged behind his
back.

 
          
There
could be no thought yet of extracting the bullet; a great surgeon, passing
through the wards on a hasty tour of inspection, had confirmed this verdict.
Oh, to have kept the surgeon there—to have had him at hand to watch for the
propitious moment and seize it without an instant’s delay! Suddenly the vision
which to Campton had been among the most hideous of all his crowding
nightmares—that of George stretched naked on an operating-table, his face
hidden by a chloroform mask, and an orderly hurrying away with a pile of red
towels like those perpetually carried through the passages below—this vision
became to the father’s fevered mind as soothing as a glimpse of Paradise. If
only George’s temperature would go down—if only the doctors would pronounce him
strong enough to have the bullet taken out! What would anything else matter then?
Campton would feel as safe as he used to years ago, when after the recurring
months of separation the boy came back from school, and he could take him in
his arms and make sure that he was the same Geordie, only bigger, browner, with
thicker curlier hair, and tougher muscles under his jacket.

 
          
What
if the great surgeon, on his way back from the front, were to pass through the
town again that evening, reverse his verdict, and perhaps even perform the
operation then and there? Was there no way of prevailing on him to stop and
take another look at George on the return? The idea took immediate possession
of Campton, crowding out his intolerable anguish, and bringing such relief that
for a few seconds he felt as if some life-saving operation had been performed
on
himself
. As he stood watching the great man’s
retreat, followed by doctors and nurses, Mr. Brant suddenly touched his arm,
and the eyes of the two met. Campton understood and gasped out: “Yes, yes; we
must manage to get him back.”

 
          
Mr.
Brant nodded.
“At all costs.”
He paused, again
interrogated Campton’s eyes, and stammered: “You authorize—?”

 
          
“Oh, God—anything!”

 
          
“He’s
dined at my house in
Paris
,” Mr. Brant threw in, as if trying to justify himself.

 
          
“Oh,
go—go!” Campton almost pushed him down the stairs. Ten minutes later he
reappeared, modest but exultant.

 
          
“Well?”

 
          
“He
wouldn’t commit himself, before the others”

 
          
“Oh”

 
          
“But
to me, as he was getting into the motor”

 
          
“Well?”

 
          
“Yes: if possible.
Somewhere about
midnight
.”

 
          
Campton
turned away, choking, and stumped off toward the tall window at the end of the
passage. Below him lay the court. A line of stretchers was being carried across
it, not empty this time, but each one with a bloody burden. Doctors, nurses,
orderlies hurried to and fro. Drub, drub, drub, went the guns, shaking the
windows, rolling their fierce din along the cloudy sky, down the corridors of
the hospital and the pavement of the streets, like huge bowls crashing through
story above story of a kind of sky-scraping bowling alley.

 
          
“Even
the dead underground must hear them!” Campton muttered.

 
          
The
word made him shudder superstitiously, and he crept back to George’s door and
opened it; but the nurse, within, shook her head.

 
          
“He
must sleep after the examination. Better go.”

 
          
Campton
turned and saw Mr. Brant waiting. A bell rang twelve. The two, in silence,
walked down the stairs, crossed the court (averting their eyes from the
stretchers) and went to the hotel to get something to eat.

 
          
Midnight
came. It passed. No one in the hurried
confused world of the hospital had heard of the possibility of the surgeon’s
returning. When Campton mentioned it to the nurse she smiled her tired smile,
and said “He could have done nothing.”

 
          
Done
nothing! How could she know? How could any one, but the surgeon himself? Would
he have promised if he had not thought there was some chance? Campton,
stretched out on a blanket and his rolled-up coat, lay through the long
restless hours staring at the moonlit sky framed by the window of the corridor.
Great clouds swept over that cold indifferent vault they seemed like the smoke
from the guns which had not once ceased through the night. At last he got up,
turned his back on the window, and lay down again facing the stairs. The
moonlight unrolled a white strip along the stone floor. A church-bell rang one
… two … there were noises and movements below. Campton raised himself, his
heart beating all over his body. Steps came echoing up.

 
          
“Careful!”
some one called. A stretcher rounded the stair-rail; another, and then another.
An orderly with a lantern preceded them, followed by one of the doctors, an old
bunched-up man in a muddy uniform, who stopped furtively to take a pinch of
snuff. Campton could not believe his eyes; didn’t the hospital people know that
every bed on that floor was full? Every bed, that is, but the two in George’s
room; and the nurse had given Campton the hope, the promise almost, that as
long as his boy was so ill she would keep those empty. “I’ll manage somehow,”
she had said.

 
          
For
a mad moment Campton was on the point of throwing himself in the way of the
tragic procession, barring the threshold with his arms. “What does this mean?”
he stammered to the nurse, who had appeared from another room with her little
lamp.

 
          
She
gave a shrug. “More casualties—every hospital is like this.”