Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (40 page)

 
          
He
threw it all out in sharp terse phrases, as a business man might try to hammer
facts about an investment into the bewildered brain of an unpractical client.
Campton felt the blood rising to his forehead, not so much in anger at Mr. Brant
as at the sense of his own inward complicity.

 
          
“There’s
no earthly reason why George should ever go back to the front,” he said.

 
          
“None whatever.
We can get him any staff-job he chooses. His
mother’s already got the half-promise of a post for him at the War Office. But
you’ll see, you’ll see! We can’t stop him. Did we before? There’s only this
woman who can do it!”

 
          
Campton
looked over the banker’s head at the reflection of the false Reynolds in the
mirror. That any one should have been fool enough to pay a big price for such a
patent fraud seemed to him as incomprehensible as his own present obtuseness
seemed to the banker.

 
          
“You
do see, don’t you?” argued Mr. Brant anxiously.

 
          
“Oh,
I suppose so.” Campton slowly got to his feet. The adroit brush-work of the
forged picture fascinated him, and he went up to look at it more closely. Mr.
Brant pursued him with a gratified glance.

 
          
“Ah,
you’re admiring my Reynolds. I paid a thumping price for it—but that’s always
my principle. Pay high, but get the best. It’s a better investment.”

 
          
“Just
so,” Campton assented dully. Mr. Brant seemed suddenly divided from him by the
whole width of the gulf between that daub on the wall and a real Reynolds. They
had nothing more to say to each other—nothing whatever. “Well, good-bye.” He
held out his hand.

 
          
“Think
it over—think it over,” Mr. Brant called out after him as he enfiladed the
sumptuous offices, a medalled veteran holding back each door.

 
          
It
was not until Campton was back at
Montmartre
,
and throwing off his coat to get into his old studio clothes, that he felt in
his pocket the weight of the forgotten concert-money. It was too late in the
day to take it back to the bank, even if he had had the energy to retrace his
steps; and he decided to hand the bag over to Boylston, with whom he was dining
that night to meet the elder Dastrey, home on a brief leave from his ambulance.

 
          
“Think
it over!” Mr. Brant’s adjuration continued to echo in Campton’s ears. As if he
needed to be told to think it over! Once again the war-worn world had vanished
from his mind, and he saw only George, himself and George, George and safety,
George and peace. They blamed women who were cowards about their husbands,
mistresses who schemed to protect their lovers! Well—he was as bad as any one of
them, if it came to that. His son had bought his freedom, had once offered his
life and nearly lost it. Brant was right: at all costs they must keep him from
rushing back into that hell.

 
          
That
Mrs. Talkett should be the means of securing his safety was bitter enough. This
trivial barren creature to be his all—it seemed the parody of Campton’s own
youth! And Julia, after all, had been only a girl when he had met her,
inexperienced and still malleable. A man less absorbed in his art, less
oblivious of the daily material details of life, might conceivably have made
something of her. But this little creature, with her farrago of false ideas,
her vanity, her restlessness, her undisguised desire to keep George and yet not
lose her world, had probably reached the term of her development, and would
trip on through an eternal infancy of fads and frenzies.

 
          
Luckily,
as Mr. Brant said, they could use her for the time; use her better, no doubt,
than had she been a more finely tempered instrument. Campton was still pondering
on these things as he set out for the restaurant where he had agreed to meet
Boylston and Dastrey. At the foot of his own stairs he was surprised to run
against Boylston under the porte-cochere. They gave each other a quick
questioning look, as men did when they encountered each other unexpectedly in
those days.

 
          
“Anything up?
Oh, the money—you’ve come for the money?”
Campton remembered that he had left the bag upstairs.

 
          
“The money?
Haven’t you heard? Louis Dastrey’s killed,” said
Boylston.

 
          
They
stood side by side in the doorway, while Campton’s darkened mind struggled anew
with the mystery of fate. Almost every day now the same readjustment had to be
gone through: the cowering averted mind dragged upward and forced to visualize
a new gap in the ranks, and summon the remaining familiar figures to fill it up
and blot it out. And today this cruel gymnastic was to be performed for
George’s best friend, the elder Dastrey’s sole stake in life! Only a few days
ago the lad had passed through
Paris
, just back from
America
, and in haste to rejoin his regiment; alive
and eager, throbbing with ideas, with courage, mirth and irony—the very
material
France
needed to rebuild her ruins and beget her sons! And now, struck down as
George had been—not to rise like George…

 
          
Once
more the inner voice in Campton questioned distinctly: “Could you bear it?” and
again he answered: “Less than ever!”

 
          
Aloud
he asked: “Paul?”

 
          
“Oh,
he went off at once.
To break the news to Louis’ mother in
the country.”

 
          
“The
boy was all Paul had left.”

 
          
“Yes.”

 
          
“What
difference would it have made in the war, if he’d just stayed on at his job in
America
?”

 
          
Boylston
did not answer, and the two stood silent, looking out unseeingly at the black
empty street. There was nothing left to say, nowadays, when such blows fell;
hardly anything left to feel, it sometimes seemed.

 
          
“Well,
I suppose we must go and eat something,” the older man said; and arm in arm
they went out into the darkness.

 
          
When
Campton returned home that night he sat down and, with the help of several
pipes, wrote a note to Mrs. Talkett asking when she would receive him.

 
          
Thereafter
he tried to go back to his painting and to continue his daily visits to the
Palais Royal office. But for the time nothing seemed to succeed with him. He
threw aside his study of Mme. Lebel—he hung about the office, confused and
idle, and with the ever clearer sense that there also things were
disintegrating.

 
          
George’s
birthday party had been given up on account of young Dastrey’s death. Mrs. Brant
evidently thought the postponement unnecessary; since George’s return she had
gone over heart and soul to the “business as usual” party. But Mr. Brant
quietly sided with George; and Campton was glad to be spared the necessity of
celebrating the day in such a setting.

 
          
It
was some time since Campton had seen his son; but the fault was not his son’s.
The painter was aware of having voluntarily avoided George. He said to himself:
“As long as I know he’s safe why should I bother him?” But in reality he did not
feel himself to be fit company for any one, and had even shunned poor Paul
Dastrey on the latter’s hurried passage through
Paris
, when he had come back from carrying the
fatal news to young Dastrey’s mother.

 
          
“What
on earth could Paul and I have found to say to each other?” Campton argued with
himself. “For men of our age there’s nothing left to say nowadays. The only
thing I can do is to try to work up one of my old studies of Louis. That might
please him a little—later on.”

 
          
But
after one or two attempts he pushed away that canvas too.

 
          
At
length one afternoon George came in. They had not met for over a week, and as
George’s blue uniform detached itself against the blurred tapestries of the
studio, the north light modelling the fresh curves of his face, the father’s
heart gave a leap of pride. His son had never seemed to him so young and strong
and vivid.

 
          
George,
with a sudden blush, took his hand in a long pressure.

 
          
“I
say, Dad—Madge has told me.
Told me that you know about us
and that you’ve persuaded her to see things as I do.
She hadn’t had a
chance to speak to me of your visit till last night.”

 
          
Campton
felt his colour rising; but though his own part in the business still
embarrassed him he was glad that the barriers were down.

 
          
“I
didn’t want,” George continued, still flushed and slightly constrained, “to say
anything to you about all this till I could say: ‘Here’s my wife.’ And now
she’s promised.”

 
          
“She’s
promised?”

 
          
“Thanks
to you, you know. Your visit to her did it. She told me the whole thing
yesterday. How she’d come here in desperation, to ask you to help her, to have
her mind cleared up for her; and how you’d thought it all over, and then gone
to see her, and how wise and perfect you’d been about it all. Poor child—if you
knew the difference it’s made to her!”

 
          
They
were seated now, the littered table between them. Campton, his elbows on it,
his chin on his hands, looked across at his son, who faced the light.

 
          
“The
difference to you too?” he questioned.

 
          
George
smiled: it was exactly the same detached smile which he used to shed on the
little nurse who brought him his cocoa.

 
          
“Of course.
Now I can go back without worrying.” He let the
words fall as carelessly as if there were nothing in them to challenge
attention.

 
          
“Go
back?” Campton stared at him with a blank countenance. Had he heard aright? The
noise of a passing lorry suddenly roared in his ears like the guns of the
front.

 
          
“Did
you say: go back?”

 
          
George
opened his blue eyes wide. “Why, of course; as soon as ever I’m patched up. You
didn’t think?”

 
          
“I
thought you had the sense to realize that you’ve done your share in one line,
and that your business now is to do it in another.”

 
          
The
same detached smile again brushed George’s lips. “But if I happen to have only
one line?”

 
          
“Nonsense!
You know they don’t think that at the War
Office.”

 
          
“I
don’t believe the War Office will shut down if I leave it.”

 
          
“What
an argument! It sounds like” Campton, breaking off on a sharp breath, closed
his lids for a second. He had been gazing too steadily into George’s eyes, and
now at last he knew what that mysterious look in them meant. It was Benny
Upsher’s look, of course—inaccessible to reason, beyond reason, belonging to
other spaces, other weights and measures, over the edge, somehow, of the
tangible calculable world…

 
          
“A
man can’t do more than his duty: you’ve done that,” he growled.

 
          
But
George insisted with his gentle obstinacy: “You’ll feel differently about it
when
America
comes in.”

 
          
Campton
shook his head.
“Never about your case.”

 
          
“You
will—when you see how we all feel. When we’re all in it you wouldn’t have me
looking on, would you? And then there are my men—I’ve got to get back to my
men.”