Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (41 page)

 
          
“But
you’ve no right to go now; no business,” his father broke in violently. “Persuading
that poor girl to wreck her life … and then leaving her, planting her there
with her past ruined, and her future … George, you can’t!”

 
          
George,
in his long months of illness, had lost his old ruddiness of complexion. At his
father’s challenge the blood again rose the more visibly to his still-gaunt
cheeks and white forehead: he was evidently struck.

 
          
“You’ll
kill her—and kill your mother!” Campton stormed.

 
          
“Oh,
it’s not for tomorrow. Not for a long time, perhaps. My shoulder’s still too
stiff. I was stupid,” the young man haltingly added, “to put it as I did. Of
course I’ve got to think of Madge now,” he acknowledged, “as well as mother.”

 
          
The
blood flowed slowly back to Campton’s heart. “You’ve got to think of—just the
mere common-sense of the thing. That’s all I ask. You’ve done your turn; you’ve
done more. But never mind that. Now it’s different. You’re barely patched up:
you’re of use, immense use, for staff-work, and you know it. And you’ve asked a
woman to tie up her future to yours—at what cost you know too. It’s as much
your duty to keep away from the front now as it was before—well, I admit it—to
go there. You’ve done just what I should have wanted my son to do, up to this
minute”

 
          
George
laid a hand on his a little wistfully. “Then just go on trusting me.”

 
          
“I
do—to see that I’m right! If I can’t convince you, ask Boylston—ask Adele!”

 
          
George
sat staring down at the table. For the first time since they had met at
Doullens Campton was conscious of reaching his son’s inner mind, and of influencing
it.

 
          
“I
wonder if you really love her?” he suddenly risked.

 
          
The
question did not seem to offend George, scarcely to surprise him. “Of course,”
he said simply. “Only—well, everything’s different nowadays, isn’t it?
So many of the old ideas have come to seem such humbug.
That’s what I want to drag her out of—the coils and coils of stale humbug. They
were killing her.”

 
          
“Well—take
care you don’t,” Campton said, thinking that everything was different indeed,
as he recalled the reasons young men had had for loving and marrying in his own
time.

 
          
A
faint look of amusement came into George’s eyes. “Kill her? Oh, no. I’m
gradually bringing her to life. But all this is hard to talk about—yet.
By-and-bye you’ll understand; she’ll show you, we’ll show you together. But at
present nothing’s to be said—to any one, please, not even to mother. Madge
thinks this is no time for such things. There, of course, I don’t agree; but I
must be patient. The secrecy, the underhandedness,
are
hateful to me; but for her it’s all a part of the sacred humbug.”

 
          
He
rose listlessly, as if the discussion had bled all the life out of him, and
took himself away.

 
          
When
he had gone his father drew a deep breath. Yes—the boy would stay in
Paris
; he would almost certainly stay; for the
present, at any rate. And people were still prophesying that in the spring
there would be a big push all along the line; and after that the nightmare
might be over. Campton was glad he had gone to see Madge Talkett. He was glad,
above all, that if the thing had to be done it was over, and that, by Madge’s
wish, no one was to know of what had passed between them. It was a distinct
relief, in spite of what he had suggested to George, not to have to carry that
particular problem to Adele Anthony or Boylston.

 
          
A
few days late George accepted a staff-appointment in
Paris
.

 
          
  

 
          
Heavily
the weeks went by.

 
          
The
world continued to roar on through smoke and flame, and contrasted with that
headlong race was the slow dragging lapse of hours and days to those who had to
wait on events inactively.

 
          
When
Campton met Paul Dastrey for the first time after the death of the latter’s
nephew, the two men exchanged a long hand-clasp and then sat silent. As Campton
had felt from the first, there was nothing left for them to say to each other.
If young men like Louis Dastrey must continue to be sacrificed by hundreds of
thousands to save their country, for whom was the country being saved? Was it
for the wasp-waisted youths in sham uniforms who hunted the reawakening hotels
and restaurants, in the frequent intervals between their ambulance trips to
safe distances from the front? Or for the elderly men like Dastrey and Campton,
who could only sit facing each other with the spectre of the lost between them?
Young Dastrey, young Fortin-Lescluze, Rene Davril, Benny Upsher—and how many
hundreds more each day! And not even a child left by most of them to carry on
the faith they had died for…

 
          
“If
we’re giving all we care for so that those little worms can reopen their
dance-halls on the ruins, what in God’s name is left?” Campton questioned.

 
          
Dastrey
sat looking at the ground, his grey head bent between his hands. “
France
,” he said.

 
          
“What’s
France
, with no men left?”

 
          
“Well—I
suppose, an Idea.”

 
          
“Yes.
I suppose so.” Campton stood up heavily.

 
          
An
Idea: they must cling to that. If Dastrey, from the depths of his destitution,
could still feel it and live by it, why did it not help Campton more? An Idea:
that was what
France
, ever since she had existed, had always been in the story of
civilization; a luminous point about which striving visions and purposes could
rally. And in that sense she had been as much Campton’s spiritual home as
Dastrey’s; to thinkers, artists, to all creators, she had always been a second
country. If
France
went, western civilization went with her; and then all they had
believed in and been guided by would perish. That was what George had felt; it
was what had driven him from the
Argonne
to
the
Aisne
. Campton felt it too; but dully, through a
fog. His son was safe; yes—but too many other men’s sons were dying. There was
no spot where his thoughts could rest: there were moments when the sight of
George, intact and immaculate—his arm at last out of its sling—
rose
before his father like a reproach.

 
          
The
feeling was senseless; but there it was. Whenever the young man entered the
room Campton saw him attended by the invisible host of his comrades, the
fevered, the maimed and the dying. The Germans had attacked at
Verdun
: horrible daily details of the struggle
were pouring in. No one at the rear had really known, except in swift fitful
flashes, about the individual suffering of the first months of the war; now
such information was systematized and distributed everywhere, daily, with a
cold impartial hand. And every night, when one laid one’s old bones on one’s
bed, there were those others, the young in their thousands, lying down, perhaps
never to rise again, in the mud and blood of the trenches.

 
          
Even
Boylston’s Preparedness was beginning to get on Campton’s nerves. He tried to
picture to himself how he should exult when his country at last fell into line;
but he could realize only what his humiliation would be if she did not. It was
almost a relief, at this time, to have his mind diverted to the dissensions
among “The Friends of French Art,” where, at a stormy meeting, Harvey Mayhew,
as a member of the Finance Committee, had asked for an account of the money
taken in at Mrs. Talkett’s concert. This money, Mr. Mayhew stated, had passed
through a number of hands. It should have been taken over by Mr. Boylston, as
treasurer, at the close of the performance; but he had failed to claim it—had,
in fact, been unfindable when the organizers of the concert brought their
takings to Mrs. Talkett—and the money, knocking about from hand to hand, had
finally been carried by Mrs. Talkett herself to Mr. Campton. The latter, when
asked to entrust it to Mr. Mayhew, had refused on the ground that he had
already deposited it in the bank; but a number of days later it was known to be
still in his possession. All this time Mr. Boylston, treasurer, and chairman of
the Financial Committee, appeared to think it quite in order that the funds
should have been (as he assumed) deposited in the bank by a member who was not
on that particular committee, and who, in reality, had forgotten that they were
in his possession.

 
          
Mr.
Mayhew delivered himself of this indictment amid an
embarrassed
silence. To Campton it had seemed as if a burst of protest must instantly clear
the air. But after
he
himself had apologized for this
negligence in not depositing the money, and Boylston had disengaged his
responsibility in a few quiet words, there followed another blank interval.
Then Mr. Mayhew suddenly suggested a complete reorganization of the work. He
had something to criticize in every department. He, who so seldom showed
himself at the office, now presented a list of omissions and commissions
against which one after another of the active members rose to enter a mild
denial. It was clear that some one belonging to the organization, and who was
playing into his hands, had provided him with a series of cleverly falsified
charges against the whole group of workers.

 
          
Presently
Campton could stand it no longer, and, jumping up, suddenly articulate, he
flung into his cousin’s face a handful of home-truths under which he expected
that glossy countenance to
lost
its lustre. But Mr.
Mayhew bore the assault with urbanity. It did not behove him, he said, to take
up the reproaches addressed to him by the most distinguished member of their
committee—the most distinguished, he might surely say without offence to any of
the others (a murmur of assent); it did not behove him, because one of the few
occasions on which a great artist may be said to be at a disadvantage is when
he is trying to discuss business matters with a man of business. He, Mr.
Mayhew, was only that, nothing more; but he was that, and he had been trained
to answer random abuse by hard facts. In no way did he intend to reflect on the
devoted labours of certain ladies of the committee, nor on their sympathetic
treasurer’s gallant efforts to acquire, amid all his other pressing interests,
the rudiments of business habits; but Miss Anthony had all along been dividing
her time between two widely different charities, and Mr. Boylston, like his
distinguished champion, was first of all an artist, with the habits of the
studio rather than of the office. In the circumstances Campton jumped to his
feet again. If he stayed a moment longer he felt he should knock Mayhew down.
He jammed his hat on, shouted out “I resign,” and limped out of the room.

 
          
It
was the way in which his encounters with practical difficulties always ended.
The consciousness of his inferiority in argument, the visionary’s bewilderment
when incomprehensible facts are thrust on him by fluent people, the helpless
sense of not knowing what to answer, and of seeing his dream-world smashed in
the rough-and-tumble of shabby motives—it all gave him the feeling that he was
drowning, and must fight his way to the surface before they had him under.

 
          
In
the street he stood in a cold sweat of remorse. He knew the charges of
negligence against Miss Anthony and Boylston were trumped up. He knew there was
an answer to be
made,
and that he was the man to make
it; and his eyes filled with tears of rage and self-pity at his own
incompetence. But then he took heart at the thought of Boylston’s astuteness
and Miss Anthony’s courage. They would not let themselves be beaten—probably
they would fight their battle better without him. He tried to protect his
retreat with such arguments, and when he got back to the studio he called up
Mme. Lebel, and plunged again into his charcoal study of her head. He did not
remember having ever worked with such supernatural felicity: it was as if that
were his victorious answer to all their lies and intrigues…