Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (9 page)

 
          
He
was to start in an hour, and Campton excused himself for intruding on the
family, who seemed as happily united, as harmonious in their deeper interests,
as if no musical studio-parties and exotic dancers had ever absorbed the master
of the house.

 
          
Campton,
looking at the group, felt a pang of envy, and thought, for the thousandth
time, how frail a screen of activity divided him from depths of loneliness he
dared not sound. “‘For every man hath business and desire,’” he muttered as he
followed the physician.

 
          
In
the consulting-room he explained: “It’s about my son”

 
          
He
had not been able to bring the phrase out in the presence of the young man who
must have been just George’s age, and who was leaving in an hour for his
regiment. But between Campton and the father there were complicities, and there
might therefore be accommodations. In the consulting-room one breathed a lower
air.

 
          
It
was not that Campton wanted to do anything underhand. He was genuinely anxious
about George’s health. After all, tuberculosis did not disappear in a month or
even a year: his anxiety was justified.
And then George, but
for the stupid accident of his birth, would never have been mixed up in the
war.
Campton felt that he could make his request with his head high.

 
          
Fortin-Lescluze
seemed to think so too; at any rate he expressed no surprise. But could
anything on earth have surprised him, after thirty years in the confessional of
a room?

 
          
The
difficulty was that he did not see his way to doing anything—not immediately,
at any rate.

 
          
“You
must let the boy join his base. He leaves tomorrow? Give me the number of his
regiment and the name of the town, and trust me to do what I can.”

 
          
“But
you’re off yourself?”

 
          
“Yes:
I’m being sent to a hospital at
Lyons
. But I’ll leave you my address.”

 
          
Campton
lingered, unable to take this as final. He looked about him uneasily, and then,
for a moment, straight into the physician’s eyes.

 
          
“You
must know how I feel; your boy is an only son, too.”

 
          
“Yes,
yes,” the father assented, in the absent-minded tone of professional sympathy.
But Campton felt that he felt the deep difference.

 
          
“Well,
goodbye—and thanks.”

 
          
As
Campton turned to go the physician laid a hand on his shoulder and spoke with
sudden fierce emotion. “Yes: Jean is an only son—an only child. For his mother
and
myself
it’s not a trifle—having our only son in
the war.”

 
          
There
was no allusion to the dancer, no hint that Fortin remembered her; it was
Campton who lowered his gaze before the look in the other father’s eyes.

 
          
  

 
          
“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 depot for 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
Revanche and 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. “She has seen 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 been made, 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 tablecloth. 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 tomorrow 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 of them, hand-cuffed to this
hideous masked bully of “War”!