Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (10 page)

 
          
The
young men were sure that the conflict was inevitable—the evening papers left no
doubt of it—and there was much animated discussion between young Dastrey and
George.

 
          
Already
their views diverged; the French youth, theoretically at one with his friend as
to the senselessness of war in general, had at once resolutely disengaged from
the mist of doctrine the fatal necessity of this particular war.

 
          
“It’s
the old festering wound of Alsace-Lorraine:
Bismarck
foresaw it and feared it—or perhaps planned
it and welcomed it: who knows? But as long as the wound was there, Germany
believed that France would try to avenge it, and as long as Germany believed
that, she had to keep up her own war-strength; and she’s kept it up to the
toppling-over point, ruining herself and us. That’s the whole thing, as I see
it. War’s rot; but to get rid of war forever we’ve got to fight this one
first.”

 
          
It
was wonderful to Campton that this slender learned youth should already have
grasped the necessity of the conflict and its deep causes. While his own head
was still spinning with wrath and bewilderment at the bottomless perversity of
mankind, Louis Dastrey had analyzed and accepted the situation and his own part
in it. And he was not simply resigned; he was trembling with eagerness to get
the thing over. “If only
England
is with us we’re safe—it’s a matter of
weeks,” he declared.

 
          
“Wait
a bit—wait a bit; I want to know more about a whole lot of things before I fix
a date for the fall of Berlin,” his uncle interposed; but Louis flung him a
radiant look. “We’ve been there before, my uncle!”

 
          
“But
there’s
Russia
too” said Boylston explosively. He had not spoken before.

 
          
“‘Nous
l’avons eu, votre Rhin allemand,’” quoted George, as he poured a golden Hock
into his glass.

 
          
He
was keenly interested, that was evident; but interested as a looker-on, a
dilettante. He had neither Valmy nor
Sedan
in his blood, and it was as a sympathizing
spectator that he ought by rights to have been sharing his friend’s enthusiasm,
not as a combatant compelled to obey the same summons. Campton, glancing from
one to another of their brilliant faces, felt his determination harden to save
George from the consequences of his parents’ stupid blunder.

 
          
After
dinner young Dastrey proposed a music-hall. The audience would be a curious
sight: there would be wild enthusiasm, and singing of the Marseillaise. The
other young men agreed, but their elders, after a tacitly exchanged glance,
decided to remain at the club, on the plea that some one at the Ministry of War
had promised to telephone if there were fresh news.

 
          
Campton
and Dastrey, left alone, stood on the balcony watching the Boulevards. The
streets, so deserted during the day, had become suddenly and densely populated.
Hardly any vehicles were in sight: the motor omnibuses were already carrying
troops to the stations, there was a report abroad that private motors were to
be requisitioned, and only a few taxis and horse-cabs, packed to the driver’s
box with young men in spick-and-span uniforms, broke through the mass of
pedestrians which filled the whole width of the Boulevards. This mass moved
slowly and vaguely, swaying this way and that, as though it awaited a portent
from the heavens. In the glare of electric lamps and glittering theatre-fronts
the innumerable faces stood out vividly, grave, intent, slightly bewildered.
Except when the soldiers passed no cries or songs came from the crowd, but only
the deep inarticulate rumour which any vast body of people gives forth.

 
          
“Queer!
How silent they are: how do you think they’re taking it?” Campton questioned.

 
          
But
Dastrey had grown belligerent again. He saw the throngs before him bounding
toward the frontier like the unchained furies of Rude’s “Marseillaise”; whereas
to Campton they seem full of the dumb wrath of an orderly and laborious people
upon whom an unrighteous quarrel has been forced. He knew that the thought of
Alsace-Lorraine still stirred in French hearts; but all Dastrey’s eloquence
could not convince him that these people wanted war, or would have sought it
had it not been thrust on them. The whole monstrous injustice seemed to take
shape before him, and to brood like a huge sky-filling dragon of the northern
darknesses over his light-loving, pleasure-loving, labour-loving
France
.

 
          
George
came home late.

 
          
It
was two in the morning of his last day with his boy when Campton heard the door
open, and saw a flash of turned-on light.

 
          
All
night he had
lain
staring into the darkness, and
thinking, thinking: thinking of George’s future, George’s friends, George and
women, of that unknown side of his boy’s life which, in this great upheaval of
things, had suddenly lifted its face to the surface. If war came, if George
were not discharged, if George were sent to the front, if George were killed,
how strange to think that things the father did not know of might turn out to
have been the central things of his son’s life!

 
          
The
young man came, and Campton looked at him as though he were a stranger.

 
          
“Hullo, Dad—any news from the Ministry?”
George, tossing
aside his hat and stick, sat down on the bed. He had a crumpled rose in his
button-hole, and looked gay and fresh, with the indestructible freshness of
youth.

 
          
“What
do I really know of him?” the father asked himself.

 
          
Yes:
Dastrey had had news.
Germany
had already committed acts of overt
hostility on the frontier: telegraph and telephone communications had been cut,
French locomotives seized,
troops
massed along the
border on the specious pretext of the “Kriegsgefahrzustand.” It was war.

 
          
“Oh,
well,” George shrugged. He lit a cigarette, and asked: “What did you think of
Boylston?”

 
          
“Boylston?”

 
          
“The fat brown chap at dinner.”

 
          
“Yes—yes—of
course.” Campton became aware that he had not thought of Boylston at all, had
hardly been aware of his presence. But the painter’s registering faculty was
always latently at work, and in an instant he called up a round face, shyly
jovial, with short-sighted brown eyes as sharp as needles, and dark hair
curling tightly over a wide watchful forehead.

 
          
“Why—I
liked him.”

 
          
“I’m
glad, because it was a tremendous event for him, seeing you. He paints, and
he’s been keen on your things for years.”

 
          
“I
wish I’d known… Why didn’t he say so? He didn’t say anything, did he?”

 
          
“No: he doesn’t, much, when he’s pleased.
He’s the very best
chap I know,” George concluded.

 
          
  

 
          
That
morning the irrevocable stared at him from the head-lines of the papers. The
German Ambassador was recalled.
Germany
had declared war on
France
at
6:40
the previous evening; there was an
unintelligible allusion, in the declaration, to French aeroplanes throwing
bombs on
Nuremberg
and
Wesel
. Campton read that part of the message over
two or three times.

 
          
Aeroplanes throwing bombs?
Aeroplanes as
engines of destruction?
He had always thought of them as a kind of giant
kite that fools went up in when they were tired of breaking their necks in
other ways. But aeroplane bombardment as a cause for declaring war? The bad
faith of it was so manifest that he threw down the papers half relieved. Of
course there would be a protest on the part of the allies; a great country like
France
would not allow herself to be bullied into
war on such a pretext.

 
          
The
ultimatum to
Belgium
was more serious; but
Belgium
’s gallant reply would no doubt check
Germany
on that side. After all, there was such a
thing as international law, and
Germany
herself had recognized it… So his mind spun
on in vain circles, while under the frail web of his casuistry gloomed the
obstinate fact that George was mobilised, that George was to leave the next
morning.

 
          
The
day wore on: it was the shortest and yet most interminable that Campton had
ever known.
Paris
, when he went out into it, was more
dazzlingly empty than ever. In the hotel, in the hall, on the stairs, he was
waylaid by flustered compatriots—“Oh, Mr. Campton, you don’t know me, but of
course all Americans know you!”—who appealed to him for the very information he
was trying to obtain himself: how one could get money, how one could get hold
of the
concierges
, how one could send
cables, if there was any restaurant where the waiters had not all been
mobilised, if he had any “pull” at the Embassy, or at any of the steamship
offices, or any of the banks. One disordered beauty blurted out: “Of course, with
your connection with Bullard and Brant”—and was only waked to her mistake by
Campton’s indignant
stare,
and his plunge past her
while she called out excuses.

 
          
But
the name acted as a reminder of his promise to go and see Mrs. Brant, and he
decided to make his visit after lunch, when George would be off collecting last
things. Visiting the Brants with George would have been beyond his capacity.

 
          
The
great drawing-rooms, their awnings spread against the sun, their tall windows
wide to the glow of the garden, were empty when he entered; but in a moment he
was joined by a tall angular woman with a veil pushed up untidily above her
pink nose. Campton reflected that he had never seen Adele Anthony in the
daytime without a veil pushed up above a flushed nose, and dangling in
irregular wisps from the back of a small hard hat of which the shape never
varied.

 
          
“Julia
will be here in a minute. When she told me you were coming I waited.”

 
          
He
was glad to have a word with her before meeting Mrs. Brant, though his impulse
had been almost as strong to avoid the one as the other. He dreaded belligerent
bluster as much as vain whimpering, and in the depths of his soul he had to own
that it would have been easier to talk to Mr. Brant than to either of the
women.

 
          
“Julia
is powdering her nose,” Miss Anthony continued. “She had an idea that if you
see she’s been crying you’ll be awfully angry.”

 
          
Campton
made an impatient gesture. “If I were—much it would matter!”

 
          
“Ah,
but you might tell George; and George is not to know.” She paused, and then
bounced round on him abruptly. She always moved and spoke in explosions, as if
the wires that agitated her got tangled, and then were too suddenly jerked
loose.

 
          
“Does
George know?”

 
          
“About his mother’s tears?”

 
          
“About
this plan you’re all hatching to have him discharged?”