Read Edith Wharton - Novel 14 Online
Authors: A Son at the Front (v2.1)
Campton
reddened under her lashless blue gaze, and the consciousness of doing so made
his answer all the curter.
“Probably not—unless you’ve told him!”
The
shot appeared to reach the mark, for an answering blush suffused her sallow
complexion. “You’d better not put ideas into my head!” she laughed. Something
in her tone reminded him of all her old dogged loyalties, and made him ashamed
of his taunt.
“Anyhow,”
he grumbled, “his place is not in the French army.”
“That
was for you and Julia to decide twenty-six years
ago,
wasn’t it? Now it’s up to him.”
Her
capricious adoption of American slang, fitted anyhow into her old-fashioned and
punctilious English, sometimes amused but oftener exasperated Campton.
“If
you’re going to talk modern slang you ought to give up those ridiculous stays,
and not wear a fringe like a mid-Victorian royalty,” he jeered, trying to laugh
off his exasperation.
She
let this pass with a smile. “Well, I wish I could find the language to make you
understand how much better it would be to leave George alone. This war will be
the making of him.”
“He’s
made quite to my satisfaction as it
is,
thanks. But
what’s the use of talking? You always get your phrases out of books.”
The
door opened, and Mrs. Brant came in.
Her
appearance answered to Miss Anthony’s description. A pearly mist covered her
face, and some reviving liquid had cleared her congested eyes. Her poor hands
had suddenly grown so thin and dry that the heavy rings, slipping down to the
joints, slid back into place as she shook hands with Campton.
“Thank
you for coming,” she said.
“Oh”
he protested, helpless, and disturbed by Miss Anthony’s presence. At the moment
his former wife’s feelings were more intelligible to him than his friend’s: the
maternal fibre stirred in her, and made her more appealing than any elderly
virgin on the war-path.
“I’m
off, my dears,” said the elderly virgin, as if guessing his thought. Her queer
shallow eyes included them both in a sweeping glance, and she flung back from
the threshold: “Be careful of what you say to George.”
What
they had to say to each other did not last many minutes. The Brants had made
various efforts, but had been baffled on all sides by the general agitation and
confusion. In high quarters the people they wanted to see were inaccessible;
and those who could be reached lent but a distracted ear. The Ambassador had at
once declared that he could no nothing; others vaguely promised they “would
see”—but hardly seemed to hear what they were being asked.
“And
meanwhile time is passing—and he’s going!” Mrs. Brant lamented.
The
reassurance that Campton brought from Fortin-Lescluze, vague though it was,
came to her as a miraculous promise, and raised Campton suddenly in her
estimation. She looked at him with a new confidence, and he could almost hear
her saying to Brant, as he had so often heard her say to himself: “You never
seem able to get anything done. I don’t know how other people manage.”
Her
gratitude gave him the feeling of having been engaged in something underhand
and pusillanimous. He made haste to take leave, after promising to pass on any
word he might receive from the physician; but he reminded her that he was not
likely to hear anything till George had been for some days at his base.
She
acknowledged the probability of this, and clung to him with trustful eyes. She
was much disturbed by the preposterous fact that the Government had already
requisitioned two of the Brant motors, and Campton had an idea that, dazzled by
his newly-developed capacity to “manage,” she was about to implore him to
rescue from the clutches of the authorities her Rolls-Royce and
Anderson
’s Delaunay.
He
was hastening to leave when the door again opened. A rumpled-looking maid peered
in, evidently perplexed, and giving way doubtfully to a young woman who entered
with a rush, and then paused as if she too were doubtful. She was pretty in an
odd dishevelled way, and with her elaborate clothes and bewildered look she
reminded Campton of a fashion-plate torn from its page and helplessly blown
about the world. He had seen the same type among his compatriots any number of
times in the last days.
“Oh,
Mrs. Brant—yes, I know you gave orders that you were not in to anybody, but I
just wouldn’t listen, and it’s not that poor woman’s fault,” the visitor began,
in a plaintive staccato which matched her sad eyes and her fluttered veils.
“You
see, I simply had to get hold of Mr. Brant, because I’m here without a
penny—literally!” She dangled before them a bejewelled mesh-bag.
“And in a hotel where they don’t know me.
And at the bank
they wouldn’t listen to me, and they said Mr. Brant wasn’t there, though of
course I suppose he was; so I said to the cashier: “Very well, then, I’ll
simply go to the Avenue Marigny and batter in his door—unless you’d rather I
jumped into the Seine?”
“Oh,
Mrs. Talkett” murmured Mrs. Brant.
“Really:
it’s a case of my money or my life!” the young lady continued with a studied
laugh. She stood between them, artificial and yet so artless, conscious of
intruding but evidently used to having her intrusions pardoned; and her large
eyes turned interrogatively to Campton.
“Of
course my husband will do all he can for you. I’ll telephone,” said Mrs. Brant;
then, perceiving that her visitor continued to gaze at Campton, she added: “Oh,
no, this is not… this is Mr. Campton.”
“John
Campton? I knew it!” Mrs. Talkett’s eyes became devouring and brilliant. “Of
course I ought to have recognised you at once—from your photographs. I have one
pinned up in my room. But I was so flurried when I came in.” She detained the
painter’s hand. “Do forgive me! For years I’ve dreamed of your doing me … you
see, I paint a little myself … but it’s ridiculous to speak of such things
now.” She added, as if she were risking something: “I knew your son at
St. Moritz
. We saw a great deal of him
there,
and in
New York
last winter.”
“Ah”
said Campton, bowing awkwardly.
“Cursed
fools—all women,” he anathematized her on the way downstairs.
In
the street, however, he felt grateful to her for reducing Mrs. Brant to such
confusion that she had made no attempt to detain him. His way of life lay so
far apart from his former wife’s that they had hardly ever been exposed to
accidents of the kind, and he saw that Julia’s embarrassment kept all its
freshness.
The
fact set him thinking curiously of what her existence had been since they had
parted. She had long since forgotten her youthful art-jargon to learn others
more consonant to her tastes. As the wife of the powerful American banker she
dispensed the costliest hospitality with the simple air of one who has never
learnt that human life may be sustained without the aid of orchids and
champagne. With guests either brought up in the same convictions or bent on
acquiring them she conversed earnestly and unweariedly about motors, clothes
and morals; but perhaps her most stimulating hours were those brightened by the
weekly visit of the Rector of her
parish.
With happy
untrammelled hands she was now free to rebuild to her own measure a corner of
the huge wicked welter of
Paris
; and immediately it became as neat, as empty,
as
air-tight as her own immaculate drawing-room.
There
he seemed to see her, throning year after year in an awful emptiness of wealth
and luxury and respectability, seeing only dull people, doing only dull things,
and fighting feverishly to defend the last traces of a beauty which had never
given her anything but the tamest and most unprofitable material prosperity.
“She’s
never even had the silly kind of success she wanted—poor Julia!” he mused,
wondering that she had been able to put into her life so few of the sensations
which can be bought by wealth and beauty. “And now what will be left—how on
earth will she fit into a war?”
He
was sure all her plans had been made for the coming six months: her week-end
sets of heavy millionaires secured for
Deauville
, and after that for the shooting at the big
château
near Compiègne, and three
weeks reserved for
Biarritz
before the return to
Paris
in January. One of the luxuries Julia had
most enjoyed after her separation from Campton (Adele had told him) had been
that of planning things ahead: Mr. Brant, thank heaven, was not impulsive. And
now here was this black bolt of war falling among all her carefully balanced
arrangements with a crash more violent than any of Campton’s inconsequences!
As
he reached the Place de la Concorde a newsboy passed with the
three o’clock
papers, and he bought one and read of the
crossing of
Luxembourg
and the invasion of
Belgium
. The Germans were arrogantly acting up to
their menace: heedless of international law, they were driving straight for
France
and
England
by the road they thought the most
accessible…
In
the hotel he found George, red with rage, devouring the same paper: the boy’s
whole look was changed.
“The
howling blackguards! The brigands! This isn’t war—it’s simple murder!”
The
two men stood and stared at each other. “Will
England
stand it?” sprang to their lips at the same
moment.
Never—never!
England
would never permit such a violation of the
laws regulating the relations between civilized peoples. They began to say both
together that after all perhaps it was the best thing that could have happened,
since, if there had been the least hesitation or reluctance in any section of
English opinion, this abominable outrage would instantly sweep it away.
“They’ve
been too damned clever for once!” George exulted. “
France
is saved—that’s certain anyhow!”
Yes;
France
was saved if
England
could put her army into the field at once.
But could she? Oh, for the Channel tunnel at this hour! Would this lesson at
last cure
England
of her obstinate insularity?
Belgium
had announced her intention of resisting;
but what was that gallant declaration worth in face of
Germany
’s brutal assault? A poor little country
pledged to
a guaranteed
neutrality could hardly be
expected to hold her frontiers more than forty-eight hours against the most
powerful army in
Europe
. And what a narrow strip
Belgium
was, viewed as an outpost of
France
!