Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (12 page)

 
          
These
thoughts, racing through Campton’s mind, were swept out of it again by his
absorbing preoccupation. What effect would the Belgian affair have on George’s
view of his own participation in the war? For the first time the boy’s feeling
were visibly engaged; his voice shook as he burst out: “Louis Dastrey’s right:
this kind of thing has got to stop. We shall go straight back to cannibalism if
it doesn’t.—God, what hounds!”

 
          
Yes,
but—Campton pondered, tried to think up Pacifist arguments, remembered his own
discussion with Paul Dastrey three days before. “My dear chap, hasn’t
France
perhaps gone about with a chip on her
shoulder? Saverne, for instance: some people think”

 
          
“Damn
Saverne! Haven’t the Germans shown us what they are now?
Belgium
sheds all the light I want on Saverne.
They’re not fit to live with white people, and the sooner they’re shown it the
better.”

 
          
“Well,
France
and
Russia
and
England
are here to show them.”

 
          
George
laughed. “
Yes,
and double quick.”

 
          
Both
were silent again, each thinking
his own
thoughts.
They were apparently the same, for just as Campton was about to ask where
George had decided that they should take their last dinner, the young man said
abruptly: “Look here, Dad; I’d planned a little
tête-à-tête
for us this evening.”

 
          
“Yes?”

 
          
“Well—I
can’t. I’m going to chuck you.” He smiled a little, his colour rising
nervously. “For some people I’ve just run across—who were awfully kind to me at
St. Moritz
—and in
New York
last winter. I didn’t know they were here
till … till just now. I’m awfully sorry; but I’ve simply got to dine with
them.”

 
          
There
was a silence. Campton stared out over his son’s shoulder at the great sunlit
square. “Oh, all right,” he said briskly.

 
          
This—on
George’s last night!

 
          
‘You
don’t mind much, do you? I’ll be back early, for a last powwow on the terrace.”
George paused, and finally brought out: “You see
,
it
really wouldn’t have done to tell mother that I was deserting her on my last
evening because I was dining with you!”

 
          
A
weight was lifted from Campton’s heart, and he felt ashamed of having failed to
guess the boy’s real motive.

 
          
“My dear fellow, naturally … quite right.
And you can stop
in and see your mother on the way home. You’ll find me here whenever you turn
up.”

 
          
George
looked relieved. “Thanks a lot—you always know.
And now for
my adieux to Adele.”

 
          
He
went off whistling the waltz from the Rosenkavalier, and Campton returned to
his own thoughts.

 
          
H
e was still revolving them when he went upstairs after a solitary repast in the
confused and servantless dining-room. Adele Anthony had telephoned to him to
come and dine—after seeing George, he supposed; but he had declined. He wanted
to be with his boy, or alone.

 
          
As
he left the dining-room he ran across Adamson, the American newspaper correspondent,
who had lived for years in
Paris
and was reputed to have “inside information.” Adamson was grave but
confident. In his opinion
Russia
would probably not get to
Berlin
before November (he smiled at Campton’s
astonished outcry); but if
England
—oh, they were sure of
England
!—could get her army over without delay, the
whole business would very likely be settled before that, in one big battle in
Belgium
.
(Yes—poor
Belgium
, indeed!)
Anyhow, in the opinion of the military
experts the war was not likely to last more than three or four months; and of
course, even if things went badly on the western front, which was highly
unlikely, there was Russia to clench the business as soon as her huge forces
got in motion. Campton drew much comfort from this sober view of the situation,
midway between that of the optimists who knew
Russia
would be in
Berlin
in three weeks, and of those who saw the
Germans in
Calais
even sooner. Adamson was a level-headed
fellow, who weighed what he said and pinned his faith to facts.

 
          
Campton
managed to evade several people whom he saw lurking for him, and mounted to his
room. On the terrace, alone with the serene city, his confidence grew, and he
began to feel more and more sure that, whatever happened, George was likely to
be kept out of the fighting till the whole thing was over. With such formidable
forces closing in on her it was fairly obvious that
Germany
must succumb before half or even a quarter
of the allied reserves had been engaged. Sustained by the thought, he let his mind
hover tenderly over George’s future, and the effect on his character of this
brief and harmless plunge into a military career.

 
          
  

 
          
George
was gone.

 
          
When,
with a last whistle and scream, his train had ploughed its way out of the
clanging station; when the last young figures clinging to the rear of the last
carriage had vanished, and the bare rails again glittered up from the cindery
tracks, Campton turned and looked about him.

 
          
All
the platforms of the station were crowded as he had seldom seen any place
crowded, and to his surprise he found himself taking in every detail of the
scene with a morbid accuracy of observation. He had discovered, during these
last
days, that
his artist’s vision had been strangely
unsettled. Sometimes, as when he had left Fortin’s house, he saw nothing: the
material world, which had always tugged at him with a thousand hands, vanished
and left him in the void. Then again, as at present, he saw everything, saw it
too clearly, in all its superfluous and negligible reality, instead of
instinctively selecting, and disregarding what was not to his purpose.

 
          
Faces,
faces—they swarmed about
him,
and his overwrought
vision registered them one by one. Especially he noticed the faces of the
women, women of all ages, all classes. These were the wives, mothers,
grandmothers, sisters, mistresses of all those heavily laden trainfuls of
French youth. He was struck with the same strong cheerfulness in all: some
pale, some flushed, some serious, but all firmly and calmly smiling.

 
          
One
young woman in particular his look dwelt on—a dark girl in a becoming
dress—both because she was so pleasant to see, and because there was such
assurance in her serenity that she did not have to constrain her lips and eyes,
but could trust them to be what she wished. Yet he saw by the way she clung to
the young artilleryman from
whom
she was parting that
hers were no sisterly farewells.

 
          
An
immense hum of voices filled the vast glazed enclosure. Campton caught the
phrases flung up to the young faces piled one above another in the
windows—words of motherly admonishment, little jokes, tender names, mirthful
allusions, last callings out: “Write often! Don’t forget to wrap up your
throat… Remember to send a line to Annette… Bring home a Prussian helmet for
the children!
On les aura, pas, mon vieux?”
It was all
bright, brave and confident.
“If
Berlin
could only see it!”
Campton thought.

 
          
He
tried to remember what his own last words to George had been, but could not;
yet his throat felt dry and thirsty, as if he had talked a great deal. The
train vanished in a roar, and he leaned against a pier to let the crowd flood
by, not daring to risk his lameness in such
a turmoil
.

 
          
Suddenly
he heard loud sobs behind him. He turned, and recognized the hat and hair of
the girl whose eyes had struck him. He could not see them now, for they were
buried in her hands and her whole body shook with woe. An elderly man was
trying to draw her away—her father, probably.

 
          
“Come,
come, my child”

 
          
“Oh—oh—oh,”
she hiccoughed, following blindly.

 
          
The
people nearest stared at her, and the faces of other women grew pale. Campton
saw tears on the cheeks of an old body in a black bonnet who might have been
his own Mme. Lebel. A pale lad went away weeping.

 
          
But
they were all afraid, then, all in immediate deadly fear for the lives of their
beloved! The same fear grasped Campton’s heart, a very present terror, such as he
had hardly before imagined. Compared to it, all that he had felt hitherto
seemed as faint as the sensations of a looker-on. His knees failed him, and he
grasped a transverse bar of the pier.

 
          
People
were leaving the station in groups of two or three who seemed to belong to each
other; only he was alone. George’s mother had not come to bid her son goodbye;
she had declared that she would rather take leave of him quietly in her own
house than in a crowd of dirty people at the station. But then it was impossible
to conceive of her being up and dressed and at the Gare de l’Est at five in the
morning—and how could she have got there without her motor? So Campton was
alone, in that crowd which seemed all made up of families.

 
          
But no—not all.
Ahead of him he saw one woman moving away
alone, and recognized, across the welter of heads, Adele Anthony’s adamantine
hat and tight knob of hair.

 
          
Poor
Adele! So she had come too—and had evidently failed in her quest, not been able
to fend a way through the crowd, and perhaps not even had a glimpse of her
hero. The thought smote Campton with compunction: he regretted his sneering
words when they had last met, regretted refusing to dine with her. He wished
the barrier of people between them had been less impenetrable; but for the
moment it was useless to try to force a way through it. He had to wait till the
crowd shifted to other platforms, whence other trains were starting, and by
that time she was lost to sight.

 
          
At
last he was able to make his way through the throng, and as he came out of a
side entrance he saw her. She appeared to be looking for a taxi—she waved her
sunshade aimlessly. But no one who knew the Gare de l’Est would have gone
around that corner to look for a taxi; least of all the practical Adele. Besides,
Adele never took taxis: she travelled in the bowels of the earth or on the
dizziest omnibus tops.

 
          
Campton
knew at once that she was waiting for him. He went up to her and a guilty pink
suffused her nose.

 
          
“You
missed him after all?” he said.

 
          
“I—oh,
no, I didn’t.”

 
          
‘You
didn’t? But I was with him all the time. We didn’t see you”

 
          
“No,
but I saw—distinctly. That was all I went for,” she jerked back.