Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (17 page)

 
          
Not
having it in his power to call up his cousin on the telephone, Campton went the
next morning to the Nouveau Luxe.

 
          
It
was the first time that he had entered the famous hotel since the beginning of
the war; and at sight of the long hall his heart sank as it used to whenever
some untoward necessity forced him to run its deadly blockade.

 
          
But
the hall was empty when he
entered,
empty not only of
the brilliant beings who filled his soul with such dismay, but also of the
porters, footmen and lift-boys who, even in its unfrequented hours, lent it the
lustre of their liveries.

 
          
A tired
concierges
sat at the desk and near the door a boy scout, coiling his bare legs about a
high stool, raised his head languidly from his book. But for these two, the
world of the Nouveau Luxe had disappeared.

 
          
As
the lift was not running there was nothing to disturb their meditations; and
when Campton had learned that Mr. Mayhew would receive him he started alone up
the deserted stairs.

 
          
Only
a few dusty trunks remained in the corridors where luggage used to be piled as
high as in the passages of the great liners on sailing-day; and instead of the
murmur of ladies’-maids’ skirts, and explosions of laughter behind glazed
service-doors, the swish of a charwoman’s mop alone broke the silence.

 
          
“After
all,” Campton thought, “if war didn’t kill people how much pleasanter it might
make the world!”

 
          
This
was evidently not the opinion of Mr. Harvey Mayhew, whom he found agitatedly
pacing a large room hung in shrimp-pink brocade, which opened on a vista of
turquoise tiling and porcelain tub.

 
          
Mr.
Mayhew’s round countenance, composed of the same simple curves as his nephew’s,
had undergone a remarkable change. He was still round, but he was ravaged. His
fringe of hair had grown greyer, and there were crow’s-feet about his blue
eyes, and wrathful corrugations in his benignant forehead.

 
          
He
seized Campton’s hands and glared at him through indignant eye-glasses.

 
          
“My
dear fellow, I looked you up as soon as I arrived. I need you—we all need
you—we need your powerful influence and your worldwide celebrity. Campton, the
day for words has gone by. We must act!”

 
          
Campton
let himself down into an armchair. No verb in the language terrified him as
much as that which his cousin had flung at him. He gazed at the ex-Delegate
with dismay. “I didn’t know you were here. Where have you come from?” he asked.

 
          
Mr.
Mayhew, resting a manicured hand on the edge of a gilt table, looked down
awfully on him.

 
          
“I
come,” he said, “from a German prison.”

 
          
“Good Lord—you?”
Campton gasped.

 
          
He
continued to gaze at his cousin with terror, but of a new kind. Here at last
was someone who had actually been in the jaws of the monster, who had seen,
heard, suffered—a witness who could speak of that which he knew! No wonder Mr.
Mayhew took himself seriously—at last he had something to be serious about!
Campton stared at him as if he had risen from the dead.

 
          
Mr.
Mayhew cleared his throat and went on: “You may remember our meeting at the
Crillon—on the 31st of last July it was—and my asking you the best way of
getting to the Hague, in view of impending events. At that time” (his voice
took a note of irony) “I was a Delegate to the Peace Congress at
the
Hague, and conceived it to be my duty to carry out my
mandate at whatever personal risk. You advised me—as you may also remember—in
order to be out of the way of trouble, to travel by Luxembourg,” (Campton
stirred uneasily). “I followed your advice; and, not being able to go by train,
I managed, with considerable difficulty, to get permission to travel by motor.
I reached Luxembourg as the German army entered it—the next day I was in a
German prison.”

 
          
The
next day! Then this pink-and-white man who stood there with his rimless
eye-glasses and neatly trimmed hair, and his shining nails reflected in the
plate glass of the table-top, this perfectly typical, usual sort of harmless
rich American, had been for four months in the depths of the abyss that men
were beginning to sound with fearful hearts!

 
          
“It
is a simple miracle,” said Mr. Mayhew, “that I was not shot as a spy.”

 
          
Campton’s
voice choked in his throat. “Where were you imprisoned?”

 
          
“The
first night, in the Police commissariat, with common thieves and
vagabonds—with—” Mr. Mayhew lowered his voice and his eyes: “With prostitutes,
Campton…”

 
          
He
waited for this to take effect, and continued: “The next day, in consequence of
the energetic intervention of our consul—who behaved extremely well, as I have
taken care to let them know in Washington—I was sent back to my hotel on
parole, and kept there, kept there, Campton—I, the official representative of a
friendly country—under strict police surveillance, like … like an unfortunate
woman … for eight days: a week and one day over!”

 
          
Mr.
Mayhew sank into a chair and passed a scented handkerchief across his forehead.
“When I was finally released I was without money, without luggage, without my
motor or my wretched chauffeur—a Frenchman, who had been instantly carried off
to Germany. In this state of destitution, and without an apology, I was shipped
to Rotterdam and put on a steamer sailing for America.” He wiped his forehead
again, and the corners of his agitated lips.
“Peace,
Campton—Peace?
When I think that I believed in a thing called Peace!
That I left Utica—always a difficult undertaking for me—because I deemed it my
duty, in the interests of Peace,” (the word became a hiss) “to travel to the
other side of the world, and use the weight of my influence and my experience
in such a cause!”

 
          
He
clenched his fist and shook it in the face of an invisible foe.

 
          
“My
influence, if I have any; my experience—ha, I have had experience now, Campton!
And, my God, sir, they shall both be used till my last breath to show up these
people, to proclaim to the world what they really are, to rouse public opinion
in America against a nation of savages who ought to be hunted off the face of
the globe like vermin-like the vermin in their own prison cells!
Campton—if I may say so without profanity—I come to bring not Peace
but a Sword!”

 
          
It
was some time before the flood of Mr. Mayhew’s wrath subsided, or before there
floated up from its agitated depths some fragments of his subsequent history
and present intentions. Eventually, however, Campton gathered that after a
short sojourn in America, where he found opinion too lukewarm for him, he had
come back to Europe to collect the experiences of other victims of German
savagery. Mr. Mayhew, in short, meant to devote himself to Atrocities; and he
had sought out Campton to ask his help, and especially to be put in contact
with persons engaged in refugee-work, and likely to have come across flagrant
offences against the law of nations.

 
          
It
was easy to comply with the latter request. Campton scribbled a message to
Adele Anthony at her refugee Depot; and he undertook also to find out from what
officials Mr. Mayhew might obtain leave to visit the front.

 
          
“I
know it’s difficult” he began; but Mr. Mayhew laughed. “I am here to surmount
difficulties—after what I’ve been through!”

 
          
It
was not until then that Mr. Mayhew found time to answer an enquiry about his
nephew.

 
          
“Benny
Upsher? Ha—I’m proud of Benny! He’s a hero, that nephew of mine—he was always
my favourite.”

 
          
He
went on to say that the youth, having failed to enlist in the French army, had managed
to get back to England, and there, passing himself off as a Canadian (“Born at
Murray Bay, sir—wasn’t it lucky?”) had joined an English regiment, and, after
three months’ training, was now on his way to the front. His parents had made a
great outcry—moved heaven and earth for news of him—but the boy had covered up
his tracks so cleverly that they had had no word till he was starting for
Boulogne with his draft. Rather high-handed—and poor Madeline had nearly gone
out of her mind; but Mr. Mayhew confessed he had no patience with such feminine
weakness. “Benny’s a man, and must act as a man. That boy, Campton, saw things
as they were from the first.”

 
          
Campton
took leave, dazed and crushed by the conversation. It was all one to him if
Harvey Mayhew chose to call on America to avenge his wrongs; Campton himself
was beginning to wish that his country would wake up to what was going on in
the world; but that he, Campton, should be drawn into the affair, should have
to write letters, accompany the ex-Delegate to Embassies and Red Crosses,
languish with him in ministerial antechambers, and be deafened with appeals to
his own celebrity and efficiency; that he should have ascribed to himself that
mysterious gift of “knowing the ropes” in which his whole blundering career had
proved him to be cruelly lacking: this was so dreadful to him as to obscure
every other question.

 
          
“Thank
the Lord,” he muttered, “I haven’t got the telephone anyhow!”

 
          
He
glanced cautiously down the wide stairs of the hotel to assure himself of a
safe retreat; but in the hall an appealing voice detained him.

 
          
“Dear
Master! Dear great Master! I’ve been lying in wait for you!”

 
          
A
Red Cross nurse advanced: not the majestic figure of the Crimean legend, but
the new version evolved in the rue de la Paix: short skirts, long ankles,
pearls and curls. The face under the coif was young, wistful,
haggard
with the perpetual hurry of the aimless. Where had
he seen those tragic eyes, so full of questions and so invariably uninterested
in the answers?

 
          
“I’m
Madge Talkett—I saw you at—I saw you the day war was declared,” the young lady
corrected herself. Campton remembered their meeting at Mrs. Brant’s, and was
grateful for her evident embarrassment. So few of the new generation seemed
aware that there were any privacies left to respect! He looked at Mrs. Talkett
more kindly.

 
          
“You
must come,” she continued, laying her hand on his arm (her imperatives were
always in italics).

 
          
“Just a step from here—to my hospital.
There’s someone
asking for you.”

 
          
“For me?
Someone wounded?” What if it were Benny Upsher? A
cold fear broke over Campton.

 
          
“Someone
dying,” Mrs. Talkett said. “Oh, nobody you know—a poor young French soldier. He
was brought here two days ago … and he keeps on repeating your name…”

 
          
“My name?
Why my name?”

 
          
“We
don’t know. We don’t think he knows you … but he’s shot to pieces and half
delirious. He’s a painter, and he’s seen pictures of yours, and keeps talking
about them, and saying he wants you to look at his… You will come? It’s just next
door, you know.”

 
          
He
did not know—having carefully avoided all knowledge of hospitals in his dread
of being drawn into war-work, and his horror of coming as a mere spectator to
gaze on agony he could neither comfort nor relieve. Hospitals were for surgeons
and women; if he had been rich he would have given big sums to aid them; being
unable to do even that, he preferred to keep aloof.

 
          
He
followed Mrs. Talkett out of the hotel and around the corner. The door of
another hotel, with a big Red Cross above it, admitted them to a marble
vestibule full of the cold smell of disinfectants. An orderly sat reading a
newspaper behind the desk, and nurses whisked backward and forward with trays
and pails. A lady with a bunch of flowers came down the stairs drying her eyes.