Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (19 page)

 
          
Campton
drew away, red and inarticulate.
“I—my son?
Those
things depend on the authorities. My boy’s health …” he stammered.

 
          
“Yes,
yes; I know. Your George is delicate. But so is my Ladislas—dreadfully.
The lungs too.
I’ve trembled for him for so long; and now,
at any moment …” Two tears gathered on her long lashes and rolled down … “at
any moment he may be taken from the War Office, where he’s doing invaluable
work, and forced into all that blood and horror; he may be brought back to me
like those poor creatures up-stairs, who are hardly men any longer … mere
vivisected animals, without eyes, without faces.” She lowered her voice and
drew her lids together, so that her very eyes seemed to be whispering.
“Ladislas has enemies who are jealous of him (I could give you their names); at
the moment someone who ought to be at the front is intriguing to turn him out
and get his place. Oh, Campton, you’ve known their terror—you know what one’s
nights are like! Have pity—tell me how you managed!”

 
          
He
had no idea of what he answered, or how he finally got away.

 
          
Everything
that was dearest to him, the thought of George, the vision of the lad dying
upstairs, was defiled by this monstrous coupling of their names with that of
the supple middle-aged adventurer safe in his spotless uniform at the War
Office. And beneath the boiling-up of Campton’s disgust a new fear lifted its
head. How did Mme. de Dolmetsch know about George? And what did she know?
Evidently there had been foolish talk somewhere. Perhaps it was Mrs. Brant—or
perhaps Fortin himself. All these great doctors forgot the professional secret
with some one woman, if not with many. Had not Fortin revealed to his own wife
the reason of Campton’s precipitate visit? The painter escaped from Mme. de
Dolmetsch’s scented lair, and from the sights and sounds of the hospital, in a
state of such perturbation that for a while he stood in the street wondering
where he had meant to go next.

 
          
He
had his own reasons for agreeing to the Davrils’ suggestion that the picture
should be returned to him; and presently these reasons came back. “They’d never
dare to sell it themselves; but why shouldn’t I sell it for them?” he had thought,
remembering their denuded rooms, and the rusty smell of the women’s mourning.
It cost him a pang to part with a study of his boy; but he was in a
superstitious and expiatory mood, and eager to act on it.

 
          
He
remembered having been told by Boylston that “The Friends of French Art” had
their office in the Palais Royal, and he made his way through the deserted
arcades to the door of a once-famous restaurant.

 
          
Behind
the plate-glass windows young women with rolled-up sleeves and straw in their
hair were delving in packing-cases, while, divided from them by an improvised
partition, another group were busy piling on the cloak-room shelves garments
such as had never before dishonoured them.

 
          
Campton
stood fascinated by the sight of the things these young women were sorting:
pink silk combinations, sporting ulsters in glaring black and white checks,
straw hats wreathed with last summer’s sunburnt flowers, high-heeled satin
shoes split on the instep, and fringed and bugled garments that suggested
obsolete names like “dolman” and “mantle,” and looked like the costumes dug out
of a country-house attic by amateurs preparing to play “Caste.” Was it possible
that “The Friends of French Art” proposed to clothe the families of fallen
artists in these prehistoric properties?

 
          
Boylston
appeared, flushed and delighted (and with straw in his hair also), and led his
visitor up a corkscrew stair. They passed a room where a row of people in
shabby mourning like that of the Davril family sat on restaurant chairs before
a caissiere’s desk; and at the desk Campton saw Miss Anthony, her veil pushed
back and a card-catalogue at her elbow, listening to a young woman who was
dramatically stating her case.

 
          
Boylston
saw Campton’s surprise, and said: “Yes, we’re desperately short-handed, and
Miss Anthony has deserted her refugees for a day or two to help me to
straighten things out.”

 
          
His
own office was in a faded cabinet particulier where the dinner-table had been
turned into a desk, and the weak-springed divan was weighed down under suits of
ready-made clothes bearing the label of a wholesale clothier.

 
          
“These
are the things we really give them; but they cost a lost of money to buy,”
Boylston explained. On the divan sat a handsomely dressed elderly lady with a
long emaciated face and red eyes, who rose as they entered. Boylston spoke to
her in an undertone and led her into another cabinet, where Campton saw her
tragic figure sink down on the sofa, under a glass scrawled with amorous
couplets.

 
          
“That
was Mme. Beausite… You didn’t recognize her? Poor thing! Her youngest boy is
blind: his eyes were put out by a shell. She is very unhappy, and she comes
here and helps now and then.
Beausite?
Oh no, we never
see him. He’s only our Honorary President.”

 
          
Boylston,
obviously spoke without afterthought; but Campton felt the sting. He too was on
the honorary committee.

 
          
“Poor woman!
What? The young fellow who did Cubist things? I
hadn’t heard…” He remembered the cruel rumour that Beausite, when his glory
began to wane, had encouraged his three sons in three different lines of art,
so that there might always be a Beausite in the fashion… ‘You must have to
listen to pretty ghastly stories here,” he said.

 
          
The
young man nodded, and Campton, with less embarrassment than he had expected,
set forth his errand. In that atmosphere it seemed natural to be planning ways
of relieving misery, and Boylston at once put him at his ease by looking
pleased but not surprised.

 
          
“You
mean to sell the sketch, sir? That will put the Davrils out of anxiety for a
long time; and they’re in a bad way, as you saw.” Boylston undid the parcel,
with a respectful: “May I?” and put the canvas on a chair. He gazed at it for a
few moments, the blood rising sensitively over his face till it reached his
tight ridge of hair. Campton remembered what George had said of his friend’s
silent admirations; he was glad the young man did not speak.

 
          
When
he did, it was to say with a businesslike accent: “We’re trying to get up an
auction of pictures and sketches—and if we could lead off with this…”

 
          
It
was Campton’s turn to redden. The possibility was one he had not thought of. If
the picture were sold at auction, Anderson Brant would be sure to buy it! But
he could not say this to Boylston. He hesitated, and the other, who seemed quick
at feeling his way, added at once: “But perhaps you’d rather sell it privately?
In that case we should get the money sooner.”

 
          
It
was just the right thing to say: and Campton thanked him and picked up his
sketch. At the door he hesitated, feeling that it became a member of the
honorary committee to add something more.

 
          
“How
are you getting on? Getting all the help you need?”

 
          
Boylston
smiled. “We need such a lot. People have been very generous: we’ve had several
big sums. But look at those ridiculous clothes down-stairs—we get boxes and
boxes of such rubbish! And there are so many applicants, and such hard cases.
Take those poor Davrils, for instance. The lame Davril girl has a talent for
music: plays the violin. Well, what good does it do her now? The artists are
having an awful time. If this war goes on much longer, it won’t be only at the
front that they’ll die.”

 
          
“Ah”
said Campton. “Well, I’ll take this to a dealer”

 
          
On
the way down he turned in to greet Miss Anthony. She looked up in surprise, her
tired face haloed in tumbling hairpins; but she was too busy to do more than
nod across the group about her desk.

 
          
At
his offer to take her home she shook her head. “I’m here till after seven. Mr.
Boylston and I are nearly snowed under. We’ve got to go down presently and help
unpack and after that I’m due at my refugee canteen at the Nord. It’s my night
shift.”

 
          
Campton,
on the way back to Montmartre, fell to wondering if such excesses of altruism
were necessary, or a mere vain overflow of energy. He was terrified by his
first close glimpse of the ravages of war, and the efforts of the little band
struggling to heal them seemed pitifully ineffectual. No doubt they did good
here and there, made a few lives less intolerable; but how the insatiable
monster must laugh at them as he spread his red havoc wider!

 
          
On
reaching home, Campton forgot everything at sight of a letter from George. He
had not had one for two weeks, and this interruption, just as the military
mails were growing more regular, had made him anxious. But it was the usual
letter: brief, cheerful, inexpressive. Apparently there was no change in
George’s situation, nor any wish on his part that there should be. He grumbled
humorously at the dulness of his work and the monotony of life in a war-zone
town; and wondered whether, if this sort of thing went on, there might not soon
be some talk of leave. And just at the end of this affectionate and
unsatisfactory two pages, Campton lit on a name that roused him.

 
          
“I
saw a fellow who’d seen Benny Upsher yesterday on his way to the English front.
The young lunatic looked very fit. You know he volunteered in the English army
when he found he couldn’t get into the French. He’s likely to get all the
fighting he wants.” It was a relief to know that someone had seen Benny Upsher
lately. The letter was but four days old, and he was then on his way to the
front. Probably he was not yet in the fighting he wanted, and one
could
, without remorse, call up an unmutilated face and
clear blue eyes.

 
          
Campton,
re-reading the postscript, was struck by a small thing. George had originally
written: “I saw Benny Upsher yesterday,” and had then altered the phrase to “I
saw a fellow who’d seen Benny Upsher.” There was nothing out of the way in
that: it simply showed that he had written in haste and revised the sentence.
But he added: “The young lunatic looked very fit.” Well: that too was natural.
It was “the fellow” who reported Benny as looking fit; the phrase was rather
elliptic, but Campton could hardly have said why it gave him the impression
that it was George himself who had seen Upsher. The idea was manifestly absurd,
since there was the length of the front between George’s staff-town and the
fiery pit yawning for his cousin. Campton laid aside the letter with the distinct
wish that his son had not called Benny Upsher a young lunatic.

 
          
  

 
          
When
Campton took his sketch of George to Leonce Black, the dealer who specialized
in “Camptons,” he was surprised at the magnitude of the sum which the great
picture-broker, lounging in a glossy War Office uniform among his Gauguins and
Vuillards, immediately offered.

 
          
Leonce
Black noted his surprise and smiled. “You think there’s nothing doing nowadays?
Don’t you believe it, Mr.
Campton.
Now that the big
men have stopped painting, the collectors are all the keener to snap up what’s
left in their portfolios.” He placed the cheque in Campton’s hand, and drew
back to study the effect of the sketch, which he had slipped into a frame
against a velvet curtain. “Ah” he said, as if he
were tasting
an old wine.

 
          
As
Campton turned to go the dealer’s enthusiasm bubbled over. “Haven’t you got
anything more? Remember me if you have.”

 
          
“I
don’t sell my sketches,” said Campton. “This was exceptional—for a charity…”

 
          
“I
know, I know. Well, you’re likely to have a good many more calls of the same
sort before we get this war over,” the dealer remarked philosophically.
“Anyhow, remember I can place anything you’ll give me. When people want a
Campton it’s to me they come. I’ve got standing orders from two clients … both
given before the war, and both good today.”