Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (2 page)

 
          
Campton
looked at him compassionately. Poor little circumscribed Paul Dastrey, whose
utmost adventure had been an occasional article in an art review, an occasional
six weeks in the near East! It was pitiful to see him breathing fire and fury
on an enemy one knew to be engaged, at that very moment, in meeting
England
and
France
more than half-way in the effort to smooth
over diplomatic difficulties. But Campton could make allowances for the nerves
of the tragic generation brought up in the shadow of
Sedan
.

 
          
“Look
here,” he said, “I’ll tell you what. Come along with George and me—as far as
Palermo
, anyhow. You’re a little stiff again in
that left knee, and we can bake our lamenesses together in the good Sicilian
oven.”

 
          
Dastrey
had found a match and lighted his cigarette.

 
          
“My
poor Campton—there’ll be war in three days.”

 
          
Campton’s
incredulity was shot through with the deadly chill of conviction. There it
was—there would be war! It was too like his cursed luck not to be true… He
smiled inwardly, perceiving that he was viewing the question exactly as the
despicable Jorgenstein and the Fatuous Prince Demetrios had viewed it: as an
unwarrantable interference with his private plans. Yes—but his case was
different… Here was the son he had never seen enough of, never till lately seen
at all as most fathers see their sons; and the boy was to be packed off to New
York that winter, to go into a bank; and for the Lord knew how many months this
was to be their last chance, as it was almost their first, of being together
quietly, confidentially, uninterruptedly. These other men were whining at the
interruption of their vile pleasures or their viler money-making; he, poor
devil, was trembling for the chance to lay the foundation of a complete and
lasting friendship with his only son, at the moment when such understandings do
most to shape a youth’s future… “And with what I’ve had to fight against!” he
groaned, seeing victory in sight, and sickening at the idea that it might be
snatched from Him.

 
          
Then
another thought came, and he felt the blood leaving his ruddy face and, as it
seemed, receding from every vein of his heavy awkward body. He sat down
opposite Dastrey, and the two looked at each other.

 
          
“There
won’t be war. But if there were—why shouldn’t George and I go to
Sicily
? You don’t see us sitting here making lint,
do you?”

 
          
Dastre
smiled. “Lint is unhygienic; you won’t have to do that. And I see no reason why
you shouldn’t go to
Sicily
—or to
China
.” He paused. “But how about George—I thought he and you were both born
in
France
?”

 
          
Campton
reached for a cigarette. “We
were,
worse luck. He’s
subject to your preposterous military regulations. But it doesn’t make any
difference, as it happens. He’s sure to be discharged after that touch of
tuberculosis he had last year, when he had to be rushed up to the
Engadine
.”

 
          
“Ah,
I see. Then, as you say… Still, of course he wouldn’t be allowed to leave the
country.”

 
          
A
constrained silence fell between the two. Campton became aware that, for the
first time since they had known each other, their points of view were the width
of the poles apart. It was hopeless to try to bridge such a distance.

 
          
“Of
course, you know,” he said, trying for his easiest voice, “I still consider
this discussion purely academic
. ..
You’d better know
that…”

 
          
Dastrey,
rising, held out his hand with his faithful smile. “My dear old Campton, I
perfectly understand a foreigner’s taking that view
. .
He walked toward the door and they parted without more words.

 
          
When
he had gone Campton began to recover his reassurance. Who was Dastrey, poor
chap, to behave as if he were in the councils of the powers? It was perfect
nonsense to pretend that a diplomatist straight from
Berlin
didn’t know more about what was happening
there than the newsmongers of the Boulevards. One didn’t have to be an
Ambassador to see which way the wind was blowing; and men like
Alicante
, belonging to a country uninvolved in the
affair, were the only people capable of a cool judgment at moments of
international tension.

 
          
Campton
took the portrait of Mme. de Dolmetsch and leaned it against the other canvases
along the wall. Then he started clumsily to put the room to rights—without
Mariette he was so helpless—and finally, abandoning the attempt, said to
himself: “I’ll come and wind things up tomorrow.”

 
          
He
was moving that day from the studio to the Hotel de Crillon, where George was
to join him the next evening. It would be jolly to be with the boy from the
moment he arrived; and, even if Mariette’s departure had not paralyzed his
primitive housekeeping, he could not have made room for his son at the studio.
So, reluctantly, for he loathed luxury and conformity, but joyously, because he
was to be with George, Campton threw some shabby clothes into a shapeless
portmanteau, and prepared to despatch the
concierges
for a taxicab.

 
          
He
was hobbling down the stairs when the old woman met him with a telegram. He
tore it open and saw that it was dated
Deauville
, and was not, as he had feared, from his
son.

 
          
“Very anxious.
Must see you tomorrow.
Please come to Avenue Marigny at five without fail. Julia Brant.”

 
          
“Oh,
damn,” Campton growled, crumpling up the message.

 
          
The
concierges
was
looking at him with searching eyes.

 
          
“Is
it war, sir?” she asked, pointing to the bit of blue paper. He supposed she was
thinking of her grandsons.

 
          
“No—no—nonsense!
War?”
He smiled into her shrewd old face, every
wrinkle of which seemed full of a deep human experience.

 
          
“War?
Can you imagine anything more absurd? Can you now?
What should you say if they told you war was going to be declared, Mme. Lebel?”

 
          
She
gave him back his look with profound earnestness; then she spoke in a voice of
sudden resolution. “Why, I should say we don’t want it, sir—I’d have four in it
if it came—but that this sort of thing has got to stop.”

 
          
Campton
shrugged. “Oh, well—it’s not going to come, so don’t worry. And call me a taxi,
will you? No, no, I’ll carry the bags down myself.”

 
          
  

 
          
“But
even if they do mobilise: mobilisation is not war—is it?” Mrs. Anderson Brant
repeated across the teacups.

 
          
Campton
dragged himself up from the deep armchair he had inadvertently chosen. To
escape from his hostess’s troubled eyes he limped across to the window and
stood gazing out at the thick turf and brilliant flower-borders of the garden
which was so unlike his own. After a moment he turned and glanced about him,
catching the reflection of his heavy figure in a mirror dividing two garlanded
panels. He had not entered Mrs. Brant’s drawing-room for nearly ten years; not
since the period of the interminable discussions about the choice of a school
for George; and in spite of the far graver preoccupations that now weighed on
him, and of the huge menace with which the whole world was echoing, he paused
for an instant to consider the contrast between his clumsy person and that
expensive and irreproachable room.

 
          
“You’ve
taken away Beausite’s portrait of you,” he said abruptly, looking up at the
chimney-panel, which was filled with the blue and umber bloom of a Fragonard
landscape.

 
          
A
full-length of Mrs. Anderson Brant by Beausite had been one of Mr. Brant’s
wedding-presents to his bride; a Beausite portrait, at that time, was as much a
part of such marriages as pearls and sables.

 
          
“Yes.
Anderson
thought … the dress had grown so dreadfully
old-fashioned,” she explained indifferently; and went on again: “You think it’s
not: don’t you?”

 
          
What
was the use of telling her what he thought? For years and years he had not done
that—about anything. But suddenly, now, a stringent necessity had drawn them
together, confronting them like any two plain people caught in a common
danger—like husband and wife, for example!

 
          
“It
is war, this time, I believe,” he said.

 
          
She
set down her cup with a hand that had begun to tremble.

 
          
“I
disagree with you entirely,” she retorted, her voice shrill with anxiety. “I
was frightfully upset when I sent you that telegram yesterday; but I’ve been
lunching today with the old Due de Monthlhery—you know he fought in
‘seventy—and with Levi-Michel of the ‘Jour,’ who had just seen some of the
government people; and they both explained to me quite clearly”

 
          
“That
you’d made a mistake in coming up from
Deauville
?”

 
          
To
save himself Campton could not restrain the sneer; on the rare occasions when a
crisis in their lives flung them on each other’s mercy, the first sensation he
was always conscious of was the degree to which she bored him. He remembered
the day, years ago, long before their divorce, when it had first come home to
him that she was always going to bore him. But he was ashamed to think of that
now, and went on more patiently: “You see, the situation is rather different
from anything we’ve known before; and, after all, in 1870 all the wise people
thought till the last minute that there would be no war.”

 
          
Her
delicate face seemed to shrink and wither with apprehension.

 
          
“Then—what
about George?” she asked, the paint coming out about her haggard eyes.

 
          
Campton
paused a moment. “You may suppose I’ve thought of that.”

 
          
“Oh,
of course…” He saw she was honestly trying to be what a mother should be in
talking of her only child to that child’s father. But the long habit of
superficiality made her stammering and inarticulate when her one deep feeling
tried to rise to the surface.

 
          
Campton
seated himself again, taking care to choose a straight-backed chair. “I see
nothing to worry about with regard to George,” he said.

 
          
“You
mean—?”

 
          
“Why,
they won’t take him—they won’t want him … with his medical record.”

 
          
“Are
you sure? He’s so much stronger… He’s gained twenty pounds…” It was terrible,
really, to hear her avow it in a reluctant whisper! That was the view that war
made mothers take of the chief blessing they could ask for their children!
Campton understood her, and took the same view. George’s wonderful recovery,
the one joy his parents had shared in the last twenty years, was now a
misfortune to be denied and dissembled. They looked at each other like
accomplices, the same thought in their eyes: if only the boy had been born in
America
! It was grotesque that the whole of joy or
anguish should suddenly be found to hang on a geographical accident.