Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (28 page)

 
          
“Oh,
not you and I, do we?” he rejoined with a scornful laugh.

 
          
She
evidently caught the allusion, for she blushed all over her uncovered neck, up
through the faintly wrinkled cheeks to the roots of her newly dyed hair; then
he saw her eyes fill.

 
          
“What’s
she crying for? Because George is not in danger?” he wondered, busying himself
with his palette.

 
          
Mrs.
Talkett hurried in with surprise and apologies; and one by one the habitues
followed, with cheery greetings for Mrs. Brant and a moment of constraint as
they noted Campton’s presence, and the relation between the two was mutely
passed about. Then the bridge-tables were brought, Mr. Talkett began to
straighten the cards nervously, and the guests broke up into groups, forgetting
everything but their own affairs. As Campton turned back to his work he was
aware of a last surprise in the sight of Mrs. Brant serene and almost
sparkling, waving her adieux to the bridge-tables, and going out followed by
Jorgenstein, with whom she seemed on terms of playful friendliness. Of all
strange war promiscuities, Campton thought this the strangest.

 
          
  

 
          
The
next time Campton saw Mrs. Brant was in his own studio.

 
          
He
was preparing, one morning, to leave the melancholy place, when the bell rang
and his
bonne
let her in. Her dress
was less frivolous than at Mrs. Talkett’s, and she wore a densely patterned
veil, like the ladies in cinema plays when they visit their seducers or their
accomplices.

 
          
Through
the veil she looked at him agitatedly, and said: “George is not at
Sainte-Menehould.”

 
          
He
stared.

 
          
“No.
Anderson
was there the day before yesterday.”

 
          
“Brant?
At Sainte-Menehould?”
Campton felt the blood rush to
his temples. What! He, the boy’s father, had not so much as dared to ask for
the almost unattainable permission to go into the war-zone; and this other man,
who was nothing to George, absolutely nothing, who had no right whatever to ask
for leave to visit him, had somehow obtained the priceless favour, and instead
of passing it on, instead of offering at least to share it with the boy’s
father, had sneaked off secretly to feast on the other’s lawful privilege!

 
          
“How the devil?”
Campton burst out.

 
          
“Oh,
he got a Red Cross mission; it was arranged very suddenly—through a friend…”

 
          
“Yes—well?”
Campton stammered, sitting down lest his legs should fail him, and signing to
her to take a chair.

 
          
“Well—he
was not there!” she repeated excitedly. “It’s what we might have known—since
he’s changed his address.”

 
          
“Then
he didn’t see him?” Campton interrupted, the ferocious joy of the discovery
crowding out his wrath and wonder.

 
          
“
Anderson
didn’t? No. He wasn’t there, I tell you!”

 
          
“The
H.Q. has been moved?”

 
          
“No,
it hasn’t.
Anderson
saw one of the officers. He said George had
been sent on a mission.”

 
          
“To another H.Q.?”

 
          
“That’s
what they said. I don’t believe it.”

 
          
“What
do you believe?”

 
          
“I
don’t know.
Anderson
’s sure they told him the truth. The officer
he saw is a friend of George’s, and he said George was expected back that very
evening.”

 
          
Campton
sat looking at her uncertainly. Did she dread, or did she rather wish, to
disbelieve the officer’s statement? Where did she hope or fear that George had
gone? And what were Campton’s own emotions? As confused, no doubt, as hers—as
undefinable. The insecurity of his feelings moved him to a momentary compassion
for hers, which were surely pitiable, whatever else they were. Then a savage
impulse swept away every other, and he said: “Wherever George was, Brant’s
visit will have done him no good.”

 
          
She
grew pale. “What do you mean?”

 
          
“I
wonder it never occurred to you—or to your husband, since he’s so solicitous,”
Campton went on, prolonging her distress.

 
          
“Please
tell me what you mean,” she pleaded with frightened eyes.

 
          
“Why,
in God’s name, couldn’t you both let well enough alone? Didn’t you guess why
George never asked for leave—why I’ve always advised him not to? Don’t you know
that nothing is as likely to get a young fellow into trouble as having his
family force their way through to see him, use influence,
seem
to ask favours? I dare say that’s how that fool of a Dolmetsch woman got Isador
killed. No one would have noticed where he was if she hadn’t gone on so about
him. They had to send him to the front finally. And now the chances are—”

 
          
“Oh,
no, no, no—don’t say it!” She held her hands before her face as if he had flung
something flaming at her. “It was I who made
Anderson
go!”

 
          
“Well—Brant
ought to have thought of that—I did,” he pursued sardonically.

 
          
Her
answer disarmed him. “You’re his father.”

 
          
“I
don’t
mean,” he went on hastily, “that
Brant’s not
right: of course there’s nothing to be afraid of. I can’t imagine why you
thought there was.”

 
          
She
hung her head. “Sometimes when I hear the other women—other mothers—I feel as
if our turn must come too. Even at Sainte-Menehould a shell might hit the
house.
Anderson
said the artillery fire seemed so near.”

 
          
He
made no answer, and she sat silent, without apparent thought of leaving.
Finally he said: “I was just going out—”

 
          
She
stood up. “Oh, yes—that reminds me. I came to ask you to come with me.”

 
          
“With you?”

 
          
“The
motor’s waiting—you must.” She laid her hand on his arm.
“To
see Olida, the new clairvoyante.
Everybody goes to her—everybody who’s
anxious about anyone. Even the scientific people believe in her. She’s told
people the most extraordinary things—it seems she warned Daisy de Dolmetsch…
Well, I’d rather know!” she burst out passionately.

 
          
Campton
smiled. “She’ll tell you that George is back at his desk.”

 
          
“Well,
then—isn’t that worth it? Please don’t refuse me!”

 
          
He
disengaged himself gently. “My poor Julia, go by all means if it will reassure
you.”

 
          
“Ah,
but you’ve got to come too. you can’t say no: Madge Talkett tells me that if
the two nearest go together Olida sees so much more clearly—especially a father
and mother,” she added hastily, as if conscious of the inopportune “nearest.”
After a moment she went on: “Even Mme. de Tranlay’s been; Daisy de Dolmetsch
met her on the stairs. Olida told her that her youngest boy, from whom she’d
had no news for weeks, was all
right,
and coming home
on leave. Mme. de Tranlay didn’t know Daisy, except by sight, but she stopped
her to tell her. Only fancy—the last person she would have spoken to in
ordinary times! But she was so excited and happy! And two days afterward the
boy turned up safe and sound. You must come!” she insisted.

 
          
Campton
was seized with a sudden deep compassion for all these women groping for a ray
of light in the blackness. It moved him to think of Mme. de Tranlay’s proud
figure climbing a clairvoyante’s stairs.

 
          
“I’ll
come if you want me to,” he said.

 
          
They
drove to the Batignolles quarter. Mrs. Brant’s lips were twitching under her
veil, and as the motor stopped she said childishly: “I’ve never been to this
kind of place before.”

 
          
“I
should hope not,” Campton rejoined. He himself, during the Russian lady’s rule,
had served an apprenticeship among the soothsayers, and come away disgusted
with the hours wasted in their company. He suddenly remembered the Spanish girl
in the little white house near the railway, who had told his fortune in the hot
afternoons with cards and olive-stones, and had found, by irrefutable signs,
that he and she would “come together” again. “Well, it was better than this
pseudo-scientific humbug,” he mused, “because it was picturesque—and so was
she—and she believed in it.”

 
          
Mrs.
Brant rang, and Campton followed her into a narrow hall. A servant-woman showed
them into a salon which was as commonplace as a doctor’s waiting-room. On the
mantelpiece were vases of pampas grass, and a stuffed monkey swung from the
electrolier. Evidently Mme. Olida was superior to the class of fortune-tellers
who prepare a special
stage-setting,
and no
astrologer’s robe or witch’s kitchen was to be feared.

 
          
The
maid led them across a plain dining-room into an inner room. The shutters were
partly closed, and the blinds down. A voluminous woman in loose black rose from
a sofa. Gold ear-rings gleamed under her oiled black hair—and suddenly, through
the billows of flesh, and behind the large pale mask, Campton recognized the
Spanish girl who used to read his fortune in the house by the railway. Her eyes
rested a moment on Mrs. Brant; then they met his with the same heavy stare. But
he noticed that her hands, which were small and fat,
trembled
a little as she pointed to two chairs.

 
          
“Sit
down, please,” she said in a low rough voice, speaking in French. The door
opened again, and a young man with Levantine eyes and a showy necktie looked
in. She said sharply: “No,” and he disappeared. Campton noticed that a large
emerald flashed on his manicured hand. Mme. Olida continued to look at her
visitors.

 
          
Mrs.
Brant wiped her dry lips and stammered: “We’re his parents—a son at the front…”

 
          
Mme.
Olida fell back in a trance-like attitude, let her lids droop over her
magnificent eyes, and rested her head against a soiled sofa-pillow. Presently
she held out both hands.

 
          
“You
are his parents? Yes? Give me each a hand, please.” As her cushioned palm
touched Campton’s he thought he felt a tremor of recognition, and saw, in the
half-light, the tremor communicate itself to her lids. He grasped her hand
firmly, and she lifted her eyes, looked straight into his with her heavy
velvety stare, and said: “You should hold my hand more loosely; the currents
must not be compressed.” She turned her palm upward, so that his finger-tips
rested on it as if on a keyboard; he noticed that she did not do the same with
the hand she had placed in Mrs. Brant’s.

 
          
Suddenly
he remembered that one sultry noon, lying under the olives, she had taught him,
by signals tapped on his own knee, how to say what he chose to her without her
brothers’ knowing it. He looked at the huge woman, seeking the curve of the
bowed upper lip on which what used to be a faint blue shadow had now become a
line as thick as her eyebrows, and recalling how her laugh used to lift the lip
above her little round teeth while she threw back her head, showing the Agnus
Dei in her neck. Now her mouth was like a withered flower, and in a crease of
her neck a string of pearls was embedded.