Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (29 page)

 
          
“Take
hands, please,” she commanded. Julia gave Campton her ungloved hand, and he sat
between the two women.

 
          
“You
are the parents? You want news of your son—ah, like so many!” Mme. Olida closed
her eyes again.

 
          
“To
know where he is—whereabouts—that is what we want,” Mrs. Brant whispered.

 
          
Mme.
Olida sat as if labouring with difficult visions. The noises of the street came
faintly through the closed windows and a smell of garlic and cheap scent
oppressed Campton’s lungs and awakened old associations. With a final effort of
memory he fixed his eyes on the clairvoyante’s darkened mask, and tapped her
palm once or twice. She neither stirred nor looked at him.

 
          
“I
see—I see” she began in the consecrated phrase. “A veil—a thick veil of smoke
between me and a face which is young and fair, with a short nose and reddish
hair: thick, thick, thick hair, exactly like this gentleman’s when he was
young…”

 
          
Mrs.
Brant’s hand trembled in Campton’s. “It’s true,” she whispered, “before your
hair turned grey it used to be as red as Georgie’s.”

 
          
“The
veil grows denser—there are awful noises; there’s a face with blood—but not
that first face. This is a very young man, as innocent as when he was born,
with blue eyes like flax-flowers, but blood, blood … why do I see that face?
Ah, now it is on a hospital pillow—not your son’s face, the other; there is no
one near, no one but some German soldiers laughing and drinking; the lips move,
the hands are stretched out in agony; but no one notices. It is a face that has
something to say to the gentleman; not to you, Madame. The uniform is different—is
it an English uniform? … Ah, now the face turns grey; the eyes shut, there is
foam on the lips. Now it is gone—there’s another man’s head on the pillow… Now,
now your son’s face comes back; but not near those others. The smoke has
cleared… I see a desk and papers; your son is writing…”

 
          
“Oh,”
gasped Mrs. Brant.

 
          
“If
you squeeze my hands you arrest the current,” Mme. Olida reminded her. There
was another interval; Campton felt his wife’s fingers beating between his like
trapped birds. The heat and darkness oppressed him; beads of sweat came out on
his forehead. Did the woman really see things, and was that face with the blood
on it Benny Upsher’s?

 
          
Mme.
Olida droned on. “It is your son who is writing—the young man with the very
thick hair. He is writing to you—trying to explain something. Perhaps you have
hoped to see him lately? That is it; he is telling you why it could not be. He
is sitting quietly in a room. There is no smoke.” She released Mrs. Brant’s
hand and Campton’s. “Go home, Madame. You are fortunate. Perhaps his letter
will reach you tomorrow.”

 
          
Mrs.
Brant stood up sobbing. She found her gold bag and pushed it toward Campton. He
had been feeling in his own pocket for money; but as he drew it forth Mme.
Olida put back his hand. “No. I am superstitious; it’s so seldom that I can
give good news.
Bonjour, madame, bonjour, monsieur.
I
commend your son to the blessed Virgin and to all the saints and angels.”

 
          
Campton
put Julia into the motor. She was still crying, but her tears were radiant.
“Isn’t she wonderful? Didn’t you see how she
seem
to
recognize George? There’s no mistaking his hair! How could she have known what
it was like? Don’t think me foolish—I feel so comforted!”

 
          
“Of
course; you’ll hear from him tomorrow,” Campton said. He was touched by her
maternal passion, and ashamed of having allowed her so small a share in his
jealous worship of his son. He walked away, thinking of a young man dying in a
German hospital, and of the other man’s face succeeding his on the pillow.

 
          
  

 
          
Two
days later, to Campton’s surprise, Anderson Brant appeared in the morning at
the studio.

 
          
Campton,
finishing a late breakfast in careless studio-garb, saw his visitor peer
cautiously about, as though fearing undressed models behind the screens or
empty beer-bottles under the tables. It was the first time that Mr. Brant had
entered the studio since his attempt to buy George’s portrait, and Campton
guessed at once that he had come again about George.

 
          
He
looked at the painter shyly, as if oppressed by the indiscretion of intruding
at that hour.

 
          
“It
was my—Mrs. Brant who insisted—when she got this letter,” he brought out
between precautionary coughs.

 
          
Campton
looked at him tolerantly: a barrier seemed to have fallen between them since
their brief exchange of words about Benny Upsher. The letter, as Campton had
expected, was a line from George to his mother, written two days after Mr.
Brant’s visit to Sainte-Menehould. It expressed, in George’s usual staccato
style, his regret at having been away. “Hard luck, when one is riveted to the
same square yard of earth for weeks on end, to have just happened to be
somewhere else the day Uncle Andy broke through.” It was always the same tone
of fluent banter, in which Campton fancied he detected a lurking stridency,
like the scrape of an overworked gramophone containing only comic disks.

 
          
“Ah,
well—his mother must be satisfied,” Campton said as he gave the letter back.

 
          
“Oh, completely.
So much so that I’ve
induced her to go off for a while to
Biarritz
.
The doctor finds her overdone; she’d got it
into her head that George had been sent to the front; I couldn’t convince her
to the contrary.”

 
          
Campton
looked at him. “You yourself never believed it?”

 
          
Mr.
Brant, who had half risen, as though feeling that his errand was done, slid
back into his seat and clasped his small hands on his agate-headed stick.

 
          
“Oh, never.”

 
          
“It
was not,” Campton pursued, “with that idea that you went to Sainte-Menehould?”

 
          
Mr.
Brant glanced at him in surprise. “No. On the contrary”

 
          
“On the contrary?”

 
          
“I
understood from—from his mother that, in the circumstances, you were opposed to
his asking for leave; thought it unadvisable, that is. So, as it was such a
long time since we’d seen him” The “we,” pulling him up short, spread a
brick-red blush over his baldness.

 
          
“Not
longer than since I have—but then I’ve not your opportunities,” Campton
retorted, the sneer breaking out in spite of him. Though he had grown kindly
disposed toward Mr. Brant when they were apart, the old resentments still broke
out in his presence.

 
          
Mr.
Brant clasped and unclasped the knob of his stick. “I took the first chance
that offered; I had his mother to think of.” Campton made no answer, and he
continued: “I was sorry to hear you thought I’d perhaps been imprudent.”

 
          
“There’s
no perhaps about it,” Campton retorted. “Since you say you were not anxious
about the boy I can’t imagine why you made the attempt.”

 
          
Mr.
Brant was silent. He seemed overwhelmed by the other’s disapprobation, and
unable to find any argument in his own defence. “I never dreamed it could cause
any trouble,” he said at length.

 
          
“That’s
the ground you’ve always taken in your interference with my son!” Campton had
risen, pushing back his chair, and Mr. Brant stood up also. They faced each
other without speaking.

 
          
“I’m
sorry,” Mr. Brant began, “that you should take such a view. It seemed to me
natural
..when
Mr. Jorgenstein gave me the chance—”

 
          
“Jorgenstein!
It was Jorgenstein who took you to the front?
Took you to see my son?” Campton threw his head back and laughed. “That’s
complete—that’s really complete!”

 
          
Mr.
Brant reddened as if the laugh had been a blow. He stood very erect, his lips
as tightly closed as a shut penknife. He had the attitude of a civilian under
fire, considerably perturbed, but obliged to set the example of fortitude.

 
          
Campton
looked at him. At last he had Mr. Brant at a disadvantage. Their respective
situations were reversed, and he saw that the banker was aware of it, and
oppressed by the fear that he might have done harm to George. He evidently
wanted to say all this and did not know how.

 
          
His
distress moved Campton, in whose ears the sound of his own outburst still
echoed unpleasantly. If only Mr. Brant would have kept out of his way he would
have found it so easy to be fair to him!

 
          
“I’m
sorry,” he began in a quieter tone. “I dare say I’m unjust—perhaps it’s in the
nature of our relation. Can’t you understand how I’ve felt, looking on
helplessly all these years, while you’ve done for the boy everything I wanted
to do for him myself? Haven’t you guessed why I jumped at my first success, and
nursed my celebrity till I’d got half the fools in
Europe
lining up to be painted?” His excitement
was mastering him again, and he went on hurriedly: “Do you suppose I’d have
wasted all these precious years over their stupid faces if I hadn’t wanted to
make my son independent of you? And he would have been, if the war hadn’t come;
been my own son again and nobody else’s, leading his own life, whatever he
chose it to be, instead of having to waste his youth in your bank, learning how
to multiply your millions.”

 
          
The
futility of this retrospect, and the inconsistency of his whole attitude,
exasperated Campton more than anything his visitor could do or say, and he
stopped, embarrassed by the sound of his own words, yet seeing no escape save
to bury them under more and more. But Mr. Brant had opened his lips.

 
          
“They’ll
be his, you know: the millions,” he said.

 
          
Campton’s
anger dropped: he felt Mr. Brant at last too completely at his mercy. He waited
for a moment before speaking.

 
          
“You
tried to buy his portrait once—you remember I told you it was not for sale,” he
then said.

 
          
Mr.
Brant stood motionless, grasping his stick in one hand and stroking his
moustache with the other. For a while he seemed to be considering Campton’s
words without feeling their sting. “It was not the money …” he stammered out at
length, from the depth of some unutterable plea for understanding; then he
added: “I wish you a good morning,” and walked out with his little stiff steps.

 
          
  

 
          
Campton
was thoroughly ashamed of what he had said to Mr. Brant, or rather of his
manner of saying it. If he could have put the same facts quietly, ironically,
without forfeiting his dignity, and with the added emphasis which
deliberateness and composure give, he would scarcely have regretted the
opportunity. He had always secretly accused himself of a lack of courage in
accepting Mr. Brant’s heavy benefactions for George when the boy was too young
to know what they might pledge him to; and it had been a disappointment that
George, on reaching the age of discrimination, had not appeared to find the
burden heavy, or the obligations unpleasant.

 
          
Campton,
having accepted Mr. Brant’s help, could hardly reproach his son for feeling
grateful for it, and had therefore thought it “more decent” to postpone
disparagement of their common benefactor till his own efforts had set them both
free. Even then, it would be impossible to pay off the past—but the past might
have been left to bury itself. Now his own wrath had dug it up, and he had paid
for the brief joy of casting its bones in Mr. Brant’s face by a deep disgust at
his own weakness.