Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (34 page)

 
          
Well—for
the moment, at any rate, Campton had the boy to himself. As he sat there,
trying to picture the gradual resurrection of George’s pre-war face out of the
delicately pencilled white mask on the pillow, he noted the curious change of
planes produced by suffering and emaciation, and the altered relation of lights
and shadows. Materially speaking, the new George looked like the old one seen
in the bowl of a spoon, and through blue spectacles: peaked, narrow, livid,
with elongated nose and sunken eye-sockets. But these altered proportions were
not what had really changed him. There was something in the curve of the mouth
that fever and emaciation could not account for. In that new line, and in the
look of his eyes—the look travelling slowly outward through a long blue tunnel,
like some mysterious creature rising from the depths of the sea—that was where
the new George lurked, the George to be watched and lain in wait for, patiently
and slowly puzzled out…

 
          
He
reopened his eyes.

 
          
“Adele too?”

 
          
Campton
had learned to bridge over the spaced between the questions. “No; not this
time. We tried, but it couldn’t be managed. A little later, I hope”

 
          
“She’s
all right?”

 
          
“Rather!
Blooming.”

 
          
“And Boylston?”

 
          
“Blooming too.”

 
          
George’s
lids closed contentedly, like doors shutting him away from the world.

 
          
It
was the first time since his operation that he had asked about any of his
friends, or had appeared to think they might come to see him. But his mind,
like his stomach, could receive very little nutriment at a time; he liked to
have one mouthful given to him, and then to lie ruminating it in the
lengthening intervals between his attacks of pain.

 
          
Each
time he asked for news of any one his father wondered what name would next come
to his lips. Even during his delirium he had mentioned no one but his parents,
Mr. Brant, Adele Anthony and Boylston; yet it was not possible, Campton
thought, that these formed the circumference of his life, that some contracted
fold of memory did not hold a nearer image, a more secret name… The father’s
heart beat faster, half from curiosity, half from a kind of shy delicacy, at
the thought that at any moment that name might wake in George and utter itself.

 
          
Campton’s
thoughts again turned to his wife. With Julia there was never any knowing. Ten
to one she would send the boy’s temperature up. He was thankful that, owing to
the difficulty of getting the news to her, and then of bringing her back from a
frontier department, so many days had had to elapse.

 
          
But
when she arrived, nothing, after all, happened as he had expected. She had put
on her nurse’s dress for the journey (he thought it rather theatrical of her,
till he remembered how much easier it was to get about in any sort of uniform);
but there was not a trace of coquetry in her appearance. As a frame for her
haggard unpowdered face the white coif look harsh and unbecoming; she reminded
him, as she got out of the motor, of some mortified Jansenist nun from one of
Philippe de Champaigne’s canvases.

 
          
Campton
led her to George’s door, but left her there; she did not appear to notice
whether or not he was following her. He whispered: “Careful about his
temperature; he’s very weak,” and she bent her profile silently as she went in.

 
          
  

 
          
George, that
evening, seemed rather better, and his
temperature had not gone up: Campton had to repress a movement of jealousy at
Julia’s having done her son no harm. Her experience as a nurse, disciplining a
vague gift for the sickroom, had developed in her the faculty of self-command:
before the war, if George had met with a dangerous accident, she would have
been more encumbering than helpful.

 
          
Campton
had to admit the change, but it did not draw them any nearer. Her manner of
loving their son was too different. Nowadays, when he and Anderson Brant were
together, he felt that they were thinking of the same things in the same way;
but Julia’s face, even aged and humanized by grief, was still a mere mask to
him. He could never tell what form her thoughts about George might be taking.

 
          
Mr.
Brant, on his wife’s arrival, had judged it discreet to efface himself. Campton
hunted for him in vain in the park, and under the cloister; he remained
invisible till they met at the early dinner which they shared with the staff.
But the meal did not last long, and when it was over, and nurses and doctors
scattered, Mr. Brant again slipped away, leaving his wife and Campton alone.

 
          
Campton
glanced after him, surprised. “Why does he go?”

 
          
Mrs.
Brant pursed her lips, evidently as much surprised by his question as he by her
husband’s withdrawal.

 
          
“I
suppose he’s going to bed—to be ready for his early start tomorrow.”

 
          
“A start?”

 
          
She
stared. “He’s going back to
Paris
.”

 
          
Campton
was genuinely astonished. “Is he? I’m sorry.”

 
          
“Oh”
She seemed unprepared for this. “After all, you must see—we can’t very well…
all three of us … especially with these nuns…”

 
          
“Oh,
if it’s only that”

 
          
She
did not take this up, and one of their usual silences followed. Campton was
thinking that it was all nonsense about the nuns, and meditating on the
advisability of going in pursuit of Mr. Brant to tell him so. He dreaded the
prospect of a long succession of days alone between George and George’s mother.

 
          
Mrs.
Brant spoke again. “I was sorry to find that the Sisters have been kept on
here. Are they much with George?”

 
          
“The Sisters?
I don’t know. The upper nurses are Red Cross,
as you saw. But of course the others are about a good deal. What’s wrong? They
seem to me perfect.”

 
          
She
hesitated and coloured a little. “I don’t want them to find out—about the
Extreme Unction,” she finally said.

 
          
Campton
repeated her words blankly. He began to think that anxiety and fatigue had
confused her mind.

 
          
She
coloured more deeply. “Oh, I forgot—you don’t know. I couldn’t think of
anything but George at first … and the whole thing is so painful to me… Where’s
my bag?”

 
          
She
groped for her reticule, found it in the folds of the cloak she had kept about
her shoulders, and fumbled in it with wrinkled jewelled fingers.

 
          
“
Anderson
hasn’t spoken to you, then—spoken about
Mrs. Talkett?” she asked suddenly.

 
          
“About Mrs. Talkett?
Why should he? What on earth has
happened?”

 
          
“Oh,
I wouldn’t see her myself … I couldn’t … so he had to. She had to be thanked,
of course … but it seems to me so dreadful, so very dreadful… our boy… that
woman…”

 
          
Campton
did not press her further. He sat dumbfounded, trying to take in what she was
so obviously trying to communicate, and yet instinctively resisting the
approach of the revelation he foresaw.

 
          
“George—Mrs. Talkett?”
He forced himself to couple the two
names, unnatural as their union seemed.

 
          
“I
supposed you knew. Isn’t it dreadful? A woman old enough”

 
          
She
drew a letter from her bag.

 
          
He
interrupted her. “Is that letter what you want to show me?”

 
          
“Yes.
She insisted on
Anderson
’s keeping it—for you. She said it belonged to us, I believe… It seems
there was a promise—made the night before he was mobilised—that if anything
happened he would get word to her… No thought of us!” She began to whimper.

 
          
Campton
reached out for the letter. Mrs. Talkett—Madge Talkett and George! That was
where the boy had gone then, that last night when his father, left alone at the
Crillon, had been so hurt by his desertion! That was the name which, in his
hours of vigil in the little white room, Campton had watched for on his son’s
lips, the name which, one day, sooner or later, he would have to hear them
pronounce… How little he had thought, as he sat studying the mysterious beauty
of George’s face, what a commonplace secret it concealed!

 
          
The
writing was not George’s, but that of an unlettered French soldier. Campton,
glancing at the signature, recalled it as that of his son’s orderly, who had
been slightly wounded in the same attack as George, and sent for twenty-four
hours to the same hospital at Doullens. He had been at George’s side when he
fell, and with the simple directness often natural to his class in
France
he told the tale of his lieutenant’s
wounding, in circumstances which appeared to have given George great glory in
the eyes of his men. They thought the wound mortal; but the orderly and a
stretcher-bearer had managed to get the young man into the shelter of a little
wood. The stretcher-bearer, it turned out, was a priest. He had at once applied
the consecrated oil, and George, still conscious, had received it “with a
beautiful smile”; then the orderly, thinking all was over, had hurried back to
the fighting, and been wounded. The next day he too had been carried to
Doullens; and there, after many enquiries, he had found his lieutenant in the
same hospital, alive, but too ill to see him.

 
          
He
had contrived, however, to see the nurse, and had learned from her that the
doctors had not given up hope. With that he had to be content; but before
returning to his base he had hastened to fulfill his lieutenant’s instructions
(given “many months earlier”) by writing to tell “his lady” that he was
severely wounded, but still alive—”which is a good deal in itself,” the orderly
hopefully ended, “not to mention his receiving the Legion of Honour.”

 
          
Campton
laid the letter down. There was too much to be taken in all at once; and, as
usual in moments of deep disturbance, he wanted to be alone, above all wanted
to be away from Julia. But Julia held him with insistent eyes.

 
          
“Do
you want this?” he asked finally, pushing the letter toward her.

 
          
She
recoiled. “Want it?
A letter written to that woman?
No! I should have returned it at once—but
Anderson
wouldn’t let me… Think of her forcing
herself upon me as she did—and making you
paint
her
portrait! I see it all now. Had you any idea this was going on?”

 
          
Campton
shook his head, and perceived by her look of relief that what she had resented
above all was the thought of his being in a secret of George’s from which she
herself was excluded.

 
          
“Adele
didn’t know either,” she said, with evident satisfaction. Campton remembered
that he had been struck by Miss Anthony’s look of sincerity when he had asked
her if she had any idea where George had spent his last evening, and she had
answered negatively. This recollection made him understand Mrs. Brant’s feeling
of relief.