Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (39 page)

 
          
“Ah,
my dear, if it comes to that—I’m not sure that I can. Not sure enough to help
you, I’m afraid.”

 
          
She
looked at him, disappointed. ‘You won’t speak to him then?”

 
          
“Not
unless he speaks to me.”

 
          
“Ah,
he frightens you—just as he does me!”

 
          
She
pulled her hat down on her troubled brow, gathered up her furs, and took
another sidelong peep at the glass. Then she turned toward the door. On the
threshold she paused and looked back at Campton. “Don’t you see,” she cried,
“that if I were to give George up he’d get himself sent straight back to the
front?”

 
          
Campton’s
heart gave an angry leap; for a second he felt the impulse to strike her, to
catch her by the shoulders and bundle her out of the room. With a great effort
he controlled himself and opened the door.

 
          
“You
don’t understand—you don’t understand!” she called back to him once again from
the landing.

 
          
Madge
Talkett had asked him to speak to his son: he had refused, and she had
retaliated by planting that poisoned shaft in him. But what had retaliation to
do with it? She had probably spoken the simple truth, and with the natural
desire to enlighten him. If George wanted to marry her, it must be (since human
nature, though it might change its vocabulary, kept its instincts), it must be
that he was very much in love—and in that case her refusal would in truth go
hard with him, and it would be natural that he should try to get himself sent
away from Paris…
From
Paris
, yes; but not necessarily
to the front.
After such
wounds and such honours he had only to choose; a staff-appointment could easily
be got. Or, no doubt, with his two languages, he might, if he preferred, have
himself sent on a military mission to
America
. With all this propaganda talk, wasn’t he
the very type of officer they wanted for the neutral countries?

 
          
It
was Campton’s dearest wish that George should stay where he was; he knew his
peace of mind would vanish the moment his son was out of sight. But he
suspected that George would soon weary of staff-work, or of any form of
soldiering at the rear, and try for the trenches if he left Paris; whereas, in
Paris, Madge Talkett might hold him—as she had meant his father to see.

 
          
The
first thing then, was to make sure of a job at the War Office.

 
          
Campton
turned and tossed like a sick man on the hard bed of his problem. To plan, to
scheme, to plot and circumvent—nothing was more hateful to him, there was
nothing in which he was less skilled. If only he dared to consult Adele
Anthony! But Adele was still incorrigibly warlike, and her having been in
George’s secret while his parents were excluded from it left no doubt as to the
side on which her influence would bear. She loved the boy, Campton sometimes
thought, even more passionately than his mother did; but—how did the old song
go?—she loved honour, or her queer conception of it, more. Ponder as he would,
he could not picture her, even now, lifting a finger to keep George back.

 
          
Campton
struggled all the morning with these questions. After lunch he pocketed Mrs.
Talkett’s money-bag and carried it to the Palais Royal, where he discovered
Harvey Mayhew in confabulation with Mme. Beausite, who still trailed her
ineffectual beauty about the office. The painter thought he detected a faint
embarrassment in the glance with which they both greeted him.

 
          
“Hallo,
Campton! Looking for our good friend Boylston? He’s off duty this afternoon,
Mme. Beausite tells me; as he is pretty often in these days, I’ve noticed,” Mr.
Mayhew sardonically added. “In fact, the office has rather been left to run
itself lately—eh? Of course our good Miss Anthony is absorbed with her
refugees—gives us but a divided allegiance. And Boylston—well, young men, young
men! Of course it’s been a weary pull for him. By the way, my dear fellow,” Mr.
Mayhew continued, as Campton appeared about to turn away, “I called at Mrs.
Talkett’s just now to ask for the money from the concert—a good round sum, I
hear it is—and she told me she’d given it to you. Have you brought it with you?
If so, Mme. Beausite here would take charge of it”

 
          
Mme.
Beausite turned her great resigned eyes on the painter. “Mr. Campton knows I’m
very careful. I will lock it up till his friend’s return. Now that Mr. Boylston
is so much away I very often have such responsibilities.”

 
          
Campton’s
eyes returned her glance; but he did not waver. “Thanks so much; but as the sum
is rather large it seems to me the bank’s the proper place. Will you please
tell Boylston I’ve deposited it?”

 
          
Mr.
Mayhew’s benevolent pink turned to an angry red. For a moment Campton thought
he was about to say something foolish. But he merely bent his head stiffly,
muttered a vague phrase about “irregular proceedings,” and returned to his seat
by Mme. Beausite’s desk.

 
          
As
for Campton, his words had decided his course: he would take the money at once
to Bullard and Brant’s and seize the occasion to see the banker. Mr. Brant was
the only person with whom, at this particular juncture, he cared to talk of
George.

 
          
  

 
          
Mr.
Brant’s private office was as glitteringly neat as when Campton had entered it
for the first time, and seen the fatal telegram about Benny Upsher marring the
order of the desk.

 
          
Now
he crossed the threshold with different feelings. To have Mr. Brant look up and
smile, to shake hands with him, accept one of his cigars, and sink into one of
the blue leather arm-chairs, seemed to be in the natural order of things. He
felt only the relief of finding
himself
with the one
person likely to understand.

 
          
“About
George” he began.

 
          
“Yes?”
said Mr. Brant briskly. “It’s curious—I was just thinking of looking you up.
It’s his birthday next Tuesday, you know.”

 
          
“Oh”
said the father, slightly put off. He had not come to talk of birthdays; nor
did he need to be reminded of his son’s by Mr. Brant. He concluded that Mr.
Brant would be less easy to get on with in
Paris
than at the front.

 
          
“And
we thought of celebrating the day by a little party—a dinner, with perhaps the
smallest kind of a dance: or just bridge—yes, probably just bridge,” the banker
added tentatively. “Opinions differ as to the suitability—it’s for his mother
to decide. But of course no evening
clothes,
and we
hoped perhaps to persuade you. Our only object is to amuse him—to divert his
mind from this wretched entanglement.”

 
          
It
was doubtful if Mr. Brant had ever before made so long a speech, except perhaps
at a board meeting; and then only when he read the annual report. He turned
pink and stared over Campton’s shoulder at the panelled white wall, on which a
false Reynolds hung.

 
          
Campton
meditated. The blush was the blush of Mr. Brant, but the voice was the voice of
Julia. Still, it was probable that neither husband nor wife was aware how far
matters had gone with Mrs. Talkett.

 
          
“George
is more involved than you think,” Campton said.

 
          
Mr.
Brant looked startled.

 
          
“In what way?”

 
          
“He
means to marry her. He insists on her getting a divorce.”

 
          
“A divorce?
Good gracious,” murmured Mr. Brant. He turned
over a jade paper-cutter, trying its edge absently on his nail. “Does Julia?”
he began at length.

 
          
Campton
shook his head. “No; I wanted to speak to you first.”

 
          
Mr.
Brant gave his quick bow. He was evidently gratified, and the sentiment
stimulated his faculties, as it had when he found that Campton no longer
resented his presence at the hospital. His small effaced features took on a
business-like sharpness, and he readjusted his eye-glasses and straightened the
paper-cutter, which he had put back on the desk a fraction of an inch out of
its habitual place.

 
          
“You
had this from George?” he asked.

 
          
“No; from her.
She’s been to see me. She doesn’t want to
divorce. She’s in love with him; in her way, that is; but she’s frightened.”

 
          
“And
that makes him the more eager?”

 
          
“The
more determined, at any rate.”

 
          
Mr.
Brant appeared to seize the distinction. “George can be very determined.”

 
          
“Yes.
I think his mother ought to be made to understand that all this talk about a
wretched entanglement isn’t likely to make him any less so.”

 
          
Mr.
Brant’s look seemed to say that making Julia understand had proved a no less
onerous task for his maturity than for Campton’s youth.

 
          
“If
you don’t object—perhaps the matter might, for the present, continue to be kept
between you and me,” he suggested.

 
          
“Oh,
by all means. What I want,” Campton pursued, “is to get him out of this
business altogether. They wouldn’t be happy—they couldn’t be. She’s too much
like” He broke off, frightened at what he had been about to say. “Too much,” he
emended, “like the usual fool of a woman that every boy of George’s age thinks
he wants simply because he can’t get her.”

 
          
“And
you say she came to you for advice?”

 
          
“She
came to me to persuade him to give up the idea of a divorce. Apparently she’s
ready for anything short of that. It’s a queer business. She seems sorry for
Talkett in a way.”

 
          
Mr.
Brant marked his sense of the weight of this by a succession of attentive nods.
He put his hands in his pockets, leaned back, and tilted his dapper toes
against the gold-trellised scrap-basket. The attitude seemed to change the pale
panelling of his background into a glass-and-mahogany Wall Street office.

 
          
“Won’t
he be satisfied with—er—all the rest, so to speak; since you say she offers
it?”

 
          
“No;
he won’t. There’s the difficulty. It seems it’s the new view. The way the young
men feel since the war. He wants her for his wife.
Nothing
less.”

 
          
“Ah,
he respects her,” murmured Mr. Brant, impressed; and Campton reflected that he
had no doubt respected Julia.

 
          
“And
what she wants is to get you to persuade him—to accept less?”

 
          
“Well—something
of the sort.”

 
          
Mr.
Brant sat up and dropped his heels to the floor. “Well, then—don’tr he snapped.

 
          
“Don’t—?”

 
          
“Persuade
her, on the contrary, to keep him hoping—to make him think she means to marry
him. Don’t you see?” Mr. Brant exclaimed, almost impatiently. “Don’t you see
that if she turns him down definitely he’ll be scheming to get away, to get
back to the front, the minute his leave is over? Tell her that—appeal to her on
that ground. Make her do it. She will if she’s in love with him. And we can’t
stop him from going back—not one of us. He’s restless here already—I know that.
Always talking about his men, saying he’s got to get back to them. The only way
is to hold him by this girl. She’s the very influence we need!”