Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (44 page)

 
          
“And
my son, Juanito; was not my son an advertisement for a Beauty Shop, I ask you?
Before he was out of petticoats he brought me customers; before he was sixteen
all the ladies who came to me were quarreling over him. Ah, there were moments
when he crucified me … but lately he had grown more reasonable, had begun to
see where his true interests lay, and we had become friends again, friends and
business partners. When the war broke out I came to Paris; I knew that all the
mothers would want news of their sons. I have made a great deal of money; and I
have had wonderful results—wonderful! I could give you instances—names that you
know—where I have foretold everything! Oh, I have the gift, my heart, I have
it!”

 
          
She
pressed his hands with a smile of triumph; then her face clouded again.

 
          
“But
six months ago my darling was called to his regiment—and for three months now
I’ve had no news of him, none, none!” she sobbed, the tears making dark streaks
through her purplish powder.

 
          
The
upshot of it was that she had heard that Campton was “all-powerful”; that he
knew Ministers and Generals, knew great financiers like Jorgenstein (who were
so much more powerful than either Generals or Ministers), and could, if he
chose, help her to trace her boy, who, from the day of his departure for the
front, had vanished as utterly as if the earth had swallowed him.

 
          
“Not
a word, not a sign—to me, his mother, who have slaved and slaved for him, who
have
made a fortune for him!”

 
          
Campton
looked at her, marvelling. “But your gift as you call it… your powers … you
can’t use them for yourself?”

 
          
She
returned his look with a tearful simplicity: she hardly seemed to comprehend
what he was saying.
“But my son!
I want news of my
son, real news; I want a letter; I want to see some one who has seen him! To
touch a hand that has touched him! Oh, don’t you understand?”

 
          
“Yes,
I understand,” he said; and she took up her desperate litany, clinging about
him with soft palms like medusa-lips, till by dint of many promises he managed
to detach himself and steer her gently to the door.

 
          
On
the threshold she turned to him once more. “And your own son, Juanito—I know
he’s at the front again. His mother came the other day—she often comes. And I
can promise you things if you’ll help me. No, even if you don’t help me—for the
old days’ sake, I will! I know secrets … magical secrets that will protect him.
There’s a Moorish salve, infallible against bullets … handed down from King
Solomon … I can get it…”

 
          
Campton,
guiding her across the sill, led her out and bolted the door on her; then he
went back to his easel and stood gazing at the sketch of George. But the spell
was broken: the old George was no longer there. The war had sucked him back
into its awful whirlpool—once more he was that dark enigma, a son at the front…

 
          
In
the heavy weeks which followed, a guarded allusion of Campton’s showed him one
day that Boylston was aware of there being “something between” George and Madge
Talkett.

 
          
“Not
that he’s ever said anything—or even encouraged me to guess anything. But she’s
got a talking face, poor little thing; and not much gift of restraint. And I
suppose it’s fairly obvious to everybody—except perhaps to Talkett—that she’s
pretty hard hit.”

 
          
“Yes.
And George?”

 
          
Boylston’s
round face became remote and mysterious. “We don’t really know—do we,
sir?—exactly how any of them feel? Any more than if they were” He drew up
sharply on the word, but Campton faced it.

 
          
“Dead?”

 
          
“Transfigured,
say; no, transwhat’s the word in the theology books? A new substance …
somehow…”

 
          
“Ah,
you feel that too?” the father exclaimed.

 
          
“Yes.
They don’t know it themselves, though—how far they are from us. At least I
don’t think they do.”

 
          
Campton
nodded. “But George, in the beginning, was—frankly indifferent to the war,
wasn’t he?”

 
          
“Yes;
intellectually he was. But he told me that when he saw the first men on their
way back from the front—with the first mud on them—he knew he belonged where
they’d come from. I tried hard to persuade him when he was here that his real
job was on a military mission to America—and it was. Think what he might have
done out there! But it was no use. His orderly’s visit did the trick. It’s the
thought of their men that pulls them all back. Look at Louis Dastrey—they
couldn’t keep him in America. There’s something in all their eyes: I don’t know
what. Dulce et decorum, perhaps”

 
          
“Yes.”

 
          
There
was a pause before Campton questioned: “And Talkett?”

 
          
“Poor
little ass—I don’t know. He’s here arguing with me nearly every day. She looks
over his shoulder, and just shrugs at me with her eyebrows.”

 
          
“Can
you guess what he thinks of George’s attitude?”

 
          
“Oh, something different every day.
I don’t believe she’s
ever really understood. But then she loves him, and nothing else counts.”

 
          
M rs.
Brant continued to face life with apparent serenity.
She had returned several times to Mme. Olida’s, and had always brought away the
same reassuring formula: she thought it striking, and so did her friends, that
the clairvoyante’s prediction never varied.

 
          
There
was reason to believe that George’s regiment had been sent to Verdun, and from
Verdun the news was growing daily more hopeful. This seemed to Mrs. Brant a
remarkable confirmation of Olida’s prophecy. Apparently it did not occur to her
that, in the matter of human life, victories may be as ruinous as defeats; and
she triumphed in the fact—it had grown to be a fact to her—that her boy was at
Verdun, when he might have been in the Somme, where things, though stagnant,
were on the whole going less well. Mothers prayed for “a quiet sector”—and
then, she argued, what happened? The men grew careless, the officers were
oftener away; your son was ordered out to see to the repairs of a barbed-wire
entanglement, and a sharp-shooter picked him off while you were sitting reading
one of his letters, and thinking: “Thank God he’s out of the fighting.” And
besides, Olida was sure, and all her predictions had been so wonderful…

 
          
Campton
began to dread his wife’s discovering Mme. Olida’s fears for her own son. Every
endeavour to get news of Pepito had been fruitless; finally Campton and
Boylston concluded that the young man must be a prisoner. The painter had a
second visit from Mme. Olida, in the course of which he besought her (without
naming Julia) to be careful not to betray her private anxiety to the poor women
who came to her for consolation; and she fixed her tortured velvet eyes on him
reproachfully.

 
          
“How
could you think it of me, Juanito? The money I earn is for my boy! That gives
me the strength to invent a new lie every morning.”

 
          
He
took her fraudulent hand and kissed it.

 
          
The
next afternoon he met Mrs. Brant walking down the Champs Elysées with her light
girlish step. She lifted a radiant face to him.
“A letter
from George this morning!
And, do you know, Olida prophesied it? I was
there again yesterday; and she told me that he would soon be back, and that at
that very moment she could see him writing to me. You’ll admit it’s
extraordinary? So many mothers depend on her—I couldn’t live without her. And
her messages from her own son are so beautiful”

 
          
“From her own son?”

 
          
‘Yes:
didn’t I tell you? He says such perfect things to her. And she confessed to me,
poor woman, that before the war he hadn’t always been kind: he used to take her
money, and behave badly. But now every day he sends her a thought-message—such
beautiful things! She says she wouldn’t have the courage to keep us all up if
it weren’t for the way that she’s kept up by her boy. And now,” Julia added
gaily, “I’m going to order the cakes for my bridge-tea this afternoon. You know
I promised Georgie I wouldn’t give up my bridge-teas.”

 
          
Now
and then Campton returned to his latest portrait of his son; but in spite of
George’s frequent letters, in spite of the sudden drawing together of father
and son during their last moments at the station, the vision of the boy George,
the careless happy George who had ridiculed the thought of war and pursued his
millennial dreams of an enlightened world—that vision was gone. Sometimes
Campton fancied that the letters themselves increased this effect of
remoteness. They were necessarily more guarded than the ones written, before
George’s wounding, from an imaginary H.Q.; but that did not wholly account for
the difference. Campton, in the last analysis, could only say that as in the
moment when George had comforted Mme. Lebel, or greeted his orderly, or when he
had said those last few broken words at the station—he seemed nearer than ever,
seemed part and substance of his father; or else he became again that beautiful
distant apparition, the winged sentry guarding the Unknown.

 
          
The
weeks thus punctuated by private anxieties rolled on dark with doom. At last,
in December, came the victory of Verdun. Men took it reverently but soberly.
The price paid had been too heavy for rejoicing; and the horizon was too
ominous in other quarters. Campton had hoped that the New Year would bring his
son back on leave; but still George did not speak of coming. Meanwhile
Boylston’s face grew rounder and more beaming. At last America was stirring in
her sleep. “Oh, if only George were out there!” Boylston used to cry, as if his
friend had been an army. His faith in George’s powers of persuasion was almost
mystical. And not long afterward Campton had the surprise of a visit which
seemed, in the most unforeseen way, to confirm this belief. Returning to his
studio one afternoon he found it tenanted by Mr. Roger Talkett.

 
          
The
young man, as carefully brushed and equipped as usual, but pale with emotion,
clutched the painter’s hand in a moist grasp.

 
          
“My
dear Master, I had to see you—to see you alone and immediately.”

 
          
Campton
looked at him with apprehension. What was the meaning of his “alone”? Had Mrs.
Talkett lost her head, and betrayed her secret—or had she committed some act of
imprudence of which the report had come back to her husband?

 
          
“Do
sit down,” said the painter weakly.

 
          
But
his visitor, remaining sternly upright, shook his head and glanced at his
wrist-watch. “My moments,” he said, “are numbered—literally; all I have time
for is to implore you to look after my wife.” He drew a handkerchief from his
glossy cuff, and rubbed his eyeglasses.

 
          
“Your wife?”
Campton echoed, dismayed.

 
          
“My
dear sir, haven’t you guessed? It’s George’s wonderful example … his
inspiration … I’ve been converted! We men of culture can’t stand by while the
ignorant and illiterate are left to die for us. We must leave that attitude to
the Barbarian. Our duty is to set an example. I’m off to-night for America—for
Plattsburg.”

 
          
“Oh”
gasped Campton, wringing his hand.

 
          
Boylston
burst into the studio the next day. “What did I tell you, sir? George’s
influence—it wakes up everybody. But Talkett—IH be hanged if I should have
thought it! And have you seen his wife? She’s a war-goddess! I went to the
station with them: their farewells were harrowing. At that minute, you know, I
believe she’d forgotten that George ever existed!”

 
          
“Well,
thank god for that,” Campton cried.