Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (7 page)

 
          
“He
is to take with him provisions for one day.”

 
          
“He
is to present himself at the station ofon the third day of mobilisation at
6 o’clock to 24
o’clock
. The first
day is that on which the order of mobilisation is published.”

 
          
“The
days of mobilisation are counted from 0 o’clock to 24 o’clock. The first day is
that on which the order of mobilisation is published.”

 
          
Campton
dropped the book and pressed his hands to his temples. “The days of
mobilisation are counted from 0 o’clock to 24 o’clock. The first day is that on
which the order of mobilisation is published.” Then, if
France
mobilised that day, George would start the
second day after, at six in the morning. George might be going to leave him
within forty-eight hours from that very moment!

 
          
Campton
had always vaguely supposed that, some day or other, if war came, a telegram
would call George to his base; it had never occurred to him that every detail
of the boy’s military life had long since been regulated by the dread power
which had him in its grasp.

 
          
He
read the next paragraph: “The bearer will travel free of charge” and thought
with a grin how it would annoy Anderson Brant that the French government should
presume to treat his stepson as if he could not pay his way. The plump bundle
of bank-notes on the dressing-table seemed to look with ineffectual scorn at
the red book that sojourned so democratically in the same pocket. And Campton,
picturing George jammed into an overcrowded military train, on the plebeian
wooden seat of a third-class compartment, grinned again, forgetful of his own
anxiety in the vision of Brant’s exasperation.

 
          
Ah,
well, it wasn’t war yet, whatever they said!

 
          
He
carried the red book back to the dressing-table. The light falling across the
bed drew his eye to the young face on the pillow. George lay on his side, one
arm above his head, the other laxly stretched along the bed. He had thrown off
the blankets, and the sheet, clinging to his body, modelled his slim flank and
legs as he lay in dreamless rest.

 
          
For
a long time Campton stood gazing; then he stole back to the sitting-room,
picked up a sketch-book and pencil and returned. He knew there was no danger of
waking
George,
and he began to draw, eagerly but
deliberately, fascinated by the happy accident of the lighting, and of the
boy’s position.

 
          
“Like
a statue of a young knight I’ve seen somewhere,” he said to himself, vexed and
surprised that he, whose plastic memories were always so precise, should not
remember where; and then his pencil stopped. What he had really thought was:
“Like the effigy of a young knight”—though he had instinctively changed the
word as it formed itself. He leaned in the doorway, the sketch-book in hand,
and continued to gaze at his son. It was the clinging sheet, no doubt, that
gave him that look … and the white glare of the electric burner.

 
          
If
war came, that was just the way a boy might
lie
on a
battlefield—or afterward in a hospital bed. Not his boy, thank heaven; but very
probably his boy’s friends: hundreds and thousands of boys like his boy, the
age of his boy, with a laugh like his boy’s… The wicked waste of it! Well, that
was what war meant … what tomorrow might bring to millions of parents like
himself
.

 
          
He
stiffened his shoulders, and opened the sketch-book again. What watery stuff
was he made of, he wondered? Just because the boy lay as if he were posing for
a tombstone! … What of Signorelli, who had sat at his dead son’s side and drawn
him, tenderly, minutely, while the coffin waited?

 
          
Well,
damn Signorelli—that was all! Campton threw down his book, turned out the
sitting-room lights, and limped away to bed.

 
          
  

 
          
The
next morning he said to George, over coffee on the terrace: “I think I’ll drop
in at Cook’s about our tickets.”

 
          
George
nodded, munching his golden roll.

 
          
“Right.
I’ll run up to see mother, then.”

 
          
His
father was silent. Inwardly he was saying to himself: “The chances are she’ll
be going back to
Deauville
this afternoon.”

 
          
There
had not been much to gather from the newspapers heaped at their feet.
Austria
had ordered general mobilisation; but while
the tone of the despatches was nervous and contradictory that of the leading
articles remained almost ominously reassuring. Campton absorbed the reassurance
without heeding its quality: it was a drug he had to have at any price.

 
          
He
expected the Javanese dancer to sit for him that afternoon, but he had not
proposed to George to be present. On the chance that things might eventually
take a wrong turn he meant to say a word to Fortin-Lescluze; and the presence
of his son would have been embarrassing.

 
          
“You’ll
be back for lunch?” he called to George, who still lounged on the terrace in
pyjamas.

 
          
“Rather.—
This
, unless mother makes a point… in case she’s leaving.”

 
          
“Oh,
of course,” said Campton with grim cordiality.

 
          
“You
see, dear old boy, I’ve got to see Uncle Andy some time…” It was the grotesque
name that George in his babyhood, had given to Mr. Brant, and when he grew up
it had been difficult to substitute another. “Especially now” George added,
pulling himself up out of his chair.

 
          
“Now?”

 
          
They
looked at each other in silence, irritation in the father’s eye, indulgent
amusement in the son’s.

 
          
“Why,
if you and I are really off on this long trek”

 
          
“Oh,
of course,” agreed Campton, relieved. “You’d much better lunch with them. I
always want you to do what’s decent.” He paused on the threshold to add: “By
the way, don’t forget Adele.”

 
          
“Well,
rather not,” his son responded. “And we’ll keep the evening free for something
awful.”

 
          
As
he left the room he heard George rapping on the telephone and calling out Miss
Anthony’s number.

 
          
Campton
had to have reassurance at any price; and he got it, as usual, irrationally but
irresistibly, through his eyes. The mere fact that the midsummer sun lay so
tenderly on Paris, that the bronze dolphins of the fountains in the square were
spraying the Nereids’ Louis Philippe
chignons
as playfully as ever; that the sleepy Cities of France dozed as heavily on
their thrones, and the Horses of Marly pranced as fractiously on their
pedestals; that the glorious central setting of the city lay there in its usual
mellow pomp—all this gave him a sense of security that no crisscrossing of
Reuters and Havases could shake.

 
          
Nevertheless,
he reflected that there was no use in battling with the silly hysterical crowd
he would be sure to encounter at Cook’s; and having left word with the
hotel-porter to secure two “sleepings” on the
Naples
express, he drove to the studio.

 
          
On
the way, as his habit was, he thought hard of his model: everything else
disappeared like a rolled-up curtain, and his inner vision centred itself on
the little yellow face he was to paint.

 
          
Peering
through her cobwebby window, he saw old Mme. Lebel on the watch. He knew she
wanted to pounce out and ask if there would be war; and composing his most
taciturn countenance he gave her a preoccupied nod and hurried by.

 
          
The
studio looked grimy and disordered, and he remembered that he had intended, the
evening before, to come back and set it to rights. In pursuance of this plan,
he got out a canvas, fussed with his brushes and colours, and then tried once
more to make the place tidy. But his attempts at order always resulted in worse
confusion; the fact had been one of Julia’s grievances against him, and he had
often thought that a reaction from his ways probably explained the lifeless
neatness of the Anderson Brant drawing-room.

 
          
Campton
had fled to Montmartre to escape a number of things: first of all, the
possibility of meeting people who would want to talk about the European
situation, then of being called up by Mrs. Brant, and lastly of having to lunch
alone in a fashionable restaurant. In his morbid dread of seeing people he
would have preferred an omelette in the studio, if only Mariette had been at
hand to make it; and he decided, after a vain struggle with his muddled
“properties,” to cross over to the
Luxembourg
quarter and pick up a meal in a wine-shop.

 
          
He
did not own to himself his secret reason for this decision; but it caused him,
after a glance at his watch, to hasten his steps down the rue
Montmartre
and bribe a passing taxi to carry him to
the Museum of the
Luxembourg
. He reached it ten minutes before the
midday
closing, and hastening past the serried
statues, turned into a room halfway down the gallery. Whistler’s Mother and the
Carmencita of Sargent wondered at each other from its walls; and on the same
wall with the Whistler hung the picture Campton had come for: his portrait of
his son. He had given it to the
Luxembourg
the day after Mr. Brant had tried to buy
it, with the object of inflicting the
most cruel
slight he could think of on the banker.

 
          
In
the generous summer light the picture shone out on him with
a
communicative
warmth: never had he seen so far into its depths. “No
wonder,” he thought, “it opened people’s eyes to what I was trying for.”

 
          
He
stood and stared his own eyes full, mentally comparing the features before him
with those of the firmer harder George he had left on the terrace of the
Crillon, and noting how time, while fulfilling the rich promise of the younger
face, had yet taken something from its brightness.

 
          
Campton,
at that moment, found more satisfaction than ever in thinking how it must have
humiliated Brant to have the picture given to
France
. “He could have understood my keeping it
myself—or holding it for a bigger price—but giving it!” The satisfaction was
worth the sacrifice of the best record he would ever have of that phase of his
son’s youth. At various times afterward he had tried for the same George, but
not one of his later studies had that magic light on it. Still, he was glad he
had given the picture. It was safe, safer than it would have been with him. His
great dread had always been that if his will were mislaid (and his things were
always getting mislaid) the picture might be sold, and fall into Brant’s hands
after his death.

 
          
The
closing signal drove him out of the Museum, and he turned into the first
wine-shop. He had advised George to lunch with the Brants, but there was
disappointment in his heart. Seeing the turn things were taking, he had hoped
the boy would feel the impulse to remain with him. But, after all, at such a
time a son could not refuse to go to his mother. Campton pictured the little
party of three grouped about the luncheon-table in the high cool dining-room of
the Avenue Marigny, with the famous Hubert Robert panels, and the Louis XV silver
and Sevres; while he, the father, George’s father, sat alone at the soiled
table of a frowsy wine-shop.