Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (8 page)

 
          
Well—it
was he who had so willed it. Life was too crazy a muddle—and who could have
foreseen that he might have been repaid for twenty-six years with such a wife
by keeping an undivided claim on such a son?

 
          
His
meal over, he hastened back to the studio, hoping to find the dancer there.
Fortin-Lescluze had sworn to bring her at two, and Campton was known to exact
absolute punctuality. He had put the final touch to his fame by refusing to
paint the mad young Duchesse de la Tour Crenelee—who was exceptionally
paintable—because she had kept him waiting three-quarters of an hour. But now,
though it was nearly three, and the dancer and her friend had not come, Campton
dared not move, lest he should miss Fortin-Lescluze.

 
          
“Sent
for by a rich patient in a war-funk; or else hanging about in the girl’s
dressing-room while she polishes her toe-nails,” Campton reflected; and sulkily
sat down to wait.

 
          
He
had never been willing to have a telephone. To him it was a live thing, a kind
of Laocoon-serpent that caught one in its coils and dragged one struggling to
the receiver. His friends had spent all their logic in trying to argue away
this belief; but he answered obstinately: “Every one would be sure to call me
up when Mariette was out.” Even the Russian lady, during her brief reign, had
pleaded in vain on this point.

 
          
He
would have given a good deal now if he had listened to her. The terror of
having to cope with small material difficulties, always strongest in him in
moments of artistic inspiration—when the hushed universe seemed hardly big
enough to hold him and his model—this dread anchored him to his seat while he
tried to make up his mind to send Mme. Lebel to the nearest telephone-station.

 
          
If
he called to her, she would instantly begin: “And the war, sir?” And he would
have to settle that first. Besides, if he did not telephone himself he could
not make sure of another appointment with Fortin-Lescluze. But the idea of
battling alone with the telephone in a public place covered his large body with
a damp distress. If only George had been in reach!

 
          
He
waited till four, and then, furious, locked the studio and went down. Mme.
Lebel still sat in her spidery den. She looked at him gravely, their eyes met,
they exchanged a bow, but she did not move or speak. She was busy as usual with
some rusty sewing—he thought it odd that she should not rush out to waylay him.
Everything that day was odd.

 
          
He
found all the telephone-booths besieged. The people waiting were certainly bad
cases of war-funk, to judge from their looks; after scrutinizing them for a
while he decided to return to his hotel, and try to communicate with
Fortin-Lescluze from there.

 
          
To
his annoyance there was not a taxi to be seen. He limped down the slope of
Montmartre
to the nearest
métro
-station, and just as he was preparing to force his lame bulk
into a crowded train, caught sight of a solitary horse-cab: a vehicle he had
not risked himself in for years.

 
          
The
cab-driver, for gastronomic reasons, declined to take him farther than the
Madeleine; and getting out there, Campton walked along the rue Royale.
Everything still looked wonderfully as usual; and the fountains in the Place
sparkled gloriously.

 
          
Comparatively
few people were about: he was surprised to see how few. A small group of them,
he noticed, had paused near the doorway of the Ministry of Marine, and were
looking—without visible excitement—at a white paper pasted on the wall.

 
          
He
crossed the street and looked too. In the middle of the paper, in queer
Gothic-looking characters, he saw the words “Les Armees de Terre
et
de Mer…”

 
          
War
had come—

 
          
He
knew now that he had never for an instant believed it possible. Even when he
had had that white-lipped interview with the Brants, even when he had planned
to take Fortin-Lescluze by his senile infatuation, and secure a medical
certificate for George; even then, he had simply been obeying the superstitious
impulse which makes a man carry his umbrella when he goes out on a cloudless
morning.

 
          
War
had come.

 
          
He
stood on the edge of the sidewalk, and tried to think—now that it was here—what
it really meant: that is, what it meant to him. Beyond that he had no intention
of venturing. “This is not our job anyhow,” he muttered, repeating the phrase
with which he had bolstered up his talk with Julia.

 
          
But
abstract thinking was impossible: his confused mind could only snatch at a few
drifting scraps of purpose. “Let’s be practical,” he said to himself.

 
          
The
first thing to do was to get back to the hotel and call up the physician. He
strode along at his fastest limp, suddenly contemptuous of the people who got
in his way.

 
          
“War—and
they’ve nothing to do but dawdle and gape! How like the French!” He found
himself hating the French.

 
          
He
remembered that he had asked to have his sleepings engaged for the following
night. But even if he managed to secure his son’s discharge, there could be no
thought, now, of George’s leaving the country; and he stopped at the desk to
cancel the order.

 
          
There
was no one behind the desk: one would have said that confusion prevailed in the
hall, if its emptiness had not made the word incongruous. At last a waiter with
rumpled hair strayed out of the restaurant, and of him, imperiously, Campton
demanded the
concierges
.

 
          
“The
concierges
?
He’s gone.”

 
          
“To get my places for
Naples
?”

 
          
The
waiter looked blank.
“Gone: mobilised—to join his regiment.
It’s the war.”

 
          
“But
look here, some one must have attended to getting my places, I suppose,” cried
Campton wrathfully. He invaded the inner office and challenged a secretary who
was trying to deal with several unmanageable travellers, but who explained to
him, patiently, that his sleeping had certainly not been engaged, as no trains were
leaving
Paris
for the present. “Not for civilian travel,”
he added, still more patiently.

 
          
Campton
had a sudden sense of suffocation. No trains leaving
Paris
“for the Present”? But then people like
himself—people who had nothing on earth to do with the war—had been caught like
rats in a trap! He reflected with a shiver that Mrs. Brant would not be able to
return to
Deauville
, and would probably insist on his coming to
see her every day. He asked: “How long is this preposterous state of things to
last?”—but no one answered, and he stalked to the lift and had himself carried
up-stairs.

 
          
He
was confident that George would be there waiting; but the sitting-room was
empty. He felt as if he were on a desert island, with the last sail
disappearing over the dark rim of the world.

 
          
After
much vain ringing he got into communication with Fortin’s house, and heard a
confused voice saying that the physician had already left
Paris
.

 
          
“Left—for where?
For how long?”

 
          
And
then the eternal answer: “The doctor is mobilised. It’s the war.”

 
          
Mobilised—already?
Within the first twenty-four hours?
A man of Fortin’s age and
authority?
Campton was terrified by the uncanny rapidity with which
events were moving, he whom haste had always confused and disconcerted, as if
there were a secret link between his lameness and the movements of his will. He
rang up Dastrey, but no one answered. Evidently his friend was out, and his
friend’s
bonne
also. “I suppose she’s
mobilised: they’ll be mobilising the women next.”

 
          
At
last, from sheer over-agitation, his fatigued mind began to move more
deliberately: he collected his wits, laboured with his more immediate
difficulties, and decided that he would go to Fortin-Lescluze’s house, on the
chance that the physician had not, after all, really started.

 
          
“Ten
to one he won’t go till tomorrow,” Campton reasoned.

 
          
The
hall of the hotel was emptier than ever, and no taxi was in sight down the
whole length of the rue Royale, or the rue Boissy d’Anglas, or the rue de
Rivoli: not even a horse-cab showed against the deserted distances. He crossed
to the
métro
, and painfully descended
its many stairs.

 
          
  

 
          
Campton,
proffering twenty francs to an astonished maid-servant, learned that, yes, to
his intimates—and of course Monsieur was one?—the doctor was in, was in fact
dining, and did not leave till the next morning.

 
          
“Dining—at
six
o’clock
?”

 
          
“Monsieur’s
son, Monsieur Jean, is starting at once for his depot. That’s the reason.”

 
          
Campton
sent in his card. He expected to be received in the so-called “studio,” a lofty
room with Chinese hangings, Renaissance choir-stalls, organ, grand piano, and
post-impressionist paintings, where Fortin-Lescluze received the celebrities of
the hour. Mme. Fortin never appeared there, and Campton associated the studio
with amusing talk, hot-house flowers, and ladies lolling on black velvet
divans. He supposed that the physician was separated from his wife, and that
she had a home of her own.

 
          
When
the maid reappeared she did not lead him to the studio, but into a small
dining-room with the traditional Henri II sideboard of waxed walnut, a hanging
table-lamp under a beaded shade, an India-rubber plant on a plush pedestal, and
napkins that were just being restored to their bone rings by the four persons
seated about the red-and-white checkered table-cloth.

 
          
These
were: the great man himself, a tall large woman with grey hair, a tiny old
lady, her face framed in a peasant’s fluted cap, and a plain young man wearing
a private’s uniform, who had a nose like the doctor’s and simple light blue
eyes.

 
          
The
two ladies and the young man—so much more interesting to the painter’s eye than
the sprawling beauties of the studio—were introduced by Fortin-Lescluze as his
wife, his mother and his son. Mme. Fortin said, in a deep alto, a word or two
about the privilege of meeting the famous painter who had portrayed her
husband, and the old mother, in a piping voice, exclaimed: “Monsieur, I was at
Sedan
in 1870. I saw the Germans. I saw the
Emperor sitting on a bench. He was crying.”

 
          
“My
mother’s heard everything, she’s seen everything. There’s no one in the world
like my mother!” the physician said, laying his hand on hers.

 
          
“You
won’t see the Germans again,
ma bonne
mère!”
her daughter-in-law added, smiling.

 
          
Campton
took coffee with them, bore with a little inevitable talk about the war, and
then eagerly questioned the son. The young man was a chemist, a preparateur in
the laboratory of the Institut Pasteur. He was also, it appeared, given to
prehistoric archaeology, and had written a “thesis” on the painted caves of the
Dordogne
. He seemed extremely serious, and absorbed
in questions of science and letters. But it appeared to him perfectly simple to
be leaving it all in a few hours to join his regiment. “The war had to come.
This sort of thing couldn’t go on,” he said, in the words of Mme. Lebel.