* * * * *

As the day approached for the return to Paris, Campton began to

penetrate more deeply into the meaning of George’s remoteness. He

himself, he discovered, had been all unawares in a far country, a

country guarded by a wingèd sentry, as the old hymn had it: the region

of silent incessant communion with his son. Just they two: everything

else effaced; not discarded, destroyed, not disregarded even, but

blotted out by a soft silver haze, as the brown slopes and distances

were, on certain days, from the windows of the seaward-gazing hospital.

It was not that Campton had been unconscious of the presence of other

suffering about them. As George grew stronger, and took his first steps

in the wards, he and his father were inevitably brought into contact

with the life of the hospital. George had even found a few friends, and

two or three regimental comrades, among the officers perpetually coming

and going, or enduring the long weeks of agony which led up to the end.

But that was only toward the close of their sojourn, when George was

about to yield his place to others, and be taken to Paris for the

re-education of his shattered arm. And by that time the weeks of

solitary communion had left such an imprint on Campton that, once the

hospital was behind him, and no more than a phase of memory, it became

to him as one of its own sea-mists, in which he and his son might have

been peacefully shut away together from all the rest of the world.

XXVIII

“Preparedness!” cried Boylston in an exultant crow.

His round brown face with its curly crest and peering half-blind eyes

beamed at Campton in the old way across the desk of the Palais Royal

office; and from the corner where she had sunk down on one of the

broken-springed divans, Adele Anthony echoed: “Preparedness!”

It was the first time that Campton had heard the word; but the sense of

it had been in the air ever since he and George had got back to Paris.

He remembered, on the very day of their arrival, noticing something

different in both Boylston and Miss Anthony; and the change had shown

itself in the same way: both seemed more vivid yet more remote. It had

struck Campton in the moment of first meeting them, in the Paris

hospital near the Bois de Boulogne—Fortin-Lescluze’s old Nursing-Home

transformed into a House of Re-education—to which George had been taken.

In the little cell crowded with flowers—almost too many flowers, his

father thought, for the patient’s aching head and tired eyes—Campton,

watching the entrance of the two visitors, the first to be admitted

after Julia and Mr. Brant, had instantly remarked the air they had of

sharing something so secret and important that their joy at seeing

George seemed only the overflow of another deeper joy.

Their look had just such a vividness as George’s own; as their glances

crossed, Campton saw the same light in the eyes of all three. And now, a

few weeks later, the clue to it came to him in Boylston’s new word.

_Preparedness!_ America, it appeared, had caught it up from east to

west, in that sudden incalculable way she had of flinging herself on a

new idea; from a little group of discerning spirits the contagion had

spread like a prairie fire, sweeping away all the other catchwords of

the hour, devouring them in one great blaze of wrath and enthusiasm.

America meant to be prepared! First had come the creation of the

training camp at Plattsburg, for which, after long delays and much

difficulty, permission had been wrung from a reluctant government; then,

as candidates flocked to it, as the whole young manhood of the Eastern

States rose to the call, other camps, rapidly planned, were springing up

at Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia, at Fort Sheridan in Illinois, at The

Presidio in California; for the idea was spreading through the West, and

the torch kindled beside the Atlantic seaboard already flashed its light

on the Pacific.

For hours at a time Campton heard Boylston talking about these training

camps with the young Americans who helped him in his work, or dropped in

to seek his counsel. More than ever, now, he was an authority and an

oracle to these stray youths who were expending their enthusiasm for

France in the humblest of philanthropic drudgery: students of the Beaux

Arts or the University, or young men of leisure discouraged by the

indifference of their country and the dilatoriness of their government,

and fired by the desire to take part in a struggle in which they had

instantly felt their own country to be involved in spite of geographical

distance.

None of these young men had heard Benny Upsher’s imperious call to be

“in it” from the first, no matter how or at what cost. They were of the

kind to wait for a lead—and now Boylston was giving it to them with his

passionate variations on the great theme of Preparedness. George,

meanwhile, lay there in his bed and smiled; and now and then Boylston

brought one or two of the more privileged candidates to see him. One day

Campton found young Louis Dastrey there, worn and haggard after a bad

wound, and preparing to leave for America as instructor in one of the

new camps. That seemed to bring the movement closer than ever, to bring

it into their very lives. The thought flashed through Campton: “When

George is up, we’ll get him sent out too”; and once again a delicious

sense of security crept through him.

George, as yet, was only sitting up for a few hours a day; the wound in

the lung was slow in healing, and his fractured arm in recovering its

flexibility. But in another fortnight he was to leave the hospital and

complete his convalescence at his mother’s.

The thought was bitter to Campton; he had had all kinds of wild plans—of

taking George to the Crillon, or hiring an apartment for him, or even

camping with him at the studio. But George had smiled all this away. He

meant to return to the Avenue Marigny, where he always stayed when he

came to Paris, and where it was natural that his mother should want him

now. Adele Anthony pointed out to Campton how natural it was, one day as

he and she left the Palais Royal together. They were going to lunch at a

near-by restaurant, as they often did on leaving the office, and Campton

had begun to speak of George’s future arrangements. He would be well

enough to leave the hospital in another week, and then no doubt a

staff-job could be obtained for him in Paris—“with Brant’s pull, you

know,” Campton concluded, hardly aware that he had uttered the detested

phrase without even a tinge of irony. But Adele was aware, as he saw by

the faint pucker of her thin lips.

He shrugged her smile away indifferently. “Oh, well—hang it, yes!

Everything’s changed now, isn’t it? After what the boy’s been through I

consider that we’re more than justified in using Brant’s pull in his

favour—or anybody else’s.”

Miss Anthony nodded and unfolded her napkin.

“Well, then,” Campton continued his argument, “as he’s likely to be in

Paris now till the war is over—which means some time next year, they all

say—why shouldn’t I take a jolly apartment somewhere for the two of us?

Those pictures I did last spring brought me in a lot of money, and

there’s no reason——” His face lit up. “Servants, you say? Why, my poor

Mariette may be back from Lille any time now. They tell me there’s sure

to be a big push in the spring. They’re saving up for that all along the

line. Ask Dastrey ... ask....”

“You’d better let George go to his mother,” said Miss Anthony concisely.

“Why?”

“Because it’s natural—it’s human. _You’re_ not always, you know,” she

added with another pucker.

“Not human?”

“I don’t mean that you’re inhuman. But you see things differently.”

“I don’t want to see anything but one; and that’s my own son. How shall

I ever see George if he’s at the Avenue Marigny?”

“He’ll come to you.”

“Yes—when he’s not at Mrs. Talkett’s!”

Miss Anthony frowned. The subject had been touched upon between them

soon after Campton’s return, but Miss Anthony had little light to throw

on it: George had been as mute with her as with every one else, and she

knew Mrs. Talkett but slightly, and seldom saw her. Yet Campton

perceived that she could not hear the young woman named without an

involuntary contraction of her brows.

“I wish I liked her!” she murmured.

“Mrs. Talkett?”

“Yes—I should think better of myself if I did. And it might be useful.

But I can’t—I can’t!”

Campton said within himself: “Oh, women——!”

For his own resentment had died out long ago. He could think of the

affair now as one of hundreds such as happen to young men; he was even

conscious of regarding it, in some unlit secret fold of himself, as a

probable guarantee of George’s wanting to remain in Paris, another

subterranean way of keeping him, should such be needed. Perhaps that was

what Miss Anthony meant by saying that her liking Mrs. Talkett might be

“useful.”

“Why shouldn’t he be with me?” the father persisted. “He and I were

going off together when the war begun. I was defrauded of that—why

shouldn’t I have him now?”

Miss Anthony smiled. “Well, for one thing, because of that very ‘pull’

you were speaking of.”

“Oh, the Brants, the Brants!” Campton glanced impatiently at the

bill-of-fare, grumbled: “_Déjeuner du jour_, I suppose?” and went on:

“Yes; I might have known it—he belongs to them. From the minute we got

back, and I saw them at the station, with their motor waiting, and

everything arranged as only money can arrange it, I knew I’d lost my boy

again.” He stared moodily before him. “And yet if the war hadn’t come I

should have got him back—I almost had.”

His companion still smiled, a little wistfully. She leaned over and laid

her hand on his, under cover of the bill-of-fare. “You did get him back,

John, forever and always, the day he exchanged into the infantry. Isn’t

that enough?”

Campton answered her smile. “You gallant old chap, you!” he said; and

they began to lunch.

* * * * *

George was able to be up now, able to drive out, and to see more people;

and Campton was not surprised, on approaching his door a day or two

later, to hear several voices in animated argument.

The voices (and this did surprise him) were all men’s. In one he

recognized Boylston’s deep round notes; but the answering voice, flat,

toneless and yet eager, puzzled him with a sense of something familiar

but forgotten. He opened the door, and saw, at the tea-tray between

George and Boylston, the smoothly-brushed figure of Roger Talkett.

Campton had not seen Mrs. Talkett’s husband for months, and in the

interval so much had happened that the young man, always somewhat

faintly-drawn, had become as dim as a daguerreotype held at the wrong

angle.

The painter hung back, slightly embarrassed; but Mr. Talkett did not

seem in the least disturbed by his appearance, or by the fact of himself

being where he was. It was evident that, on whatever terms George might

be with his wife, Mr. Talkett was determined to shed on him the same

impartial beam as on all her other visitors.

His eye-glasses glinted blandly up at Campton. “Now I daresay I _am_

subversive,” he began, going on with what he had been saying, but in a

tone intended to include the newcomer. “I don’t say I’m not. We _are_ a

subversive lot at home, all of us—you must have noticed that, haven’t

you, Mr. Campton?”

Boylston emitted a faint growl. “What’s that got to do with it?” he

asked.

Mr. Talkett’s glasses slanted in his direction. “Why—everything!

Resistance to the herd-instinct (to borrow one of my wife’s expressions)

is really innate in me. And the idea of giving in now, of sacrificing my

convictions, just because of all this deafening noise about America’s

danger and America’s duties—well, _no_,” said Mr. Talkett, straightening

his glasses, “Philistinism won’t go down with me, in whatever form it

tries to disguise itself.” Instinctively, he stretched a neat hand

toward the teacups, as if he had been rearranging the furniture at one

of his wife’s parties.

“But—but—but——” Boylston stuttered, red with rage.

George burst into a laugh. He seemed to take a boyish amusement in the

dispute. “Tea, father?” he suggested, reaching across the tray for a

cigarette.

Talkett jerked himself to his feet. “Take my chair, now do, Mr. Campton.

You’ll be more comfortable. Here, let me shake up this cushion for

you——” (“_Cushion!_” Boylston interjected scornfully.) “A light, George?

Now don’t move!—I don’t say, of course, old chap,” Talkett continued, as

he held the match deferentially to George’s cigarette, “that this sort

of talk would be safe—or advisable—just now in public; subversive talk

never is. But when two or three of the Elect are gathered together—well,

your father sees my point, I know. The Hero,” he nodded at George, “has

his job, and the Artist,” with a slant at Campton, “his. In Germany, for

instance, as we’re beginning to find out, the creative minds, the

Intelligentsia (to use another of my wife’s expressions), have been

carefully protected from the beginning, given jobs, vitally important

jobs of course, but where their lives were not exposed. The country

needs them too much in other ways; they would probably be wretched

fighters, and they’re of colossal service in their own line. Whereas in

France and England——” he suddenly seemed to see his chance——“Well, look

here, Mr. Campton, I appeal to you, I appeal to the great creative

Artist: in any country but France and England, would a fellow of

George’s brains have been _allowed_, even at this stage of the war, to

chuck an important staff job, requiring intellect, tact and _savoir

faire_, and try to get himself killed like any unbaked boy—like your

poor cousin Benny Upsher, for instance? Would he?”

“Yes—in America!” shouted Boylston; and Mr. Talkett’s tallowy cheeks

turned pink.

“George knows how I feel about these things,” he stammered.

George still laughed in his remote impartial way, and Boylston asked

with a grin: “Why don’t you get yourself naturalized—a neutral?”

Mr. Talkett’s pinkness deepened. “I have lived too much among Artists——”

he began; and George interrupted gaily: “There’s a lot to be said on

Talkett’s side too. Going, Roger? Well, I shall be able to look in on

you now in a few days. Remember me to Madge. Goodbye.”

Boylston rose also, and Campton remained alone with his son.

“Remember me to Madge!” That was the way in which the modern young man

spoke of his beloved to his beloved’s proprietor. There had not been a

shadow of constraint in George’s tone; and now, glancing at the door

which had closed on Mr. Talkett, he merely said, as if apostrophizing

the latter’s neat back: “Poor devil! He’s torn to pieces with it.”

“With what?” asked Campton, startled.

“Why, with Boylston’s Preparedness. Wanting to do the proper thing—and

never before having had to decide between anything more vital than

straight or turned-down collars. It’s playing the very deuce with him.”

His eyes grew thoughtful. Was he going to pronounce Mrs. Talkett’s

name—at last? But no; he wandered back to her husband. “Poor little ass!

Of course he’ll decide against.” He shrugged his shoulders. “And

Boylston’s just as badly torn in the other direction.”

“Boylston?”

“Yes. Knowing that he wouldn’t be taken himself, on account of his bad

heart and his blind eyes, and wondering if, in spite of his

disabilities, he’s got the right to preach to all these young chaps here

who hang on his words like the gospel. One of them taunted him with it

the other day.”

“The cur!”

“Yes. And ever since, of course, Boylston’s been twice as fierce, and

overworking himself to calm his frenzy. The men who can’t go are all

like that, when they know it’s their proper work. It isn’t everybody’s

billet out there—I’ve learnt that since I’ve had a look at it—but it

would be Boylston’s if he had the health, and he knows it, and that’s

what drives him wild.” George looked at his father with a smile. “You

don’t know how I thank my stars that there weren’t any ‘problems’ for

me, but just a plain job that picked me up by the collar, and dropped me

down where I belonged.” He reached for another cigarette. “Old Adele’s

coming presently. Do you suppose we could rake up some fresh tea?” he

asked.

XXIX

Coming out of the unlit rainy March night, it was agreeable but almost

startling to Campton to enter Mrs. Talkett’s drawing-room. In the

softness of shaded lamplight, against curtains closely drawn, young

women dressed with extravagant elegance chatted with much-decorated

officers in the new “horizon” uniform, with here and there among them an

elderly civilian head, such as Harvey Mayhew’s silvery thatch and the

square rapacious skull of the newly-knighted patriot, Sir Cyril

Jorgenstein.

Campton had gone to Mrs. Talkett’s that afternoon because she had lent

her apartment to “The Friends of French Art,” who were giving a concert

organized by Miss Anthony and Mlle. Davril, with Mme. de Dolmetsch’s

pianist as their leading performer. It would have been ungracious to

deprive the indefatigable group of the lustre they fancied Campton’s

presence would confer; and he was not altogether sorry to be there. He

knew that George had promised Miss Anthony to come; and he wanted to see

his son with Mrs. Talkett.

An abyss seemed to divide this careless throng of people, so obviously

assembled for their own pleasure, the women to show their clothes, the

men to admire them, from the worn preoccupied audiences of the first

war-charity entertainments. The war still raged; wild hopes had given

way to dogged resignation; each day added to the sum of public anguish

and private woe. But the strain had been too long, the tragedy too

awful. The idle and the useless had reached their emotional limit, and

once more they dressed and painted, smiled, gossiped, flirted as though

the long agony were over.

On a sofa stacked with orange-velvet cushions Mme. de Dolmetsch reclined

in a sort of serpent-coil of flexible grey-green hung with strange

amulets. Her eyes, in which fabulous islands seemed to dream, were fixed

on the bushy-haired young man at the piano. Close by, upright and

tight-waisted, sat the Marquise de Tranlay, her mourning veil thrown

back from a helmetlike hat. She had planted herself in a Louis Philippe

armchair, as if appealing to its sturdy frame to protect her from the

anarchy of Mrs. Talkett’s furniture; and beside her was the daughter for

whose sake she had doubtless come—a frowning beauty who, in spite of her

dowdy dress and ugly boots, somehow declared herself as having already

broken away from the maternal tradition.

Mme. de Tranlay’s presence in that drawing-room was characteristic

enough. It meant—how often one heard it nowadays!—that mothers had to

take their daughters wherever there was a chance of their meeting young

men, and that such chances were found only in the few “foreign” houses

where, discreetly, almost clandestinely, entertaining had been resumed.

You had to take them there, Mme. de Tranlay’s look seemed to say,

because they had to be married (the sooner the better in these wild

times, with all the old barriers down), and because the young men were

growing so tragically few, and the competition was so fierce, and

because in such emergencies a French mother, whose first thought is

always for her children, must learn to accept, even to seek,

propinquities from which her inmost soul, and all the ancestral souls

within her, would normally recoil.

Campton remembered her gallant attitude on the day when, under her fresh

crape, she had rebuked Mrs. Brant’s despondency. “But how she hates it

here—how she must loathe sitting next to that woman!” he thought; and

just then he saw her turn toward Mme. de Dolmetsch with a stiff bend

from the waist, and heard her say in her most conciliatory tone: “Your

great friend, the rich American, _chère Madame_, the benefactor of

France—we should so like to thank him, Claire and I, for all he is doing

for our country.”

Beckoned to by Mme. de Dolmetsch, Mr. Mayhew, all pink and silver and

prominent pearl scarf-pin, bowed before the Tranlay ladies, while the

Marquise deeply murmured: “We are grateful—we shall not forget—” and

Mademoiselle de Tranlay, holding him with her rich gaze, added in fluent

English: “Mamma hopes you’ll come to tea on Sunday—with no one but my

uncle the Duc de Montlhéry—so that we may thank you better than we can

here.”

“Great women—great women!” Campton mused. He was still watching Mme. de

Tranlay’s dauntless mask when her glance deserted the gratified Mayhew

to seize on a younger figure. It was that of George, who had just

entered. Mme. de Tranlay, with a quick turn, caught Campton’s eye,

greeted him with her trenchant cordiality, and asked, in a voice like

the pounce of talons: “The young officer who has the Legion of

Honour—the one you just nodded to—with reddish hair and his left arm in

a sling? French, I suppose, from his uniform; and yet——? Yes, talking to

Mrs. Talkett. Can you tell me——?”

“My son,” said Campton with satisfaction.

The effect was instantaneous, though Mme. de Tranlay kept her radiant

steadiness. “How charming—charming—charming!” And, after a proper

interval: “But, Claire, my child, we’ve not yet spoken to Mrs. Brant,

whom I see over there.” And she steered her daughter swiftly toward

Julia.

Campton’s eyes returned to his son. George was still with Mrs. Talkett,

but they had only had time for a word or two before she was called away

to seat an important dowager. In that moment, however, the father noted

many things. George, as usual nowadays, kept his air of guarded

kindliness, though the blue of his eyes grew deeper; but Mrs. Talkett

seemed bathed in light. It was such a self-revelation that Campton’s

curiosity was lost in the artist’s abstract joy. “If I could have

painted her like that!” he thought, reminded of having caught Mme. de

Dolmetsch transfigured by fear for her lover; but an instant later he

remembered. “Poor little thing!” he murmured. Mrs. Talkett turned her

head, as if his thought had reached her. “Oh, yes—oh, yes; come and let

me tell you all about it,” her eyes entreated him. But Mayhew and Sir

Cyril Jorgenstein were between them.

“George!” Mrs. Brant called; and across the intervening groups Campton

saw his son bowing to the Marquise de Tranlay.

Mme. de Dolmetsch jumped up, her bracelets jangling like a prompter’s

call. “Silence!” she cried. The ladies squeezed into their seats, the

men resigned themselves to door-posts and window-embrasures, and the

pianist attacked Stravinsky....

“Dancing?” Campton heard his hostess answering some one. “N—no: not

_quite_ yet, I think. Though in London, already ... oh, just for the

officers on leave, of course. Poor darlings—why shouldn’t they? But

to-day, you see, it’s for a charity.” Her smile appealed to her hearer

to acknowledge the distinction.

The music was over, and scanning the groups at the tea-tables, Campton

saw Adele and Mlle. Davril squeezed away in the remotest corner of the

room. He took a chair at their table, and Boylston presently blinked his

way to them through the crowd.

They seemed, all four, more like unauthorized intruders on the brilliant

scene than its laborious organizers. The entertainment, escaping from

their control, had speedily reverted to its true purpose of feeding and

amusing a crowd of bored and restless people; and the little group

recognized the fact, and joked over it in their different ways. But

Mlle. Davril was happy at the sale of tickets, which must have been

immense to judge from the crowd (spying about the entrance, she had seen

furious fine ladies turn away ticketless); and Adele Anthony was

exhilarated by the nearness of people she did not know, or wish to know,

but with whose names and private histories she was minutely and

passionately familiar.

“That’s the old Duchesse de Murols with Mrs. Talkett—there, she’s put

her at the Beausite’s table! Well, of all places! Ah, but you’re all too

young to know about Beausite’s early history. And now, of course, it

makes no earthly difference to anybody. But there must be times when

Mme. Beausite remembers, and grins. Now that she’s begun to rouge again

she looks twenty years younger than the Duchess.——Ah,” she broke off,

abruptly signing to Campton.

He followed her glance to a table at which Julia Brant was seating

herself with the Tranlay ladies and George. Mayhew joined them, nobly

deferential, and the elder ladies lent him their intensest attention,

isolating George with the young girl.

“H’m,” Adele murmured, “not such a bad thing! They say the girl will

have half of old Montlhéry’s money—he’s her mother’s uncle. And she’s

heaps handsomer than the other—not that _that_ seems to count any more!”

Campton shrugged the subject away. Yes; it would be a good thing if

George could be drawn from what his mother (with a retrospective

pinching of the lips) called his “wretched infatuation.” But the idea

that the boy might be coaxed into a marriage—and a rich marriage—by the

Brants, was even more distasteful to Campton. If he really loved Madge

Talkett better stick to her than let himself be cajoled away for such

reasons.

* * * * *

As the second part of the programme began, Campton and Boylston slipped

out together. Campton was oppressed and disturbed. “It’s queer,” he

said, taking Boylston’s arm to steer him through the dense darkness of

the streets; “all these people who’ve forgotten the war have suddenly

made me remember it.”

Boylston laughed. “Yes, I know.” He seemed preoccupied and

communicative, and the painter fancied he was going to lead the talk, as

usual, to Preparedness and America’s intervention; but after a pause he

said: “You haven’t been much at the office lately——”

“No,” Campton interrupted. “I’ve shirked abominably since George got

back. But now that he’s gone to the Brants’ you’ll see——”

“Oh, I didn’t mean it as a reproach, sir! How could you think it? We’re

running smoothly enough, as far as organization goes. That’s not what

bothers me——”

“You’re bothered?”

Yes; he was—and so, he added, was Miss Anthony. The trouble was, he went

on to explain, that Mr. Mayhew, after months of total indifference

(except when asked to “represent” them on official platforms) had

developed a disquieting interest in “The Friends of French Art.” He had

brought them, in the beginning, a certain amount of money (none of which

came out of his own pocket), and in consequence had been imprudently put

on the Financial Committee, so that he had a voice in the disposal of

funds, though till lately he had never made it heard. But now,

apparently, “Atrocities” were losing their novelty, and he was disposed

to transfer his whole attention to “The Friends of French Art,” with

results which seemed incomprehensibly disturbing to Boylston, until he

let drop the name of Mme. de Dolmetsch. Campton exclaimed at it.

“Well—yes. You must have noticed that she and Mr. Mayhew have been

getting pretty chummy. You see, he’s done such a lot of talking that

people think he’s at least an Oil King; and Mme. de Dolmetsch is

dazzled. But she’s got her musical prodigy to provide for——” and

Boylston outlined the situation which his astuteness had detected while

it developed unperceived under Campton’s dreaming eyes. Mr. Mayhew was

attending all their meetings now, finding fault, criticizing, asking to

have the accounts investigated, though they had always been audited at

regular intervals by expert accountants; and all this zeal originated in

the desire to put Mme. de Dolmetsch in Miss Anthony’s place, on the plea

that her greater social experience, her gift of attracting and

interesting, would bring in immense sums of money—whereas, Boylston

grimly hinted, they already had a large balance in the bank, and it was

with an eye to that balance that Mme. de Dolmetsch was forcing Mayhew to

press her claim.

“You see, sir, Mr. Mayhew never turns out to be as liberal as they

expect when they first hear him talk; and though Mme. de Dolmetsch has

him in her noose she’s not getting what she wants—by a long way. And so

they’ve cooked this up between them—she and Mme. Beausite—without his

actually knowing what they’re after.”

Campton stopped short, releasing Boylston’s arm. “But what you suggest

is abominable,” he exclaimed.

“Yes. I know it.” But the young man’s voice remained steady. “Well, I

wish you’d come to our meetings, now you’re back.”

“I will—I will! But I’m no earthly use on financial questions. You’re

much stronger there.”

He felt Boylston’s grin through the darkness. “Oh, they’ll have me out

too before long.”

“You? Nonsense! What do you mean?”

“I mean that lots of people are beginning to speculate in war

charities—oh, in all sorts of ways. Sometimes I’m sick to the point of

chucking it all. But Miss Anthony keeps me going.”

“Ah, she would!” Campton agreed.

As he walked home his mind was burdened with Boylston’s warning. It was

not merely the affair itself, but all it symbolized, that made his gorge

rise, made him, as Boylston said, sick to the point of wanting to chuck

it all—to chuck everything connected with this hideous world that was

dancing and flirting and money-making on the great red mounds of dead.

He grinned at the thought that he had once believed in the regenerative

power of war—the salutary shock of great moral and social upheavals. Yet

he _had_ believed in it, and never more intensely than at George’s

bedside at Doullens, in that air so cleansed by passion and pain that

mere living seemed a meaningless gesture compared to the chosen

surrender of life. But in the Paris to which he had returned after

barely four months of absence the instinct of self-preservation seemed

to have wiped all meaning from such words. Poor fatuous Mayhew dancing

to Mme. de Dolmetsch’s piping, Jorgenstein sinking under the weight of

his international honours, Mme. de Tranlay intriguing to push her

daughter in such society, and Julia placidly abetting her—Campton hardly

knew from which of these sorry visions he turned with a completer

loathing....

There were still the others, to be sure, the huge obscure majority; out

there in the night, the millions giving their lives for this handful of

trivial puppets, and here in Paris, and everywhere, in every country,

men and women toiling unweariedly to help and heal; but in Mrs.

Talkett’s drawing-room both fighters and toilers seemed to count as

little in relation to the merrymakers as Miss Anthony and Mlle. Davril

in relation to the brilliant people who had crowded their table into the

obscurest corner of the room.

XXX

These thoughts continued to weigh on Campton; to shake them off he

decided, with one of his habitual quick jerks of resolution, to get back

to work. He knew that George would approve, and would perhaps be oftener

with him if he had something interesting on his easel. Sir Cyril

Jorgenstein had suggested that he would like to have his portrait

finished—with the Legion of Honour added to his lapel, no doubt. And

Harvey Mayhew, rosy and embarrassed, had dropped in to hint that, if

Campton could find time to do a charcoal head—oh, just one of those

brilliant sketches of his—of the young musical genius in whose career

their friend Mme. de Dolmetsch was so much interested.... But Campton

had cut them both short. He was not working—he had no plans for the

present. And in truth he had not thought even of attempting a portrait

of George. The impulse had come to him, once, as he sat by the boy’s

bed; but the face was too incomprehensible. He should have to learn and

unlearn too many things first——

At last, one day, it occurred to him to make a study of Mme. Lebel. He

saw _her_ in charcoal: her simple unquestioning anguish had turned her

old face to sculpture. Campton set his canvas on the easel, and started

to shout for her down the stairs; but as he opened the door he found

himself face to face with Mrs. Talkett.

“Oh,” she began at once, in her breathless way, “you’re here? The old

woman downstairs wasn’t sure—and I couldn’t leave all this money with

her, could I?”

“Money? What money?” he echoed.

She was very simply dressed, and a veil, drooping low from her hat-brim,

gave to her over-eager face a shadowy youthful calm.

“I _may_ come in?” she questioned, almost timidly; and as Campton let

her pass she added: “The money from the concert, of course—heaps and

heaps of it! I’d no idea we’d made so much. And I wanted to give it to

you myself.”

She shook a bulging bag out of her immense muff, while Campton continued

to stare at her.

“I didn’t know you went out so early,” he finally stammered, trying to

push a newspaper over the disordered remains of his breakfast.

She lifted interrogative eyebrows. “That means that I’m in the way?”

“No. But why did you bring that money here?”

She looked surprised. “Why not? Aren’t you the head—the real head of the

committee? And wasn’t the concert given in my house?” Her eyes rested on

him with renewed timidity. “Is it—disagreeable to you to see me?” she

asked.

“Disagreeable? My dear child, no.” He paused, increasingly embarrassed.

What did she expect him to say next? To thank her for having sent him

the orderly’s letter? It seemed to him impossible to plunge into the

subject uninvited. Surely it was for her to give him the opening, if she

wished to.

“Well, no!” she broke out. “I’ve never once pretended to you, have I?

The money’s a pretext. I wanted to see you—here, alone, with no one to

disturb us.”

Campton felt a confused stirring of relief and fear. All his old dread

of scenes, commotions, disturbing emergencies—of anything that should

upset his perpetually vibrating balance—was blent with the passionate

desire to hear what his visitor had to say.

“You—it was good of you to think of sending us that letter,” he

faltered.

She frowned in her anxious way and looked away from him. “Afterward I

was afraid you’d be angry.”

“Angry? How could I?” He groped for a word. “Surprised—yes. I knew

nothing ... nothing about you and....”

“Not even that it was I who bought the sketch of him—the one that Léonce

Black sold for you last year?”

The blood rushed to Campton’s face. Suddenly he felt himself trapped and

betrayed. “You—_you_? You’ve got that sketch?” The thought was somehow

intolerable to him.

“Ah, now you _are_ angry,” Mrs. Talkett murmured.

“No, no; but I never imagined——”

“I know. That was what frightened me—your suspecting nothing.” She

glanced about her, dropped to a corner of the divan, and tossed off her

hat with the old familiar gesture. “Oh, can I talk to you?” she pleaded.

Campton nodded.

“I wish you’d light your pipe, then, and sit down too.” He reached for

his pipe, struck a match, and slowly seated himself. “You always smoke a

pipe in the morning, don’t you? _He_ told me that,” she went on; then

she paused again and drew a long anxious breath. “Oh, he’s so changed! I

feel as if I didn’t know him any longer—do _you_?”

Campton looked at her with deepening wonder. This was more surprising

than discovering her to be the possessor of the picture; he had not

expected deep to call unto deep in their talk. “I’m not sure that I do,”

he confessed.

Her fidgeting eyes deepened and grew quieter. “Your saying so makes me

feel less lonely,” she sighed, half to herself. “But has he told you

nothing since he came back—really nothing?”

“Nothing. After all—how could he? I mean, without indiscretion?”

“Indiscretion? Oh——” She shrugged the word away with half a smile, as

though such considerations belonged to a prehistoric order of things.

“Then he hasn’t even told you that he wants me to get a divorce?”

“A divorce?” Campton exclaimed. He sat staring at her as if the weight

of his gaze might pin her down, keep her from fluttering away and

breaking up into luminous splinters. George wanted her to get a

divorce—wanted, therefore, to marry her! His passion went as deep for

her as that—too deep, Campton conjectured, for the poor little ephemeral

creature, who struck him as wriggling on it like a butterfly impaled.

“Please tell me,” he said at length; and suddenly, in short inconsequent

sentences, the confession poured from her.

George, it seemed, during the previous winter in New York, when they had

seen so much of each other, had been deeply attracted, had wanted

“everything,” and at once—and there had been moments of tension and

estrangement, when she had been held back by scruples she confessed she

no longer understood (inherited prejudices, she supposed), and when her

reluctance must have made her appear to be trifling, whereas, really it

was just that she couldn’t ... couldn’t.... So they had gone on for

several months, with the usual emotional ups-and-downs, till he had left

for Europe to join his father; and when they had parted she had given

him the half-promise that if they met abroad during the summer she would

perhaps ... after all....

Then came the war. George had been with her during those few last hours

in Paris, and had dined with her and her husband (had Campton forgiven

her?) the night before he was mobilised. And then, when he was gone, she

had understood that only timidity, vanity, the phantom barriers of old

terrors and traditions, had prevented her being to him all that he

wanted....

She broke off abruptly, put in a few conventional words about an

ill-assorted marriage, and never having been “really understood,” and

then, as if guessing that she was on the wrong tack, jumped up, walked

to the other end of the studio, and turned back to Campton with the

tears running down her ravaged face.

“And now—and now—he says he won’t have me!” she lamented.

“Won’t have you? But you tell me he wants you to be divorced.”

She nodded, wiped away the tears, and in so doing stole an unconscious

glance at the mirror above the divan. Then, seeing that the glance was

detected, she burst into a sort of sobbing laugh. “My nose gets so

dreadfully red when I cry,” she stammered.

Campton took no notice, and she went on: “A divorce? Yes. And unless I

do—unless I agree to marry him—we’re never to be anything but friends.”

“That’s what he says?”

“Yes. Oh, we’ve been all in and out of it a hundred times.”

She pulled out a gold-mesh bag and furtively restored her complexion, as

Mrs. Brant had once done in the same place.

Campton sat still, considering. He had let his pipe go out. Nothing

could have been farther from the revelation he had expected, and his own

perplexity was hardly less great than his visitor’s. Certainly it was

not the way in which young men had behaved in his day—nor, evidently,

had it been George’s before the war.

Finally he made up his mind to put the question: “And Talkett?”

She burst out at once: “Ah, that’s what I say—it’s not so simple!”

“What isn’t?”

“Breaking up—all one’s life.” She paused with a deepening embarrassment.

“Of course Roger has made me utterly miserable—but then I know he really

hasn’t meant to.”

“Have you told George that?”

“Yes. But he says we must first of all be aboveboard. He says he sees

everything differently now. That’s what I mean when I say that I don’t

understand him. He says love’s not the same kind of feeling to him that

it was. There’s something of Meredith’s that he quotes—I wish I could

remember it—something about a mortal lease.”

“Good Lord,” Campton groaned, not so much at the hopelessness of the

case as at the hopelessness of quoting Meredith to her. After a while he

said abruptly: “You must forgive my asking: but things change

sometimes—they change imperceptibly. Do you think he’s as much in love

with you as ever?”

He had been half afraid of offending her: but she appeared to consider

the question impartially, and without a shadow of resentment. “Sometimes

I think more—because in the beginning it wasn’t meant to last. And

now—if he wants to marry me? Oh, I wish I knew what to do!”

Campton continued to ponder. “There’s one more question, since we’re

talking frankly: what does Talkett know of all this?”

She looked frightened. “Oh, nothing, nothing!”

“And you’ve no idea how he would take it?”

She examined the question with tortured eyebrows, and at length, to

Campton’s astonishment, brought out: “Magnificently——”

“He’d be generous, you mean? But it would go hard with him?”

“Oh, dreadfully, dreadfully!” She seemed to need the assurance to

restore her shaken self-approval.

Campton rose with a movement of pity and laid his hand on her shoulder.

“My dear child, if your husband cares for you, give up my son.”

Her face fell, and she drew back. “Oh, but you don’t understand—not in

the least! It’s not possible—it’s not moral——. You know I’m all for the

new morality. First of all, we must be true to self.” She paused, and

then broke out: “You tell me to give him up because you think he’s tired

of me. But he’s not—I know he’s not! It’s his new ideas that you don’t

understand, any more than I do. It’s the war that has changed him. He

says he wants only things that last—that are permanent—things that hold

a man fast. That sometimes he feels as if he were being swept away on a

flood, and were trying to catch at things—at anything—as he’s rushed

along under the waves.... He says he wants quiet, monotony ... to be

sure the same things will happen every day. When we go out together he

sometimes stands for a quarter of an hour and stares at the same

building, or at the Seine under the bridges. But he’s happy, I’m

sure.... I’ve never seen him happier ... only it’s in a way I can’t make

out....”

“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 moneybag 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.

XXXI

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 armchairs, 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 businesslike 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’t_!” 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!”

He threw it all out in sharp terse phrases, as a business man might try

to hammer facts about an investment into the bewildered brain of an

unpractical client. Campton felt the blood rising to his forehead, not

so much in anger at Mr. Brant as at the sense of his own inward

complicity.

“There’s no earthly reason why George should ever go back to the front,”

he said.

“None whatever. We can get him any staff-job he chooses. His mother’s

already got the half-promise of a post for him at the War Office. But

you’ll see, you’ll see! We can’t stop him. Did we before? There’s only

this woman who can do it!”

Campton looked over the banker’s head at the reflection of the false

Reynolds in the mirror. That any one should have been fool enough to pay

a big price for such a patent fraud seemed to him as incomprehensible as

his own present obtuseness seemed to the banker.

“You do see, don’t you?” argued Mr. Brant anxiously.

“Oh, I suppose so.” Campton slowly got to his feet. The adroit brushwork

of the forged picture fascinated him, and he went up to look at it more

closely. Mr. Brant pursued him with a gratified glance.

“Ah, you’re admiring my Reynolds. I paid a thumping price for it—but

that’s always my principle. Pay high, but get the best. It’s a better

investment.”

“Just so,” Campton assented dully. Mr. Brant seemed suddenly divided

from him by the whole width of the gulf between that daub on the wall

and a real Reynolds. They had nothing more to say to each other—nothing

whatever. “Well, goodbye.” He held out his hand.

“Think it over—think it over,” Mr. Brant called out after him as he

enfiladed the sumptuous offices, a medalled veteran holding back each

door.

It was not until Campton was back at Montmartre, and throwing off his

coat to get into his old studio clothes, that he felt in his pocket the

weight of the forgotten concert-money. It was too late in the day to

take it back to the bank, even if he had had the energy to retrace his

steps; and he decided to hand the bag over to Boylston, with whom he was

dining that night to meet the elder Dastrey, home on a brief leave from

his ambulance.

* * * * *

“Think it over!” Mr. Brant’s adjuration continued to echo in Campton’s

ears. As if he needed to be told to think it over! Once again the

war-worn world had vanished from his mind, and he saw only George,

himself and George, George and safety, George and peace. They blamed

women who were cowards about their husbands, mistresses who schemed to

protect their lovers! Well—he was as bad as any one of them, if it came

to that. His son had bought his freedom, had once offered his life and

nearly lost it. Brant was right: at all costs they must keep him from

rushing back into that hell.

That Mrs. Talkett should be the means of securing his safety was bitter

enough. This trivial barren creature to be his all—it seemed the parody

of Campton’s own youth! And Julia, after all, had been only a girl when

he had met her, inexperienced and still malleable. A man less absorbed

in his art, less oblivious of the daily material details of life, might

conceivably have made something of her. But this little creature, with

her farrago of false ideas, her vanity, her restlessness, her

undisguised desire to keep George and yet not lose her world, had

probably reached the term of her development, and would trip on through

an eternal infancy of fads and frenzies.

Luckily, as Mr. Brant said, they could use her for the time; use her

better, no doubt, than had she been a more finely tempered instrument.

Campton was still pondering on these things as he set out for the

restaurant where he had agreed to meet Boylston and Dastrey. At the foot

of his own stairs he was surprised to run against Boylston under the

porte-cochère. They gave each other a quick questioning look, as men did

when they encountered each other unexpectedly in those days.

“Anything up? Oh, the money—you’ve come for the money?” Campton

remembered that he had left the bag upstairs.

“The money? Haven’t you heard? Louis Dastrey’s killed,” said Boylston.

They stood side by side in the doorway, while Campton’s darkened mind

struggled anew with the mystery of fate. Almost every day now the same

readjustment had to be gone through: the cowering averted mind dragged

upward and forced to visualize a new gap in the ranks, and summon the

remaining familiar figures to fill it up and blot it out. And to-day

this cruel gymnastic was to be performed for George’s best friend, the

elder Dastrey’s sole stake in life! Only a few days ago the lad had

passed through Paris, just back from America, and in haste to rejoin his

regiment; alive and eager, throbbing with ideas, with courage, mirth and

irony—the very material France needed to rebuild her ruins and beget her

sons! And now, struck down as George had been—not to rise like

George....

Once more the inner voice in Campton questioned distinctly: “Could you

bear it?” and again he answered: “Less than ever!”

Aloud he asked: “Paul?”

“Oh, he went off at once. To break the news to Louis’ mother in the

country.”

“The boy was all Paul had left.”

“Yes.”

“What difference would it have made in the war, if he’d just stayed on

at his job in America?”

Boylston did not answer, and the two stood silent, looking out

unseeingly at the black empty street. There was nothing left to say,

nowadays, when such blows fell; hardly anything left to feel, it

sometimes seemed.

“Well, I suppose we must go and eat something,” the older man said; and

arm in arm they went out into the darkness.

When Campton returned home that night he sat down and, with the help of

several pipes, wrote a note to Mrs. Talkett asking when she would

receive him.

* * * * *

Thereafter he tried to go back to his painting and to continue his daily

visits to the Palais Royal office. But for the time nothing seemed to

succeed with him. He threw aside his study of Mme. Lebel—he hung about

the office, confused and idle, and with the ever clearer sense that

there also things were disintegrating.

George’s birthday party had been given up on account of young Dastrey’s

death. Mrs. Brant evidently thought the postponement unnecessary; since

George’s return she had gone over heart and soul to the “business as

usual” party. But Mr. Brant quietly sided with George; and Campton was

glad to be spared the necessity of celebrating the day in such a

setting.

It was some time since Campton had seen his son; but the fault was not

his son’s. The painter was aware of having voluntarily avoided George.

He said to himself: “As long as I know he’s safe why should I bother

him?” But in reality he did not feel himself to be fit company for any

one, and had even shunned poor Paul Dastrey on the latter’s hurried

passage through Paris, when he had come back from carrying the fatal

news to young Dastrey’s mother.

“What on earth could Paul and I have found to say to each other?”

Campton argued with himself. “For men of our age there’s nothing left to

say nowadays. The only thing I can do is to try to work up one of my old

studies of Louis. That might please him a little—later on.”

But after one or two attempts he pushed away that canvas too.

At length one afternoon George came in. They had not met for over a

week, and as George’s blue uniform detached itself against the blurred

tapestries of the studio, the north light modelling the fresh curves of

his face, the father’s heart gave a leap of pride. His son had never

seemed to him so young and strong and vivid.

George, with a sudden blush, took his hand in a long pressure.

“I say, Dad—Madge has told me. Told me that you know about us and that

you’ve persuaded her to see things as I do. She hadn’t had a chance to

speak to me of your visit till last night.”

Campton felt his colour rising; but though his own part in the business

still embarrassed him he was glad that the barriers were down.

“I didn’t want,” George continued, still flushed and slightly

constrained, “to say anything to you about all this till I could say:

‘Here’s my wife.’ And now she’s promised.”

“She’s promised?”

“Thanks to you, you know. Your visit to her did it. She told me the

whole thing yesterday. How she’d come here in desperation, to ask you to

help her, to have her mind cleared up for her; and how you’d thought it

all over, and then gone to see her, and how wise and perfect you’d been

about it all. Poor child—if you knew the difference it’s made to her!”

They were seated now, the littered table between them. Campton, his

elbows on it, his chin on his hands, looked across at his son, who faced

the light.

“The difference to you too?” he questioned.

George smiled: it was exactly the same detached smile which he used to

shed on the little nurse who brought him his cocoa.

“Of course. Now I can go back without worrying.” He let the words fall

as carelessly as if there were nothing in them to challenge attention.

“Go back?” Campton stared at him with a blank countenance. Had he heard

aright? The noise of a passing lorry suddenly roared in his ears like

the guns of the front.

“Did you say: _go back_?”

George opened his blue eyes wide. “Why, of course; as soon as ever I’m

patched up. You didn’t think——?”

“I thought you had the sense to realize that you’ve done your share in

one line, and that your business now is to do it in another.”

The same detached smile again brushed George’s lips. “But if I happen to

have only one line?”

“Nonsense! You know they don’t think that at the War Office.”

“I don’t believe the War Office will shut down if I leave it.”

“What an argument! It sounds like——” Campton, breaking off on a sharp

breath, closed his lids for a second. He had been gazing too steadily

into George’s eyes, and now at last he knew what that mysterious look in

them meant. It was Benny Upsher’s look, of course—inaccessible to

reason, beyond reason, belonging to other spaces, other weights and

measures, over the edge, somehow, of the tangible calculable world....

“A man can’t do more than his duty: you’ve done that,” he growled.

But George insisted with his gentle obstinacy: “You’ll feel differently

about it when America comes in.”

Campton shook his head. “Never about your case.”

“You will—when you see how we all feel. When we’re all in it you

wouldn’t have me looking on, would you? And then there are my men—I’ve

got to get back to my men.”

“But you’ve no right to go now; no business,” his father broke in

violently. “Persuading that poor girl to wreck her life ... and then

leaving her, planting her there with her past ruined, and her future....

George, you can’t!”

George, in his long months of illness, had lost his old ruddiness of

complexion. At his father’s challenge the blood again rose the more

visibly to his still-gaunt cheeks and white forehead: he was evidently

struck.

“You’ll kill her—and kill your mother!” Campton stormed.

“Oh, it’s not for to-morrow. Not for a long time, perhaps. My shoulder’s

still too stiff. I was stupid,” the young man haltingly added, “to put

it as I did. Of course I’ve got to think of Madge now,” he acknowledged,

“as well as mother.”

The blood flowed slowly back to Campton’s heart. “You’ve got to think

of—just the mere common-sense of the thing. That’s all I ask. You’ve

done your turn; you’ve done more. But never mind that. Now it’s

different. You’re barely patched up: you’re of use, immense use, for

staff-work, and you know it. And you’ve asked a woman to tie up her

future to yours—at what cost you know too. It’s as much your duty to

keep away from the front now as it was before—well, I admit it—to go

there. You’ve done just what I should have wanted my son to do, up to

this minute——”

George laid a hand on his a little wistfully. “Then just go on trusting

me.”

“I do—to see that I’m right! If I can’t convince you, ask Boylston—ask

Adele!”

George sat staring down at the table. For the first time since they had

met at Doullens Campton was conscious of reaching his son’s inner mind,

and of influencing it.

“I wonder if you really love her?” he suddenly risked.

The question did not seem to offend George, scarcely to surprise him.

“Of course,” he said simply. “Only—well, everything’s different

nowadays, isn’t it? So many of the old ideas have come to seem such

humbug. That’s what I want to drag her out of—the coils and coils of

stale humbug. They were killing her.”

“Well—take care _you_ don’t,” Campton said, thinking that everything was

different indeed, as he recalled the reasons young men had had for

loving and marrying in his own time.

A faint look of amusement came into George’s eyes. “Kill her? Oh, no.

I’m gradually bringing her to life. But all this is hard to talk

about—yet. By-and-bye you’ll understand; she’ll show you, we’ll show you

together. But at present nothing’s to be said—to any one, please, not

even to mother. Madge thinks this is no time for such things. There, of

course, I don’t agree; but I must be patient. The secrecy, the

under-handedness, are hateful to me; but for her it’s all a part of the

sacred humbug.”

He rose listlessly, as if the discussion had bled all the life out of

him, and took himself away.

When he had gone his father drew a deep breath. Yes—the boy would stay

in Paris; he would almost certainly stay; for the present, at any rate.

And people were still prophesying that in the spring there would be a

big push all along the line; and after that the nightmare might be over.

Campton was glad he had gone to see Madge Talkett. He was glad, above

all, that if the thing had to be done it was over, and that, by Madge’s

wish, no one was to know of what had passed between them. It was a

distinct relief, in spite of what he had suggested to George, not to

have to carry that particular problem to Adele Anthony or Boylston.

A few days later George accepted a staff-appointment in Paris.