ot long after his midnight tramp with Boylston and Dastrey the post brought Campton two letters. One was postmarked Paris, the other bore the military frank and was addressed in his son’s hand: he laid it aside while he glanced at the first. It contained an engraved1 card:
Mrs. Anderson Brant
At Home on February 20th at 4 o’clock
Mr. Harvey Mayhew will give an account of his captivity2 in Germany
Mme. de Dolmetsch will sing
For the benefit of the “Friends of French Art Committee”
Tickets 100 francs
Enclosed was the circular of the sub-committee in aid of Musicians at the Front, with which Campton was not directly associated. It bore the names of Mrs. Talkett, Mme. Beausite and a number of other French and American ladies.
Campton tossed the card away. He was not annoyed by the invitation: he knew that Miss Anthony and Mlle. Davril were getting up a series of drawing-room 196entertainments for that branch of the charity, and that the card had been sent to him as a member of the Honorary Committee. But any reminder3 of the sort always gave a sharp twitch4 to the Brant nerve in him. He turned to George’s letter.
It was no longer than usual; but in other respects it was unlike his son’s previous communications. Campton read it over two or three times.
“Dear Dad, thanks for yours of the tenth, which must have come to me on skis, the snow here is so deep.” (There had, in fact, been a heavy snow-fall in the Argonne). “Sorry mother is bothering about things again; as you’ve often reminded me, they always have a way of ‘being as they will be,’ and even war doesn’t seem to change it. Nothing to worry her in my case—but you can’t expect her to believe that, can you? Neither you nor I can help it, I suppose.
“There’s one thing that might help, though; and that is, your letting her feel that you’re a little nearer to her. War makes a lot of things look differently, especially this sedentary kind of war: it’s rather like going over all the old odds-and-ends in one’s cupboards. And some of them do look so foolish.
“I wish you’d see her now and then—just naturally, as if it had happened. You know you’ve got one Inexhaustible Topic between you. The said I. T. is doing well, and has nothing new to communicate up to now 197except a change of address. Hereafter please write to my Base instead of directing here, as there’s some chance of a shift of H.Q. The precaution is probably just a new twist of the old red tape, signifying nothing; but Base will always reach me if we are shifted. Let mother know, and explain, please; otherwise she’ll think the unthinkable.
“Interrupted by big drive—quill-drive, of course!
“As ever
“Georgius Scriblerius.
“P.S. Don’t be too savage5 to Uncle Andy either.
“No. 2.—I had thought of leave; but perhaps you’re right about that.”
It was the first time George had written in that way of his mother. His smiling policy had always been to let things alone, and go on impartially6 dividing his devotion between his parents, since they refused to share even that common blessing7. But war gave everything a new look; and he had evidently, as he put it, been turning over the old things in his cupboards. How was it possible, Campton wondered, that after such a turning over he was still content to write “Nothing new to communicate,” and to make jokes about another big quill-drive? Glancing at the date of the letter, Campton saw that it had been written on the day after the first ineffectual infantry8 assault on Vauquois. And George was sitting a few miles off, safe 198in headquarters at Sainte Menehould, with a stout9 roof over his head and a beautiful brown gloss10 on his boots, scribbling11 punning letters while his comrades fell back from that bloody12 summit....
Suddenly Campton’s eyes filled. No; George had not written that letter for the sake of the joke: the joke was meant to cover what went before it. Ah, how young the boy was to imagine that his father would not see! Yes, as he said, war made so many of the old things look foolish....
Campton set out for the Palais Royal. He felt happier than for a long time past: the tone of his boy’s letter seemed to correspond with his own secret change of spirit. He knew the futility13 of attempting to bring the Brants and himself together, but was glad that George had made the suggestion. He resolved to see Julia that afternoon.
At the Palais Royal he found the indefatigable14 Boylston busy with an exhibition of paintings sent home from the front, and Mlle. Davril helping15 to catalogue them. Lamentable16 pensioners17 came and went, bringing fresh tales of death, fresh details of savagery18; the air was dark with poverty and sorrow. In the background Mme. Beausite flitted about, tragic19 and ineffectual. Boylston had not been able to extract a penny from Beausite for his secretary and the latter’s left-handed family; but Mme. Beausite had discovered a newly-organized charity which lent money to “temporarily 199embarrassed” war-victims; and with an artless self-satisfaction she had contrived20 to obtain a small loan for the victim of her own thrift21. “For what other purpose are such charities founded?” she said, gently disclaiming22 in advance the praise which Miss Anthony and Boylston had no thought of offering her. Whenever Campton came in she effaced23 herself behind a desk, where she bent24 her beautiful white head over a card-catalogue without any perceptible results.
The telephone rang. Boylston, after a moment, looked up from the receiver.
“Mr. Campton!”
The painter glanced apprehensively25 at the instrument, which still seemed to him charged with explosives.
“Take the message, do. The thing always snaps at me.”
There was a listening pause: then Boylston said: “It’s about Upsher——”
Campton started up. “Killed——?”
“Not sure. It’s Mr. Brant. The news was wired to the bank; they want you to break it to Mr. Mayhew.”
“Oh, Lord,” the painter groaned26, the boy’s face suddenly rising before his blurred27 eyes. Miss Anthony was not at the office that morning, or he would have turned to her; at least she might have gone with him on his quest. He could not ask Boylston to leave the office, and he felt that curious incapacity to deal 200with the raw fact of sorrow which had often given an elfin unreality to the most poignant28 moments of his life. It was as though experience had to enter into the very substance of his soul before he could even feel it.
“Other people,” he thought, “would know what to say, and I shan’t....”
Some one, meanwhile, had fetched a cab, and he drove to the Nouveau Luxe, though with little hope of finding Mr. Mayhew. But Mr. Mayhew had grown two secretaries, and turned the shrimp-pink drawing-room into an office. One of the secretaries was there, hammering at a typewriter. She was a competent young woman, who instantly extracted from her pocket-diary the fact that her chief was at Mrs. Anderson Brant’s, rehearsing.
“Rehearsing——?”
“Why, yes; he’s to speak at Mrs. Brant’s next week on Atrocities,” she said, surprised at Campton’s ignorance.
She suggested telephoning; but in the shrunken households of the rich, where but one or two servants remained, telephoning had become as difficult as in the understaffed hotels; and after one or two vain attempts Campton decided29 to go to the Avenue Marigny. He felt that to get hold of Mayhew as soon as possible might still in some vague way help poor Benny—since it was not yet sure that he was dead. “Or else it’s just the need to rush about,” he thought, 201conscious that the only way he had yet found of dealing30 with calamity31 was a kind of ant-like agitation32.
On the way the round pink face of Benny Upsher continued to float before him in its very substance, with the tangibility33 that only a painter’s visions wear. “I want to be in this thing,” he heard the boy repeating, as if impelled34 by some blind instinct flowing down through centuries and centuries of persistent35 childish minds.
“If he or his forebears had ever thought things out he probably would have been alive and safe to-day,” Campton mused36, “like George.... The average person is always just obeying impulses stored up thousands of years ago, and never re-examined since.” But this consideration, though drawn37 from George’s own philosophy, did not greatly comfort his father.
At the Brants’ a bewildered concierge38 admitted him and rang a bell which no one answered. The vestibule and the stairs were piled with bales of sheeting, bulging39 jute-bags, stacked-up hospital supplies. A boy in scout’s uniform swung inadequate40 legs from the lofty porter’s armchair beside the table with its monumental bronze inkstand. Finally, from above, a maid called to Campton to ascend41.
In the drawing-room pictures and tapestries42, bronzes and pâtes tendres, had vanished, and a plain moquette replaced the priceless Savonnerie across whose pompous43 garlands Campton had walked on the day of his last visit.
............