The words followed Campton down the stairs. What did it mean, and what must it feel like, for parents in this safe denationalized modern world to be suddenly saying to each other with white lips: A son in the war?
He stood on the kerbstone, staring ahead of him and forgetting whither he was bound. The world seemed to lie under a spell, and its weight was on his limbs and brain. Usually any deep inward trouble made him more than ever alive to the outward aspect of things; but this new world in which people talked glibly1 of sons in the war had suddenly become invisible to him, and he did not know where he was, or what he was staring at. He noted2 the fact, and remembered a story of St. Bernard—he thought it was—walking beside a beautiful lake in supersensual ecstasy3, and saying afterward4: “Was there a lake? I didn’t see it.”
71On the way back to the hotel he passed the American Embassy, and had a vague idea of trying to see the Ambassador and find out if the United States were not going to devise some way of evading5 the tyrannous regulation that bound young Americans to France. “And they call this a free country!” he heard himself exclaiming.
The remark sounded exactly like one of Julia’s, and this reminded him that the Ambassador frequently dined at the Brants’. They had certainly not left his door untried; and since, to the Brant circles, Campton was still a shaggy Bohemian, his appeal was not likely to fortify6 theirs.
His mind turned to Jorgenstein, and the vast web of the speculator’s financial relations. But, after all, France was on the verge7 of war, if not in it; and following up the threads of the Jorgenstein web was likely to land one in Frankfort or Vienna.
At the hotel he found his sitting-room8 empty; but presently the door opened and George came in laden9 with books, fresh yellow and grey ones in Flammarion wrappers.
“Hullo, Dad,” he said; and added: “So the silly show is on.”
“Mobilisation is not war——,” said Campton.
“No——”
“What on earth are all those books?”
“Provender. It appears we may rot at the depot10 72for weeks. I’ve just seen a chap who’s in my regiment11.”
Campton felt a sudden relief. The purchase of the books proved that George was fairly sure he would not be sent to the front. His father went up to him and tapped him on the chest.
“How about this——?” He wanted to add: “I’ve just seen Fortin, who says he’ll get you off”; but though George’s eye was cool and unenthusiastic it did not encourage such confidences.
“Oh—lungs? I imagine I’m sound again.” He paused, and stooped to turn over the books. Carelessly, he added: “But then the stethoscope may think differently. Nothing to do but wait and see.”
“Of course,” Campton agreed.
It was clear that the boy hated what was ahead of him; and what more could his father ask? Of course he was not going to confess to a desire to shirk his duty; but it was easy to see that his whole lucid12 intelligence repudiated13 any sympathy with the ruinous adventure.
“Have you seen Adele?” Campton enquired14, and George replied that he had dropped in for five minutes, and that Miss Anthony wanted to see his father.
“Is she—nervous?”
“Old Adele? I should say not: she’s fighting mad. La Revanche and all the rest of it. She doesn’t realize—sancta simplicitas!”
“Oh, I can see Adele throwing on the faggots!”
73Father and son were silent, both busy lighting15 cigarettes. When George’s was lit he remarked: “Well, if we’re not called at once it’ll be a good chance to read ‘The Golden Bough’ right through.”
Campton stared, not knowing the book even by name. What a queer changeling the boy was! But George’s composure, his deep and genuine indifference16 to the whole political turmoil17, once more fortified18 his father.
“Have they any news—?” he ventured. “They,” in their private language, meant the Brants.
“Oh, yes, lots: Uncle Andy was stiff with it. But not really amounting to anything. Of course there’s no doubt there’ll be war.”
“How about England?”
“Nobody knows; but the bankers seem to think England’s all right.” George paused, and finally added: “Look here, dear old boy—before she leaves I think mother wants to see you.”
Campton hardened instantly. “She has seen me—yesterday.”
“I know; she told me.”
The son began to cut the pages of one of his books with a visiting-card he had picked up, and the father stood looking out on the Place de la Concorde through the leafy curtain of the terrace.
Campton knew that he could not refuse his son’s request; in his heart of hearts he was glad it had been 74made, since it might mean that “they” had found a way—perhaps through the Ambassador.
But he could never prevent a stiffening19 of his whole self at any summons or suggestion from the Brants. He thought of the seeming unity20 of the Fortin-Lescluze couple, and of the background of peaceful family life revealed by the scene about the checkered21 table-cloth. Perhaps that was one of the advantages of a social organization which still, as a whole, ignored divorce, and thought any private condonation22 better than the open breaking up of the family.
“All right; I’ll go——” he agreed. “Where are we dining?”
“Oh, I forgot—an awful orgy. Dastrey wants us at the union. Louis Dastrey is dining with him, and he let me ask Boylston——”
“Boylston——?”
“You don’t know him. A chap who was at Harvard with me. He’s out here studying painting at the Beaux Arts. He’s an awfully23 good sort, and he wanted to see me before I go.”
The father’s heart sank. Only one whole day more with his boy, and this last evening but one was to be spent with poor embittered24 Dastrey, and two youths, one unknown to Campton, who would drown them in stupid war-chatter! But it was what George wanted; and there must not be a shade, for George, on these last hours.
75“All right! You promised me something awful for to-night,” Campton grinned sardonically25.
“Do you mind? I’m sorry.”
“It’s only Dastrey’s damned chauvinism that I mind. Why don’t you ask Adele to join the chorus?”
“Well—you’ll like Boylston,” said George.
Dastrey, after all, turned out less tragic26 and aggressive than Campton had feared. His irritability27 had vanished, and though he was very grave he seemed preoccupied28 only with the fate of Europe, and not with his personal stake in the affair.
But the older men said little. The youngsters had the floor, and Campton, as he listened to George and young Louis Dastrey, was overcome by a sense of such dizzy unreality that he had to grasp the arms of his ponderous29 leather armchair to assure himself that he was really in the flesh and in the world.
What! Two days ago they were still in the old easy Europe, a Europe in which one could make plans, engage passages on trains and steamers, argue about pictures, books, theatres, ideas, draw as much money as one chose out of the bank, and say: “The day after to-morrow I’ll be in Berlin or Vienna or Belgrade.” And here they sat in their same evening clothes, about the same shining mahogany writing-table, apparently30 the same group of free and independent youths and elderly men, and in reality prisoners, every one of 76them, hand-cuffed to this hideous31 masked bully32 of “War”!
The young men were sure that the conflict was inevitable—the evening papers left no doubt of it—and there was much animated33 discussion between young Dastrey and George.
Already their views diverged34; the French youth, theoretically at one with his friend as to the senselessness of war in general, had at once resolutely35 disengaged from the mist of doctrine36 the fatal necessity of this particular war.
“It’s the old festering wound of Alsace-Lorraine: Bismarck foresaw it and feared it—or perhaps planned it and welcomed it: who knows? But as long as the wound was there, Germany believed that France would try to avenge37 it, and as long as Germany believed that, she had to keep up her own war-strength; and she’s kept it up to the toppling-over point, ruining herself and us. That’s the whole thing, as I see it. War’s rot; but to get rid of war forever we’ve got to fight this one first.”
It was wonderful to Campton that this slender learned youth should already have grasped the necessity of the conflict and its deep causes. While his own head was still spinning with wrath38 and bewilderment at the bottomless perversity39 of mankind, Louis Dastrey had analyzed40 and accepted the situation and his own part in it. And he was not simply resigned; he 77was trembling with eagerness to get the thing over. “If only England is with us we’re safe—it’s a matter of weeks,” he declared.
“Wait a bit—wait a bit; I want to know more about a whole lot of things before I fix a date for the fall of Berlin,” his uncle interposed; but Louis flung him a radiant look. “We’ve been there before, my uncle!”
“But there’s Russia too——” said Boylston explosively. He had not spoken before.
“‘Nous l’avons eu, votre Rhin allemand,’” quoted George, as he poured a golden Hock into his glass.
He was keenly interested, that was evident; but interested as a looker-on, a dilettante41. He had neither Valmy nor Sedan in his blood, and it was as a sympathizing spectator that he ought by rights to have been sharing his friend’s enthusiasm, not as a combatant compelled to obey the same summons. Campton, glancing from one to another of their brilliant faces, felt his determination harden to save George from the consequences of his parents’ stupid blunder.
After dinner young Dastrey proposed a music-hall. The audience would be a curious sight: there would be wild enthusiasm, and singing of the Marseillaise. The other young men agreed, but their elders, after a tacitly exchanged glance, decided42 to remain at the club, on the plea that some one at the Ministry43 of War had promised to telephone if there were fresh news.
78Campton and Dastrey, left alone, stood on the balcony watching the Boulevards. The streets, so deserted44 during the day, had become suddenly and densely45 populated. Hardly any vehicles were in sight: the motor omnibuses were already carrying troops to the stations, there was a report abroad that private motors were to be requisitioned, and only a few taxis and horse-cabs, packed to the driver’s box with young men in spick-and-span uniforms, broke through the mass of pedestrians46 which filled the whole width of the Boulevards. This mass moved slowly and vaguely47, swaying this way and that, as though it awaited a portent48 from the heavens. In the glare of electric lamps and glittering theatre-fronts the innumerable faces stood out vividly49, grave, intent, slightly bewildered. Except when the soldiers passed no cries or songs came from the crowd, but only the deep inarticulate rumour50 which any vast body of people gives forth51.
“Queer——! How silent they are: how do you think they’re taking it?” Campton questioned.
But Dastrey had grown belligerent52 again. He saw the throngs53 before him bounding toward the frontier like the unchained furies of Rude’s “Marseillaise”; whereas to Campton they seemed full of the dumb wrath of an orderly and laborious54 people upon whom an unrighteous quarrel has been forced. He knew that the thought of Alsace-Lorraine still stirred in French hearts; but all Dastrey’s eloquence55 could not convince him 79that these people wanted war, or would have sought it had it not been thrust on them. The whole monstrous56 injustice57 seemed to take shape before him, and to brood like a huge sky-filling dragon of the northern darknesses over his light-loving, pleasure-loving, labour-loving France.
George came home late.
It was two in the morning of his last day with his boy when Campton heard the door open, and saw a flash of turned on light.
All night he had lain staring into the darkness, and thinking, thinking: thinking of George’s future, George’s friends, George and women, of that unknown side of his boy’s life which, in this great upheaval58 of things, had suddenly lifted its face to the surface. If war came, if George were not discharged, if George were sent to the front, if George were killed, how strange to think that things the father did not know of might turn out to have been the central things of his son’s life!
The young man came in, and Campton looked at him as though he were a stranger.
“Hullo, Dad—any news from the Ministry?” George, tossing aside his hat and stick, sat down on the bed. He had a crumpled59 rose in his button-hole, and looked gay and fresh, with the indestructible freshness of youth.
80“What do I really know of him?” the father asked himself.
Yes: Dastrey had had news. Germany had already committed acts of overt60 hostility61 on the frontier: telegraph and telephone communications had been cut, French locomotives seized, troops massed along the border on the specious62 pretext63 of the “Kriegsgefahr-zustand.” It was war.
“Oh, well,” George shrugged64. He lit a cigarette, and asked: “What did you think of Boylston?”
“Boylston——?”
“The fat brown chap at dinner.”
“Yes—yes—of course.” Campton became aware that he had not thought of Boylston at all, had hardly been aware of his presence. But the painter’s registering faculty65 was always latently at work, and in an instant he called up a round face, shyly jovial66, with short-sighted brown eyes as sharp as needles, and dark hair curling tightly over a wide watchful67 forehead.
“Why—I liked him.”
“I’m glad, because it was a tremendous event for him, seeing you. He paints, and he’s been keen on your things for years.”
“I wish I’d known.... Why didn’t he say so? He didn’t say anything, did he?”
“No: he doesn’t, much, when he’s pleased. He’s the very best chap I know,” George concluded.
