the killing of rené davril seemed to campton one of the most senseless crimes the war had yet perpetrated. it brought home to him, far more vividly than the distant death of poor jean fortin, what an incalculable sum of gifts and virtues went to make up the monster’s daily meal.
“ah, you want genius, do you? mere youth’s not enough ... and health and gaiety and courage; you want brains in the bud, imagination and poetry, ideas 151all folded up in their sheath! it takes that, does it, to tempt your jaded appetite?” he was reminded of the rich vulgarians who will eat only things out of season. “that’s what war is like,” he muttered savagely to himself.
the next morning he went to the funeral with mrs. talkett—between whom and himself the tragic episode had created a sort of improvised intimacy—walking at her side through the november rain, behind the poor hearse with the tricolour over it.
at the church, while the few mourners shivered in a damp side chapel, he had time to study the family: a poor sobbing mother, two anæmic little girls, and the lame sister who was musical—a piteous group, smelling of poverty and tears. behind them, to his surprise, he saw the curly brown head and short-sighted eyes of boylston. campton wondered at the latter’s presence; then he remembered “the friends of french art,” and concluded that the association had probably been interested in poor davril.
with some difficulty he escaped from the thanks of the mother and sisters, and picked up a taxi to take mrs. talkett home.
“no—back to the hospital,” she said. “a lot of bad cases have come in, and i’m on duty again all day.” she spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world; and he shuddered at the serenity with which women endure the unendurable.
152at the hospital he followed her in. the davril family, she told him, had insisted that they had no claim on his picture, and that it must be returned to him. mrs. talkett went up to fetch it; and campton waited in one of the drawing-rooms. a step sounded behind him, and another nurse came in—but was it a nurse, or some haloed nun from a umbrian triptych, her pure oval framed in white, her long fingers clasping a book and lily?
“mme. de dolmetsch!” he cried; and thought: “a new face again—what an artist!”
she seized his hands.
“i heard from dear madge talkett that you were here, and i’ve asked her to leave us together.” she looked at him with ravaged eyes, as if just risen from a penitential vigil.
“come, please, into my little office: you didn’t know that i was the infirmière-major? my dear friend, what upheavals, what cataclysms! i see no one now: all my days and nights are given to my soldiers.”
she glided ahead on noiseless sandals to a little room where a bowl of jade filled with gardenias, and a tortoise-shell box of gold-tipped cigarettes, stood on a desk among torn and discoloured livrets militaires. the room was empty, and mme. de dolmetsch, closing the door, drew campton to a seat at her side. so close to her, he saw that the perfect lines of her face were flawed by marks of suffering. “the woman really has 153a heart,” he thought, “or the war couldn’t have made her so much handsomer.”
mme. de dolmetsch leaned closer: a breath of incense floated from her conventual draperies.
“i know why you came,” she continued; “you were good to that poor little davril.” she clutched campton suddenly with a blue-veined hand. “my dear friend, can anything justify such horrors? isn’t it abominable that boys like that should be murdered? that some senile old beast of a diplomatist should decree, after a good dinner, that all we love best must be offered up?” she caught his hands again, her liturgical scent enveloping him. “campton, i know you feel as i do.” she paused, pressing his fingers hard, her beautiful mouth trembling. “for god’s sake tell me,” she implored, “how you’ve managed to keep your son from the front!”
campton drew away, red and inarticulate. “i—my son? those things depend on the authorities. my boy’s health....” he stammered.
“yes, yes; i know. your george is delicate. but so is my ladislas—dreadfully. the lungs too. i’ve trembled for him for so long; and now, at any moment....” two tears gathered on her long lashes and rolled down ... “at any moment he may be taken from the war office, where he’s doing invaluable work, and forced into all that blood and horror; he may be brought back to me like those poor creatures upstairs, who are 154hardly men any longer ... mere vivisected animals, without eyes, without faces.” she lowered her voice and drew her lids together, so that her very eyes seemed to be whispering. “ladislas has enemies who are jealous of him (i could give you their names); at this moment someone who ought to be at the front is intriguing to turn him out and get his place. oh, campton, you’ve known this terror—you know what one’s nights are like! have pity—tell me how you managed!”
he had no idea of what he answered, or how he finally got away. everything that was dearest to him, the thought of george, the vision of the lad dying upstairs, was defiled by this monstrous coupling of their names with that of the supple middle-aged adventurer safe in his spotless uniform at the war office. and beneath the boiling-up of campton’s disgust a new fear lifted its head. how did mme. de dolmetsch know about george? and what did she know? evidently there had been foolish talk somewhere. perhaps it was mrs. brant—or perhaps fortin himself. all these great doctors forgot the professional secret with some one woman, if not with many. had not fortin revealed to his own wife the reason of campton’s precipitate visit? the painter escaped from mme. de dolmetsch’s scented lair, and from the sights and sounds of the hospital, in a state of such perturbation that for a while he stood in the street wondering where he had meant to go next.
155he had his own reasons for agreeing to the davrils’ suggestion that the picture should be returned to him; and presently these reasons came back. “they’d never dare to sell it themselves; but why shouldn’t i sell it for them?” he had thought, remembering their denuded rooms, and the rusty smell of the women’s mourning. it cost him a pang to part with a study of his boy; but he was in a superstitious and expiatory mood, and eager to act on it.
he remembered having been told by boylston that “the friends of french art” had their office in the palais royal, and he made his way through the deserted arcades to the door of a once-famous restaurant.
behind the plate-glass windows young women with rolled-up sleeves and straw in their hair were delving in packing-cases, while, divided from them by an improvised partition, another group were busy piling on the cloak-room shelves garments such as had never before dishonoured them.
campton stood fascinated by the sight of the things these young women were sorting: pink silk combinations, sporting ulsters in glaring black and white checks, straw hats wreathed with last summer’s sunburnt flowers, high-heeled satin shoes split on the instep, and fringed and bugled garments that suggested obsolete names like “dolman” and “mantle,” and looked like the costumes dug out of a country-house attic by amateurs preparing to play “caste.” was it possible 156that “the friends of french art” proposed to clothe the families of fallen artists in these prehistoric properties?
boylston appeared, flushed and delighted (and with straw in his hair also), and led his visitor up a corkscrew stair. they passed a room where a row of people in shabby mourning like that of the davril family sat on restaurant chairs before a caissière’s desk; and at the desk campton saw miss anthony, her veil pushed back and a card-catalogue at her elbow, listening to a young woman who was dramatically stating her case.
boylston saw campton’s surprise, and said: “yes, we’re desperately short-handed, and miss anthony has deserted her refugees for a day or two to help me to straighten things out.”
his own office was in a faded cabinet particulier where the dinner-table had been turned into a desk, and the weak-springed divan was weighed down under suits of ready-made clothes bearing the label of a wholesale clothier.
“these are the things we really give them; but they cost a lot of money to buy,” boylston explained. on the divan sat a handsomely dressed elderly lady with a long emaciated face and red eyes, who rose as they entered. boylston spoke to her in an undertone and led her into another cabinet, where campton saw her tragic figure sink down on the sofa, under a glass scrawled with amorous couplets.
157“that was mme. beausite.... you didn’t recognize her? poor thing! her youngest boy is blind: his eyes were put out by a shell. she is very unhappy, and she comes here and helps now and then. beausite? oh no, we never see him. he’s only our honorary president.”
boylston obviously spoke without afterthought; but campton felt the sting. he too was on the honorary committee.
“poor woman! what? the young fellow who did cubist things? i hadn’t heard....” he remembered the cruel rumour that beausite, when his glory began to wane, had encouraged his three sons in three different lines of art, so that there might always be a beausite in the fashion.... “you must have to listen to pretty ghastly stories here,” he said.
the young man nodded, and campton, with less embarrassment than he had expected, set forth his errand. in that atmosphere it seemed natural to be planning ways of relieving misery, and boylston at once put him at his ease by looking pleased but not surprised.
“you mean to sell the sketch, sir? that will put the davrils out of anxiety for a long time; and they’re in a bad way, as you saw.” boylston undid the parcel, with a respectful: “may i?” and put the canvas on a chair. he gazed at it for a few moments, the blood rising sensitively over his face till it reached his tight ridge of hair. campton remembered what george had 158said of his friend’s silent admirations; he was glad the young man did not speak.
when he did, it was to say with a businesslike accent: “we’re trying to get up an auction of pictures and sketches—and if we could lead off with this....”
it was campton’s turn to redden. the possibility was one he had not thought of. if the picture were sold at auction, anderson brant would be sure to buy it! but he could not say this to boylston. he hesitated, and the other, who seemed quick at feeling his way, added at once: “but perhaps you’d rather sell it privately? in that case we should get the money sooner.”
it was just the right thing to say: and campton thanked him and picked up his sketch. at the door he hesitated, feeling that it became a member of the honorary committee to add something more.
“how are you getting on? getting all the help you need?”
boylston smiled. “we need such a lot. people have been very generous: we’ve had several big sums. but look at those ridiculous clothes downstairs—we get boxes and boxes of such rubbish! and there are so many applicants, and such hard cases. take those poor davrils, for instance. the lame davril girl has a talent for music: plays the violin. well, what good does it do her now? the artists are having an awful time. if this war goes on much longer, it won’t be only at the front that they’ll die.”
159“ah——” said campton. “well, i’ll take this to a dealer——”
on the way down he turned in to greet miss anthony. she looked up in surprise, her tired face haloed in tumbling hairpins; but she was too busy to do more than nod across the group about her desk.
at his offer to take her home she shook her head. “i’m here till after seven. mr. boylston and i are nearly snowed under. we’ve got to go down presently and help unpack; and after that i’m due at my refugee canteen at the nord. it’s my night shift.”
campton, on the way back to montmartre, fell to wondering if such excesses of altruism were necessary, or a mere vain overflow of energy. he was terrified by his first close glimpse of the ravages of war, and the efforts of the little band struggling to heal them seemed pitifully ineffectual. no doubt they did good here and there, made a few lives less intolerable; but how the insatiable monster must laugh at them as he spread his red havoc wider!
on reaching home, campton forgot everything at sight of a letter from george. he had not had one for two weeks, and this interruption, just as the military mails were growing more regular, had made him anxious. but it was the usual letter: brief, cheerful, inexpressive. apparently there was no change in george’s situation, nor any wish on his part that there should be. he grumbled humorously at the dulness of his 160work and the monotony of life in a war-zone town; and wondered whether, if this sort of thing went on, there might not soon be some talk of leave. and just at the end of his affectionate and unsatisfactory two pages, campton lit on a name that roused him.
“i saw a fellow who’d seen benny upsher yesterday on his way to the english front. the young lunatic looked very fit. you know he volunteered in the english army when he found he couldn’t get into the french. he’s likely to get all the fighting he wants.” it was a relief to know that someone had seen benny upsher lately. the letter was but four days old, and he was then on his way to the front. probably he was not yet in the fighting he wanted, and one could, without remorse, call up an unmutilated face and clear blue eyes.
campton, re-reading the postscript, was struck by a small thing. george had originally written: “i saw benny upsher yesterday,” and had then altered the phrase to: “i saw a fellow who’d seen benny upsher.” there was nothing out of the way in that: it simply showed that he had written in haste and revised the sentence. but he added: “the young lunatic looked very fit.” well: that too was natural. it was “the fellow” who reported benny as looking fit; the phrase was rather elliptic, but campton could hardly have said why it gave him the impression that it was george himself who had seen upsher. the idea was manifestly absurd, since there was the length of the front between 161george’s staff-town and the fiery pit yawning for his cousin. campton laid aside the letter with the distinct wish that his son had not called benny upsher a young lunatic.
