when campton took his sketch of george to léonce black, the dealer who specialized in “camptons,” he was surprised at the magnitude of the sum which the great picture-broker, lounging in a glossy war office uniform among his gauguins and vuillards, immediately offered.
léonce black noted his surprise and smiled. “you think there’s nothing doing nowadays? don’t you believe it, mr. campton. now that the big men have stopped painting, the collectors are all the keener to snap up what’s left in their portfolios.” he placed the cheque in campton’s hand, and drew back to study the effect of the sketch, which he had slipped into a frame against a velvet curtain. “ah——” he said, as if he were tasting an old wine.
as campton turned to go the dealer’s enthusiasm bubbled over. “haven’t you got anything more? remember me if you have.”
“i don’t sell my sketches,” said campton. “this was exceptional—for a charity....”
“i know, i know. well, you’re likely to have a good many more calls of the same sort before we get this 162war over,” the dealer remarked philosophically. “anyhow, remember i can place anything you’ll give me. when people want a campton it’s to me they come. i’ve got standing orders from two clients ... both given before the war, and both good to-day.”
campton paused in the doorway, seized by his old fear of the painting’s passing into anderson brant’s possession.
“look here: where is this one going?”
the dealer cocked his handsome grey head and glanced archly through plump eyelids. “violation of professional secrecy? well.... well ... under constraint i’ll confess it’s to a young lady: great admirer, artist herself. had her order by cable from new york a year ago. been on the lookout ever since.”
“oh, all right,” campton answered, repocketing the money.
he set out at once for “the friends of french art,” and léonce black, bound for the ministry of war, walked by his side, regaling him alternately with the gossip of the ministry and with racy anecdotes of the dealers’ world. in m. black’s opinion the war was an inexcusable blunder, since germany was getting to be the best market for the kind of freak painters out of whom the dealers who “know how to make a man ‘foam’” can make a big turn over. “i don’t know what on earth will become of all those poor devils now: paris cared for them only because she knew germany would 163give any money for their things. personally, as you know, i’ve always preferred sounder goods: i’m a classic, my dear campton, and i can feel only classic art,” said the dealer, swelling out his uniformed breast and stroking his assyrian nose as though its handsome curve followed the pure delphic line. “but, as long as things go on as they are at present in my department of the administration, the war’s not going to end in a hurry,” he continued. “and now we’re in for it, we’ve got to see the thing through.”
campton found boylston, as usual, in his melancholy cabinet particulier. he was listening to the tale of a young woman with streaming eyes and an extravagant hat. she was so absorbed in her trouble that she did not notice campton’s entrance, and behind her back the painter made a sign to say that she was not to be interrupted.
he was as much interested in the suppliant’s tale as in watching boylston’s way of listening. that modest and commonplace-looking young man was beginning to excite a lively curiosity in campton. it was not only that he remembered george’s commendation, for he knew that the generous enthusiasms of youth may be inspired by trifles imperceptible to the older. it was boylston himself who interested the painter. he knew no more of the young man than the scant details miss anthony could give. boylston, it appeared, was the oldest hope of a well-to-do connecticut family. on his 164leaving college a place had been reserved for him in the paternal business; but he had announced good-humouredly that he did not mean to spend his life in an office, and one day, after a ten minutes’ conversation with his father, as to which details were lacking, he had packed a suitcase and sailed for france. there he had lived ever since, in shabby rooms in the rue de verneuil, on the scant allowance remitted by an irate parent: apparently never running into debt, yet always ready to help a friend.
all the american art-students in paris knew boylston; and though he was still in the early thirties, they all looked up to him. for boylston had one quality which always impresses youth: boylston knew everybody. whether you went with him to a smart restaurant in the rue royale, or to a wine-shop of the left bank, the patron welcomed him with the same cordiality, and sent the same emphatic instructions to the cook. the first fresh peas and the tenderest spring chicken were always for this quiet youth, who, when he was alone, dined cheerfully on veal and vin ordinaire. if you wanted to know where to get the best burgundy, boylston could tell you; he could also tell you where to buy an engagement ring for your girl, a ford runabout going at half-price, or the papier timbré on which to address a summons to a recalcitrant laundress.
if you got into a row with your landlady you found that boylston knew her, and that at sight of him she 165melted and withdrew her claim; or, failing this, he knew the solicitor in whose office her son was a clerk, or had other means of reducing her to reason. boylston also knew a man who could make old clocks go, another who could clean flannels without their shrinking, and a third who could get you old picture-frames for a song; and, best of all, when any inexperienced american youth was caught in the dark parisian cobweb (and the people at home were on no account to hear about it) boylston was found to be the friend and familiar of certain occult authorities who, with a smile and a word of warning, could break the mesh and free the victim.
the mystery was, how and why all these people did what boylston wanted; but the reason began to dawn on campton as he watched the young woman in the foolish hat deliver herself of her grievance. boylston was simply a perfect listener—and most of his life was spent in listening. everything about him listened: his round forehead and peering screwed-up eyes, his lips twitching responsively under the close-clipped moustache, and every crease and dimple of his sagacious and humorous young countenance; even the attitude of his short fat body, with elbows comfortably bedded in heaped up papers, and fingers plunged into his crinkled hair. there was never a hint of hurry or impatience about him: having once asserted his right to do what he liked with his life, he was apparently content 166to let all his friends prey on it. you never caught his eye on the clock, or his lips shaping an answer before you had turned the last corner of your story. yet when the story was told, and he had surveyed it in all its bearings, you could be sure he would do what he could for you, and do it before the day was over.
“very well, mademoiselle,” he said, when the young woman had finished. “i promise you i’ll see mme. beausite, and try to get her to recognize your claim.”
“mind you, i don’t ask charity—i won’t take charity from your committee!” the young lady hissed, gathering up a tawdry hand-bag.
“oh, we’re not forcing it on any one,” smiled boylston, opening the door for her.
when he turned back to campton his face was flushed and frowning. “poor thing! she’s a nuisance, but i’ll fight to the last ditch for her. the chap she lives with was beausite’s secretary and understudy, and devilled for him before the war. the poor fellow has come back from the front a complete wreck, and can’t even collect the salary beausite owes him for the last three months before the war. beausite’s plea is that he’s too poor, and that the war lets him out of paying. of course he counts on our doing it for him.”
“and you’re not going to?”
“well,” said boylston humorously, “i shouldn’t wonder if he beat us in the long run. but i’ll have a try first; and anyhow the poor girl needn’t know. she 167used to earn a little money doing fashion-articles, but of course there’s no market for that now, and i don’t see how the pair can live. they have a little boy, and there’s an infirm mother, and they’re waiting to get married till the girl can find a job.”
“good lord!” campton groaned, with a sudden vision of the countless little trades and traffics arrested by the war, and all the industrious thousands reduced to querulous pauperism or slow death.
“how do they live—all these people?”
“they don’t—always. i could tell you——”
“don’t, for god’s sake; i can’t stand it.” campton drew out the cheque. “here: this is what i’ve got for the davrils.”
“good lord!” said boylston, staring with round eyes.
“it will pull them through, anyhow, won’t it?” campton triumphed.
“well——” said boylston. “it will if you’ll endorse it,” he added, smiling. campton laughed and took up a pen.
a day or two later campton, returning home one afternoon, overtook a small black-veiled figure with a limp like his own. he guessed at once that it was the lame davril girl, come to thank him; and his dislike of such ceremonies caused him to glance about for a way of escape. but as he did so the girl turned with a smile 168that put him to shame. he remembered adele anthony’s saying, one day when he had found her in her refugee office patiently undergoing a like ordeal: “we’ve no right to refuse the only coin they can repay us in.”
the davril girl was a plain likeness of her brother, with the same hungry flame in her eyes. she wore the nondescript black that campton had remarked at the funeral; and knowing the importance which the french attach to every detail of conventional mourning, he wondered that mother and daughter had not laid out part of his gift in crape. but doubtless the equally strong instinct of thrift had caused mme. davril to put away the whole sum.
mlle. davril greeted campton pleasantly, and assured him that she had not found the long way from villejuif to montmartre too difficult.
“i would have gone to you,” the painter protested; but she answered that she wanted to see with her own eyes where her brother’s friend lived.
in the studio she looked about her with a quick searching glance, said “oh, a piano——” as if the fact were connected with the object of her errand—and then, settling herself in an armchair, unclasped her shabby hand-bag.
“monsieur, there has been a misunderstanding; this money is not ours.” she laid campton’s cheque on the table.
a flush of annoyance rose to the painter’s face. what 169on earth had boylston let him in for? if the davrils were as proud as all that it was not worth while to have sold a sketch it had cost him such a pang to part with. he felt the exasperation of the would be philanthropist when he first discovers that nothing complicates life as much as doing good.
“but, mademoiselle——”
“this money is not ours. if rené had lived he would never have sold your picture; and we would starve rather than betray his trust.”
when stout ladies in velvet declare that they would starve rather than sacrifice this or that principle, the statement has only the cold beauty of rhetoric; but on the drawn lips of a thinly-clad young woman evidently acquainted with the process, it becomes a fiery reality.
“starve—nonsense! my dear young lady, you betray him when you talk like that,” said campton, moved.
she shook her head. “it depends, monsieur, which things matter most to one. we shall never—my mother and i—do anything that rené would not have done. the picture was not ours: we brought it back to you——”
“but if the picture’s not yours it’s mine,” campton interrupted; “and i’d a right to sell it, and a right to do what i choose with the money.”
his visitor smiled. “that’s what we feel; it was 170what i was coming to.” and clasping her threadbare glove-tips about the arms of the chair mlle. davril set forth with extreme precision the object of her visit.
it was to propose that campton should hand over the cheque to “the friends of french art,” devoting one-third to the aid of the families of combatant painters, the rest to young musicians and authors. “it doesn’t seem right that only the painters’ families should benefit by what your committee are doing. and rené would have thought so too. he knew so many young men of letters and journalists who, before the war, just managed to keep their families alive; and in my profession i could tell you of poor music-teachers and accompanists whose work stopped the day war broke out, and who have been living ever since on the crusts their luckier comrades could spare them. rené would have let us accept from you help that was shared with others: he would have been so glad, often, of a few francs to relieve the misery we see about us. and this great sum might be the beginning of a co-operative work for artists ruined by the war.”
she went on to explain that in the families of almost all the young artists at the front there was at least one member at home who practised one of the arts, or who was capable of doing some kind of useful work. the value of campton’s gift, mlle. davril argued, would be tripled if it were so employed as to give the artists and their families occupation: producing at 171least the illusion that those who could were earning their living, or helping their less fortunate comrades. “it’s not only a question of saving their dignity: i don’t believe much in that. you have dignity or you haven’t—and if you have, it doesn’t need any saving,” this clear-toned young woman remarked. “the real question, for all of us artists, is that of keeping our hands in, and our interest in our work alive; sometimes, too, of giving a new talent its first chance. at any rate, it would mean work and not stagnation; which is all that most charity produces.”
she developed her plan: for the musicians, concerts in private houses (hence her glance at the piano); for the painters, small exhibitions in the rooms of the committee, where their pictures would be sold with the deduction of a percentage, to be returned to the general fund; and for the writers—well, their lot was perhaps the hardest to deal with; but an employment agency might be opened, where those who chose could put their names down and take such work as was offered. above all, mlle. davril again insisted, the fund created by campton’s gift was to be spent only in giving employment, not for mere relief.
campton listened with growing attention. nothing hitherto had been less in the line of his interests than the large schemes of general amelioration which were coming to be classed under the transatlantic term of “social welfare.” if questioned on the subject a few 172months earlier he would probably have concealed his fundamental indifference under the profession of an extreme individualism, and the assertion of every man’s right to suffer and starve in his own way. even since rené davril’s death had brought home to him the boundless havoc of the war, he had felt no more than the impulse to ease his own pain by putting his hand in his pocket when a particular case was too poignant to be ignored.
yet here were people who had already offered their dearest to france, and were now pleading to be allowed to give all the rest; and who had had the courage and wisdom to think out in advance the form in which their gift would do most good. campton had the awe of the unpractical man for anyone who knows how to apply his ideas. he felt that there was no use in disputing mlle. davril’s plan: he must either agree to it or repocket his cheque.
“i’ll do as you want, of course; but i’m not much good about details. hadn’t you better consult some one else?” he suggested.
oh, that was already done: she had outlined her project to miss anthony and mr. boylston, who approved. all she wanted was campton’s consent; and this he gave the more cordially when he learned that, for the present at least, nothing more was expected of him. first steps in beneficence, he felt, were unspeakably terrifying; yet he was already aware that, 173resist as he might, he would never be able to keep his footing on the brink of that abyss.
into it, as the days went by, his gaze was oftener and oftener plunged. he had begun to feel that pity was his only remaining link with his kind, the one barrier between himself and the dreadful solitude which awaited him when he returned to his studio. what would there have been to think of there, alone among his unfinished pictures and his broken memories, if not the wants and woes of people more bereft than himself? his own future was not a thing to dwell on. george was safe: but what george and he were likely to make of each other after the ordeal was over was a question he preferred to put aside. he was more and more taking george and his safety for granted, as a solid standing-ground from which to reach out a hand to the thousands struggling in the depths. as long as the world’s fate was in the balance it was every man’s duty to throw into that balance his last ounce of brain and muscle. campton wondered how he had ever thought that an accident of birth, a remoteness merely geographical, could justify, or even make possible, an attitude of moral aloofness. harvey mayhew’s reasons for wishing to annihilate germany began to seem less grotesque than his own for standing aside.
in the heat of his conversion he no longer grudged the hours given to mr. mayhew. he patiently led his truculent relative from one government office to another, 174everywhere laying stress on mr. mayhew’s sympathy with france and his desire to advocate her cause in the united states, and trying to curtail his enumeration of his grievances by a glance at the clock, and the reminder that they had another minister to see. mr. mayhew was not very manageable. his adventure had grown with repetition, and he was increasingly disposed to feel that the retaliation he called down on germany could best be justified by telling every one what he had suffered from her. intensely aware of the value of time in utica, he was less sensible of it in paris, and seemed to think that, since he had left a flourishing business to preach the holy war, other people ought to leave their affairs to give him a hearing. but his zeal and persistence were irresistible, and doors which campton had seen barred against the most reasonable appeals flew open at the sound of mr. mayhew’s trumpet. his pink face and silvery hair gave him an apostolic air, and circles to which america had hitherto been a mere speck in space suddenly discovered that he represented that legendary character, the typical american.
the keen boylston, prompt to note and utilize the fact, urged campton to interest mr. mayhew in “the friends of french art,” and with considerable flourish the former peace delegate was produced at a committee meeting and given his head. but his interest flagged when he found that the “friends” concerned 175themselves with atrocities only in so far as any act of war is one, and that their immediate task was the humdrum one of feeding and clothing the families of the combatants and sending “comforts” to the trenches. he served up, with a somewhat dog-eared eloquence, the usual account of his own experiences, and pressed a modest gift upon the treasurer; but when he departed, after wringing everybody’s hands, and leaving the french members bedewed with emotion, campton had the conviction that their quiet weekly meetings would not often be fluttered by his presence.
campton was spending an increasing amount of time in the palais royal restaurant, where he performed any drudgery for which no initiative was required. once or twice, when miss anthony was submerged by a fresh influx of refugees, he lent her a hand too; and on most days he dropped in late at her office, waited for her to sift and dismiss the last applicants, and saw her home through the incessant rain. it interested him to note that the altruism she had so long wasted on pampered friends was developing into a wise and orderly beneficence. he had always thought of her as an eternal schoolgirl; now she had grown into a woman. sometimes he fancied the change dated from the moment when their eyes had met across the station, the day they had seen george off. he wondered whether it might not be interesting to paint her new face, if ever painting became again thinkable.
“passion—i suppose the great thing is a capacity for passion,” he mused.
in himself he imagined the capacity to be quite dead. he loved his son: yes—but he was beginning to see that he loved him for certain qualities he had read into him, and that perhaps after all——. well, perhaps after all the sin for which he was now atoning in loneliness was that of having been too exclusively an artist, of having cherished george too egotistically and self-indulgently, too much as his own most beautiful creation. if he had loved him more humanly, more tenderly and recklessly, might he have not put into his son the tenderness and recklessness which were beginning to seem to him the qualities most supremely human?
