in the street campton looked about him with the same confused sense as when he had watched fortin-lescluze driving away to chalons, his dead son’s image in his eyes.
each time that campton came in contact with people on whom this calamity had fallen he grew more acutely aware of his own inadequacy. if he had been fortin-lescluze it would have been impossible for him to go back to chalons and resume his task. if he had been harvey mayhew, still less could he have accommodated himself to the intolerable, the really inconceivable, thought that benny upsher had vanished into that fiery furnace like a crumpled letter tossed into a grate. young fortin was defending his country—but 209upsher, in god’s name what was benny upsher of connecticut doing in a war between the continental powers?
suddenly campton remembered that he had george’s letter in his pocket, and that he had meant to go back with it to mrs. brant’s. he had started out that morning full of the good intentions the letter had inspired; but now he had no heart to carry them out. yet george had said: “let mother know, and explain, please;” and such an injunction could not be disregarded.
he was still hesitating on a street corner when he remembered that miss anthony was probably on her way home for luncheon, and that if he made haste he might find her despatching her hurried meal. it was instinctive with him, in difficult hours, to turn to her, less for counsel than for shelter; her simple unperplexed view of things was as comforting as his mother’s solution of the dark riddles he used to propound in the nursery.
he found her in her little dining-room, with delft plates askew on imitation cordova leather, and a death’s head pennon and a prussian helmet surmounting the nymph in cast bronze on the mantelpiece. in entering he faced the relentless light of a ground-glass window opening on an air-shaft; and miss anthony, flinging him a look, dropped her fork and sprang up crying: “george——”
“george—why george?” campton recovered his 210presence of mind under the shock of her agitation. “what made you think of george?”
“your—your face,” she stammered, sitting down again. “so absurd of me.... but you looked.... a seat for monsieur, jeanne,” she cried over her shoulder to the pantry.
“ah—my face? yes, i suppose so. benny upsher has disappeared—i’ve just had to break it to mayhew.”
“oh, that poor young upsher? how dreadful!” her own face grew instantly serene. “i’m so sorry—so very sorry.... yes, yes, you shall lunch with me—i know there’s another cutlet,” she insisted.
he shook his head. “i couldn’t.”
“well, then, i’ve finished.” she led the way into the drawing-room. there it was her turn to face the light, and he saw that her own features were as perturbed as she had apparently discovered his to be.
“poor benny, poor boy!” she repeated, in the happy voice she might have had if she had been congratulating campton on the lad’s escape. he saw that she was still thinking not of upsher but of george, and her inability to fit her intonation to her words betrayed the violence of her relief. but why had she imagined george to be in danger?
campton recounted the scene at which he had just assisted, and while she continued to murmur her sympathy he asked abruptly: “why on earth should you have been afraid for george?”
miss anthony had taken her usual armchair. it was placed, as the armchairs of elderly ladies usually are, with its high back to the light, and campton could no longer observe the discrepancy between her words and her looks. this probably gave her laugh its note of confidence. “my dear, if you were to cut me open george’s name would run out of every vein,” she said.
“but in that tone—it was your tone. you thought he’d been—that something had happened,” campton insisted. “how could it, where he is?”
she shrugged her shoulders in the “foreign” way she had picked up in her youth. the gesture was as incongruous as her slang, but it had become part of her physical self, which lay in a loose mosaic of incongruities over the solid crystal block of her character.
“why, indeed? i suppose there are risks everywhere, aren’t there?”
“i don’t know.” he pulled out the letter he had received that morning. a sudden light had illuminated it, and his hand shook. “i don’t even know where george is any longer.”
she seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then asked calmly: “what do you mean?”
“here—look at this. we’re to write to his base. i’m to tell his mother of the change.” he waited, cursing the faint winter light, and the protecting back of her chair. “what can it mean,” he broke out, “except that he’s left sainte menehould, that he’s been sent 212elsewhere, and that he doesn’t want us to find out where?”
miss anthony bent her long nose over the page. her hand held the letter steadily, and he guessed, as she perused it, that she had had one of the same kind, and had already drawn her own conclusions. what they were, that first startled “george!” seemed to say. but would she ever let campton see as far into her thoughts again? he continued to watch her hands patiently, since nothing was to be discovered of her face. the hands folded the letter with precision, and handed it back to him.
“yes: i see why you thought that—one might have,” she surprised him by conceding. then, darting at his unprotected face a gaze he seemed to feel though he could not see it: “if it had meant that george had been ordered to the front, how would you have felt?” she demanded.
he had not expected the question, and though in the last weeks he had so often propounded it to himself, it caught him in the chest like a blow. a sense of humiliation, a longing to lay his weakness bare, suddenly rose in him, and he bowed his head. “i couldn’t ... i couldn’t bear it,” he stammered.
she was silent for an interval; then she stood up, and laying her hand on his shaking shoulder crossed the room to a desk in which he knew she kept her private papers. her keys clinked, and a moment later she 213handed him a letter. it was in george’s writing, and dated on the same day as his own.
“dearest old girl, nothing new but my address. hereafter please write to our base. this order has just been lowered from the empyrean at the end of an endless reel of red tape. what it means nobody knows. it does not appear to imply an immediate change of headquarters; but even if such a change comes, my job is likely to remain the same. i’m getting used to it, and no wonder, for one day differeth not from another, and i’ve had many of them now. take care of dad and mother, and of your matchless self. i’m writing to father to-day. your george the first—and last (or i’ll know why).”
the two letters bore one another out in a way which carried conviction. campton saw that his sudden doubts must have been produced (since he had not felt them that morning) by the agonizing experience he had undergone: the vision of benny upsher had unmanned him. george was safe, and asked only to remain so: that was evident from both letters. and as the certainty of his son’s acquiescence once more penetrated campton it brought with it a fresh reaction of shame. ashamed—yes, he had begun to be ashamed of george as well as of himself. under the touch of adele anthony’s implacable honesty his last pretenses shrivelled up, and he longed to abase himself. he lifted his head and looked at her, remembering all she would be able to read in his eyes.
you’re satisfied?” she enquired.
“yes. if that’s the word.” he stretched his hand toward her, and then drew it back. “but it’s not: it’s not the word any longer.” he laboured with the need of self-expression, and the opposing instinct of concealing feelings too complex for miss anthony’s simple gaze. how could he say: “i’m satisfied; but i wish to god that george were not”? and was he satisfied, after all? and how could he define, or even be sure that he was actually experiencing, a feeling so contradictory that it seemed to be made up of anxiety for his son’s safety, shame at that anxiety, shame at george’s own complacent acceptance of his lot, and terror of a possible change in that lot? there were hours when it seemed to campton that the furies were listening, and ready to fling their awful answer to him if he as much as whispered to himself: “would to god that george were not satisfied!”
the sense of their haunting presence laid its clutch on him, and caused him, after a pause, to finish his phrase in another tone. “no; satisfied’s not the word; i’m glad george is out of it!” he exclaimed.
miss anthony was folding away the letter as calmly as if it had been a refugee record. she did not appear to notice the change in campton’s voice.
“i don’t pretend to your sublime detachment: you’ve never had a child,” he sneered. (certainly, if the furies were listening, they would put that down to his credit!)
215“oh, my poor john,” she said; then she locked the desk, took her hat from the lamp-chimney on which it had been hanging, jammed it down on her head like a helmet, and remarked: “we’ll go together, shall we? it’s time i got back to the office.”
on the way downstairs both were silent. campton’s ears echoed with his stupid taunt, and he glanced at her without daring to speak. on the last landing she paused and said: “i’ll see julia this evening about george’s change of address. she may be worried; and i can explain—i can take her my letter.”
“oh, do,” he assented. “and tell her—tell her—if she needs me——”
it was as much of a message as he found courage for. miss anthony nodded.
