# A Son at the Front/Chapter 21

XXI
The next time Campton saw Mrs. Brant was in his own studio.
He was preparing, one morning, to leave the melancholy place, when the bell rang and his bonne let her in. Her dress was less frivolous than at Mrs. Talkett's, and she wore a densely patterned veil, like the ladies in cinema plays when they visit their seducers or their accomplices.
Through the veil she looked at him agitatedly, and said: "George is not at Sainte Menehould."
He stared.
"No. Anderson was there the day before yesterday."
"Brant? At Sainte Menehould?" Campton felt the blood rush to his temples. What! He, the boy's father, had not so much as dared to ask for the almost unattainable permission to go into the war-zone; and this other man, who was nothing to George, absolutely nothing, who had no right whatever to ask for leave to visit him, had somehow obtained the priceless favour, and instead of passing it on, instead of offering at least to share it with the boy's father, had sneaked off secretly to feast on the other's lawful privilege!
"How the devil———?" Campton burst out.
"Oh, he got a Red Cross mission; it was arranged very suddenly—through a friend. . ."
"Yes—well?" Campton stammered, sitting down lest ​his legs should fail him, and signing to her to take a chair.
"Well—he was not there!" she repeated excitedly. "It's what we might have known—since he's changed his address."
"Then he didn't see him?" Campton interrupted, the ferocious joy of the discovery crowding out his wrath and wonder.
"Anderson didn't? No. He wasn't there, I tell you!"
"The H. Q. has been moved?"
"No, it hasn't. Anderson saw one of the officers. He said George had been sent on a mission."
"To another H. Q.?"
"That's what they said. I don't believe it."
"What do you believe?"
"I don't know. Anderson's sure they told him the truth. The officer he saw is a friend of George's, and he said George was expected back that very evening."
Campton sat looking at her uncertainly. Did she dread, or did she rather wish, to disbelieve the officer's statement? Where did she hope or fear that George had gone? And what were Campton's own emotions? As confused, no doubt, as hers—as undefinable. The insecurity of his feelings moved him to a momentary compassion for hers, which were surely pitiable, whatever else they were. Then a savage impulse swept away every other, and he said: "Wherever George was, Brant's visit will have done him no good."
​She grew pale. "What do you mean?"
"I wonder it never occurred to you—or to your husband, since he's so solicitous," Campton went on, prolonging her distress.
"Please tell me what you mean," she pleaded with frightened eyes.
"Why, in God's name, couldn't you both let well enough alone? Didn't you guess why George never asked for leave—why I've always advised him not to? Don't you know that nothing is as likely to get a young fellow into trouble as having his family force their way through to see him, use influence, seem to ask favours? I dare say that's how that fool of a Dolmetsch woman got Isador killed. No one would have noticed where he was if she hadn't gone on so about him. They had to send him to the front finally. And now the chances are———"
"Oh, no, no, no—don't say it!" She held her hands before her face as if he had flung something flaming at her. "It was I who made Anderson go!"
"Well—Brant ought to have thought of that—I did," he pursued sardonically.
Her answer disarmed him. "You're his father."
"I don't mean," he went on hastily, "that Brant's not right: of course there's nothing to be afraid of. I can't imagine why you thought there was."
She hung her head. "Sometimes when I hear the other women—other mothers—I feel as if our turn ​must come too. Even at Sainte Menehould a shell might hit the house. Anderson said the artillery fire seemed so near."
He made no answer, and she sat silent, without apparent thought of leaving. Finally he said: "I was just going out———"
She stood up. "Oh, yes—that reminds me. I came to ask you to come with me."
"With you———?"
"The motor's waiting—you must." She laid her hand on his arm. "To see Olida, the new clairvoyante. Everybody goes to her—everybody who's anxious about anyone. Even the scientific people believe in her. She's told people the most extraordinary things—it seems she warned Daisy de Dolmetsch. . . Well, I'd rather know!" she burst out passionately.
Campton smiled. "She'll tell you that George is back at his desk."
"Well, then—isn't that worth it? Please don't refuse me!"
He disengaged himself gently. "My poor Julia, go by all means if it will reassure you."
"Ah, but you've got to come too. You can't say no: Madge Talkett tells me that if the two nearest go together Olida sees so much more clearly—especially a father and mother," she added hastily, as if conscious of the inopportune "nearest." After a moment she went on: "Even Mme. de Tranlay's been; Daisy de ​Dolmetsch met her on the stairs. Olida told her that her youngest boy, from whom she'd had no news for weeks, was all right, and coming home on leave. Mme. de Tranlay didn't know Daisy, except by sight, but she stopped her to tell her. Only fancy—the last person she would have spoken to in ordinary times! But she was so excited and happy! And two days afterward the boy turned up safe and sound. You must come!" she insisted.
Campton was seized with a sudden deep compassion for all these women groping for a ray of light in the blackness. It moved him to think of Mme. de Tranlay's proud figure climbing a clairvoyante's stairs.
"I'll come if you want me to," he said.
They drove to the Batignolles quarter. Mrs. Brant's lips were twitching under her veil, and as the motor stopped she said childishly: "I've never been to this kind of place before."
"I should hope not," Campton rejoined. He himself, during the Russian lady's rule, had served an apprenticeship among the soothsayers, and come away disgusted with the hours wasted in their company. He suddenly remembered the Spanish girl in the little white house near the railway, who had told his fortune in the hot afternoons with cards and olive-stones, and had found, by irrefutable signs, that he and she would "come together" again. "Well, it was better than this pseudo-scientific humbug," he mused, "because it was ​picturesque—and so was she—and she believed in it."
Mrs. Brant rang, and Campton followed her into a narrow hall. A servant-woman showed them into a salon which was as commonplace as a doctor's waiting-room. On the mantelpiece were vases of Pampas grass, and a stuffed monkey swung from the electrolier. Evidently Mme. Olida was superior to the class of fortune-tellers who prepare a special stage-setting, and no astrologer's robe or witch's kitchen was to be feared.
The maid led them across a plain dining-room into an inner room. The shutters were partly closed, and the blinds down. A voluminous woman in loose black rose from a sofa. Gold ear-rings gleamed under her oiled black hair—and suddenly, through the billows of flesh, and behind the large pale mask, Campton recognized the Spanish girl who used to read his fortune in the house by the railway. Her eyes rested a moment on Mrs. Brant; then they met his with the same heavy stare. But he noticed that her hands, which were small and fat, trembled a little as she pointed to two chairs.
"Sit down, please," she said in a low rough voice, speaking in French. The door opened again, and a young man with Levantine eyes and a showy necktie looked in. She said sharply: "No," and he disappeared. Campton noticed that a large emerald flashed on his ​manicured hand. Mme. Olida continued to look at her visitors.
Mrs. Brant wiped her dry lips and stammered: "We're his parents—a son at the front. . ."
Mme. Olida fell back in a trance-like attitude, let her lips droop over her magnificent eyes, and rested her head against a soiled sofa-pillow. Presently she held out both hands.
"You are his parents? Yes? Give me each a hand, please." As her cushioned palm touched Campton's he thought he felt a tremor of recognition, and saw, in the half-light, the tremor communicate itself to her lids. He grasped her hand firmly, and she lifted her eyes, looked straight into his with her heavy velvety stare, and said: "You should hold my hand more loosely; the currents must not be compressed." She turned her palm upward, so that his finger-tips rested on it as if on a keyboard; he noticed that she did not do the same with the hand she had placed in Mrs. Brant's.
Suddenly he remembered that one sultry noon, lying under the olives, she had taught him, by signals tapped on his own knee, how to say what he chose to her without her brothers' knowing it. He looked at the huge woman, seeking the curve of the bowed upper lip on which what used to be a faint blue shadow had now become a line as thick as her eyebrows, and recalling how her laugh used to lift the lip above her little round ​teeth while she threw back her head, showing the Agnus Dei in her neck. Now her mouth was like a withered flower, and in a crease of her neck a string of pearls was embedded.
"Take hands, please," she commanded. Julia gave Campton her ungloved hand, and he sat between the two women.
"You are the parents? You want news of your son—ah, like so many!" Mme. Olida closed her eyes again.
"To know where he is—whereabouts—that is what we want," Mrs. Brant whispered.
Mme. Olida sat as if labouring with difficult visions. The noises of the street came faintly through the closed windows and a smell of garlic and cheap scent oppressed Campton's lungs and awakened old associations. With a final effort of memory he fixed his eyes on the clairvoyante's darkened mask, and tapped her palm once or twice. She neither stirred nor looked at him.
"I see—I see———" she began in the consecrated phrase. "A veil—a thick veil of smoke between me and a face which is young and fair, with a short nose and reddish hair: thick, thick, thick hair, exactly like this gentleman's when he was young. . ."
Mrs. Brant's hand trembled in Campton's. "It's true," she whispered, "before your hair turned grey it used to be as red as Georgie's."
"The veil grows denser—there are awful noises; ​there's a face with blood—but not that first face. This is a very young man, as innocent as when he was born, with blue eyes like flax-flowers, but blood, blood . . . why do I see that face? Ah, now it is on a hospital pillow—not your son's face, the other; there is no one near, no one but some German soldiers laughing and drinking; the lips move, the hands are stretched out in agony; but no one notices. It is a face that has something to say to the gentleman; not to you, Madame. The uniform is different—is it an English uniform? . . . Ah, now the face turns grey; the eyes shut, there is foam on the lips. Now it is gone—there's another man's head on the pillow. . . Now, now your son's face comes back; but not near those others. The smoke has cleared. . . I see a desk and papers; your son is writing. . .
"Oh," gasped Mrs. Brant.
"If you squeeze my hands you arrest the current," Mme. Olida reminded her. There was another interval; Campton felt his wife's fingers beating between his like trapped birds. The heat and darkness oppressed him; beads of sweat came out on his forehead. Did the woman really see things, and was that face with the blood on it Benny Upsher's?
Mme. Olida droned on. "It is your son who is writing—the young man with the very thick hair. He is writing to you—trying to explain something. Perhaps you have hoped to see him lately? That is it; he is telling ​you why it could not be. He is sitting quietly in a room. There is no smoke." She released Mrs. Brant's hand and Campton's. "Go home, Madame. You are fortunate. Perhaps his letter will reach you tomorrow."
Mrs. Brant stood up sobbing. She found her gold bag and pushed it toward Campton. He had been feeling in his own pocket for money; but as he drew it forth Mme. Olida put back his hand. "No. I am superstitious; it's so seldom that I can give good news. Bonjour, madame, bonjour, monsieur. I commend your son to the blessed Virgin and to all the saints and angels."
Campton put Julia into the motor. She was still crying, but her tears were radiant. "Isn't she wonderful? Didn't you see how she seemed to recognize George? There's no mistaking his hair! How could she have known what it was like? Don't think me foolish—I feel so comforted!"
"Of course; you'll hear from him to-morrow," Campton said. He was touched by her maternal passion, and ashamed of having allowed her so small a share in his jealous worship of his son. He walked away, thinking of the young man dying in a German hospital, and of the other man's face succeeding his on the pillow.