# A Son at the Front/Chapter 8

VIII
THAT morning the irrevocable stared at him from the head-lines of the papers. The German Ambassador was recalled. Germany had declared war on France at 6.40 the previous evening; there was an unintelligible allusion, in the declaration, to French aeroplanes throwing bombs on Nuremberg and Wesel. Campton read that part of the message over two or three times.
Aeroplanes throwing bombs? Aeroplanes as engines of destruction? He had always thought of them as a kind of giant kite that fools went up in when they were tired of breaking their necks in other ways. But aeroplane bombardment as a cause for declaring war? The bad faith of it was so manifest that he threw down the papers half relieved. Of course there would be a protest on the part of the allies; a great country like France would not allow herself to be bullied into war on such a pretext.
The ultimatum to Belgium was more serious; but Belgium's gallant reply would no doubt check Germany on that side. After all, there was such a thing as international law, and Germany herself had recognized it. . . So his mind spun on in vain circles, while under the frail web of his casuistry gloomed the obstinate fact that George was mobilised, that George was to leave the next morning.
​The day wore on: it was the shortest and yet most interminable that Campton had ever known. Paris, when he went out into it, was more dazzlingly empty than ever. In the hotel, in the hall, on the stairs, he was waylaid by flustered compatriots—"Oh, Mr. Campton, you don't know me, but of course all Americans know you!"—who appealed to him for the very information he was trying to obtain for himself: how one could get money, how one could get hold of the concierge, how one could send cables, if there was any restaurant where the waiters had not all been mobilised, if he had any "pull" at the Embassy, or at any of the steamship offices, or any of the banks. One disordered beauty blurted out: "Of course, with your connection with Bullard and Brant"—and was only waked to her mistake by Campton's indignant stare, and his plunge past her while she called out excuses.
But the name acted as a reminder of his promise to go and see Mrs. Brant, and he decided to make his visit after lunch, when George would be off collecting last things. Visiting the Brants with George would have been beyond his capacity.
The great drawing-rooms, their awnings spread against the sun, their tall windows wide to the glow of the garden, were empty when he entered; but in a moment he was joined by a tall angular woman with a veil pushed up untidily above her pink nose. Campton ​reflected that he had never seen Adele Anthony in the daytime without a veil pushed up above a flushed nose, and dangling in irregular wisps from the back of a small hard hat of which the shape never varied.
"Julia will be here in a minute. When she told me you were coming I waited."
He was glad to have a word with her before meeting Mrs. Brant, though his impulse had been almost as strong to avoid the one as the other. He dreaded belligerent bluster as much as vain whimpering, and in the depths of his soul he had to own that it would have been easier to talk to Mr. Brant than to either of the women.
"Julia is powdering her nose," Miss Anthony continued. "She has an idea that if you see she's been crying you'll be awfully angry."
Campton made an impatient gesture. "If I were—much it would matter!"
"Ah, but you might tell George; and George is not to know." She paused, and then bounced round on him abruptly. She always moved and spoke in explosions, as if the wires that agitated her got tangled, and then were too suddenly jerked loose.
"Does George know?"
"About his mother's tears?"
"About this plan you're all hatching to have him discharged?"
Campton reddened under her lashless blue gaze, ​and the consciousness of doing so made his answer all the curter.
"Probably not—unless you've told him!"
The shot appeared to reach the mark, for an answering blush suffused her sallow complexion. "You'd better not put ideas into my head!" she laughed. Something in her tone reminded him of all her old dogged loyalties, and made him ashamed of his taunt.
"Anyhow," he grumbled, "his place is not in the French army."
"That was for you and Julia to decide twenty-six years ago, wasn't it? Now it's up to him."
Her capricious adoption of American slang, fitted anyhow into her old-fashioned and punctilious English, sometimes amused but oftener exasperated Campton.
"If you're going to talk modern slang you ought to give up those ridiculous stays, and not wear a fringe like a mid-Victorian royalty," he jeered, trying to laugh off his exasperation.
She let this pass with a smile. "Well, I wish I could find the language to make you understand how much better it would be to leave George alone. This war will be the making of him."
"He's made quite to my satisfaction as it is, thanks. But what's the use of talking? You always get your phrases out of books."
​The door opened, and Mrs. Brant came in.
Her appearance answered to Miss Anthony's description. A pearly mist covered her face, and some reviving liquid had cleared her congested eyes. Her poor hands had suddenly grown so thin and dry that the heavy rings, slipping down to the joints, slid back into place as she shook hands with Campton.
"Thank you for coming," she said.
"Oh———" he protested, helpless, and disturbed by Miss Anthony's presence. At the moment his former wife's feelings were more intelligible to him than his friend's: the maternal fibre stirred in her, and made her more appealing than any elderly virgin on the war-path.
"I'm off, my dears," said the elderly virgin, as if guessing his thought. Her queer shallow eyes included them both in a sweeping glance, and she flung back from the threshold: "Be careful of what you say to George."
What they had to say to each other did not last many minutes. The Brants had made various efforts, but had been baffled on all sides by the general agitation and confusion. In high quarters the people they wanted to see were inaccessible; and those who could be reached lent but a distracted ear. The Ambassador had at once declared that he could do nothing; others vaguely promised they "would see"—but hardly seemed to hear what they were being asked.
​"And meanwhile time is passing—and he's going!" Mrs. Brant lamented.
The reassurance that Campton brought from Fortin-Lescluze, vague though it was, came to her as a miraculous promise, and raised Campton suddenly in her estimation. She looked at him with a new confidence, and he could almost hear her saying to Brant, as he had so often heard her say to himself: "You never seem able to get anything done. I don't know how other people manage."
Her gratitude gave him the feeling of having been engaged in something underhand and pusillanimous. He made haste to take leave, after promising to pass on any word he might receive from the physician; but he reminded her that he was not likely to hear anything till George had been for some days at his base.
She acknowledged the probability of this, and clung to him with trustful eyes. She was much disturbed by the preposterous fact that the Government had already requisitioned two of the Brant motors, and Campton had an idea that, dazzled by his newly-developed capacity to "manage," she was about to implore him to rescue from the clutches of the authorities her Rolls-Royce and Anderson's Delaunay.
He was hastening to leave when the door again opened. A rumpled-looking maid peered in, evidently perplexed, and giving way doubtfully to a young woman who entered with a rush, and then paused as if she too ​were doubtful. She was pretty in an odd dishevelled way, and with her elaborate clothes and bewildered look she reminded Campton of a fashion-plate torn from its page and helplessly blown about the world. He had seen the same type among his compatriots any number of times in the last days.
"Oh, Mrs. Brant—yes, I know you gave orders that you were not in to anybody, but I just wouldn't listen, and it's not that poor woman's fault," the visitor began, in a plaintive staccato which matched her sad eyes and her fluttered veils.
"You see, I simply had to get hold of Mr. Brant, because I'm here without a penny—literally!" She dangled before them a bejewelled mesh-bag. "And in a hotel where they don't know me. And at the bank they wouldn't listen to me, and they said Mr. Brant wasn't there, though of course I suppose he was; so I said to the cashier: `Very well, then, I'll simply go to the Avenue Marigny and batter in his door—unless you'd rather I jumped into the Seine?'"
"Oh, Mrs. Talkett———" murmured Mrs. Brant.
"Really: it's a case of my money or my life!" the young lady continued with a studied laugh. She stood between them, artificial and yet so artless, conscious of intruding but evidently used to having her intrusions pardoned; and her large eyes turned interrogatively to Campton.
"Of course my husband will do all he can for you. ​I'll telephone," said Mrs. Brant; then, perceiving that her visitor continued to gaze at Campton, she added: "Oh, no, this is not. . . this is Mr. Campton."
"John Campton? I knew it!" Mrs. Talkett's eyes became devouring and brilliant. "Of course I ought to have recognised you at once—from your photographs. I have one pinned up in my room. But I was so flurried when I came in." She detained the painter's hand. "Do forgive me! For years I've dreamed of your doing me . . . you see, I paint a little myself. . . but it's ridiculous to speak of such things now." She added, as if she were risking something: "I knew your son at St. Moritz. We saw a great deal of him there, and in New York last winter."
"Ah———" said Campton, bowing awkwardly.
"Cursed fools—all women," he anathematized her on the way downstairs.
In the street, however, he felt grateful to her for reducing Mrs. Brant to such confusion that she had made no attempt to detain him. His way of life lay so far apart from his former wife's that they had hardly ever been exposed to accidents of the kind, and he saw that Julia's embarrassment kept all its freshness.
The fact set him thinking curiously of what her existence had been since they had parted. She had long since forgotten her youthful art-jargon to learn others more consonant to her tastes. As the wife of the powerful American banker she dispensed the cost​liest hospitality with the simple air of one who has never learnt that human life may be sustained without the aid of orchids and champagne. With guests either brought up in the same convictions or bent on acquiring them she conversed earnestly and unweariedly about motors, clothes and morals; but perhaps her most stimulating hours were those brightened by the weekly visit of the Rector of her parish. With happy untrammelled hands she was now free to rebuild to her own measure a corner of the huge wicked welter of Paris; and immediately it became as neat, as empty, as air-tight as her own immaculate drawing-room. There he seemed to see her, throning year after year in an awful emptiness of wealth and luxury and respectability, seeing only dull people, doing only dull things, and fighting feverishly to defend the last traces of a beauty which had never given her anything but the tamest and most unprofitable material prosperity.
"She's never even had the silly kind of success she wanted—poor Julia!" he mused, wondering that she had been able to put into her life so few of the sensations which can be bought by wealth and beauty. "And now what will be left—how on earth will she fit into a war?"
He was sure all her plans had been made for the coming six months: her week-end sets of heavy millionaires secured for Deauville, and after that for the shooting at the big château near Compiègne, and three ​weeks reserved for Biarritz before the return to Paris in January. One of the luxuries Julia had most enjoyed after her separation from Campton (Adele had told him) had been that of planning things ahead: Mr. Brant, thank heaven, was not impulsive. And now here was this black bolt of war falling among all her carefully balanced arrangements with a crash more violent than any of Campton's inconsequences!
As he reached the Place de la Concorde a newsboy passed with the three o'clock papers, and he bought one and read of the crossing of Luxembourg and the invasion of Belgium. The Germans were arrogantly acting up to their menace: heedless of international law, they were driving straight for France and England by the road they thought the most accessible. . .
In the hotel he found George, red with rage, devouring the same paper: the boy's whole look was changed."The howling blackguards! The brigands! This isn't war—it's simple murder!"
The two men stood and stared at each other. "Will England stand it?" sprang to their lips at the same moment.
Never—never! England would never permit such a violation of the laws regulating the relations between civilized peoples. They began to say both together that after all perhaps it was the best thing that could have happened, since, if there had been the least hesitation or reluctance in any section of English opinion, ​this abominable outrage would instantly sweep it away.
"They've been too damned clever for once!" George exulted. "France is saved—that's certain anyhow!"
Yes; France was saved if England could put her army into the field at once. But could she? Oh, for the Channel tunnel at this hour! Would this lesson at last cure England of her obstinate insularity? Belgium had announced her intention of resisting; but what was that gallant declaration worth in face of Germany's brutal assault? A poor little country pledged to a guarranteed neutrality could hardly be expected to hold her frontiers more than forty-eight hours against the most powerful army in Europe. And what a narrow strip Belgium was, viewed as an outpost of France!
These thoughts, racing through Campton's mind, were swept out of it again by his absorbing preoccupation. What effect would the Belgian affair have on George's view of his own participation in the war? For the first time the boy's feelings were visibly engaged; his voice shook as he burst out: "Louis Dastrey's right: this kind of thing has got to stop. We shall go straight back to cannibalism if it doesn't.— God, what hounds!"
Yes, but—Campton pondered, tried to think up Pacifist arguments, remembered his own discussion with Paul Dastrey three days before. "My dear chap, hasn't ​France perhaps gone about with a chip on her shoulder? Saverne, for instance: some people think———"
"Damn Saverne! Haven't the Germans shown us what they are now? Belgium sheds all the light I want on Saverne. They're not fit to live with white people, and the sooner they're shown it the better."
"Well, France and Russia and England are here to show them."
George laughed. "Yes, and double quick."
Both were silent again, each thinking his own thoughts. They were apparently the same, for just as Campton was about to ask where George had decided that they should take their last dinner, the young man said abruptly: "Look here. Dad; I'd planned a little tête-à-tête for us this evening."
"Yes———?"
"Well—I can't. I'm going to chuck you." He smiled a little, his colour rising nervously. "For some people I've just run across—who were awfully kind to me at St. Moritz—and in New York last winter. I didn't know they were here till. . . till just now. I'm awfully sorry; but I've simply got to dine with them."
There was a silence. Campton stared out over his son's shoulder at the great sunlit square. "Oh, all right," he said briskly.
This—on George's last night!
"You don't mind much, do you? I'll be back early, for a last pow-wow on the terrace." George paused, ​and finally brought out: "You see, it really wouldn't have done to tell mother that I was deserting her on my last evening because I was dining with you!"
A weight was lifted from Campton's heart, and he felt ashamed of having failed to guess the boy's real motive.
"My dear fellow, naturally . . . quite right. And you can stop in and see your mother on the way home. You'll find me here whenever you turn up."
George looked relieved. "Thanks a lot—you always know. And now for my adieux to Adele."
He went off whistling the waltz from the Rosenkavalier, and Campton returned to his own thoughts.
He was still revolving them when he went upstairs after a solitary repast in the confused and servantless dining-room. Adele Anthony had telephoned to him to come and dine—after seeing George, he supposed; but he had declined. He wanted to be with his boy, or alone.
As he left the dining-room he ran across Adamson, the American newspaper correspondent, who had lived for years in Paris and was reputed to have "inside information." Adamson was grave but confident. In his opinion Russia would probably not get to Berlin before November (he smiled at Campton's astonished outcry); but if England—oh, they were sure of England!—could get her army over without delay, the whole ​business would very likely be settled before that, in one big battle in Belgium. (Yes—poor Belgium, indeed!) Anyhow, in the opinion of the military experts the war was not likely to last more than three or four months; and of course, even if things went badly on the western front, which was highly unlikely, there was Russia to clench the business as soon as her huge forces got in motion. Campton drew much comfort from this sober view of the situation, midway between that of the optimists who knew Russia would be in Berlin in three weeks, and of those who saw the Germans in Calais even sooner. Adamson was a level-headed fellow, who weighed what he said and pinned his faith to facts.
Campton managed to evade several people whom he saw lurking for him, and mounted to his room. On the terrace, alone with the serene city, his confidence grew, and he began to feel more and more sure that, whatever happened, George was likely to be kept out of the fighting till the whole thing was over. With such formidable forces closing in on her it was fairly obvious that Germany must succumb before half or even a quarter of the allied reserves had been engaged. Sustained by the thought, he let his mind hover tenderly over George's future, and the effect on his character of this brief and harmless plunge into a military career.