 Chapter 8 of A Sun at the Front. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording for LibriVox by Mary Lou Capes Platt. A Sun at the Front by Edith Wharton. Chapter 8 That morning, the irrevocable stared at him from the headlines 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 Vessel. 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 mobilized. 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 mobilized, 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 Brandt and was only waked to her mistake by Campton's indignant stare and his plunge passed her while she called out excuses. But the name acted as a reminder of his promise to go and see Mrs. Brandt and he decided to make his visit after lunch when George would be off collecting last things. Visiting the Brandts 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 untitled 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. Brandt 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. Brandt than to either of the women. Julia's 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 would it matter? I, 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. Probably not, unless you've told him. The shot appeared to reach the mark for an answering blush suffused her shallow 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 26 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 often her 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. Brandt 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 friends. The maternal fiber stirred in her and made her more appealing than any elderly virgin on the warpath. 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 Brandts 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. Brandt lamented. The reassurance that Campton brought from Fortin-Lecluse, 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 Brandt 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 Brandt 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 Delonnet. 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 disheveled 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. Brandt, yes, I knew you gave orders that you were not into 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. Brandt because I'm here without a penny, literally. She dangled before them a bejeweled 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. Brandt 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 sang. Oh Mrs. Talcott murmured Mrs. Brandt, 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. Brandt. Then proceeding that her visitor continued to gaze at Campton she added, oh no this is Mr. Campton. John Campton, I knew it. Mrs. Talcott's eyes became devouring and brilliant. Of course I ought to have recognized 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 San Maritz. 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. Brandt to such confusion that she had made no attempt to detain him. His way of life lay so far apart from his former wives 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 costliest 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 unwiredly 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 untrammeled 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 airtight 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 weekend 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 Captain, Adele had told him, had been that of planning things ahead. Mr. Brandt think 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 Captain's inconsequences. As he reached the Place de la Concorde a news boy 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 blaggards, 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 exalted. 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 intentions of resisting. But what was that gallant declaration worth in face of Germany's brutal assault? A poor little country pledged to a guaranteed neutrality could hardly be expected to hold her frontiers more than 48 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 Campden'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 boys' feelings were visibly engaged. His voice shook as he burst out. Louis Destre'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 Campden pondered trying to think up pacifist arguments, remembering his own discussion with Paul Destre three days before. My dear chap, hasn't France perhaps gone about with a chip on her shoulder? Severn, for instance. Some people think. Damn Severn, haven't the Germans shown us what they are now? Belgium sheds all the light I want on Severn. They are not fit to live with white people, and the sooner they are 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 Campden 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 tete-a-tete for us this evening. Yes? Well, I can't. I'm going to chuck you. He smiled a little, his color rising nervously. For some people I've just run across who were awfully kind to me at Samaritz and in New York last winter. I didn't know they were here till just now. I'm awfully sorry, but I've simply got to dying with them. There was a silence. Campden 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 Campden'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 adieu to Adele. He went off whistling the waltz from the Rosencavalier and Campden returned to his own thoughts. He was still revolving them and 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 Campden's astonished outcry. But if England, or 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. Campden drew much comfort from the 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. Campden 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. End of chapter 8 Chapter 9 of A Son at the Front This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Chad A Son at the Front by Edith Wharton Chapter 9 George was gone when, with a last whistle and scream, his train had plowed its way out of the clanging station when the last young figures clinging to the rear of the last carriage had vanished and the bare rails again glittered up from the cindery tracks. Campton turned and looked about him. All the platforms of the station were crowded as he had seldom seen any place crowded and to his surprise he found himself taking in every detail of the scene with a morbid accuracy of observation. He had discovered during these last days that his artist's vision had been strangely unsettled. Sometimes, as when he had left Fortman's House, he saw nothing. The material world, which had always tugged at him with a thousand hands, vanished and left him in the void. Then again, as at present, he saw everything, saw it too clearly in all its superfluous and negligible reality instead of instinctively selecting and disregarding what was not to his purpose. Faces, faces, they swarmed about him and his overwrought vision registered them one by one. Especially, he noticed the faces of the women, women of all ages, all classes. These were the wives, mothers, grandmothers, sisters, mistresses of all those heavily laden tramples of French youth. He was stuck with the same strong cheerfulness in all. Some pale, some flushed, some serious, but all firmly and calmly smiling. One young woman in particular, he has looked well done. A dark girl in a becoming dress. Both because she was so pleasant to see and because there was such assurance in her serenity that she did not have to constrain her lips and eyes but could trust him to be what she wished. Yet he saw by the way she clung to the young artillery man from whom she was parting that hers were no sisterly farewells. An immense hum of voices filled the vast glazed enclosure. Campton caught the phrases flung up to the young faces piled one above another in the windows, words of motherly astonishment, little jokes, tender names, mirthful allusions, last callings out. Right often, don't forget to wrap up your throat. Remember to send a line to Annette. Bring home a Prussian helmet for the children. On les aura par mon vue. It was all bright, brave and confident. If Berlin could only see it, Campton thought. He tried to remember what his own last words to George had been, but he could not. Yet his throat felt dry on Thursday as if he had talked a great deal. The train vanished in a roar and he leaned against a pier to let the crowd flood by, not daring to risk his lameness in such a turmoil. Suddenly he heard loud subs behind him. He turned and recognised the hat and hair of the girl whose eyes had struck him. He could not see them now, for they were buried in her hands and her whole body shook with woe. An elderly man was trying to draw her away, her father probably. Come, come, my child. Oh, oh, oh, she hiccuffed, following blindly. The people nearest stared at her and the faces of a other woman grew pale. Campton saw tears on the cheeks of an old body in a black bonnet who might have been his own Madame Lebel. A pale lad went away weeping, but they were all afraid then, all in immediate deadly fear for the lives of their beloved. The same fear grasped Campton's heart, a very present terror such as he had hardly before imagined. Compared to it, all that he had felt hither too, seemed as faint as the sensations of a look around. His knees failed him and he grasped a transverse bar of the pier. People were leaving the station in groups of two or three who seemed to belong to each other. Only he was alone. George's mother had not come to bid her son goodbye. She had declared that she would rather take leave of him quietly in her own house than in a crowd of dirty people at the station. But then it was impossible to conceive of her being up and dressed and at the gerdule at five in the morning. And how could she have got there without her motor? So Campton was alone in that crowd which seemed all made up of families. No, not all. Ahead of him he saw one woman moving away alone. I'm recognised. Across the wilder of heads Adele Anthony's adamantine heart and tight knob of hair. Her Adele. So she had come too and had evidently failed in her quest not been able to fend away through the crowd and perhaps not even had a glimpse of her hero. The thought smoked Campton with compunction. He regretted hearing words when they had last met. Regretted refusing to down with her. He wished the barrier of people between them had been less impenetrable. But for the moment it was just us to try to force away through it. He had to wait till the crowd shifted to other platforms. Whence other trains were starting and by that time she was lost to sight. At last he was able to make his way through the throng and as he came out of his side entrance he saw her. She appeared to be looking for a taxi. She waved her son she had aimlessly. But no one who knew the Gerdilly would have gone around that corner to look for a taxi. Least of all the practical Adele. Besides Adele never took taxis. She travelled in the bowels of the earth or on the dizziest omnibus tops. Campton knew at once that she was waiting for him. He looked up to her and a guilty pink suffused her nose. You missed him after all he said. I oh no I didn't. You didn't but I was with him all the time. We didn't see you. No but I saw distinctly that was all I went for. She jerked back. He slipped his arms through hers. This crowd terrifies me. I'm glad you waited for me he said. He saw her pleasure. But she merely answered. Aren't you? Yes or hunger or something. Could we find a... They find one. I sat down among early clerks and shop girls. And a few dishevelled women with swollen faces whom Campton had noticed in the station. One of them he sat opposite an elderly man had drawn out a pocket mirror and was powdering her nose. Campton hated to see women powder their noses. One of the few merits with which he credited Julia Bratt was that of never having adopted these dirty modern fashions of continuing to make her toilet in private like a lady as people used to say when he was young but now the gestures charmed him for he had recognised the girl who had been sobbing in the station. How game she is I like that. But why is she so frightened he wondered for he saw that her chocolate was untouched while had shifted on her lips. Since his talk with Adamson he could not bring himself to be seriously alarmed. Fear had taken him by the throat for a moment in the station at the sound of the girl's sobs but already he had thrown it off. Everybody agreed that the war was sure to be over in a few weeks even Dastry had come round to that view. And with Forton's protection and the influences Anderson Brunt George was surely safe as safe as his depot as anywhere else in this precarious world Counten poured out Adele's coffee and drank off his own as if it had been champagne. Do you know anything about the people George standing with last night he inquired abruptly Miss Antony knew everything and everybody in the American Circle in Paris she was a clearing house of Franco-American gossip and it was likely enough that if George had special reasons for wishing to spend his last evening away from his family she would know why but the chance of her knowing what had been kept from him made Counten's question as soon as it was put seemed indiscreet and he added hastily not that I want she looked surprised no he didn't tell me some young man's affair I suppose she smirked absurdly her lashes eyes blinking under the pushback veil Counten's mind had already strayed from the question nothing bored him more than Adele doing the sad dog and he was vexed at having given her such a chance to be silly what he wanted to know was whether George had spoken to his old friend about his future about his own idea of his situation and his intentions and wishes of the grim chance which people with pro-pitiatory vagueness call anything happen had the boy left any word any message with her for anyone but it was just to speculate for if he had the old goose truest stale would never betray it by as much as a twitch of her lids she could look when it was a question of keeping a secret like such an impenetrable idiot that one could not imagine anyone's having trusted a secret to her Counten had no wish to surprise George's secrets if the boy had any but her parting had been so hopelessly Anglo-Saxon so curt and casual that he would have liked to think his son had left somewhere a message for him, a word, a letter in case there was anything premonitory in the sobbing of that girl at the next table but Adele's pink nose confronted him as guileless as a rabbits and he went out with her unsatisfied they parted at the door of the restaurant and Campdom went to the studio to see if there were any news of his maid servant Mariette he meant to return to sleep there that night and even his simple housekeeping was likely to be troublesome if Mariette should not arrive on the way it occurred to him that he had not yet seen the morning papers and he stopped and bought a handful negotiations, hopes fears, conjectures but nothing new or definite except the insolent fact of Germany's aggression and the almost certainty of England's intervention when he reached the studio he found Madame LaBelle in her usual place paler than usual but with firm lips and bright eyes her three grandsons had left for the debuts the day before and probably already on his way to Alsius another in the infantry the third in the heavy artillery she did not know where the two latter were likely to be sent her eldest son, their father was dead the second a man of 50 and a cabinet maker by trade was in the territorial and was not to report for another week he hoped before leaving to see the return of his wife and little girl who were in the wife's people, Madame LaBelle's mind was made up on her philosophy ready for immediate application it's terribly hard for the younger people but it had to be I come from Nancy once you I remember the German occupation I understand better than my daughter in law no one could tell how long civilian travels would be interrupted Madame LaBelle moved by her lodgers plight promised to find someone and camped him mounted to the studio he had left it only two days before on the day when he had vainly waited for Fortin and his dancer and an abyss already divided him from that banished time then his little world still hung like a straw above the eddy now it was spinning about in the central vortex the picture stood about untidily and he looked curiously at all those faces which belonged to the other life each bore the mark of its own immediate passions and interests no one betrayed the least consciousness of coming disaster except the face of poor Madame Dimitsch whose love had enlightened her Campton began to think of the future from the painter's point of view what a modeler of faces a great war must be what would the people who came through it look like he wondered his bell tingled and he turned to answer it he supposed he had caught a glimpse of his friend across the crowd and the saying of his nephew but had purposefully made no sign he still wanted to be alone and above all not to hear war talk Madame Nebell I ever had no doubt revealed his presence in the studio and he could not risk offending Dastry when he opened the door it was a surprise to see there instead of Dastry's anxious face the round rosy countenance of a well-dressed youth with a shock of fair hair above eyes of childish candour oh come in, Campton said, surprised but defining a compatriot in a difficulty the youth obeyed blessing his apologies I'm Benny Upshire, sir he said in a tone modest yet confident as if the name were an introduction oh, Campton stammered cursing his absent-mindedness and his unfeeling faculty for forgetting names you're a friend of George's aren't you, he risked yes, tremendous we were at Harvard together he was two years ahead of me ah, then you're still there Mr Upshire's blush became a mask of crimson well, I thought I was till this thing happened what thing? the youth stared at the older ma'am with a look of celestial wonder this war George has started already, hasn't he? yes, two years ago, so they said I looked up at him at the Krillin, I want it most awfully to see him if I had, of course, I shouldn't have bothered you my dear young man you're not bothering me but what can I do Mr Upshire's composure seemed to be returning as the necessary preliminaries were cleared away thanks a lot, he said of course, what I'd like best is to join his regiment join his regiment? you? Campton exclaimed oh, I know it's difficult I raced up from Barit's quick as I could to catch him he seemed still to be panting with the effort I want to be in this, he concluded Campton contemplated at him with helpless perplexity, but I don't understand, there's no reason in your case it's obligatory on the count of his being born here but I suppose you were born in America well, I guess so in Eureka, my mother was Madeleine May who I think were a sort of cousin sir, aren't we? of course, of course excuse my not recalling it, just at first but my dear boy, I still don't see Mr Upshire's powers of stating his case were plainly limited he pushed back, his rumpled hair looked hard again at his cousin and repeated doggedly, I want to be in this, this war he nodded Campton groaned what did the boy mean and why come to him with such comfoolery at that moment he felt even more unfitted than usual to deal with practical problems and in spite of the forgotten cousinship, it was no affair of his, what Madeleine May's son wanted to be in there was the boy himself, stolid immevable, impenetrable to hints and with something in his wide blue eyes like George and yet so charrously different, sit down have a cigarette, won't you you know, of course, Campton began that what you propose is almost insuperably difficult getting into George's regiment getting into French army at all for a foreigner, a neutral there's really nothing I can do Benny Upsher smiled indulgently I can fix that up alright, getting into the army I mean, the only thing that might be hard would be getting into his regiment oh, as to that out of the question I should think Campton was conscious of speaking curtly, the boy's bland determination was beginning to get on his nerves thank you, no end said Benny Upsher, getting up sorry to have butted in he added, holding out a large brown hand Campton followed him to the door to her plexidly, he knew that something ought to be done, but what on the threshold he laid his hand impossibly on the youth's shoulder look here my boy, we're cousins as you say and if you're Madeleine Mayhew's boy you're an only son moreover, you're George's friend which matters still more to me I can't let you go like this just let me say a word to you before a gleam of shrewdness flashed through Benny Upsher's inarticulate blue eyes a word or two against you mean why, it's awfully kind but not the least earthly use I guess I've heard all the arguments but all I see is that hulking Billy trying to do Belgium in England's coming in, ain't she well then, why ain't we England, why, why there's no analogy the young man groped for the right word I don't know, maybe not only in tight places we always do seem to stand together you're Madeleine, this is not our war do you really want to go out and butcher people? yes this kind of people, said Benny Upsher cheerfully you see, I've had all this talk from Uncle Harvey Mayhew a good many times on the way over he came out on the same boat he wanted me to be his private secretary at the Hague Congress, but I was pretty sure I'd have a job of my own to attend to Counten still couldn't have played at him hopelessly where is your uncle, he wondered Benny Grint, on his way to the Hague I suppose he ought to be here to look after you, someone ought to then you don't see your way to getting me into George's regimen Benny simply replied our later captain still seemed to see him standing there with obstinate soft eyes repeating the same senseless question it cost him an effort to shake off the vision he returned to the Krillin to collect his possessions on his table was a telegram and he seized it eagerly wondering if by some mad chance George's plans were changed and if he were being sent back if Fortin had already arranged something he tore open the message in red Eureka, July 31 new news from Benny, please do all you can to facilitate his immediate return to America, dreadfully anxious your cousin Madeline Upsher good lord, Counten groaned and I never even asked the boys address End of Chapter 9 Recording by Chad Chapter 10 of A Sun at the Front This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Chad A Sun at the Front by Edith Fortin Chapter 10 The war was 3 months old 3 centuries by virtue of some gift of adaptation which seemed forever to discredit human sensibility people were already beginning to live into the monstrous idea of it acquire its ways, speak its language regard it as a thinkable, insurable, arrangeable fact to eat it by day and sleep on it yes, and silently at night the war went on life went on Paris went on she had had her great hour of resistance when alone exposed and defenceless she had held back the enemy and broken his strength she had had afterward her hour of triumph the hour of marge then her hour of passionate and prayerful hope when it seemed to the watching nations that the enemy was not only held back but thrust back and victory finally in reach that hour had passed in its turn giving way to the grey reality of the trenches that the gorge was growing up in this new world there were trenches now there was a front people were beginning to talk of their sons at the front the first time john canton heard the phrase it sent a shudder through him winter was coming on and he was hunted by the vision of the youths out there boys of george's age thousands and thousands of them exposed by day in reeking and sleeping at night under the rain and snow people were talking calmly a victory in the spring the spring that was still six long months away and meanwhile what cold and wet, what blood and agony what shattered bodies out on that hideous front what shattered homes in all the lands it guarded canton could bear to think of these things now his son was not at the front was safe thank god to remain so during the first awful weeks of silence and uncertainty when every morning brought news of a fresh disaster when no letters came from the army and no private messages could reach it during those weeks while canton, like other fathers was without news of his son the war had been to him simply a huge featureless mass crushing him earthward blinding him letting him neither think nor move nor breathe but at last he had got permission to go to challenge whether fortin, who chance to have begun his career as a surgeon had hastily transferred the physician called from his incessant labours in a roughly impoverished operating room to which canton was led between rows of stretchers laden with livid blood splashed men had said kindly but with a shade of impatience that he had not forgotten that george's health did not warrant his being discharged from the army but that he was temporarily on a staff job at the rear and would probably be kept there if such and such influences were brought to bear then calling for hot water and fresh tiles the surgeon, vanished and canton made his way back with lowered eyes between the stretchers the influences in question were brought to bear and now that george was fairly certain to be kept at clerical work a good many miles from the danger zone canton felt less like an ant under a landslide and was able for the first time to think of the war as he might have thought of any other war objectively, intellectually almost as passionately as of history in the making it was not that he had any doubt as to the rights and wrongs of the case the painfully preserved equilibrium of the neutrals made a pitiful show now that the monstrous facts of the first weeks were known germany's diplomatic perfidy her savagery in the field her premeditated and systematised terrorising of the civil populations nothing could efface what had been done in belgium and luxembourg the burning of levant the bombardment of reams his successive outrages had arised and counted the same incredulous wrath as the rest of mankind but being of a speculative mind i'm fairly sure now that george would never lie in the mud and snow with the others he had begun to consider the landslide in its universal relations as well as in its effects on his private ant-ape his son's situation however was still his central thought that this lad who was meant to have been 3,000 miles away in his own safe warless country and who was regarded by the government of that country as having been born there as subject to her laws and entitled to her protection that this lad by the most idiotic of blunders a blunder perpetuated before he was born should have been dragged into a conflict in which he was totally unconcerned should become temporarily and arbitrarily the subject of a foreign state exposed to whatever catastrophes that state might draw upon itself this fact still seemed to count as unjust as when it first dawned on him that his boy's very life might hang on some torturous secret negotiation between the cabinets of Europe he still refused to admit that france had any claim on george any right to his time to his suffering or to his life he had argued it about 100 times with Adele Antony and I were to blame for not going home before the boy was born and God knows I agree with you but suppose we'd meant to go suppose we'd made every arrangement taken every precaution as my parents did in my own case got to Havera and Sherbrooke so I'm being told the steamer had broken her screwy or being prevented ourselves at the last moment by illness or accident or any sudden grab of the hand of God you'll admit we shouldn't have been to blame for that yet the law would have recognised no difference george would still have found himself a French soldier on the 2nd of last August because by the same kind of unlucky accident he and I were born on the wrong side of the Atlantic and I say that's enough to prove it's an iniquitous law a travesty of justice nobody's going to convince me that because a steamer may happen to break a phalanges of her screwy with the wrong time or a poor woman be frightened by a thunder storm France has the right to force an American boy to go and rot in the trenches in the trenches is George in the trenches Adele Anthony asked raising her pale eyebrows no, Canton thundered his fist crashing down among her teethings and all your word juggling convince me that he ought to be there he paused and stared furiously about the little lady like drawing room into which Miss Anthony's sharp angles were so incongruously squeezed she made no answer and he went on George looks at the thing exactly as I do has he told you so Miss Anthony inquired rescuing his take up and putting sugar into her own he has told me nothing to the contrary you don't seem to be aware that military correspondence is censured and that a soldier can always blurt out everything he thinks Miss Anthony followed his glance about the room and her eyes paused with his on her own portrait now in the place of honour over the mantelpiece where it hung incongruously above a miniaturie of China animals and a collection of trophies from the Marne I dropped in at the Luxembourg yesterday she said do you know whom I saw there? Anderson Brunt he was looking at George's portrait and turned as red as a beat you ought to do him a sketch of George someday after this Captain's face darkened he knew it was partly through Brunt's influence that George had been detached from his regiment and given a staff job in the Argonne but Miss Anthony's reminder annoyed him the Brunt's had acted through sheer selfish cowardice the desire to safeguard something which belonged to him, something that they valued as they valued their pictures and tapestries though of course in a greater degree whereas he, Captain, was sustained by a principle which he could openly avow and was ready to discuss with anyone he had the leisure to listen he had explained all this so often to Miss Anthony that the words rose again to his lips without an effort if it had been a national issue I should have wanted him to be among the first such as our having to fight Mexico for instance yes, or the moon for my part I understand Julia and Anderson better they don't care a fig for national issues they're just animals defending their cub there? thank you Captain explained well, poor Anderson really was a dry nurse to the boy who else was there to look after him for his beauties at the time she frowned life's a puzzle I see perfectly that if you'd let everything else go to keep George you'd never have become the great John Campton the real John Campton you were meant to be and it wouldn't have been half as satisfactory for you or for George either only in the meanwhile somebody had to blow the child's nose and pay his dentist and doctor and you ought to be grateful to Anderson for doing it aren't there bees or ants or something that are kept for such purposes Campton's lips were open to reply when her face changed and he saw that he had ceased to exist for her he knew the reason that look came over everybody's face nowadays at the hour when the evening paper came the old maid servant brought it in and lingered to hear the communique at that hour everywhere over the globe business and labour and pleasure if it still existed they would spend it for a moment while the hearts of all men gathered themselves up in a question and a prayer Miss Anthony sought for her and failed to find it with a shaking hand she passed the newspaper over to Campton violent enemy attacks in the region of and on the advanced slopes of the Grand Connaum have been successfully repulsed we have taken back the village of we have taken and the northeast of progress has been made in the region of enemy attacks in the and southeast of have also been repulsed in Poland the Austrian retreat is becoming general the Russians are still advancing in the direction of and have progressed beyond has been reoccupied and the whole railway system of Poland is now controlled by the Russian forces a good day oh, decidedly a good day at this rate we have taken back the people who talked of a winter in the trenches to be followed by a spring campaign true, the Serbian army was still retreating before superior Austrian forces but there too the scales would soon be turned if the Russians continued to progress that day there was hope everywhere the old maid servant went away smiling and Miss Anthony poured out another cup of tea and left it as eyes from the paper suddenly they lit on a short paragraph fallen on the field of honour one had got used to that with the rest used even to the bang of reading names one knew evoking familiar features young faces blotted out in blood young limbs convulsed in the fires of that hell called the front but this time camped and turned pale as knee gloriously fallen for France there followed a ringing citation fort and son, his only son was dead canton saw before him the honest bourgeois dining room so strangely out of caping with the rest of the establishment he saw the late August son slanting in on the grip about the table on the ambitious and unscrupulous great men the two quiet women hidden under his illustrious roof and the youth who had held together these three dissimilar people making an invisible home in the heart of all that publicity canton remembered his brief exchange of words with fort and on the threshold and his father's uncontrollable outburst for his mother and myself it's not a trifle having our only son in the war canton shut his eyes and leaned back sick with the memory this man had had a share in saving george but his own son he could not save what's the matter miss antony asked her hand on his arm canton could not bring the name to his lips nothing, nothing only this room's rather hot and i must be off any high he got up escaping from her solicitude and made his way out he must go at once to fortans for news the physician was still at cologne's but there would surely be someone at the house and canton could at least leave a message and ask where to write dusk had fallen his eyes usually faced on the beauty of the new Paris the secret mysterious Paris of veiled lights and deserted streets but tonight he was blind to it he could see nothing but fortans face hear nothing but his voice when he said our only son in the war he croaked along the pitch black street for the remembered outline of the house since no house numbers were visible and rang several times without result he was just turning away when a big, mud splashed motor drove up he noticed a soldier at the steering wheel then three people got out stiffily two women smothered one crepe and a haggard man in a dirty uniform canton stopped and fortan lyclues recognised him by the light of the motor lamp the four stood and looked at each other the old mother under her crepe appeared no bigger than a child ah, you know the doctor said canton nodded the father spoke in a firm voice it happened three days ago at sweep you've seen his citation and brought him into me at callons without a warning and too late i took off both legs but gangrene had set in ah, if i could have got hold of one of our big surgeons yes, we're just back from the funeral my mother and my wife they had that comfort the two women stood beside him like shrouded statues suddenly madham fortans deep voice came through the crepe that last day the day you came about your own son i think, i? yes, canton stammered in anguish, the physician intervened and now ma bon mer you're not to be kept standing you're to go straight in and take your t-zen and go to bed he kissed his mother and pushed her into his wife's arms goodbye my dear take care of her the woman vanished under the portico chair and fortan turned to the painter thank you for coming i can't ask you in i must go back immediately back to my work, thank god if it were not for that he jumped into the motor called out en route and was absorbed into the night end of chapter 10 recording by chad chapter 11 of a son at the front this is a libervox recording all libervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libervox.org recording by chad a son at the front by edith worton chapter 11 canton went home to his studio he still lived there shiflessly and uncomfortably for mariette had never come back from leal she had not come back leal had become a part of the occupied provinces from which there was no escape and people were beginning to find out what that living burial meant adel antony had urged canton to go back to the hotel but he obstinately refused what business had he to be living in expensive hotels when for the lord knew how long his means of earning a livelihood were gone and when it was his duty to save up for george he was definitely out of danger and whom he longed more than ever when the war was over to withdraw from the stifling atmosphere of his stepfather's millions he had been so near to having the boy to himself when the war broke out he had almost had in sight the pride day when he should be able to say look here, this is your own bank account now, you're independent for god's sake consider what you want to do with your life the war had put an end to that but only for a time if victory came before long canton's reputation would survive the eclipse his chances of money making would be as great as ever and the new george the george matured and disciplined by war would come back with a finer sense of values and a soul steeled against the vulgar opportunities of wealth meanwhile it behooved his father to save every penny and the simplest way of saving was to go on camping in the studio taking his meals at the nearest wine shop and entrusting his bed making and dusting to old madame lebel in that way he could live for a long time without appreciably reducing his savings madame lebel's daughter-in-law madame jul who was in arden with the little girl when the war broke out was to have replaced mariette but like mariette madame jul's never arrived and no word came from her or the child they too were in an occupied province so campton jogged on without a servant it was very uncomfortable even for his lax standards but the dread of letting a stranger loose in the studio made him prefer to put up with madame lebel's intermittent services so far she had born bravely her orphan grandsons were all at the front how that word had insinuated itself into the language but she continued to have fairly frequent reassuring news of them the chasseur alpain slightly wounded by alzès was safe in hospital and the others were well and wrote cheerfully her son jul the cabinet maker was guarding a bridge at Saint-Clo and came in regularly to see her but campton noticed that it was about him he seemed most anxious he was a silent industrious man who had worked hard to support his orphaned nephews and his mother and had married in middle age only four or five years before the war when the lads could shift for themselves and his own situation was secure enough to permit the luxury of a wife and baby madame jul had weirded patiently for him though she had other chances and finally they had married and the baby had been born and blossomed into one of those finished little french women who at four or five seemed already to be musing on the great central problems of love and thrift the parents used to bring the child to see campton and had made a celebrated sketch of her in her Sunday bonnet with little earrings and a wise smile and these two mother and child had disappeared on the second of august as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed them as campton entered he glanced at the old woman's den silently and said to himself she's a song clue again for he knew that she seized every chance of being with her eldest he unlocked his door and filled his way into the dark studio madame labelle might at least have made up the fire campton lit the lamp, found some wood and knelt down stiffly by the stove really life was getting too uncomfortable he was trying to coax a flame when the door opened and he heard madame really you know he turned to rebuke her but the words died on his lips she stood before him taking no notice then her shapeless black figure doubled up and she sank down into his own armchair madame labelle who even when he offered her a seat never did more than rest respectful knuckles on its back what's the matter what's wrong he exclaimed she shifted her aged face I came about your fire but I am too unhappy I have more than I can bear she fumbled vainly for a handkerchief and wiped away her tears with the back of her old laborious hand Jules has enlisted Montieux enlisted in the infantry he has left for the front without telling me good lord enlisted at his age is he crazy no Montieux but the little girl he's had news he waited to steady her voice and then fishing in another slit of her multiple skirts pulled out a letter I got that at midday I hurry to Saint-Claude but he left yesterday the letter was grim reading the poor father had accidentally run across and escaped prisoner who had regained the French lines near the village where madame Jules and the child were staying the man who knew the wife's family had been charged by them with a message to the effect that madame Jules a proud woman had got into trouble with the authorities and been sent off to a German prison on the charge of spying the poor little girl had cried and clung to her mother and had been so savagely pushed aside by the officer who made the arrest that she had fallen on the stone steps of the commandotour and fractured her skull the fugitive reported her as still alive but unconscious and dying Jules received this news the previous day and within 24 hours he was at the front guard a bridge at Saint-Claude after that all he asked was to kill and be killed he knew the name and the regiment of the officer who had denounced his wife if I live long enough I shall run the swine down he wrote if not I'll kill as many of his kind as God lets me but Anne LaBelle sat silent her head bowed on her hands and Canton stood and watched her instantly she got up passed the back of her hand across her eyes and said the room is cold I'll fetch some coal Canton protested don't know Madame LaBelle don't worry about me make yourself something warm to drink and try to sleep thank God for the work if it were not for that she said in the same words as the physician she hobbled away and presently he heard her bumping up again when the fire was started and the curtain is drawn and she had left him the painter sat down and looked about the studio bare and untidy as it was he did not find the sight unpleasant he was used to it and being used to things seemed to him the first requisite of comfort but tonight his thoughts were elsewhere he saw neither the tattered tapestries with their huge heroes and kings nor the blotched walls hung with pictures nor the canvases stacked against the chaired eggs nor the long littered table at which he wrote and ate and mixed his colours at one moment he was with foot on the clues speeding through the night toward fresh scenes of death at another loge downstairs where Madame LaBelle her days work done would no doubt sit down as usual by her smoky lamp and go on with her sewing thank God for the work they had both said and here Canton sat with idle hands and did nothing it was not exactly his fault what was there for a portrait painter to do? he was not a portrait painter only and on his brief trip to Cullons some of the scenes by the way gaunt unshorned faces of territorial at railway bridges soldiers grouped about a provision lorry a mud splash company returning to the rear a long grey train of 75 plowing forward through the train at these sites the old graphic instinct has stirred in him but the approaches of the front were sternly forbidden to civilians and especially to neutrals Canton was beginning to wince at the word he himself who had been taken to Cullons by a high official of the army medical board had been given only time enough for his interview with Fortin and brought back to Paris the same night if ever there came a time for art to interpret the war as raffet for instance had interpreted Napoleon's campaigns the day was not yet the world in which men lived a present was one in which the word art had lost its meaning and what was Compton what had he ever been but an artist a father yes he had waked up to the practice of the other art he was learning to be a father and now at a stroke his only two reasons for living were gone since the 2nd of August he had had no portraits to paint no son to guide and to companion other people he knew had fine jobs most of his friends had been drawn into some form of war work dastry after vain attempts to enlist Fortiby and untimely sciatica had found a post near the front on the staff of Red Cross Ambulance Adele Antony was working 8 or 9 hours a day in a depot which distributed food and clothing to refugees from the invader provinces a mrs. Brant's name figured on the committees of most of the newly organized war charities among Compton's other friends many had accepted humbler tasks some devoted their time to listing and packing hospital supplies keeping accounts in ambulance offices sorting out refugees at the railway stations and telling them where to go for food and help still others spent their days and sometimes their nights at the bitter cold suburban sightings where the long train loads of wounded stopped on the way to the hospitals of the interior there was enough misery and confusion at the rear for every civilian volunteer to find his task among them all Compton could not see his place his lameness put him at a disadvantage since taxi cabs were few and it was difficult for him to travel in the crowded metro he had no head for figures and would have thrown the best kept accounts into confusion he could not climb steep stairs to seek refugees nor should he have known what to say to them when he reached their Alex and so it would have been at the railway canteens he choked with rage and commiseration at all the sufferings about him but find no word to cheer the sufferers secretly too he feared the demands that would be made on him if he once let himself be drawn into the network of war charities tiresome women would come and beg for money or for pictures for bazaars they were already getting a bazaar's money he could not spare since it was his duty to save it for George and as for pictures why there were a few sketches he might give but here again he was checked by his fear of establishing a precedent he had seen in the papers that the English painters were already giving blank canvases to be sold by auction to millionaires in quest of a portrait but that form of philanthropy would lead to his having to paint all the unpaintable people who had been trying to bribe a picture out of him since his sudden celebrity no artist had a right to cheapen his art in that way it could only result in his turning out work that would injure his reputation were just his sales after the war so far Camden had not been troubled by many appeals for help but that was probably because he had kept out of sight and thrown into the fire the letters of the few ladies who had begged a sketch for their sales and his name for their committees on appeal however he had not been able to avoid about two months earlier he had had a visit from George's friend Bolston the youth he had met at Dastry's dinner the night before war was declared in the interval he had entirely forgotten Bolston but as soon as he saw the fat brown young man with a twinkle in his eyes and his hair, Camden recalled him and held out a cordial hand had not George said that Bolston was the best fellow he knew Bolston seemed much impressed by the honour of waiting on the great man in spite of his cool twinkling air he was evidently full of reverence for the things and people he esteemed and Camden's welcome sent the blood up to the edge of his tight curls it also gave him courage to explain his visit he had come to beg Camden to accept the chairmanship of the American committee of the Friends of French Art an international group of painters he proposed to raise funds for the families of mobilised artists the American group would naturally be the most active since Americans had in larger numbers than any other foreigners sought artistic training in France and all the members agreed that Camden's name must figure out their head but Camden was known to be inaccessible and the committee aware that Bolston was a friend of George's had asked him to transmit their request you see sir nobody else represents Camden thought as seldom as possible of what followed he hated the part he had played but after all what else could he have done everything in him recalled from what acceptance would bring with it publicity, committee meetings speechifying writing letters seeing troublesome visitors hearing harrowing stories asking people for money above all having to give his own a great deal of his own he stood before the young man abject, irresolute chinking a bunch of keys in his treasure pocket remembering afterward that the chink must have signed it as if it were full of money he remembered too oddly enough that his own embarrassment Bolston's vanished it was as though the modest youth taking his host's measure had reluctantly found him wanting and from that moment had felt less in awe of his genius illogical of course and unfair but there it was the talk had ended but Camden's refusing the chairmanship but agreeing to let his name figure on the list of honorary members where he hoped it would be overshadowed by rival glories having reached this conclusion he had limped to his desk produced a handful of notes and after a moment's hesitation held out 200 francs with the stereotype sorry I can't make it more he had meant it to be 250 but with his usual luck all his fumbling had failed to produce a 50 franc note and he could hardly ask Bolston to make a change on the threshold the young man paused for the last news of George and on Camden's assuring him that it was excellent at it with evident sincerity still hung up on that beastly staff job I do call that hard luck and now of all the unpleasant memories of the visit that phrase kept the sharp sting was it in fact hard luck and did George himself think so there was nothing in his letters to show it he seemed to have undergone no change of view as to his own relation to the war he had shown no desire to be in it as that young man Upsher said for the first time since he had seen George's train pull out of the Gardele Camden found himself wondering at the perfection of his son's moral balance so many things had happened since war had turned out to be more hideous and abominable than those who most abhorred war had dreamed it could be the issues at stake had become so glaringly plain right and wrong honour and dishonour, humanity and savagery faced each other so squarely across the trenches that it seemed strange to Camden that his boy so eager so impressionable, so quick on the uptake should not have felt some such burst of wrath as had driven even even perjure Lebel into the conflict the comparison of course was absurd Lebel had been parted from his dearest, his wife dragged to prison, his child virtually murdered, any man in his place must have felt the blind impulse to kill, but what was Lebel's private plight but a symbol of the larger wrong this war could no longer be compared to other wars, Germany was conducting it on methods that civilisation had made men forget, the occupation of Luxembourg, the systematic destruction of Belgium, the savage treatment of the people of the invader regions, the outrages of Levant and Reims and Ypres, the voice with which these offences cried to heaven had waked the indignation of humanity yet George in daily contact with all this woe and ruin seemed as unmoved still he had been behind a desk in the New York office of Bullard and Brunt, if there were any change to his letters it was rather that they were more indifferent his reports of himself became drier, more stereotyped his comments on the situation fewer, he seemed to have been subdued to the hideous business he worked in, it was true that his letters had never been expressive, his individuality seemed to dry up in contact with paper, it was true also that letters from the front were severely censured and that it would have been foolish to put in them anything likely to prevent their delivery but George had managed to send several notes by hand and these were as colourless as the others and so were his letters to his mother which Mrs Brunt always sent to Miss Anthony who privately passed them on to Campton, besides there were other mains of comparison, people with the front were beginning to hand about cobbies of their letters, a few passages strangely moving and beautiful had found their way into the papers, George gobbie blessed was not at the front but he was in the war zone far near the sights and signs of death than his father and he had comrades and friends in the trenches, strange that what he wrote was still so cold to the touch, it's the scientific mind I suppose these youngsters were all rather like beautifully made machines yet it had never before struck him that his son was like a beautifully made machine, he remembered that he had not dined and got up wearily, as he passed out he noticed on a pile of letters and papers a brand new card he could always tell the new cards by their whiteness which 24 hours of studio dust turned to grey, Campton held the card to the light, it was large and glossy, a beautiful thick pre-war card and on it was engraved, Harvey Mehue Delegue de Etta Unio Congra de Lepe with a pen stroke through the lower line, beneath was written an impressive PTO and reversing the card Campton read in an agitated hand, must see you at once call up Nuvu Lux and lower down, excuse your ridiculous card, impossible get others under 6 weeks so Mehue had turned up, well it was a good thing, perhaps he might bring news of that mad Benny Upsher whose doings had caused Campton so much trouble in the early days that he could never recall the boys obstinate rosy face without a stir of irritation, I want to be in this thing, well young Upsher had apparently been in it with a vengeance, but what he had cost Campton in cables to his distracted family and in wary pilgrimages to the war office the American Embassy, the consulate the prefecture of police and divers other supposed sources of information the painter meant some day to tell his young relative in no measured terms, that is if the chance ever presented itself for since he had left the studio that morning 4 months ago Benny had so completely vanished that Campton sometimes wondered with a little shiver, if they were ever likely to exchange words again in this world, Mehue will know, he wants to tell me about the boy I suppose he mused, Harvey Mehue Harvey Mehue with a pen stroke through the title which so short a time since it had been his chief ambition to display on his cards no wonder it embarrassed him now but where on earth had he been all this time, as Campton pondered on the card a memory flashed out, Mehue Mehue, why, wasn't it Mehue who had waylaid him in the Krillin a few hours before war was declared to ask his advice about the safest way of travelling to the Hague and hadn't he Campton in all good faith counseled him to go by Luxembourg in order to be out of the way of trouble, the remembrance swept away the painter's somber thoughts and he burst into a laugh that woke the echoes of the studio. End of Chapter 11, Recording by Chad Chapter 12 of A Sun at the Front This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Chad A Sun at the Front by Edith Wharton Chapter 12 Not having it in his power to call up his cousin on the telephone, Campton went the next morning to the Nouveau Luxe. It was the first time that he had entered the famous hotel since the beginning of the war and at sight of the long call his heart sank as it used to whenever some untoward necessity forced him to run its deadly blockade. But the hall was empty when he entered, empty not only of the brilliant beings of the soul with such dismay but also of the porters, footmen and list boys who even in its unfrequented ours linted the lustre of their liveries. A tired concierge sat at the desk and near the door a boy scout calling his bare legs about a high sill, raised his head languidly from his book. But for these two the world of the Nouveau Luxe had disappeared. As the lift was not running there was nothing to disturb their meditations and when Campton had learned that Mr Mayhew would receive him he started alone up the deserted stairs. Only a few dusty trucks remained in the corridors where luggage used to be piled as high as in the passages of the great liners on sailing day and instead of the murmur of ladies made skirts and explosions of laughter behind glazed service doors the swish of a charwoman's mop alone broke the silence. After all, Campton thought, if war didn't kill people how much pleasanter it might make the world. This was evidently not the opinion of Mr Harvey Mayhew whom he found agitatorily pacing a large room hung in shrimp pink brocade which opened on a vista of turquoise, tiling and porcelain tub. Mr Mayhew's round condonance composed of the same simple curves as his nephews had undergone a remarkable change. He was still round but he was ravished. His fringe of hair had grown grayer and there were crow's feet about his blue eyes and wrathful corrugations in his indignant forehead. He seized Campton's hands and glared at him three indignant eyeglasses. My dear fellow, I looked you up as soon as I arrived. I need you, we all need you. We need your powerful influence and your worldwide celebrity. Campton, the day for words, has gone by. We must act. Campton let himself down into an armchair. No verb in the language terrified him as much as that which his cousin had flung at him. He gazed at the ex-delegate with dismay. I didn't know you were here. Where have you come from? he asked. Mr Mayhew, resting a manicured hand on the edge of a gilt table, looked down awfully on him. I come, he said, from a German prison. Good Lord, you! Campton gasped. He continued to gaze at his cousin with terror but of a new kind. Here at last was someone who had actually been in the jaws of the monster, who had seen, heard, suffered a witness who could speak of that which he knew. No wonder Mr Mayhew took himself seriously. At last he had something to be serious about. Campton stared at him as if he had risen from the dead. Mr Mayhew cleared his throat and went on. You may remember our meeting at the Krillin on the 31st of last July it was, and my asking you the best way of getting to the Hague. In view of impending events, at that time, his voice took a note of irony. I was a delicate to the peace congrats at the Hague. I conceived it to be my duty to carry out my mandate of whatever personal risk. You advised me, as you may also remember, in order to be out of the way of trouble to travel by Luxembourg, Campton stirred uneasily. I followed your advice and not being able to go by train I managed with considerable difficulty to get permission to travel by motor. I reached Luxembourg as the German army arrived. The next day I was in a German prison. The next day when this pink and white man who stood there with his rimless eyeglasses and neatly trimmed hair and his shining nails reflected in the plate glass of the tabletop this perfectly typical, usual sort of harmless rich American had been for four months in the depths of the abyss that men were beginning to sound with fearful hearts. It is a simple Mr. Mayhew that I was not shot as a spy. Campton's voice choked in his throat where were you in prison the first night in the police commissariat with common thieves and vagabonds with Mr. Mayhew lowered his voice and his eyes with prostitutes, Campton. He waited for this to take effect and continued the next day in consequence of the energetic intervention of our council who behaved extremely well as I have taken care to let them know in Washington. I was sent back to my hotel on parole and kept there, kept there, Campton. I, the official representative of a friendly country under strict police surveillance like, like an unfortunate woman for eight days a week and one day over Mr. Mayhew sank into a chair and passed a scintid tanger chief in his forehead. When I was finally released I was without money without luggage, without my motor or my wrecked chauffeur. A Frenchman who had been instantly carried off to Germany in this state of destitution and without an apology I was shipped to Rotterdam and put on a streamer sailing for America He wiped his forehead again and the corners of his agitated lips Peace, Campton Peace that I believed in the thing called peace that I left Eureka always a difficult undertaking for me because I deemed it my duty in the interests of peace. The word became a hiss. To travel to the other side of the world and use the weight of my influence and my experience in such a cause he clenched his fist and shook it in the face of an invisible foe. My influence if I have any my experience I have had experience now, Campton and my God sir they shall both be used to my last breath to show up these people to proclaim to the world what they really are to rise public opinion in America against a nation of savages who ought to be hunted off the face of the globe like vermin like the vermin in their own prison cells Campton if I may say so without profanity I come to not bring peace but assort. It was some time before the flood of Mr May whose wrath subsided and before there floated up from its agitated depths some fragments of his subsequent history and present intentions eventually however Campton gathered that after a short sojourn in America where he found opinion too lukewarm for him he had come back to Europe to collect the experiences of the victims of German savagery Mr Mayhew in short meant to devote himself to atrocities and he had sought out Campton to ask his help and especially to be put in contact with persons engaged in refugee work and likely to have come across flagrant offences against the law of nations it was easy to comply with the latter request Campton scribbled a message to Adele Anthony at her refugee depot and he undertook also to find out from what officials Mr Mayhew might obtain leave to visit the front I know what's difficult he began but Mr Mayhew laughed I am here to surmint difficulties after what I've been through it was not until then that Mr Mayhew found time to answer an inquiry about his nephew Benny Upshur ha I'm proud of Benny he's a hero that nephew of mine he was always my favourite he went on to say that the youth having failed to enlist in the French army had managed to get back to England and there passing himself off as a Canadian born at Murray Bay sir wasn't it lucky had joined an English regiment and after three months training was now on his way to the front his parents had made great outcry moved heaven and earth for news of him but the boy had covered up this track so cleverly that they had had no word till he was starting for Boulogne with his draft rather high handed and poor Madeleine had nearly gone out of her mind but Mr Mayhew confessed he had no patience with such feminine weakness Benny's a man and must act as a man but Captain saw things as they were from the first Captain took leave dazed and crushed by the conversation it was all one to him if Harvey Mayhew chose to call on America to event his wrongs Captain himself was beginning to wish that his country would wake up to warps going on in the world but that he, Captain should be drawn into the affair should have to write letters accompany the ex-delegate to embassies and red crosses languish with him in ministerial anti chambers and be deafened with appeals to his own celebrity and efficiency that he should have ascribed to himself that mysterious gift of knowing the ropes in which his whole blundering career had proved him to be cruelly lacking this was so dreadful to him as to obscure every other question think the Lord he muttered I haven't got the telephone any how he glanced cautiously down the wide stairs of the hotel to assure himself of a safe retreat but in the hall an appealing voice detained him dear master dear great master I've been lying in wait for you a Red Cross nurse advanced not the majestic figure of a Crimean legend but the new version evolved in the Rue de la Paix short skirts, long ankles pearls and curls the face under the coiff was young with perpetual hurry of the aimless where had he seen those tragic eyes so full of questions and so invariably uninterested in the answers Tuckett I saw you at the day war was declared the young lady corrected herself Compton remembered their meeting at Mrs Brant's and was grateful for her evident embarrassment so few of the new generation seemed to wear that there were any privacies left to respect he looked at Mrs Tuckett more kindly he must come she continued on his arm her imperatives were always in italics just to step from here to my hospital there's someone asking for you for me, someone wounded what if it were Benny Upsher a cold fear broke over Compton someone dying Mrs Tuckett said oh nobody you know a poor young French soldier he was brought here two days ago and he keeps on repeating your name why, my name we don't know we don't think he knows you but he's shot to pieces and half delirious he's a painter and he's seen pictures of yours and keeps talking about them and saying he wants you to look at his you will come it's just next door you know he did not know having carefully avoided all knowledge of hospitals in his dread of being drawn into war work and his horror of coming as a mere spectator to gaze on agony he could neither comfort nor relief hospitals were for surgeons and women if he had been rich he would have given great sums to aid them being unable to do even that he preferred to keep a lift he followed Mrs Tuckett out of the hotel and around the corner the door of another hotel with a big red cross above it admitted them to a marble full of the cold smell of disinfectant an orderly sat reading a newspaper behind the desk the nurses whisked backward and forward with trays and pails a lady with a bunch of flowers came down the stairs drying her eyes captain's whole being recoiled from what awaited him since the poor youth was delirious what was the use of seeing him but women took a morbid pleasure in making one do things that were useless on an upper floor they paused at a door where there was a moment partying come Mrs Tuckett said he's a little better the room contained two beds in one lay a haggard elderly man with closed eyes and lips drawn back from his clenched teeth his legs stirred breathlessly and one of his arms was in a lifted sling attached to a horrible king of gallows above the bed it reminded captain of Chonde Borgoñas picture of the inquisition in the parade oh he's alright he'll get well it's the other the other lay quietly in his bed no gallows over hung him no visible bandaging showed his wound there was a flush on the young cheeks and his eyes looked out large and steady from their hollow brides but he was the one who would not get well Mrs Tuckett bent over him when it was lowered I've kept my promise here he is the eyes turned in the lads immovable head and he and captain looked at each other the painter had never seen the face before him a sharp irregular face prematurely hollowed by pain with thick chestnut hair tumbled above the forehead it's you master the boy said captain sat down beside him how did you know have you seen me before once at one of your exhibitions he paused and drew a hard breath but the first thing was the portrait at the Luxembourg your son ah you look like him the eyes of the young soldier lit up do I someone told me he was your son I went home from saying that and began to paint after the war would you let me come and work with you my things wait I'll show you my things first he tried to raise himself Mrs Tuckett slipped her arm under his shoulders and resting against her he lifted his hand and pointed to the bare wall facing him there there you see look for yourself the brush work not too bad eh I was getting it there that head my grandfather eh and my lame sister oh I'm young he smiled never had any models but after the war you'll see Mrs Tuckett let him down again and feverishly vehemently he began to describe one by one and over and over again the pictures he saw on the naked wall in front of him a nurse had slipped in and Mrs Tuckett signed to her out the boys seemed aware that the painter was going and interrupted his enumeration to say as soon as the war's over you'll let me come of course I will canton promised in the passage he asked can nothing see of him has everything possible been done everything we're also fond of him the biggest surgeons have seen him it seems he has great talent but he never could afford models so he has painted his family over and over again Mrs Tuckett looked at canton with a good deal of feeling in her changing eyes you see it did help you're coming I know you thought it tires him of me to insist she led him downstairs and into the office where a lame soldier with the quarter girl sat at the desk the officer wrote out the young soldier's name Rene d'Avril and his family's address they're quite desperate months here a lame sister who taught music a widowed mother and several younger children I'll come back I'll come back, canton again promised as he parted for Mrs Tuckett he had not thought it possible that he would ever feel so kindly to award her as at that moment then a second later she nearly spoiled it by saying dear master you see the penalty of greatness the name of Rene d'Avril with canton all day the boy had believed in him his eyes had been opened by the sight of George's portrait and now in a day or two more he would be filling a three by six stitch in a crowded graveyard at 20 and with eyes like George's what could canton do no one was less visited by happy inspirations the little acts of kindness recommended to his pious infancy and had always seemed to him far harder to think of than to perform but now some instinct carried him straight to the corner of the studio where he remembered having shoved out a half furnished study for George's portrait he found it examined it critically scribbled his signature in one corner and set out with it for the hospital on the way he had to stop at the ministry of war on Mayhew's tiresome business almost delayed there till too late to proceed with his errand before luncheon but in the afternoon he passed in again through the revolving plate glass and sent up his name Mrs. Tuckett was not there but a nurse came down to him with embarrassment he explained himself poor little d'Avril yes he's still alive will you come up his family are with him he shook his head and held out the parcel it's a picture he wanted the nurse promised it should be given she looked at Campton with a vague benevolence having evidently never heard his name and the painter turned away with a cowardly sense that he thought to have taken the picture up himself but to see the death change on a face so like a son's reflected in other anguished faces was more than he could endure he turned away the next morning Mrs. Tuckett wrote that Rene D'Avril was better that the fever had dropped and that he was lying quietly looking at the sketch the only thing that troubles him is that he realises now that you have not seen his pictures but he is very happy and blesses you for your goodness his goodness, Campton staring at the letter could only curse himself for his superiority he saw now that the one thing which might have comforted the poor lad would have been to have his own pictures seen and judged and that one thing he, Campton, so many years vainly a thirst for the approbation of the men he revered that one thing he had never thought of doing the way of attuning for his negligence was instantly to go out to the suburb where the D'Avril family left, Campton without a scruple abandoned Mr. Mayhew with him he had an appointment at the embassy and another at the war office and devoted the rest of the day to the expedition it was after six when he reached the hospital again and when Mrs. Tuckett came down he went up to her impetuously I've seen them I've seen his pictures and he's right, they're astonishing awkward still and hesitating but with such a sense of air and mass he'll do things may I go up and tell him he broke off and looked at her he died an hour ago if only you'd seen them yesterday she said, end of chapter 12 recording by Chad