A Son at the Front by Edith Wharton

"But even if they do mobilise: mobilisation is not war-_is_ it? " Mrs. Anderson Brant repeated across the teacups.

Campton dragged himself up from the deep armchair he had inadvertently chosen. To escape from his hostess's troubled eyes he limped across to the window and stood gazing out at the thick turf and brilliant flower-borders of the garden which was so unlike his own. After a moment he turned and glanced about him, catching the reflection of his heavy figure in a mirror dividing two garlanded panels. He had not entered Mrs. Brant's drawing-room for nearly ten years; not since the period of the interminable discussions about the choice of a school for George; and in spite of the far graver preoccupations that now weighed on him, and of the huge menace with which the whole world was echoing, he paused for an instant to consider the contrast between his clumsy person and that expensive and irreproachable room.

"You've taken away Beausite's portrait of you," he said abruptly, looking up at the chimney-panel, which was filled with the blue and umber bloom of a Fragonard landscape.

A full-length of Mrs. Anderson Brant by Beausite had been one of Mr. Brant's wedding-presents to his bride; a Beausite portrait, at that time, was as much a part of such marriages as pearls and sables.

"Yes. Anderson thought. the dress had grown so dreadfully old-fashioned," she explained indifferently; and went on again: "You think it's _not_ war: don't you?"

What was the use of telling her what he thought? For years and years he had not done that-about anything. But suddenly, now, a stringent necessity had drawn them together, confronting them like any two plain people caught in a common danger-like husband and wife, for example!

"It _is_ war, this time, I believe," he said.

She set down her cup with a hand that had begun to tremble.

"I disagree with you entirely," she retorted, her voice shrill with anxiety. "I was frightfully upset when I sent you that telegram yesterday; but I've been lunching to-day with the old Duc de Montlhéry-you know he fought in 'seventy-and with Lévi-Michel of the ‘Jour,' who had just seen some of the government people; and they both explained to me quite clearly -- "

"That you'd made a mistake in coming up from Deauville?"

To save himself Campton could not restrain the sneer; on the rare occasions when a crisis in their lives flung them on each other's mercy, the first sensation he was always conscious of was the degree to which she bored him. He remembered the day, years ago, long before their divorce, when it had first come home to him that she was always going to bore him. But he was ashamed to think of that now, and went on more patiently: "You see, the situation is rather different from anything we've known before; and, after all, in 1870 all the wise people thought till the last minute that there would be no war."

Her delicate face seemed to shrink and wither with apprehension.

"Then-what about George? " she asked, the paint coming out about her haggard eyes.

Campton paused a moment. "You may suppose I've thought of _that_."

"Oh, of course. " He saw she was honestly trying to be what a mother should be in talking of her only child to that child's father. But the long habit of superficiality made her stammering and inarticulate when her one deep feeling tried to rise to the surface.

Campton seated himself again, taking care to choose a straight-backed chair. "I see nothing to worry about with regard to George," he said.

"You mean -- ?"

"Why, they won't take him-they won't want him. with his medical record."

"Are you sure? He's so much stronger. He's gained twenty pounds. " It was terrible, really, to hear her avow it in a reluctant whisper! That was the view that war made mothers take of the chief blessing they could ask for their children! Campton understood her, and took the same view. George's wonderful recovery, the one joy his parents had shared in the last twenty years, was now a misfortune to be denied and dissembled. They looked at each other like accomplices, the same thought in their eyes: if only the boy had been born in America! It was grotesque that the whole of joy or anguish should suddenly be found to hang on a geographical accident.

"After all, we're Americans; this is not our job-" Campton began.