A Son at the Front by Edith Wharton

The next morning he said to George, over coffee on the terrace: "I think I'll drop in at Cook's about our tickets."

George nodded, munching his golden roll.

"Right. I'll run up to see mother, then."

His father was silent. Inwardly he was saying to himself: "The chances are she'll be going back to Deauville this afternoon."

There had not been much to gather from the newspapers heaped at their feet. Austria had ordered general mobilisation; but while the tone of the despatches was nervous and contradictory that of the leading articles remained almost ominously reassuring. Campton absorbed the reassurance without heeding its quality: it was a drug he had to have at any price.

He expected the Javanese dancer to sit to him that afternoon, but he had not proposed to George to be present. On the chance that things might eventually take a wrong turn he meant to say a word to Fortin-Lescluze; and the presence of his son would have been embarrassing.

"You'll be back for lunch? " he called to George, who still lounged on the terrace in pyjamas.

"Rather. -That is, unless mother makes a point. in case she's leaving."

"Oh, of course," said Campton with grim cordiality.

"You see, dear old boy, I've got to see Uncle Andy some time. " It was the grotesque name that George, in his babyhood, had given to Mr. Brant, and when he grew up it had been difficult to substitute another. "Especially now -- " George added, pulling himself up out of his chair.

"Now?"

They looked at each other in silence, irritation in the father's eye, indulgent amusement in the son's.

"Why, if you and I are really off on this long trek -- "

"Oh, of course," agreed Campton, relieved. "You'd much better lunch with them. I always want you to do what's decent. " He paused on the threshold to add: "By the way, don't forget Adele."

"Well, rather not," his son responded. "And we'll keep the evening free for something awful."

As he left the room he heard George rapping on the telephone and calling out Miss Anthony's number.

Campton had to have reassurance at any price; and he got it, as usual, irrationally but irresistibly, through his eyes. The mere fact that the midsummer sun lay so tenderly on Paris, that the bronze dolphins of the fountains in the square were spraying the Nereids' Louis Philippe chignons as playfully as ever; that the sleepy Cities of France dozed as heavily on their thrones, and the Horses of Marly pranced as fractiously on their pedestals; that the glorious central setting of the city lay there in its usual mellow pomp-all this gave him a sense of security that no crisscrossing of Reuters and Havases could shake.

Nevertheless, he reflected that there was no use in battling with the silly hysterical crowd he would be sure to encounter at Cook's; and having left word with the hotel-porter to secure two "sleepings" on the Naples express, he drove to the studio.

On the way, as his habit was, he thought hard of his model: everything else disappeared like a rolled-up curtain, and his inner vision centred itself on the little yellow face he was to paint.

Peering through her cobwebby window, he saw old Mme. Lebel on the watch. He knew she wanted to pounce out and ask if there would be war; and composing his most taciturn countenance he gave her a preoccupied nod and hurried by.