A Son at the Front by Edith Wharton

That morning the irrevocable stared at him from the head-lines of the papers. The German Ambassador was recalled. Germany had declared war on France at 6.40 the previous evening; there was an unintelligible allusion, in the declaration, to French aeroplanes throwing bombs on Nuremberg and Wesel. Campton read that part of the message over two or three times.

Aeroplanes throwing bombs? Aeroplanes as engines of destruction? He had always thought of them as a kind of giant kite that fools went up in when they were tired of breaking their necks in other ways. But aeroplane bombardment as a cause for declaring war? The bad faith of it was so manifest that he threw down the papers half relieved. Of course there would be a protest on the part of the allies; a great country like France would not allow herself to be bullied into war on such a pretext.

The ultimatum to Belgium was more serious; but Belgium's gallant reply would no doubt check Germany on that side. After all, there was such a thing as international law, and Germany herself had recognized it. So his mind spun on in vain circles, while under the frail web of his casuistry gloomed the obstinate fact that George was mobilised, that George was to leave the next morning.

The day wore on: it was the shortest and yet most interminable that Campton had ever known. Paris, when he went out into it, was more dazzlingly empty than ever. In the hotel, in the hall, on the stairs, he was waylaid by flustered compatriots-"Oh, Mr. Campton, you don't know me, but of course all Americans know _you_! "-who appealed to him for the very information he was trying to obtain for himself: how one could get money, how one could get hold of the concierge, how one could send cables, if there was any restaurant where the waiters had not all been mobilised, if he had any "pull" at the Embassy, or at any of the steamship offices, or any of the banks. One disordered beauty blurted out: "Of course, with your connection with Bullard and Brant"-and was only waked to her mistake by Campton's indignant stare, and his plunge past her while she called out excuses.

But the name acted as a reminder of his promise to go and see Mrs. Brant, and he decided to make his visit after lunch, when George would be off collecting last things. Visiting the Brants with George would have been beyond his capacity.

The great drawing-rooms, their awnings spread against the sun, their tall windows wide to the glow of the garden, were empty when he entered; but in a moment he was joined by a tall angular woman with a veil pushed up untidily above her pink nose. Campton reflected that he had never seen Adele Anthony in the daytime without a veil pushed up above a flushed nose, and dangling in irregular wisps from the back of a small hard hat of which the shape never varied.

"Julia will be here in a minute. When she told me you were coming I waited."

He was glad to have a word with her before meeting Mrs. Brant, though his impulse had been almost as strong to avoid the one as the other. He dreaded belligerent bluster as much as vain whimpering, and in the depths of his soul he had to own that it would have been easier to talk to Mr. Brant than to either of the women.

"Julia is powdering her nose," Miss Anthony continued. "She has an idea that if you see she's been crying you'll be awfully angry."

Campton made an impatient gesture. "If I were-much it would matter!"

"Ah, but you might tell George; and George is not to know. " She paused, and then bounced round on him abruptly. She always moved and spoke in explosions, as if the wires that agitated her got tangled, and then were too suddenly jerked loose.

"_Does_ George know?"

"About his mother's tears?"

"About this plan you're all hatching to have him discharged?"

Campton reddened under her lashless blue gaze, and the consciousness of doing so made his answer all the curter.

"Probably not-unless you've told him!"

The shot appeared to reach the mark, for an answering blush suffused her sallow complexion. "You'd better not put ideas into my head! " she laughed. Something in her tone reminded him of all her old dogged loyalties, and made him ashamed of his taunt.

"Anyhow," he grumbled, "his place is not in the French army."

"That was for you and Julia to decide twenty-six years ago, wasn't it? Now it's up to him."

Her capricious adoption of American slang, fitted anyhow into her old-fashioned and punctilious English, sometimes amused but oftener exasperated Campton.