A Son at the Front by Edith Wharton

The killing of René Davril seemed to Campton one of the most senseless crimes the war had yet perpetrated. It brought home to him, far more vividly than the distant death of poor Jean Fortin, what an incalculable sum of gifts and virtues went to make up the monster's daily meal.

"Ah, you want genius, do you? Mere youth's not enough. and health and gaiety and courage; you want brains in the bud, imagination and poetry, ideas all folded up in their sheath! It takes that, does it, to tempt your jaded appetite? " He was reminded of the rich vulgarians who will eat only things out of season. "That's what war is like," he muttered savagely to himself.

The next morning he went to the funeral with Mrs. Talkett-between whom and himself the tragic episode had created a sort of improvised intimacy-walking at her side through the November rain, behind the poor hearse with the tricolour over it.

At the church, while the few mourners shivered in a damp side chapel, he had time to study the family: a poor sobbing mother, two anemic little girls, and the lame sister who was musical-a piteous group, smelling of poverty and tears. Behind them, to his surprise, he saw the curly brown head and short-sighted eyes of Boylston. Campton wondered at the latter's presence; then he remembered "The Friends of French Art," and concluded that the association had probably been interested in poor Davril.

With some difficulty he escaped from the thanks of the mother and sisters, and picked up a taxi to take Mrs. Talkett home.

"No-back to the hospital," she said. "A lot of bad cases have come in, and I'm on duty again all day. " She spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world; and he shuddered at the serenity with which women endure the unendurable.

At the hospital he followed her in. The Davril family, she told him, had insisted that they had no claim on his picture, and that it must be returned to him. Mrs. Talkett went up to fetch it; and Campton waited in one of the drawing-rooms. A step sounded behind him, and another nurse came in-but was it a nurse, or some haloed nun from a Umbrian triptych, her pure oval framed in white, her long fingers clasping a book and lily?

"Mme. de Dolmetsch! " he cried; and thought: "A new face again-what an artist!"

She seized his hands.

"I heard from dear Madge Talkett that you were here, and I've asked her to leave us together. " She looked at him with ravaged eyes, as if just risen from a penitential vigil.

"Come, please, into my little office: you didn't know that I was the _Infirmière-Major_? My dear friend, what upheavals, what cataclysms! I see no one now: all my days and nights are given to my soldiers."

She glided ahead on noiseless sandals to a little room where a bowl of jade filled with gardenias, and a tortoise-shell box of gold-tipped cigarettes, stood on a desk among torn and discoloured _livrets militaires_. The room was empty, and Mme. de Dolmetsch, closing the door, drew Campton to a seat at her side. So close to her, he saw that the perfect lines of her face were flawed by marks of suffering. "The woman really has a heart," he thought, "or the war couldn't have made her so much handsomer."

Mme. de Dolmetsch leaned closer: a breath of incense floated from her conventual draperies.

"I know why you came," she continued; "you were good to that poor little Davril. " She clutched Campton suddenly with a blue-veined hand. "My dear friend, can anything justify such horrors? Isn't it abominable that boys like that should be murdered? That some senile old beast of a diplomatist should decree, after a good dinner, that all we love best must be offered up? " She caught his hands again, her liturgical scent enveloping him. "Campton, I know you feel as I do. " She paused, pressing his fingers hard, her beautiful mouth trembling. "For God's sake tell me," she implored, "how you've managed to keep your son from the front!"

Campton drew away, red and inarticulate. "I-my son? Those things depend on the authorities. My boy's health. " he stammered.

"Yes, yes; I know. Your George is delicate. But so is my Ladislas-dreadfully. The lungs too. I've trembled for him for so long; and now, at any moment. " Two tears gathered on her long lashes and rolled down. "at any moment he may be taken from the War Office, where he's doing invaluable work, and forced into all that blood and horror; he may be brought back to me like those poor creatures upstairs, who are hardly men any longer. mere vivisected animals, without eyes, without faces. " She lowered her voice and drew her lids together, so that her very eyes seemed to be whispering. "Ladislas has enemies who are jealous of him (I could give you their names); at this moment someone who ought to be at the front is intriguing to turn him out and get his place. Oh, Campton, you've known this terror-you know what one's nights are like! Have pity-tell me how you managed!"

He had no idea of what he answered, or how he finally got away. Everything that was dearest to him, the thought of George, the vision of the lad dying upstairs, was defiled by this monstrous coupling of their names with that of the supple middle-aged adventurer safe in his spotless uniform at the War Office. And beneath the boiling-up of Campton's disgust a new fear lifted its head. How did Mme. de Dolmetsch know about George? And what did she know? Evidently there had been foolish talk somewhere. Perhaps it was Mrs. Brant-or perhaps Fortin himself. All these great doctors forgot the professional secret with some one woman, if not with many. Had not Fortin revealed to his own wife the reason of Campton's precipitate visit? The painter escaped from Mme. de Dolmetsch's scented lair, and from the sights and sounds of the hospital, in a state of such perturbation that for a while he stood in the street wondering where he had meant to go next.