A Son at the Front by Edith Wharton

A week or two later, coming home late from a long day's work at the office, Campton saw Mme. Lebel awaiting him.

He always stopped for a word now; fearing each time that there was bad news of Jules Lebel, but not wishing to seem to avoid her.

To-day, however, Mme. Lebel, though mysterious, was not anxious.

"Monsieur will find the studio open. There's a lady: she insisted on going up."

"A lady? Why did you let her in? What kind of a lady?"

"A lady-well, a lady with such magnificent furs that one couldn't keep her out in the cold," Mme. Lebel answered with simplicity.

Campton went up apprehensively. The idea of unknown persons in possession of his studio always made him nervous. Whoever they were, whatever errands they came on, they always-especially women-disturbed the tranquil course of things, faced him with unexpected problems, unsettled him in one way or another. Bouncing in on people suddenly was like dynamiting fish: it left him with his mind full of fragments of dismembered thoughts.

As he entered he perceived from the temperate atmosphere that Mme. Lebel had not only opened the studio but made up the fire. The lady's furs must indeed be magnificent.

She sat at the farther end of the room, in a high-backed chair near the stove, and when she rose he recognized his former wife. The long sable cloak, which had slipped back over the chair, justified Mme. Lebel's description, but the dress beneath it appeared to Campton simpler than Mrs. Brant's habitual raiment. The lamplight, striking up into her powdered face, puffed out her under-lids and made harsh hollows in her cheeks. She looked frightened, ill and yet determined.

"John -- " she began, laying her hand on his sleeve.

It was the first time she had ever set foot in his shabby quarters, and in his astonishment he could only stammer out: "Julia -- "

But as he looked at her he saw that her face was wet with tears. "Not-bad news? " he broke out.

She shook her head and, drawing a handkerchief from a diamond-monogrammed bag, wiped away the tears and the powder. Then she pressed the handkerchief to her lips, gazing at him with eyes as helpless as a child's.

"Sit down," said Campton.

As they faced each other across the long table, with papers and paint-rags and writing materials pushed aside to make room for the threadbare napkin on which his plate and glass, and bottle of _vin ordinaire_, were set out, he wondered if the scene woke in her any memory of their first days of gaiety and poverty, or if she merely pitied him for still living in such squalor. And suddenly it occurred to him that when the war was over, and George came back, it would be pleasant to hunt out a little apartment in an old house in the Faubourg St. Germain, put some good furniture in it, and oppose the discreeter charm of such an interior to the heavy splendours of the Avenue Marigny. How could he expect to hold a luxury-loving youth if he had only this dingy studio to receive him in?

Mrs. Brant began to speak.

"I came here to see you because I didn't wish any one to know; not Adele, nor even Anderson. " Leaning toward him she went on in short breathless sentences: "I've just left Madge Talkett: you know her, I think? She's at Mme. de Dolmetsch's hospital. Something dreadful has happened. too dreadful. It seems that Mme. de Dolmetsch was very much in love with Ladislas Isador; a writer, wasn't he? I don't know his books, but Madge tells me they're wonderful. and of course men like that ought not to be sent to the front."

"Men like what?"

"Geniuses," said Mrs. Brant. "He was dreadfully delicate besides, and was doing admirable work on some military commission in Paris; I believe he knew any number of languages. And poor Mme. de Dolmetsch-you know I've never approved of her; but things are so changed nowadays, and at any rate she was madly attached to him, and had done everything to keep him in Paris: medical certificates, people at Headquarters working for her, and all the rest. But it seems there are no end of officers always intriguing to get staff-jobs: strong able-bodied young men who ought to be in the trenches, and are fit for nothing else, but who are jealous of the others. And last week, in spite of all she could do, poor Isador was ordered to the front."

Campton made an impatient movement. It was even more distasteful to him to be appealed to by Mrs. Brant in Isador's name than by Mme. de Dolmetsch in George's. His gorge rose at the thought that people should associate in their minds cases as different as those of his son and Mme. de Dolmetsch's lover.