A Son at the Front by Edith Wharton

Coming out of the unlit rainy March night, it was agreeable but almost startling to Campton to enter Mrs. Talkett's drawing-room. In the softness of shaded lamplight, against curtains closely drawn, young women dressed with extravagant elegance chatted with much-decorated officers in the new "horizon" uniform, with here and there among them an elderly civilian head, such as Harvey Mayhew's silvery thatch and the square rapacious skull of the newly-knighted patriot, Sir Cyril Jorgenstein.

Campton had gone to Mrs. Talkett's that afternoon because she had lent her apartment to "The Friends of French Art," who were giving a concert organized by Miss Anthony and Mlle. Davril, with Mme. de Dolmetsch's pianist as their leading performer. It would have been ungracious to deprive the indefatigable group of the lustre they fancied Campton's presence would confer; and he was not altogether sorry to be there. He knew that George had promised Miss Anthony to come; and he wanted to see his son with Mrs. Talkett.

An abyss seemed to divide this careless throng of people, so obviously assembled for their own pleasure, the women to show their clothes, the men to admire them, from the worn preoccupied audiences of the first war-charity entertainments. The war still raged; wild hopes had given way to dogged resignation; each day added to the sum of public anguish and private woe. But the strain had been too long, the tragedy too awful. The idle and the useless had reached their emotional limit, and once more they dressed and painted, smiled, gossiped, flirted as though the long agony were over.

On a sofa stacked with orange-velvet cushions Mme. de Dolmetsch reclined in a sort of serpent-coil of flexible grey-green hung with strange amulets. Her eyes, in which fabulous islands seemed to dream, were fixed on the bushy-haired young man at the piano. Close by, upright and tight-waisted, sat the Marquise de Tranlay, her mourning veil thrown back from a helmetlike hat. She had planted herself in a Louis Philippe armchair, as if appealing to its sturdy frame to protect her from the anarchy of Mrs. Talkett's furniture; and beside her was the daughter for whose sake she had doubtless come-a frowning beauty who, in spite of her dowdy dress and ugly boots, somehow declared herself as having already broken away from the maternal tradition.

Mme. de Tranlay's presence in that drawing-room was characteristic enough. It meant-how often one heard it nowadays! -that mothers had to take their daughters wherever there was a chance of their meeting young men, and that such chances were found only in the few "foreign" houses where, discreetly, almost clandestinely, entertaining had been resumed. You had to take them there, Mme. de Tranlay's look seemed to say, because they had to be married (the sooner the better in these wild times, with all the old barriers down), and because the young men were growing so tragically few, and the competition was so fierce, and because in such emergencies a French mother, whose first thought is always for her children, must learn to accept, even to seek, propinquities from which her inmost soul, and all the ancestral souls within her, would normally recoil.

Campton remembered her gallant attitude on the day when, under her fresh crape, she had rebuked Mrs. Brant's despondency. "But how she hates it here-how she must loathe sitting next to that woman! " he thought; and just then he saw her turn toward Mme. de Dolmetsch with a stiff bend from the waist, and heard her say in her most conciliatory tone: "Your great friend, the rich American, _chère Madame_, the benefactor of France-we should so like to thank him, Claire and I, for all he is doing for our country."

Beckoned to by Mme. de Dolmetsch, Mr. Mayhew, all pink and silver and prominent pearl scarf-pin, bowed before the Tranlay ladies, while the Marquise deeply murmured: "We are grateful-we shall not forget-" and Mademoiselle de Tranlay, holding him with her rich gaze, added in fluent English: "Mamma hopes you'll come to tea on Sunday-with no one but my uncle the Duc de Montlhéry-so that we may thank you better than we can here."

"Great women-great women! " Campton mused. He was still watching Mme. de Tranlay's dauntless mask when her glance deserted the gratified Mayhew to seize on a younger figure. It was that of George, who had just entered. Mme. de Tranlay, with a quick turn, caught Campton's eye, greeted him with her trenchant cordiality, and asked, in a voice like the pounce of talons: "The young officer who has the Legion of Honour-the one you just nodded to-with reddish hair and his left arm in a sling? French, I suppose, from his uniform; and yet -- ? Yes, talking to Mrs. Talkett. Can you tell me -- ?"

"My son," said Campton with satisfaction.

The effect was instantaneous, though Mme. de Tranlay kept her radiant steadiness. "How charming-charming-charming! " And, after a proper interval: "But, Claire, my child, we've not yet spoken to Mrs. Brant, whom I see over there. " And she steered her daughter swiftly toward Julia.

Campton's eyes returned to his son. George was still with Mrs. Talkett, but they had only had time for a word or two before she was called away to seat an important dowager. In that moment, however, the father noted many things. George, as usual nowadays, kept his air of guarded kindliness, though the blue of his eyes grew deeper; but Mrs. Talkett seemed bathed in light. It was such a self-revelation that Campton's curiosity was lost in the artist's abstract joy. "If I could have painted her like that! " he thought, reminded of having caught Mme. de Dolmetsch transfigured by fear for her lover; but an instant later he remembered. "Poor little thing! " he murmured. Mrs. Talkett turned her head, as if his thought had reached her. "Oh, yes-oh, yes; come and let me tell you all about it," her eyes entreated him. But Mayhew and Sir Cyril Jorgenstein were between them.