A Son at the Front by Edith Wharton

The next morning Campton said to himself: "I can catch that goodbye look if I get it down at once -- " and pulled out a canvas before Mme. Lebel came in with his coffee.

As sometimes happened to him, the violent emotions of the last twenty-four hours had almost immediately been clarified and transmuted into vision. He felt that he could think contentedly of George if he could sit down at once and paint him.

The picture grew under his feverish fingers-feverish, yet how firm! He always wondered anew at the way in which, at such hours, the inner flame and smoke issued in a clear guiding radiance. He saw-he saw; and the mere act of his seeing seemed to hold George safe in some pure impenetrable medium. His boy was there, sitting to him, the old George he knew and understood, essentially, vividly face to face with him.

He was interrupted by a ring. Mme. Lebel, tray in hand, opened the door, and a swathed and voluminous figure, sweeping in on a wave of musk, blotted her out. Campton, exasperated at the interruption, turned to face Mme. Olida.

So remote were his thoughts that he would hardly have recognized her had she not breathed, on the old familiar guttural: "Juanito!"

He was less surprised at her intrusion than annoyed at being torn from his picture. "Didn't you see a sign on the door? ‘No admission before twelve' -- " he growled.

"Oh, yes," she said; "that's how I knew you were in."

"But I'm _not_ in; I'm working. I can't allow -- "

Her large bosom rose. "I know, my heart! I remember how stern you always were. ‘Work-work-my work! ' It was always that, even in the first days. But I come to you on my knees: Juanito, imagine me there! " She sketched a plunging motion of her vast body, arrested it in time by supporting herself on the table, and threw back her head entreatingly, so that Campton caught a glint of the pearls in a crevasse of her quaking throat. He saw that her eyes were red with weeping.

"What can I do? You're in trouble?"

"Oh, such trouble, my heart-such trouble! " She leaned to him, absorbing his hands in her plump muscular grasp. "I must have news of my son; I must! The young man-you saw him that day you came with your wife? Yes-he looked in at the door: beautiful as a god, was he not? That was my son Pepito! " And with a deep breath of pride and anguish she unburdened herself of her tale.

Two or three years after her parting with Campton she had married a clever French barber from the Pyrenees. He had brought her to France, and they had opened a "Beauty Shop" at Biarritz and had prospered. Pepito was born there and soon afterward, alas, her clever husband, declaring that he "hated grease in cooking or in woman" ("and after my Pepito's birth I became as you now see me"), had gone off with the manicure and all their savings. Mme. Olida had had a struggle to bring up her boy; but she had kept on with the Beauty Shop, had made a success of it, and not long before the war had added fortune-telling to massage and hair-dressing.

"And my son, Juanito; was not my son an advertisement for a Beauty Shop, I ask you? Before he was out of petticoats he brought me customers; before he was sixteen all the ladies who came to me were quarrelling over him. Ah, there were moments when he crucified me. but lately he had grown more reasonable, had begun to see where his true interests lay, and we had become friends again, friends and business partners. When the war broke out I came to Paris; I knew that all the mothers would want news of their sons. I have made a great deal of money; and I have had wonderful results-wonderful! I could give you instances-names that you know-where I have foretold everything! Oh, I have the gift, my heart, I have it!"

She pressed his hands with a smile of triumph; then her face clouded again.

"But six months ago my darling was called to his regiment-and for three months now I've had no news of him, none, none! " she sobbed, the tears making dark streaks through her purplish powder.

The upshot of it was that she had heard that Campton was "all-powerful"; that he knew Ministers and Generals, knew great financiers like Jorgenstein (who were so much more powerful than either Generals or Ministers), and could, if he chose, help her to trace her boy, who, from the day of his departure for the front, had vanished as utterly as if the earth had swallowed him.

"Not a word, not a sign-to me, his mother, who have slaved and slaved for him, who have made a fortune for him!"

Campton looked at her, marvelling. "But your gift as you call it. your powers. you can't use them for yourself?"

She returned his look with a tearful simplicity: she hardly seemed to comprehend what he was saying. "But my son! I want _news_ of my son, real news; I want a letter; I want to see some one who has seen him! To touch a hand that has touched him! Oh, don't you understand?"

"Yes, I understand," he said; and she took up her desperate litany, clinging about him with soft palms like medusa-lips, till by dint of many promises he managed to detach himself and steer her gently to the door.