“Oh, he went off at once. To break the news to Louis’ mother in the country.”
“What difference would it have made in the war, if he’d just stayed on at his job in America?”
Boylston did not answer, and the two stood silent, looking out unseeingly at the black empty street. There was nothing left to say, nowadays, when such blows fell; hardly anything left to feel, it sometimes seemed.
“Well, I suppose we must go and eat something,” the older man said; and arm in arm they went out into the darkness.
When Campton returned home that night he sat down and, with the help of several pipes, wrote a note to Mrs. Talkett asking when she would receive him.
Thereafter he tried to go back to his painting and to continue his daily visits to the Palais Royal office. But for the time nothing seemed to succeed with him. He threw aside his study of Mme. Lebel—he hung about the office, confused and idle, and with the ever clearer sense that there also things were disintegrating.
George’s birthday party had been given up on account of young Dastrey’s death. Mrs. Brant evidently thought the postponement unnecessary; since George’s return she had gone over heart and soul to the “business as usual” party. But Mr. Brant quietly sided with George; and Campton was glad to be spared the necessity of celebrating the day in such a setting.
It was some time since Campton had seen his son; but the fault was not his son’s. The painter was aware of having voluntarily avoided George. He said to himself: “As long as I know he’s safe why should I bother him?” But in reality he did not feel himself to be fit company for any one, and had even shunned poor Paul Dastrey on the latter’s hurried passage through Paris, when he had come back from carrying the fatal news to young Dastrey’s mother.
“What on earth could Paul and I have found to say to each other?” Campton argued with himself. “For men of our age there’s nothing left to say nowadays. The only thing I can do is to try to work up one of my old studies of Louis. That might please him a little—later on.”
But after one or two attempts he pushed away that canvas too.
At length one afternoon George came in. They had not met for over a week, and as George’s blue uniform detached itself against the blurred tapestries of the studio, the north light modelling the fresh curves of his face, the father’s heart gave a leap of pride. His son had never seemed to him so young and strong and vivid.