The killing1 of René Davril seemed to Campton one of the most senseless crimes the war had yet perpetrated. It brought home to him, far more vividly2 than the distant death of poor Jean Fortin, what an incalculable sum of gifts and virtues3 went to make up the monster’s daily meal.
“Ah, you want genius, do you? Mere4 youth’s not enough ... and health and gaiety and courage; you want brains in the bud, imagination and poetry, ideas 151all folded up in their sheath! It takes that, does it, to tempt5 your jaded7 appetite?” He was reminded of the rich vulgarians who will eat only things out of season. “That’s what war is like,” he muttered savagely8 to himself.
The next morning he went to the funeral with Mrs. Talkett—between whom and himself the tragic9 episode had created a sort of improvised10 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 chapel11, he had time to study the family: a poor sobbing12 mother, two anæmic little girls, and the lame13 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 spoke14 as if it were the most natural thing in the world; and he shuddered15 at the serenity16 with which women endure the unendurable.
152At 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 nun17 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 ravaged18 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 upheavals19, what cataclysms20! I see no one now: all my days and nights are given to my soldiers.”
She glided21 ahead on noiseless sandals to a little room where a bowl of jade6 filled with gardenias22, 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 153a heart,” he thought, “or the war couldn’t have made her so much handsomer.”
“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 justify24 such horrors? Isn’t it abominable25 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 liturgical26 scent27 enveloping28 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 implored29, “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 stammered30.
“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 lashes31 and rolled down ... “at any moment he may be taken from the War Office, where he’s doing invaluable32 work, and forced into all that blood and horror; he may be brought back to me like those poor creatures upstairs, who are 154hardly 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 intriguing33 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 defiled34 by this monstrous35 coupling of their names with that of the supple36 middle-aged37 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 precipitate38 visit? The painter escaped from Mme. de Dolmetsch’s scented39 lair40, 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.
155He had his own reasons for agreeing to the Davrils’ suggestion that the picture should be returned to him; and presently these reasons came back. “They’d never dare to sell it themselves; but why shouldn’t I sell it for them?” he had thought, remembering their denuded41 rooms, and the rusty42 smell of the women’s mourning. It cost him a pang43 to part with a study of his boy; but he was in a superstitious44 and expiatory45 mood, and eager to act on it.
He remembered having been told by Boylston that “The Friends of French Art” had their office in the Palais Royal, and he made his way through the deserted46 arcades47 to the door of a once-famous restaurant.
Behind the plate-glass windows young women with rolled-up sleeves and straw in their hair were delving48 in packing-cases, while, divided from them by an improvised partition, another group were busy piling on the cloak-room shelves garments such as had never before dishonoured49 them.
Campton stood fascinated by the sight of the things these young women were sorting: pink silk combinations, sporting ulsters in glaring black and white checks, straw hats wreathed with last summer’s sunburnt flowers, high-heeled satin shoes split on the instep, and fringed and bugled50 garments that suggested obsolete51 names like “dolman” and “mantle,” and looked like the costumes dug out of a country-house attic52 by amateurs preparing to play “Caste.” Was it possible 156that “The Friends of French Art” proposed to clothe the families of fallen artists in these prehistoric53 properties?
Boylston appeared, flushed and delighted (and with straw in his hair also), and led his visitor up a corkscrew stair. They passed a room where a row of people in shabby mourning like that of the Davril family sat on restaurant chairs before a caissière’s desk; and at the desk Campton saw Miss Anthony, her veil pushed back and a card-catalogue at her elbow, listening to a young woman who was dramatically stating her case.
Boylston saw Campton’s surprise, and said: “Yes, we’re desperately54 short-handed, and Miss Anthony has deserted her refugees for a day or two to help me to straighten things out.”
His own office was in a faded cabinet particulier where the dinner-table had been turned into a desk, and the weak-springed divan55 was weighed down under suits of ready-made clothes bearing the label of a wholesale56 clothier.
“These are the things we really give them; but they cost a lot of money to buy,” Boylston explained. On the divan sat a handsomely dressed elderly lady with a long emaciated57 face and red eyes, who rose as they entered. Boylston spoke to her in an undertone and led her into another cabinet, where Campton saw her tragic figure sink down on the sofa, under a glass scrawled58 with amorous59 couplets.
157“That was Mme. Beausite.... You didn’t recognize her? Poor thing! Her youngest boy is blind: his eyes were put out by a shell. She is very unhappy, and she comes here and helps now and then. Beausite? Oh no, we never see him. He’s only our Honorary President.”
Boylston obviously spoke without afterthought; but Campton felt the sting. He too was on the honorary committee.
“Poor woman! What? The young fellow who did Cubist things? I hadn’t heard....” He remembered the cruel rumour60 that Beausite, when his glory began to wane61, had encouraged his three sons in three different lines of art, so that there might always be a Beausite in the fashion.... “You must have to listen to pretty ghastly stories here,” he said.
The young man nodded, and Campton, with less embarrassment62 than he had expected, set forth63 his errand. In that atmosphere it seemed natural to be planning ways of relieving misery64, and Boylston at once put him at his ease by looking pleased but not surprised.
“You mean to sell the sketch65, sir? That will put the Davrils out of anxiety for a long time; and they’re in a bad way, as you saw.” Boylston undid66 the parcel, with a respectful: “May I?” and put the canvas on a chair. He gazed at it for a few moments, the blood rising sensitively over his face till it reached his tight ridge67 of hair. Campton remembered what George had 158said of his friend’s silent admirations; he was glad the young man did not speak.
When he did, it was to say with a businesslike accent: “We’re trying to get up an auction68 of pictures and sketches—and if we could lead off with this....”
It was Campton’s turn to redden. The possibility was one he had not thought of. If the picture were sold at auction, Anderson Brant would be sure to buy it! But he could not say this to Boylston. He hesitated, and the other, who seemed quick at feeling his way, added at once: “But perhaps you’d rather sell it privately69? In that case we should get the money sooner.”
It was just the right thing to say: and Campton thanked him and picked up his sketch. At the door he hesitated, feeling that it became a member of the honorary committee to add something more.
“How are you getting on? Getting all the help you need?”
Boylston smiled. “We need such a lot. People have been very generous: we’ve had several big sums. But look at those ridiculous clothes downstairs—we get boxes and boxes of such rubbish! And there are so many applicants70, and such hard cases. Take those poor Davrils, for instance. The lame Davril girl has a talent for music: plays the violin. Well, what good does it do her now? The artists are having an awful time. If this war goes on much longer, it won’t be only at the front that they’ll die.”
159“Ah——” said Campton. “Well, I’ll take this to a dealer——”
On the way down he turned in to greet Miss Anthony. She looked up in surprise, her tired face haloed in tumbling hairpins71; but she was too busy to do more than nod across the group about her desk.
At his offer to take her home she shook her head. “I’m here till after seven. Mr. Boylston and I are nearly snowed under. We’ve got to go down presently and help unpack72; and after that I’m due at my refugee canteen at the Nord. It’s my night shift.”
Campton, on the way back to Montmartre, fell to wondering if such excesses of altruism73 were necessary, or a mere vain overflow74 of energy. He was terrified by his first close glimpse of the ravages75 of war, and the efforts of the little band struggling to heal them seemed pitifully ineffectual. No doubt they did good here and there, made a few lives less intolerable; but how the insatiable monster must laugh at them as he spread his red havoc76 wider!
On reaching home, Campton forgot everything at sight of a letter from George. He had not had one for two weeks, and this interruption, just as the military mails were growing more regular, had made him anxious. But it was the usual letter: brief, cheerful, inexpressive. Apparently77 there was no change in George’s situation, nor any wish on his part that there should be. He grumbled78 humorously at the dulness of his 160work and the monotony of life in a war-zone town; and wondered whether, if this sort of thing went on, there might not soon be some talk of leave. And just at the end of his affectionate and unsatisfactory two pages, Campton lit on a name that roused him.
“I saw a fellow who’d seen Benny Upsher yesterday on his way to the English front. The young lunatic looked very fit. You know he volunteered in the English army when he found he couldn’t get into the French. He’s likely to get all the fighting he wants.” It was a relief to know that someone had seen Benny Upsher lately. The letter was but four days old, and he was then on his way to the front. Probably he was not yet in the fighting he wanted, and one could, without remorse79, call up an unmutilated face and clear blue eyes.
Campton, re-reading the postscript80, was struck by a small thing. George had originally written: “I saw Benny Upsher yesterday,” and had then altered the phrase to: “I saw a fellow who’d seen Benny Upsher.” There was nothing out of the way in that: it simply showed that he had written in haste and revised the sentence. But he added: “The young lunatic looked very fit.” Well: that too was natural. It was “the fellow” who reported Benny as looking fit; the phrase was rather elliptic, but Campton could hardly have said why it gave him the impression that it was George himself who had seen Upsher. The idea was manifestly absurd, since there was the length of the front between 161George’s staff-town and the fiery81 pit yawning for his cousin. Campton laid aside the letter with the distinct wish that his son had not called Benny Upsher a young lunatic.
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1
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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tempt
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| vt.引诱，勾引，吸引，引起…的兴趣 | |
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jade
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| n.玉石；碧玉；翡翠 | |
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jaded
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| adj.精疲力竭的；厌倦的；（因过饱或过多而）腻烦的；迟钝的 | |
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savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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improvised
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| a.即席而作的,即兴的 | |
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chapel
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| n.小教堂，殡仪馆 | |
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sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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15
shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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nun
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| n.修女，尼姑 | |
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18
ravaged
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| 毁坏( ravage的过去式和过去分词 )； 蹂躏； 劫掠； 抢劫 | |
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19
upheavals
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| 突然的巨变( upheaval的名词复数 )； 大动荡； 大变动； 胀起 | |
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cataclysms
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| n.（突然降临的）大灾难( cataclysm的名词复数 ) | |
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21
glided
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| v.滑动( glide的过去式和过去分词 )；掠过；（鸟或飞机 ） 滑翔 | |
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22
gardenias
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| n.栀子属植物，栀子花( gardenia的名词复数 ) | |
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23
incense
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| v.激怒；n.香，焚香时的烟，香气 | |
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24
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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25
abominable
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| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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26
liturgical
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| adj.礼拜仪式的 | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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28
enveloping
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的现在分词 ) | |
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implored
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| 恳求或乞求（某人）( implore的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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stammered
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| v.结巴地说出( stammer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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32
invaluable
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| adj.无价的，非常宝贵的，极为贵重的 | |
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33
intriguing
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| adj.有趣的；迷人的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的现在分词)；激起…的好奇心 | |
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34
defiled
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| v.玷污( defile的过去式和过去分词 )；污染；弄脏；纵列行进 | |
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35
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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36
supple
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| adj.柔软的，易弯的，逢迎的，顺从的，灵活的；vt.使柔软，使柔顺，使顺从；vi.变柔软，变柔顺 | |
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37
middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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38
precipitate
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| adj.突如其来的；vt.使突然发生；n.沉淀物 | |
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39
scented
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| adj.有香味的；洒香水的；有气味的v.嗅到(scent的过去分词) | |
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40
lair
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| n.野兽的巢穴；躲藏处 | |
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41
denuded
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| adj.[医]变光的，裸露的v.使赤裸( denude的过去式和过去分词 )；剥光覆盖物 | |
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42
rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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43
pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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44
superstitious
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| adj.迷信的 | |
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45
expiatory
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| adj.赎罪的，补偿的 | |
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46
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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47
arcades
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| n.商场( arcade的名词复数 )；拱形走道（两旁有商店或娱乐设施）；连拱廊；拱形建筑物 | |
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48
delving
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| v.深入探究，钻研( delve的现在分词 ) | |
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49
dishonoured
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| a.不光彩的，不名誉的 | |
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50
bugled
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| 吹号（bugle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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51
obsolete
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| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
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52
attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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53
prehistoric
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| adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的 | |
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54
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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55
divan
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| n.长沙发；（波斯或其他东方诗人的）诗集 | |
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56
wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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57
emaciated
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| adj.衰弱的，消瘦的 | |
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58
scrawled
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| 乱涂，潦草地写( scrawl的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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59
amorous
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| adj.多情的；有关爱情的 | |
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60
rumour
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| n.谣言，谣传，传闻 | |
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61
wane
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| n.衰微，亏缺，变弱；v.变小，亏缺，呈下弦 | |
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62
embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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64
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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65
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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66
Undid
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| v. 解开, 复原 | |
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67
ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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68
auction
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| n.拍卖；拍卖会；vt.拍卖 | |
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69
privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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70
applicants
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| 申请人，求职人( applicant的名词复数 ) | |
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71
hairpins
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| n.发夹( hairpin的名词复数 ) | |
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72
unpack
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| vt.打开包裹（或行李），卸货 | |
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73
altruism
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| n.利他主义，不自私 | |
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74
overflow
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| v.(使)外溢，(使)溢出；溢出，流出，漫出 | |
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75
ravages
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| 劫掠后的残迹，破坏的结果，毁坏后的残迹 | |
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76
havoc
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| n.大破坏，浩劫，大混乱，大杂乱 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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78
grumbled
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| 抱怨( grumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 发牢骚； 咕哝； 发哼声 | |
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79
remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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80
postscript
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| n.附言，又及；(正文后的)补充说明 | |
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81
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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