Edith Wharton - Novel 14 (20 page)

 
          
Campton
paused in the doorway, seized by his old fear of the painting’s passing into
Anderson Brant’s possession.

 
          
“Look
here: where is this one going?”

 
          
The
dealer cocked his handsome grey head and glanced archly through plump eyelids.
“Violation of professional secrecy?
Well … Well … under
constraint I’ll confess it’s to a young lady: great admirer, artist herself.
Had her order by cable from New York a year ago.
Been on the
lookout ever since.”

 
          
“Oh,
all right,” Campton answered, repocketing the money.

 
          
He
set out at once for “The Friends of French Art,” and Leonce Black, bound for
the Ministry of War, walked by his side, regaling him alternately with the
gossip of the Ministry and with racy anecdotes of the dealers’ world. In M.
Black’s opinion the war was an inexcusable blunder, since Germany was getting
to be the best market for the kind of freak painters out of whom the dealers
who “know how to make a man ‘foam’” can make a big turn-over. “I don’t know
what on earth will become of all those poor devils now: Paris cared for them
only because she knew Germany would give any money for their things.
Personally, as you know, I’ve always preferred sounder goods: I’m a classic, my
dear Campton, and I can feel only classic art,” said the dealer, swelling out
his uniformed breast and stroking his Assyrian nose as though its handsome
curve followed the pure Delphic line. “But, as long as things go on as they are
at present in my department of the administration, the war’s not going to end
in a hurry,” he continued. “And now we’re in for it, we’ve got to see the thing
through.”

 
          
Campton
found Boylston, as usual, in his melancholy cabinet particulier. He was
listening to the tale of a young woman with streaming eyes and an extravagant
hat. She was so absorbed in her trouble that she did not notice Campton’s
entrance, and behind her back the painter made a sign to say that she was not
to be interrupted.

 
          
He
was as much interested in the suppliant’s tale as in watching Boylston’s way of
listening. That modest and commonplace-looking young man was beginning to
excite a lively curiosity in Campton. It was not only that he remembered
George’s commendation, for he knew that the generous enthusiasms of youth may
be inspired by trifles imperceptible to the older. It was Boylston himself who
interested the painter. He knew no more of the young man than the scant details
Miss Anthony could give. Boylston, it appeared, was the oldest hope of a
well-to-do Connecticut family. On his leaving college a place had been reserved
for him in the paternal business; but he had announced good-humouredly that he
did not mean to spend his life in an office, and one day, after a ten minutes’
conversation with his father, as to which details were lacking, he had packed a
suitcase and sailed for France. There he had lived ever since, in shabby rooms
in the rue de Verneuil, on the scant allowance remitted by an irate parent:
apparently never running into debt, yet always ready to help a friend.

 
          
All
the American art-students in Paris knew Boylston; and though he was still in
the early thirties, they all looked up to him. For Boylston had one quality
which always impresses youth: Boylston knew everybody. Whether you went with
him to a smart restaurant in the rue Royale, or to a wine-shop of the Left
Bank, the patron welcomed him with the same cordiality, and sent the same
emphatic instructions to the cook. The first fresh peas and the tenderest
spring chicken were always for this quiet youth, who, when he was alone, dined
cheerfully on veal and vin ordinaire. If you wanted to know where to get the
best Burgundy, Boylston could tell you; he could also tell you where to buy an
engagement ring for your girl, a Ford run-about going at half-price, or the
papier timbre on which to address a summons to a recalcitrant laundress.

 
          
If
you got into a row with your landlady you found that Boylston knew
her,
and that at sight of him she melted and withdrew her
claim; or, failing this, he knew the solicitor in whose office her son was a
clerk, or had other means of reducing her to reason. Boylston also knew a man
who could make old clocks go, another who could clean flannels without their
shrinking, and a third who could get you old picture-frames for a song; and,
best of all, when any inexperienced American youth was caught in the dark
Parisian cobweb (and the people at home were on no account to hear about it)
Boylston was found to be the friend and familiar of certain occult authorities
who, with a smile and a word of warning, could break the mesh and free the
victim.

 
          
The
mystery was, how and why all these people did what Boylston wanted; but the
reason began to dawn on Campton as he watched the young woman in the foolish
hat deliver herself of her grievance. Boylston was simply a perfect
listener—and most of his life was spent in listening. Everything about him
listened: his round forehead and peering screwed-up eyes, his lips twitching
responsively under the close-clipped moustache, and every crease and dimple of
his sagacious and humorous young countenance; even the attitude of his short
fat body, with elbows comfortably bedded in heaped-up papers, and fingers
plunged into his crinkled hair. There was never a hint of hurry or impatience
about him: having once asserted his right to do what he liked with his life, he
was apparently content to let all his friends prey on it. You never caught his
eye on the clock, or his lips shaping an answer before you had turned the last
corner of your story. Yet when the story was told, and he had surveyed it in
all its bearings, you could be sure he would do what he could for you, and do
it before the day was over.

 
          
“Very
well, Mademoiselle,” he said, when the young woman had finished. “I promise you
I’ll see Mme. Beausite, and try to get her to recognize your claim.”

 
          
“Mind
you, I don’t ask charity—I won’t take charity from your committee!” the young
lady hissed, gathering up a tawdry hand-bag.

 
          
“Oh,
we’re not forcing it on any one,” smiled Boylston, opening the door for her.

 
          
When
he turned back to Campton his face was flushed and frowning.
“Poor
thing!
She’s a nuisance, but I’ll fight to the last ditch for her. The
chap she lives with was Beausite’s secretary and understudy, and devilled for
him before the war. The poor fellow has come back from the front a complete
wreck, and can’t even collect the salary Beausite owes him for the last three
months before the war. Beausite’s plea is that he’s too poor, and that the war
lets him out of paying. Of course he counts on our doing it for him.”

 
          
“And
you’re not going to?”

 
          
“Well,”
said Boylston humorously, “I shouldn’t wonder if he beat us in the long run.
But I’ll have a try first; and anyhow the poor girl needn’t know. She used to
earn a little money doing fashion-articles, but of course there’s no market for
that now, and I don’t see how the pair can live. They have a little boy, and
there’s an infirm mother, and they’re waiting to get married till the girl can
find a job.”

 
          
“Good
Lord!” Campton groaned, with a sudden vision of the countless little trades and
traffics arrested by the war, and all the industrious thousands reduced to
querulous pauperism or slow death.

 
          
“How
do they live—all these people?”

 
          
“They
don’t—always. I could tell you”

 
          
“Don’t,
for God’s sake; I can’t stand it.” Campton drew out the cheque. “Here: this is
what I’ve got for the Davrils.”

 
          
“Good
Lord!” said Boylston, staring with round eyes.

 
          
“It
will pull them through, anyhow, won’t it?”

 
          
“Well”
said Boylston. “It will if you’ll endorse it,” he added, %smiling. Campton
laughed and took up a pen.

 
          
A.
day or two later Campton, returning home one afternoon, overtook a small
black-veiled figure with a limp like his own. He guessed at once that it was
the lame Davril girl, come to thank him; and his dislike of such ceremonies
caused him to glance about for a way of escape. But as he did so the girl
turned with a smile that put him to shame. He remembered Adele Anthony’s
saying, one day when he had found her in her refugee office patiently
undergoing a like ordeal: “We’ve no right to refuse the only coin they can
repay us in.”

 
          
The
Davril girl was a plain likeness of her brother, with the same hungry flame in
her eyes. She wore the nondescript black that Campton had remarked at the
funeral; and knowing the importance which the French attach to every detail of
conventional mourning, he wondered that mother and daughter had not laid out
part of his gift in crape. But doubtless the equally strong instinct of thrift
had caused Mme. Davril to put away the whole sum.

 
          
Mile.
Davril greeted Campton pleasantly, and assured him
that she had not found the long way from Villejuif to Montmartre too difficult.

 
          
“I
would have gone to you,” the painter protested; but she answered that she
wanted to see with her own eyes where her brother’s friend lived.

 
          
In
the studio she looked about her with a quick searching glance, %said “Oh, a
piano” as if the fact were connected with the object of her errand—and then,
settling herself in an armchair, unclasped her shabby hand-bag.

 
          
“Monsieur,
there has been a misunderstanding; this money is not ours.” She laid Campton’s
cheque on the table.

 
          
A
flush of annoyance rose to the painter’s face. What on earth had Boylston let
him in for? If the Davrils were as proud as all that it was not worth while to
have sold a sketch it had cost him such a pang to part with. He felt the
exasperation of the would-be philanthropist when he first discovers that
nothing complicates life as much as doing
good
.

 
          
“But,
Mademoiselle”

 
          
“This
money is not ours. If Rene had lived he would never have sold your picture; and
we would starve rather than betray his trust.”

 
          
When
stout ladies in velvet declare that they would starve rather than sacrifice
this or that principle, the statement has only the cold beauty of rhetoric; but
on the drawn lips of a thinly-clad young woman evidently acquainted with the
process, it becomes a fiery reality.

 
          
“Starve—nonsense!
My dear young lady, you betray him when you talk like that,” said Campton,
moved.

 
          
She
shook her head. “It depends, Monsieur, which things matter most to one. We
shall never—my mother and I—do anything that Rene would not have done. The
picture was not ours: we brought it back to you”

 
          
“But
if the picture’s not yours it’s mine,” Campton interrupted; “and I’d a right to
sell it, and a right to do what I choose with the money.”

 
          
His
visitor smiled. “That’s what we feel; it was what I was coming to.”
And clasping her threadbare glove-tips about the arms of the chair
Mile.
Davril set forth with extreme precision the object of her visit.

 
          
It
was to propose that Campton should hand over the cheque to “The Friends of
French Art,” devoting one-third to the aid of the families of combatant
painters, the rest to young musicians and authors. “It doesn’t seem right that
only the painters’ families should benefit by what your committee are doing.
And Rene would have thought so too. He knew so many young men of letters and
journalists who, before the war, just managed to keep their families alive; and
in my profession I could tell you of poor music-teachers and accompanists whose
work stopped the day war broke out, and who have been living ever since on the
crusts their luckier comrades could spare them. Rene would have let us
accept
from you help that was shared with others: he would
have been so glad, often, of a few francs to relieve the misery we see about
us.
and
this great sum might be the beginning of a
co-operative work for artists ruined by the war.”