“Yes: I see why you thought that—one might have,” she surprised him by conceding. Then, darting at his unprotected face a gaze he seemed to feel though he could not see it: “If it had meant that George had been ordered to the front, how would you have felt?” she demanded.
He had not expected the question, and though in the last weeks he had so often propounded it to himself, it caught him in the chest like a blow. A sense of humiliation, a longing to lay his weakness bare, suddenly rose in him, and he bowed his head. “I couldn’t ... I couldn’t bear it,” he stammered.
She was silent for an interval; then she stood up, and laying her hand on his shaking shoulder crossed the room to a desk in which he knew she kept her private papers. Her keys clinked, and a moment later she handed him a letter. It was in George’s writing, and dated on the same day as his own.
“Dearest old girl, nothing new but my address. Hereafter please write to our Base. This order has just been lowered from the empyrean at the end of an endless reel of red tape. What it means nobody knows. It does not appear to imply an immediate change of Headquarters; but even if such a change comes, my job is likely to remain the same. I’m getting used to it, and no wonder, for one day differeth not from another, and I’ve had many of them now. Take care of Dad and mother, and of your matchless self. I’m writing to father to-day. Your George the First—and Last (or I’ll know why).”
The two letters bore one another out in a way which carried conviction. Campton saw that his sudden doubts must have been produced (since he had not felt them that morning) by the agonizing experience he had undergone: the vision of Benny Upsher had unmanned him. George was safe, and asked only to remain so: that was evident from both letters. And as the certainty of his son’s acquiescence once more penetrated Campton it brought with it a fresh reaction of shame. Ashamed—yes, he had begun to be ashamed of George as well as of himself. Under the touch of Adele Anthony’s implacable honesty his last pretenses shrivelled up, and he longed to abase himself. He lifted his head and looked at her, remembering all she would be able to read in his eyes.
“You’re satisfied?” she enquired.
“Yes. If that’s the word.” He stretched his hand toward her, and then drew it back. “But it’s not: it’s not the word any longer.” He laboured with the need of self-expression, and the opposing instinct of concealing feelings too complex for Miss Anthony’s simple gaze. How could he say: “I’m satisfied; but I wish to God that George were not”? And was he satisfied, after all? And how could he define, or even be sure that he was actually experiencing, a feeling so contradictory that it seemed to be made up of anxiety for his son’s safety, shame at that anxiety, shame at George’s own complacent acceptance of his lot, and terror of a possible change in that lot? There were hours when it seemed to Campton that the Furies were listening, and ready to fling their awful answer to him if he as much as whispered to himself: “Would to God that George were not satisfied!”
The sense of their haunting presence laid its clutch on him, and caused him, after a pause, to finish his phrase in another tone. “No; satisfied’s not the word; I’m glad George is out of it!” he exclaimed.
Miss Anthony was folding away the letter as calmly as if it had been a refugee record. She did not appear to notice the change in Campton’s voice.
“I don’t pretend to your sublime detachment: you’ve never had a child,” he sneered. (Certainly, if the Furies were listening, they would put that down to his credit!)