Mrs. Brant, having reduced her household and given over her drawing-rooms to charity, received in her boudoir, a small room contrived by a clever upholsterer to simulate a seclusion of which she had never felt the need. Photographs strewed the low tables; and facing the door Campton saw George’s last portrait, in uniform, enclosed in an expensive frame. Campton had received the same photograph, and thrust it into a drawer; he thought a young man on a safe staff job rather ridiculous in uniform, and at the same time the sight filled him with a secret dread.
Mrs. Brant was bidding goodbye to a lady in mourning whom Campton did not know. His approach through the carpeted antechamber had been unnoticed, and as he entered the room he heard Mrs. Brant say in French, apparently in reply to a remark of her visitor: “Bridge, chère Madame? No; not yet. I confess I haven’t the courage to take up my old life. We mothers with sons at the front....”
“Ah,” exclaimed the other lady, “there I don’t agree with you. I think one owes it to them to go on as if one were as little afraid as they are. That is what all my sons prefer.... Even,” she added, lowering her voice but lifting her head higher, “even, I’m sure, the one who is buried by the Marne.” With a flush on her handsome face she pressed Mrs. Brant’s hand and passed out.
Mrs. Brant had caught sight of Campton as she received the rebuke. Her colour rose slightly, and she said with a smile: “So many women can’t get on without amusement.”
“No,” he agreed. There was a pause, and then he asked: “Who was it?”
“The Marquise de Tranlay—the widow.”
“Where are the sons she spoke of?”
“There are three left: one in the Chasseurs à Pied; the youngest, who volunteered at seventeen, in the artillery in the Argonne; the third, badly wounded, in hospital at Compiègne. And the eldest killed. I simply can’t understand....”
“Why,” Campton interrupted, “did you speak as if George were at the front? Do you usually speak of him in that way?”
Her silence and her deepening flush made him feel the unkindness of the question. “I didn’t mean ... forgive me,” he said. “Only sometimes, when I see women like that I’m——”