Suddenly he remembered that one sultry noon, lying under the olives, she had taught him, by signals tapped on his own knee, how to say what he chose to her without her brothers’ knowing it. He looked at the huge woman, seeking the curve of the bowed upper lip on which what used to be a faint blue shadow had now become a line as thick as her eyebrows, and recalling how her laugh used to lift the lip above her little round teeth while she threw back her head, showing the Agnus Dei in her neck. Now her mouth was like a withered flower, and in a crease of her neck a string of pearls was embedded.
“Take hands, please,” she commanded. Julia gave Campton her ungloved hand, and he sat between the two women.
“You are the parents? You want news of your son—ah, like so many!” Mme. Olida closed her eyes again.
“To know where he is—whereabouts—that is what we want,” Mrs. Brant whispered.
Mme. Olida sat as if labouring with difficult visions. The noises of the street came faintly through the closed windows and a smell of garlic and cheap scent oppressed Campton’s lungs and awakened old associations. With a final effort of memory he fixed his eyes on the clairvoyante’s darkened mask, and tapped her palm once or twice. She neither stirred nor looked at him.
“I see—I see——” she began in the consecrated phrase. “A veil—a thick veil of smoke between me and a face which is young and fair, with a short nose and reddish hair: thick, thick, thick hair, exactly like this gentleman’s when he was young....”
Mrs. Brant’s hand trembled in Campton’s. “It’s true,” she whispered, “before your hair turned grey it used to be as red as Georgie’s.”
“The veil grows denser—there are awful noises; there’s a face with blood—but not that first face. This is a very young man, as innocent as when he was born, with blue eyes like flax-flowers, but blood, blood ... why do I see that face? Ah, now it is on a hospital pillow—not your son’s face, the other; there is no one near, no one but some German soldiers laughing and drinking; the lips move, the hands are stretched out in agony; but no one notices. It is a face that has something to say to the gentleman; not to you, Madame. The uniform is different—is it an English uniform?... Ah, now the face turns grey; the eyes shut, there is foam on the lips. Now it is gone—there’s another man’s head on the pillow.... Now, now your son’s face comes back; but not near those others. The smoke has cleared ... I see a desk and papers; your son is writing....”
“Oh,” gasped Mrs. Brant.
“If you squeeze my hands you arrest the current,” Mme. Olida reminded her. There was another interval; Campton felt his wife’s fingers beating between his like trapped birds. The heat and darkness oppressed him; beads of sweat came out on his forehead. Did the woman really see things, and was that face with the blood on it Benny Upsher’s?