“No, no, not that; but that he might be—oh, at any minute! Forgive me—oh, do forgive me! He wouldn’t let me tell you that he was at the front,” Boylston had faltered through his sobs.
“Let you tell me——?”
“You and his mother: he refused a citation last March so that you shouldn’t find out that he’d exchanged into an infantry regiment. He was determined to from the first. He’s been fighting for months; he’s been magnificent; he got away from the Argonne last February; but you were none of you to know.”
“But why—why—why?” Campton had flashed out; then his heart stood still, and he awaited the answer with lowered head.
“Well, you see, he was afraid: afraid you might prevent ... use your influence ... you and Mrs. Brant....”
Campton looked up again, challenging the other. “He imagined perhaps that we had—in the beginning?”
“Oh, yes”—Boylston was perfectly calm about it—“he knew all about that. And he made us swear not to speak; Miss Anthony and me. Miss Anthony knew.... If this thing happened,” Boylston ended in a stricken voice, “you were not to be unfair to her, he said.”
Over and over again that short dialogue distilled itself syllable by syllable, pang by pang, into Campton’s cowering soul. He had had to learn all this, this overwhelming unbelievable truth about his son; and at the same instant to learn that that son was grievously wounded, perhaps dying (what else, in such circumstances, did the giving of the Legion of Honour ever mean?); and to deal with it all in the wild minutes of preparation for departure, of intercession with the authorities, sittings at the photographer’s, and a crisscross of confused telephone-calls from the Embassy, the Prefecture and the War Office.
From this welter of images Miss Anthony’s face next detached itself: white and withered, yet with a look which triumphed over its own ruin, and over Campton’s wrath.
“Ah—you knew too, did you? You were his other confidant? How you all kept it up—how you all lied to us!” Campton had burst out at her.