“Well—take care you don’t,” Campton said, thinking that everything was different indeed, as he recalled the reasons young men had had for loving and marrying in his own time.
A faint look of amusement came into George’s eyes. “Kill her? Oh, no. I’m gradually bringing her to life. But all this is hard to talk about—yet. By-and-bye you’ll understand; she’ll show you, we’ll show you together. But at present nothing’s to be said—to any one, please, not even to mother. Madge thinks this is no time for such things. There, of course, I don’t agree; but I must be patient. The secrecy, the under-handedness, are hateful to me; but for her it’s all a part of the sacred humbug.”
He rose listlessly, as if the discussion had bled all the life out of him, and took himself away.
When he had gone his father drew a deep breath. Yes—the boy would stay in Paris; he would almost certainly stay; for the present, at any rate. And people were still prophesying that in the spring there would be a big push all along the line; and after that the nightmare might be over. Campton was glad he had gone to see Madge Talkett. He was glad, above all, that if the thing had to be done it was over, and that, by Madge’s wish, no one was to know of what had passed between them. It was a distinct relief, in spite of what he had suggested to George, not to have to carry that particular problem to Adele Anthony or Boylston.
A few days later George accepted a staff-appointment in Paris.
BOOK IV
XXXII
Heavily the weeks went by.
The world continued to roar on through smoke and flame, and contrasted with that headlong race was the slow dragging lapse of hours and days to those who had to wait on events inactively.
When Campton met Paul Dastrey for the first time after the death of the latter’s nephew, the two men exchanged a long hand-clasp and then sat silent. As Campton had felt from the first, there was nothing left for them to say to each other. If young men like Louis Dastrey must continue to be sacrificed by hundreds of thousands to save their country, for whom was the country being saved? Was it for the wasp-waisted youths in sham uniforms who haunted the reawakening hotels and restaurants, in the frequent intervals between their ambulance trips to safe distances from the front? Or for the elderly men like Dastrey and Campton, who could only sit facing each other with the spectre of the lost between them? Young Dastrey, young Fortin-Lescluze, René Davril, Benny Upsher—and how many hundreds more each day! And not even a child left by most of them, to carry on the faith they had died for....