At the thought Campton felt a loosening of the tightness about his heart. Something which had been confused and uncertain in his relation to the whole long anguish was abruptly lifted, giving him the same sense of buoyancy that danced in Boylston’s glance. At last, random atoms that they were, they seemed all to have been shaken into their places, pressed into the huge mysterious design which was slowly curving a new firmament over a new earth....
There was another knock; and a jubilant nurse appeared, hardly visible above a great bunch of lilacs tied with a starred and striped ribbon. Campton, as he passed the flowers over to his son, noticed an envelope with Mrs. Talkett’s perpendicular scrawl. George lay smiling, the lilacs close to his pillow, his free hand fingering the envelope; but he did not unseal the letter, and seemed to care less than ever to talk.
After an interval the door opened again, this time to show Mr. Brant’s guarded face. He drew back slightly at the sight of Campton; but Boylston, jumping up, passed close to the painter to breathe: “To-day, sir, just to-day—you must!”
Campton went to the door and signed silently to Mr. Brant to enter. Julia Brant stood outside, flushed and tearful, carrying as many orchids as Mrs. Talkett had sent lilacs. Campton held out his hand, and with an embarrassed haste she stammered: “We couldn’t wait——” Behind her he saw Adele Anthony hurriedly coming up the stairs.
For a few minutes they all stood or sat about George’s bed, while their voices, beginning to speak low, rose uncontrollably, interrupting one another with tears and laughter. Mr. Brant and Boylston were both brimming with news, and George, though he listened more than he spoke, now and then put a brief question which loosened fresh floods. Suddenly Campton noticed that the young man’s face, which had been too flushed, grew pale; but he continued to smile, and his eyes to move responsively from one illuminated face to the other. Campton, seeing that the others meant to linger, presently rose and slipping out quietly walked across the Rue de Rivoli to the deserted terrace of the Tuileries. There he sat for a long time, looking out on the vast glittering spaces of the Place de la Concorde, and calling up, with his painter’s faculty of vivid and precise visualization, a future vision of interminable lines of brown battalions marching past.
When he returned to the hospital after dinner the night-nurse met him. She was not quite as well satisfied with her patient that evening: hadn’t he perhaps had too many visitors? Yes, of course—she knew it had been a great day, a day of international rejoicing, above all a blessed day for France. But the doctors, from the beginning, must have warned Mr. Campton that his son ought to be kept quiet-very quiet. The last operation had been a great strain on his heart. Yes, certainly, Mr. Campton might go in; the patient had asked for him. Oh, there was no danger—no need for anxiety; only he must not stay too long; his son must try to sleep.
Campton nodded, and stole in.
George lay motionless in the shaded lamplight: his eyes were open, but they seemed to reflect his father’s presence without any change of expression, like mirrors rather than like eyes. The room was doubly silent after the joyful hubbub of the afternoon. The nurse had put the orchids and lilacs where George’s eyes could rest on them. But was it on the flowers that his gaze so tranquilly dwelt? Or did he see in their place the faces of their senders? Or was he again in that far country whither no other eyes could follow him?
Campton took his usual seat by the bed. Father and son looked at each other, and the old George glanced out for half a second between the wounded man’s lids.
“There was too much talking to-day,” Campton grumbled.