Miss Anthony followed his glance about the room, and her eyes paused with his on her own portrait, now in the place of honour over the mantelpiece, where it hung incongruously above a menagerie of china animals and a collection of trophies from the Marne.
“I dropped in at the Luxembourg yesterday,” she said. “Do you know whom I saw there? Anderson Brant. He was looking at George’s portrait, and turned as red as a beet. You ought to do him a sketch of George some day—after this.”
Campton’s face darkened. He knew it was partly through Brant’s influence that George had been detached from his regiment and given a staff job in the Argonne; but Miss Anthony’s reminder annoyed him. The Brants had acted through sheer selfish cowardice, the desire to safeguard something which belonged to them, something they valued as they valued their pictures and tapestries, though of course in a greater degree; whereas he, Campton, was sustained by a principle which he could openly avow, and was ready to discuss with any one who had the leisure to listen.
He had explained all this so often to Miss Anthony that the words rose again to his lips without an effort. “If it had been a national issue I should have wanted him to be among the first: such as our having to fight Mexico, for instance——”
“Yes; or the moon. For my part, I understand Julia and Anderson better. They don’t care a fig for national issues; they’re just animals defending their cub.”
“Their—thank you!” Campton exclaimed.
“Well, poor Anderson really was a dry-nurse to the boy. Who else was there to look after him? You were painting Spanish beauties at the time.” She frowned. “Life’s a puzzle. I see perfectly that if you’d let everything else go to keep George you’d never have become the great John Campton: the real John Campton you were meant to be. And it wouldn’t have been half as satisfactory for you—or for George either. Only, in the meanwhile, somebody had to blow the child’s nose, and pay his dentist and doctor; and you ought to be grateful to Anderson for doing it. Aren’t there bees or ants, or something, that are kept for such purposes?”
Campton’s lips were opened to reply when her face changed, and he saw that he had ceased to exist for her. He knew the reason. That look came over everybody’s face nowadays at the hour when the evening paper came. The old maid-servant brought it in, and lingered to hear the communiqué. At that hour, everywhere over the globe, business and labour and pleasure (if it still existed) were suspended for a moment while the hearts of all men gathered themselves up in a question and a prayer.
Miss Anthony sought for her lorgnon and failed to find it. With a shaking hand she passed the newspaper over to Campton.
“Violent enemy attacks in the region of Dixmude, Ypres, Armentières, Arras, in the Argonne, and on the advanced slopes of the Grand Couronné de Nancy, have been successfully repulsed. We have taken back the village of Soupir, near Vailly (Aisne); we have taken Maucourt and Mogeville, to the northeast of Verdun. Progress has been made in the region of Vermelles (Pas-de-Calais), south of Aix Noulette. Enemy attacks in the Hauts-de-Meuse and southeast of Saint-Mihiel have also been repulsed.