When he had gone Campton began to recover his reassurance. Who was Dastrey, poor chap, to behave as if he were in the councils of the powers? It was perfect nonsense to pretend that a diplomatist straight from Berlin didn’t know more about what was happening there than the newsmongers of the Boulevards. One didn’t have to be an Ambassador to see which way the wind was blowing; and men like Alicante, belonging to a country uninvolved in the affair, were the only people capable of a cool judgment at moments of international tension.
Campton took the portrait of Mme. de Dolmetsch and leaned it against the other canvases along the wall. Then he started clumsily to put the room to rights—without Mariette he was so helpless—and finally, abandoning the attempt, said to himself: “I’ll come and wind things up to-morrow.”
He was moving that day from the studio to the Hotel de Crillon, where George was to join him the next evening. It would be jolly to be with the boy from the moment he arrived; and, even if Mariette’s departure had not paralyzed his primitive housekeeping, he could not have made room for his son at the studio. So, reluctantly, for he loathed luxury and conformity, but joyously, because he was to be with George, Campton threw some shabby clothes into a shapeless portmanteau, and prepared to despatch the concierge for a taxicab.
He was hobbling down the stairs when the old woman met him with a telegram. He tore it open and saw that it was dated Deauville, and was not, as he had feared, from his son.
“Very anxious. Must see you to-morrow. Please come to Avenue Marigny at five without fail. Julia Brant.”
“Oh, damn,” Campton growled, crumpling up the message.
The concierge was looking at him with searching eyes.
“Is it war, sir?” she asked, pointing to the bit of blue paper. He supposed she was thinking of her grandsons.
“No—no—nonsense! War?” He smiled into her shrewd old face, every wrinkle of which seemed full of a deep human experience.
“War? Can you imagine anything more absurd? Can you, now? What should you say if they told you war was going to be declared, Mme. Lebel?”