He remembered having been told by Boylston that “The Friends of French Art” had their office in the Palais Royal, and he made his way through the deserted arcades to the door of a once-famous restaurant.
Behind the plate-glass windows young women with rolled-up sleeves and straw in their hair were delving in packing-cases, while, divided from them by an improvised partition, another group were busy piling on the cloak-room shelves garments such as had never before dishonoured them.
Campton stood fascinated by the sight of the things these young women were sorting: pink silk combinations, sporting ulsters in glaring black and white checks, straw hats wreathed with last summer’s sunburnt flowers, high-heeled satin shoes split on the instep, and fringed and bugled garments that suggested obsolete names like “dolman” and “mantle,” and looked like the costumes dug out of a country-house attic by amateurs preparing to play “Caste.” Was it possible that “The Friends of French Art” proposed to clothe the families of fallen artists in these prehistoric properties?
Boylston appeared, flushed and delighted (and with straw in his hair also), and led his visitor up a corkscrew stair. They passed a room where a row of people in shabby mourning like that of the Davril family sat on restaurant chairs before a caissière’s desk; and at the desk Campton saw Miss Anthony, her veil pushed back and a card-catalogue at her elbow, listening to a young woman who was dramatically stating her case.
Boylston saw Campton’s surprise, and said: “Yes, we’re desperately short-handed, and Miss Anthony has deserted her refugees for a day or two to help me to straighten things out.”
His own office was in a faded cabinet particulier where the dinner-table had been turned into a desk, and the weak-springed divan was weighed down under suits of ready-made clothes bearing the label of a wholesale clothier.
“These are the things we really give them; but they cost a lot of money to buy,” Boylston explained. On the divan sat a handsomely dressed elderly lady with a long emaciated face and red eyes, who rose as they entered. Boylston spoke to her in an undertone and led her into another cabinet, where Campton saw her tragic figure sink down on the sofa, under a glass scrawled with amorous couplets.
“That was Mme. Beausite.... You didn’t recognize her? Poor thing! Her youngest boy is blind: his eyes were put out by a shell. She is very unhappy, and she comes here and helps now and then. Beausite? Oh no, we never see him. He’s only our Honorary President.”
Boylston obviously spoke without afterthought; but Campton felt the sting. He too was on the honorary committee.
“Poor woman! What? The young fellow who did Cubist things? I hadn’t heard....” He remembered the cruel rumour that Beausite, when his glory began to wane, had encouraged his three sons in three different lines of art, so that there might always be a Beausite in the fashion.... “You must have to listen to pretty ghastly stories here,” he said.