Edith Wharton - Novel 14 by A Son at the Front (v2.1) Page A

express, he drove to the studio.
                 On
the way, as his habit was, he thought hard of his model: everything else
disappeared like a rolled-up curtain, and his inner vision centred itself on
the little yellow face he was to paint.
                 Peering
through her cobwebby window, he saw old Mme. Lebel on the watch. He knew she
wanted to pounce out and ask if there would be war; and composing his most
taciturn countenance he gave her a preoccupied nod and hurried by.
                 The
studio looked grimy and disordered, and he remembered that he had intended, the
evening before, to come back and set it to rights. In pursuance of this plan,
he got out a canvas, fussed with his brushes and colours, and then tried once
more to make the place tidy. But his attempts at order always resulted in worse
confusion; the fact had been one of Julia’s grievances against him, and he had
often thought that a reaction from his ways probably explained the lifeless
neatness of the Anderson Brant drawing-room.
                 Campton
had fled to Montmartre to escape a number of things: first of all, the
possibility of meeting people who would want to talk about the European
situation, then of being called up by Mrs. Brant, and lastly of having to lunch
alone in a fashionable restaurant. In his morbid dread of seeing people he
would have preferred an omelette in the studio, if only Mariette had been at
hand to make it; and he decided, after a vain struggle with his muddled
“properties,” to cross over to the Luxembourg quarter and pick up a meal in a wine-shop.
                 He
did not own to himself his secret reason for this decision; but it caused him,
after a glance at his watch, to hasten his steps down the rue Montmartre and bribe a passing taxi to carry him to
the Museum of the Luxembourg . He reached it ten minutes before the midday closing, and hastening past the serried
statues, turned into a room halfway down the gallery. Whistler’s Mother and the
Carmencita of Sargent wondered at each other from its walls; and on the same
wall with the Whistler hung the picture Campton had come for: his portrait of
his son. He had given it to the Luxembourg the day after Mr. Brant had tried to buy
it, with the object of inflicting the most cruel slight he could think of on the banker.
                 In
the generous summer light the picture shone out on him with a
communicative warmth: never had he seen so far into its depths. “No
wonder,” he thought, “it opened people’s eyes to what I was trying for.”
                 He
stood and stared his own eyes full, mentally comparing the features before him
with those of the firmer harder George he had left on the terrace of the
Crillon, and noting how time, while fulfilling the rich promise of the younger
face, had yet taken something from its brightness.
                 Campton,
at that moment, found more satisfaction than ever in thinking how it must have
humiliated Brant to have the picture given to France . “He could have understood my keeping it
myself—or holding it for a bigger price—but giving it!” The satisfaction was
worth the sacrifice of the best record he would ever have of that phase of his
son’s youth. At various times afterward he had tried for the same George, but
not one of his later studies had that magic light on it. Still, he was glad he
had given the picture. It was safe, safer than it would have been with him. His
great dread had always been that if his will were mislaid (and his things were
always getting mislaid) the picture might be sold, and fall into Brant’s hands
after his death.
                 The
closing signal drove him out of the Museum, and he turned into the first
wine-shop. He had advised George to lunch with the Brants, but there was
disappointment in his heart. Seeing the turn things were taking, he had hoped
the boy would feel the impulse to