Page:A Son at the Front (1923) Wharton.djvu/389
A SON AT THE FRONT
guing against Philistinism. One afternoon the painter stumbled on them, taking tea with George in Boylston's little flat; but he went away again, unable to bear the interminable discussion between Talkett and Boylston, and the pacifist's reiterated phrase: "To borrow one of my wife's expressions"—while George, with a closed brooding face, sat silent, laughing drily now and then. What a different George from the one his father had found, in silence also, kneeling beside Mme. Lebel!
Once again Campton was vouchsafed a glimpse of that secret George. He had walked back with his son after the funeral mass for young Lebel; and in the porter's lodge of the Avenue Marigny they found a soldier waiting—a young square-built fellow, with a shock of straw-coloured hair above his sunburnt rural face. Campton was turning from the door when George dashed past him, caught the young man by both shoulders, and shouted out his name. It was that of the orderly who had carried him out of the firing-line and hunted him up the next day in the Doullens hospital. Campton saw the look the two exchanged: it lasted only for the taking of a breath; a moment later officer and soldier were laughing like boys, and the orderly was being drawn forth to shake hands with Campton. But again the glance was an illumination; it came straight from that far country, the Benny Upsher country, which Campton so feared to see in his son's eyes.
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