“Rather! There’s a night’s work ahead. But I’m as good as new after our talk.”
Campton looked at him wistfully. “You know I’d like to paint you some day.”
“Oh——” cried Boylston, suffused with blushes; and added with a laugh: “It’s my uniform, not me.”
“Well, your uniform _is_ you—it’s all of you young men.”
Boylston stood in the window twisting his cap about undecidedly. “Look here, sir—now that you’ve got back to work again——”
“Well?” Campton interrupted suspiciously.
The young man cleared his throat and spoke with a rush. “His mother wants most awfully that something should be decided about the monument.”
“Monument? What monument? I don’t want my son to have a monument,” Campton exploded.
But Boylston stuck to his point. “It’ll break her heart if something isn’t put on the grave before long. It’s five months now—and they fully recognize your right to decide——”
“Damn what they recognize! It was they who brought him to Paris; they made him travel when he wasn’t fit; they killed him.”
“Well—supposing they did: judge how much more they must be suffering!”
“Let ’em suffer. He’s my son—my son. He isn’t Brant’s.”
“And he’s not hers either, that I know of!”
Boylston seemed to hesitate. “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it, sir? You’ve had him; you have him still. Nobody can touch that fact, or take it from you. Every hour of his life was yours. But they’ve never had anything, those two others, Mr. Brant and Miss Anthony; nothing but a reflected light. And so every outward sign means more to them. I’m putting it badly, I know——”
Campton held out his hand. “You don’t mean to, I suppose. But better not put it at all. Good night,” he said. And on the threshold he called out sardonically: “And who’s going to pay for a monument, I’d like to know?”
A monument—they wanted a monument! Wanted him to decide about it, plan it, perhaps design it—good Lord, he didn’t know! No doubt it all seemed simple enough to them: anything did, that money could buy.... When he couldn’t yet bear to turn that last canvas out from the wall, or look into the old portfolio even.... Suffering, suffering! What did they any of them know about suffering? Going over old photographs, comparing studies, recalling scenes and sayings, discussing with some sculptor or other the shape of George’s eyelids, the spring of his chest-muscles, the way his hair grew and his hands moved—why, it was like digging him up again out of that peaceful corner of the Neuilly cemetery where at last he was resting, like dragging him back to the fret and the fever, and the senseless roar of the guns that still went on.