The boy threw off the hand of the woman with him and ran to his father. He was crying.
“There, there,” said the directress. “Daddy hasn’t come all this way to see a weeper, has he, Bibber?”
Georgie felt his heart heave in love and confusion. He kissed the tears from the boy’s face and held him against his chest.
“Perhaps you’d like to take a little walk with Bibber,” the directress suggested. “Perhaps Bibber would like to show you the sights.”
Georgie, with the boy clinging to his hand, had to face certain responsibilities that transcended the love he felt for his son. His instinct was to take the boy away. His responsibility was to hearten and encourage him to shoulder the burdens of life. “What is your favorite place, Bibber?” he asked enthusiastically, keenly aware of the fatuity in his tone, and convinced of the necessity for it. “I want you to show me your favorite place in the whole camp.”
“I don’t have any favorite place,” Bibber said. He was trying successfully to keep from crying. “That’s the mess hall,” he said, pointing to a long, ugly shed. Fresh pieces of yellow lumber had replaced those that had rotted.
“Is that where you have your plays?” Georgie asked.
“We don’t have any plays,” Bibber said. “The lady in charge of plays got sick and she had to go home.”
“Is that where you sing?”
“Please take me home, Daddy,” Bibber said.
“But I can’t, Bibber. Mummy’s in Europe, and I’m flying over tomorrow afternoon to join her.”
“When can I go home?”
“Not until camp closes.” Georgie felt some of the weight of this sentence himself. He heard the boy’s breathing quicken with pain. Somewhere a bugle sounded. Georgie, struggling to mix his responsibilities with his instincts, knelt and took the boy in his arms. “You see, I can’t very well cable Mummy and tell her I’m not coming. She’s expecting me there. And anyhow, we don’t really have a home when Mummy isn’t with us. I have my dinners out, and I’m away all day. There won’t be anyone there to take care of you.”
“I’ve participated in everything,” the boy said hopefully. It was his last appeal for clemency, and when he saw it fail he said, “I have to go now. It’s my third period.” He went up a worn path under the pines.
Georgie returned to the administration building reflecting on the fact that he had loved camp, that he had been one of the most popular boys in camp, and that he had never wanted to go home.
“I think things are bound to improve,” the directress said. “As soon as he gets over the hump, he’ll enjoy himself much more than the others. I would suggest, however, that you don’t stay too long. He has a riding period now. Why don’t you watch him ride, and leave before the period’s ended? He takes pride in his riding, and in that way you’ll avoid a painful farewell. This evening we’re going to have a big campfire and a good long sing. I’m sure that he’s suffering from nothing that won’t be cured by a good sing with his mates around a roaring fire.”
It all sounded plausible to Georgie, who liked a good campfire sing himself. Were there any sorrows of early life that couldn’t be cured by a rousing performance of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”? He walked over to the riding ring singing, “They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps…” It had begun to rain again, and Georgie couldn’t tell whether the boy’s face was wet with tears or drops of rain. He was on horseback and being led around the ring by a groom. Bibber waved once to his father and nearly lost his seat, and when the boy’s back was turned Georgie went away.
He flew to Treviso and took a train into Venice, where Jill waited for him in a Swiss hotel on one of the back canals. Their reunion was ardent, and he loved her no less for noticing that she was tired and thin. Getting her lambs across Europe had been a rigorous and exhausting task. What he wanted to do then was to move from their third-rate hotel to Cipriani’s, get a cabana at the Lido, and spend a week on the beach. Jill refused to move to Cipriani’s?it would be full of tourists?and on their second day in Venice she got up at seven, made instant coffee in a toothbrush glass, and rushed him off to eight-o’clock Mass at St. Mark’s. Georgie knew Venice, and Jill knew?or should have known?that he was not interested in painting or mosaics, but she led him by the nose, so to speak, from monument to monument. He guessed that she had got into the habit of tireless sightseeing, and that the tactful thing to do would be to wait until the habit spent itself. He suggested that they go to Harry’s for lunch, and she said, “What in the world are you thinking of, Georgie?” They had lunch in a trattoria, and toured churches and museums until closing time. In the morning, he suggested that they go to the Lido, but she had already made arrangements to go to Maser and see the villas.
Jill brought all her competence as a tour director to their days in Venice, although Georgie didn’t see why. Most of us enjoy displaying our familiarity with the world, but he could not detect a trace of enjoyment in her assault. Some people love painting and architecture, but there was nothing loving in her approach to the treasures of Venice. The worship of beauty was mysterious to Georgie, but was beauty meant to crush one’s sense of humor? She stood, one hot afternoon, before the facade of a church, lecturing him from her guidebook. She recited dates, naval engagements, and so on, and sketched the history of the Republic as if she were preparing him for an examination. The light in which she stood was bright and unflattering, and the generally festive air of Venice made her erudition, the sternness of her enthusiasm, seem ungainly. She was trying to impress him with the fact that Venice was to be taken seriously. And was this, he wondered, the meaning, the sum, of these brilliant marbles,
