LONGFIELD DECIDES
How Madame Ribot travelled third-class all night to Boulogne, where she
was crowded on board a steamer with Belgian refugees and American
tourists, whom she found equally objectionable in interfering with her
comfort, and then finally to London and Truckleford, was a narrative
which excited such sympathy in the simple vicarage that life there was
soon adapted entirely to her habits. News that her daughters were safe
was a relief to her: but the announcement that they were on their way
to join her brought a premonition of overcrowding.
The same kind of journey that she had made the three cousins made.
From London Henriette went on to Truckleford, but Helen astounded her
sister by remaining in town, giving as her reason that she wanted to
see if she could not sell some of her sketches. She said nothing of
her trip to America, which she realised once she saw the crowds of
stranded Americans must be given up for the present for want of steamer
accommodation. Her _au revoir_ to Phil had been spoken at the Victoria
Station; a handshake, with the understanding that they would meet at
Truckleford. Thus they parted without his knowing her hotel. A few
hours later she was sitting beside the desk of an agent while he looked
over her few finished sketches. As businesslike as M. Vailliant, he
told her to go home and do more, and he would try to dispose of those
that were completed.
Something which had been working in Phil's secret brain had come to a
head. The recollection of having been marched up a village street
between two Prussian bayonets did not sit easily in the blood of his
inheritance of freedom. The French were fighting against that kind of
tyranny; those poor Belgian women and children on the steamer were the
victims of it. When he stepped ashore at Folkestone it was with the
thrill of relief of one who has come to the home of another kind of
principle, which was that of his inheritance. Here they were speaking
his own tongue; here the system was individualism. The green pastures
and hedges had an appeal which they lacked before he crossed the
Channel. On the train an _attache_ of the Paris Embassy whom he knew
had introduced him to a general, who had asked Phil to look in at the
War Office. In London the press and the hoardings called to arms. War
was in the air; and he was young. Instead of trying to push his way
through the crowd in front of the steamship offices, he went to a cable
office and sent a despatch to Longfield:
"With your permission I am going to fight. Answer."
Dr. Sanford received this message only twenty-four hours later than one
from Paris announcing that Phil was on his way to London. The girl in
the telegraph office saw the Doctor passing along the street on his
afternoon constitutional just after the despatch had been clicked in
from New York. It was not her business to know what was in telegrams
once she had transcribed them; but this one was like a hot breath from
the cataclysm shot across the Atlantic into a quiet New England
village. She pretended to be busy as she watched the Doctor. On this
occasion his spectacles happened to be in the right-hand trousers'
pocket, which was the last one that he investigated. Ever since he had
had to wear spectacles he had tried in vain to establish a system of
carrying them in the same pocket; but in order to have it work he must
think which was the right pocket when he put them in, rather than when
he came to look for them.
The girl was amazed when he gave no indication of excitement after the
reading, let alone a start of surprise, which "certainly beat me," to
put it in her own language, "considering how he worshipped Phil and
Phil was asking permission to be killed in Europe like he was asking
permission to go fishing. People are queer, and never so queer as when
they get notice of sudden death or an elopement!"
When she asked, belying her gasping curiosity, if there was any answer,
the Doctor said "None!" in his quiet, absent-minded way, as he folded
the telegram and this time put the spectacles in his inside coat pocket.
"I must think this over a little before I speak to mother about it," he
thought, after he had turned into the street and as soon as he was
capable of thinking--such had been the blow of the message. The shadow
of the statue lay across his path at the time. He looked up at the
ancestor questioningly. The ancestor kept on charging British redcoats.
Dr. Sanford took a long way around back to the house. Every familiar
landmark seemed to recall some boyhood anecdote of Phil. If only there
had been two boys or a girl! With all of his thinking he was
blank-minded when he sat down in his favourite chair on the porch.
"What's happened, dear?" Mrs. Sanford asked at once. She knew his
signs of emotion better than the telegraph girl.
"Why, I have another cable from Phil," he replied.
"Is he ill or hurt? Don't hold back--I want to know!"
"No, he's well. It isn't that. It's--well--it's asking our
permission----"
"I know! He wants to fight!"
Now, how could she guess that? But she was an amazing woman, as he had
often said.
"Yes." He passed the cablegram to her.
"I'm not surprised," she said, after reading it. "I'd been fearing it
all along."
"Yes, he could not stand by and see such wrong done without wanting to
strike his blow. I honour him for it."
"But he's Phil--the only boy we have!"
"I am leaving it to you," the Doctor concluded. "He will not if you
say not."
"We'll think it over," said Mrs. Sanford.
When they broke silence and began a discussion of the pros and cons it
was only to return to silence; for they were merely rehearsing the
heads of trains of thought that occurred to both of them in a vicious
circle. At the supper table Jane realised that something was wrong,
and poignantly wrong.
"If it's about Phil," she blurted out, "I guess I'm entitled to know!"
When they told her, she said:
"Against that thieving Kaiser and for them poor little Belgiums! He
just couldn't help it! That's Phil all over. But it ain't the United
States' war, it's Europe's; and all I've got to say is that maybe he'll
never come back. He'll just be killed and buried over in them furrin
parts."
"We've thought of that, Jane," replied Mrs. Sanford.
"You're going to let him do it!" gasped Jane. "He won't, though, if
you say not."
"Buried in furrin parts!" Jane repeated in fresh horror. This was the
most awful aspect of it to her. If one insisted on being killed it
ought to be at home, where he could be laid in the family plot.
After supper the Doctor and Mrs. Sanford went into the study, though it
was early September and hot. There they sat silent as the flow of
still waters which run deep.
"I leave it to you and to him," she said quietly, after a time.
Dr. Sanford hunted in his desk and found a telegraph blank, and rapidly
in his fine, small hand which was suggestive of his mental
self-possession when he had a pen between his fingers, he wrote:
"Yes, by Jehovah, fight if your heart is in the cause and you are not
fighting for fighting's sake."
After Mrs. Sanford, who had been sitting very still, had read it she
nodded. The decision was made. It takes such occasions as this to
prove that fortitude still survives in quiet people who live on quiet
village streets.
Before going to bed Dr. Sanford wrote to the vicar of Truckleford:
"It has been our aim to teach Phil self-reliance and to decide for
himself. He is going to fight for the same kind of a cause that the
ancestor fought for, this time with the British. He is very far away
from us, but we are happy to think that he will have a second home with
you."
He showed the letter to Mrs. Sanford, who approved it.
As soon as Phil received the cable he moved on the War Office. As he
approached that enormous pile of stone he felt his inconsequence and
quizzically wondered if anybody had ever laughed inside its solemn
halls. Would the General whom Phil had met on the train see him? An
august person who attended at the door allowed him to write his name on
a slip of paper, and after a while a messenger conducted him to the
General's office, through the long, gloomy corridors, which seemed to
protest against the activity which the war had brought.
The General was doing the work of five men because there were so few
officers who knew how to do that kind of work and trying, English
fashion, not to make any show of it, in order to preserve his
appearance of poise and leisureliness. He asked Phil what his training
had been and then stepped into an adjoining room, where he spoke to
another general. The door had been left open, so that the other
general could look over the slim figure, with its well-moulded
features, which stood awaiting the result.
"Rather got me, his wanting to fight, so different from the usual
soldier of fortune type," he said. "Nice chap, well set up, from one
of the great American colleges. Just the man for the guns. That
_attache_ fellow said he came from good old stock, which you can see
for yourself."
He returned, after the other general had written the name of Philip
Sanford on a sheet of paper, to say that Philip Sanford would be
gazetted a second lieutenant of artillery. They were making second
lieutenants rapidly at the War Office in those days. Phil did not know
anything about guns, but, then, he knew as much as many other second
lieutenants of artillery.
"You will get word when and where to report," said the General. "And
jolly fine of you, I must say!"
The thing was done; no turning back, now. The next step was to send a
cable announcing his decision to his employer, who replied:
"Go ahead. We'll keep your job for you!"