CHAPTER XXX
PETER SMITHERS IN ACTION
Two white heads bent over the tombstones in the cemetery at Truckleford and talked genealogy; two white heads strolled on the lawn and had tilts in theology, or sat in the library and discussed English and American viewpoints. The vicar of Truckleford believed in a State church, while Dr. Sanford held that this meant mixing religion and politics, which was a bad business. Sanford of England, who had cheeks ruddy from the moist climate, brought his sentences to a close with a rising inflection; and Sanford of New England had a dry complexion, with sharp little wrinkles around his eyes, and brought his sentences to a close with a falling inflection. They seemed a trifle strange to each other at times, though they were speaking the same language; and either would have been highly complimented if you had told him that you recognised him for the Englishman or the American he was at once? They rambled from philosophy to politics, from scientific versus classical education to the future of humanity generally, rich in words and ideas if not in money.
Then, two other white heads pottered about the flower and kitchen gardens, both clicking their knitting needles industriously for soldiers the while. In England, roses were not often frost-killed or burned by the hot sun of summer, which brightened the sunflower and the goldenrod fringeing the roadsides with yellow in autumn at home. Two white heads discussed the servant problem in both countries; and England thought it pretty bad at home until she heard of the state of affairs in America. It was the particular care of the two English heads, plotting together in their nightly conferences, that the American cousins should feel at home when English facility in this respect, however insular and offish the islanders may seem abroad, requires no calculation.
The visit at last come true had the aspect of romance under the circumstances. It required a certain amount of courage for Dr. and Mrs. Sanford to cross the Atlantic in the midst of submarine activity quite in keeping with ancestral Pilgrim daring in crossing in the seventeenth century. From Jane came an occasional letter on the state of affairs in Longfield. "Things can't be right personally with you away," she wrote. "I am getting too fat and lazy for words. But things exteriorly, as Phil would say when he got hifalutin, are just the same. Garden doing fine except the cauliflowers, which look peaked; but they will pick up, Patrick says, as cauliflowers have a way of looking peaked and ragged before they get a start. No hyphenates and few potato bugs in Longfield this year. I put up thirty jars of currant jelly and it looks licking good. That is more than you can eat; but sure, unless you change your habits, it isn't more than you can give away. I expect you're putting your shoes outside your door every morning to be blacked, like the lords do. Well, when you come home you will find the blacking-brush in the same old place and that Jane has not changed. I am writing a letter to Phil himself. With best regards,
"Your truly, JANE."
There was one subject which knit the cousinship of the four ever closer—Phil. The local postmaster was convinced that there was no danger of one officer starving, if soldiers could live on cake, judging by the number of packages which went through the parcels post to Second Lieutenant Philip Sanford. Their thoughts were those of hundreds of thousands of other households in England. The pride of it for the vicar and his wife was that they, too, had a son at the front. They would not waive the claim that he was partly theirs and their guests did not ask it. Every day they wrote to Phil, and his cheerful letters in answer, always making sport of the mud and minimising the dangers—long letters when the battery was in billets—brought the four heads into communion of spirit whenever the envelopes arrived. Always there was the fear—the fear over hundreds of thousands of households, no less poignant in each because of the hundreds of thousands of others—the fear which they never mentioned and never forgot.
The postman brought Helen's letter, the only one in the post that trip, to Dr. Sanford when he was alone on the lawn, thinking that a point had occurred to him which would give him the better of the argument with the vicar the next time they resumed a certain discussion. After he had opened the envelope and read the first sentence, he folded the sheet and walked away into the garden to be undisturbed. He must think how to break the news to his wife.
"This time Cousin Phil is not writing to you himself, but I am writing for him," Helen wrote. "Though I have never seen you, it seems as if I knew you and I think, as Phil's father and mother, you are the kind who might suffer more in the end if some of the truth were held back by clever phrases than if it were all told at first. He loves you so much and you love him so much that it is the only honest way.
"He is as whole as ever in body, his mind quite clear, despite the wound in his jaw from a shell-fragment; but he must remain here at the hospital for many months, while a miracle man of a surgeon will make his jaw as good as ever. As the result of shell-shock he is also, for the moment, both blind and deaf; but other miracle men will bring back his sight and hearing. All the great ones are prepared to spoil him with attention, he is so brave.
"As he cannot write himself, I shall write for him every day. But you must not be impatient; as these modern miracle men, unlike the Biblical ones, must take time to perform their wonders. Write him as many letters as you can and I'll spell out every word of them to him. Yes, go on writing just as if he were making a fight at the front and that will help him in the new fight he is making in the dark against pain and for you. When he returns he will be the same as when he left you, only dearer to you as you will be to him. He will recover completely. Depend on this."
"Brave little liar!" as Bricktop had said. Yet Helen believed every word.
Dr. Sanford continued to walk up and down after he had finished the letter. Mrs. Sanford, coming out of doors and seeing him, knew that something had happened to Phil, though the Doctor looked only customarily thoughtful and calm. She went toward him, followed by the vicar and his wife; they, too, divining from her attitude that tragedy had come to Truckleford.
"I am ready! What is it?" asked Mrs. Sanford.
He read the letter aloud, thinking that this would soften the message for her. She listened with a white face and still eyes. When he had finished she took his hands in hers; then in silence the two started walking up and down, arm in arm. Two other white heads in the background, quite as if it were their son, also walked up and down, arm in arm. Silent, very silent, the garden, except for the occasional hum of a bee.
The mother was looking the worst fairly in the face, with characteristic fearlessness.
"We have a little money—enough if——" If Phil should be in the eternal night they could care for him, was the first thought of her love. But after they were gone——
The other two white heads were thinking the same. Phil had done this for their cause. They had a little money; he should not want. When, finally, the first two came toward the vicar, he was suddenly mindful that Helen had written the letter; rather than Henriette—which was very odd.
"She would state all the truth, Helen would," said the vicar. "It's her merit. She could not help doing so. When she says that Phil will be as right as ever again, you may depend upon it."
"We do!" said Phil's mother. "He will get well! He must! We'll not think anything else. He will!" There was a quiet, tense vitality in her declaration akin to Helen's own.
"He will!" said Dr. Sanford.
"That sounds better," said the vicar. "It is worthier of the ancestors and Phil."
"We must go to him!" said the mother.
The next morning this pair of old children set out, holding hands in the compartment a good portion of the way to London. Cities always confused Dr. Sanford. Only the call to his son would have given him courage to enter the portals of that sombre War Office, which was only one of many doors whence he took his plea.
Every one was sorry and kindly, too, when they looked over the old clergyman and he told his tale. If they let one parent go to a great hospital in the military zone in France, then they would have to let thousands; but one official, with a sly wink, suggested that he get a note from his Ambassador. Going to the Embassy simply as an American gentleman, without any letters of introduction, he waited in the reception-room a long time till somebody returned from luncheon; and the somebody, who was a young person with a Burke's Peerage under his arm, said that it was quite out of the question for the Embassy to interest itself in his case.
"It's the rules, I suppose," said Mrs. Sanford.
"Yes. We can't go behind the rules," said the Doctor.
It was a sad journey for the old children back to Truckleford and their hand-clasp was tighter than before as they looked out at the hedges slipping by. Awaiting them were letters from Helen, long letters, less matter-of-fact than the first one, with a chant of optimism running through the sentences; and a telegram from Peter Smithers, who had arrived at Liverpool and was coming to see them.
Automobiles were difficult of hire in England then; yet Peter arrived in one, a high-powered one at that. How could he travel by train when he was on the verge of poverty from keeping up that miserable little farm? The way he came through the gate heralded a dynamic advent at the vicarage.
"Glad to meet you, sir, and you, too, Mrs. Sanford!" he said. "Suppose you four have all the ancestors looked up and card-indexed by this time. And what about Phil? Still wallowing in the mud for the pleasure of being shot at? What!"
The look in all four faces drew a sharp, penetratingly anxious exclamation from him.
"Tell me!" he demanded, and the whole aspect of the man had changed in an instant. "Tell me!"
He dropped in a chair at the news; but no sooner was he down than he jumped up, jerking a cigar out of his pocket and chewing at it as he began pacing back and forth with pounding steps.
"Bricktop can do it if anybody can!" he said excitedly. "I'd back Bricktop against anybody or anything! Bricktop over there operating on Phil! It's a small world. Bricktop will do it; and if there aren't specialists over there big enough to bring back Phil's sight and hearing, we'll get them, by George!" Peter took another turn, chewing at his cigar, and then whirled around. Decision was in his eyes and in every one of the definite wrinkles of his face. "I know what you've been thinking—if the worst should happen!"
"Yes, we had!" admitted Mrs. Sanford.
"But it won't, not to Phil! He'll pull out. George! I'd have given a thousand to have seen him knock that Prussian down! Whatever happens, I want you to know that all I have is back of him and every cent I have, if that farm doesn't break me, goes to him—and there's three millions, anyway."
Let it be recorded that the effect of this sudden declaration on four white heads was indescribable, particularly on the vicar and his wife, who had a feeling that they were witnessing some sort of a Christmas-time extravaganza. Phil's mother said that it was quite in keeping with Peter's reputation for making vital decisions promptly. At the same time she only gasped, "Peter!" while Dr. Sanford blinked like one who tries to look the sun in the face.
"Surprises you! I expect it is surprising," said Peter. "Never had any other idea since he was a little shaver. Always had my eye on him, but wasn't going to ruin him by making him think he didn't have to go out and clean cattle cars and knock down Prussians on his own account. Wanted to leave my fortune to a man, and the way to become a man is to go out and scratch gravel. Was kind of backing him when Ledyard took him on, but don't you tell him; it would make him mad. Now Ledyard says he won't let him go; but Ledyard doesn't own the whole United States. Remember last time I saw Phil and I was talking about my employees' clubhouse—he gave me such a slam that my indignation was real."
Misfortune to Phil had cracked the Smithers burr and revealed the sweet kernel inside.
"Peter, I——"
"Peter, we——"
The Longfield Sanfords were at last trying to utter their thanks. As for the Truckleford Sanfords, they still expected to see Peter toss a rope skyward and climb up it out of sight.
"Bless you for a pair of the best old dears that ever lived!" said Peter. "If it hadn't been for your father, Doctor, I might be holding Bill Hurley's job driving the local 'bus. Now, what you want to do is to get to Phil, don't you?"
"Yes! Oh, above everything!" exclaimed Mrs. Sanford.
"I gadded all over London trying," said the Doctor, who narrated his experiences.
"That baby boy at the Embassy, with his little accent and his little moustache turned up, and afraid he might slip on his little shadow, that's Levering's son," said Peter. "Levering started driving a donkey in a mine and left about two hundred thousand dollars and got heart disease making it, while his wife was in Paris. She couldn't stay at home in Cokeville because she had no social standing there. He used to see her once a year, if he could spare two weeks to cross the pond. But I'm wasting a lot of words on him, though it's time somebody gave him a twist. Now, I'll go back to London to-night."
"But you must stay to dinner!" begged the vicar.
"Sorry. But we want to see Phil. Is there a telegraph office here? Good! Might as well start things moving. I'll get dinner at one of those little inns. First-rate meat and potatoes; that's all a man wants—only the English never season anything. Put a pile of salt on the side of their plate and dab every mouthful in it, which means irregular distribution and a waste of time."
He was shaking hands all around preparatory to going, when he had a reminder.
"I want to see that ancestor of ours," he said. "Mine by adoption! You don't mind? I see your family isn't large and there ought to be enough of him to go round."
"We welcome you!" said the vicar, chuckling. This interest in genealogy convinced him that both Peter and the three millions must be real.
Peter looked the ancestor over with the eye of one who knows men.
"I'm proud of him!" he concluded, with a wink to the vicar. "You can see that he had his teeth set firmly in their sockets. Most ancestors have, and those of later generations get wiggly. Well, I'm off!"
When Peter had gone four white heads gazed at one another and swallowed and gazed. Three million dollars! Peter confessed it! And all for Phil!
"Hm-m—let the cat out of the bag!" he mused on his way to London. "Couldn't help it! Enjoyed it! What the professors call the psychological moment! Enjoyed keeping it secret before—enjoyed letting it go. Phil will keep that farm running after I'm gone—if it doesn't break me before I pass over the border."
Now Peter did not go to the War Office and beat a table and argue; but he set things in motion by sending cablegrams and telegrams. He did not even send up his card to the Ambassador until the Ambassador had received messages from four United States senators, from the man to whom he owed his appointment, and from the Secretary of State, that Peter Smithers was in London. Nobody was out at luncheon when he went to the Embassy, where he was at once given a note to some one on high who would immediately communicate to some one at the War Office. But before leaving he reminded the Ambassador that one of the Embassy chore-boys, ought to be taught civility as well as manners.
Nor did Peter go to the War Office until the General who was above the General who was above the General that Phil had first seen also had heard from several quarters about the importance of Peter Smithers. The Great One at the War Office was most cordial, and Peter talked to him as if he were used to meeting Great Ones. Both were leaders and organisers of men.
"I think there will be no difficulty," said the Great One. "We'll make a special case of it on account of his having to remain a long time at a base hospital in France. I'd heard about that young man before. Fine chap! Hope he'll pull through. A relative of yours?"
"Nephew!" Peter replied truthfully.
Hadn't he formally adopted himself as Phil's uncle?