CHAPTER XIII
When Colonel Butler declared his intention of going to New York and Washington to consult with his friends about the great war, to urge active participation in it by the United States, and to offer to the proper authorities, his services as a military expert and commander, his daughter protested vigorously. It was absurd, she declared, for him, at his age, to think of doing anything of the kind; utterly preposterous and absurd. But he would not listen to her. His mind was made up, and she was entirely unable to divert him from his purpose.
"Then I shall go with you," she declared.
"May I ask," he inquired, "what your object is in wishing to accompany me?"
"Because you're not fit to go alone. You're too old and feeble, and something might happen to you."
He turned on her a look of infinite scorn.
"Age," he replied, "is no barrier to patriotism. A man's obligation to serve his country is not measured by his years. I have never been more capable of taking the field against an enemy of civilization than I am at this moment. To suggest that I am not fit to travel unless accompanied by a female member of my family falls little short of being gross disrespect. I shall go alone."
Again she protested, but she was utterly unable to swerve him a hair's breadth from his determination and purpose. So she was obliged to see him start off by himself on his useless and Quixotic errand. She knew that he would return disappointed, saddened, doubly depressed, and ill both in body and mind.
Since Pen's abrupt departure to seek a home with his Grandpa Walker, Colonel Butler had not been so obedient to his daughter's wishes. He had changed in many respects. He had grown old, white-haired, feeble and despondent. He was often ill at ease, and sometimes morose. That he grieved over the boy's absence there was not a shadow of doubt. Yet he would not permit the first suggestion of a reconciliation that did not involve the humble application of his grandson to be forgiven and taken back. But such an application was not made. The winter days went by, spring blossomed into summer, season followed season, and not yet had the master of Bannerhall seen coming down the long, gray road to the old home the figure of a sorrowful and suppliant boy.
When the world war began, his mind was diverted to some extent from his sorrow. From the beginning his sympathies had been with the Allies. Old soldier that he was he could not denounce with sufficient bitterness the spirit of militarism that seemed to have run rampant among the Central Powers. At the invasion of Belgium and at the mistreatment of her people, especially of her women and children, at the bombardment of the cathedral of Rheims, at the sinking of the Lusitania, at the execution of Edith Cavell, at all the outrages of which German militarism was guilty, he grew more and more indignant and denunciatory. His sense of fairness, his spirit of chivalry, his ideas of honorable warfare and soldierly conduct were inexpressibly shocked. The murder of sleeping women and children in country villages by the dropping of bombs from airships, the suffocation of brave soldiers by the use of deadly gases, the hurling of liquid fire into the ranks of a civilized enemy; these things stirred him to the depths. He talked of the war by day, he dreamed of it at night. He chafed bitterly at the apparent attempt of the Government at Washington to preserve the neutrality of this country against the most provoking wrongs. It was our war, he declared, as much as it was the war of any nation in Europe, and it was our duty to get into it for the sake of humanity, at the earliest possible moment and at any cost. His intense feeling and profound conviction in the matter led finally to his determination to make the trip to New York and Washington in order to present his views and make his recommendations, and to offer his services in person, in quarters where he believed they would be welcomed and acted on. So he went on what appeared to his daughter to be the most preposterous errand he had ever undertaken.