They Have Sown the Wind
The Battle Flags Are Furled
I
THERE was only one steamer a week to France at this time, and those who traveled on it were carefully selected persons, able to show that they had important business, of a kind the authorities approved. In theory, the world was still at war, and it was not intended that Americans should use the peace conference as a propaganda platform, or for sightseeing tours. But Robert P. Budd knew the people at the War and State Departments; they talked to him confidentially, and when he asked for passports they arranged it at once.
The first thing Robbie did on a steamer was to study the passenger list. He was an extrovert; he liked to talk with people, all sorts, and especially those who were familiar with his hunting ground. There was no printed list in wartime, but he borrowed the purser's list, and went over it with Lanny, and told him that this man was “in steel,” that one “in copper,” and a third represented a Wall Street banking group. Near the top he read: “Alston, Charles T.,” and remarked: “That must be old Charlie Alston, who was in my class at Yale. He's a professor now, and has published a couple of books on the geography of Europe.”
“He'll have to begin all over again,” ventured. Lanny.
“He was a 'barb,' and I didn't know him well,” added the father. “I remember him as a rather frail chap with big spectacles. He was an awful grind, and most of us considered it unfair competition. However, he's made good, I suppose.”
December is apt to be a rude month on the Atlantic, and there were vacant seats in the dining saloon, and one or two at the captain's table. Robbie glanced at the place card alongside him, and read “Professor Alston.” He asked the captain, and learned that his former classmate was an adviser to the peace delegation, but had been unable to sail with the presidential staff because of an attack of influenza.
The third day out, the sea was quieter, and the professor appeared on deck; the same frail little man, wearing his large spectacles. The only thing Robbie didn't recall was that his complexion was yellow with a slight tinge of green; perhaps that would change when he was able to keep food on his stomach. The professor was glad to see his classmate; it appeared that when you had known somebody in college, you felt a peculiar sentimental bond. Alston had looked up to the handsome, rich, and popular Budd as to a shining light on a mountain top; so now to have him sitting in a deckchair asking questions about the coming peace conference and listening with deference to his replies — that was a sort of promotion.
Also the professor was interested in a fresh incarnation of the handsome, rich, and popular Budd; a youth of nineteen, resembling in many ways the one whom Alston remembered. Lanny was lighter in build and faster in mind, more accessible than his father and more eager to learn. The fact that Charles T. Alston had never “made” a fraternity in college and had earned a scant living by waiting on table in a students' boarding house — that didn't mean anything to Lanny. But that he was a storehouse of vital facts, and had been chosen to help the American peace commissioners in their efforts to make Europe a saner place to live in — that made him a great personage in Lanny's eyes. He listened to the conversations between the two elders, and at other times, when Robbie was exchanging shop talk with the “big men” of steel and copper and banking, Lanny would be strolling the deck with the specialist in geography, keeping one hand under his arm to steady him when the ship gave a lurch.