href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@36329@[email protected]#chap30" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">PETER SMITHERS IN ACTION

THE OLD BLOOD

CHAPTER I

A HOME-COMING

Perhaps a real story-teller, who leaps into the heart of things, would have begun this story in France instead of with a railroad journey from the Southwest to New England; perhaps he would have taken the view of "our Philip's" mother that Phil fought the whole war in Europe himself; perhaps given the story the name of "The Plain Girl," leaving Phil secondary place.

A veracious chronicler, consulting Phil's wishes, makes his beginning with a spring afternoon of 1914, when the Berkshire slopes were dripping and glistening and smiling and the air, washed by showers and purified by a burst of sunshine, was like some rare vintage which might be drunk only on the premises.

Complaining in a familiar way as it followed the course of a winding stream, which laughed in flashes of pearly white over rocky shallows, the train ran out into a broad valley—the home valley. Not a road that he had not tramped over; not a woodland path that he did not know; not a mountain trail that he had not climbed. The scene was bred in his blood.

If Bill Hurley were at the station the auguries would be right, and there he was, standing on the same spot where he had stood for twenty years when the trains arrived; there, too, the stooped old station agent in his moment of bustling importance. By the calendar of Bill's chin it was Tuesday; for Bill shaved only on Sunday and Wednesday afternoons. A man of observation and opinion this keeper of the gate of Longfield, who let the world come to him and took charge of its baggage and conveyed its persons to their destinations. He was also a dispenser of news.

"The Jerrods have got that new porch," he said. "They'd been talking about it so long that they're sort of lost-minded and dumb these days. And Hanks has put in a new soda fountain and plate glass windows. Ambitious man, Hanks. Nothing can keep him from branching out."

"And nothing can change you, Bill."

"Me? I guess not. May wither a little when the winters are hard, but you'll find me here fifty years from now. H-m-m!" after looking Phil over. "Bound to happen to young fellers out of college. Noticed it often. Something rubbed off you and something rubbed in out West, I jedge."

"You have it—and in one of your epigrams, as usual," Phil agreed.

"Folks do say that I have a tolerable understanding of human nature, not to mention a sententious way of saying things, which I've always said comes from handling trunks. Hear you're going to Europe."

"Always well informed!" Phil affirmed.

"Never denied it. Well, you've earned the trip. Three years out there. Made good, too, everybody says. Soon as you've seen your folks and eat your veal, you and me must have a talk about old times. Trunk and suit case? Right! Have 'em up in a quarter of an hour."

Beyond the station was the old wooden bridge, which spanned the river here running deep and sluggish under drooping, solicitous willows. Then the avenue of maples; and at the end of the vista of deep shade, in the bright light of the little square, the statue of a strenuous gentleman in bronze who, sword in hand, was charging British redcoats. For Longfield had a real work of art, though not all Longfield appreciated the fact yet and certain Puritan sections were inclined to regard anything called a work of art with suspicion.

In boyhood Phil had heard so much about the hero at home that he seemed a bore. To-day that spirited, indomitable figure gave him a thrill. With a fresh eye he realised its quality and something deeper than that in a wave of personal gratitude to a famous sculptor, also a son of Longfield, known in other lands where the ancestor was unknown, who had taken the commission out of civic pride for a small fee and the satisfaction of putting his best into a chivalrous subject after having received a large fee for doing a statesman in a frock for the grounds of a State capital.

Phil recalled how his father and mother and the Sons of the Revolution, and also the Daughters thereof, had favoured a full Continental uniform for the hero. But the sculptor had had enough of coats. Not lacking in that pithiness of expression which is salad to genius, he had told the family and societies and committees and all such that either he would have his way or they could employ a mortuary chiseller and a tailor, who would gratify their conceptions of martial dignity by clothing a gallant gentleman who had fought free-limbed on a hot August day in an overcoat, muffler and mittens and two suits of underclothes, which would have meant death to freedom from sunstroke and that the Declaration of Independence might be a relic in the British Museum.

Coatless, hatless, sleeves rolled and shirt open at the throat, young and lean, with every fibre attuned to conflict, the "rebel" who had helped to found a nation now served the purpose not of stopping a British charge, but of bringing touring automobiles to a standstill while their occupants appreciated, either by virtue of their own taste or by the desire to be in fashion with the taste of their superiors, what many considered to be the best work of a master, in contrast with the graveyard effigies, which had the martial spirit of Alaskan totem poles, from the same mould in other squares, to glorify the deeds of local regiments in the Civil War.

Longfield was proud of the statue because it attracted so much attention and because it was Longfield's and yet resentful because it attracted more attention than the elms. Tourists thought that other villages had equally as noble elms as Longfield—equally patched and scarred. Longfield knew better. Its elms were without comparison. From the selectmen's point of view the cost of nursing was considerable, too, which gave further merit over the statue, which cost nothing for upkeep.

Besides, the elms were old when the hero was a child. They marked the epoch of the village's birth, even as the maples marked that of the railroad's coming. Nothing in Old England is quite as old as New England. Not even the pyramids are as old as a New England elm. Europe may repair and renovate cathedrals; New England repairs and renovates elms. The Puritan Fathers planted trees on such broad main streets as that of Longfield, with stretches of green border of old turf now curving around the massive trunks that supported their stately plumes—a street which Phil saw in its age, its serenity and its spring freshness with the appreciation of one come from the Southwest, plus the call of old association which absence strengthens. To him the Berkshires were the hills of all hills; Longfield the village of villages; this street the street of streets; and the most majestic elm stood beside a path which led to the house of houses. Home-coming had kindled his sentiment. He had been long enough out of college not to be ashamed of a little of it, if he did not have to mention it to anybody.

It was this mood in its