Laura Spencer Portor

“ For Crayton was not alone a man of strong beliefs and ideals, but of proven ones. He was not the man merely to express opinions; he lived them. That popular and vicious belief, for instance, that to make a success of life a man must compromise with his own soul and must lower his ideals, Crayton did not combat with mere words—he refuted it by the evidence of his own career. Never in all the years had he changed or lowered his ideals one iota, yet his success was there large, enviable, for any one to behold. ”

“ Had not the lovers of horror, the scandal-mongers, already pictured our own land a prey to brutal conquerors, who, having stamped out the young manhood of the country, would outrage its women and lead its children into bondage? Were not tongues of flame and the smoke of prejudice and hate already curling to blacken those fair human attainments—justice, peace, order, brotherhood—reared with so much toil and painstaking through generations? ”

“ And Crayton conceded that it was. Perhaps, after all, he was even glad of this happening. He was aware of his old strength again and the need of his hand at the helm. This was the season for men of tried and proven faith. His old fondness for Frazier came over him but mingled with blame, a blame that should be spoken. He turned to De Lorbe:
"You young men have need of the better balance of older men of larger knowledge. It seems to you that civilization has broken down, that the world is going to pieces, that brute force threatens to triumph over humanity." ”

“ The dignity and severity of Crayton's attitude were consistent with the strong, determined face, the uncompromising mouth and eyes. When petty alarmists, and the shallow and the headlong and those who love scandal, are positively eager, it seems, to take humanity at a low estimate, it is then, precisely, that men of ripened experience and strong ideals are needed to uphold their ideals and to assert strongly what they know. What, indeed, should we do without this older reserve when the young, the weak, the impetuous, so soon lose the armor of their faith. ”

“ Crayton's disappointment as to his wife and daughter was dulled—even that—by the sharpness of his disapproval, very nearly his disgust, of Dulaney. He had always looked upon Dulaney as a promising young man—uncompromising and perhaps a trifle domineering, a little hard, but a man sound at heart. Now he saw him revealing himself even a little arrogantly as on the worse side; not among the believers in humanity, but the disbelievers. What could be hoped if the young range themselves on the side of pessimism and the darker powers! ”

“ Crayton moved a book, a paper-cutter away from him on the table, leaned forward a little, and put his arm where these had been. He meant once for all to get the matter clear. It was as though in this young man he saw the long-looked-for opportunity to state consummately all that his whole life stood for.
"I believe profoundly in humanity," he said, making his solemn confession, "and whoever believes in humanity is of necessity against war." ”

“ For one man who holds humanity in inviolable esteem there will be ten ready to believe the worst of it. So much the greater need, then, of the one man. It was a little as though Crayton himself had been called to arms to do battle for a high cause.
One day Reddington, Crayton's assistant accountant, opined the Allies would soon be in need of copper and ready to pay top prices—"There will be fortunes made now, sir." Reddington had even gone so far as to figure at just what advance the output of the firm could be sold. ”

“ For this new move on Crayton's part was to be not only a test of Frazier's business ability, but secretly a test of powers of far more importance to a man's soul. Deadlocket was notoriously corrupt, even among corrupt mining towns. On the army of young men who had gone there to win fortune there followed the usual camp-followers. For reasons single to itself the place was full of peculiarly insidious temptations. The young man who came back whole from a town like Deadlocket might reasonably be accounted secure for the remainder of his life. ”

“ De Lorbe said, quietly, "and facts are things we cannot ignore. They must be reckoned with. You have seen mentioned the German atrocities."
"I do not believe in any such atrocities," Crayton said. "It is to the advantage of the press and partisans to spread such reports. It is not that I am especially sympathetic with the Germans. It is simply that I believe better of humanity."
De Lorbe leaned forward eagerly. "My brother, who has seen, who is the very calmest, the very kindest of men, writes me: 'You know of old how calm I am; how nothing disturbs me. ”

“ Crayton was fond of chess. Indeed, it was the only game he played. He liked the planning and determining, the forecasting and foreseeing, and the establishing of his own position invulnerable at the last. He felt a like but larger pleasure now in foreseeing and disposing of possibilities of so much greater importance. The white knight was to be brought to the side of the white queen, but by moves carefully thought out, cautiously planned. He wrote in a neat, firm hand the telegram to Frazier:
Thank you very much. ”

“ Crayton looked to De Lorbe for a repetition.
De Lorbe's gray eyes fixed themselves on Josef. "I was saying that your countrymen have violated many Belgian women."
It was Josef's manner rather than his tongue which seemed to stutter, as though he could not say quickly enough nor clearly enough what was to be said.
"The Belgians were given a choice, but they offered resistance, sir. My people are forced to be severe with them. There is no such army in the world as the German Army. Everyone knows that. ”

“ It exists at certain seasons in the remote twilight, above dark and tapestried moors, there where the evening star hangs wet and gold, or, at the moment when the young Cinderella moon puts her silver slipper upon the stairway of the west, departing at the given signal, before all the glory of the stars is come. ”

“ To be an idealist necessitates at times the setting aside of facts which the timorous and compromising would have your believe are unalterable; it means stubborn tenacity in the face of the disbelief, often the scornful disbelief, of disbelievers. Crayton had a coarse old uncle in his youth who had gone wild with impatience of him and his ideals one day, and had flung out at him a sentence he had never forgotten: "You'll find out some damned day you're wrong!" ”

“ Crayton was unaware of all three. He bent over the chess-table, absorbed in the next move. The fingers of one hand were grouped intently, consideringly, on one of the pieces. One would have said his hand thought.
Josef went back noiselessly to his butler's sitting-room and to the letters he was writing. His three brothers had joined the colors and his fierce old mother in Augsburg expected him to return to fight for the Fatherland. Of course he had not the slightest idea of returning! Not he! He liked America and meant to stay in it. ”

“ It was not the poet now, but something alien, strange to himself, which kept suggesting to Crayton vague doubts; not doubts of humanity at large—never that; there he was firm—but of human beings in particular. He began wondering why he had not heard again from Frazier. Not that Crayton's last letter called for an answer, but if Frazier had been really free to offer himself as an aspirant for the hand of Crayton's daughter, would he not have written declaring himself at this time? ”

“ Crayton smiled and sent Frazier a wireless of approval. Not that Crayton disapproved so much of religion in childhood, as he suspected and distrusted it in young manhood. The religious child may be the future great man; but the avowedly religious young man he had found to be, as a rule, either of a distinctly neurotic or an inferior type. ”

“ Did not the poet know all this? And the poet did know it, of course, when he thought of it. And he knew, as Crayton did, that war is too hideous a thing to last, and justice and brotherhood, however threatened, too solid to be destroyed. ”

“ By the next boat, four days later, there came, as Crayton felt sure there would, an explanatory letter from Dulaney. It was as Crayton had suspected, Dulaney had had no word from Mrs. Crayton. She had not asked him to go to Belgium. He had gone entirely on his own responsibility. It had seemed to him the only thing to do under the circumstances. The present time was certainly not one in which to sentimentalize about human nature. For himself, he never took any chances with it. ”

“ De Lorbe waited, only bending forward a trifle more through the dusk. Josef continued:
"What is an army of strong men to do in a foreign land? Can officers and a few men control a thing like that? My mother in Augsburg writes me. She knows. She is old. She is wise. She has known for years all that was going to happen. She has written me twice of our brave men already lost. But she says: 'There will be a rich harvest in the Fatherland this year, and in Belgium, please God.' I think there will be."
Crayton sat staring ashily at Josef as a man stares at some apparition. ”

“ He had watched human progress too closely, studied it too long, believed in it too entirely, to have his fifty-five years of world experience overthrown by the altogether-out-of-the-ordinary, hot-headed happenings of a few days or weeks. ”

“ By and by a slight breeze began to stir delicately the leaves of a little walnut-tree in the green area on which that window of the library near his desk looked. He turned his face fully toward it in subtle, half-conscious recognition. He and his daughter Madeleine had planted that tree ten years ago on her birthday (it was his own idea) , when she was a little girl of eight—for the poet who is reputed to die young in each of us had not died in Crayton ”

“ Life is larger than all our prejudice, deeper than our firmest belief. It is Stevenson who says, 'The man who cannot forgive any mortal thing is a green hand at life.' "
Crayton's eyebrows lifted the least bit. He was finding out a good deal! The refreshing independence of Frazier's mind which Crayton so much admired— Was it just possible Frazier's independence might go so far as that! For this question of a man's moral code was one of those subjects on which Crayton had long been inflexible. ”

“ May I return to New York? Will you allow me to take the first boat for Belgium, to be of service to Mrs. Crayton and Miss Crayton.
F. Frazier.
Crayton read it twice, narrowing his eyes. From the telegram it might be supposed that Frazier also was of the scare-headline type, a young fellow—like so many others—whose first impulse was to distrust humanity. Then, too, fancy Crayton calling Frazier in from Deadlocket, more than three-fourths across the country and away from the important work he was doing there for the firm, to start him off on a wild-goose chase to Belgium. ”

“ And Crayton had compressed his fine lips, and narrowed his eyes, and spoken once more in defense of all that he knew and believed concerning human nature.
"Honorable men do not make fortunes in that manner," was his reply to Reddington. ”

“ He put out the desk light. Before putting out that on the center-table he took another look to make sure everything was safe and to take a survey, as he often did, of the comfort and beauty of the room. He liked beautiful and refined things, did Josef. At his mother's home in Augsburg everything was well scrubbed and clean, but coarse, very coarse. Here what a difference! How his old mother would stare and wipe her lips. Maybe his brothers would stay in America, too, if they were here. He raised his eyes to the portraits. What would Emil and Friedl say to women like that, eh? ”

“ Treasure and wealth a man may have—precious metals, gold and silver; priceless cloths and scones, gems and jewels; but there will be that he treasures above all these, and for which he will hold all these cheap ”

“ Crayton and Miss Crayton to get it. Of course there was a bare possibility they might be detained in one of the Belgian towns taken over by the Germans; but, from what he could gather of the general exodus, he thought it hardly likely. If he had luck he hoped to get away the following week. Then there followed a few remarks about the prevailing conditions. The letter ended with a personal note of pessimism. He had always believed the nations of Europe were only waiting what they thought was a good chance to spring at one another's throat. ”

“ Not Josef so soon! He turned and looked up. In the doorway, and then with a quick stride or two beside him, was a tall, well-built young man of about his own age—a clean, high-headed type, with frank eyes peering strangely at him through the dusk.
"I have just come. Josef has told me that Mr. Crayton— What has happened? Can you tell me?" Frazier was down on his knees also now. His hand, too, was feeling for Crayton's heart. Across the still form these two young men peered at each other, their young eyes asking questions. "You can trust me. I am Frazier ”

“ The Belgian situation was unpleasant, certainly, but not alarming. Of course the newspapers would continue to make the most of it; and of course thousands of headlong, harebrained people would continue to form headlong opinions as to what might happen. But Crayton did not concern himself with these. He turned soon to the financial section and began scanning the copper quotations, as was his wont.
Josef put fresh toast beside him and withdrew.
It was unfortunate, certainly, that Crayton's wife and his daughter Madeleine should have been in Belgium when war was declared. ”