“Well, thank God for that,” Campton cried.
“Yes. Don’t you feel how we’re all being swept into it?” panted Boylston breathlessly. His face had caught the illumination. “Sealed, as George says—we’re sealed to the job, every one of us! Even I feel that, sitting here at a stuffy desk....” He flushed crimson and his eyes filled. “We’ll be in it, you know; America will—in a few weeks now, I believe! George was as sure of it as I am. And, of course, if the war goes on, our army will have to take short-sighted officers; won’t they, sir? As England and France did from the first. They’ll need the men; they’ll need us all, sir!”
“They’ll need _you_, my dear chap; and they’ll have you, to the full, whatever your job is,” Campton smiled; and Boylston, choking back a sob, dashed off again.
Yes, they were all being swept into it together—swept into the yawning whirlpool. Campton felt that as clearly as all these young men; he felt the triviality, the utter unimportance, of all their personal and private concerns, compared with this great headlong outpouring of life on the altar of conviction. And he understood why, for youths like George and Boylston, nothing, however close and personal to them, would matter till the job was over. “And not even for poor Talkett!” he reflected whimsically.
That afternoon, curiously appeased, he returned once more to his picture of his son. He had sketched the boy leaning out of the train window, smiling back, signalling, saying goodbye, while his destiny rushed him out into darkness as years ago the train used to rush him back to school. And while Campton worked he caught the glow again; it rested on brow and eyes, and spread in sure touches under his happy brush.
One day, as the picture progressed, he wavered over the remembrance of some little detail of the face, and went in search of an old portfolio into which, from time to time, he had been in the habit of thrusting his unfinished studies of George. He plunged his hand into the heap, and Georges of all ages looked forth at him: round baby-Georges, freckled schoolboys, a thoughtful long-faced youth (the delicate George of St. Moritz); but none seemed quite to serve his purpose and he rummaged on till he came to a page torn from an old sketch-book. It was the pencil study he had made of George as the lad lay asleep at the Crillon, the night before his mobilisation.