The Desert of Wheat Part 51

I'll do my duty, whatever it is. I would have gone to war only a beast with my soul killed before I ever got there.... With no hope--no possibility of return!... But you love me!... Can't you see--how great the difference?"

Lenore understood and felt it in his happiness. "Yes, Kurt, I know....

Thank G.o.d, I've helped you.... I want you to go. I'll pray always. I believe you will come back to me.... Life could not be so utterly cruel..." She broke off.

"Life can't rob me now--nor death," he cried, in exaltation. "I have your love. Your face will always be with me--as now--lovely and brave!... Not a tear!... And only that sweet smile like an angel's!...

Oh, Lenore, what a girl you are!"

"Say good-by--and go," she faltered. Another moment would see her weaken.

"Yes, I must hurry." His voice was a whisper--almost gone. He drew a deep breath. "Lenore--my promised wife--my star for all the black nights--G.o.d bless you--keep you!... Good-by!"

She spent all her strength in her embrace, all her soul in the pa.s.sion of her farewell kiss. Then she stood alone, tottering, sinking. The swift steps, now heavy and uneven, pa.s.sed out of the hall--the door closed--the motor-car creaked and rolled away--the droning hum ceased.

For a moment of despairing shock, before the storm broke, Lenore blindly wavered there, unable to move from the spot that had seen the beginning and the end of her brief hour of love. Then she summoned strength to drag herself to her room, to lock her door.

Alone! In the merciful darkness and silence and loneliness!... She need not lie nor play false nor fool herself here. She had let him go!

Inconceivable and monstrous truth! For what?... It was not now with her, that deceiving spirit which had made her brave. But she was a woman. She fell upon her knees beside her bed, shuddering.

That moment was the beginning of her sacrifice, the sacrifice she shared in common now with thousands of other women. Before she had pitied; now she suffered. And all that was sweet, loving, n.o.ble, and motherly--all that was womanly--rose to meet the stretch of gray future, with its endless suspense and torturing fear, its face of courage for the light of day, its despair for the lonely night, and its vague faith in the lessons of life, its possible and sustaining and eternal hope of G.o.d.

CHAPTER XXIV

Camp--, _October_--.

Dear Sister Lenore,--It's been long since I wrote you. I'm sorry, dear. But I haven't just been in shape to write. Have been transferred to a training-camp not far from New York. I don't like it. The air is raw, penetrating, different from our high mountain air in the West. So many gray, gloomy days! And wet--why you never saw a rain in Was.h.i.+ngton! Fine bunch of boys, though. We get up in the morning at 4:30. Sweep the streets of the camp! I'm glad to get up and sweep, for I'm near frozen long before daylight. Yesterday I peeled potatoes till my hands were cramped. Nine million spuds, I guess! I'm wearing citizen's clothes--too thin, by gos.h.!.+--and sleeping in a tent, on a canvas cot, with one blanket. Wouldn't care a--(scoose me, sis)--I wouldn't mind if I had a real gun, and some real fighting to look forward to. Some life, I don't think! But I meant to tell you why I'm here.

You remember how I always took to cowboys. Well, I got chummy with a big cow puncher from Montana. His name was Andersen. Isn't that queer? His name same as mine except for the last e where I have o.

He's a Swede or Norwegian. True-blue American? Well, I should smile.

Like all cowboys! He's six feet four, broad as a door, with a flat head of an Indian, and a huge, bulging chin. Not real handsome, but say! he's one of the finest fellows that ever lived. We call him Montana.

There were a lot of rough-necks in our outfit, and right away I got in bad. You know I never was much on holding my temper. Anyway, I got licked powerful fine, as dad would say, and I'd been all beaten up but for Montana. That made us two fast friends, and sure some enemies, you bet.

We had the tough luck to run into six of the rough-necks, just outside of the little town, where they'd been drinking. I never heard the name of one of that outfit. We weren't acquainted at all.

Strange how they changed my soldier career, right at the start! This day, when we met them, they got fresh, and of course I had to start something. I soaked that rough-neck, sis, and don't you forget it.

Well, it was a fight, sure. I got laid out--not knocked out, for I could see--but I wasn't any help to pard Montana. It looked as if he didn't need any. The rough-necks jumped him. Then, one after another, he piled them up in the road. Just a swing--and down went each one--cold. But the fellow I hit came to and, grabbing up a pick-handle, with all his might he soaked Montana over the head.

What an awful crack! Montana went down, and there was blood everywhere.

They took Montana to the hospital, sewed up his head. It wasn't long before he seemed all right again, but he told me sometimes he felt queer. Then they put us on a troop-train, with boys from California and all over, and we came East. I haven't seen any of those other Western boys, though, since we got here.

One day, without any warning, Montana keeled over, down and out.

Paralysis! They took him to a hospital in New York. No hope, the doctors said, and he was getting worse all the time. But some New York surgeon advised operation, anyway. So they opened that healed-over place in his head, where the pick-handle hit--and what do you think they found? A splinter off that pick-handle, stuck two inches under his skull, in his brain! They took it out. Every day they expected Montana to die. But he didn't. But he _will_ die. I went over to see him. He's unconscious part of the time--crazy the rest. No part of his right side moves! It broke me all up. Why couldn't that soak he got have been on the Kaiser's head?

I tell you, Lenore, a fellow has his eye teeth cut in this getting ready to go to war. It makes me sick. I enlisted to fight, not to be chased into a climate that doesn't agree with me--not to sweep roads and juggle a wooden gun. There are a lot of things, but say! I've got to cut out that kind of talk.

I feel almost as far away from you all as if I were in China. But I'm nearer France! I hope you're well and standing pat, Lenore.

Remember, you're dad's white hope. I was the black sheep, you know.

Tell him I don't regard my transfer as a disgrace. The officers didn't and he needn't. Give my love to mother and the girls. Tell them not to worry. Maybe the war will be over before--I'll write you often now, so cheer up.

Your loving brother,

Jim.

Camp--, _October_--.

My Dearest Lenore,--If my writing is not very legible it is because my hand shakes when I begin this sweet and sacred privilege of writing to my promised wife. My other letter was short, and this is the second in the weeks since I left you. What an endless time! You must understand and forgive me for not writing oftener and for not giving you definite address.

I did not want to be in the Western regiment, for reasons hard to understand. I enlisted in New York and am trying hard to get into the Rainbow Division, with some hope of success. There is nothing to me in being a member of a crack regiment, but it seems that this one will see action first of all American units. I don't want to be an officer, either.

How will it be possible for me to write you as I want to--letters that will be free of the plague of myself--letters that you can treasure if I never come back? Sleeping and waking, I never forget the wonderful truth of your love for me. It did not seem real when I was with you, but, now that we are separated, I know that it is real. Mostly my mind contains only two things--this constant memory of you, and that other terrible thing of which I will not speak. All else that I think or do seems to be mechanical.

The work, the training, is not difficult for me, though so many boys find it desperately hard. You know I followed a plow, and that is real toil. Right now I see the brown fallow hills and the great squares of gold. But visions or thoughts of home are rare. That is well, for they hurt like a stab. I cannot think now of a single thing connected with my training here that I want to tell you. Yet some things I must tell. For instance, we have different instructors, and naturally some are more forcible than others. We have one at whom the boys laugh. He tickles them. They like him. But he is an ordeal for me. The reason is that in our first bayonet practice, when we rushed and thrust a stuffed bag, he made us yell, _"G.o.d d.a.m.n you, German--die!"_ I don't imagine this to be general practice in army exercises, but the fact is he started us that way.

I can't forget. When I begin to charge with a bayonet those words leap silently, but terribly, to my lips. Think of this as reality, Lenore--a sad and incomprehensible truth in 1917. All in me that is spiritual, reasonable, all that was once hopeful, revolts at this actuality and its meaning. But there is another side, that dark one, which revels in antic.i.p.ation. It is the cave-man in me, hiding by night, waiting with a bludgeon to slay. I am beginning to be struck by the gradual change in my comrades. I fancied that I alone had suffered a retrogression. I have a deep consciousness of baseness that is going to keep me aloof from them. I seem to be alone with my own soul. Yet I seem to be abnormally keen to impressions. I feel what is going on in the soldiers' minds, and it shocks me, set me wondering, forces me to doubt myself. I keep saying it must be my peculiar way of looking at things.

Lenore, I remember your appeal to me. Shall I ever forget your sweet face--your sad eyes when you bade me hope in G.o.d?--I am trying, but I do not see G.o.d yet. Perhaps that is because of my morbidness--my limitations. Perhaps I will face him over there, when I go down into the Valley of the Shadow. One thing, however, I do begin to see is that there is a divinity in men. Slowly something divine is revealing itself to me. To give up work, property, friends, sister, mother, home, sweetheart, to sacrifice all and go out to fight for country, for honor--that indeed is divine. It is beautiful. It inspires a man and lifts his head. But, alas! if he is a thinking man, when he comes in contact with the actual physical preparation for war, he finds that the divinity was the hour of his sacrifice and that, to become a good soldier, he must change, forget, grow hard, strong, merciless, brutal, humorous, and callous, all of which is to say base. I see boys who are tender-hearted, who love life, who were born sufferers, who cannot inflict pain! How many silent cries of protest, of wonder, of agony, must go up in the night over this camp! The sum of them would be monstrous. The sound of them, if voiced, would be a clarion blast to the world. It is sacrifice that is divine, and not the making of an efficient soldier.

I shall write you endlessly. The action of writing relieves me. I feel less burdened now. Sometimes I cannot bear the burden of all this unintelligible consciousness. My mind is not large enough.

Sometimes I feel that I am going to be every soldier and every enemy--each one in his strife or his drifting or his agony or his death. But despite that feeling I seem alone in a horde. I make no friends. I have no way to pa.s.s my leisure but writing. I can hardly read at all. When off duty the boys amuse themselves in a hundred ways--going to town, the theaters, and movies; chasing the girls (especially that to judge by their talk); play; boxing; games; and I am sorry to add, many of them gamble and drink. But I cannot do any of these things. I cannot forget what I am here for. I cannot forget that I am training to kill men. Never do I forget that soon I will face death. What a terrible, strange, vague thrill that sends s.h.i.+vering over me! Amus.e.m.e.nt and forgetfulness are past for Kurt Dorn. I am concerned with my soul. I am fighting that black pa.s.sion which makes of me a sleepless watcher and thinker.

If this war only lets me live long enough to understand its meaning!

Perhaps that meaning will be the meaning of life, in which case I am longing for the unattainable. But underneath it all must be a colossal movement of evolution, of spiritual growth--or of retrogression. Who knows? When I ask myself what I am going to fight for, I answer--for my country, as a patriot--for my hate, as an individual. My time is almost up. I go on duty. The rain is roaring on the thin roof. How it rains in this East! Whole days and nights it pours. I cannot help but think of my desert hills, always so barren and yellow, with the dust-clouds whirling. One day of this rain, useless and wasted here, would have saved the Bend crop of wheat. Nature is almost as inscrutable as G.o.d.

Lenore, good-by for this time. Think of me, but not as lonely or unhappy or uncomfortable out there in the cold, raw, black, wet night. I will be neither. Some one--a spirit--will keep beside me as I step the beat. I have put unhappiness behind me. And no rain or mud or chill will ever feaze me.

Yours with love,

Kurt Dorn.

Camp--, _October_--.

Dear Sister Lenore,--After that little letter of yours I could do nothing more than look up another pin like the one I sent Kathleen.

I inclose it. Hope you will wear it.

I'm very curious to see what your package contains. It hasn't arrived yet. All the mail comes late. That makes the boys sore.

The weather hasn't been so wet lately as when I last wrote, but it's colder. Believe me these tents are not steam-heated! But we grin and try to look happy. It's not the most cheerful thing to hear the old call in the morning and tumble out in the cold gray dawn. Say! I've got two blankets now. _Two!_ Just time for mess, then we hike down the road. I'm in for artillery now, I guess. The air service really fascinated me, but you can't have what you want in this business.

_Sat.u.r.day_.--This letter will be in sections. No use sending you a little dab of news now and then. I'll write when I can, and mail when the letter a.s.sumes real proportions. Your package arrived and I was delighted. I think I slept better last night on your little pillow than any night since we were called out. My pillow before was your sleeveless jersey.

It's after three A.M. and I'm on guard--that is, battery guard, and I have to be up from midnight to reveille, not on a post, but in my tent, so that if any of my men (I'm a corporal now), whom I relieve every two hours, get into trouble they can call me. Non-coms. go on guard once in six days, so about every sixth night I get along with no sleep.

We have been ordered to do away with all personal property except shaving outfit and absolutely necessary articles. We can't keep a foot-locker, trunk, valise, or even an ordinary soap-box in our tents. Everything must be put in one barrack bag, a canvas sack just like a laundry-bag.

Thank the girls for the silk handkerchief and candy they sent. I sure have the sweetest sisters of any boy I know. I never appreciated them when I had them. I'm learning bitter truths these days. And tell mother I'll write her soon. Thank her for the pajamas and the napkins. Tell her I'm sorry a soldier has no use for either.