the Desert Of Wheat (2001)
Page 25
He would not be denied. And if she had any desire to deny him it was lost in the moment. She clasped his neck and gave him kiss for kiss.
But her surrender made him think of her. She felt his effort to let her go.
Lenore's heart felt too big for her breast. It hurt. She clung to his hand and they walked on across the field and across a brook, up the slope to one of Lenore's favorite seats. And there she wanted to rest.
She smoothed her hair and brushed her dress, aware of how he watched her, with his heart in his eyes.
Had there ever in all the years of the life of the earth been so perfect a day? How dazzling the sun! What heavenly blue the sky! And all beneath so gold, so green! A lark caroled over Lenore's head and a quail whistled in the brush below. The brook babbled and gurgled and murmured along, happy under the open sky. And a soft breeze brought the low roar of the harvest fields and the scent of wheat and dust and straw.
Life seemed so stingingly full, so poignant, so immeasurably worth living, so blessed with beauty and richness and fruitfulness.
"Lenore, your eyes are windows--and I can see into your soul. I can read--and first I'm uplifted and then I'm sad."
It was he who talked and she who listened. This glorious day would be her strength when the--Ah! but she would not complete a single bitter thought.
She led him away, up the slope, across the barley-field, now cut and harvested, to the great, swelling golden spaces of wheat. Far below, the engines and harvesters were humming. Here the wheat waved and rustled in the wind. It was as high as Lenore's head.
"It's fine wheat," observed Dorn. "But the wheat of my desert hills was richer, more golden, and higher than this."
"No regrets to-day!" murmured Lenore, leaning to him.
There was magic in those words--the same enchantment that made the hours fly. She led him, at will, here and there along the rustling-bordered lanes. From afar they watched the busy harvest scene, with eyes that lingered long on a great, glittering combine with its thirty-two horses plodding along.
"I can drive them. Thirty-two horses!" she asserted, proudly.
"No!"
"Yes. Will you come? I will show you."
"It is a temptation," he said, with a sigh. "But there are eyes there.
They would break the spell."
"Who's talking about eyes now?" she cried.
They spent the remainder of that day on the windy wheat-slope, high up, alone, with the beauty and richness of "Many Waters" beneath them. And when the sun sent its last ruddy and gold rays over the western hills, and the weary harvesters plodded homeward, Lenore still lingered, loath to break the spell. For on the way home, she divined, he would tell her he was soon to leave.
Sunset and evening star! Their beauty and serenity pervaded Lenore's soul. Surely there was a life somewhere else, beyond in that infinite space. And the defeat of earthly dreams was endurable.
They walked back down the wheat lanes hand in hand, as dusk shadowed the valley; and when they reached the house he told her gently that he must go.
"But--you will stay to-night?" she whispered.
"No. It's all arranged," he replied, thickly. "They're to drive me over--my train's due at eight.... I've kept it--till the last few minutes."
They went in together.
"We're too late for dinner," said Lenore, but she was not thinking of that, and she paused with head bent. "I--I want to say good-by to you--here." She pointed to the dim, curtained entrance of the living-room.
"I'd like that, too," he replied. "I'll go up and get my bag. Wait."
Lenore slowly stepped to that shadowed spot beyond the curtains where she had told her love to Dorn; and there she stood, praying and fighting for strength to let him go, for power to conceal her pain. The one great thing she could do was to show him that she would not stand in the way of his duty to himself. She realized then that if he had told her sooner, if he were going to remain one more hour at "Many Waters," she would break down and beseech him not to leave her.
She saw him come down-stairs with his small hand-bag, which he set down.
His face was white. His eyes burned. But her woman's love made her divine that this was not a shock to his soul, as it was to hers, but stimulation--a man's strange spiritual accounting to his fellow-men.
He went first into the dining-room, and Lenore heard her mother's and sisters' voices in reply to his. Presently he came out to enter her father's study. Lenore listened, but heard no sound there. Outside, a motor-car creaked and hummed by the window, to stop by the side porch.
Then the door of her father's study opened and closed, and Dorn came to where she was standing.
Lenore did precisely as she had done a few nights before, when she had changed the world for him. But, following her kiss, there was a terrible instant when, with her arms around his neck, she went blind at the realization of loss. She held to him with a savage intensity of possession. It was like giving up life. She knew then, as never before, that she had the power to keep him at her side. But a thought saved her from exerting it--the thought that she could not make him less than other men--and so she conquered.
"Lenore, I want you to think always--how you loved me," he said.
"Loved you? Oh, my boy! It seems your lot has been hard. You've toiled--you've lost all--and now..."
"Listen," he interrupted, and she had never heard his voice like that.
"The thousands of boys who go to fight regard it a duty. For our country!... I had that, but more.... My father was German... and he was a traitor. The horror for me is that I hate what is German in _me_.... I will have to kill that. But you've helped me.... I know I'm American.
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 God, 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--God bless you--keep you!... Good-by!"
She spent all her strength in her embrace, all her soul in the passion of her farewell kiss. Then she stood alone, tottering, sinking. The swift steps, now heavy and uneven, passed 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, noble, 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 God.
Chapter XXIV
Camp--, _October_--.
peeled potatoes till my hands were cramped. Nine million spuds, I
guess! I'm wearing citizen's clothes--too thin, by gosh!--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, _"God damn 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 anticipation. 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 God?--I am trying, but I do not see God 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 t
he 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 pass 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 shivering over me! Amusement and forgetfulness are past for Kurt Dorn. I am concerned with my soul. I am fighting that black passion 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 God.
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.