CHAPTER XXIIIFor two fleeting days Lenore Anderson was happy when she forgot, miserable when she remembered. Then the third morning dawned.At the breakfast-table her father had said, cheerily, to Dorn: "Better take off your coat an' come out to the fields. We've got some job to harvest that wheat with only half-force.… But, by George! my trouble's over."Dorn looked suddenly blank, as if Anderson's cheery words had recalled him to the realities of life. He made an incoherent excuse and left the table."Ah-huh!" Anderson's characteristic exclamation might have meant little or much. "Lenore, what ails the boy?""Nothing that I know of. He has been as—as happy as I am," she replied."Then it's all settled?""Father, I—I—"Kathleen's high, shrill, gleeful voice cut in: "Sure it's settled! Look at Lenorry blush!"Lenore indeed felt the blood stinging face and neck. Nevertheless, she laughed."Come into my room," said Anderson.She followed him there, and as he closed the door she answered his questioning look by running into his arms and hiding her face."Wal, I'll be dog-goned!" the rancher ejaculated, with emotion. He held her and patted her shoulder with his big hand. "Tell me, Lenore.""There's little to tell," she replied, softly. "I love him—and he loves me so—so well that I've been madly happy—in spite of—of—""Is that all?" asked Anderson, dubiously."Is not that enough?""But Dorn's lovin' you so well doesn't say he'll not go to war."And it was then that forgotten bitterness returned to poison Lenore's cup of joy."Ah!"… she whispered."Good Lord! Lenore, you don't mean you an' Dorn have been alone all the time these few days—an' you haven't settled that war question?" queried Anderson, in amaze."Yes.… How strange!… But since—well, since something happened—we—we forgot," she replied, dreamily."Wal, go back to it," said Anderson, forcibly. "I want Dorn to help me.… Why, he's a wonder!… He's saved the situation for us here in the valley. Every rancher I know is praisin' him high. An' he sure treated Neuman square. An' here I am with three big wheat-ranches on my hands!… Lenore, you've got to keep him home.""Dad!… I—I could not!" replied Lenore. She was strangely realizing an indefinable change in herself. "I can't try to keep him from going to war. I never thought of that since—since we confessed our love.… But it's made some difference.… It'll kill me, I think, to let him go—but I'd die before I'd ask him to stay home.""Ah-huh!" sighed Anderson, and, releasing her, he began to pace the room. "I don't begin to understand you, girl. But I respect your feelin's. It's a hell of a muddle!… I'd forgotten the war myself while chasin' off them I.W.W.'s.… But this war hasgotto be reckoned with!… Send Dorn to me!"Lenore found Dorn playing with Kathleen. These two had become as brother and sister."Kurt, dad wants to see you," said Lenore seriously.Dorn looked startled, and the light of fun on his face changed to a sober concern."You told him?""Yes, Kurt, I told him what little I had to tell."He gave her a strange glance and then slowly went toward her father's study. Lenore made a futile attempt to be patient. She heard her father's deep voice, full and earnest, and she heard Dorn's quick, passionate response. She wondered what this interview meant. Anderson was not one to give up easily. He had set his heart upon holding this capable young man in the great interests of the wheat business. Lenore could not understand why she was not praying that he be successful. But she was not. It was inexplicable and puzzling—this change in her—this end of her selfishness. Yet she shrank in terror from an impinging sacrifice. She thrust the thought from her with passionate physical gesture and with stern effort of will.Dorn was closeted with her father for over an hour. When he came out he was white, but apparently composed. Lenore had never seen his eyes so piercing as when they rested upon her."Whew!" he exclaimed, and wiped his face. "Your father has my poor old dad—what does Kathleen say?—skinned to a frazzle!""What did he say?" asked Lenore, anxiously."A lot—and just as if I didn't know it all better than he knows," replied Dorn, sadly. "The importance of wheat; his three ranches and nobody to run them; his growing years; my future and a great opportunity as one of the big wheat men of the Northwest; the present need of the government; his only son gone to war, which was enough for his family.… And then he spoke of you—heiress to 'Many Waters'—what a splendid, noble girl you were—like your mother! What a shame to ruin your happiness—your future!… He said you'd make the sweetest of wives—the truest of mothers!… Oh, my God!"Lenore turned away her face, shocked to her heart by his tragic passion. Dorn was silent for what seemed a long time."And—then he cussed me—hard—as no doubt I deserved," added Dorn."But—what did you say?" she whispered."I said a lot, too," replied Dorn, remorsefully."Did—did you—?" began Lenore, and broke off, unable to finish."I arrived—to where I am now—pretty dizzy," he responded, with a smile that was both radiant and sorrowful. He took her hands and held them close. "Lenore!… if I come home from the war—still with my arms and legs—whole—will you marry me?""Only come homealive, and no matter what you lose, yes!—yes!" she whispered, brokenly."But it's a conditional proposal, Lenore," he insisted. "You must never marry half a man.""I will marryyou!" she cried, passionately.It seemed to her that she loved him all the more, every moment, even though he made it so hard for her. Then through blurred, dim eyes she saw him take something from his pocket and felt him put a ring on her finger."It fits! Isn't that lucky," he said, softly. "My mother's ring, Lenore.…"He kissed her hand.Kathleen was standing near them, open-eyed and open-mouthed, in an ecstasy of realization."Kathleen, your sister has promised to marry me—when I come from the war," said Dorn to the child.She squealed with delight, and, manifestly surrendering to a long-considered temptation, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him close."It's perfectly grand!" she cried. "But what a chump you are for going at all—when you could marry Lenorry!"That was Kathleen's point of view, and it must have coincided somewhat with Mr. Anderson's."Kathleen, you wouldn't have me be a slacker?" asked Dorn, gently."No. But we let Jim go," was her argument.Dorn kissed her, then turned to Lenore. "Let's go out to the fields."It was not a long walk to the alfalfa, but by the time she got there Lenore's impending woe was as if it had never been. Dorn seemed strangely gay and unusually demonstrative; apparently he forgot the war-cloud in the joy of the hour. That they were walking in the open seemed not to matter to him."Kurt, some one will see you," Lenore remonstrated."You're more beautiful than ever to-day," he said, by way of answer, and tried to block her way.Lenore dodged and ran. She was fleet, and eluded him down the lane, across the cut field, to a huge square stack of baled alfalfa. But he caught her just as she got behind its welcome covert. Lenore was far less afraid of him than of laughing eyes. Breathless, she backed up against the stack."You're—a—cannibal!" she panted. But she did not make much resistance."You're—a goddess!" he replied."Me!… Of what?""Why, of 'Many Waters'!… Goddess of wheat!… The sweet, waving wheat, rich and golden—the very spirit of life!""If anybody sees you—mauling me—this way—I'll not seem a goddess to him.… My hair is down—my waist—Oh, Kurt!"Yet it did not very much matter how she looked or what happened. Beyond all was the assurance of her dearness to him. Suddenly she darted away from him again. Her heart swelled, her spirit soared, her feet were buoyant and swift. She ran into the uncut alfalfa. It was thick and high, tangling round her feet. Here her progress was retarded. Dorn caught up with her. His strong hands on her shoulders felt masterful, and the sweet terror they inspired made her struggle to get away."You shall—not—hold me!" she cried."But I will. You must be taught—not to run," he said, and wrapped her tightly in his arms."Now surrender your kisses meekly!""I—surrender!… But, Kurt, someone will see… Dear, we'll go back—or—somewhere—""Who can see us here but the birds?" he said, and the strong hands held her fast. "You will kiss me—enough—right now—even if the whole world—looked on!" he said, ringingly. "Lenore, my soul!… Lenore, I love you!"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 inme.… 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 XXIVCamp—,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 Washington! 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 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 hewilldie. 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 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 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.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.Saturday.—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 assumes 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.This morning I did my washing of the past two weeks, and I was so busy that I didn't hear the bugle blow, and thereby got on the "black book." Which means that I won't get any time off soon.Before I forget, Lenore, let me tell you that I've taken ten thousand dollars' life insurance from the government, in your favor as beneficiary. This costs me only about six and a half dollars per month, and in case of my death—Well, I'm a soldier, now. Please tell Rose I've taken a fifty-dollar Liberty Bond of the new issue for her. This I'm paying at the rate of five dollars per month and it will be delivered to her at the end of ten months. Both of these, of course, I'm paying out of my government pay as a soldier. The money dad sent me I spent like water, lent to the boys, threw away. Tell him not to send me any more. Tell him the time has come for Jim Anderson to make good. I've a rich dad and he's the best dad any harum-scarum boy ever had. I'm going to prove more than one thing this trip.We hear so many rumors, and none of them ever come true. One of them is funny—that we have so many rich men with political influence in our regiment that we will never get to France! Isn't that the limit? But it's funny because, if we have rich men, I'd like to see them. Still, there are thirty thousand soldiers here, and in my neck of the woods such rumors are laughed and cussed at. We hear also that we're going to be ordered South. I wish that would come true. It's so cold and drab and muddy and monotonous.My friend Montana fooled everybody. He didn't die. He seems to be hanging on. Lately he recovered consciousness. Told me he had no feeling on his left side, except sometimes his hand itched, you know, like prickly needles. But Montana will never be any good again. That fine big cowboy! He's been one grand soldier. It sickens me sometimes to think of the difference between what thrilled me about this war game and what we get. Maybe, though—There goes my call. I must close. Love to all.Jim.New York City,October—.Dearest Lenore,—It seems about time that I had a letter from you. I'm sure letters are on the way, but they do not come quickly. The boys complain of the mail service. Isn't it strange that there is not a soul to write me except you? Jeff, my farm-hand, will write me whenever I write him, which I haven't done yet.I'm on duty here in New York at an armory bazaar. It's certainly the irony of fate. Why did the officer pick on me, I'd like to know? But I've never complained of an order so far, and I'm standing it. Several of us—and they chose the husky boys—have been sent over here, for absolutely no purpose that I can see except to exhibit ourselves in uniform. It's a woman's bazaar, to raise money for war-relief work and so on. The hall is almost as large as that field back of your house, and every night it is packed with people, mostly young. My comrades are having fun out of it, but I feel like a fish out of water.Just the same, Lenore, I'm learning more every day. If I was not so disgusted I'd think this was a wonderful opportunity. As it is, I regard it only as an experience over which I have no control and that interests me in spite of myself. New York is an awful place—endless, narrow, torn-up streets crowded with hurrying throngs, taxicabs, cars, and full of noise and dust. I am always choked for air. And these streets reek. Where do the people come from and where are they going? They look wild, as if they had to go somewhere, but did not know where that was. I've no time or inclination to see New York, though under happier circumstances I think I'd like to.People in the East seem strange to me. Still, as I never mingled with many people in the West, I cannot say truly whether Eastern people are different from Western people. But I think so. Anyway, while I was in Spokane, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles I did not think people were greatly concerned about the war. Denver people appeared not to realize there was a war. But here in New York everything is war. You can't escape it. You see that war will soon obsess rich and poor, alien and neutral and belligerent, pacifist and militarist. Since I wrote you last I've tried to read the newspapers sent to us. It's hard to tell you which makes me the sicker—the prattle of the pacifist or the mathematics of the military experts. Both miss the spirit of men. Neither has any soul. I think the German minds must all be mathematical.But I want to write about the women and girls I see, here in New York, in the camps and towns, on the trains, everywhere. Lenore, the war has thrown them off their balance. I have seen and studied at close hand women of all classes. Believe me, as the boys say, I have thought more than twice whether or not I would tell you the stark truth. But somehow I am impelled to. I have an overwhelming conviction that all American girls and mothers should know what the truth is. They will never be told, Lenore, and most would never believe if they were told. And that is one thing wrong with people.I believe every soldier, from the time he enlists until the war is ended, should be kept away from women. This is a sweeping statement and you must take into account the mind of him who makes it. But I am not leaping at conclusions. The soldier boys have terrible peril facing them long before they get to the trenches. Not all, or nearly all, the soldiers are going to be vitally affected by the rottenness of great cities or by the mushroom hotbeds of vice springing up near the camps. These evils exist and are being opposed by military and government, by police and Y.M.C.A., and good influence of good people. But they will never wholly stamp it out.Nor do I want to say much about the society women who are "rushing" the officers. There may be one here and there with her heart in the right place, but with most of them it must be, first, this something about war that has unbalanced women; and secondly, a fad, a novelty, a new sentimental stunt, a fashion set by some leader. Likewise I want to say but little about the horde of common, street-chasing, rattled-brained women and girls who lie in wait for soldiers at every corner, so to speak. All these, to be sure, may be unconsciously actuated by motives that do not appear on the surface; and if this be true, their actions are less bold, less raw than they look.What I want to dwell upon is my impression of something strange, unbalanced, incomprehensible, about the frank conduct of so many well-educated, refined, and good women I see; and about the eagerness, restlessness, the singular response of nice girls to situations that are not natural.To-night a handsome, stylishly gowned woman of about thirty came up to me with a radiant smile and a strange brightness in her eyes. There were five hundred couples dancing on the floor, and the music and sound of sliding feet made it difficult to hear her. She said: "You handsome soldier boy! Come dance with me?" I replied politely that I did not dance. Then she took hold of me and said, "I'll teach you." I saw a wedding-ring on the hand she laid on my arm. Then I looked straight at her, "Madam, very soon I'll be learning the dance of death over in France, and my mind's concerned with that." She grew red with anger. She seemed amazed. And she snapped, "Well, youarea queer soldier!" Later I watched her flirting and dancing with an officer.Overtures and advances innumerable have been made to me, ranging from the assured possession-taking onslaught like this woman's to the slight, subtle something, felt more than seen, of a more complex nature. And, Lenore, I blush to tell you this, but I've been mobbed by girls. They have a thousand ways of letting a soldierknow!I could not begin to tell them. But I do not actually realize what it is that is conveyed, that I know; and I am positive the very large majority of soldiersmisunderstand. At night I listen to the talks of my comrades, and, well—if the girls only heard! Many times I go out of hearing, and when I cannot do that I refuse to hear.Lenore, I am talking about nice girls now. I am merciless. There are many girls like you—they seem like you, though none so pretty. I mean, you know, there are certain manners and distinctions that at once mark a really nice girl. For a month I've been thrown here and there, so that it seems I've seen as many girls as soldiers. I have been sent to different entertainments given for soldiers. At one place a woman got up and invited the girls to ask the boys to dance. At another a crowd of girls were lined up wearing different ribbons, and the boys marched along until each one found the girl wearing a ribbon to match the one he wore. That was his partner. It was interesting to see the eager, mischievous, brooding eyes of these girls as they watched and waited. Just as interesting was it to see this boy's face when he found his partner was ugly, and that boy swell with pride when he found he had picked a "winner." It was all adventure for both boys and girls. But I saw more than that in it. Whenever I could not avoid meeting a girl I tried to be agreeable and to talk about war, and soldiers, and what was going on. I did not dance, of course, and I imagine more than one girl found me a "queer soldier."It always has touched me, though, to see and feel the sweetness, graciousness, sympathy, kindness, and that other indefinable something, in the girls I have met. How they made me think of you, Lenore! No doubt about their hearts, their loyalty, their Americanism. Every soldier who goes to France can fight for some girl! They make you feel that. I believe I have gone deeper than most soldiers in considering what I will call war-relation of the sexes. If it is normal, then underneath it all is a tremendous inscrutable design of nature or God. If that be true, actually true, then war must be inevitable and right! How horrible! My thoughts confound me sometimes. Anyway, the point I want to make is this: I heard an officer tell an irate father, whose two daughters had been insulted by soldiers: "My dear sir, it is regrettable. These men will be punished. But they are not greatly to blame, because so many girls throw themselves at their heads. Your daughters did not, of course, but they should not have come here." That illustrates the fixed idea of the military, all through the ranks—Women throw themselves at soldiers!It is true that they do. But the idea is false, nevertheless, because the mass of girls are misunderstood.Misunderstood!—I can tell you why. Surely the mass of American girls are nice, fine, sweet, wholesome. They are young. The news of war liberates something in them that we can find no name for. But it must be noble. A soldier! The very name, from childhood, is one to make a girl thrill. What then the actual thing, the uniform, invested somehow with chivalry and courage, the clean-cut athletic young man, somber and fascinating with his intent eyes, his serious brow, or his devil-may-care gallantry, the compelling presence of him that breathes of his sacrifice, of his near departure to privation, to squalid, comfortless trenches, to the fire and hell of war, to blood and agony and death—in a word to fight, fight, fight for women!… So through this beautiful emotion women lose their balance and many are misunderstood. Those who would not and could not be bold are susceptible to advances that in an ordinary time would not affect them. War invests a soldier with a glamour. Love at first sight, flirtations, rash intimacies, quick engagements, immediate marriages. The soldier who is soon going away to fight and perhaps to die strikes hard at the very heart of a girl. Either she is not her real self then, or else she is suddenly transported to a womanhood that is instinctive, elemental, universal for the future. She feels what she does not know. She surrenders because there is an imperative call to the depths of her nature. She sacrifices because she is the inspiritor of the soldier, the reward for his loss, the savior of the race. If women are the spoils of barbarous conquerors, they are also the sinews, the strength, the soul of defenders.And so, however you look at it, war means for women sacrifice, disillusion, heartbreak, agony, doom. I feel that so powerfully that I am overcome; I am sick at the gaiety and playing; I am full of fear, wonder, admiration, and hopeless pity for them.No man can tell what is going on in the souls of soldiers while noble women are offering love and tenderness, throwing themselves upon the altar of war, hoping blindly to send their great spirits marching to the front. Perhaps the man who lives through the war will feel the change in his soul if he cannot tell it. Day by day I think I see a change in my comrades. As they grow physically stronger they seem to grow spiritually lesser. But maybe that is only my idea. I see evidences of fear, anger, sullenness, moodiness, shame. I see a growing indifference to fatigue, toil, pain. As these boys harden physically they harden mentally. Always, 'way off there is the war, and that seems closely related to the near duty here—what it takes to make a man. These fellows will measure men differently after this experience with sacrifice, obedience, labor, and pain. In that they will become great. But I do not think these things stimulate a man's mind. Changes are going on in me, some of which I am unable to define. For instance, physically I am much bigger and stronger than I was. I weigh one hundred and eighty pounds! As for my mind, something is always tugging at it. I feel that it grows tired. It wants to forget. In spite of my will, all of these keen desires of mine to know everything lag and fail often, and I catch myself drifting. I see and feel and hear without thinking. I am only an animal then. At these times sight of blood, or a fight, or a plunging horse, or a broken leg—and these sights are common—affects me little until I am quickened and think about the meaning of it all. At such moments I have a revulsion of feeling. With memory comes a revolt, and so on, until I am the distressed, inquisitive, and morbid person I am now. I shudder at what war will make me. Actual contact with earth, exploding guns, fighting comrades, striking foes, will make brutes of us all. It is wrong to shed another man's blood. If life was meant for that why do we have progress? I cannot reconcile a God with all this horror. I have misgivings about my mind. If I feel so acutely here in safety and comfort, what shall I feel over there in peril and agony? I fear I shall laugh at death. Oh, Lenore, consider that! To laugh in the ghastly face of death! If I yield utterly to a fiendish joy of bloody combat, then my mind will fail, and that in itself would be evidence of God.I do not read over my letters to you, I just write. Forgive me if they are not happier. Every hour I think of you. At night I see your face in the shadow of the tent wall. And I love you unutterably.Faithfully,Kurt Dorn.Camp ——,November—,Dear Sister,—It's bad news I've got for you this time. Something bids me tell you, though up to now I've kept unpleasant facts to myself.The weather has knocked me out. My cold came back, got worse and worse. Three days ago I had a chill that lasted for fifteen minutes. I shook like a leaf. It left me, and then I got a terrible pain in my side. But I didn't give in, which I feel now was a mistake. I stayed up till I dropped.I'm here in the hospital. It's a long shed with three stoves, and a lot of beds with other sick boys. My bed is far away from a stove. The pain is bad yet, but duller, and I've fever. I'm pretty sick, honey. Tell mother and dad, but not the girls. Give my love to all. And don't worry. It'll all come right in the end. This beastly climate's to blame.Later,—It's night now. I was interrupted. I'll write a few more lines. Hope you can read them. It's late and the wind is moaning outside. It's so cold and dismal. The fellow in the bed next to me is out of his head. Poor devil! He broke his knee, and they put off the operation—too busy! So few doctors and so many patients! And now he'll lose his leg. He's talking about home. Oh, Lenore!Home!I never knew what home was—till now.I'm worse to-night. But I'm always bad at night. Only, to-night I feel strange. There's a weight on my chest, besides the pain. That moan of wind makes me feel so lonely. There's no one here—and I'm so cold. I've thought a lot about you girls and mother and dad. Tell dad I made good.JimCHAPTER XXVJim's last letter was not taken seriously by the other members of the Anderson family. The father shook his head dubiously. "That ain't like Jim," but made no other comment. Mrs. Anderson sighed. The young sisters were not given to worry. Lenore, however, was haunted by an unwritten meaning in her brother's letter.Weeks before, she had written to Dorn and told him to hunt up Jim. No reply had yet come from Dorn. Every day augmented her uneasiness, until it was dreadful to look for letters that did not come. All this fortified her, however, to expect calamity. Like a bolt out of the clear sky it came in the shape of a telegram from Camp —— saying that Jim was dying.The shock prostrated the mother. Jim had been her favorite. Mr. Anderson left at once for the East. Lenore had the care of her mother and the management of "Many Waters" on her hands, which duties kept her mercifully occupied. Mrs. Anderson, however, after a day, rallied surprisingly. Lenore sensed in her mother the strength of the spirit that sacrificed to a noble and universal cause. It seemed to be Mrs. Anderson's conviction that Jim had been shot, or injured by accident in gun-training, or at least by a horse. Lenore did not share her mother's idea and was reluctant to dispel it. On the evening of the fifth day after Mr. Anderson's departure a message came, saying that he had arrived too late to see Jim alive. Mrs. Anderson bore the news bravely, though she weakened perceptibly.The family waited then for further news. None came. Day after day passed. Then one evening, while Lenore strolled in the gloaming, Kathleen came running to burst out with the announcement of their father's arrival. He had telephoned from Vale for a car to meet him.Not long after that, Lenore, who had gone to her room, heard the return of the car and recognized her father's voice. She ran down in time to see him being embraced by the girls, and her mother leaning with bowed head on his shoulder."Yes, I fetched Jim—back," he said, steadily, but very low. "It's all arranged.… An' we'll bury him to-morrow.""Oh—dad!" cried Lenore."Hello, my girl!" he replied, and kissed her. "I'm sorry to tell you I couldn't locate Kurt Dorn.… That New York—an' that trainin' camp!"He held up his hands in utter futility of expression. Lenore's quick eyes noted his face had grown thin and haggard, and she made sure with a pang that his hair was whiter."I'm sure glad to be home," he said, with a heavy expulsion of breath. "I want to clean up an' have a bite to eat."Lenore was so disappointed at failing to hear from Dorn that she did not think how singular it was her father did not tell more about Jim. Later he seemed more like himself, and told them simply that Jim had contracted pneumonia and died without any message for his folk at home. This prostrated Mrs. Anderson again.Later Lenore sought her father in his room. He could not conceal from her that he had something heartrending on his mind. Then there was more than tragedy in his expression. Lenore felt a leap of fear at what seemed her father's hidden anger. She appealed to him—importuned him. Plainer it came to her that he wanted to relieve himself of a burden. Then doubling her persuasions, she finally got him to talk."Lenore, it's not been so long ago that right here in this room Jim begged me to let him enlist. He wasn't of age. But would I let him go—to fight for the honor of our country—for the future safety of our home?… We all felt the boy's eagerness, his fire, his patriotism. Wayward as he's been, we suddenly were proud of him. We let him go. We gave him up. He was a part of our flesh an' blood—sent by us Andersons—to do our share."Anderson paused in his halting speech, and swallowed hard. His white face twitched strangely and his brow was clammy. Lenore saw that his piercing gaze looked far beyond her for the instant that he broke down."Jim was a born fighter," the father resumed. "He wasn't vicious. He just had a leanin' to help anybody. As a lad he fought for his little pards—always on the right side—an' he always fought fair.… This opportunity to train for a soldier made a man of him. He'd have made his mark in the war. Strong an' game an' fierce, he'd … he'd … Well, he's dead—he'sdead!… Four months after enlistment he's dead.… An' he never had a rifle in his hands! He never had his hands on a machine-gun or a piece of artillery!… He never had a uniform! He never had an overcoat! He never …"Then Mr. Anderson's voice shook so that he had to stop to gain control. Lenore was horrified. She felt a burning stir within her."Lemme get this—out," choked Anderson, his face now livid, his veins bulging. "I'm drove to tell it. I was near all day locatin' Jim's company. Found the tent where he'd lived. It was cold, damp, muddy. Jim's messmates spoke high of him. Called him a prince!… They all owed him money. He'd done many a good turn for them. He had only a thin blanket, an' he caught cold. All the boys had colds. One night he gave that blanket to a boy sicker than he was. Next day he got worse.… There was miles an' miles of them tents. I like to never found the hospital where they'd sent Jim. An' then it was six o'clock in the mornin'—a raw, bleak day that'd freeze one of us to the marrow. I had trouble gettin' in. But a soldier went with me an'—an' …"Anderson's voice went to a whisper, and he looked pityingly at Lenore."That hospital was a barn. No doctors! Too early.… The nurses weren't in sight. I met one later, an', poor girl! she looked ready to drop herself!… We found Jim in one of the little rooms. No heat! It was winter there.… Only a bed!… Jim lay on the floor, dead! He'd fallen or pitched off the bed. He had on only his underclothes that he had on—when he—left home.… He was stiff—an' must have—been dead—a good while."Lenore held out her trembling hands. "Dead—Jim dead—like that!" she faltered."Yes. He got pneumonia," replied Anderson, hoarsely. "The camp was full of it.""But—my God! Were not the—the poor boys taken care of?" implored Lenore, faintly."It's a terrible time. All was done thatcouldbe done!""Then—it was all—for nothing?""All! All! Our boy an' many like him—the best blood of our country—Western blood—dead because … because …"Anderson's voice failed him."Oh, Jim! Oh, my brother!… Dead like a poor neglected dog! Jim—who enlisted to fight—for—"Lenore broke down then and hurried away to her room.With great difficulty Mrs. Anderson was revived, and it became manifest that the prop upon which she had leaned had been slipped from under her. The spirit which had made her strong to endure the death of her boy failed when the sordid bald truth of a miserable and horrible waste of life gave the lie to the splendid fighting chance Jim had dreamed of.When Anderson realized that she was fading daily he exhausted himself in long expositions of the illness and injury and death common to armies in the making. More deaths came from these causes than from war. It was the elision of the weaker element—the survival of the fittest; and some, indeed very many, mothers must lose their sons that way. The government was sound at the core, he claimed; and his own rage was at the few incompetents and profiteers. These must be weeded out—a process that was going on. The gigantic task of a government to draft and prepare a great army and navy was something beyond the grasp of ordinary minds. Anderson talked about what he had seen and heard, proving the wonderful stride already made. But all that he said now made no impression upon Mrs. Anderson. She had made her supreme sacrifice for a certain end, and that was as much the boy's fiery ambition to fight as it was her duty, common with other mothers, to furnish a man at the front. What a hopeless, awful sacrifice! She sank under it.Those were trying days for Lenore, just succeeding her father's return; and she had little time to think of herself. When the mail came, day after day, without a letter from Dorn, she felt the pang in her breast grow heavier. Intimations crowded upon her of impending troubles that would make the present ones seem light.It was not long until the mother was laid to rest beside the son.When that day ended, Lenore and her father faced each other in her room, where he had always been wont to come for sympathy. They gazed at each other, with hard, dry eyes. Stark-naked truth—grim reality—the nature of this catastrophe—the consciousness of war—dawned for each in the look of the other. Brutal shock and then this second exceeding bitter woe awakened their minds to the futility of individual life."Lenore—it's over!" he said, huskily, as he sank into a chair. "Like a nightmare!… What have I got to live for?""You have us girls," replied Lenore. "And if you did not have us there would be many others for you to live for.… Dad, can't you see—now?""I reckon. But I'm growin' old an' mebbe I've quit.""No, dad, you'll never quit. Suppose all we Americans quit. That'd mean a German victory. Never! Never! Never!""By God! you're right!" he ejaculated, with the trembling strain of his face suddenly fixing. Blood and life shot into his eyes. He got up heavily and began to stride to and fro before her. "You see clearer than me. You always did, Lenore.""I'm beginning to see, but I can't tell you," replied Lenore, closing her eyes. Indeed, there seemed a colossal vision before her, veiled and strange. "Whatever happens, wecannotbreak. It's because of the war. We have our tasks—greater now than ever we believe could be thrust upon us. Yours to show men what you are made of! To raise wheat as never before in your life! Mine to show my sisters and my friends—all the women—what their duty is. We must sacrifice, work, prepare, and fight for the future.""I reckon," he nodded solemnly. "Loss of mother an' Jim changes this damned war. Whatever's in my power to do must go on. So some one can take it up when I—""That's the great conception, dad," added Lenore, earnestly. "We are tragically awakened. We've been surprised—terribly struck in the dark. Something monstrous and horrible!… I can feel the menace in it for all—over every family in this broad land.""Lenore, you said once that Jim—Now, how'd you know it was all over for him?""A woman's heart, dad. When I said good-by to Jim I knew it was good-by forever.""Did you feel that way about Kurt Dorn?""No. He will come back to me. I dream it. It's in my spirit—my instinct of life, my flesh-and-blood life of the future—it's in my belief in God. Kurt Dorn's ordeal will be worse than death for him. But I believe as I pray—that he will come home alive.""Then, after all, you do hope," said her father. "Lenore, when I was down East, I seen what women were doin'. The bad women are good an' the good women are great. I think women have more to do with war then men, even if they do stay home. It must be because women are mothers.… Lenore, you've bucked me up. I'll go at things now. The need for wheat next year will be beyond calculation. I'll buy ten thousand acres of that wheatland round old Chris Dorn's farm. An' my shot at the Germans will be wheat. I'll raise a million bushels!"Next morning in the mail was a long, thick envelope addressed to Lenore in handwriting that shook her heart and made her fly to the seclusion of her room.New York City,November—.DEAREST,—when you receive this I will be in France.Then Lenore sustained a strange shock. The beloved handwriting faded, the thick sheets of paper fell; and all about her seemed dark and whirling, as the sudden joy and excitement stirred by the letter changed to sickening pain."France!He's in France?" she whispered. "Oh, Kurt!" A storm of love and terror burst over her. It had the onset and the advantage of a bewildering surprise. It laid low, for the moment, her fortifications of sacrifice, strength, and resolve. She had been forced into womanhood, and her fear, her agony, were all the keener for the intelligence and spirit that had repudiated selfish love. Kurt Dorn was in France in the land of the trenches! Strife possessed her and had a moment of raw, bitter triumph. She bit her lips and clenched her fists, to restrain the impulse to rush madly around the room, to scream out her fear and hate. With forcing her thought, with hard return to old well-learned arguments, there came back the nobler emotions. But when she took up the letter again, with trembling hands, her heart fluttered high and sick, and she saw the words through blurred eyes.…I'll give the letter to an ensign, who has promised to mail it the moment he gets back to New York.
For two fleeting days Lenore Anderson was happy when she forgot, miserable when she remembered. Then the third morning dawned.
At the breakfast-table her father had said, cheerily, to Dorn: "Better take off your coat an' come out to the fields. We've got some job to harvest that wheat with only half-force.… But, by George! my trouble's over."
Dorn looked suddenly blank, as if Anderson's cheery words had recalled him to the realities of life. He made an incoherent excuse and left the table.
"Ah-huh!" Anderson's characteristic exclamation might have meant little or much. "Lenore, what ails the boy?"
"Nothing that I know of. He has been as—as happy as I am," she replied.
"Then it's all settled?"
"Father, I—I—"
Kathleen's high, shrill, gleeful voice cut in: "Sure it's settled! Look at Lenorry blush!"
Lenore indeed felt the blood stinging face and neck. Nevertheless, she laughed.
"Come into my room," said Anderson.
She followed him there, and as he closed the door she answered his questioning look by running into his arms and hiding her face.
"Wal, I'll be dog-goned!" the rancher ejaculated, with emotion. He held her and patted her shoulder with his big hand. "Tell me, Lenore."
"There's little to tell," she replied, softly. "I love him—and he loves me so—so well that I've been madly happy—in spite of—of—"
"Is that all?" asked Anderson, dubiously.
"Is not that enough?"
"But Dorn's lovin' you so well doesn't say he'll not go to war."
And it was then that forgotten bitterness returned to poison Lenore's cup of joy.
"Ah!"… she whispered.
"Good Lord! Lenore, you don't mean you an' Dorn have been alone all the time these few days—an' you haven't settled that war question?" queried Anderson, in amaze.
"Yes.… How strange!… But since—well, since something happened—we—we forgot," she replied, dreamily.
"Wal, go back to it," said Anderson, forcibly. "I want Dorn to help me.… Why, he's a wonder!… He's saved the situation for us here in the valley. Every rancher I know is praisin' him high. An' he sure treated Neuman square. An' here I am with three big wheat-ranches on my hands!… Lenore, you've got to keep him home."
"Dad!… I—I could not!" replied Lenore. She was strangely realizing an indefinable change in herself. "I can't try to keep him from going to war. I never thought of that since—since we confessed our love.… But it's made some difference.… It'll kill me, I think, to let him go—but I'd die before I'd ask him to stay home."
"Ah-huh!" sighed Anderson, and, releasing her, he began to pace the room. "I don't begin to understand you, girl. But I respect your feelin's. It's a hell of a muddle!… I'd forgotten the war myself while chasin' off them I.W.W.'s.… But this war hasgotto be reckoned with!… Send Dorn to me!"
Lenore found Dorn playing with Kathleen. These two had become as brother and sister.
"Kurt, dad wants to see you," said Lenore seriously.
Dorn looked startled, and the light of fun on his face changed to a sober concern.
"You told him?"
"Yes, Kurt, I told him what little I had to tell."
He gave her a strange glance and then slowly went toward her father's study. Lenore made a futile attempt to be patient. She heard her father's deep voice, full and earnest, and she heard Dorn's quick, passionate response. She wondered what this interview meant. Anderson was not one to give up easily. He had set his heart upon holding this capable young man in the great interests of the wheat business. Lenore could not understand why she was not praying that he be successful. But she was not. It was inexplicable and puzzling—this change in her—this end of her selfishness. Yet she shrank in terror from an impinging sacrifice. She thrust the thought from her with passionate physical gesture and with stern effort of will.
Dorn was closeted with her father for over an hour. When he came out he was white, but apparently composed. Lenore had never seen his eyes so piercing as when they rested upon her.
"Whew!" he exclaimed, and wiped his face. "Your father has my poor old dad—what does Kathleen say?—skinned to a frazzle!"
"What did he say?" asked Lenore, anxiously.
"A lot—and just as if I didn't know it all better than he knows," replied Dorn, sadly. "The importance of wheat; his three ranches and nobody to run them; his growing years; my future and a great opportunity as one of the big wheat men of the Northwest; the present need of the government; his only son gone to war, which was enough for his family.… And then he spoke of you—heiress to 'Many Waters'—what a splendid, noble girl you were—like your mother! What a shame to ruin your happiness—your future!… He said you'd make the sweetest of wives—the truest of mothers!… Oh, my God!"
Lenore turned away her face, shocked to her heart by his tragic passion. Dorn was silent for what seemed a long time.
"And—then he cussed me—hard—as no doubt I deserved," added Dorn.
"But—what did you say?" she whispered.
"I said a lot, too," replied Dorn, remorsefully.
"Did—did you—?" began Lenore, and broke off, unable to finish.
"I arrived—to where I am now—pretty dizzy," he responded, with a smile that was both radiant and sorrowful. He took her hands and held them close. "Lenore!… if I come home from the war—still with my arms and legs—whole—will you marry me?"
"Only come homealive, and no matter what you lose, yes!—yes!" she whispered, brokenly.
"But it's a conditional proposal, Lenore," he insisted. "You must never marry half a man."
"I will marryyou!" she cried, passionately.
It seemed to her that she loved him all the more, every moment, even though he made it so hard for her. Then through blurred, dim eyes she saw him take something from his pocket and felt him put a ring on her finger.
"It fits! Isn't that lucky," he said, softly. "My mother's ring, Lenore.…"
He kissed her hand.
Kathleen was standing near them, open-eyed and open-mouthed, in an ecstasy of realization.
"Kathleen, your sister has promised to marry me—when I come from the war," said Dorn to the child.
She squealed with delight, and, manifestly surrendering to a long-considered temptation, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him close.
"It's perfectly grand!" she cried. "But what a chump you are for going at all—when you could marry Lenorry!"
That was Kathleen's point of view, and it must have coincided somewhat with Mr. Anderson's.
"Kathleen, you wouldn't have me be a slacker?" asked Dorn, gently.
"No. But we let Jim go," was her argument.
Dorn kissed her, then turned to Lenore. "Let's go out to the fields."
It was not a long walk to the alfalfa, but by the time she got there Lenore's impending woe was as if it had never been. Dorn seemed strangely gay and unusually demonstrative; apparently he forgot the war-cloud in the joy of the hour. That they were walking in the open seemed not to matter to him.
"Kurt, some one will see you," Lenore remonstrated.
"You're more beautiful than ever to-day," he said, by way of answer, and tried to block her way.
Lenore dodged and ran. She was fleet, and eluded him down the lane, across the cut field, to a huge square stack of baled alfalfa. But he caught her just as she got behind its welcome covert. Lenore was far less afraid of him than of laughing eyes. Breathless, she backed up against the stack.
"You're—a—cannibal!" she panted. But she did not make much resistance.
"You're—a goddess!" he replied.
"Me!… Of what?"
"Why, of 'Many Waters'!… Goddess of wheat!… The sweet, waving wheat, rich and golden—the very spirit of life!"
"If anybody sees you—mauling me—this way—I'll not seem a goddess to him.… My hair is down—my waist—Oh, Kurt!"
Yet it did not very much matter how she looked or what happened. Beyond all was the assurance of her dearness to him. Suddenly she darted away from him again. Her heart swelled, her spirit soared, her feet were buoyant and swift. She ran into the uncut alfalfa. It was thick and high, tangling round her feet. Here her progress was retarded. Dorn caught up with her. His strong hands on her shoulders felt masterful, and the sweet terror they inspired made her struggle to get away.
"You shall—not—hold me!" she cried.
"But I will. You must be taught—not to run," he said, and wrapped her tightly in his arms.
"Now surrender your kisses meekly!"
"I—surrender!… But, Kurt, someone will see… Dear, we'll go back—or—somewhere—"
"Who can see us here but the birds?" he said, and the strong hands held her fast. "You will kiss me—enough—right now—even if the whole world—looked on!" he said, ringingly. "Lenore, my soul!… Lenore, I love you!"
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 inme.… 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.
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 Washington! 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 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 hewilldie. 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 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 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.
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.
Saturday.—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 assumes 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.
This morning I did my washing of the past two weeks, and I was so busy that I didn't hear the bugle blow, and thereby got on the "black book." Which means that I won't get any time off soon.
Before I forget, Lenore, let me tell you that I've taken ten thousand dollars' life insurance from the government, in your favor as beneficiary. This costs me only about six and a half dollars per month, and in case of my death—Well, I'm a soldier, now. Please tell Rose I've taken a fifty-dollar Liberty Bond of the new issue for her. This I'm paying at the rate of five dollars per month and it will be delivered to her at the end of ten months. Both of these, of course, I'm paying out of my government pay as a soldier. The money dad sent me I spent like water, lent to the boys, threw away. Tell him not to send me any more. Tell him the time has come for Jim Anderson to make good. I've a rich dad and he's the best dad any harum-scarum boy ever had. I'm going to prove more than one thing this trip.
We hear so many rumors, and none of them ever come true. One of them is funny—that we have so many rich men with political influence in our regiment that we will never get to France! Isn't that the limit? But it's funny because, if we have rich men, I'd like to see them. Still, there are thirty thousand soldiers here, and in my neck of the woods such rumors are laughed and cussed at. We hear also that we're going to be ordered South. I wish that would come true. It's so cold and drab and muddy and monotonous.
My friend Montana fooled everybody. He didn't die. He seems to be hanging on. Lately he recovered consciousness. Told me he had no feeling on his left side, except sometimes his hand itched, you know, like prickly needles. But Montana will never be any good again. That fine big cowboy! He's been one grand soldier. It sickens me sometimes to think of the difference between what thrilled me about this war game and what we get. Maybe, though—There goes my call. I must close. Love to all.
Jim.
New York City,October—.
Dearest Lenore,—It seems about time that I had a letter from you. I'm sure letters are on the way, but they do not come quickly. The boys complain of the mail service. Isn't it strange that there is not a soul to write me except you? Jeff, my farm-hand, will write me whenever I write him, which I haven't done yet.
I'm on duty here in New York at an armory bazaar. It's certainly the irony of fate. Why did the officer pick on me, I'd like to know? But I've never complained of an order so far, and I'm standing it. Several of us—and they chose the husky boys—have been sent over here, for absolutely no purpose that I can see except to exhibit ourselves in uniform. It's a woman's bazaar, to raise money for war-relief work and so on. The hall is almost as large as that field back of your house, and every night it is packed with people, mostly young. My comrades are having fun out of it, but I feel like a fish out of water.
Just the same, Lenore, I'm learning more every day. If I was not so disgusted I'd think this was a wonderful opportunity. As it is, I regard it only as an experience over which I have no control and that interests me in spite of myself. New York is an awful place—endless, narrow, torn-up streets crowded with hurrying throngs, taxicabs, cars, and full of noise and dust. I am always choked for air. And these streets reek. Where do the people come from and where are they going? They look wild, as if they had to go somewhere, but did not know where that was. I've no time or inclination to see New York, though under happier circumstances I think I'd like to.
People in the East seem strange to me. Still, as I never mingled with many people in the West, I cannot say truly whether Eastern people are different from Western people. But I think so. Anyway, while I was in Spokane, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles I did not think people were greatly concerned about the war. Denver people appeared not to realize there was a war. But here in New York everything is war. You can't escape it. You see that war will soon obsess rich and poor, alien and neutral and belligerent, pacifist and militarist. Since I wrote you last I've tried to read the newspapers sent to us. It's hard to tell you which makes me the sicker—the prattle of the pacifist or the mathematics of the military experts. Both miss the spirit of men. Neither has any soul. I think the German minds must all be mathematical.
But I want to write about the women and girls I see, here in New York, in the camps and towns, on the trains, everywhere. Lenore, the war has thrown them off their balance. I have seen and studied at close hand women of all classes. Believe me, as the boys say, I have thought more than twice whether or not I would tell you the stark truth. But somehow I am impelled to. I have an overwhelming conviction that all American girls and mothers should know what the truth is. They will never be told, Lenore, and most would never believe if they were told. And that is one thing wrong with people.
I believe every soldier, from the time he enlists until the war is ended, should be kept away from women. This is a sweeping statement and you must take into account the mind of him who makes it. But I am not leaping at conclusions. The soldier boys have terrible peril facing them long before they get to the trenches. Not all, or nearly all, the soldiers are going to be vitally affected by the rottenness of great cities or by the mushroom hotbeds of vice springing up near the camps. These evils exist and are being opposed by military and government, by police and Y.M.C.A., and good influence of good people. But they will never wholly stamp it out.
Nor do I want to say much about the society women who are "rushing" the officers. There may be one here and there with her heart in the right place, but with most of them it must be, first, this something about war that has unbalanced women; and secondly, a fad, a novelty, a new sentimental stunt, a fashion set by some leader. Likewise I want to say but little about the horde of common, street-chasing, rattled-brained women and girls who lie in wait for soldiers at every corner, so to speak. All these, to be sure, may be unconsciously actuated by motives that do not appear on the surface; and if this be true, their actions are less bold, less raw than they look.
What I want to dwell upon is my impression of something strange, unbalanced, incomprehensible, about the frank conduct of so many well-educated, refined, and good women I see; and about the eagerness, restlessness, the singular response of nice girls to situations that are not natural.
To-night a handsome, stylishly gowned woman of about thirty came up to me with a radiant smile and a strange brightness in her eyes. There were five hundred couples dancing on the floor, and the music and sound of sliding feet made it difficult to hear her. She said: "You handsome soldier boy! Come dance with me?" I replied politely that I did not dance. Then she took hold of me and said, "I'll teach you." I saw a wedding-ring on the hand she laid on my arm. Then I looked straight at her, "Madam, very soon I'll be learning the dance of death over in France, and my mind's concerned with that." She grew red with anger. She seemed amazed. And she snapped, "Well, youarea queer soldier!" Later I watched her flirting and dancing with an officer.
Overtures and advances innumerable have been made to me, ranging from the assured possession-taking onslaught like this woman's to the slight, subtle something, felt more than seen, of a more complex nature. And, Lenore, I blush to tell you this, but I've been mobbed by girls. They have a thousand ways of letting a soldierknow!I could not begin to tell them. But I do not actually realize what it is that is conveyed, that I know; and I am positive the very large majority of soldiersmisunderstand. At night I listen to the talks of my comrades, and, well—if the girls only heard! Many times I go out of hearing, and when I cannot do that I refuse to hear.
Lenore, I am talking about nice girls now. I am merciless. There are many girls like you—they seem like you, though none so pretty. I mean, you know, there are certain manners and distinctions that at once mark a really nice girl. For a month I've been thrown here and there, so that it seems I've seen as many girls as soldiers. I have been sent to different entertainments given for soldiers. At one place a woman got up and invited the girls to ask the boys to dance. At another a crowd of girls were lined up wearing different ribbons, and the boys marched along until each one found the girl wearing a ribbon to match the one he wore. That was his partner. It was interesting to see the eager, mischievous, brooding eyes of these girls as they watched and waited. Just as interesting was it to see this boy's face when he found his partner was ugly, and that boy swell with pride when he found he had picked a "winner." It was all adventure for both boys and girls. But I saw more than that in it. Whenever I could not avoid meeting a girl I tried to be agreeable and to talk about war, and soldiers, and what was going on. I did not dance, of course, and I imagine more than one girl found me a "queer soldier."
It always has touched me, though, to see and feel the sweetness, graciousness, sympathy, kindness, and that other indefinable something, in the girls I have met. How they made me think of you, Lenore! No doubt about their hearts, their loyalty, their Americanism. Every soldier who goes to France can fight for some girl! They make you feel that. I believe I have gone deeper than most soldiers in considering what I will call war-relation of the sexes. If it is normal, then underneath it all is a tremendous inscrutable design of nature or God. If that be true, actually true, then war must be inevitable and right! How horrible! My thoughts confound me sometimes. Anyway, the point I want to make is this: I heard an officer tell an irate father, whose two daughters had been insulted by soldiers: "My dear sir, it is regrettable. These men will be punished. But they are not greatly to blame, because so many girls throw themselves at their heads. Your daughters did not, of course, but they should not have come here." That illustrates the fixed idea of the military, all through the ranks—Women throw themselves at soldiers!It is true that they do. But the idea is false, nevertheless, because the mass of girls are misunderstood.
Misunderstood!—I can tell you why. Surely the mass of American girls are nice, fine, sweet, wholesome. They are young. The news of war liberates something in them that we can find no name for. But it must be noble. A soldier! The very name, from childhood, is one to make a girl thrill. What then the actual thing, the uniform, invested somehow with chivalry and courage, the clean-cut athletic young man, somber and fascinating with his intent eyes, his serious brow, or his devil-may-care gallantry, the compelling presence of him that breathes of his sacrifice, of his near departure to privation, to squalid, comfortless trenches, to the fire and hell of war, to blood and agony and death—in a word to fight, fight, fight for women!… So through this beautiful emotion women lose their balance and many are misunderstood. Those who would not and could not be bold are susceptible to advances that in an ordinary time would not affect them. War invests a soldier with a glamour. Love at first sight, flirtations, rash intimacies, quick engagements, immediate marriages. The soldier who is soon going away to fight and perhaps to die strikes hard at the very heart of a girl. Either she is not her real self then, or else she is suddenly transported to a womanhood that is instinctive, elemental, universal for the future. She feels what she does not know. She surrenders because there is an imperative call to the depths of her nature. She sacrifices because she is the inspiritor of the soldier, the reward for his loss, the savior of the race. If women are the spoils of barbarous conquerors, they are also the sinews, the strength, the soul of defenders.
And so, however you look at it, war means for women sacrifice, disillusion, heartbreak, agony, doom. I feel that so powerfully that I am overcome; I am sick at the gaiety and playing; I am full of fear, wonder, admiration, and hopeless pity for them.
No man can tell what is going on in the souls of soldiers while noble women are offering love and tenderness, throwing themselves upon the altar of war, hoping blindly to send their great spirits marching to the front. Perhaps the man who lives through the war will feel the change in his soul if he cannot tell it. Day by day I think I see a change in my comrades. As they grow physically stronger they seem to grow spiritually lesser. But maybe that is only my idea. I see evidences of fear, anger, sullenness, moodiness, shame. I see a growing indifference to fatigue, toil, pain. As these boys harden physically they harden mentally. Always, 'way off there is the war, and that seems closely related to the near duty here—what it takes to make a man. These fellows will measure men differently after this experience with sacrifice, obedience, labor, and pain. In that they will become great. But I do not think these things stimulate a man's mind. Changes are going on in me, some of which I am unable to define. For instance, physically I am much bigger and stronger than I was. I weigh one hundred and eighty pounds! As for my mind, something is always tugging at it. I feel that it grows tired. It wants to forget. In spite of my will, all of these keen desires of mine to know everything lag and fail often, and I catch myself drifting. I see and feel and hear without thinking. I am only an animal then. At these times sight of blood, or a fight, or a plunging horse, or a broken leg—and these sights are common—affects me little until I am quickened and think about the meaning of it all. At such moments I have a revulsion of feeling. With memory comes a revolt, and so on, until I am the distressed, inquisitive, and morbid person I am now. I shudder at what war will make me. Actual contact with earth, exploding guns, fighting comrades, striking foes, will make brutes of us all. It is wrong to shed another man's blood. If life was meant for that why do we have progress? I cannot reconcile a God with all this horror. I have misgivings about my mind. If I feel so acutely here in safety and comfort, what shall I feel over there in peril and agony? I fear I shall laugh at death. Oh, Lenore, consider that! To laugh in the ghastly face of death! If I yield utterly to a fiendish joy of bloody combat, then my mind will fail, and that in itself would be evidence of God.
I do not read over my letters to you, I just write. Forgive me if they are not happier. Every hour I think of you. At night I see your face in the shadow of the tent wall. And I love you unutterably.
Faithfully,
Kurt Dorn.
Camp ——,November—,
Dear Sister,—It's bad news I've got for you this time. Something bids me tell you, though up to now I've kept unpleasant facts to myself.
The weather has knocked me out. My cold came back, got worse and worse. Three days ago I had a chill that lasted for fifteen minutes. I shook like a leaf. It left me, and then I got a terrible pain in my side. But I didn't give in, which I feel now was a mistake. I stayed up till I dropped.
I'm here in the hospital. It's a long shed with three stoves, and a lot of beds with other sick boys. My bed is far away from a stove. The pain is bad yet, but duller, and I've fever. I'm pretty sick, honey. Tell mother and dad, but not the girls. Give my love to all. And don't worry. It'll all come right in the end. This beastly climate's to blame.
Later,—It's night now. I was interrupted. I'll write a few more lines. Hope you can read them. It's late and the wind is moaning outside. It's so cold and dismal. The fellow in the bed next to me is out of his head. Poor devil! He broke his knee, and they put off the operation—too busy! So few doctors and so many patients! And now he'll lose his leg. He's talking about home. Oh, Lenore!Home!I never knew what home was—till now.
I'm worse to-night. But I'm always bad at night. Only, to-night I feel strange. There's a weight on my chest, besides the pain. That moan of wind makes me feel so lonely. There's no one here—and I'm so cold. I've thought a lot about you girls and mother and dad. Tell dad I made good.
Jim
Jim's last letter was not taken seriously by the other members of the Anderson family. The father shook his head dubiously. "That ain't like Jim," but made no other comment. Mrs. Anderson sighed. The young sisters were not given to worry. Lenore, however, was haunted by an unwritten meaning in her brother's letter.
Weeks before, she had written to Dorn and told him to hunt up Jim. No reply had yet come from Dorn. Every day augmented her uneasiness, until it was dreadful to look for letters that did not come. All this fortified her, however, to expect calamity. Like a bolt out of the clear sky it came in the shape of a telegram from Camp —— saying that Jim was dying.
The shock prostrated the mother. Jim had been her favorite. Mr. Anderson left at once for the East. Lenore had the care of her mother and the management of "Many Waters" on her hands, which duties kept her mercifully occupied. Mrs. Anderson, however, after a day, rallied surprisingly. Lenore sensed in her mother the strength of the spirit that sacrificed to a noble and universal cause. It seemed to be Mrs. Anderson's conviction that Jim had been shot, or injured by accident in gun-training, or at least by a horse. Lenore did not share her mother's idea and was reluctant to dispel it. On the evening of the fifth day after Mr. Anderson's departure a message came, saying that he had arrived too late to see Jim alive. Mrs. Anderson bore the news bravely, though she weakened perceptibly.
The family waited then for further news. None came. Day after day passed. Then one evening, while Lenore strolled in the gloaming, Kathleen came running to burst out with the announcement of their father's arrival. He had telephoned from Vale for a car to meet him.
Not long after that, Lenore, who had gone to her room, heard the return of the car and recognized her father's voice. She ran down in time to see him being embraced by the girls, and her mother leaning with bowed head on his shoulder.
"Yes, I fetched Jim—back," he said, steadily, but very low. "It's all arranged.… An' we'll bury him to-morrow."
"Oh—dad!" cried Lenore.
"Hello, my girl!" he replied, and kissed her. "I'm sorry to tell you I couldn't locate Kurt Dorn.… That New York—an' that trainin' camp!"
He held up his hands in utter futility of expression. Lenore's quick eyes noted his face had grown thin and haggard, and she made sure with a pang that his hair was whiter.
"I'm sure glad to be home," he said, with a heavy expulsion of breath. "I want to clean up an' have a bite to eat."
Lenore was so disappointed at failing to hear from Dorn that she did not think how singular it was her father did not tell more about Jim. Later he seemed more like himself, and told them simply that Jim had contracted pneumonia and died without any message for his folk at home. This prostrated Mrs. Anderson again.
Later Lenore sought her father in his room. He could not conceal from her that he had something heartrending on his mind. Then there was more than tragedy in his expression. Lenore felt a leap of fear at what seemed her father's hidden anger. She appealed to him—importuned him. Plainer it came to her that he wanted to relieve himself of a burden. Then doubling her persuasions, she finally got him to talk.
"Lenore, it's not been so long ago that right here in this room Jim begged me to let him enlist. He wasn't of age. But would I let him go—to fight for the honor of our country—for the future safety of our home?… We all felt the boy's eagerness, his fire, his patriotism. Wayward as he's been, we suddenly were proud of him. We let him go. We gave him up. He was a part of our flesh an' blood—sent by us Andersons—to do our share."
Anderson paused in his halting speech, and swallowed hard. His white face twitched strangely and his brow was clammy. Lenore saw that his piercing gaze looked far beyond her for the instant that he broke down.
"Jim was a born fighter," the father resumed. "He wasn't vicious. He just had a leanin' to help anybody. As a lad he fought for his little pards—always on the right side—an' he always fought fair.… This opportunity to train for a soldier made a man of him. He'd have made his mark in the war. Strong an' game an' fierce, he'd … he'd … Well, he's dead—he'sdead!… Four months after enlistment he's dead.… An' he never had a rifle in his hands! He never had his hands on a machine-gun or a piece of artillery!… He never had a uniform! He never had an overcoat! He never …"
Then Mr. Anderson's voice shook so that he had to stop to gain control. Lenore was horrified. She felt a burning stir within her.
"Lemme get this—out," choked Anderson, his face now livid, his veins bulging. "I'm drove to tell it. I was near all day locatin' Jim's company. Found the tent where he'd lived. It was cold, damp, muddy. Jim's messmates spoke high of him. Called him a prince!… They all owed him money. He'd done many a good turn for them. He had only a thin blanket, an' he caught cold. All the boys had colds. One night he gave that blanket to a boy sicker than he was. Next day he got worse.… There was miles an' miles of them tents. I like to never found the hospital where they'd sent Jim. An' then it was six o'clock in the mornin'—a raw, bleak day that'd freeze one of us to the marrow. I had trouble gettin' in. But a soldier went with me an'—an' …"
Anderson's voice went to a whisper, and he looked pityingly at Lenore.
"That hospital was a barn. No doctors! Too early.… The nurses weren't in sight. I met one later, an', poor girl! she looked ready to drop herself!… We found Jim in one of the little rooms. No heat! It was winter there.… Only a bed!… Jim lay on the floor, dead! He'd fallen or pitched off the bed. He had on only his underclothes that he had on—when he—left home.… He was stiff—an' must have—been dead—a good while."
Lenore held out her trembling hands. "Dead—Jim dead—like that!" she faltered.
"Yes. He got pneumonia," replied Anderson, hoarsely. "The camp was full of it."
"But—my God! Were not the—the poor boys taken care of?" implored Lenore, faintly.
"It's a terrible time. All was done thatcouldbe done!"
"Then—it was all—for nothing?"
"All! All! Our boy an' many like him—the best blood of our country—Western blood—dead because … because …"
Anderson's voice failed him.
"Oh, Jim! Oh, my brother!… Dead like a poor neglected dog! Jim—who enlisted to fight—for—"
Lenore broke down then and hurried away to her room.
With great difficulty Mrs. Anderson was revived, and it became manifest that the prop upon which she had leaned had been slipped from under her. The spirit which had made her strong to endure the death of her boy failed when the sordid bald truth of a miserable and horrible waste of life gave the lie to the splendid fighting chance Jim had dreamed of.
When Anderson realized that she was fading daily he exhausted himself in long expositions of the illness and injury and death common to armies in the making. More deaths came from these causes than from war. It was the elision of the weaker element—the survival of the fittest; and some, indeed very many, mothers must lose their sons that way. The government was sound at the core, he claimed; and his own rage was at the few incompetents and profiteers. These must be weeded out—a process that was going on. The gigantic task of a government to draft and prepare a great army and navy was something beyond the grasp of ordinary minds. Anderson talked about what he had seen and heard, proving the wonderful stride already made. But all that he said now made no impression upon Mrs. Anderson. She had made her supreme sacrifice for a certain end, and that was as much the boy's fiery ambition to fight as it was her duty, common with other mothers, to furnish a man at the front. What a hopeless, awful sacrifice! She sank under it.
Those were trying days for Lenore, just succeeding her father's return; and she had little time to think of herself. When the mail came, day after day, without a letter from Dorn, she felt the pang in her breast grow heavier. Intimations crowded upon her of impending troubles that would make the present ones seem light.
It was not long until the mother was laid to rest beside the son.
When that day ended, Lenore and her father faced each other in her room, where he had always been wont to come for sympathy. They gazed at each other, with hard, dry eyes. Stark-naked truth—grim reality—the nature of this catastrophe—the consciousness of war—dawned for each in the look of the other. Brutal shock and then this second exceeding bitter woe awakened their minds to the futility of individual life.
"Lenore—it's over!" he said, huskily, as he sank into a chair. "Like a nightmare!… What have I got to live for?"
"You have us girls," replied Lenore. "And if you did not have us there would be many others for you to live for.… Dad, can't you see—now?"
"I reckon. But I'm growin' old an' mebbe I've quit."
"No, dad, you'll never quit. Suppose all we Americans quit. That'd mean a German victory. Never! Never! Never!"
"By God! you're right!" he ejaculated, with the trembling strain of his face suddenly fixing. Blood and life shot into his eyes. He got up heavily and began to stride to and fro before her. "You see clearer than me. You always did, Lenore."
"I'm beginning to see, but I can't tell you," replied Lenore, closing her eyes. Indeed, there seemed a colossal vision before her, veiled and strange. "Whatever happens, wecannotbreak. It's because of the war. We have our tasks—greater now than ever we believe could be thrust upon us. Yours to show men what you are made of! To raise wheat as never before in your life! Mine to show my sisters and my friends—all the women—what their duty is. We must sacrifice, work, prepare, and fight for the future."
"I reckon," he nodded solemnly. "Loss of mother an' Jim changes this damned war. Whatever's in my power to do must go on. So some one can take it up when I—"
"That's the great conception, dad," added Lenore, earnestly. "We are tragically awakened. We've been surprised—terribly struck in the dark. Something monstrous and horrible!… I can feel the menace in it for all—over every family in this broad land."
"Lenore, you said once that Jim—Now, how'd you know it was all over for him?"
"A woman's heart, dad. When I said good-by to Jim I knew it was good-by forever."
"Did you feel that way about Kurt Dorn?"
"No. He will come back to me. I dream it. It's in my spirit—my instinct of life, my flesh-and-blood life of the future—it's in my belief in God. Kurt Dorn's ordeal will be worse than death for him. But I believe as I pray—that he will come home alive."
"Then, after all, you do hope," said her father. "Lenore, when I was down East, I seen what women were doin'. The bad women are good an' the good women are great. I think women have more to do with war then men, even if they do stay home. It must be because women are mothers.… Lenore, you've bucked me up. I'll go at things now. The need for wheat next year will be beyond calculation. I'll buy ten thousand acres of that wheatland round old Chris Dorn's farm. An' my shot at the Germans will be wheat. I'll raise a million bushels!"
Next morning in the mail was a long, thick envelope addressed to Lenore in handwriting that shook her heart and made her fly to the seclusion of her room.
New York City,November—.
DEAREST,—when you receive this I will be in France.
Then Lenore sustained a strange shock. The beloved handwriting faded, the thick sheets of paper fell; and all about her seemed dark and whirling, as the sudden joy and excitement stirred by the letter changed to sickening pain.
"France!He's in France?" she whispered. "Oh, Kurt!" A storm of love and terror burst over her. It had the onset and the advantage of a bewildering surprise. It laid low, for the moment, her fortifications of sacrifice, strength, and resolve. She had been forced into womanhood, and her fear, her agony, were all the keener for the intelligence and spirit that had repudiated selfish love. Kurt Dorn was in France in the land of the trenches! Strife possessed her and had a moment of raw, bitter triumph. She bit her lips and clenched her fists, to restrain the impulse to rush madly around the room, to scream out her fear and hate. With forcing her thought, with hard return to old well-learned arguments, there came back the nobler emotions. But when she took up the letter again, with trembling hands, her heart fluttered high and sick, and she saw the words through blurred eyes.
…I'll give the letter to an ensign, who has promised to mail it the moment he gets back to New York.