the Desert Of Wheat (2001) (31 page)

His face had grown white again--grave now and troubled. "May I speak to your father?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied.

"If I come back from the war--well--not crippled--will you promise to marry me?"

"Kurt, I promise now."

That seemed to shake him. "But, Lenore, it is not fair to you. I don't believe a soldier should bind a girl by marriage or engagement before he goes to war. She should be free.... I want you to be free."

"That's for you to say," she replied, softly. "But for my part, I don't want to be free--if you go away to war."

"If!... I'm going," he said, with a start. "You don't want to be free?

Lenore, would you be engaged to me?"

"My dear boy, of course I would.... It seems I _am,_ doesn't it?" she replied, with one of her deep, low laughs.

He gazed at her, fascinated, worked upon by overwhelming emotions.

"Would you marry me--before I go?"

"Yes," she flashed.

He bent and bowed then under the storm. Stumbling to her, almost on his knees, he brokenly expressed his gratitude, his wonder, his passion, and the terrible temptation that he must resist, which she must help him to resist.

"Kurt, I love you. I will see things through your eyes, if I must. I want to be a comfort to you, not a source of sorrow."

"But, Lenore, what comfort can I find?... To leave you now is going to be horrible!... To part from you now--I don't see how I can."

Then Lenore dared to broach the subject so delicate, so momentous.

"You need not part from me. My father has asked me to try to keep you home. He secured exemption for you. You are more needed here than at the front. You can feed many soldiers. You would be doing your duty--with honor!... You would be a soldier. The government is going to draft young men for farm duty. Why not you? There are many good reasons why you would be better than most young men. Because you know wheat. And wheat is to become the most important thing in the world. No one misjudges your loyalty.... And surely you see that the best service to your country is what you can do best."

He sat down beside her, with serious frown and somber eyes. "Lenore, are you asking me not to go to war?"

"Yes, I am," she replied. "I have thought it all over. I've given up my brother. I'd not ask you to stay home if you were needed at the front as much as here. That question I have had out with my conscience.... Kurt, don't think me a silly, sentimental girl. Events of late have made me a woman."

He buried his face in his hands. "That's the most amazing of all--you--Lenore Anderson, my American girl--asking me not to go to war."

"But, dear, it is not so amazing. It's reasonable. Your peculiar point of view makes it look different. I am no weak, timid, love-sick girl afraid to let you go!... I've given you good, honorable, patriotic reasons for your exemption from draft. Can you see that?"

"Yes. I grant all your claims. I know wheat well enough to tell you that if vastly more wheat-raising is not done the world will starve. That would hold good for the United States in forty years without war."

"Then if you see my point why are you opposed to it?" she asked.

"Because I am Kurt Dorn," he replied, bitterly.

His tone, his gloom made her shiver. It would take all her intelligence and wit and reason to understand him, and vastly more than that to change him. She thought earnestly. This was to be an ordeal profoundly more difficult than the confession of her love. It was indeed a crisis dwarfing the other she had met. She sensed in him a remarkably strange attitude toward this war, compared with that of her brother or other boys she knew who had gone.

"Because you are Kurt Dorn," she said, thoughtfully. "It's in the name, then.... But I think it a pretty name--a good name. Have I not consented to accept it as mine--for life?"

He could not answer that. Blindly he reached out with a shaking hand, to find hers, to hold it close. Lenore felt the tumult in him. She was shocked. A great tenderness, sweet and motherly, flooded over her.

"Dearest, in this dark hour--that was so bright a little while ago--you must not keep anything from me," she replied. "I will be true to you. I will crush my selfish hopes. I will be your mother.... tell me why you must go to war because you are Kurt Dorn."

"My father was German. He hated this country--yours and mine. He plotted with the I. W. W. He hated your father and wanted to destroy him....

Before he died he realized his crime. For so I take the few words he spoke to Jerry. But all the same he was a traitor to my country. I bear his name. I have German in me.... And by God I'm going to pay!"

His deep, passionate tones struck into Lenore's heart. She fought with a rising terror. She was beginning to understand him. How helpless she felt--how she prayed for inspiration--for wisdom!

"Pay!... How?" she asked.

"In the only way possible. I'll see that a Dorn goes to war--who will show his American blood--who will fight and kill--and be killed!"

His passion, then, was more than patriotism. It had its springs in the very core of his being. He had, it seemed, a debt that he must pay. But there was more than this in his grim determination. And Lenore divined that it lay hidden in his bitter reference to his German blood. He hated that--doubted himself because of it. She realized now that to keep him from going to war would be to make him doubt his manhood and eventually to despise himself. No longer could she think of persuading him to stay home. She must forget herself. She knew then that she had the power to keep him and she could use it, but she must not do so. This tragic thing was a matter of his soul. But if he went to war with this bitter obsession, with this wrong motive, this passionate desire to spill blood in him that he hated, he would lose his soul. He must be changed. All her love, all her woman's flashing, subtle thought concentrated on this fact. How strange the choice that had been given her! Not only must she relinquish her hope of keeping him home, but she must perhaps go to desperate ends to send him away with a changed spirit. The moment of decision was agony for her.

"Kurt, this is a terrible hour for both of us," she said, "but, thank Heaven, you have confessed to me. Now I will confess to you."

"Confess?... You?... What nonsense!" he exclaimed. But in his surprise he lifted his head from his hands to look at her.

"When we came in here my mind was made up to make you stay home. Father begged me to do it, and I had my own selfish motive. It was love. Oh, I do love you, Kurt, more than you can dream of!... I justified my resolve. I told you that. But I wanted you. I wanted your love--your presence. I longed for a home with you as husband--master--father to my babies. I dreamed of all. It filled me with terror to think of you going to war. You might be crippled--mangled--murdered.... Oh, my dear, I could not bear the thought!... So I meant to overcome you. I had it all planned. I meant to love you--to beg you--to kiss you--to make you stay--"

"Lenore, what are you saying?" he cried, in shocked amaze.

She flung her arms round his neck. "Oh, I could--I could have kept you!" she answered, low voiced and triumphant. "It fills me with joy.... Tell me I could have kept you--tell me."

"Yes. I've no power to resist you. But I might have hated--"

"Hush!... It's all might have.... I've risen above myself."

"Lenore, you distress me. A little while ago you bewildered me with your sweetness and love.... Now--you look like an angel or a goddess.... Oh, to have your face like this--always with me! Yet it distresses me--so terrible in purpose. What are you about to tell me? I see something--"

"Listen," she broke in. "I meant to make you weak. I implore you now to be strong. You must go to war! But with all my heart and soul I beg you to go with a changed spirit.... You were about to do a terrible thing.

You hated the German in you and meant to kill it by violence. You despised the German blood and you meant to spill it. Like a wild man you would have rushed to fight, to stab and beat, to murder--and you would have left your breast open for a bayonet-thrust.... Oh, I know it!...

Kurt, you are horribly wrong. That is no way to go to war.... War is a terrible business, but men don't wage it for motives such as yours. We Americans all have different strains of blood--English--French--German.

One is as good as another. You are obsessed--you are out of your head on this German question. You must kill that idea--kill it with one bayonet-thrust of sense.... You must go to war as my soldier--with my ideal. Your country has called you to help uphold its honor, its pledged word. You must fight to conquer an enemy who threatens to destroy freedom.... You must be brave, faithful, merciful, clean--an American soldier!... You are only one of a million. You have no personal need for war. You are as good, as fine, as noble as any man--my choice, sir, of all the men in the world!... I am sending you. I am giving you up....

Oh, my darling--you will never know how hard it is!... But go! Your life has been sad. You have lost so much. I feel in my woman's heart what will be--if only you'll change--if you see God in this as I see. Promise me. Love that which you hated. Prove for yourself what I believe. Trust me--promise me... Then--oh, I know God will send you back to me!"

He fell upon his knees before her to bury his face in her lap. His whole frame shook. His hands plucked at her dress. A low sob escaped him.

"Lenore," he whispered, brokenly, "I can't see God in this--for me!... I can't promise!"

Chapter
XXI

Thirty masked men sat around a long harvest mess-table. Two lanterns furnished light enough to show a bare barnlike structure, the rough-garbed plotters, the grim set of hard lips below the half-masks, and big hands spread out, ready to draw from the hat that was passing.

The talk was low and serious. No names were spoken. A heavy man, at the head of the table, said: "We thirty, picked men, represent the country.

Let each member here write on his slip of paper his choice of punishment for the I. W. W.'s--death or deportation...."

The members of the band bent their masked faces and wrote in a dead silence. A noiseless wind blew through the place. The lanterns flickered; huge shadows moved on the walls. When the papers had been passed back to the leader he read them.

"Deportation," he announced. "So much for the I. W. W. men.... Now for the leader.... But before we vote on what to do with Glidden let me read an extract from one of his speeches. This is authentic. It has been furnished by the detective lately active in our interest. Also it has been published. I read it because I want to bring home to you all an issue that goes beyond our own personal fortunes here."

Leaning toward the flickering flare of the lantern, the leader read from a slip of paper: "If the militia are sent out here to hinder the I. W. W. we will make it so damned hot for the government that no troops will be able to go to France.... I don't give a damn what this country is fighting for.... I am fighting for the rights of labor.... American soldiers are Uncle Sam's scabs in disguise."

The deep, impressive voice ended. The leader's huge fist descended upon the table with a crash. He gazed up and down the rows of sinister masked figures. "Have you anything to say?"

"No," replied one.

"Pass the slips," said another.

And then a man, evidently on in years, for his hair was gray and he looked bent, got up. "Neighbors," he began "I lived here in the early days. For the last few years I've been apologizing for my home town. I don't want to apologize for it any longer."

He sat down. And a current seemed to wave from him around that dark square of figures. The leader cleared his throat as if he had much to say, but he did not speak. Instead he passed the hat. Each man drew forth a slip of paper and wrote upon it. The action was not slow.

Presently the hat returned round the table to the leader. He spilled its contents, and with steady hand picked up the first slip of paper.

"Death!" he read, sonorously, and laid it down to pick up another. Again he spoke that grim word. The third brought forth the same, and likewise the next, and all, until the verdict had been called out thirty times.

"At daylight we'll meet," boomed out that heavy voice. "Instruct Glidden's guards to make a show of resistance.... We'll hang Glidden to the railroad bridge. Then each of you get your gangs together. Round up all the I. W. W.'s. Drive them to the railroad yard. There we'll put them aboard a railroad train of empty cars. And that train will pass under the bridge where Glidden will be hanging.... We'll escort them out of the country."

* * * * *

That August dawn was gray and cool, with gold and pink beginning to break over the dark eastern ranges. The town had not yet awakened. It slept unaware of the stealthy forms passing down the gray road and of the distant hum of motor-cars and trot of hoofs.

Glidden's place of confinement was a square warehouse, near the edge of town. Before the improvised jail guards paced up and down, strangely alert.

Daylight had just cleared away the gray when a crowd of masked men appeared as if by magic and bore down upon the guards. There was an apparent desperate resistance, but, significantly, no cries or shots.

The guards were overpowered and bound.