Heart's Kindred

“About comin’ to me?”

“About makin’ you do all this for me!” she cried. “I’m sick over it. I don’t know how to tell you…”

He wondered if it was possible that she did not understand.

“I done the only thing I could think to do,” she said. “There wasn’t anybody else…”

“Do you get the idea,” he demanded, “that I’m ever going to forget how you said that to me that first night? I was drunk – but I knew when you said that. And then – ”

“Don’t,” she said.

“How can I help it?” he asked bitterly. “I made fool enough of myself that night – ”

“Don’t,” she begged.

“ – so’s you never can forget it,” he finished. “And so’s I never can. If it hadn’t been for that – ”

“What then?” she asked.

And now he did not answer, but looked away from her, and so it was she who made him tell.

“What then?” she said again.

“Would you have liked me then,” he burst out, “before that night?”

She said – and nothing could have swept him like the simplicity and honesty of this:

“But you never come down to town once after that morning on the horse.”

“How did you know that?” he cried.

“I watched,” she answered, quietly.

And yet this, he knew, was before that night on the trail. This was still in the confidence of her supreme confession: “I didn’t know no woman I could tell – nor no other decent man.” And she had watched for him…

But, after all, she was telling him so now! And here, to-night, when she no longer had need of him, her comradeship was unchanged. And there had been those hours on the train from Chicago…

“You watched!” he repeated. “Oh look here! Would you watch – now?”

To her voice came that tremor that he remembered, which seemed to be in the very words themselves.

“I watched all day to-day,” she said.

Even then he did not touch her. It was as if there were some gulf which she must be the one to cross.

“Oh Lory, Lory!” he cried.

And she understood, and it was she who stretched out her hands to him.

In their broken talk, he told her of his father, and she clung to him with a cry that she had not been with him.

“I couldn’t send for you,” she said. “I thought – maybe you was glad Bunchy come. I thought maybe you was glad I was off your hands – ”

“My hands,” he said, “just was huntin’ for your hands.”

“Then that ice-cream place’s wife,” she said, “told me about to-night – and somebody told Aunt ’Cretia. And we come here to the meeting – but when I saw you, I run and lost ’em – ”

“I wanted you when I was in that meeting,” he told her, “more’n any other time, most. I knew you knew what they meant.”

She said the thing which in the tense feeling of that hour, had remained for her paramount.

“That woman,” she cried, “with her baby in her shawl! Think– when she knew it was gone – and she couldn’t go back…”

“I thought – what if it had been you,” he told her.

She was in his arms, close in the dusk of a great cedar. “Any woman – any woman!” she said, and he felt her sobbing.

He turned and looked away at the people. Not far from them, like murals on the night, went the people, that little lighted stream of people, down the white steps and along the gray drives. He looked at the women. That about the baby in the shawl might have happened to any one of them, if war were here… It was terrible to think that this might happen to any one of these women. He felt as if he knew them. And then too, there must be some of them whose fathers had died…

He kept looking at the people, and in his arms was Lory, sobbing for that woman who had lost her child from her shawl; and over there across the water were thousands whose children were gone, whose fathers had died…

Here they all seemed so kindly, and they were going home … to homes such as he and Lory were going to have. Just the same – just the same…

And as he looked at the people, the thousands, going to their homes, Love that had come to dwell in him, touched him on the eyes. He saw them loving, as he and Lory loved. He saw them grieving, as that woman had grieved for her child. He saw them lonely for their dead, as he was lonely for his dead. None of them could deceive him. He knew them, now. They were like Lory and like him.

Out of a heart suddenly full he spoke the utmost that he could:

“What a rotten shame,” he said, “it’d be to kill any of them!”

She looked up, and saw where he was looking, and her heart leaped with her understanding of him.

He was trying to think it out.

“But they can’t seem to stop to think of things like that,” he said; “not when big things come up.”

“Big things!” she cried. “What’s big things?”

“Well – rights – and land – and sea-ports,” said he.

She laughed, and caught up an end of her blue knitted shawl and covered her face, and dropped the shawl with almost a sob.

“Rights – and land – and sea-ports!” she said over.

The three words hung in air, and echoed. And abruptly there came upon him a dozen things that he had heard that night: “We had just three little streets, but they took those…” “There is only one hell worse than we have been through…” “Say, if you like, that Belgium was only a part of what happens in war…” “We have to think of men brutalized and driven to hideous deeds…” “Enough of slaughter. Enough of devastation. Peace – lasting peace!” And then again the words of the Hungarian woman: “I had the shawl on my back, but I had no baby and I don’t know where I dropped him.”

“Think of millions of men doing like Dad and that sheriff,” the girl said suddenly. “I saw ’em there on the woodshed floor, – stark, starin’, ravin’ mad.”

Sharp on the dark before him was struck the image of that old madman in the kitchen. There was a beast in him. The Inger had felt the beast in himself answer. He had felt the shame of a man who is a beast to another man. What if it were the same kind of shame for the nations?

Suddenly, in his arms, Lory was pouring out all that she had longed to say to him.

“Back there in Inch,” she cried, “I knew there was some other way. I had to know! It didn’t seem as if everybody could be like Dad and Bunchy. Then I saw you – and you seemed like you could be some other way. And you are – and see the folks there. There is some other way to be besides killin’!”

The lights in the dome went out, and that high white presence dropped back against the sky. Still the people were going by, their feet treading the gravel; and now there was a man’s voice, now a woman’s voice, now the sleepy treble of a child. And they were all in some exquisite faith of destination.

“I guess there must be some other way,” the Inger said.

To the man and the woman in each other’s arms, there came no glimpse of the future, great with its people, “striving who should contribute most to the happiness of mankind.” But of the man’s love was born his dim knowledge – which had long been the woman’s knowledge – that the people are bound together by ties which the nations must cease to break. That the people are heart’s kindred, met here for their world-work, which the nations must cease to interrupt.

Yet all that he could say of this was something which every soldier knows – though armies never know:

“If that woman had been you – and the baby in the shawl had been ours – ”

“Anybody’s!” she insisted. “Anybody’s baby!”

“Yes,” said the Inger then. “Anybody’s baby.!”