Grapes of wrath

“That wasn’t all,” he went on. “The words fitted ’most everywheh they touched. All along I’ve neveh quite managed to get so soaked in confidence that we must win as every man I’ve met in the British Army has been. I’ve had some doubts at times; but that night I lost them all. It wasn’t only seeing the men pouring up into the firing line, an’ the sureness of not being driven back that I could figure was in the minds of the higher Commands when they set to building roads an’ rails right up into the captured ground; it wasn’t only the endless stacks of shells and stuff piled right there on the back doorstep of the battle, and the swarms of guns we came back through. It was something that just spoke plain and clear in my ear, ‘He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat,’ an’ I’ve had no shadow of doubt since but that Germany will go undeh, that theh is nothing left for her but defeat, that she is to be made to pay to the last bitter squeezing of the grapes of wrath for the blood and misery she plunged Europe into. Theh will be no mercy fo’ heh. That was told me plain too—‘I have read the fiery gospel writ in rows of burnished steel, “As ye deal with My contemners so with you My soul shall deal.”’ ... Bernhardi an’ all his lot writ a fiery enough gospel, but it’s cold print beside that other one, that strips the last hope of mercy from His contemners with their gospel of blood and iron and terror and frightfulness.” He paused and was silent a little, and then glanced half-shamefacedly from the flickering fire-shadows at Larry.

“Any one else might think I was talkin’ like a rantin’, crazy, fanatic preacher,” he said. “But you an’ I, boy, an’ most that’s been oveh theh, will undehstand, because we’ve learned a lot mo’ than we can eveh tell or speak out loud.... So I’ve come to believe that all these things fetched home a plain message to me, an’ I’d do right to follow the rest of the verses as best I could. ‘As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,’ is straight enough, an’ I’ve got to go on offering my life as long as He sees fit to let me, or until He sees fit to take it.”

He was speaking now slowly and low and musingly, almost as if he spoke to himself. “My heart has had some sifting too. It was so easy to take this offeh of yo’ father’s, and live pleasant an’ smooth; an’ it was nasty to think about that otheh life, an’ the muck and misery of it all. But altho’ I could be no ways swift or jubilant about it, I came to allow I’d just go again, an’ do what I could.”

In the silence that followed they heard the quick slam of an outer door, and a minute later their room door swung open and some one entered briskly, stopped in the half-dark and cried out in a girl’s laughing voice, “Why—whatever are you two boys doing in the dark?”

Kentucky had jumped to his feet and was moving round the couch, but Larry’s sister spoke imperiously. “Will you sit down, Kentuck? How often have I to tell you that you haven’t quite escaped being an invalid yet?”

“Why, now, I thought I’d been discharged fit,” said Kentucky, and Larry called, “Come here, Rose, and see if you can persuade this crazy fellow.”

Rose came forward into the firelight and made Kentucky sit again, and dropped to a seat on the floor in front of Larry’s couch. Kentucky sat back in the shadow looking at her and thinking what a picture she made with her pretty English face framed in a dark close-fitting hat and a heavy fur round her throat with the outside damp clinging and sparkling on it.

“Persuade him,” she said, “what to? Wouldn’t it be easier for me just to order him?”

“He talks about going back,” said Larry. “Out there—to the front again.”

The girl sat up wide-eyed. “The front,” she repeated. “But how—I don’t understand—your hand....”

“Not in the firing line,” said Kentucky quickly, “I’m not fit for that. But I am fit for Red Cross work.”

“It’s as bad,” said Larry, “if you’re working close up, as I know you’d be if you had a chance.”

The girl was staring into the flickering fire with set lips. She looked round suddenly and leaned forward and slipped a hand on to Kentucky’s knee. “Oh, Ken ... don’t, don’t go. Stay here with us.”

Kentucky’s thought flashed out to “over there,” where he would move in mud and filth, would be cold and wet and hungry. He saw himself crawling a car along the shell-holed muddy track, his hands stiff with cold, the rain beating and driving in his face, the groans of his load of wounded behind him, the stench of decay and battle in his nostrils, the fear of God and the whistling bullets and roaring shells cold in his heart. And against that was this snug, cozy room and all the life that it stood for ... and the warm touch of the girl’s hand on his knee. He wavered a moment while a line hammered swiftly through his mind, “... sifting out the hearts of men....”

Then he spoke quietly, almost casually; but knowing him as they did, both knew that his words were completely final.

“Why, now,” he said slowly, “Kendrick, my friend Kendrick of the Red Cross, asked me; and I passed my word, I gave my promise that I’d go.”