“To earn some honorable advancement for one's soul.”
Deep down in him, overlaid with years of worldliness, there was a belief in a life after death. He looked out the window at the little, changing group. In each man out there there was something that would live on, after he had shed that sweating, often dirty, always weary, sometimes malformed shell that was the body. And then the thing that would count would be not how he had lived but what he had done.
This war was a big thing. It was the biggest thing in all the history of the world. There might be, perhaps, some special heaven for those who had given themselves to it, some particular honorable advancement for their souls. Already he saw Jackson as one apart, a man dedicated.
Then he knew that all his thinking was really centered about his boy. He wanted Graham to go. But in giving him he was giving him to the chance of death. Then he must hold to his belief in eternity. He must feel that, or the thing would be unbearable. For the first time in his life he gave conscious thought to Natalie's religious belief. She believed in those things. She must. She sat devoutly through the long service; she slipped, with a little rustle of soft silk, so easily to her knees. Perhaps, if he went to her with that?
CHAPTER XXXII
For a week after Anna's escape Herman Klein had sat alone and brooded. Entirely alone now, for following a stormy scene on his discovery of Anna's disappearance, Katie had gone too.
“I don't know where she is,” she had said, angrily, “and if I did know I wouldn't tell you. If I was her I'd have the law on you. Don't you look at that strap. You lay a hand on me and I'll kill you. If you think I'm afraid of you, you can think again.”
“She is my daughter, and not yet of age,” Herman said heavily. “You tell her for me that she comes back, or I go and bring her.”
“Yah!” Katie jeered. “You try it! She's got marks on her that'll jail you.” And on his failure to reply her courage mounted. “This ain't Germany, you know. They know how to treat women over here. And you ask me”—her voice rose—“and I'll just say that there's queer comings and goings here with that Rudolph. I've heard him say some things that'll lock him up good and tight.”