Down among men

by Will Levington Comfort

“I dared not offer much with that pure old face looking at me. The silver and gold that was in my purse I put in her lap.

“‘Oh, it is very much—the good God brought you from him, did he not?’

“‘And we will not need to wait until Sunday for——’

“‘Hush—Jan—no, we will not need to wait.’

“... And then the young mother came. I saw her steps quicken when yet she was far off. The little ones were about her—all carrying something. The older children were laughing a little, but the others were quiet in their haste and effort to keep up.... There was one little boy, but I will tell you afterward of the littlest Jan.... There was a pallor over the brood. Their health was pure, and their blood strong, but that pallor had come. Men, it was hunger already. Here were the fields, and the Fatherland had taken him before the harvest. This thing, the shocking truth of it; that this actually could be; that a country could do such a thing—made me forget everything else for the moment. Then I realized that I must keep the truth from the young mother. Before I spoke at all they told her that I had come from her husband.

“Her lips were white, her breasts wasted. She was lean from hunger, lean from her bearing. Young she was for the six, but much had she labored, and there was a mountain wildness in her eyes. She was stilled, as the old mother had been, by the fear of hearing her man’s death. She dared not ask. She accepted what was said—that I had come from him, that I had brought money, and wished to stay for a little.... She leaned against the door, the smaller children gathering at her knees, the others putting away the wood. Her single skirt hung square, and her arms seemed very long, nearly to her knees; her hands loose and tired. Her hair was yellow; the wind had tossed it. You know how a horse that has been listening, suddenly catches his breath again. The same sound came from her as she started to breathe again.... One of the smaller children laughed, and I looked down. It was the little four-year-old, the third Jan of that house, and he was close to my knees, looking up at me ... and we were all together.

“I loved the world better after that look of the child into my eyes.... I took him on my shoulder. We went to the village together. That night the wagon brought us back; there was much food.... And that was my house. I looked out on the mountains the next day, and for many days to come, and, men—their grand sky-wide simplicity poured into my heart. I took the old horse out, and we ploughed during the few days remaining. There was not much land—but we ploughed it together to the end, when the frost made the upturned clods ring. Then I strawed up the shed for the old horse to pass his winter in warmth, and brought blankets for him. I respected that old horse. Health and good-fellowship had come to me as we worked together. I remember the sharp turning of the early afternoons from yellow to gray and to dark.... Then we went into the bush together in the early winter days. The ax rang, and the snow-bolt was piled high each day with wood. The smell of the wood-smoke in the morning air had a zest for my nostrils I had never known before, and at night the cabin windows were red with fire-light. We were all one together. And I think the spirit of the Ploughman was there in the happiness.

“Sometimes in the night when I would get up to replenish the fire—the mystery of plain goodness would come to me. I would see the children and others all around. Then at the frosty window, shading the fire from my eyes, I looked out upon the snows. I was unable to contain the simple grandeurs that had unfolded to me day by day.... And then I would go back to the blankets where the little boy lay—his hand always fumbling for me as I crept in. The love that I felt for this child was beyond all fear. We could stand together against any fate. And one night it came to me that from much loving of one a man learns to love the many, and that I would really be a man when I learned to love the world with the same patience and passion that I loved the little boy. The Ploughman came along in a dream that night and said it was all quite true.

“And that was the winter.... I wish you could have seen this sick man who had come. I had lain on my back for months, except when some great effort aroused me. I had that coming on, men, which makes a man walk—as a circus bear turns and totters on his back feet. The house, the field, the plough, the horse, woods, winter, and mountains, love for the child, love for all the others—the much that my hands found to do and the heart found to give—these things made me new again. These simple sound and holy things.

“I had been a sick man mentally and morally, too, sick with ego and intellect—a nasty sickness. But one could not look, feeling the joy in which I lived, upon the snows of the foothills, nor afar through the yellow winter noons to the gilded summits of the Bosks; one could not look into the eyes of the children, the last vestige of hunger pallor gone from them; one could not talk of tobacco-and-sausage with the old man by his fireside; nor watch the mysterious great givings of the two mothers—their whole lives giving—pure instruments of giving—passionate givers, they were; givers of life and preservers of life—I say, men, one could not live in this purity and not put away such evil and cruel things.... As the sickness of the blood went from me—so that sickness of mind.... And, I tell you, we were ready as a house could be, when the news came officially that our Ploughman was among the missing from the battle of Liaoyang.