Chapter 13

His hands clenched on the young grass, slowly dragging out bunches of tender, growing things. He began to smell the sweetness of their roots, of the soil that clung to them—moist, full of sap and growth, of inevitable rebirth. These budding, springing things, growing out of deadness into life and warmth, suddenly gave him a little piteous thrill of joy, which broke into his despair like a trickle of rain into dry sods. The earth seemed to hold a steadfast hope in her stillness and strength, in her scent and moisture and green life struggling out of death.... Those boys who had cast themselves down on the earth to die, perhaps they had found this hope ... perhaps disgraced Jerry slept with it. No man, no blood-lusty power, could cheat them of it, for even bodies blown into a thousand pieces the earth takes into her kind stillness and makes them whole in union with herself.

Even in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the earth had not failed him. No one could separate him from her or cheat him of his reward in her. From her he had come and to her he would return, and in her he would be one with those whom he had lost, his dead wife and his dead [308] son. There should be no disgrace there, nor torment, nor tears, nor sighing; no parting, when all are united in the one element and the children are asleep together on the mother’s breast....