abel reflected.
“yes,” he said presently, “but we have not fulfilled our purpose.... you know, we set out in high courage to start the army back home again—and now, here we are.”
“a man named columbus set out to discover a short passage to india and found a new world. really my son—these are not our affairs. we have done what we could.... once i wanted the world to answer abruptly to my service—to speak up sharp. but i have made terms—hard terms we all must make. this is it—to do our part the best we can, and keep off the results. they are god's concern, moritz.”
“i dare say.”
“when i was younger,” fallows went on, “i wanted to make a circle of light around the world. i thought they must see it, as i did. and often i left my friends discussing my failure. but once i came home and looked into the eyes of a little boy—a little peasant child named jan. i saw that his love for me had awakened his soul.... man, these matters are managed with a finer art than we dream of. the work is the thing.” peter swung into the larger current. they had all been cold. fallows was burning for them. the ice and the agony were melting from each heart.
“we think all is going wrong. we sit and breathe our failures often when the celestial answer is in the air. if we were not so obtuse and fleshly, we could see the quickening of light about us. we have had our hours here. we have breathed the open. a very huge army is about us, and we are thrust aside. it would seem that we and our little story are lost in the great brute noise. why, moritz, these things that we have thought and dreamed will rise again in the midst of a world that has forgotten the tread of armies.”
they heard a voice in the street—a running step upon the stair. queerly it happened in that instant of waiting, that peter heard the sound of dropping water beyond the partition—drip, drip, drip, upon a tinny surface. berthe had risen, and followed fallows and abel to the door. a moment later poltneck, the singer, was with them, and the sentry who brought him took his post with the other at the entrance. he freed himself from them, and strode alone to the front of the room, where he sat, face covered in his hands, weaving his head to and fro.
“you do not well to welcome me,” he groaned at last. “i should have been in a cell alone—not here among friends. you see in me the most abject failure—a mere music-monger who forgot his greater work.”
“tell us—”
he did not answer at once. they led him back into the shadows where peter and berthe had been; gathered closely about, so their voices would not carry.
“we were hoping not to see you,” said abel, “yet sending our dearest thoughts. what you have done is good, and we will not be denied a song. speak, poltneck—”
“i was all right till you went. i was thinking of everything—but then i became blind. the work in the hospitals palled. i did not do what i could. they saw i was different, and watched closely. that made me mad. i am a fool to temper and pride. all i have is something that i did not earn—something thrust upon me that makes sounds. the rest is emptiness. in fact there must be emptiness where sounds come from—”
“we know better than that,” said fallows. “tell us and we will judge.”
poltneck straightened up and met the eyes of peter. “this is the correspondent?” he asked.
“he came up from the field this morning and in looking for us—fell under suspicion,” berthe explained.
the long hard arm stretched out to peter, who still was somewhat at sea, as boylan had been, and afraid that he detected a taint of the dramatic.
“i saw your companion in the bomb-proof pit,” poltneck declared. “in fact, i just came from there, but i will tell you.... i was perhaps two hours or more in the hospital, after you three were taken, when they sent for me. i thought it a summons, of course, such, as you—”
he glanced at the faces about him, and continued:
“but instead of leading me in the direction you had taken, the sentry bade me mount a horse at the door, and we rode rapidly down to the edge of the valley, to kohlvihr's headquarters—a pestilential place sunken in the ground and covered with sods. there they broke it to me what was wanted—”
his listeners began to understand.
“yes, i was to sing to the lines,” poltneck added. “it appears they had been driven back several times, leaving their dead and wounded in such numbers on the field—officers and men—that there was some hesitation about the expediency of trying it again. not, however, in the bomb-proof pit. kohlvihr was of a single mind, determined to make his reputation as man-indomitable at the expense of his division. a patchy old rodent of a man—
“i was to be used to sing the men forward. great god, they didn't see the difference from singing to wounded men, to men under the knife without sleep, to dying men and to homesick bivouacs—from this that they asked. it is my devil. i played with them. i made them think i was afraid. i made them think i was simple. one of them told me of the tenor chautonville with the army. i played to that. it was very petty of me to get caught in this cleverness, because that's how i fell—”
“you didn't sing the lines into a new advance?” fallows asked. his face looked lined and gray as he leaned forward.
“no, i didn't do that. but i made them wait to find out. i was so occupied with repartee and acting that i failed to seize the real chance of all the world. i told them i had been tried out as an anesthetic, but was not sure of myself in an opposite capacity. i begged them to send for the member of imperial orchestra stars—”
poltneck's self-scorn was vitriolic as he now spoke.
“i told them i was a poor simple man afraid of great numbers, abased even before wounded, but that if they would wound the men first i would try. it was this that betrayed me—the joy of astonishing. oh, they were without humor. it goes with the army—to be without humor. really, you would have been dumfounded at the brittleness of mind which i encountered in the bomb-proof pit.... of course, it had to come. it dawned on them—what i meant, and what the real state of my scorn was—at least, in part. and i was taken away, very pleased with myself and joyous—”
“i do not see where you failed. where, where?” berthe asked.
it was fallows who understood first—even before abel and peter, who was not so imbued with the specific passion of the revolutionist.
“i was here—back in the city when it came to me what i might have done. and so clearly the cause of the failure was shown to me,” poltneck said, with a humility that touched peter deeply, for his first thought had vanished before the fact that poltneck neither in the action nor the narrative had once thought of his own life or death.
“i should have gone out to the lines and met the men face to face. oh, it is hard—hard that i did not think of it, for i could have sung them home, instead of on into the valley. we might have been marching back now—all the lines crumbling—the bomb-proof pit squashed!”
the final stroke fell upon him this instant. none of the others had thought of it.
“and these—doors! living god, we could have opened these doors!”
their hands went out to him.
