The dead man in the hospital steward's coat had been carried forth from the bomb-proof pit.
Big Belt perceived that the day was working out according to its evil beginnings.... After coming in from the infantry hollows as one risen from the dead (and transfigured in the garish light of field bravery) Peter Mowbray had left him again, now in the possession of strange devils.
Boylan was not ready to go back to Judenbach. It was almost noon. He was watching the heart of the Russian invasion of Galicia, and from its main lesion. This he knew quite as well as Dabnitz, or Doltmir, or the half-insane Kohlvihr himself. The Austrians still held. Indeed, it was not hard for them. The Russian west wing entire, and possibly part of its center, would be called upon to flank this stoutly adhering force, if Kohlvihr continued to fail. Such an action would greatly delay the general forward movement of the Russian arms.
“You will be without a command, General,” Doltmir suggested, at the end of the second infantry throwback, following that in which Peter had participated. “We are not disturbing them greatly in our advances. We are chiefly effective in destroying their ammunition—”
“Then we must continue that,” said Kohlvihr.
“But the troops will not continue to charge. Our reserves are in. The fresher men see the fate of the former advances. The hollows are in plain sight from the forward rifle pits.”
“The officers must drive them forward—”
“Most of the lesser commanders are lying in the valley. The troops are killing them as well as the enemy—”
“Do you mean there is mutiny, sir?”
“Not of a reckonable type. These men work in the midst of action. Moreover, our troops are hard pressed. Our division has borne the brunt for three days in almost unparalleled action.”
“Would you advise me to leave them funking in the trenches?” Kohlvihr demanded.
“General, I would advise a report to the Commander of our failure in four advances—that we can not get sufficient men across the valley to charge the Austrian positions. Meanwhile I would order the wounded to be brought in. After that, I would suggest food for the men in the trenches.”
“I do not care to report four failures without a fifth trial.”
Doltmir turned back.
Big Belt was thinking fast. In all his experience, he had never seen the Inside stripped naked like this. Of course, he had observed the strategy of small bodies of troops determined by a swift consultation of officers; but this was an army in itself, or had been, and on the part of Kohlvihr it was very clear that personal matters were powerfully to the fore. Kohlvihr was enraged; Kohlvihr was ambitious. Big Belt was aware that, given a free hand and a free cable, he could make Kohlvihr a loathsome monster in the eyes of the world, this merely by a display of the facts.
Boylan's view was cleared a little as he thought of such a narrative. His sense of the reception of the story showed him the commanding nature of it. The thing might be done later. Peter's trouble was that he could not forget it for the present. Thoughts of work put a new energy into Boylan's thinking. These things now passing in the bomb-proof pit formed the climax of a narrative that had been running from the Warsaw office to the present hour.... For a moment in the story's grasp, Boylan did not hear the voice of the invaluable Dabnitz:
“...He is under suspicion, sir,” that young officer was saying to his chief. “In fact, the whole hospital corps is rotten with revolutionists, but the fact remains he can sing like an angel. I think if Poltneck were brought here to the lines and made to sing the folk songs—”
“Get him,” said Kohlvihr. “Is he under arrest?”
“No; as yet merely under espionage. He was valuable in rather a unique way in the hospitals yesterday.”
“Bring him at once.”
Kohlvihr sent an order for his troops to rest and have a bite in the trenches.
The sorry Doltmir stepped forward again:
“Would it not be well to bring in our wounded from the field, sir?”
“We willhavethe field presently,” said Kohlvihr. “The sun is not hot. The lines already have seen too much of their blood.”
Big Belt remembered that. Moments were intense again when Poltneck was brought in—a tall, angular, sandy-faced chap, with a wide mouth and glistening teeth, a smile that quickened the pulse, somehow. Boylan thought of the passions of women for such men. His shoulders were lean and square. Yellow hair, long on top and cropped tight below the brim of his hat, dropped a lock across his forehead, as he uncovered in the bomb-proof pit. He had been shaven-recently. Boylan reflected that he belonged to the hospital corps. There was a thrill about him not to be missed.
“Poltneck—he calls himself,” Dabnitz whispered. “Poltneck perhaps, but I've seen him with the Imperial orchestra or I'm losing memory. I didn't have a good look at him before—”
Dabnitz was called by the General, who was seated with Doltmir over a small collation with wine and bread. The lieutenant was requested to arrange the inspiration for the men in the trenches.
Boylan noted how much taller the singer was than even the tall Russian officer—as the two stood together.
“The men are very tired, Poltneck,” Dabnitz began. “Much has been required of them, and much is still required. We want you to help us.”
“Yes?”
Poltneck had been looking about, interested as a kitten in a strange house. He regarded Kohlvihr and the rest, the trace of a smile around his mouth. The smile was still there as he turned quickly to Dabnitz with the single questioning word, not contemptuous in itself, but Boylan imagined it morally so. The voice furnished a second and very real thrill.
“We thought you would sing for your fellow soldiers. You are from the peasantry, I am told?”
“Yes, from the people.”
“We thought you would understand,” Dabnitz added. “There is an operatic tenor in the command—one Chautonville. We might have sent for him, but our thought was to reach the soldiers directly. It is a great honor.”
“Is it? How and where do you want me to sing?”
“An advance is to be ordered immediately. We will send an escort with you along the trenches—just before the order is given. I heard you singing yesterday. I am sure the men will answer with zeal.”
Poltneck seemed to wilt. Boylan was caught with the others thinking it was the mention of the trenches that frightened this hospital soldier. Yet the smile had not changed when Boylan's eye roved to that. It was not more contemptuous, nor less; but something about it was unsteadying. Dabnitz already had used many more words than he expected.
“I am not used to crowds,” Poltneck objected weakly. “I am just a simple man. Already I am without voice. I beg of you to send for Chautonville of the opera.”
Dabnitz was puzzled.
“That is out of the question. Chautonville is back in the city. Within twenty minutes the order for advance will be given. Come, Poltneck; you will do very well when you see your soldiers—”
Boylan reflected swiftly at this point that the smile might be neither deep nor portentous—a single accomplishment, some stray refinement perhaps that had leaked back somehow to the people.
“No, no. I am afraid. I belong back among the wounded. I am very good there. This is not my place—”
“Will you require men to assist you to the trenches? Already I have talked too long.”
“Yesterday I was an anesthetic,” Poltneck wailed. “To-day I am to be a stimulant.”
Kohlvihr now came forward. “It is time,” he said.
“General,” said Dabnitz, “we have to deal with an unusual peasant, I am afraid.”
“It would not do for me to encroach upon the work of professionals,” the singer explained in dilemma.
“You see he is humorous,” Dabnitz observed.
“We sent for you to sing to the soldiers. Will you do that?” the General asked, from puffing cheeks.
Poltneck looked down at him with sudden steadiness. “On the way home,” he said.
“You refuse—then?”
“I would prefer that you wound them first.”
“At least, he has declared himself,” said Dabnitz.
They did not murder him then and there. Boylan was glad of that. His sack was already full of blood.... It was all too big. Something would happen to spoil the telling. No man ever got out with such a story.... He was a little ashamed to find himself thinking of his newspaper story so soon after the singer was led forth—the man who would sing for the wounded, but who would not sing men to their death. Come to think—there was a prostitution about it. Certainly Poltneck had a point of view. And he was a hair-raiser of quality... everything about him.
Boylan thought of writing the Poltneck incident, and became hopeless again. The Russians would be idiots to let him out alive. He did not expect it. The only chance was that they couldn't see themselves. Perhaps Kohlvihr thought he was a hero to-day. Doubtless he did.... One thing was sure, he, Boylan, must sit tight with his enthusiasm for the Russian force; must play it harder than ever—must play it for Peter Mowbray, too.
“You fellows certainly have your troubles—front and back,” he said to Dabnitz. “But I say, Lieutenant, you couldn't ask troops to go forward better—you couldn't ask more of the Japanese in the business of charges—”
“I wasn't out in that service,” Dabnitz observed.
“Grand little bunch of celibates afield, those Japanese—religious about these matters of using up hostile ammunition. Fact is, I never saw white troops go out to a finish four times in one day—as yours did to-day—out over their own dead, too—”
He was becoming genial; his heart quaking for Peter, as he thought suddenly of the words aimed at Kohlvihr's throat, and of Peter's association at the last with the man in the steward's blouse. ...Dabnitz was unvaryingly courteous.
The advance was on again. Boylan went forth to see the repulse. The main lines on either side had loosened to fill the gaps of Kohlvihr's division, the much-torn outfits braced by the fresher infantrymen. On they went, a last time, over the strewn land.
Boylan saw it all again; heard the drum of the batteries when the troops reached the hollow of the valley; saw them change like figures on a blurred screen; perceived the antics and the general settling—and turned away....
It was like the swoop of a carrion bird an instant afterward—and the deafening strike. The Austrians had varied a little. A shrapnel battery had been emplaced among the rapid-fire pieces during the recent interval. A hundred yards down the works to the east landed the first finger of a hand that groped for headquarters. Boylan watched for the second shell—one eye, and as little besides as possible, above the rim of the trench now deserted. It was the same tension and tallying of seconds that Peter had known on the afternoon that the moon rose before the setting sun. Big Belt ducked at the second scream. The explosion was nearer and a little back. He returned to field headquarters just as a third shrapnel shivered the land still nearer the bomb-proof pit.
Kohlvihr's face was gray as the fringe of his hair. He looked little and aged.
“My compliments to the commander,” he was dictating, “...report that after five advances we find enemy's front impregnable to infantry. Headquarters now under shrapnel fire. We are forced to withdraw toward Judenbach—”
The dispatch rider was standing by. The dirt sprinkled down on their heads through the wooden buttresses as another shrapnel broke outside.
“But the wounded, General. The field is alive with wounded—” came from Doltmir.
“I can't send troops out there again—” The voice was thick and hoarse with repression. “We'll get them at nightfall.... Gentlemen, we may now withdraw.”
Boylan was one of the last to leave. He saw the aged legs disappear up the earth-rise as the rear door opened. The legs jerked and twitched spasmodically, as if taking an invisible spanking.
Boylan was actually afraid of his thoughts, lest they be read in his face—the shocking personal business on Kohlvihr's part. “A little shrapnel or two sends him quaking home, andtheywent out five times for him into the very steam of hell.”
His brain kept repeating this in spite of him, so that he did not try to overtake the staff.
Andthey—the poor last fragment of them—were piling back toward Judenbach, leaving their wounded behind.
Goylan was back in Judenbach. It was four in the afternoon. He had searched everywhere for Peter Mowbray. The whole war zone was getting blacker and blacker to his sight. He had even gone to the Grim House to look for the white-fire creature who had taken his companion to her breast, figuratively speaking; but neither she, nor the weak-shouldered little chap who had brought the hospital steward's blouse, was there. There remained Dabnitz, who more than any other was aware generally of what passed. Big Belt returned to headquarters and waited. Darkness was thickening before the Lieutenant came in.
“Where's Mowbray?”
Dabnitz came close and looked at the other sorrowfully.
“How long have you known Mr. Mowbray?”
Boylan tried to think. His faculties were at large. According to facts he had known Peter (and not at all intimately) during a mere ten weeks before the column left Warsaw. Facts, however, hadn't anything to do with the reality. Peter Mowbray was his own property. He said as much, his voice going back on him.
“Mr. Boylan, I have seldom been more hard hit. He was my friend, too. A more charming and accomplished young American would be hard to find, but we who are out for service, a life and death matter for our country, must not let these things enter. Mr. Mowbray is affiliated in various ways with our enemies—not the Austrians, but enemies more subtle and insidious.”
“For God's sake—Dabnitz!”
“I thought it would hurt you.”
“You might just as well say it of me.”
“Not at all. Your record stands. It was well known to us when you were accepted to accompany our column. You will recall that it was your estimate of Mr. Mowbray's superior that decided us to accept the younger man—”
“I have been with Mowbray night and day. He is a newspaper man, brain and soul—one of the coolest and most effective I have ever met. He has been for years in Paris and Berlin, before Warsaw.”
“I am sorry. You did not know that he caught a young surgeon by the throat this morning, when the former was very properly stimulating a malingerer?”
“I did not. But a personal matter ought not to weigh against a man's life—”
“You did not know that he was seen in somewhat extended conversation yesterday and last evening with one of the most dangerous of our recent discoveries among the revolutionists?”
“I did not.”
“Or that a woman came to him last night, in the heart of the night—and talked long—and was called for by the same revolutionist; that Mr. Mowbray went to her a little after daybreak this morning—”
“Ah, Dabnitz—a little romance! All night he was serving in the hospital. I went out to find him this morning, and saw him turn into the amputation house. Following, I saw him standing there.... He had probably never seen her until last night. You know how some young fellows are. They—you turn around—and they are in an affair—”
“But the two were overheard to speak of days in Warsaw together. It is not such a little affair.”
“I know nothing of it, but is such a thing fatal?”
“She is under arrest with the other revolutionist that I mentioned—a case against her that is hardly breakable—”
Boylan sat down,
“Of course you are aware—of the remark he made this morning in the field headquarters? I saw how gallantly you tried to cover it. It was that remark, by the way, which nearly cost the life of our General. The hospital steward, took up the action as you know—”
“Dabnitz, I was shocked as you. Peter was beside himself. He had come in from the field—the actuality of it. He forgot where he was. The unparalleled energy of the General to win the day, you know—and Peter had just come in from the hollows where the men lay—”
“My dear Boylan, I'm sorry—”
For the first time, Big Belt felt the iron personality of the other. There was something commercial in the manner of the last, a kind of ushering out one who would not do. There are men who remain as aloof as the peaks of Phyrges, though their words and intonations come down running softly out of a smile. Boylan looked away, and then, with an inner groan, turned back.
“I tell you it is a mistake. The boy is as sound as—”
He couldn't finish. There were exceptions to everything he thought of. “I want to see him,” he added.
“I'll try to manage that for you, a little later.”
It was darkening. In the front room of the house, Kohlvihr sat bung-eyed by a telegraph instrument. The further strategy from Judenbach was still in the dark to Boylan. He wished the heavens would fall. As never before, he had the sense that he had pinned his life and faith to matters of no account; not that Peter Mowbray belonged to these matters, but that he, too, was meshed in them.... A shot from somewhere below in the town. Boylan shivered. There was shooting from time to time for various butchering reasons, but this particular shot was all Big Belt needed to finish the picture.
“Why, they'll shoot the lad,” he muttered.
The sentence remained in his brain in lit letters.
The States of America couldn't help him; even Mother Nature had turned her face from this war.... “My dear Boylan, I'm sorry—” something crippling in that.
Dabnitz returned, bringing a pair of saddle bags.
“They're Mr. Mowbray's,” he said. “His horse got loose and tangled himself in a battery. One of the men brought in the bags.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant,” said Boylan.
Dabnitz started to the door when Boylan called, “Oh, I say, did you look through 'em?”
The Russian smiled deprecatingly.
“Of course, I needn't have asked that, but I wanted you to. I'll gamble you didn't find anything—”
“A little book of poems by a man we're familiar with. A woman's name on the front page—a woman we're familiar with. Nothing startling, Mr. Boylan.”
Dabnitz was gone, the bags lying on the floor. Big Belt opened the nearest flap. On top was a case containing a tooth brush and a pair of razors.
“Peter will want these,” he muttered.
Peter walked ahead unbound. He could not keep his mind on the journey with the sentry. His thoughts winged from Lonegan at Warsaw, toThe States''office and home, as if carrying the message of his own end.... Boylan might finally break out with the details.... The personal part ended suddenly, like an essential formality, leaving him a sorrow for Boylan and his mother especially. His full faculties now opened to Berthe Wyndham.
He was ordered to turn twice to the left. They had left the little stone court, entering the main street, and back again into the first side street for a short distance to a narrow stairway, between low mercantile houses now used for hospitals. Up the creaking way; the sentry within answered the sentry without and opened the door. A long narrow room with a single square of light from the roof, and Moritz Abel came forward.
“I'm sorry,” the poet said. “I had hoped—”
“Yes, we had hoped,” Peter replied with a smile.
Duke Fallows appeared from the shadows and hastily pressed his hand. Abel had turned toward the square of light, as if there were still another.
She came forward like a wraith—into the light—and still toward him, her lips parted, her eyes intent upon him. The sentry who had brought him turned, clattered down the stairs. The door was shut by the other sentry. Her lips moved, but there was nothing that he heard. With one hand still in his, she turned and led him back under the daylight to the shadows.... He heard Moritz Abel's voice repeating that he had been a poor protector. Fallows spoke....
There was much to it, hardly like a human episode—the silence so far as words between them, the tragedy in each soul that the other must go; the tearing readjustments to the end of all work in the world, and the swift reversion of the mind to its innumerable broken ends of activity; and above all, the deep joy of their being together in this last intense weariness.... She wore her white veiled cap and apron; having followed the summons from her work. There was a chair in the shadows, and she pressed him down in her old way, and took her own place before him (as in her own house) half-sitting, half-kneeling.
“Peter, I could not believe—until I touched you. I was praying just here, that you would not come—”
“I am very grateful to be here,” he said.
“I was so lonely. I was afraid of death. Fallows talked to me and Moritz Abel—but it did not do. I was thinking of you at the battle, as if you were a thousand miles away—as if I were waiting, as a mother for you, waiting for tidings with a babe in her arms—”
She paused and he said, “Tell me,” knowing that she must speak on.
“...It was just like that. I prayed that you would live—that you would not be brought here—that the time would pass swiftly. We have been here hours. They came for us soon after you went. We were all together in that place—all at our work. They led us here through the streets. It seemed very far. Something caught in the throat when the soldiers looked at me. I know what my father felt when he kept saying, 'It's all right. Yes, this is all right.' I know just how the surprise and the amazement affected him from time to time, and made him say that.... Then we were here. I wanted this darker chair. They came—I mean our good friends—Fallows came and talked to me, and Moritz Abel, but it wasn't what I seemed to need. Ah, Peter, I'm talking in circles—”
Something warned him that she was going to break, but he could not speak quickly enough. The human frightened little girl that he had never seen before in Berthe Wyndham, was so utterly revealing to his heart that he was held in enchantment. She seemed so frail and tender, as she said plaintively:
“We must be very dear to each other—”
There were tears in her eyes now, and her breast rose and fell with emotion, as poignant to Mowbray as if it were his own.
“I did pray for them not to bring you here,” she added. “If I had not left Warsaw, you would not be here now—”
“Listen—oh, Berthe, don't say that. Please, listen—”
The current was turned on in his brain, thoughts revolving faster and faster:
“It would all have been a mere military movement if you had not come. I would not have understood Spenski, nor the real Samarc, nor Kohlvihr as he is, nor the charges of infantry. The coming of Moritz Abel, words I have heard, the street, the singing, the field, the future—why, it's all different because you came. I am not dismayed by this. I have had a great life here. If this is our last day—the matter is lifted out of our hands. And dear Berthe, what do you think it means to me—this last hour together?”
“What does it mean, Peter?'
“I look into your face, and know that I've found something the world tried to make me believe wasn't here. Everything I did as a boy and man tried to show me that there isn't anything uncommon in a man finding a woman. My mother knew differently, but every time she wanted to tell me something happened. Another voice broke in, or perhaps she saw I wasn't attentive or ready. But I know now—and it didn't come to me until here in Judenbach—”
“She must have known,” Berthe whispered.
Fallows drew near. He seemed calm but very weary. “May I bring up my chair for a little while?” he asked as an old nurse might.
“Please do,” they said.
“Thank you,” Fallows answered, and returned with his wooden chair. “If you change the subject I shall have to go.”
“I was just saying that I had found something in the world that my mother knew all the time,” Peter explained.
“Oh, I say, this is important. Moritz must come in,” Fallows told them.
They nodded laughingly.
“Moritz,” he called. “Here's a little boy and girl telling stories—very important stories. You must hear.... We're all one, Peter Mowbray.”
They drew closer together. Berthe was watching Peter intensely, knowing that it was his test, very far from his way. Then she remembered the death-room, and that all things are changed by that. She sat very still, trying to give him strength to go on. “I've always used my head,” he said, “always explained why, and made diagrams. The one time I didn't use my head—well, the best thing happened in my experience.”
Peter was in for it, and weathered gracefully.
“You'll forgive me,” he said, when they asked to know. “I was thinking of meeting Berthe Wyndham. I saw her one day passing through the Square in Warsaw near the river corner. Well, it all came about, because I went there again the next day at the same time—”
He was a little breathless, but the glad and eager sincerity of his listeners helped him, and he wanted more than all to lift Berthe if he could.
“I could not help thinking of that when I recalled another little matter yesterday—in Judenbach. Once when we were little, my brother Paul and I quarreled. My mother and I were alone afterward. I told her of the tragedy. Everything seemed lost since I had lost Paul. She said, 'Some time you will find your real playmate, if you are good and search very hard.' I suppose she has forgotten. I forgot for years. But it came to me here.... You see I never suffered before, never was tested, everything came smoothly, everything covered up—”
“You are good to let us listen,” Fallows said quietly. He was staring at the ceiling.
“Here in Judenbach the relations of all other days began to match up. It was as if the whole war was to showme, each department carried on clearly. I didn't know a man could stand so much. Day before yesterday morning, I wanted to quit. I had a kind of madness from it all—an ache that wouldn't break or bleed, and was driving the life out of me. I found the way out by going into the hospital. I had to forget myself or go under.... When it seemed all over to-day, and the sentry was marching me here (you see I had gone back to the house of amputations and couldn't find any of you, and then to the Court of Execution, and you were not there), it was all slipping away in a loneliness not to be described, when I found you here—”
Fallows straightened his head and blinked.
“'It was all slipping away in a loneliness not to be described,'” he repeated. “We know that. This is too fine.”
Peter laughed. He was thinking of what Lonegan had said on the night he came back from Berthe's door, after she had asked him not to come in.... “Peter, you're lying. I don't believe you'd let anybody see your fires—not even how well you bank 'em.”
They seemed to require further talk from him. He did not want the two men, sorry they had drawn up their chairs. His heart was very tender to them—Fallows and Abel, and the woman who had changed him. They were before him now as messengers from the benignant empire of the future—strange strong souls gathered together now in waiting at the end of a road.... He told them of the bomb-proof pit, the naked animalism of Kohlvihr, the infantry advances and of Samarc. Presently his heart was light again, the pent forces of expression springing gladly into use.
“...The laughable thing about it,” he finished, “—the thing that held me speechless as Samarc left my side there in the dark corner of the pit—was that just a few minutes before Kohlvihr had promised to see that the Little Father decorated him. He had almost reached the General when my throat worked, and I called, 'Samarc.' It was as if he didn't hear me. Nothing would have stopped him. It was his idea, yet I think he meant only to stop the order of another infantry advance. He had ceased to kill, you know....”
Peter ended it hastily. They were all interested to know why Samarc was to have been decorated. This opened the earlier part of the day, and his strange wandering with Samarc among the hills—the magic of the hospital steward's coat, the scent of the cedars, and Peter's persistent sense of Berthe's nearness.
“Actually, I had to stop and think,” he explained. “Each time I fell into an abstraction, it struck me that she was there. It seems yesterday, too—”
“I was just here,” Berthe said. “It was soon after we came. We were all quiet at first—in different corners—”
“Slipping away in that loneliness,” Fallows suggested.
“As for me,” said Moritz Abel, “I had to make peace with myself. We have been very busy the last few days. I have discovered that I am a bit of a coward at heart—and I missed having something to do—”
They smiled at him. “Perhaps I was out there,” Berthe said. “Perhaps I was only sitting here—”
It was a queer matter that the three men, each of whom would have given his life to save the woman's, to all appearances accepted the fact of her as one of them in courage and control. It was Abel who mentioned the singer, Poltneck, whom Peter had not met. He had been left in the hospital when the others were taken; yet he had been one in all their interests and the most reckless and outspoken of all in his hatred of slaughter. They did not understand, but hoped he would be saved.
“He's a magician,” Abel said. “He sang to them yesterday—as they bore the knife. He seemed to hold them in the everlasting arms. It was worth living to witness that, but I'm afraid Poltneck will come to us. He's got the fury. Hearing that we are gone, he will start something—if only to join us. Then there will be no one to escape with the story. It troubles me.... If Mr. Mowbray were only free. Doesn't it seem that our brothers should hear the story?”
His voice broke a little. His brow was wet.
Fallows came back from the ceiling, and said:
“Moritz, my boy, all is well with us. That which is true is immortal.”
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.