He ran up the ladder to fetch his mess kit and in a few minutes was in line again in the rutted village street where the grey houses were just forming outlines as light crept slowly into the leaden sky, while a faint odor of bacon and coffee came to him, making him eager for food, eager to drown his thoughts in the heaviness of swiftly-eaten greasy food and in the warmth of watery coffee gulped down out of a tin-curved cup. He was telling himself desperately that he must do something—that he must make an effort to save himself, that he must fight against the deadening routine that numbed him.
Later, while he was sweeping the rough board floor of the company's quarters, the theme came to him which had come to him long ago, in a former incarnation it seemed, when he was smearing windows with soap from a gritty sponge along the endless side of the barracks in the training camp. Time and time again in the past year he had thought of it, and dreamed of weaving it into a fabric of sound which would express the trudging monotony of days bowed under the yoke. “Under the Yoke”; that would be a title for it. He imagined the sharp tap of the conductor's baton, the silence of a crowded hall, the first notes rasping bitterly upon the tense ears of men and women. But as he tried to concentrate his mind on the music, other things intruded upon it, blurred it. He kept feeling the rhythm of the Queen of Sheba slipping from the shoulders of her gaudily caparisoned elephant, advancing towards him through the torchlight, putting her hand, fantastic with rings and long gilded fingernails, upon his shoulders so that ripples of delight, at all the voluptuous images of his desire, went through his whole body, making it quiver like a flame with yearning for unimaginable things. It all muddled into fantastic gibberish—into sounds of horns and trombones and double basses blown off key while a piccolo shrilled the first bars of “The Star Spangled Banner.”
He had stopped sweeping and looked about him dazedly. He was alone. Outside, he heard a sharp voice call “Atten-shun!” He ran down the ladder and fell in at the end of the line under the angry glare of the lieutenant's small eyes, which were placed very close together on either side of a lean nose, black and hard, like the eyes of a crab.
The company marched off through the mud to the drill field.
After retreat Andrews knocked at the door at the back of the Y. M. C. A., but as there was no reply, he strode off with a long, determined stride to Sheffield's room.
In the moment that elapsed between his knock and an answer, he could feel his heart thumping. A little sweat broke out on his temples.
“Why, what's the matter, boy? You look all wrought up,” said Sheffield, holding the door half open, and blocking, with his lean form, entrance to the room.
“May I come in? I want to talk to you,” said Andrews.
“Oh, I suppose it'll be all right.... You see I have an officer with me...” then there was a flutter in Sheffield's voice. “Oh, do come in”; he went on, with sudden enthusiasm. “Lieutenant Bleezer is fond of music too.... Lieutenant, this is the boy I was telling you about. We must get him to play for us. If he had the opportunities, I am sure he'd be a famous musician.”
Lieutenant Bleezer was a dark youth with a hooked nose and pincenez. His tunic was unbuttoned and he held a cigar in his hand. He smiled in an evident attempt to put this enlisted man at his ease.