Chapter 2
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.”