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'Jena' or 'Sedan'?

by Franz Adam Beyerlein · English · Gutenberg #31099 · 757,170 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: 'Jena' or 'Sedan'?

Author: Franz Adam Beyerlein


        
Release date: January 27, 2010 [eBook #31099]
                Most recently updated: January 6, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31099

Credits: Produced by Charles Bowen, from scans obtained from The
        Internet Archive.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 'JENA' OR 'SEDAN'? ***




Produced by Charles Bowen, from scans obtained from The
Internet Archive.





Transcriber's notes:
  1. Source is Web Archive
"http://www.archive.org/details/jenorsedan00beyerich."

  2. [oe] is the diphthong oe.





                           'JENA' OR 'SEDAN'?




                           FROM THE GERMAN OF

                          FRANZ ADAM BEYERLEIN






                                 LONDON
                           WILLIAM HEINEMANN
                                  1905









_All rights reserved_






                            Publisher's Note


_The German original of this novel had a larger circulation in the
first year of its career than any novel of our days, close upon one
quarter of a million copies having been sold. It was praised by some as
a superb piece of imaginative literature of the realistic school: by
others it has been anathematised as a libel on the great army that made
Modern Germany. The truth about it is probably best summarised in the
words of a reviewer of the_ "_Daily Mail_":

         "_The author holds up the mirror with impartiality, without
      fear or passion, and with an unmistakably friendly intention,
      and asks_, '_Where art thou going? Towards Jena or Sedan?_'"

_It is perhaps unnecessary to remind the English reader in
explanation of the title that Jena stands for French supremacy and
German defeat--Sedan for German victory and a French débâcle; but he
should be warned that in this truthful mirror of life there may be
details liable to shock insular notions. The author could not shrink
from such in the fulfilment of his task, which was to give the
truth--the whole truth and nothing but the truth. His work must be
judged not only as a novel (and assuredly as such it is a most
admirable and artistic piece of work), but it must be regarded also as
the cry of a patriot who loves his country above anything in the
world. This is most completely realised in the following opening
sentences of a long and careful review given to the original by the_
"_Spectator_":--

"_The Englishman who is acutely distressed by the report of
shortcomings in the German Army can hardly be human. The frank pleasure
which the Germans took in our troubles is too recent to be quite
forgotten, even by a people so forgetful as we are. But for all that,
only those who crave for the_ '_wicked joys of the soul_,' _which grow,
the poet tells us, near by the gates of hell, can lay down Herr
Beyerlein's story without a sense of sadness. In spite of its freshness
and its humour, there breathes through it that note of disappointment,
almost of lassitude, which is not seldom audible in Germany to-day. If
is as though the nation, which has travelled such an astonishing
distance in the last thirty years, were pausing to ask_, '_Is this all
that has come of it?_'

"_Herr Beyerlein's theme is the decadence of the German Army. That
it is decadent he has no doubt at all, and he is a close, careful and
not unfriendly observer. But the writer who deals boldly and broadly
with the German Army is in reality dealing with a much larger subject.
The British Army is a piece cut from the stuff of which the nation is
made, and shaped to a particular end. In Germany the whole material of
the nation passes through the Army, and is to some extent shaped and
coloured in the process; if does not come out precisely as it went in.
German military training is an iron pressure to which men cannot be
submitted for two years at an impressionable age and remain unchanged.
Symptoms of decay in the Army point, therefore, not only to possible
disaster abroad, but to demoralisation at home; and it is with this
aspect of his subject that Herr Beyerlein is chiefly concerned._"








                             JENA OR SEDAN?



                               CHAPTER I

                                         "Must I go, must I go,
                                          Away into the town?"
                                               (_Swabian Folk-song._)


Franz Vogt was on his way home. He carried a neatly tied-up parcel
containing the under-linen and the boots that he had been buying in the
town. He had trodden this same road a countless number of times during
his life; but now that he must bid good-bye to it so soon, the old
familiar surroundings presented themselves to him in a new light.

Of course it was not good-bye for ever, nor was it even as though he
were going to America. At the most he would only be away for his two
years of military service, and between-whiles there would, he supposed,
be leave now and again; moreover, this was not the first time he had
left the village. But there was one circumstance peculiar to this going
away--he was obliged to go.

Franz Vogt did not trouble his head much about the why and the
wherefore of this obligation. He reasoned it out thus: Germany had
enemies--the French and the Russians, to wit--who might some day and
for some unknown reason begin a war; therefore, of course, it behoved
Germany to keep watch and ward, and for that soldiers were necessary.
Furthermore, there was a certain consolation in the thought that
this authoritative call took no respect of persons; the sons of
the two richest peasants in the village had been called up just like
himself--they to the Uhlans, he to the field-artillery.

The life, however, must be so different from anything hitherto
experienced that one could not but feel a little nervous about it. For
the men on leave whom he had come across were never tired of talking
about the hard words and harder usage that fell to a soldier's lot.
Never mind! hard words break no bones. He was strong and active; no one
had done better than he in athletics. One must take things as they
come, and perhaps after all they won't turn out as bad as they have
been painted.

The young man pushed his hat back from his brow and began to whistle
as he stepped forward more briskly.

It was fairly warm for October. The broad dusty road that led onward
up the hill lay shining as brightly in the sun as if it were July and
the corn rising on either side, tall and golden. But instead the
stubble showed in paler streaks against the darker ground that was
already prepared for a new sowing. Further on in the valley green
meadows stretched away to the border-line of a forest.

On the hither side of those woods, but disappearing at last in the
dense verdure, ran the straight line of the railway. A cloud of white
smoke could just be seen above the trees, and then the train would
glide out into the open. By that line Franz Vogt must travel on the
morrow to the place where he would have to sojourn for the next two
years; and again the thought, "How shall I get on there?" forced
itself upon his mind, and absorbed his thoughts until he reached the
cross-roads where stood the paternal dwelling. Years ago, when toll was
still levied on the highway, it had been the gate-keeper's cottage; and
Franz Vogt's father, the last turnpike-keeper, had bought it from the
State when the toll was abolished. Nearly twenty years had gone by
since the white-painted barrier had been let down at night for the last
time, but the little house remained the same in appearance. His father
had even stuck the old barrier up in the garden, and had nailed at the
top a box for the starlings to nest in; every spring a pair of birds
built there.

And his father himself, how little he had altered! Only the beard,
which he wore after the fashion of the old Emperor William, had become
more and more grey, and the hair of his head had retreated from the
crown in an ever-widening circle. But the old man who now stepped to
the door held himself as stiff and erect as ever; the eyes looked forth
from beneath the bushy eyebrows with a stern yet kindly gaze, and the
deep voice rang out with military precision and sharpness.

"Why, boy," he cried, "you're looking quite dashed! Shaking in your
shoes about to-morrow, eh? See what comes of having a woman for your
mother! Come along in." He preceded his son into the parlour, and made
him exhibit his purchases.

"Dear, very dear, all these odds and ends!" he grumbled; but finally
declared himself pleased that Franz had preserved intact a good portion
of the money entrusted to him.

"That you can keep," said his father; "for you know at first you'll
have nothing more from me. By-and-bye, perhaps, a few groschen now and
then; but first you must learn to shift for yourself. That's always
good for one. I had to get along on my pay the whole time, from the
first year to the fifteenth. Now go up and pack your traps, and make
everything shipshape."

At supper the fare was no more sumptuous than usual; but Franz was
surprised to see that his father had set out two smoked sausages
instead of one.

"To-morrow, boy," said the old man, "you'll have regimental black
bread. Good nourishing stuff! You'll soon like it." And pointing to the
two long fat sausages, he continued:

"And the remains of those sausages can go in your box. You shall
pack them up."

The two men ate off wooden platters, and cut up their bread and
sausage with their pocket-knives; there was nothing to do afterwards
but to gather up the fragments and carry the plates into the kitchen.
An old woman came every morning to do the housework and prepare the
midday meal, and every afternoon the turnpike keeper waited with
repressed impatience till the door had closed behind her. Then he felt
better.

When Franz had put the sausage in his box and come downstairs again,
he found his father with cap in hand, ready to go out.

"Come, boy," he said, "let's stretch our legs a bit."

They went past the village, and wandered for a while in silence
under the starry heavens. Then the old man began to speak less briskly
and decidedly than was his wont.

"Look you, my boy, to-morrow you will be standing on your own feet,
as it were; you'll be responsible for yourself. For it's like this:
before one has served one is a silly youth: but afterwards, a man.
Therefore you want something that you can steer by; and I tell you,
you must make a rule for yourself that you can look to. The printed
ones--they're only just by the way. Always ask yourself: is it right,
is it honest, what you're doing? If yes, then fire away! And when you
don't know exactly one way or the other, then just think: could you
tell your old father about it and look him straight in the eyes?"

He had a heavy load of cares and hopes on his mind for the welfare
of this son, the only thing left him to love; but he broke short off.
He felt himself incapable of expressing clearly the result of the
experience gained during his sixty years of life. He lived himself by
that gathered wisdom, and it had passed into his flesh and bone; but
the right words failed him when he would have imparted it to his son.


Friedrich August Vogt and his twin sister had been born in 1840, the
little-prized children of an unmarried mother, who had vanished one day
and left no trace. Probably she had died in a ditch. The children were
taken into an orphanage, on leaving which the girl had gone to service,
while the boy had become a soldier and climbed the ladder of promotion
to the rank of sergeant, receiving the silver medal for bravery, and at
St. Privat the iron cross. In command over others he proved strict and
just; and though assuming an outwardly harsh, bearish manner, he looked
after those who were under him with indefatigable and almost fatherly
care. His whole endeavour throughout those fifteen years had been to
stand blameless, not only in the eyes of his superiors, but, what was
more important still, in his own.

His comrades disliked the quiet, serious man, and Vogt himself was
just as little drawn to their frivolous ways; nor had women any
attraction for him. He was sufficient unto himself, and looked neither
for friend nor wife; but though he had grown up independent of love, he
yet craved to win for himself some modest amount of grateful
recognition within the narrow limits of the service, and he felt
richly rewarded if a reservist when bidding good-bye gripped his
hand and muttered a few clumsy words of gratitude. Of such were many
good-for-nothings whom he had saved from dangerous follies and their
inevitable punishment, not by rough words, but by kindly counsel. When
he eventually doffed his uniform he had nothing with which to reproach
himself; no neglect and no overstepping of duty, no injustice and no
improper leniency; he had good cause for self-satisfaction.

He was given the post of turnpike-keeper in recognition of his good
service, and could then carry out a long-cherished wish: he took his
sister to live with him. But he did not long enjoy her companionship.
She left him after but a few years, during which she succeeded--not
without difficulty--in bringing some sort of brightness into the life
of her grave brother. She foresaw that he would in all probability
lapse into deeper and deeper gloom when she was no longer there; and on
her deathbed she joined his hand with that of a girl some years younger
than herself, with whom she had struck up a firm friendship. They
respected the wishes of the dead, married, and lived together happily,
thinking themselves the most fortunate of mortals when a son was born
to them. But August Vogt was doomed to loneliness, for his wife died
when the boy was just old enough to go to school.

Shortly after this Vogt inherited a small property from his wife's
father, and the toll on the highway being at the same time abolished,
he bought the now superfluous house cheap from the State, and set up as
a peasant proprietor. He had now a new source of pride: that this land,
which he watered with his sweat, should bring forth abundantly; that
his cattle, whom no strange hand might touch, should be the sleekest
and fattest of all. Solitary and unaided he laboured in house and
field, as if wishing to defy that fate which had torn from him the
only two people he had loved. As he could love them no longer he had
rather be quite alone, save for the little chap who trotted after him
everywhere, and--looking almost as grave and preoccupied as his
father--copied with his tiny gardening tools everything he saw his
father do. In course of time the child became a more and more useful
helper, till at last the two in equal comradeship spent their entire
energies on the land, by whose produce they were almost exclusively
nourished, with the addition of the milk from their own cow.

In the evening they sat opposite to each other, resting after their
toil. Occasionally, with a youth's eagerness for adventure, the younger
man would ask the elder to recount those military experiences to which
the decorations in the cash-box bore testimony; but the father gave
only scanty and unwilling replies. He bethought himself how in those
days of St. Privat they had stormed a burning village, rushing through
a fine field of ripe oats, and how a man had fallen next to him--a
boyish drummer--with a bullet in his throat. In dying he had grasped
and torn up the golden ears; and he held a bunch of them in his dead
hand, all dyed in his blood like some red flag.

Oh yes, he was proud of his medal and his cross, notwithstanding a
sort of doubt that he could not suppress. An ever-widening gulf now
separated him from that famous past; and it gave him a certain sense of
discomfort, in the midst of this life of creative labour, to think of a
time devoted chiefly, after all, to death and destruction.

It was from this feeling that he had abandoned his first intention
of making his son follow his own old profession. There was no hurry.
When the youngster was serving his time, he could decide to join on if
he liked.

And now one thing was certain: it was very tiresome that his son
should be called up just at this moment. Of course he mustn't let the
boy see it; but he felt it hard, all the same. The recruiting-sergeant
had pointed out to him that he could claim his son if he could show
that the lad was indispensable to his work. But August Vogt was too
honourable for that. Certainly he was sixty years of age; but even had
he been ninety he would have managed to keep things going. Still, it
was hard.

The father was probably heavier of heart than the son, as they paced
through the night together; but when they stood once more before their
door, after making a somewhat lengthy round, he only said: "Well, well,
young 'un; you'll often think of this. Now sleep well, your last night
at home." And as his son went off upstairs he added softly to himself,
"My dear good boy!"


Early next day Franz Vogt departed.

The greater number of the recruits left the train when it reached
the capital, and it was only a small company that proceeded onwards to
the little garrison town.

Two or three non-commissioned officers received the detachment when
it ultimately arrived at its destination. The recruits were then formed
into squads and conducted to a large exercise-ground. The main body,
hailing from the coal-mines and factories of the neighbouring mountain
district, had already arrived by special train. There must have been
about four hundred men altogether. Two or three officers, and numerous
non-commissioned officers with helmets and shoulder-straps, were
standing about. An endless calling over of names began. Those who were
told off to the first battery were taken first, and were led away as
soon as their number was complete. Then came those of the second
battery, then the third, and so on. The other recruits stood looking
dully in front of them, while those whose names were called out pressed
forward through the ranks with feverish haste, jostling every one else
with their boxes and bundles.

Franz Vogt listened at first full of expectation. Each time he
thought that his name would be the next; but when the third battery had
marched off without him his interest began to flag, and he thought he
would take a look round. What he saw was not very encouraging. The
large square exercise-ground was strewn with a fine black dust,
coke-refuse, evidently; on three sides it was surrounded by a wooden
paling through which bare fields could be seen, and, in the direction
of the town, miserable-looking vegetable-gardens in all the desolation
of autumn. On the fourth side was an irregular row of buildings; first
a long shed with windows at wide intervals, before which stood a
sentry, who gazed across at the recruits with great curiosity; next a
forge, from the door of which a grimy blacksmith and his assistants
were watching, and a soldier in a grey jacket was leading out a black
mare that had just been shod; then came another shed with large gates,
one of which was open, and a number of men inside were busily engaged
around a gun with cloths and brushes.

At length the names of the men belonging to the last--the sixth
battery were read out. Franz Vogt counted them for want of something
better to do--his own was the nineteenth on the list; he answered with
a loud "Here!" and hurried forward. The corporal, who was arranging his
men in ranks of six abreast, was a little man with a red face, flashing
eyes, and a heavy dark moustache over a mouth whence continually issued
objurgations and reprimands. When Vogt with quick comprehension placed
himself at the beginning of a new row he gave a nod of satisfaction,
and the young recruit felt mildly gratified that he had at any rate
begun well.

As soon as the recruits told off to the sixth battery were in order
they were marched off, two non-commissioned officers in front, one on
either side, and another behind. It looked almost as if they were
prisoners with a military escort.

The road went through part of the town and then took a curve round a
corner into a street that led out into the open country. Broad fields
stretched on either hand, those on the right separated from the road by
a stream, alongside of which ran a branch railway line. Beyond these
fields rose steep, sparsely-wooded hills, showing in some places the
bare rock.

A good way up the valley the walls of a large mass of buildings
gleamed white in the sunshine. The little corporal in front turned
round and cried, "Those are your future quarters, boys!"

Vogt felt glad they were not in the town with its close alleys, but
out in the open country, where one could feel nearer the fertile
mother-earth; where the eye had an uninterrupted out-look, and where
one could watch the sprouting and blossoming of springtime.

A whirl of dust now issued from the barrack gates and drew rapidly
nearer. An officer, and behind him a soldier, both mounted, came along
at a trot. When he had almost reached the detachment of recruits the
officer reined in his bay horse, and as they passed by let his eyes
rest for a moment on each one of them in careful scrutiny. He
acknowledged with a curt nod the salutes of the non-commissioned
officers as they marched quickly past. Although not a big man, he sat
his horse with dignity; while a huge red moustache and piercing eyes
that flashed through his _pince-nez_ lent him an aspect of considerable
fierceness. Vogt thought to himself, "He looks strict, but not exactly
bad-tempered," when the little corporal turned round once more and
said: "Boys, that was your captain--von Wegstetten."

The escort of armed and spurred non-commissioned officers had
already made Vogt feel as if he were going to prison, and the entry
into the barracks made it full clear that he was, at any rate, under
stringent discipline, and must henceforth renounce a large measure of
individual freedom. The opening gates were of iron, and were adorned
with sharp spikes on the top, so as to make climbing over impossible; a
sentry, too, stood at the entrance. The gates opened on to a spacious
courtyard surrounded by buildings. Not a green thing was to be seen,
and the gravelled yard was as naked and barren as the buildings
themselves, whose blank windows suggested deserted rooms. Only a few
were graced with white curtains, which gave promise of habitation. Even
the young chestnut-trees that had been planted round the borders of the
courtyard throve but poorly; now and then a yellow leaf fell to the
ground, although the woods outside were still a mass of green.

The quarters of the sixth battery were exactly facing the entrance,
but the inner yard was evidently held sacred, for the recruits were
taken round it by a paved pathway.

The little corporal now marshalled them carefully in two rows, and
announced to an older man in a green jacket trimmed with red braid who
was standing in a doorway: "The recruits are here, sir."

"Are they all there?" asked the other, as he came down the steps.

"All here, sir," replied the little man.

The sergeant-major passed slowly along the ranks, and examined each
recruit with a searching glance. Vogt looked him fearlessly in the
face. He reminded him of his father. He, too, could look one through
and through like that; but one need never cast down one's eyes if one
has a clear conscience.

The recruits were next conducted into the barrack-rooms, where to each
was allotted a locker of his own, in which a white napkin and a spoon
had already been placed. After putting their bundles into these
lockers, they were taken straight to the dining-hall. Each gave in his
white napkin through a serving-hatch and received it back again full,
almost burning his fingers with the contents before he could put it
down on the well-scoured wooden table. Beans and bacon was the fare,
and it tasted rather good. No wonder, when the men had been travelling
ever since early morning.

Vogt's neighbour during the march came and sat next him on the wooden
bench. He wiped his short black beard, and nodded to Vogt.

"This goes down pretty quick, doesn't it?" he said, as he spooned up
his food.

"Rather!" answered Vogt. And the other went on, as he pointed to his
empty napkin:

"If only our two years would go as fast!"

They soon made acquaintance. Weise was the man's name, and he was a
locksmith from a factory in the neighbouring coal-district. But they
only had time to exchange the barest preliminaries of intercourse when
they had to get up again, go and wash their dishes and spoons at a tap,
and then return.

Outside in the court-yard, in front of the quarters of another battery,
some recruits who had arrived still earlier were standing, looking
hungrily towards the kitchen.

"We've come off better than they," remarked Weise. "Things are going
well with us, it seems."

Now again they had to go outside, and the reading over of names began
once more. This time the standing-orders were given out, and during
this performance their captain came into the barrack-yard. He
dismounted, and walked up and down, sometimes behind and sometimes in
front of the recruits, occasionally standing still and examining a man
with special attention. It felt very uncomfortable if the little
captain paused too long behind one; but--so much they had learned
already--it would not do to turn round.

It was a considerable time before the last standing-order was given
out, after which the sergeant-major desired those who wished to attend
to the horses and to be drivers to stand on one side, and those who
wanted to be gunners to take up their position on the other. Vogt and
his new friend Weise placed themselves with the gunners, Vogt in this
acting after his father's advice. "Youngster," the old man had said,
"first and foremost be a good gunner. Then if you want to go on serving
and become a corporal, you will get on faster than you would otherwise.
You will know your gun and will only have to learn to ride."

Vogt began now to long for the end of all this. He felt tired in every
limb, and would never have believed that waiting and standing about
could take it out of one to such an extent. But what had gone before
was child's play compared with the tiresome business of getting fitted
with a uniform, which now began. Vogt himself came off rather well: the
trousers, measured according to the length of the outstretched arm,
fitted exactly, as did also the second coat he tried on; the leather
belt with sword attached he buckled on at once, and cap and helmet were
soon forthcoming, but he had to put on several pairs of boots before he
found the right ones. Then the corporal tossed him over a drill suit as
well, and he was ready.

But with some of the men nothing would fit. The tallest of all found
the sleeves reaching just below his elbows, and when he tried the next
size, the coat hung in folds across his chest. Others had square heads
on which the round helmets rocked about, until they were jammed on by
two or three good blows of the fist. One sturdy, thick-set, big-bellied
fellow it seemed impossible to suit; everything was far too tight for
him.

"What have you been hitherto?" asked one of the non-commissioned
officers.

"A brewer," answered the fat man.

"Did you drink all your beer yourself, then, eh?" inquired the other;
and the man who gave out the clothing flung over a fresh suit, saying,
threateningly: "Well, if that doesn't fit, by God! you shall drill in
your drawers!"

He made the trousers meet with difficulty, and the coat was abominably
tight; but the corporal gave him a dig in the stomach and said: "Cheer
up, fatty! that'll soon go. They'll get rid of your paunch here in no
time!"

When Vogt left the kit-room with his regimentals on his arm the
erstwhile perfect order of the shelves, and of the symmetrically-folded
piles of clothing, had been transformed into a scene of the wildest
confusion. "A pity so much labour should be wasted," he thought.

And in what a wretched state were the clothes he had now to wear! The
green cloth of the coat was so shabby that in parts it was positively
threadbare; dark patches had been put in near the arm-holes, and the
once red facings were quite faded. He examined them dejectedly and
shook his head; he had expected something very different, and certainly
he would not cut much of a figure in this get-up. He pulled a stool up
to his locker, and began to take his things off. Weise sat down near
him, already a full-blown soldier. The smart young fellow could adapt
himself to anything, and had known at once how to give just the right
saucy tilt to his forage-cap.

"Fine, eh?" he said, laughing, as he struck an attitude and gave his
moustache an upward twirl.

But now once more the little corporal's penetrating voice recalled
the recruits from their short breathing-space; those who were ready
dressed must go down into the yard again, and then began another
putting-to-rights all round. The presiding non-commissioned officers
were in despair, for one of the men had one leg shorter than the other,
another had crooked shoulders, and a third drew forth the exclamation:
"Why, the fellow is humpbacked!"

The corporal called across the court-yard to his comrades: "We've got a
hunchback here in the sixth!"

And the poor devil, a firmly-knit, broad-shouldered fellow, who had got
somewhat round-shouldered from sheer hard labour, stood inwardly
raging, and letting them pull him about as they liked; straighten his
back he could not.

"A fellow-townsman of mine, that Findeisen there, a stonemason," said
Weise.

He and Vogt came off well in this inspection. Their things fitted
exactly.

"Thank God some of them have straight bones!" sighed the corporal, and
sent them indoors again.

"You can be packing up your civilian clothes," he called after them,
"and getting them ready to be sent away."

In the passage Vogt stopped: "Which is our room then?" he asked.

"Oh, number nine; we're all in nine," answered Weise. He pushed the
door open, and with mock ceremony invited his comrade to enter.

At this moment the opposite door opened, and a tall thin soldier
stepped over the threshold. Weise started. "What! you, Wilhelm?" he
exclaimed in astonishment.

The other said, "Well, why not? Didn't you know?---- How are you,
anyhow?"

They shook hands warmly, and it seemed to Vogt that they looked at each
other as if there were some private understanding between them. Curious
for an explanation, he inquired, "Who's that? He's an old hand, isn't
he?"

Weise replied: "Oh, he's an old friend of mine; Wolf is his name. Yes,
he has served since last autumn."

He had been speaking quite gravely; but quickly regained his cheerful
manner, and soon after left the room.

Vogt put his civilian clothes into his box and snapped the padlock with
a click. With that he felt that the last link that had bound him to the
old life was broken. He was a soldier now. He looked round the room
that was to be his home for two years: the floor of bare boards; the
grey-plastered walls, hidden for the most part by the rows of lockers,
and their only decoration a portrait of the King over the door and two
unframed battle pictures fastened up with tin-tacks. These had
evidently been torn out of a newspaper. Two large tables surrounded by
stools stood in the middle of the room; and at one of the two windows,
which were bare except for their striped roller-blinds, a smaller table
was placed with a common chair before it, the seat assigned to the
corporal in charge of the room.

The others now began to come up from the court-yard. They were fifteen,
all told; but as there were sixteen cupboards in the room, one man must
be still to come. Most of them had to finish packing their civilian
clothes; when that was done they sat down in the darkening room, tired
and silent, hardly even caring to make acquaintance with one another.

The fat brewer had placed himself at the table next to Vogt and Weise.
He was overcome with heat, and said he would rather hang himself than
endure this horrible drudgery for two whole years. But Weise chaffed
him in his genial way: "How do you know you could find a tough enough
rope, brewer? you're no light weight!" And presently the brewer grew
less melancholy; now that he could sit down things did not look so
formidable, and he only groaned pathetically: "Oh, if I'd only a mug of
beer--just one!"

At last Weise suggested lighting up. The two lamps gave but a scanty
light; yet even that helped to dispel the gloomy thoughts of the men.
And soon the little corporal appeared, with two of the "old gang"
carrying loaves of bread, of which every man received one.

It tasted very good, this hard black bread, to which each recruit had
some little relish of his own to add--butter, or dripping, or perhaps a
sausage. Only one sat regarding his dry loaf disconsolately: Klitzing,
a pale, spare young fellow with hollow cheeks, whose uniform was a
world too wide for him. Vogt, who sat beside him, cut a big piece from
his smoked sausage and pushed it to his neighbour: "There, comrade,
let's go shares!"

Klitzing at first declined; but at last he took it, and thanked Vogt
shyly.

"Why didn't you pack up your clothes?" asked the latter.

"I have no friends," replied Klitzing, "and I only came out of hospital
on Monday."

"Poor fellow! all the more reason for you to eat. What were you?"

"A clerk."

"Well, we'll stick together, and you'll get along all right," said Vogt
kindly. This pale clerk attracted him more than did Weise. Klitzing had
frank honest eyes; one could not but feel sorry for his pallor and
languor; how was he going to stand the hard work?

The men were still sitting over their meal when the little corporal
brought in another recruit, a tall overgrown lad with a pink and white
boyish face, apparently several years younger than the rest. The
corporal spoke less gruffly to him, and showed him his locker with
something like politeness. Apparently there was something special about
this Frielinghausen, as he was called; even the uniform he wore was
rather less patched and threadbare than those of the others. However,
the new comrade seemed in anything but a cheerful mood; he dropped into
a seat at the darkest end of the table, leant his head on his hand, and
did not touch the loaf which the corporal placed before him.

Most of the recruits regarded him with unconcealed mistrust. What kind
of stuck-up fine gentleman was this, who sat there as if his comrades
didn't exist? He was no better than they. Only Vogt and Klitzing looked
at him with compassion; who could tell what trouble this Frielinghausen
was suffering from?

Weise became only the more gay. He took on himself to enliven the feast
with jokes and drollery, and they all listened willingly; it kept off
dulness, and the disagreeable thoughts that assailed them.

The corporal, too, listened awhile, well pleased. Then he called to the
joker: "Hi, you black fellow! come here a minute!"

Weise sprang up, and his superior looked him up and down, not
unfavourably.

"You're right," he said; "it's no good pulling a long face; a soldier
should be jolly. Tell me, what's your name?"

"Weise," answered the recruit.

"Weise? Gustav Weise?"

"Yes, sir."

"Oh, indeed. Well, all right; sit down again."

Weise went back to his place, feeling somewhat snubbed. Why had the
corporal suddenly looked so glum when he heard the name? There was
nothing peculiar about his name. He did not trouble his head very much
about it; but his cheerfulness passed away.

The last thing to do on this first day of their soldier's life was to
give up their civilian clothes, with the address to which each box was
to be sent. Klitzing knew no one who could receive his belongings; so
they remained in the custody of the battery.


At length the day drew to a close. Shortly before ten o'clock "Lights
out and go to bed!" was called. They hung up their jackets and went
upstairs to the dormitory.

This was a spacious room, which extended, directly under the roof, the
whole length and breadth of the building. Vogt had the good fortune to
secure a bed in one of the outer rows close to a window, and he
beckoned to Klitzing to take possession of the bed next him on the
right. That on the left, in the corner, had been allotted by the
corporal to Frielinghausen. The recruits were not long in getting to
bed; though the "old gang" were more leisurely in their proceedings.

It was only on lying down that Vogt discovered how tired he was. The
lean clerk on the right fell asleep immediately. Frielinghausen,
however, seemed wakeful. Vogt listened. No, he was not deceived: the
tall lad was weeping. For a moment he felt inclined to question his
comrade about his trouble; but he feared a repulse, so turned over on
the other side. After all, it was not for a man to weep, especially a
soldier!

Once more he started from incipient slumber; he thought he heard the
cow in her stall, clattering her chain. Surprised, he collected his
wits. "Of course," he then said to himself, "it is the tattoo. I am a
soldier."




                               CHAPTER II

                                   "Every hour of every day,
                                    Gunners, be ye blithe and gay!"
                                            (_Old Artillery song._)


There was a good deal to do in the orderly-room. This new batch of
sixty recruits meant a large amount of work that must be seen to at
once, if the wilderness of papers were ever to be brought into some
sort of order.

Three men sat bending over their writing: a bombardier, a corporal, and
the sergeant-major.

The bombardier was doggedly filling in the lists, only glancing
occasionally to see if the pile of forms still to be got through were
not growing somewhat smaller.

Käppchen, the corporal, a lanky fellow with cunning eyes, grumbled from
time to time at the trouble, and consigned to perdition the dirty
rascals who caused it. Of course it was much pleasanter for him to sit
in the orderly-room than to be messing about with the idiots out of
doors; but he had never bargained for having to scribble away till he
nearly got writer's cramp. And to-day the sergeant-major didn't even
seem to be thinking of a pause for luncheon.

It therefore happened very opportunely when Captain von Wegstetten,
having scarcely listened to the sergeant-major's report, "Nothing new
in the battery," said: "Sergeant Schumann, I want to speak to you for a
minute."

No further intimation was needed; Käppchen and the bombardier
disappeared from the room instantly.

Sergeant Schumann stood by his table in the orthodox attitude of
respectful attention. As on every day of the eight years during which
Wegstetten had commanded the sixth battery, and he, Schumann, had been
its sergeant-major, he waited until the former by a gesture or a word
should permit him to assume an easier position. Nothing could alter
this; not even the confidence that time had gradually established
between them.

Wegstetten motioned him kindly to a seat, and then bent over the
records of the recruits.

"Well, Schumann," he began, "what sort of a lot have we got this time?"

"It doesn't seem a bad year, sir," answered the sergeant-major;
"they've nearly all got clean sheets----"

"Hm," assented the officer, "nearly all, but----?"

"Two have been convicted, one of theft, the other of resisting lawful
authority. The first made away with a quantity of copper wire from a
building; and the second made a row because he was notified that he had
contravened some regulations as to driving. He was a cab-driver. Then
there is another who has been punished for begging, tramping the
streets, and sleeping out at nights."

"Well, he won't catch cold camping out, at any rate! What do you think,
sergeant? mustn't a chap like that be glad to have a good roof over his
head every night? Well, go on! What about political antecedents?"

"There is only one marked for that, sir--Gustav Weise."

Wegstetten began to polish his eye-glasses; then, "Read it aloud,
Schumann," he said.

The sergeant-major took the paper and read: "Weise has more than once
taken an active part in socialist propaganda; in spite of his youth he
was for a time confidential agent for the Metal Workers' Union, and
sometimes spoke at meetings, without, however, necessitating the
interference of the police-officer in attendance, as Weise's
communications chiefly referred to details of the trade."

"Nothing further? He seems a promising fellow! Where have we put him?"

"In Room IX., Corporal Wiegandt."

"Does he know----?"

"Yes, sir, I've mentioned it to him."

"Right. Call him in; I'll speak to him, and afterwards to
Frielinghausen."

"Very good, sir."

In a few minutes the little bearded corporal was in the room and
awaiting his captain's pleasure.

The officer appealed to the honour of his subordinate, in whom he was
placing a special trust, and impressed upon him in carefully chosen
language the necessity for keeping a watchful eye on the new recruit
Weise, without, however, treating him differently from his comrades.

Wiegandt thereupon felt called on to describe and commend Weise's
smartness and good humour.

Wegstetten listened, a fleeting smile once passing over his face. At
the end he said: "Well, that's another proof that this sort often turn
out good soldiers. You understand what I have said, Wiegandt? A sharp
eye, and a firm grip on the rein; otherwise--just as with the rest of
them."

"Very good, sir."

"That's all then."

When Wiegandt had gone, the officer turned to the sergeant-major and
said with a sigh, "Damned nuisances they are! Now we've got two of
these fellows, Wolf and Weise, we must see they don't get together. How
is Wolf doing?"

"No fault to find with him, sir."

Wegstetten walked to the window and looked out silently. This was not
the lightest part of an officer's duty, this supervision of the
suspicious political element among the men. A perfect task of Sisyphus,
indeed! After all, one could do nothing more than prevent the fellows
from spouting their wisdom as long as they were soldiers, make them
keep to the beaten track, give them "patriotism and the joys of a
soldier's life" for their watchword. What sort of a fanatic was this
Wolf? A man who had been handed over to him labelled "Poison!" with
four cross-bones and a death's-head; who put on an expressionless face
when his opinions were alluded to, and to the question "Are you a
social-democrat?" answered with a stereotyped, almost sarcastic, "No,
sir," and always went about looking as dark as a regular conspirator!

He turned round and began again: "Do you know, Schumann, I shall be
glad when Wolf is off our hands. The man strikes me as almost uncanny.
And then that Sergeant Keyser; he's a revengeful, resentful kind of
fellow. He'll never forgive Wolf the six weeks he had on his account.
Just see to it that the two have as little to do with one another as
possible. Of course he'd never really do anything to a fellow like
that; but it's always as well to be on the safe side. I'm not going to
have another rumpus in my battery, with the whole lot of them had up as
witnesses for three days on end! And that Keyser must mind what he's
about. After all, we can't have the army turned into a big incubator
for social-democrats."

"Very good, sir. And as Keyser has got charge of the kit-room now,
that's easily arranged."

Any mention of this affair of Keyser and Wolf always rekindled
Wegstetten's anger. Had he not himself been publicly shamed by it, as
it had taken place in his battery? It had only been a trifle at bottom;
such rough words as the sergeant had hurled at Wolf's head were daily
showered on the men; but this social-democrat had, of course, a quite
peculiar sense of personal dignity, and the stupid thing was that they
had had to allow him to be in the right. For these zoological
comparisons were strictly forbidden. An inquiry had been held about the
sergeant's conduct, and then such a crowd of other "oxen," "pigs," and
"donkeys," had appeared in the witness-box, that the commanding officer
of the battery had felt quite giddy, and the presiding judge had
perpetrated the cheap witticism that the entire German army might have
been fed for a month on the cattle that the defendant had bullied into
existence. He, Wegstetten, had hardly been in a humour to enjoy the
joke, when the senior major (that detestable Lischke, in whose bad
books he already stood), who was commanding the regiment during the
colonel's absence on leave, had taken him aside and lectured him about
the rough tone that seemed to prevail in the sixth battery. Wegstetten
had taken it much to heart, and as he made the stiff little bow that
formality prescribed, he had sworn a grim oath that never, no, never,
should such a sickening business occur again in his battery. To have
affairs like this connected with one's name had been for many the
beginning of the end. And he was ambitious; he meant to go far.

He turned once more to the sergeant-major. "But it will be all right,"
he said, "at any rate so long as I have you, Schumann. I can depend on
you. God knows, I should be pretty furious if you thought of deserting
the colours."

The sergeant-major looked somewhat embarrassed: "Forgive me, sir. I
shall have seen eighteen years' service come Easter; and however glad I
might be to stop on, still--a man ought to provide for his old age.
Schmidt, of the fourth battery, left four years ago, and he's got a
good post as assistant station-master."

Wegstetten reassured him: "You mustn't think I was serious, Schumann. I
know better than any one what you've gone through and what I have to
thank you for, and I shall wish you good luck with all my heart when
you go. But you must feel for me, and understand how hard it will be
for me to do with-out you. If I only knew who could take your place!"

The sergeant-major shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, speak out; you know the men better even than I do."

Schumann hesitated a little, and then said: "You know yourself, sir;
Heppner is the next in seniority."

"Of course," said Wegstetten rather testily, "I know that. But I know,
too, that you have something in your mind against him. What's the
matter with Heppner? Isn't he steady in his work and first-rate in the
stables?"

The sergeant-major answered slowly: "In his work, and as far as the
horses are concerned--oh, yes."

"But----?"

Schumann shrugged his shoulders again.

The captain began to be angry. "Good God, man! so----"
but he swallowed the sentence and continued more mildly: "Look here,
Schumann. I'm not asking you for any gossip about your comrades; I only
speak in the interest of the service. What is all this about Heppner?
Is it that story about his wife and his sister-in-law?"

"No, sir, that's his private affair. But he won't do for the office, or
to--to assist in money matters."

"But why?"

"He gambles, sir."

Wegstetten walked up and down the room for a few moments, plunged in
thought; then came to a stand in front of the sergeant-major.

"Thank you for being so open with me, Schumann," he said; "but I don't
see how we can avoid it. Heppner has served eleven years, the colonel
likes him well enough,--and he really is a capable man in all practical
work."

He looked at the clock and went on: "Thank goodness, you will be here
another six months, and we shall be able to get this year's recruits
well started. Now it's half-past ten, and I must be off to the
riding-school. What else was there? Oh yes, Frielinghausen. Have him
here at eleven." And with a friendly "Good morning, Schumann," he left
the room.

Schumann sat down again to his writing; but he did not take up the pen.
What his captain had said about "desertion" kept running in his head.
He himself sometimes had the feeling that it would be wrong of him to
quit the service. Especially now, when these new-fangled ways made men
of the good old stamp all the more necessary.

He had worked his way upwards through long years of service, only
getting promotion by slow degrees; and eight years ago he had been made
sergeant-major, Wegstetten getting his battery on the self-same day.
Nowadays any young fool of a gunner might be made bombardier in a year,
in another six months corporal, and then be set to teach others. Raw,
empty-headed fellows that only thought of their own comfort, and
disappeared from barracks the moment their time of service had expired,
without leaving a trace behind. Chaps without the least pride or
interest in the service;--nice sort of non-commissioned officers!

He looked round. Just so; Käppchen was still away. Where was that lazy
beggar? and where was the bombardier? He shut up his book and went off
on the hunt.

The bombardier was waiting outside the door: he "thought the captain
was still in the orderly-room." That might be true, of course. He
didn't know where Käppchen was.

The sergeant-major knew where to look, and went straight to the
canteen. There indeed was Käppchen, just lighting a cigarette, after
wiping from his thin black beard the froth of a freshly-drawn glass of
beer.

Schumann would not make a fuss before the other non-commissioned
officers who were standing about, so only said: "Käppchen, you're
wanted in the orderly-room." Whereupon the corporal was off like a
shot, not even finishing his beer.


Wegstetten sauntered along the sandy road that led from the
riding-school to the barracks. Now and then he stopped to switch off
the dust scattered over him by the galloping hoofs. Now and then he
flung an oath or so at the riders, but on the whole he was contented
enough. It could not be gainsaid, Heppner was the man for him. Yes, the
battery was all right, and he, Wegstetten, would see to it that it
remained so. On every speech-making occasion when the chief held it up
as an example, he had rejoiced to see the envious faces with which the
commanders of the other batteries congratulated him.

Undoubtedly on this account he was given extra hard nuts to crack--such
as this case of Frielinghausen.

Baron Walter von Frielinghausen was a second-year student, expelled
from the gymnasium for repeated misdemeanours. His mother, a very poor
widow, had not the means to continue his education, neither was the
family ready to do so. They had therefore suggested that the young
scapegrace should be brought under strict soldierly discipline, with
the view to his eventually entering the Fire-Workers' Corps, and
perhaps being made an officer therein.

And it was the sixth battery that was selected as the scene of action
for this young man's talents! Wegstetten resolved to take all the
nonsense out of him, and to destroy any delusions the youth might have
as to his being in any way privileged.

But when Frielinghausen stood before him, an overgrown stripling, whose
somewhat angular limbs looked still more immature in the coarse,
ready-made uniform; and when he met a pair of anxious young eyes fixed
on him, his tone softened perceptibly. There occurred to him, too, the
consciousness of another bond: Frielinghausen, like himself, belonged
to the old Thuringian nobility--possibly even to an older family than
Wegstetten's. Although this youngster had undoubtedly caused his mother
grave anxiety, yet he had not stolen copper-wire, nor taken part in any
socialistic demonstration. Wegstetten at the moment did not know of
what worse he could be accused. Naturally he would see to it that this
sympathy with the fate of a common soldier should not be wasted on an
unworthy object. Directly Frielinghausen did amiss, he would be down on
him; just as with that other sprig of nobility, Count Egon Plettau, who
had actually managed to serve nearly eight years and of that time to
spend, first six months, then two and then five years confined in a
fortress--always on account of insubordination. Now this incarnate
disgrace to the German nobility was nearing his release, and was
expected to be back again soon in the battery. Accident would determine
whether he would finish his remaining two months before he was put on
the Reserve, or would again get himself into prison.

Wegstetten had sufficient knowledge of men to recognise the difference
between the two. Count Plettau was a mere hopeless idler and vagabond.
Frielinghausen was at least inspired with a wish to pull himself
together and become good for something.

Accordingly Wegstetten spoke to him like a father; told him in a few
pointed words that he must try to be independent and steady, and must
not expect to be treated exceptionally; enjoining him by zeal and good
conduct to earn promotion as quickly as possible. But at the door he
added softly, for he did not wish the non-commissioned officers to
hear: "Be worthy of the name you bear! That alone should be sufficient
inducement to make you try to get on."

Frielinghausen stood breathless for a moment after he had closed the
door of the orderly-room. His heart was full of gratitude for the warm,
humane words, which, after all the dry exhortations and admonitions,
put new life into his heart. He earnestly resolved to repay his chief
by his deeds, and to take all possible pains to please him.

The boy, than whom a few weeks ago none had been more light-hearted and
careless, had been forced into serious reflections the night before. He
had been a favourite with all his fellow-students, even outdoing the
others in boyish exuberance, looking only at the sunny side of life and
laughing at the censure of his teachers. Now suddenly he found himself
banished to surroundings the misery of which made sweet by comparison
even the bitterest hours of the past, which he could only remember with
shame. He thought of the times when his mother had implored him with
anxious, fervent words to be good. How ill he had succeeded as to that
"goodness"! That dear tender mother had not grudged him the freedom of
youth; often she had told him that she had no wish to see him a
priggish, model boy, but had urged him not to lag behind the others,
nor to fall short of his goal. This was chiefly because of the stingy,
well-to-do relations, whose goodwill she had to secure in order that he
might not have an utterly joyless youth. She had borne every burden,
and was prematurely aged through her anxiety that he should attain the
object which had shone so brightly in the future: namely, the family
scholarship at the University of Jena, an endowment founded by a
Frielinghausen of old for the benefit of his descendants.

Then came the catastrophe. Never in all his life would he forget the
blank dismay of his mother when the head of the gymnasium interviewed
her and told her of the inevitable expulsion. "Levity, carelessness,
lack of industry, superficiality in almost every subject," thus ran the
reports of his teachers.

Hereupon followed a period of dreary inaction, and again a feverish
succession of petitions and persuasions, with the object of obtaining
means for three years' private coaching, but the relations declined to
open their purses. So they had fallen upon this last expedient for
providing him with a career as a sort of mongrel, half officer, half
non-com.

He envied the simple lads who were his comrades. They had, it is true,
entered into new and strange conditions, but after all they remained in
their natural environment. Many of them had never been so well off as
in barracks. There was no bridge between the heights of culture to
which he had aspired and the uncivilised depths in which his comrades
dwelt so contentedly. Possibly they numbered among them fine and
loveable natures: he was most attracted by the shabby clerk Klitzing,
and by Vogt, the rough peasant-boy; but all these men, with their
scanty words and awkward gestures, fought shy of him, fearing to be
despised by an educated gentleman.

The prospect of intercourse with the non-commissioned officers, who, on
promotion, would be his comrades, promised to be but little better than
with the recruits. Among them he met, for the most part, with the same
distrustful reticence that he had experienced among the men, though a
few of them made up to him, thinking him the _protégé_ of the captain,
and this he resented. Käppchen, in particular, a little man, with
unpleasant cunning eyes, offered to his "future comrade" sundry little
favours which, being battery-clerk, were in his power to bestow.

Look at it as he would, the life of both the present and the future had
seemed to him scarcely worth living. Upon such reflections broke the
captain's hearty, friendly words, bringing a glimmer of light into the
terrible darkness. To merit the goodwill of this man, to show him that
his sympathy had not been unworthily bestowed, was at least an object
to live for. Frielinghausen set himself to attain it.

He paused near the door sunk in thought, he hardly knew for how long.
He was startled by a hand on his shoulder and a voice saying: "Just let
me pass, my son."

Frielinghausen stood aside at the bidding of an officer who, in
full-dress helmet, with aigrette, epaulettes, bandolier, and scarf,
strode into the orderly-room. He thought sadly how he had himself as a
youngster dreamt of being an officer, until his mother had talked him
over to the safer career of letters. Now he glanced at his own shabby
uniform and compared it regretfully with that of the other.

In the orderly-room Wegstetten rose briskly to meet the new-comer, and
held out his hand: "Delighted to have you in my battery, Reimers; you
are heartily welcome!" cutting short the lieutenant's acknowledgments
with: "Yes indeed, I am pleased to have a man with me who has some
actual experience of soldiering; of possibly something even more severe
than that of Madelung with the fourth battery in China."

Laughingly he held up a warning finger as he added:

"Even though it was entirely contrary to orders that you should have
fought for the Boers. How did you get on in the fortress?"

Reimers answered, smiling:

"Pretty well, sir. I have scarcely ever been so well treated as during
that arrest."

"Very likely. And his majesty did not let you languish there long?"

"No, indeed, sir."

Wegstetten glanced at his watch.

"Well, I'm sorry I can't stop any longer now, for I must go back to the
riding-school again. So good-bye, my dear fellow. But let me say once
more how glad I am to have a man who has really smelt powder. They are
only to be found among colonels and generals as a rule nowadays."

As soon as the captain had gone, Reimers put his helmet on the table,
and drew off his gloves.

He glanced round the orderly-room and nodded with satisfaction as he
noted that everything was as it used to be. Then he held out his hand
to the sergeant-major.

"Good-day, Schumann!" he said cheerily. "You're still here? How are
you?"

"I'm well, sir, thank God. And, beg pardon, sir, but how are you?"

Reimers looked surprised. "I'm quite well, of course. Why should I not
be?"

"Well, sir, you had sick-leave last year----?"

"Ah, yes, that's all gone, Schumann; all gone--not a trace of it left."

"I'm delighted to hear it, sir," said the sergeant-major; "and, if you
will excuse me, sir," he went on somewhat hesitatingly, "I'm glad, very
glad, you've come back to the sixth, especially after you've fought for
the Boers. I should like to go out there myself, you know, sir."

"Oh, no, Schumann," said Reimers, "you must not think of that. I don't
believe you would like it. There's another side to that affair. Stay
contentedly here. This is the place for you. Besides, the poor devils
have next to no artillery left."

Lieutenant Reimers took Schumann's familiarity in good part. He
recognised that it was the strong love of justice which made him
espouse the cause of the weak.

"No, Schumann," he went on: "that is no place for you. Wait; wait
quietly here. Mark my words! There will be work enough! The lessons
learnt over there in China, too, will have to be worked out here, and
for that we shall want our best men. You will be wanted. If only we had
more like you!"

Reimers emphasised the last words, and heartily wrung the
sergeant-major's hand.

Then he put on his helmet again and strode out of the room; a man,
indeed, over whom the soldier heart of Schumann rejoiced. One could
have confidence in a man like that, with his quick penetrating glance
and his easy, erect carriage. He was a handsome fellow too, fair-haired
and of open countenance, only just a trifle thin from his campaigning
experiences. Not one of those young puppies, like some of the officers,
who caused the sergeant-major, notwithstanding his due respect for his
superiors, to shake his head sadly at times.

Schumann seated himself at his table. But despite all his efforts he
could not concentrate his attention on the recruiting papers. The words
of Reimers haunted him: that he, Schumann, would be wanted. That was
the second time the same thing had been said to him this very day.
There must be something in it. He felt as though he had a bad
conscience.

But all day long he was busy, and it was only towards evening, when
work was nearly done, that he had time to think. He left what he could
for the next day, and went into his own quarters at the end of the
corridor. Here he would earnestly think it out, whether he would not
remain for a few more years with the battery.


Two families were quartered at the end of the corridor, that of
Sergeant-major Schumann and that of the deputy sergeant-major, Heppner;
each had a bedroom, sitting-room, and kitchen, and they shared the
entrance-hall between them.

As Schumann entered he could hear through the door the rough,
blustering voice of Heppner.

That was the worst of these quarters; the thin walls and doors let the
faintest sound through, to say nothing of rows and quarrelling. Unless
one positively whispered, one's neighbours could overhear everything
one said, even though they were not intentionally listening.

The Heppners were always noisy. It was the old story that caused the
bickerings of the ill-mated pair: a sickly wife stricken with lung
disease, drawing daily nearer to her grave, and a husband of rough
exuberant physical strength.

Heppner had married his wife when she was already with child by him;
and he never could imagine afterwards how he had come to tie himself to
her. He had at no time really cared for the pale, thin woman; but she
had a quiet way of managing, inch by inch, to attain the end she aimed
at. She had caught him by appearing humble and patient; so humble and
patient that he fancied she would make a submissive wife--a wife who
would let him go his own way and would wink at his shortcomings. For he
had never had the smallest intention of playing the faithful spouse.

Devil take it! Wasn't he a jolly young chap who looked thoroughly well
in his smart uniform; tall, broad-shouldered, strong of limb, with full
ruddy face and black moustache; a fellow all the women ran after; was
such as he to belong solely to a broomstick like his wife? It would be
a sin and a shame! Lucky for her that she was so tame and yielding!

But after marriage the pliant, patient woman altered suddenly. She
turned out a regular scold; a perfect vixen, who was ever at his heels,
distorting his most harmless acts, and starting a new jealousy every
day. Once she went for him with finger-nails and scissors; but he had
given her such a drubbing that she never attempted that game again. She
used her tongue all the more; and when, driven to extremity, he sought
to chastise her, she screamed so that the whole barracks ran to the
rescue.

In the end Heppner completely gave up troubling about her. He went his
own way, going out evening after evening, enjoying himself after his
fashion. He hardly ever gave his wife money enough for housekeeping.
When he did come home it was he who was the aggressor now, and the
reproaches of his wife were indifferent to him.

Thus things went on for months. It was not exactly pleasant for
Heppner; but one can get used to anything. He seemed only to grow
handsomer and more robust, while his wife became daily thinner and
uglier. Finally she did him an ill turn by falling sick. The doctor
declared her case to be hopeless from the first, and gave her but a
short time to live. But even the approach of death did not silence her
evil tongue.

Once the wretched wife went to Wegstetten, the captain of their
battery, in the vain hope that he might be able to help her.

"Just consider a little, Frau Heppner," he suggested, "whether you
yourself may not be somewhat to blame. For it is impossible that a man
so regular in his duties, who never has to be found fault with, can be
as violent as you make out. You exaggerate a bit, my good woman."

After this she resigned herself angrily to her miserable fate.

Wegstetten was not wrong in his praise of Heppner. Outside his own
quarters Heppner was a blameless non-commissioned officer; one who knew
his duties as well as any, and was strictly obedient to rules and
regulations. He handled the men smartly, his brutal, leonine voice
being audible all over the parade-ground; yet he never permitted
himself any undue licence of speech.

In general, if his men took the trouble to try, he got on well enough
with them. It was a satisfaction to him to command a well-drilled body
of men; if they behaved themselves he showed them thorough good-will.
Only now and then he would fix on a man and worry him to the utmost
permissible limit in a grim, cold way almost past endurance. It would
always be one of the weaker sort; pale-faced lads he could never
endure. And occasionally in other ways the rough animal nature of the
man would show itself. If any one got hurt, Heppner was the first to
run up--not to help, but to see the blood; he would watch it flow with
unmistakable pleasure in his eager eyes.

His special forte was the breaking-in of chargers. In the riding-school
he was thoroughly in his element; particularly under cover in
the winter, when the horses steamed and the dim lamps glowed red
through the dust. With the air of a conqueror he would mount some horse
which had refused a jump. His hand could be as soft as satin or as hard
as steel, and he would always try gentle means first. Throwing himself
back on the hind-quarters, where the weight tells most, and thus
driving the brute involuntarily forward till with his powerful legs he
had forced it up to the obstacle, with one final squeeze he would get
it over. If a refractory horse fell with him, he would be out of the
saddle in a moment, and would wait, rein in hand, smiling quietly,
until the animal was up again snorting. Then he would remount, and four
or five times must the rebellious horse take the jump; then at last his
rider would be satisfied.

Heppner's voice would sometimes sound quite good-humoured during riding
instruction; he would then relax somewhat. He knew that his men would
ride well when it came to the point; for that the sixth battery must
have the best horsemen was an understood thing.

Thus it will be seen that the brutality Heppner displayed at home he
could successfully repress when on duty. But the most remarkable thing
about this man, who behaved like a brute to his wife, and had no
affection for his comrades, was the metamorphosis he underwent if the
horses were in question. Towards those beautiful animals he showed an
almost womanly tenderness. They all knew him, and he loved them all,
though naturally he had his favourites among them. There was Udo, a
light-brown gelding, who could kneel down. And Zulu, almost black,
would shake his head when asked if he were French, but nodded when one
said, "A German artillery-man, aren't you?" Heppner would take them
sugar every day, or other tit-bits, which he would divide among them
with scrupulous fairness.

If by chance a horse fell ill, Heppner's devotion amounted to actual
self-sacrifice, and he would anticipate the orders of the vet. with
marvellous acuteness. Once only had he mal-treated a subordinate, a
driver whom as a rule he particularly liked. He gave him a blow which
caused the blood to spurt from both nose and mouth, because he had,
when on stable duty, allowed Dornröschen to get caught in her chain.
Dornröschen was Heppner's own riding-horse, and the very apple of his
eye.

It was chiefly among these beautiful and intelligent animals that the
more human element in Heppner's nature came out, and his love for them
almost amounted to superstition. There must always be a goat about the
stables, for it was an old belief that the strong smell of that animal
was a preventive of disease, and the long-bearded Billy was the special
_protégé_ of the deputy sergeant-major. Now and then there were
difficulties concerning him; as, for instance, when an unexpected
attack in the rear knocked the major down in the dust before the whole
corps. It was only by desperate entreaty that Heppner succeeded in
saving the life of the bleating culprit, and then a curious chance
led to his reinstatement. The very first night that the goat was
turned out of the barracks, two of the horses began to cough the vet.
hinted at bronchitis--four weeks only from the man[oe]uvres, and
bronchitis!--Billy was at once restored to his place in the stables,
and both horses ceased to cough.

The deputy sergeant-major would have found it difficult to answer had
he been asked which he preferred: to play cards in a beerhouse with a
buxom Bohemian waitress beside him, or to be in the neat stables amid
the chain-rattling, snorting, stamping company of the horses. Both were
to his taste; but perhaps on the whole he was really happiest walking
up and down before the stalls, with the goat trotting after him, and
the horses turning their heads to follow him with their sagacious eyes.

But as soon as the stable-door closed behind him the soft look would
vanish; and as he opened the door of his own quarters an evil
expression would overspread his face, as if he were ready at once to
fall upon his defenceless wife.

Through grief and illness the unfortunate woman became at last
incapable of attending to her domestic duties. She cast about for
an assistant, and at last wrote to her sister Ida, who was in
service in Lusatia. Ida willingly threw up her situation, came to her
brother-in-law's dwelling, and immediately took over the management of
the little household and of the invalid.

For a time it seemed as if the loathsome atmosphere of hate and squalor
must disappear in presence of the tall fresh country girl; the deputy
sergeant-major put a restraint upon himself before his sister-in-law,
and the sickly wife found comfort and relief in talking to her. But
eventually the presence of this third party transformed the house into
a veritable hell.

The eyes of hatred are as keen as those of love. Julie Heppner soon
discovered that her husband loved her sister with his usual coarse
passion, as he had loved so many others before. She recognised the
ardent fixed gaze that rested lustfully on the young girl, following
her every movement. This, then, was to be the last, bitterest,
deadliest drop in her cup; this betrayal, in her own home, under her
very eyes.

The sick woman watched her sister's conduct in agonised suspense. At
first Ida had been honestly indifferent to the behaviour of her
brother-in-law; after a while, however, a faint embarrassed flush would
sometimes overspread her pretty youthful countenance. From the fugitive
glances which she now and then intercepted between the two, the invalid
foresaw the most sinister results.

Heppner himself, not being particularly quick-witted, and being used
only to coarse associates, did not quite know what to make of his
sister-in-law. Of only one thing was he certain, this beautiful girl
must be his. He was even prepared, if he could not otherwise succeed,
to resort to violence.

One evening Heppner had been exercising Walküre, Wegstetten's charger,
for an hour. Having seen her wisped down in the stable and covered with
a horse cloth, he went towards the canteen for a drink, when he
remembered that there was a bottle of beer in his own kitchen. He
strolled slowly and somewhat stiffly towards his quarters.

Ida was washing in the kitchen. He said briefly, "Good evening," poured
out the beer, and drank it in great gulps. Then he shook the last drops
in the glass to make them froth up, silently watching his sister-in-law
the while. She had round white arms; and as she bent over the tub, the
outline of her hips showed broad and firm.

Through the open door came the shrill hoarse voice of his wife.

"Ida, who is there?"

"Who else should it be but Otto?" answered the girl.

Again the shrill voice called, yet more insistently, "Why does he not
come in?"

Heppner finished his glass, put it down, and said: "Because I won't.
Because I'm better off here. Because Ida's a pretty girl, and you're an
old crone."

At this, as though in fun, he put his arm round the girl and pressed
her to him.

Ida kept still for a moment. She shivered. Then she shook him off: "Let
go, stupid! Go to your wife."

Heppner let her go. The single moment that she had permitted his
embrace convinced him that here, too, he would conquer. How she had
quivered in his arms! He understood such signs.


Meanwhile Sergeant Schumann, only separated from the Heppners by a
partition wall, sat at the round table by the sofa with his wife.

Their room, with its antimacassars, its upholstered furniture, its
flower-pots and canary-bird, its sewing-machine in the window, was more
like an old maid's best parlour than a soldier's sitting-room. The
small, neat-featured mistress herself, who was not very strong, and
always, even in summer, wore a little shawl round her shoulders, suited
her surroundings admirably.

She had a thousand small cares, and one great grief: that they were
childless. But she never troubled her husband with her sorrow, taking
care to bear it alone. He had bothers enough in the service; how often
did she not hear his voice storming outside! He should have peace at
home. One thing only she could not bear without complaining to him: the
terrible quarrellings of their neighbours. She shuddered whenever she
heard the strife begin afresh; and gradually out of this had grown an
aversion from all this noisy life. She became a most zealous advocate
of her husband's plans for retiring; and could scarcely find patience
to await the moment when he would put off the richly-laced coat beside
which she had formerly been so proud to walk. In her heart she had
always been rather against the martial calling, and would take
Schumann's sword from him as though it dripped blood.

All this would cease when he changed his military coat or the handsome
dark uniform of a railway-official; all this discomfort would come to
an end; above all, this noise: the shouts and curses with which
recalcitrant recruits had to be knocked into shape, the trampling of
nailed boots on the stone stairs, the bellowing of commands on the
parade-ground, and--last, but not least--the hideous racket next door.

The sergeant-major had almost finished his time of service. A post
awaited him as assistant at a small railway-station in the
neighbourhood; and once when Schumann was away at the practice-camp,
she had not been able to resist the temptation to see the place for
herself. It was on a branch-line, which wound up among the hills. The
station was a little distance from the village in a green plantation.
She yearned after the peaceful spot.

And now Schumann had again begun to speak of remaining on in the army!

His wife let him talk, listening patiently. She sat quietly opposite to
him, giving him his supper as usual, as busy and attentive as though he
were only speaking on indifferent topics. But when he had finished she
spoke out, saying that, as a rule, she was not the woman to meddle in
her husband's affairs, but that _this_ was a matter which concerned
herself as well. His notion that to quit the service now would make him
feel like a deserter and a scoundrel seemed to her utter unpractical
nonsense. He would be sacrificing a couple of years to a mere fancy.

Finally she produced her trump-card. She knew that the rural quiet of
the little station had wound itself round her husband's heart during
the week of trial he had already passed there. So she confessed her own
secret journey.

And she conquered.

Each could describe as well as the other the charms of the unassuming
little retreat. What one omitted the other supplied. Thus the picture
in the sergeant-major's mind was revived afresh, and in such vivid
colours that it regained its old power over him, dissipating the cloud
of self-reproachful doubt. He saw before him a calm bright future in
the narrow valley between wooded heights, and it came over him suddenly
that there in the stillness, where one could live in touch with nature,
he would for the first time begin really to live.




                              CHAPTER III

                                   "I vow to thee my duty,
                                      My heart and my hand,
                                    O land of love and beauty,
                                      My German fatherland!"
                                                      (_Massmann._)


Lieutenant Reimers had reported himself to the colonel of the regiment
and to the major.

These officers had given him a hearty welcome, each after his own
fashion.

Major Schrader, who never let pass an opportunity of making a joke,
received his report at first in a very stiff official manner, assuring
him with a frown that he was very loth to have in his division officers
who had been in disgrace; then almost fell on his neck, and asked him
if it were true that the Kaffir girls had such an abominable smell.

Colonel Falkenhein gave him only a prolonged handshake; but Reimers
could read the great gladness in his eyes.

The colonel had treated the young man almost as a son; and a year
before, when the doctors had sent Reimers to Egypt as a consumptive
patient with a very doubtful prospect of recovery, had seen him depart
with a heavy heart. Now, looking upon him once more, he was doubly
glad. Reimers had not developed into a broad-chested, red-cheeked,
powerful man, but every trace of illness had vanished from the bronzed
face; the thin features and the rather spare rigid figure gave an
impression of tough endurance, a characteristic of greater value in
resisting disease than mere well-nourished sleekness.

"You are well out of that, thank God! Reimers," he said, once more
shaking the lieutenant's hand; "and it looks as if the improvement
would be permanent, considering the test to which your health has been
put."

"It was rather _va banque_, sir," replied the lieutenant. "Either all
or nothing."

"I decidedly prefer the all," said Falkenhein, in such a hearty,
affectionate tone that a rush of devotion carried the lieutenant past
the barriers of formality. He bent quickly over the colonel's hand and
kissed it. Tears stood in his eyes--tears of grateful pleasure. Now he
indeed felt himself back in his native country.

How he had longed for it, day after day, during this year of furlough!


At first when, in Cairo, he was again laid low by the fatigues of the
journey, he had thought of his country with pensive melancholy. Later,
as his strength returned, homesickness asserted itself increasingly; he
suffered from it more than from his gradually-subsiding bodily malady,
and the aimless life of a health-resort only increased his sufferings.
He could never have resigned himself to pass long months of such
inaction in a strange land; and when he joined the Boer forces, it was
to no small extent in order to counteract the torturing longing for
Germany.

He loved his country with a passionate ardour. The ideas of greatness,
power and sovereignty were inseparably connected in his mind with the
name of the German Empire. But his chief enthusiasm was reserved for
the diligent, unostentatious work, quietly accomplished and conscious
of its aim, which, begun by Stein, Scharnhorst and Boyen, had led
through long struggles to such a glorious result. He reviewed the whole
story with the eye of a soldier from the collapse at Jena onward to the
last great war he seemed to trace an uninterruptedly ascending line,
not diverted even by Prussia's temporary political defeats. In the
unparalleled siege of Sedan a height of military efficiency had been
reached from which no further ascent was possible. He could not imagine
anything in the whole world more honourable than to belong to that
splendid army of Sedan; and he wore his officer's sword-knot with a
pride far removed from any kind of conceit: in fact, nearly akin to
religious veneration.

As a boy, it had been his bitterest grief that his mother's wishes and
the doctor's opinion were against his becoming a soldier,--an officer
like his dead father, who had fought in the great campaign. His mother
and the doctor had feared that he was too weakly for the military
profession. In order to remove this objection, the boy voluntarily
subjected himself to heroic discipline, and by strictly following a
graduated system of physical exercises inured his body to hardships,
until he was actually found fit for service. Conquered by such
persistent devotion, his mother at last yielded to his wishes; but she
saw him wear his father's familiar old uniform only a few times, for
she died shortly after, barely forty years old.

Bernhard Reimers thus became doubly an orphan. But he had far more than
the death of a mother to deplore. With his mother he also lost the only
person who had loved him, and the only one whom he in return had loved.

So closely was the boy encircled by his mother's love, that the need
which led his schoolfellows at the gymnasium to form friendships was
never felt by him. Whenever he wanted to learn something, to solve a
doubt or to confide a secret, he could count on his mother's
tenderness; she would explain, soothe, or sympathise, as the joys and
sorrows of the growing youth became ever more serious. From this
relation he retained a touch of womanliness in his character, even
after he had left home to enter the regiment: a shrinking from
everything coarse, a reserve before all that was unlovely. This
instinctive feeling did not, indeed, altogether protect him from
temptation, but it withheld him from yielding to excess. He joined in
the little drink and love follies of the other young subalterns from a
sense of comradeship; alone they would never have appealed to him.

As at school, so in the regiment, he had many comrades, but no friend.
He did not trouble himself about this, and until his mother's death he
felt no want. Then he recognised sadly that he was quite alone; but he
was incapable of setting to work to seek a friend, so he just waited
for some happy chance to bring the right person across his path.

When, at last, he found the friendship he sought, it did not come in
the way he had dreamed, suddenly, like a gift from heaven thrown into
his lap; but was a gradual strong growth, a slow mutual recognition.

It would be difficult to find a greater contrast than that presented by
Reimers and this Senior-lieutenant Güntz; externally and internally
they differed radically. Reimers was tall and lean, with golden-brown
hair, and a noble, but somewhat melancholy expression; Güntz was small
and very fair, with a tendency to stoutness, and with a red jovial face
like the full moon. The one was romantic and even exuberant, slightly
fantastic in his moods; the other firmly rooted in prosaic fact.

Both were prized as able officers. Reimers was referred to on questions
of military history and science; Güntz was considered an authority on
mathematical technicalities, especially in connection with the
artillery. Thoroughness was a characteristic of each alike; and on the
strength of this, and despite all difference, they were daily attracted
more and more to each other. Güntz, the more expansive nature, soon
opened his whole heart to his friend; though Reimers, partly from a
kind of timidity, still kept his deepest and innermost feelings
somewhat hidden. For Güntz, with his sober sense and terrible logic,
must necessarily, since he could never be otherwise than sincere,
destroy most of the ideals and illusions to which Reimers passionately
clung, and without which he believed he could not live.

Little by little, however, the wall of separation between them gave
way, and their friendship and mutual confidence had become almost
ideal, when Güntz was ordered to serve in the Experimental Department
of the Artillery in Berlin. This was a distinction; but it meant
absence for a year.

Reimers had thus found a friend only to lose him again.

The exchange of letters between the two was not specially brisk. Things
which could be instantly understood in conversation had to be treated
in such detail on paper! They would have had to write each other
scientific treatises, and for that there was no time; Reimers was too
zealous in his garrison duty, and Güntz too much absorbed in the
technical problems on which he was engaged. His loneliness only caused
Reimers to devote himself with the greater zeal to his profession.

Even the irksome duties of the service did not trouble him, and he took
special interest in his recruits, superintending, correcting, and
instructing them. In times of peace this was, indeed, the greatest and
most important work of the young officer, to mould this stubborn human
material into soldiers--soldiers who, after the first rough shaping,
had to be trained till finally they attained their highest end: fitness
for active service.

At the same time he had to pursue his own studies in military science.
But he would have been ashamed to call that work; he knew no nobler
pleasure, and would gladly have sat up the whole night over the plans
of the general staff, only refraining so that the next morning might
find him fresh with the needful, or, as he smilingly called it, the
"regulation" vigour for practical duty.

Thus, when Güntz had gone, Reimers was in danger of becoming somewhat
shy of his fellow-creatures. He had honestly to put constraint on
himself to fulfil the claims of comradeship with a good grace, and more
especially his social obligations. He was most at home in outdoor
recreations; he played tennis with enthusiasm, and had nothing against
excursions on foot or bicycle with a picnic thrown in, or the
regimental races, or hunting. These all meant healthy exercise, and
afforded a wholesome change from the confined life of the garrison. But
winter, with its obligatory dinners and balls, was a torment to him.

On one occasion, standing in the doorway of a ballroom, he had closed
his ears so as to exclude all sound of the music, and then had
seriously doubted the sanity of the men and women he saw madly jumping
about. He felt almost ashamed afterwards when he had to ask the no
longer youthful Frau Lischke for a dance; but the fat lady hung smiling
on his arm, and did not spare him a single round. Reimers thought sadly
of his honest friend Güntz, and the rude things he had been wont to say
about such follies as these.

But chance threw in his way a gift which to some extent compensated him
for the loss of his friend. He and Colonel von Falkenhein were brought
together; and, by the irony of fate, at one of these same odious balls.

After working through his duty dances, Reimers had allowed himself to
omit a polka, and was leaning out of a window in the end room of the
suite, when Colonel Falkenhein tapped him on the shoulder.

The colonel was bored; for those of the older men who were not occupied
with the ladies had set themselves down to cards, and he--a widower,
whose only daughter was still at school--could not bear cards, and
liked dancing still less. This Lieutenant Reimers, standing alone
gazing out into the night, seemed a kindred spirit.

The young officer had already excited his interest; his behaviour as a
soldier was loudly praised by his superiors; and then unprofessionally
he was distinguished from the average type of young lieutenant by a
certain attractive maturity of bearing, without, however, impressing
one as a prig. Priggishness was even less endurable to Falkenhein than
play and dancing.

The colonel had the gift of making people open their hearts to him by
means of a few judicious questions, and could very well distinguish
between genuine and spurious sentiment.

Reimers answered with a candour which astonished himself most of all,
and Falkenhein listened with a pleased attention. Here was a man after
his own heart, possessed by a manly seriousness, and with a deliberate
lofty aim in life; not merely dreaming of substituting a general's
epaulettes for the simple shoulder-knots of a lieutenant. Here, too,
was a fine enthusiasm, which touched the veteran of fifty and warmed
his heart. It recalled the old warlike days and the cry: "Only put us
to the proof! and rather to-day than to-morrow!" Ah! since those days
he had learnt to judge such things rather differently; but nevertheless
it was the right way for youth to regard them. Such enthusiasm was a
little exaggerated, at any rate as things stood at present, and also a
trifle shortsighted. It was now no longer as in the days of 1870 and
after, when the watch on the Rhine had to be kept for fear of
vengeance. He could not join as heartily as he might then have done in
the proud joy of the young officer.

He felt inclined to take himself to task for this, and on no account
would he pour cold water on this fine flame of enthusiasm. It was the
very thing in which the present time was most lacking: patriotism as a
genuine conviction rooted firmly and deep in the breast, not venting
itself in mere cheering and hurrahs; and accompanied by a steady
comprehension of the soldier's profession as simply a constant
readiness for war.

From the time of this conversation, Reimers began to feel heartily
enthusiastic about his colonel. He was almost ashamed to find that his
good friend Güntz was thus slightly forgotten; but this was not really
the case--the two might safely share in his affection without wrong to
either of them. The honest, faithful fellow in Berlin remained his dear
friend; the colonel he began to look on as a second father.

Falkenhein's partiality was not, of course, openly expressed; but by
many little signs he let the young man see how much he thought of him.
Reimers, fully aware of the fatherly sympathy, was happy in the
knowledge of it. His comrades were, indeed, surprised to find how
lively and almost exuberant the hitherto staid Reimers could become;
and particularly was this so during the artillery practice and the
autumn man[oe]uvres, when--garrison and parade drills at an end for a
time--conditions were somewhat akin to those of real warfare.

Then the even course of things was broken by his illness.

When, before his enforced furlough, he took leave of the colonel, the
latter's hearty liking for the first time broke through the barriers of
official form. His clear eyes became dim, and his voice slightly
trembled as he said: "Come back well, my dear Reimers--come back to me.
Be sure and do all you can to get cured!"

Now, when at last Reimers found himself once more standing face to face
with this honoured colonel, joy overpowered him, and he kissed the hand
of his fatherly friend.

The colonel tolerated this altogether unmilitary excess with a
good-natured smile. He would have been delighted to clasp in his arms
this young man, who was as dear as a son to him; but he, an old
soldier, could not allow his feelings to get the better of him as the
lieutenant had done, rejoiced though he had been by the latter's
outburst.


Out on the parade-ground Reimers looked about him with interest.
Everything seemed to have become different and delightful; even the
bare, prosaic yard of the barracks appeared no longer devoid of charm.
He passed through the gate and went slowly along the high road towards
the town. Then it was that the glad feeling of being in his native
country asserted itself in full force. He realised that it was just the
tender green of those beeches and alders edging the brook that he had
longed to see when, in Cairo, the fan-like palm-leaf hung motionless at
his window; just this slope of meadow land that he had remembered on
the arid veldt of South Africa. It was this mild sunshine of his native
land, this blue German sky that he had pined for in the glowing furnace
of the Red Sea. The tiny engine which puffed along asthmatically up the
valley, dragging its little carriages and ringing its bell from time to
time when a browsing sheep strayed between the rails, had been ever
present in his mind during his journeyings to and fro.

As he walked along, the young officer thought of his comrades whom he
would now meet again.

In this glad moment he could tolerate them all. Their various defects,
whether small or great, now appeared less offensive than of yore; and
in any case it was kind of them and a great compliment to him that on
this very day of his return they should have arranged a feast. It is
true he rather dreaded this feast, which was sure to end in the usual
way--general drunkenness--but it was well meant, and there was at least
one advantage in it, that he would at once be made acquainted with all
the details of garrison gossip; for, though altogether beneath
contempt, they must be known in order to avoid giving unintentional
offence.

At the door of his quarters he found waiting the gunner who had been
appointed as his servant.

"Gunner Gähler, as servant to Lieutenant Reimers," he announced
himself.

Reimers took a good look at the man. The sergeant-major seemed to have
done well for him in this respect. Gähler was a smart fellow, not
exactly tall, but well proportioned, and very clean. His hair smelt a
little too strongly of pomade, and wax had not been spared on his
fashionably-stiffened moustache.

When Reimers drew his bunch of keys out of his pocket to unlock the
door, Gähler hastened to take them from his hand, and opened the door
for the lieutenant to pass in before him. He quickly laid his bundle of
clothes upon a chair, and at once helped to take off Reimer's helmet,
shoulder-belt, and scarf.

The officer smiled at such excessive zeal.

"How is it that you are so well up in this work?"

"I was for a time servant to Captain von Wegstetten, sir."

"Indeed? And why did you leave him?"

Gähler hesitated a little; then he resumed glibly: "Please do not think
badly of me, sir. There were difficulties; the servant-girl slandered
me; you will understand, sir."

He stood there embarrassed, polishing the chin-piece of the helmet with
the sleeve of his coat.

Reimers felt amused at his choice manner of expressing himself. "So you
can't leave the women alone?" he asked. "Well, with me you will not be
led into temptation."

Gähler modestly demurred: "I beg your pardon, sir; but in that case it
was really not at all my fault."

The lieutenant laughed. "Oh, all right!" he said; "but before that,
where were you?"

The gunner drew himself up proudly, and replied with dignity: "I was
groom to Count Vocking, in Dresden."

"Aha, that accounts for it!"

Reimers was no longer surprised. The aristocratic cavalry-officer was
considered the richest and smartest sportsman in Germany.

First, Reimers asked for his smoking-jacket, and then told Gähler to
help him in unpacking the case of books which had just arrived from
Suez.

Gähler handed him the volumes, and could not help remarking: "You have
an awful lot of books, sir!"

The lieutenant did not look offended, so he went on: "The count hadn't
so many, and none at all of this sort."

He stole another glance to assure himself that he had not displeased
his master, and then added: "The count only had books about horses, and
a few about women, and the Regulations for cavalry-exercise."

At this Reimers could not help laughing, and his "Hold your tongue,"
did not sound to Gähler particularly angry.

But if Count Vocking possessed fewer books than the lieutenant, he
apparently surpassed him greatly in other respects.

As Gähler was arranging the washhand stand, he remarked: "The count had
lots of little boxes and bottles, with real silver tops."

And when he fetched Reimers some sandwiches and a glass of beer for
lunch from the kitchen on the ground floor, he informed his master,
"The count had his own kitchen, and used to drink Burgundy at lunch."

And here another result of his training in the Vocking household came
to light. In a few moments the table was covered with a clean cloth,
with knife, fork, and spoon neatly in place; and it was certainly not
the rough maid down below in the simple kitchen to whom it had occurred
to decorate the dish so prettily with parsley and radishes. The meal
looked far more appetising than usual, and this was Gähler's work.

"Where did you get the radishes from?" Reimers asked.

"The cook gave them to me, sir," his servant replied.

"So you are at it again, making yourself agreeable?"

This time Gähler was not in the least confused, but replied frankly, "I
beg your pardon, sir; the cook is very old and very fat, I----"


That evening, in the mess-house, the officers, both his seniors in rank
and those of his own age, vied with each other in pleasant speeches.
But it ended just as it had done a year before; when all had greeted
him, he was left standing alone in the doorway of the reading-room.

His only friend, Güntz, was still in Berlin, and the officers chatted
together in the other rooms of the mess-house, standing in groups which
in almost every case denoted circles of friends. There was hardly any
change in the composition of these circles, which was usually due
to similar length of service, but in certain cases they were held
together by some other bond. There was the Keyl-Möller group of two
senior-lieutenants and a lieutenant, who were brothers-in-law in a
double sense, two Keyls having married two Fräulein Möllers, and a
Möller a Fräulein Keyl. There was also the trio of musical officers,
one of whom sang and played the violin and also the French horn, while
the second was an excellent pianist, and the third only whistled, but
in a most artistic manner. Then, finally, there was the philosophic
group, to which little Lieutenant Dr. von Fröben gave the tone. He had
taken his doctor's degree in jurisprudence at Heidelberg, and had
recently become an officer, as during his year of military service he
had lost all taste for legal science. He bore his academic honours with
that dignity which often accompanies the unusual; he was considered
extremely up-to-date, and at times rather extravagant in his opinions.
Among his friends were two officers still very young, one of whom was
always reading Prevost and Maupassant; and the other blushingly
acknowledged himself to be the author of an ode, printed in a daily
newspaper, welcoming the troops just returned from China, among whom
had been Captain Madelung of the regiment.

Everything at the mess-house seemed to be just as of old; it seemed to
Reimers as if he had not been away for a day. He looked around him: all
were as before, the elder men, with thick moustaches and hair growing
thin in places, with the cares of a future command already on the brow;
those of his own age, easy-going and assuming nonchalant airs; and the
youngest of all very spick and span and extremely correct. Just as of
old the three brothers-in-law stood close together (two of them had in
the meantime become fathers, and the wife of Keyl II., _née_ Möller,
was in an interesting condition), and chatted about their various
uncles and aunts. As of yore, the singing, violin and horn-playing
Manitius was at the piano, turning over the leaves of a pianoforte
arrangement of the "Trompeter von Säkkingen." And again, as of old, the
little red-haired Dr. von Fröben held forth learnedly to every one who
would listen. There were only two new men who had entered the regiment
during his illness, and had just got their commissions as lieutenants.
One of them, Landsberg, had introduced himself to Reimers as belonging
to his battery.

Reimers was not much taken with him. This youth, with his somewhat
vacant expression, hair glossy with pomade, and single eye-glass
squeezed into his eye, was too artificial and dandified to suit his
taste. But he seemed somehow to be an object of interest to Landsberg,
though the latter was evidently shy of addressing his elder comrade.

Reimers thought he could guess what was coming. No doubt it was again
some question about his experiences in the war, of the kind he had
already answered twenty times this evening in a more or less evasive
fashion. This curiosity did not offend him, for such questions must be
in every officer's mind, and especially in that of one who was fresh to
the soldier's calling.

Sure enough Landsberg came up. He began rather slowly. "Excuse me, may
I ask you a question?"

"Certainly, I shall be most happy," answered Reimers.

"Do tell me," Landsberg proceeded hesitatingly, "I would like so
much--in fact, the shape of your boots pleases me immensely; they are
awfully smart, and I--in fact, you would confer a tremendous favour on
me if you would give me the address of your bootmaker."

Reimers considered for a moment, then replied coldly: "I bought these
boots in passing through Berlin."

"Just what I expected! They do look awfully smart, really! And do you
remember the address of the shop?"

"No."

"What a pity! But, if you don't mind, I will send my servant to you to
copy it off the lining. May I?"

Again Reimers was silent for a moment, then he said: "I have no
objection, if you think it important."

Landsberg brought his heels together with a click, bowed, and murmured:
"You are very kind; I shall certainly do so."

Then he moved away with, "Thank you so much."

Reimers turned away. He suddenly found the room too hot, and he walked
up and down for a time in the cooler air of the vestibule. All the
doors were open. In the mess-room the staff-officers and the captains
were standing near the table, which was already laid. It was a few
minutes before half-past seven. Only the colonel had not come yet.

Andreae, the senior staff-surgeon, gave Reimers a friendly nod through
the doorway. Reimers was his show patient. The specialist had shrugged
his shoulders, but he, Andreae, had not thrown up the sponge. The thing
was in reality quite simple. It only needed, like other military
affairs, initiative. The right diagnosis must be made as promptly as
possible, and the right treatment must follow without delay. Then all
went well, as in this case--unless, indeed, something went wrong. Yes,
indeed, this patient was a triumph which should finally reduce to
silence those civilian colleagues of his who considered a military
surgeon competent at most to deal with venereal diseases and broken
bones.

Reimers listened in an absent-minded way to his long-winded
deliverances on the subject of acclimatisation, taking furtive glances
the while at the other officers in the mess-room.

They also seemed in no way changed. Major Lischke and Captain von
Wegstetten were still at loggerheads, Lischke blustering away in his
loud voice, and Wegstetten assuming his most ironical expression.
Captain Stuckardt was listening in a half-hearted way; he had quite
recently been put on the list for promotion to the staff, and
consequently wore a rather preoccupied look. Hitherto he had found the
charge of one battery difficult enough, and now he would have to
command three. Undisturbed by the dispute, the captain of the fifth
battery, Mohr, had sat down to the table by himself; he was always
thirsty, and had already disposed of half a bottle of champagne.
Madelung, fresh from the Far East, paced up and down with short nervous
steps between him and the disputing officers. In passing, he glanced at
the two fighting-cocks with a kind of scornful pity, and at the silent
toper with contempt. Major Schrader and Captain von Gropphusen were
whispering and chuckling together in a window nook. They had one
inexhaustible theme--women; while forage was the favourite topic of the
two men standing beneath the chandelier--Träger and Heuschkel, the
officers commanding the first and second batteries. The third battery
had the fattest horses in the regiment--"and the laziest," said the
colonel; nevertheless, it must be allowed, that when the inspector from
the Ministry of War paid his visit, it was an uncommonly pleasant sight
to see the hind-quarters of those horses shining so round and sleek in
their stalls.

"Carrots! carrots!" cried Heuschkel. "They're the thing!" And Andreae,
who, as a healer of men must also have some knowledge of the inside of
beasts, was called on to endorse this view as to the excellence of
carrots as fodder.

Thus Reimers felt himself rather out of it all, and was just about to
leave the mess-room and join his younger comrades, when Madelung came
towards him.

The lieutenant waited expectantly. He was interested, for it was almost
an event when Madelung spoke to any one.

This lean, black-haired man, with the thin dark face and the deep-set
penetrating eyes, was undoubtedly the most unpopular officer in the
regiment. He was characterised as an unscrupulous place-hunter, and
gave himself not the slightest trouble to disprove the accusation. The
one excuse that could be offered for him was that, his father having
been ruined through no fault of his own, he was almost entirely
dependent on his pay, and had been able to keep up his position as an
officer only by means of the strictest economy, and with the help of an
extra allowance from the royal privy-purse. It may have been this that
embittered him so that he avoided all social intercourse with the other
officers, and devoted himself entirely to his profession. By means of
relentless industry he had now won for himself the prospect of a
brilliant career; on leaving the Staff College he had been presented by
the king with a sword of honour, and he could look forward to a
position on the general staff. Naturally he had volunteered for the
expedition to Eastern Asia, and had recently returned from China
decorated with an order, thinner and more pinched-looking than ever,
and still less amiable.

Reimers stood before him in a strictly correct attitude, for the
captain was not to be trifled with. But Madelung put him at his ease
with a nod, and said, glancing sharply at him, "So you are the other
exotic prodigy who is being fêted to-day!"

He laughed drily.

The lieutenant made no response, and Madelung went on rapidly: "I may
tell you that I envy you!"

Reimers felt the captain take his hand and give it a quick, hearty
shake; but before he could answer, Madelung had turned and walked away
to the table.

At this moment the colonel appeared. He greeted each of the older
officers with a couple of words, and the younger with a general nod.
Reimers alone, on the day of his return, had a special greeting and a
hearty handshake.

Then they sat down to table. From the colonel in the seat of honour,
downwards, the officers were placed according to rank and length of
service. The youngest and the last was an _avantageur_[A] who had
joined the regiment on October 1st. He had been on stable duty from
half-past four that morning, and had to pull himself together now not
to fall asleep; till at last a bottle of Zeltinger was placed before
him by the orderly, and then he became livelier.


[Footnote A: A one-year volunteer who elects to remain on in the army
and await promotion.--_Translator_.]


Reimers had chosen a place near the little lieutenant of doctor's
degree, who was quite an amusing fellow, and chattered away so glibly
that his neighbour hardly needed to contribute to the conversation.

Of course Fröben had begun: "Well, Reimers, fire away! Give us some
leaves from your military diary. We are all ears!" But Reimers soon
changed the subject. What he had seen and gone through down there among
the Boers was still in his own mind a dim, confused chaos of
impressions, and it was repugnant to him to touch on it even
superficially, so long as he was not clear about it himself.

The little doctor began to dilate on the splendid German East-African
line of steamers, which conveyed one for a mere trifle from Hamburg to
Naples, by way of Antwerp, Oporto, and Lisbon, and he enlarged at great
length on the educational influence of long journeys in general and of
sea-voyages in particular.

Reimers listened patiently, letting his eyes wander round the table.
Just as of old, the various groups still kept together, and were
continuing their conversations uninterruptedly. Falkenhein, in
their midst, listened with amusement as the senior staff-surgeon
chaffed Stuckhardt about that oldest and yet newest of nervous
diseases--"majoritis." Madelung was looking rather glum, and kept
twirling the little silver wheel of the knife-rest. Next to him, Mohr
was staring straight before him with glassy eyes, and Schrader leant
back in his chair laughing, while Gropphusen still kept on talking to
him.

"He's got something to laugh about!" said Fröben to his neighbour,
interrupting his discourse.

"How do you mean?" asked Reimers.

"Well, to put it delicately, Schrader has got a flirtation on with Frau
von Gropphusen--a very intimate flirtation!"

"Indeed!" Reimer responded indifferently.

Here was a fine piece of gossip, and strange to say, in this, too,
things were as before; it was not the first time that Major Schrader
and Frau von Gropphusen had afforded material for conversation.

Dr. von Fröben continued: "But you must not think, Reimers, that in
such matters I am a bigoted moralist. Ideas of morality are subject to
just the same fluctuations as----"

And he dealt out what remained in his memory of a newspaper article,
the writer of which had entirely misunderstood Nietsche.

After the toast of "The King," a momentary silence fell upon the
company, contrasting strangely with the clatter of voices which had
preceded it.

During this lull in the conversation the word "China" was spoken
somewhere near the colonel, and all eyes involuntarily turned to
Madelung.

He sat there stiffly with his cold face, a cynical smile on his thin
lips. "Dangers!" he cried in his hard voice, which had the shrillness
of a musical instrument that has lost its resonance, "Dangers! I knew
nothing about them."

He laughed drily.

Captain Heuschkel, who was always worrying about his fat horses,
inquired: "Well, against such an opponent, surely cover had to be
considered most of all. Wasn't it so? that cover was of more importance
than action? Ten thousand of those yellow fellows were not worth a
single trained soldier, surely?"

"Or one of my horses," he added in his own mind. He would probably have
committed suicide if he had seen one of his horses shot by a dirty
Chinaman.

"Surely it was a question of good cover, wasn't it?" he insisted.

"No," answered Madelung in a loud voice. "It was a question of keeping
your fingers out of your mouth."

"What on earth had that to do with it?" put in Captain von Stuckardt,
rather hesitatingly.

Madelung bowed with ironical politeness.

"Infection with the typhus bacillus," he replied, "was the principal
danger in China, Captain von Stuckardt."

After a little pause the shrill voice continued: "We had a
senior-lieutenant in our cantonment, belonging to some Prussian
grenadier regiment, a gay fellow, and, indeed, quite a useful officer
besides."

Madelung paused a moment, and again his dry, mocking laugh resounded.

Then he continued: "He had a queer fad. He cultivated one of his
finger-nails, that of the little finger of his left hand, with the
greatest care. Just like a Chinese mandarin. At last the nail was fully
a centimetre long, and made holes in all his gloves. Now, whenever a
speck of dirt lodged in this nail, he was in the habit of removing it
with his teeth. It wasn't exactly a nice thing to do; but, you see, he
had a passion for that nail. I often said to him, 'My dear fellow, do
keep your finger away from your mouth--it's just swarming with typhus
bacilli.' He did try, but sometimes he forgot; and so in the end he was
caught."

Every one looked inquiringly at Madelung, and he added: "He died of
typhus."

He sipped his wine, and continued, rather more gently: "I firmly
believe that it required greater self-control in that senior-lieutenant
to refrain from putting his little finger into his mouth than to lead
his men under the heaviest fire against one of those Chinese clay and
mud walls."

Then he raised his voice again, as if ashamed of the rather gentler
tone of his last words, and concluded, harshly and shrilly: "Besides,
it really is a bad habit, putting one's fingers in one's mouth."

And again he sat silent and stiff, twirling the little silver wheel of
the knife-rest.

The feast then took the usual course.

After the table had been cleared some of the officers remained in the
mess-room sitting over their wine, while others went off to the reading
or smoking-rooms with a _schoppen_ of Pilsener. In the mess-room the
talk became more and more noisy, while in the adjoining rooms quieter
conversation was the rule. A couple of inveterate card-players started
a game of skat; and in the billiard-room Captain Madelung amused
himself alone, making cannon after cannon. At his first miss he put
down his cue and waited impatiently for the colonel's departure, that
being the signal for the official close of the festivity. Madelung left
almost immediately after Falkenhein, and the majority of the married
men followed his example.

At last only lieutenants remained, except Major Schrader and Captain
von Gropphusen. The one other senior officer, Captain Mohr, did not
count. He had not quitted his seat the whole evening, and still went on
persistently drinking with the assistant-surgeon, an exceedingly stout
man, with a face scarred by students' fights. The scars were glowing
now as if they would burst.

The subalterns could feel quite at their ease, for Schrader and
Gropphusen were no spoil-sports.

Manitius now sang his "Behüet dich Gott," rather unsteadily,
accompanied by Frommelt, who was quite tipsy. The song was a great
success, for the young _avantageur_ was overcome by emotion, and began
blubbering about a certain Martha whom he loved prodigiously, and whom
he must now abandon, because he would never be permitted to marry a
barmaid. On this Schrader suddenly tore open his uniform and offered
him nourishment from his hairy breast, and the boy sank weeping into
his arms.

At last the comedy grew wearisome. The _avantageur_ was sent off to
bed, and Frommelt had to play a cancan, to which Gropphusen and
Landsberg danced. Gropphusen was supple and agile, and, with his pale,
handsome, rather worn face, looked a perfect Montmartre type.
Landsberg, on the contrary, cut a grotesque figure, kicking up his long
shoes in the air, and as he did so almost choking in his unduly high
collar.

The company became smaller and smaller, and at last only two groups
were left.

In the card-room half-a-dozen men still sat awhile at one of the
tables, and in the mess-room Captain Mohr and the junior surgeon
continued drinking. They had long ago given up conversation; but
occasionally one of them would say "Prosit!" and then they would both
drink. When at last they left their seats they found the orderly in the
ante-room half-asleep, half drunk, fallen from his chair, and lying
snoring on the ground.

Growling "Damned swine!" the assistant-surgeon kicked the man till he
rose, and with an effort stood upright.

When the last two officers had left the mess-house he locked the doors,
drank the end of a bottle of champagne, and lay down to sleep on the
sofa in the smoking-room.

The sofa-cover was a sacred relic, a present to the mess-house from an
officer in the East African forces, who had formerly belonged to the
regiment. It was a magnificent specimen of Oriental art. The orderly
found the thick gold embroidery very uncomfortable to his cheek; but
then it certainly was a fine thing to scratch his head with!


When Reimers, who had left early, reached his quarters, he was
surprised to find his servant waiting up for him.

"Why on earth are you not in bed?" he inquired.

Gähler answered respectfully, "Beg pardon, sir, on such occasions the
count used sometimes to need me; he often went out again."

"Well, I don't. So remember that in future," enjoined Reimers.

Gähler still waited, and asked, "Would you like some tea, sir?"

Reimers looked up. Not a bad idea that! He was too much excited to
sleep, for he had been obliged to pledge his comrades far too often,
and a cup of tea would be just the thing. After that he would read a
few pages, and only then try to go to sleep.

"Yes, make me some tea," he assented, "but not too strong."

He put on a comfortable smoking-jacket. Gähler brought his tea almost
immediately, and with it a plate of anchovy sandwiches.

Reimers smiled. It certainly paid to have for one's servant the quondam
groom of an elegant cavalry officer. He gave Gähler a friendly nod, and
said, "I think, Gähler, that we shall get on capitally together."

The gunner stood at attention.

"Any other orders, sir?" he asked.

"No. Good-night."

"Good-night, sir."

Reimers ate a few mouthfuls as he walked up and down the room; then he
carried the green-shaded lamp to his writing-table, and took down a
volume of the official history of the great Franco-Prussian War.

He spread out the marvellously accurate maps, and began, as he had done
so often before, to follow the various phases of his favourite battle,
the three days' fight on the Lisaine. That was the only great defensive
battle of the campaign, clearer and easier to follow than any other in
its simple tactics, almost suggesting the typical example of a
textbook, and yet what a living reality! Almost at the same moment
when the German Empire was being proclaimed at Versailles, Bavarians
were fighting shoulder to shoulder with East Prussians, regiments
from Schleswig next those from Upper Silesia, soldiers from the
Rhine-provinces side by side with soldiers from Saxony: a glorious
demonstration of the newly achieved unity.

His admiration for the valiant defenders was no greater than his pity
for the tragic fate of the attacking army, which, almost dying of
starvation, had fought with the wild courage of despair, and had
deserved a more honourable reward than to be driven along that terrible
path of suffering to the Swiss frontier. Not less tragic was the fate
of its commander; a fate, indeed, which Bourbaki shared with the other
military leaders of the Republic. All those generals, Aurelle de
Paladines, Chanzy, Faidherbe, Bourbaki, who at the brave but somewhat
futile summons of the Committee of National Defence tried to arrest the
victorious advance of the German army, were inevitably doomed to
defeat; and even the inspiration of a military genius could not have
got over the fundamental mistake that had been made, of considering the
impossible possible.

Reimers looked up from the book with a glowing face. He had followed
the French army as far as Pontarlier. That was the moment in which the
German forces commanded the largest area. In the west the Rhinelanders
were gazing astonished at the winter waves on the canal, while to the
east, Pomeranians greeted the sentinels of the Swiss frontier.

Where in all the world could a nation be found richer in honour and in
victories?


During the next few days Reimers had to make calls on the ladies of the
regiment.

It was wearisome work, answering the same questions over and over
again; and once more he had proof of the fact that against certain
conditions time seems powerless. Some of the young married women had
during his absence become mothers; but most of the ladies of the
regiment presided without change over the solid domestic comfort of
their house-holds. The main thing noticeable was that they had
sacrificed themselves with greater or less success to fashion, which
was just now in favour of slender figures.

The course of their conversation was almost literally the same as of
yore, and in each case the curiosity shown was of exactly the same
degree, except that Captain Heuschkel's wife, who was president of the
Red Cross Society, inquired as to the care of the wounded in South
Africa; while the lady who presided over the Home Missions wished to
know if the Boers were really as pious as they were represented to be.

This monotony was, to a certain extent, the result of natural
selection. Most of the officers had chosen their wives very carefully,
and this had brought about a fine similarity in their views, a
similarity which even found expression in the rather unattractive
arrangement of their dwellings, in which the upholsterer's hand was but
too evident.

Only two ladies, the wives of Captains von Stuckardt and von
Gropphusen, differed from this type.

Frau von Stuckardt was unjustly considered haughty. She was merely
unfortunate in being unable to adapt herself to the mental atmosphere
of the other ladies. She had been placed for a couple of years in an
institution for the daughters of the nobility, and was just preparing
to enter a convent when Stuckardt, who was a distant cousin of hers,
proposed to her. In her heart she regretted the worldly emotion to
which she had then yielded; she believed that, by her marriage, she had
defrauded the Church, and felt her conscience constantly oppressed by
this grave offence. The interests of the other officers' wives puzzled
her, doubly separated from them as she was by creed and by education;
and when, under social compulsion, she gave a coffee-party, she sat
among her guests like a being from a strange world, a pale and slender
figure, always dressed in dark colours and wearing a cap of old lace
upon her smoothly parted black hair; a striking contrast to the other
fair, rosy, lively women in their gay gowns.

Frau von Gropphusen's parties were much more amusing. You could not be
quite sure that she was not making fun of you; but you were certain to
carry away on each occasion a supply of gossip which would last for
weeks.

Externally, Gropphusen and his wife were exceedingly well matched. He
was of medium height, with slender limbs and a pale, finely chiselled
face, vivacious eyes, wavy dark hair, and a small black beard. She was
one of those dainty blondes who remind one of iced champagne, with a
marvellously graceful figure, a droll little nose, and steel blue eyes
under dark eyebrows.

When first married they were madly in love with each other; but when
the fire burnt out, Gropphusen went back to his old habits.

Truth to tell, he was a rake, who, even after marriage, thought nothing
of spending dissipated nights week after week in the capital, returning
by the early morning train. He seemed to have cast-iron nerves; for
even the envious had to admit that his official work did not suffer. He
had a clever head, and was an artist into the bargain, an excellent
painter of horses; experts advised him to hang up his sword on a nail
and devote himself to the brush. But he had not yet made up his mind to
that.

Irregular in all other departments of life, he was regular only in his
excesses. He was very rich, so that he could give the rein to almost
all his whims. Indeed, reports of a rather fantastic kind, somewhat
recalling Duke Charles of Brunswick, were current about him, the most
extravagant being of a ballet he had had performed for him by fifty
naked dancing girls. There was a certain amount of exaggeration about
this, perhaps. In any case he troubled himself no longer about his
young wife.

Hannah Gropphusen indemnified herself in her own way by coquetry and
flirtations, and she was soon gossipped about as much as her husband.
But those that whispered and chattered about her felt their consciences
prick them when they carried their backbiting further; the young wife
could never be accused of anything more serious.

It was noteworthy that Reimers had always felt more attracted by these
exceptions among the officers' ladies than by the typical
representatives of that class. He did not know why exactly, but he
thought he saw a certain similarity between the position of these
ladies and his own; these two and he were different from the average.

Unlike his comrades, he enjoyed visiting Frau von Stuckardt. She never
talked platitudes, she would rather remain silent, and she was a little
given to proselytising. Reimers liked to hear her subdued voice
extolling the mysteries of the Catholic faith; he was proof against her
endeavours, but a beneficent calm emanated from this unworldly woman,
and he could feel with her that the spiritual renunciations of
Catholicism offered a quiet resting-place to the world-weary.

The Gropphusen interested him. She was considered superficial and
frivolous, but he did not think her really so. There was too much
system in her frivolity and superficiality.

He had purposely left these two visits to the last. But Frau von
Stuckardt was away from home; and when he handed his card to Frau von
Gropphusen's servant he was told that the lady was unwell, but the man
would ask if she could receive.

Reimers felt rather vexed, and was just turning away when the gunner
returned and asked him to come in.

He conducted the lieutenant along the corridor. "My mistress is in her
boudoir," he said.

Reimers was shown into a small room, the only window of which was
darkened. Frau von Gropphusen half raised herself from a broad couch.
She wore a loose tea-gown of soft silk, and had a light covering spread
over her knees.

"Welcome back, Herr Reimers!" she said, and stretched out her hand to
him.

Reimers bent over it respectfully, and kissed the tips of her fingers.

Then his young hostess let herself fell back again upon the couch and
drew her hand across her forehead.

"I am not very well," she resumed; "but I could not refuse to see you."

"No, no, you must stay," she went on; for Reimers looked as if he meant
to take leave at once. "There, sit down. Just wait a minute; I feel
better already."

Reimers took a seat and glanced round the room. The couch almost filled
it, the only other furniture being a dainty little writing-table in the
window and a couple of chairs. Above the couch hung the only picture, a
fine print of Gainsborough's _Blue Boy_.

In the meanwhile, Frau von Gropphusen had recovered herself. Her pretty
pale face was lighted up by a somewhat melancholy smile, and she began
softly: "No, really, I couldn't let you go!"

She raised herself again, drew her knees up beneath their covering, and
clasped her arms round them. It was done quite simply and naturally,
without any touch of coquetry. And then she stretched out her hand
again to Reimers and said: "You, the champion of the Boers!" Then,
supporting her chin on her knees, she continued: "But now you must tell
me exactly why you fought for them?"

As Reimers was preparing to answer, she interrupted him: "No, I will
question you. Wait a minute. Was it from love of adventure?"

"No. At least, that is not the right way of putting it. I wanted for
once to see something of the serious side of my profession. But even
that was not the chief reason."

"Well, then, was it in search of fame?"

Involuntarily Reimers deviated from his usual rule of answering
evasively, and replied: "No; that was not it either. I wanted nothing
for myself personally, or at most only to prove my fitness for my
profession."

"But neither was that your principal motive?"

"Oh, no."

"Perhaps it was indignation against the strong who were oppressing the
weak?"

Reimers was silent for a moment. Then he said: "Perhaps. But other
things contributed; above all, boredom. And--I wanted a decision as to
whether I was to live or not. I could not remain an invalid for ever."

"But still your chief, your final motive was the love of justice,
wasn't it?"

"Well, yes."

Hannah Gropphusen sank back again languidly. For the third time she
stretched out her hand to Reimers: "It rejoices me to find that such
people still exist, and to know one of them!"

Reimers had held her hand for a moment in his own. It was a small hand,
almost too thin, with slender fingers. As he looked at it, he was
reminded of the gentle hands of his mother. He respectfully touched the
beautiful fingers with his lips and rose. Frau von Gropphusen made no
effort to detain him.

"It is perhaps better for me," she said wearily; and as he reached the
door, she added: "But it has given me great pleasure to see you again,"
and she dismissed him with a friendly nod.

Reimers stood for a moment before the front door, thoughtfully
buttoning his gloves.

It was certainly odd; the very woman whom every one else seemed to
distrust appeared to him more worthy of esteem than any of the others.
He realised this only after the visit just paid. To her alone had he
answered frankly, and although they had hardly exchanged a dozen words,
he felt they under-stood each other perfectly. He could not avoid the
thought that their souls were akin. Each of them yearned after what was
great and beautiful in life. This woman, indeed, deserved pity, for she
had suffered shipwreck in the greatest and noblest end for which woman
is created--in her love; but he, thank God, was a man; and his ideal,
Germany, still stood out clear and definite, dwarfing mere personal
aims.

In that dim room a sinister thought had seized upon him, oppressing and
paralysing him; a vague foreboding that his fate would resemble that of
this pale woman. But he chased the dark clouds away. His star did not
vary in its light as does the shifting and drifting human mind; it was
like the sun, steady, unchangeable, inspiring.




                               CHAPTER IV

                                   "For oh! I had a comrade,
                                    And a better could not be."
                                                        (_Uhland._)

During the first days of December Corporal Wiegandt would sometimes
observe, in a pause of the drill, that the recruits were beginning to
look a little like soldiers; and in the bar-rack-room, after drill was
over, he occasionally even went so far as to give them some praise.

When he was getting ready to go out in the evening, and, with sabre
buckled on and forage-cap stuck jauntily on his head, brushed his
moustache before the little looking-glass, he would say: "Boys, I am
almost pleased with you to-day. I shall tell my Frieda."

Whereupon the recruits would laugh, as in duty bound. They might all
hate the corporal; he would not dispense with a fraction of their
drill, and did not express himself in a complimentary way during the
exercises; but he made things easy for them as far as possible,
changing about from difficult to less difficult movements, and giving
them long intervals between those that were the most exacting. His
division never had to stand for minutes together with their knees bent,
like Heppner's. Moreover, despite his roughness, there was about him a
certain kind-heartedness which took the form of good-natured little
extra lessons to the least efficient after drill.

His Frieda was a merry industrious girl who sewed muslin in a frilling
factory, and hoarded up the groschen she earned in order to save enough
money to be married some day.

And Wiegandt, who, despite his martial appearance, was an ardent lover,
added the pfennigs of his pay, and deprived himself of his evening
beer, going for walks with his sweet-heart instead, and kissing her
over and over again.

"That tastes better than beer," he would say, "and costs nothing."

As the pair had not much to talk of except their lover-like wishes,
Wiegandt used to tell the girl about the recruits, so that by degrees
Frieda learnt to know all their names and idiosyncrasies, and
began to take a certain interest in them. Above all had the case of
Frielinghausen appealed to her. The sympathetic little seamstress saw
in him something of the romantic disguised prince; and it amused her to
make the credulous Wiegandt a little jealous, until at last she would
assure him with a hearty kiss that he was her dearest and best.

When the corporal had gone off to his rendezvous, Frielinghausen was
left in supervision of Room IX. The sergeant-major had arranged it
thus, in order that from the very beginning the young man might become
accustomed to responsibility. And the charge was quite an easy one. By
evening none of the recruits had much inclination to make a noise or to
get into mischief. All the day-time, from morning till evening, was
occupied in the various branches of their duty; and the hours which
then remained were completely filled up with the brushing and polishing
of their clothes and accoutrements. It they could have done as they
liked, they would have gone to bed directly after evening stable-duty;
but that was not permitted until nine o'clock.

So when their cleaning up was done and they sat on their stools round
the table, most of them would stretch their arms on the top and fall
asleep; occasionally some one would scribble a few lines home. When
bedtime came at last, none of them tarried; but, drunken with sleep,
would tramp one after the other up the stairs to the dormitory.

Some, of course, were more fatigued by the work than others. Vogt and
Weise were among those who got on best. Both were strong, healthy lads,
and, moreover, not stupid; so that the theoretical instruction was as
easy to them as the foot-drill, gun-practice, and gymnastics. To be
attentive and quick--that was the chief thing.

Among the worst were Truchsess the fat brewer, the clerk Klitzing, and
Frielinghausen.

The brewer, it is true, was a strong, powerful man, but far too slow in
his movements. Klitzing, on the other hand, was too weak for the
demands of the drill. It was impossible for him, in the gun-practice,
to raise the end of the gun-carriage as "Number 3," or as "Number 5" to
direct the pole of the carriage; in gymnastics he would hang helplessly
on the horizontal bar; and even in the foot-drill it was difficult for
him to stand up straight.

When Vogt advised him to report himself as ill he refused. "No, I won't
go into hospital. Never!"

"Why not?" asked Vogt.

"I don't wish to," replied the clerk; and as Vogt insisted, he said,
"Well, Vogt, I'll tell you: I should never come out again; I should die
there."

And with a strained smile he added: "It doesn't matter where I die; but
I shouldn't like it to be in hospital."

Frielinghausen, though an active and agile young fellow, seemed to be
constitutionally flighty and superficial. He had been one of the
quickest to pick up a general idea of things; but afterwards the minute
details of instruction, which sometimes appeared so unpractical and so
apt to make more of the "how?" than of the "what?" would not stay in
his head. What difference could it make whether one sprang forward with
the right foot or with the left, or whether in pulling the lanyard the
right hand had rested upon the left? Surely the essential things were
that one should spring over the line and that the shot should go off!

So, despite his honest zeal, he made many mistakes, and the
everlastingly warning calls of his name maddened him. In the
theoretical work he was naturally far in advance of his comrades; for,
despite idleness at school, this was mere child's play to his practised
memory. He, who had had to learn hundreds of lines of the "Odyssey" by
heart, could easily remember facts about the bores of guns!

Klitzing also distinguished himself in these instruction-lessons. The
delicate clerk possessed another advantage, in his own calling almost
surprising, and particularly useful to an artilleryman: that is to say,
unusually sharp sight, which found the mark in a moment and took aim
with absolute accuracy.

This somewhat atoned to Wiegandt for his other faults, and it was only
for Lieutenant Landsberg that Klitzing remained nothing but a
scapegoat.

During drill Landsberg generally stood at the end of the parade-ground,
looking utterly bored and staring at his boots, which he had had made
in the style of Reimers'. It was only if Wegstetten was in sight that
he troubled himself about the recruits. Then he would run to Corporal
Wiegandt's division, and always began to abuse Klitzing, the "careless
fellow," the "lazy-bones."

He was constantly threatening the poor devil with extra drill; but he
never enforced the punishment, as that would have meant that he himself
must put in an appearance at the same time.

At last Reimers, who was commanding the battery during a brief absence
of the captain, put an end to this little game.

"Tell me, Landsberg, have you ever consulted Corporal Wiegandt about
that wretched Klitzing?"

"No, sir," answered Landsberg.

Reimers called Wiegandt to him.

"What's the matter with Klitzing?" he inquired.

The corporal replied: "Beg pardon, sir; the man means thoroughly well
and takes great pains; but I think he is far too delicate."

"Very good, Wiegandt," said Reimers, and dismissed him. Then he turned
seriously and officially to Landsberg. "I think, Landsberg, you had
better leave the man in peace."

Landsberg murmured: "Yes, sir," and looked out for another victim.

During the week the recruits in Room IX. had got to know each other
better. The band of comradeship had wound itself imperceptibly around
them, and within it some closer, more cordial friendships had sprung
up.

The most varied types of men found themselves thrown together.

If, in the evening, the fat brewer happened for once not to be resting
his tired body in sleep after the fatigues of the day, he would squat
down near Listing, who had been a wanderer and a vagabond. He would
listen with many a shake of the head to the stories Listing related of
his life on the roads, especially of the nights the fine ones, in which
one lay on the dry grass beneath the twinkling stars, or in the forest
under a beech in the branches of which the screech-owl was calling; and
of the wretched, rainy, cold nights of late autumn. Then one would pull
a few trusses of straw out of a stack and creep shivering into the
hole, which would gradually become wet through from the dripping rain,
and through the opening of which the east wind would blow in icily.

Then the brewer would clap his comrade on the knee with his broad, fat
hand, and say: "Well, friend, it must feel first-class to you now when
you roll into a good bed?"

But Listing replied: "Well, no. Not exactly. But perhaps I shall get
used to it. I have often slept better out of doors; but worse too."


Vogt soon formed his own opinions about his comrades.

The best of them all, the one who put the whole lot into the shade, was
without doubt Klitzing. The courage with which the weakly clerk
performed his duties filled him with an almost reverential admiration,
and the honest fellow was ready to stand by the poor, harassed lad
whenever it was possible.

During the dinner hour, if Klitzing were too much fatigued to go to the
dining-hall, Vogt would carry his rations to him, and if possible would
add his own piece of meat to the other's portion. Then he would quickly
polish up boots and buttons for him and hand him his cap when it was
time for the after-noon drill to commence.

"Come, Heinrich, I have made you smart," he would say with an attempt
to joke. "Now we shall be all right."

And Klitzing would go down the steps with aching limbs and fall into
line.

Vogt's care for him only ceased at night and began anew every morning.
It was the source both of joy and shame to the clerk; he deprecated it
to his comrade, but Vogt shut him up with good-natured roughness. So
Klitzing let the matter be, and thought that a mother's care for her
child must be something like this. For he had never known his parents,
but after their early death had grown up as the adopted child of some
distant relations.

Vogt himself had also the feeling that instead of a comrade Klitzing
was more like a child, or, rather, a younger brother to care for; but
that suited his strength of character, and anyhow Klitzing was a very
different fellow from the gay, clever, Weise, and a far better one.

Weise tried to make himself a favourite with all, but the others
noticed that he kept a check upon himself and never showed himself as
he really was. Moreover, even when he was alone with them, he evidently
felt a certain constraint.

One morning while washing there was almost a quarrel, when Vogt caught
him by the arm and tried to examine the tattoo marks on his skin. Weise
angrily shook himself free; but Vogt had seen that on the right forearm
the words "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" were inscribed, surrounded by
a broken chain and a wreath of flame, and above them something that
looked like a nightcap.

His father had never discussed politics with him, but Vogt had learnt
enough by himself to recognise the significance of the tattooing; Weise
was a social-democrat! Well, that was nothing so very bad. At home in
the village there were numbers of social-democrats, chiefly workers in
the large fire-clay factory by the river, and they were all very good
sort of people. Certainly, such tendencies were strictly forbidden in
the army, so Weise must take care of himself.

On the whole this meant nothing to Vogt. He had almost forgotten about
the tattooed arm, and the recollection of it was only once forced upon
his memory when taking the oath. Then Weise had sworn fealty to the
king, raising the arm on which was inscribed the motto of revolution.
His sleeve had slipped up a little, so that the word "Fraternity" could
be distinctly seen.

Surely there was some inconsistency here! But then Vogt reflected: how
could Weise help the hypocrisy? If he had objected to taking the oath,
he would simply have been imprisoned. Weise's swearing falsely was
practically on compulsion; he was in the same case with Findeisen and
all the others.


At Christmas the greater number of the "old gang" went on leave. For
those who remained behind there was a tree in the large Room VII., with
something on it for every one; a penknife, a cigarette holder, or a
wooden pipe, together with a few cigars; but Listing, who could not
even yet be got to wash himself properly, received a large piece of
soap with his cigars. At the same time a big barrel of lager-beer was
broached.

But before the battery Christmas-tree most of the men had had a
special rejoicing of their own. The orderly had had the precaution to
take a small hand-cart with him to the post-office, and had brought
it back full of boxes and packages. Then the men stood round the
sergeant-major, and each one pricked up his ears to hear whether there
was anything for him.

Klitzing had moved aside, he had nothing to expect. Suddenly his name
was called. There was a small box for him, and it was not very light
either when he took it in his hand. He thought it must be a mistake,
but there were his name and address sure enough: "Gunner Heinrich
Klitzing, 6th Battery, 80th Regiment, Eastern Division, Field
Artillery." He looked at the label, the sender was Friedrich August
Vogt; and on the back was written, "To my boy's best friend, for
Christmas!"

The clerk went to Room IX. and showed the label to Vogt, who was
already unpacking his parcel. Klitzing could say nothing; he could only
press his friend's hand, while tears stood in his eyes.

But Vogt shouted cheerfully: "I say! the old man has done finely! Let's
see what else there is."

And when they compared their gifts--sausages, Christmas fare, and warm
woollen underclothing--it looked almost as though his father had given
more presents to his friend than to himself. At the bottom he found a
letter from the old man:


"My Dear Boy,--Herewith are a few trifles for you for Christmas. I
think I shall have done as you would wish by sending half of what I
intended for you to your friend and comrade, Klitzing, of whom you are
always writing to me. You know I was an orphan myself, and I can
understand his feelings. I had my dear sister; but he has nobody. So a
merry Christmas to you! and keep well and hearty.
                                   "Your loving father,
                                           "FRIEDRICH AUGUST VOGT."

Frielinghausen also had a letter, which he read with streaming eyes and
a glowing face. He held his mother's pardon in his hands, and the love
which trembled in her words poured balm and healing on his heart, and
raised his desponding spirits.

He was another man after this Christmas Eve. Duties which before had
been a burden to him, which he had, besides, despised, he now performed
willingly and zealously.

If now Wegstetten inquired about him, Corporal Wiegandt always
answered, "He could not be doing better, sir."

The captain took an opportunity of praising him; and when he had
finished, Frielinghausen, his face quite red with pride and joy,
remained standing before him.

Wegstetten asked, "Well, is there anything you want to ask me?"

The tall youth choked a bit over his reply, but finally he got it out:
"Pardon me, sir--I don't know whether my request is in order--but, sir,
if you would have the goodness to write to my mother and tell her that
you are satisfied with me?"

Wegstetten was silent with astonishment. The request did seem a little
unusual and unmilitary; but he consented, and wrote to "The high and
well-born Baroness von Frielinghausen" a letter over which a mother
might well rejoice.

It seemed the more terrible for Frielinghausen when in February, after
the examination of the recruits, he received a telegram briefly
announcing his mother's death.


Work became lighter for the recruits after the examination. Certainly
the battery foot-drill and gun-drill was no joke; but things went more
quietly than they had done during the wild rush of the training, and
between-whiles one had occasionally time to take breath.

And now the recruits were gradually allotted their respective duties.
Horses to look after were given to the young drivers and to some of the
gunners. Vogt, Klitzing, and Weise, however, were not among these.
Corporal Wiegandt, who had been promoted to sergeant after the
examination, and had been put in charge of the guns and waggons of the
battery, knew them for industrious, trustworthy fellows, just such as
he needed to assist him.

The recruits were also being trained in sentry-duty; though this was
not made very much of. The field-artillery would never be put on
sentry-duty in time of war; gunners only equipped with swords and
revolvers would not be sufficiently armed for that work; for it the
infantry, or in case of necessity the cavalry, must be responsible.
So all that was necessary was easily learnt, and in the peaceful
garrison-town it was merely a question of guarding the official
buildings.

However, Vogt felt as if something very important were taking place
when he was the first recruit to be put on sentry-duty.

The second-year soldiers, on the other hand, rejoiced over their lazy
days. They took things easy, and laughed at the recruits, who adhered
conscientiously to every detail of the instructions, and would not take
off their uncomfortable swords while sleeping on the hard benches, even
after the orderly-officer had inspected them.

Vogt was posted inside the back gate of the barracks, through which the
road led towards the riding-school on one side, and straight on to the
wood on the slope of the hill. The first two hours from five to seven
o'clock in the after noon seemed to him terribly wearisome and
purposeless; but during the night from eleven to one o'clock he felt
stimulated by the sense of responsibility. The sentries were then
locked outside, and had to patrol two sides of the great quadrangle
surrounded by the public offices.

The night was pitch dark, so that Vogt was unable to distinguish his
narrow path. But he stumbled bravely up and down by the buildings for
his two hours. Even if he often missed his footing, it was better than
standing still. For then one heard all kinds of strange noises, the
cause of which could not be perceived in the baffling darkness. The
forest was never quite silent; there were always cracklings and
rustlings from its boughs and bushes. But in going the rounds these
things went unheard in the noise of one's own footsteps; and one passed
the quarters in which comrades were sleeping, and the stables, whose
dimly-lighted windows showed small squares in the night, and one could
indistinctly hear the rattling of the halter chains.

When Vogt went into the dormitory from the fresh, pure, night air he
thought at first that he would choke in the atmosphere laden with stale
tobacco-smoke and foul odours; but in the end he slept splendidly,
despite his hard bed.

At five o'clock he was again on sentry-go. It was still dark, but there
was already movement in the kitchen and the stables. At the gate there
was a delay; the watch about to be relieved was nowhere to be found.
The bombardier in charge cursed and swore unavailingly; finally, he
consented to the suggestion of the others and organised a search. In a
small shed, which served for the storing of hurdles and such-like, the
gunner was discovered fast asleep. He had covered himself up with
straw, and his sword lay by his side. The bombardier kicked him in the
ribs with his heavy boots, and stormed at the rashness of such conduct,
when at any moment an officer might come by.

But the sentry, a tall, strong fellow, answered crossly, "Shut your
mouth, you stupid swine! And if you dare to report me I'll break every
bone in your body!"

The bombardier grumbled something about "not going too far and getting
into trouble."

"Any one might happen to fall asleep," continued the gunner. He yawned
a few times, brushed the dust off his uniform, and said laughingly to
Vogt: "It is nothing unusual on sentry-duty, you raw booby of a
recruit! Nothing for you to gape about!"

And he walked off solemnly behind the bombardier.

Vogt stood thoughtfully beside the sentry-box. That was pretty bad
discipline! At the same time the case was quite clear: if the
bombardier reported the sentry, then the latter would naturally be
punished, and severely too; but he would certainly revenge himself on
the bombardier. Despite the buttons on his collar, the bombardier was
not technically superior to the gunner; it would only bring about a
quarrel, and in a fight it would certainly be the bombardier who would
come off worst. It was quite the rule for the men to stick loyally
together, and never expose a comrade if it could possibly be avoided.

Vogt, however, considered that there was a limit to comradeship, and
that the sentry ought to have been punished. For in such ways respect
was lost for other still more important rules. And, finally, he
congratulated himself on having nothing to do with the matter.

This morning, for the first time for weeks, the memory of his home and
the longing for it overwhelmed him.

He thought of how at home in the early days of the year he and his
father had finished preparing the fields for the spring cultivation. He
remembered how the young sun, in those fresh morning hours, had seemed
to caress the long-deserted wintry earth with his kindling rays; and
the black soil turned up by the harrow had exhaled a refreshing odour
as of incense offered by nature's maternal heart. The daily increasing
heat of the sun, the milder air, and the grateful receptivity of earth:
all betokened the end of idle winter and the beginning of a new year of
fruitfulness, the gospel of labour and of blessing. The ardent forces
of nature welled up also in the hearts of men; and though his father
had seemed to him old in the short cold days of winter, the scent of
spring-time always made him young again.

He almost felt like a deserter not to be at home working. But no! the
contrary was really the case. It was these thoughts that were disloyal.
Was he not now a soldier, called to protect the soil of his beloved
fatherland, if an enemy threatened it?

If----? he reflected further. There had been peace for thirty years
now, and it might quite well last thirty more, or even a hundred. Was
not this, then, mere waste of time? But, on the other hand, there was
nothing to prevent a war breaking out to-morrow. He knew that it was
improbable, but not impossible. The devil! then of course war must be
prevented. But how?

His simple mind saw no solution of these contradictions. He gazed
contemplatively at his sentry-box, and almost omitted to present arms
to his captain, who was passing to the riding-school with the remount
division.

After being relieved he watched two comrades who were playing at _skat_
in the guard-room with dreadfully dirty cards. Suddenly he had a kind
of waking vision. It was like the taking of the oath, when each man
stretched out an arm to swear. The tattooed letters on Weise's arm,
where the sleeve had slipped off, began suddenly to glow as brightly
and clearly as if the sun were shining on them. Fraternity! that was
not merely an empty word, then, not simply talk? If all men, Germans,
French, Russians, and all others, stretched forth their arms and swore
to be brothers, then--yes, then--there would be no more war.

But would that ever happen?

The card-players brought his reflections on the question of fraternity
to a hasty close; they began to quarrel furiously, and wound up by
throwing the cards at each other's heads in a very unbrotherly manner.

The recruit had to pick up the scattered cards, and when a king and a
ten were missing there was nearly a fight. Finally the corporal in
charge angrily stopped the noise.


When Vogt returned from his sentry-duty between eleven and one, he
found his comrade Klitzing singularly depressed, and after a time the
clerk confided to him that he had been very unlucky all the day before.

"You see, Franz," he said, "I can't get on at all without you. If you
are my neighbour at foot-drill, I know just where I am. But yesterday
you were absent, and I was a regular blockhead. Just because of me the
drill lasted nearly an hour longer than usual."

"Well, now I shall be back again," Vogt replied.

Klitzing continued: "Yes, but this morning it was the same thing; and
after drill the deputy sergeant-major said that slack fellows like me
should be given a lesson by the other men, and so----"

Here he was silent, and nothing more could be got out of him, so that
Vogt was quite angry over this lack of confidence.

By and by the fat brewer (who, however, was no longer fat) joined them,
and said: "Well, mate, aren't you a bit dense to-day? The 'old gang,'
especially the drivers, mean to be at him, to do for him, all because
of that little bit of extra drill."

Vogt could not but smile at his comrade's good-nature. Truchsess, the
most easy-going of them all, whose clothes after drill were as wet with
perspiration as if they had been in water, Truchsess called it "a
little bit of extra drill"!

But before he could speak, Klitzing began again: "Franz, you mustn't
mix yourself up in this. If they mean to do it you can't prevent it.
The best thing will be for me to submit quietly."

And with a little bitterness he added: "The most they can do is to beat
me to death."

But Vogt interrupted: "Don't talk such nonsense! I don't know what they
are thinking of doing, but I can tell you it shall be prevented. I
promise you that. Don't be afraid. I shall find a way out."

He began to ponder how he could protect his friend from the roughness
of the "old gang."

Should he ask Sergeant Wiegandt to give up going to see his Frieda for
one evening? If he told him, of course not officially, but in a sort of
way privately, about the intentions of the elder soldiers, then
Wiegandt would certainly stay in. But his feeling of solidarity with
his comrades forbad this.

Only, were they any longer comrades when they could ill-treat a poor
weakling? Surely not.

Still he rejected this plan, and in the end decided himself to defend
Klitzing regardless of consequences. If he challenged the fellows
fearlessly and cheekily they would be sure to turn on him, and he would
be able to defend himself. At any rate he could better stand a good
hard blow than the clerk could.

Evening came, and Sergeant Wiegandt went to his rendezvous as usual. An
expectant silence lay over Room IX. The recruits cleaned their things
and glanced now and then in an embarrassed way at the corner where Vogt
had seated himself close to Klitzing. The brewer had joined them also.

All was quiet until shortly before bed-time. Then heavy clanking steps
approached from the large Room VII. on the other side of the corridor,
and eight or nine old drivers pushed themselves in, armed with whips,
belts, and snaffle-reins.

Vogt placed himself full in front of Klitzing.

"You be off!" they said.

"I shan't!" answered Vogt.

"We'll soon make you!"

"We shall see about that!"

In a moment a dozen hands had seized him; but the big, strong fellow
defended himself bravely. He lashed out powerfully with fists and feet,
making the attacking party more and more furious; but finally he was
dashed to the ground, dragging several of his opponents with him. As if
they had been waiting for this, the others now threw themselves upon
him, and their blows fell thick as hail.

Klitzing, with his whole body trembling, stood by as if he had been
paralysed. But the brewer bent his round head like a furious bull, and
charged, using his skull as a battering ram, right into the middle of
the scrimmage. Now there were two against ten. The odds were still far
too great; and the brewer also was soon on the floor. The fighters made
a tremendous noise, but whereas usually at the least sound a corporal
would come running up to enjoin quiet, to-day nobody seemed to heed.

With a sudden effort Vogt succeeded in shaking two of his opponents
off, and in half raising himself; he just caught Weise's eye, who, with
his hands in his trousers pockets, was looking on at the row and
laughing a little. He shouted to him goadingly: "Is this what you call
liberty, equality, fraternity, you lousy fellow? Liberty, equality,
fraternity!"

And he gave a shrill, scornful laugh.

But, as if summoned by the words, the haggard, sombre-visaged Wolf came
to the door from the opposite room. He had at once understood why the
row was going on. It was only to be expected, after the deputy
sergeant-major's words! It was one of those injustices that he hated so
intensely; worse and a thousandfold more cowardly even than a blow
given to a soldier on the parade-ground by his superior officer.

He felt he had been summoned by those three words.

"Here I am!" he shouted, and his long thin arms brought substantial
help.

But the "old gang" also received reinforcements. The struggle became
wilder and wilder, and the combatants grappled with each other more and
more furiously. The shouts had ceased, and one noticed now only the
gasps of the fighters, the grinding of their teeth, the dull sound of
blows, and now and then a grim oath.

Vogt was bleeding from a wound in his brow, in return for which he had
bitten his opponent in the hand. But now the heavy buckle of a belt
caught him full in the face. Sparks flew before his eyes, he reeled
from the force of the blow, and, like an infuriated animal, his only
desire was to revenge himself, to hit out and to kill his enemy. A
newly polished sword lay near him, where it had fallen from the table.
He seized it and struck and thrust with it in blind fury.

The recruits shrieked as they saw this development, but no one had the
courage to seize the arms of the furious man.

Then an inspiration came to one of them.

"The sergeant-major!" he yelled at the door.

The struggling _mêlée_ dispersed in a twinkling, the "old gang"
vanished from Room IX., and only a great cloud of dust betrayed what
had taken place.

The sergeant-major of course did not appear. But it was just as well;
blood poured down Vogt's face, and when Klitzing awakened from his
torpor he was seized with a kind of convulsive attack. He threw himself
down, weeping and shrieking before his brave comrade, embracing his
knees, and no talking could soothe him.

The other recruits stood frightened and helpless around the two. The
brewer sat down on his stool to get his breath, and wiped the
perspiration off his face.

Listing, the quondam tramp, was the most sensible. On the roads there
is occasionally a fight or an accident, therefore one must know how to
render assistance. He ran to the water-tap, and returned with a bowl of
fresh water. He washed the wounded man's face, and then put quite a
respectable bandage round Vogt's head. It is true that the folds were a
little thick, as two towels were applied, and they looked almost like a
turban, but they stopped the bleeding and held together.

The tattoo sounded over the courtyard.

It was high time to get ready for bed. The corporal in charge came into
the room and told them to be quick. Suddenly he noticed the wounded
man.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

Listing lied fluently: "He fell down the dormitory stairs, sir, just a
little while ago, when the wind had blown out the lamp."

"Indeed!" said the officer in charge. "Is he badly hurt?"

"No, sir," answered Vogt.

"Then off to bed!"

Vogt and Klitzing were the last to leave Room IX. Klitzing went
silently along by his wounded comrade and looked at him timidly.

"Does it hurt, Franz?" he asked on the stairs.

Vogt began hesitatingly: "Well, you know----" but then when he saw his
friend's sad eyes he continued: "Oh, no; it's not a bit bad."

Tears stood in the clerk's eyes.

"Franz, what a dear good fellow you are!" he said softly. "I don't know
how I can thank you; but never doubt that I _shall_ thank you some
time."

In the bedroom Listing whispered to him that the "old gang" would
beware of beginning it again. Wolf had told them that he should at once
report them if they did, and he was known to keep his word in such
matters.

When the two friends were in bed, the tall man came round to their
corner.

"How are you?" he asked Vogt.

"All right, thanks," he answered.

"Glad to hear it."

He stretched out his hand to the recruit, and the two men exchanged a
hearty grip.




                               CHAPTER V


                                   "So pass the bottle about, hurrah!
                                    Gaily sing and shout, hurrah!
                                    Jolly artillerymen are we!"
                                                  (_Artillery song._)

Sergeant Schumann looked once more round the two rooms and the kitchen;
no, nothing had been left behind. Only his overcoat and hat hung on the
window-bolt, and his stick stood in the corner.

The civilian clothes did not please him at all. Every other minute his
hand was up at his neck, feeling for a collar-band which seemed to be
much too loose, but which, in reality, was not there at all.

His wife came in, busy as ever, in her hat and cloak, a little
leather bag and an umbrella in her hand. She was to start at noon for
the little mountain railway-station, where she would get the house
ready for the furniture, which should arrive during the day. The
sergeant-major, or rather the station-master's assistant, had some
money matters to settle in the garrison town, and would not follow her
until the next morning.

Frau Schumann was quite out of breath. Those stupid gunners had been so
disagreeable when she wished to have her flowers put in the furniture
van. She began excitedly: "Thank God, Schumann, the van is ready. Here
are the keys. It's quite time for me to go to the station, isn't it?"

Schumann looked at his watch and growled: "Certainly, quite!"

"Then I'll be off," said the little woman.

But she remained standing in the middle of the room, seemingly unable
to tear herself away.

"Dear, dear!" she said, "for years I have wished to leave this place,
and now that we are really going I feel quite sad; don't you,
Schumann?"

The sergeant-major muttered something unintelligible. If it had
depended on him the house would not now have been empty and the
furniture-van before the door. It was his wife who had worried him into
it, and yet now probably she would begin to snivel.

Indeed, she had just taken her handkerchief out of her pocket and
raised it to her eyes, when suddenly her face changed: "Good gracious!
our bean-poles are still in the garden! I'm not going to leave them
behind. Fancy it's only occurring to me now!"

She was hurrying out. But the sergeant-major got in the way and held up
his watch in her face.

"Look here!" he said. "If you don't stir your stumps you'll miss your
train."

She was alarmed: "Good heavens, yes, of course! I'm going. Good bye,
Schumann! Look after everything, and--and--good bye."

Standing on tiptoe she reached up for a kiss from her husband and was
quickly out of the door.

Schumann drew a long breath. She was his dear wife, but now that he had
to say farewell to the battery he preferred to be alone, without her.

He stood still in the doorway.

A driver had just brought two horses out of the stable and was
harnessing them to the furniture van.

Schumann had not taken much to do with the horses of late years; he
knew that they were thoroughly well cared for under Heppner's
superintendence, and the deputy sergeant-major was rather apt to resent
any interference with his department. But he would have failed in his
duty if he had not, in spite of this, kept himself informed of all that
concerned the horses; if, in fact, he had not been individually
acquainted with each one of them.

Sergeant Schumann went down the steps. He must begin his
leave-taking--so he would first say good-bye to the horses.

Slowly he passed between the stalls. At that moment the strong smell of
the stable seemed to him more delicious than the most fragrant scent,
more delicious than the resinous forest breeze which blew through the
valley where the little station of the mountain railway lay surrounded
by pine woods.

There stood the beautiful creatures side by side in splendid condition
and with coats like satin. Nearly all of them were dark bay, and
according to temperament they stood stolidly staring before them, or
pawed impatiently at the straw, or playfully bit and teased each other.
Only four stalls were empty. "Sybille" and "Achat" were drawing his
belongings to the station. Another pair had been borrowed by Major
Schrader, who had been invited to a hunting party on a neighbouring
estate.

Last he came to his own riding-horse in the loose box, a pretty
creature with four white fetlocks, who was rather nervous, and
unusually tender-mouthed. Baldwin shrank from the man in the dark brown
suit, and it was only when the sergeant-major spoke that the animal
recognised him. Even then he was shy, and sugar and bread failed to re
assure him. Schumann called him by his pet name, rubbing his cheek
against the velvet nostrils, and then only did the horse become quiet.
The sergeant-major could have shed tears. But he wanted to make an end
of it, and clear out from these barracks, where he no longer had his
place. Lingeringly he quitted the stable, and going out on to the
parade-ground, stood once more before the battery's memorial tablet.
The sixth was one of the oldest batteries; there were therefore a
goodly number of skirmishes and battles engraved upon the tablet. Sedan
was the most disastrous and at the same time the most glorious day--the
day on which the battery had fired nearly eight hundred shots, so that
by evening the gunners had become so deaf that they could hardly
understand the orders which were shrieked into their ears.

Oh yes, it had been an honour to belong to the battery, and it was only
right that in times of peace also the sixth should always have been an
example for others.

"To commemorate the fallen; to inspire the living!" he read softly.

He nodded in earnest assent; then turned round suddenly and re
entered his house.

He put on his overcoat hastily, and seized his hat and stick. Then he
locked up, and knocked at the deputy sergeant-major's door, in order to
give up the keys.

Frau Heppner was alone.

"Are you just going, Herr Schumann?" she asked softly.

The sergeant-major nodded, and said: "I am putting the keys here, in
front of the looking-glass."

Then he went up to the sofa on which the invalid was lying and took her
hand. "Good-bye, Frau Heppner."

"Good-bye," answered the woman; and whispering softly she added: "And
as we shall not meet again, I must thank both you and your wife."

"But what for?"

The invalid was silent for a moment, then she replied: "Well, when
one's own house has always been a perfect hell, one learns to
appreciate the peace and quiet of others. At least, it helps one to see
there is something better than one's own lot."

The sergeant was silent. What could he say to the unhappy woman?

"So, good-bye, Herr Schumann!" she went on. "I sincerely wish you
well!"

Schumann breathed more freely as the door closed behind him. He felt
deeply for the poor woman, and was relieved to have got over the
parting from her.

With the giving up of the key the last cord was loosened which had
bound him to the battery and to the military life as a whole.
Everything else had already been done.

The evening before there had been a small _fête_, to which the captain
and the two subalterns had invited him and all the non-commissioned
officers of the battery. Then in the morning, in the presence of the
officers, including the colonel, and before all the men of the
regiment, the good-service cross, which the king had granted him, had
been handed him by the commanding officer; he had also received
permission to wear his old uniform at any patriotic festivities.
The colonel had spoken of him warmly as a pattern soldier, and had
concluded with a cheer for the emperor and the king. Then the
sergeant-major had requested that he, on his side, might be allowed to
say a few words; and with a voice which failed many times he led a
cheer for the beloved regiment, and especially for the splendid sixth
battery. Afterwards handsome presents were given him: from Wegstetten
and the two lieutenants a beautiful gold watch; from Major Schrader a
heavy gold chain for it; from the non-commissioned officers an album
with views of the town and the barracks, and with photographic groups
of officers, non-commissioned officers, men, and horses. Finally, the
commanding officer presented to him that service sabre which he had
worn for ten long years, to be now his own private property.

He had only been able to thank them by a silent grasp of the hand, for
fear that if he spoke he would begin to cry like a girl. Afterwards he
had also said farewell to all the men. So now he was ready and could
go.

It was about half an hour before the time for the afternoon drill. As
Schumann entered the parade-ground he heard a voice shout from the
steps: "The sergeant-major is going!" And in a moment all came running
towards him, the drivers and gunners, old stagers and raw recruits, the
entire battery crowding round to shake hands with him once more.

Again the sergeant-major had to clench his teeth; he passed silently
along, shaking the hands that were stretched out to him.

Suddenly he stopped in astonishment, thinking he must be mistaken. But
no, Wolf was there too--Wolf, the social-democrat, whose whole
existence as a soldier was a cynical mask, the revolutionist who was
only waiting for the moment when, free from the green uniform, he might
preach his faith again! And he, Schumann, had never been at any pains
to conceal what he thought of such disgraceful opinions.

Wolf had not exactly run up, but had come with the rake over his
shoulder with which he had been raking the riding-ground, and was at
any rate associating himself with the others.

"What, you too, Wolf?" Schumann involuntarily exclaimed.

"Yes, sir," answered the soldier. "You never were hard on any-one. You
were always just."

Schumann was just a little bit shamefaced at this obviously sincere
praise. Generally speaking, he had honestly tried to deserve it; but
with regard to this social-democrat, he knew quite well he had many
times been lacking in justice. He remembered how often, when Wolf's
turn came, he had ordered him to perform some specially unpleasant
work.

Embarrassed and hesitating, he replied: "Well, well, and you have
always been a good soldier yourself, at any rate in externals. Only
that you--well, there was no getting at you there!"

It was a good thing that after Wolf others came up to grasp his hand in
farewell; or else, notwithstanding order, watch, and sabre, he would
have left the barracks with a bad conscience.

The last, who kept on moving further down in order to be the very last
to say good bye, was Niederlein, a smart little gunner, who had
polished his accoutrements for him during the last year.

The sergeant-major pressed his hand with special heartiness, and
breathed freely: Thank God, Niederlein made up for Wolf! Once when ill,
and left alone in the dormitory, Niederlein had broken open a locker
and appropriated a piece of sausage therefrom. Schumann had caught him
red-handed. Thieving from a comrade was a serious offence, entailing
severe punishment and public disgrace; but Schumann knew Niederlein was
only thoughtless and greedy, and it had been more a stupid prank than a
crime, for the money which lay near the sausage was untouched. So he
had held the boy across the table and given him five-and-twenty strokes
with his leather belt. He was not quite clear in his mind whether this
had been entirely in order--it might have been technically an assault;
at any rate it turned out right. Niederlein was now about the best
soldier in the whole battery, and would have, gone through fire and
water for the sergeant-major.

The lad watched awhile how Schumann went slowly out through the back
gateway and disappeared into the little wood. Then he hurried off to
his quarters, for the battery was collecting for foot-drill.

Schumann had purposely chosen to go to the town by the lonely way
through the wood, because if he had gone by the high road he would have
met the battery officers again. That would have meant another delay;
and then besides he felt he belonged far more to the men than to the
officers, despite his double stripes.

He paused on the hill and gazed at the well-known landscape beneath
him, where in the foreground lay the great drill-ground at his feet.

With his sharp eyes he could even recognise individual men. The fourth
battery had just brought its six guns up to the gate; the fifth had not
stirred as yet--Captain Mohr was not fond of duty so soon after dinner;
and now his own battery, the sixth, arrived on the ground to perform
foot-drill. The ornaments on the helmets shimmered in the sun, and he
almost fancied he could hear the even tread. Wegstetten and the two
lieutenants were behind.

The drill began, and the breaking up into files, the deployment, and
finally the parade-march, first in file and then in battery column--all
went splendidly. It was a joy to look down upon the smart, well-ordered
straight lines as they moved. Instead of himself, Heppner marched in
the sergeant-major's place, and Keyser, as the senior non-commissioned
officer present, led the file of drivers instead of  the deputy
sergeant-major.

All was thoroughly well done, there was not a hitch anywhere.

And he, Schumann, had believed that he was indispensable, he had
thought things could not go on without him!


At supper Julie Heppner said to her husband: "Otto, the money you give
us for housekeeping isn't enough. Ida couldn't pay the milkman to-day."

"No affair of mine," replied the deputy sergeant-major, with his mouth
full. "You must manage things better."

When he had finished eating he put his coat on, buckled on his sabre
and put on his forage cap.

His wife watched him from the sofa with angry eyes as he brushed his
heavy beard and put on his gloves.

Heppner looked her straight in the face, laughed scornfully and said:
"Yes, you are thinking again: 'Now he is going to the public-house and
will spend all the bit of money!' Well, as it happens, it's not so this
time. But you had better believe it all the same, and make yourself
really angry."

This perpetual lack of money was, however, no joke to the sister-in-law
either, as she was always having to put off and conciliate the
creditors, and she joined in angrily: "It's the truth! You squander the
money and we have to manage as best we can."

Heppner went round behind her and mockingly retorted: "So you're
beginning to scold like your dear sister? It seems to be catching. But
I'll tell you how it is: there was a good lot of the farewell beer left
over yesterday, and I saved it up for myself. Now, who's right?"

He tapped his sister-in-law's round shoulder playfully, and added: "Who
knows? Perhaps to-morrow I may give you quite a lot of money."

With that he left the house.

He was in a good temper. It had long been a grievance to him that
Schumann--grumbling old plodder!--instead of packing up his few sticks
and being drafted into the civil service, should have remained so long
stuck fast to the battery, thus preventing his own promotion. Now at
last the old man had disappeared, and he was certain of becoming
sergeant-major.

To-day was a lucky day for him, he felt sure; and this must be taken
advantage of: a little game must be arranged for the evening.

Therefore, he had taken care only to invite men on whom he could
rely to this second instalment of the farewell drinking party: the
sergeant-major of the fifth battery, who imitated his chief in
drinking, and Trumpeter Henke of his own, the sixth battery, two
seasoned gamblers. The two other members of the party were to be the
landlord of the White Horse, and the fat baker, Kühn, who held the
contract for the white bread supplied to the regiment. To the baker in
particular he had allotted the _rôle_ of loser, as he had the most
money.

At the gate it suddenly occurred to Heppner that it would be much
pleasanter to walk the half-mile to the town in company, and he decided
to fetch the trumpeter.

Sergeant Henke was a lively young fellow, with a fresh, rosy face, a
flowing black beard and curly hair, rather beyond the regulation
length. He was of a handsome soldierly appearance, and contrasted well
with his wife, Lisbeth, a beautiful blonde, who with her slender figure
always looked like a young girl.

This fair woman was blindly in love with her husband. She almost
worshipped him, but he did not trouble himself much about her. He
regarded himself as a great artist, because in the choir concerts he
played the cornet solos, and always received much applause from the
female part of the audience, and he considered that his marriage alone
had prevented him from becoming a "celebrity." Once he had received a
passionate love letter, signed by "a lady of high degree, who deplored
with tears of blood" the dividing difference of rank between them. It
was transparently the coarse work of a practical joker; but Henke in
his conceit believed in the high-born heiress, and this dream quite
turned his head. He ever afterwards posed as a fine gentleman, ogled
all the elegant women of the town, and had hardly a glance left for his
wife. She worked and pinched for him in order that he might be able to
enjoy his aristocratic tastes, and thought herself happy because he
bore with her. And he was always urging her to work and earn money, as
he longed to become rich and be the equal of really fashionable people.

Gambling was to help him to this; besides, in itself it gave him
intense pleasure.

He was ready dressed to go out, and was only lingering before the
looking-glass, when he heard outside the signal-whistle with which
Heppner, his boon-companion, was accustomed to call him. He soon joined
the deputy sergeant-major in the street, and after a brief greeting the
two walked rapidly towards the town.

A few steps from the White Horse the trumpeter suddenly stopped, felt
in his pocket, and exclaimed, "Damnation! I've left my money behind at
home!"

"Never mind!" said Heppner, in his genial mood. "You shall eat and
drink free to-day, and I'll lend you a thaler into the bargain. There,
catch hold!"

He gave him the piece of money before they reached the door, and the
trumpeter rejoiced: borrowed money brought luck.

The landlord of the Horse had laid the table neatly in the little
parlour. The leavings of the previous evening had been freshly dished
up, and the barrel, which must still contain nearly forty litres of
beer, had been cooled with ice.

But only one of the five banqueters was in the vein--Blechschmidt,
sergeant-major of the fifth battery. He was still eating and drinking
when the four others were already sitting at the half-cleared table
playing cards.

"Something moderate to begin with!" the master baker Kühn had
suggested; so each one put down three marks.

It was a long time before the last fifty-pfennig piece was played out
of the pool; but Heppner triumphed. He had been right in his
premonition; when he counted his money he had won nearly two marks.

After this exertion the players took a little refreshment, and while
eating talked the game over.

Heppner swallowed his bread and meat eagerly, and the last plate had
hardly been cleared before he began, his eyes twinkling craftily, "And
what next, gentlemen?"

The master baker laughed pleasantly and replied, "Well, as we've been
lying low, we may afford to let ourselves go a bit now."

Thereupon the landlord bolted the door and saw that the shutters were
firmly closed. They drew closer together, and even Blechschmidt came
nearer.

The players bent over the table, their eyes followed the dealing of the
cards with eagerness, their faces glowed. They lighted their fresh
cigars on the stumps of the old ones, and when their throats became
parched from excitement, they gulped down rapid draughts of the beer,
which was gradually becoming flat and muddy as it flowed from the tap
into the glasses.

They had lost all thought of time.

Suddenly Blechschmidt, the tireless toper, grumbled, "No, I shan't play
with you any more. Beer's best."

The landlord looked at the clock. "It is nearly five," he said.

None of them could believe it; they thought they had not been playing
above an hour at most.

But late or early they must finish the game, and they all heaved deep
breaths as the last round ended. While playing they had been quite
unconscious of the terrible fatigue, which, now that they had stopped,
utterly overpowered them.

Now they had to calculate the gains and losses of the night. The
trumpeter got through quickest. He tossed Heppner the borrowed thaler,
and laughed contentedly to himself. He had every reason to be cheerful,
he, who had not brought a single red pfennig with him, and who now had
more than a hundred marks--chiefly in silver, but with a few gold
pieces also--clinking in his pocket!

The other four had all lost. The deputy sergeant-major was quite thirty
marks poorer. He glanced darkly at the small sum which still lay before
him. How stupid he had been! He had thrown away his luck with the
thaler which he had lent Henke, that was quite certain. Now, instead of
himself, this fop had hauled in the fat baker's money. That was the
reward of his good nature!

Then suddenly Henke had an idea.

"Gentlemen!" he began, "I see that I have had tremendous luck. I must
really give some of it away."

He dug the sleepy landlord in the ribs, and shouted in his ear, "Now
then, Anton! I want two bottles of champagne."

The landlord was quite alert in a moment. He stood to win by this sort
of play.

"Bring the most expensive!" trumpeted the trumpeter. "Eleven marks the
bottle, Henke!"

"No matter! What our officers can do I can do also. Bring it along!"

Mine host hurried down into his cellar and fetched two bottles of
Pommery from the furthermost corner, a good dry brand with which
horse-dealers sometimes christened a concluded bargain.

There was no more ice to be had; so he opened the bottle as it came out
of the cellar. The cork sprang to the ceiling with a loud pop, and the
wine poured from the neck like a fountain.

The two sergeants had given the word of command, "Fire!" as the cork
flew out, and the trumpeter had blown a fanfare. All five buried their
noses in their glasses and let them be tickled by the rising bubbles.
Then they drank off the wine, which was far too warm, and could not
praise it enough.

The trumpeter, who was always imitating the officers, considered
himself a judge of wine. He smelt the champagne, let it lie on his
tongue, while at the same time his face took on an enraptured
expression, and he shouted enthusiastically, "Gentlemen, gentlemen! in
this bouquet one recognises the true French brand. It is utterly
different from German champagne!"

The others imitated his action and were in complete agreement with him.

Only Kühn remarked discontentedly, "The hog-wash tastes like bitter
almonds!"

At which the landlord took offence. "Don't you know then, baker," he
snarled, "that that is just the way to know genuine French champagne?"

And he looked lovingly at the two corks which he had placed carefully
in a corner.


When Captain von Wegstetten entered the orderly-room on the morning of
April 1st, he at once said to the deputy sergeant-major, "What is the
matter with you? You look quite green."

Heppner answered, "Excuse me, sir, my wife has had a very bad night."

"Indeed!" drawled Wegstetten. "I am sorry to hear it."

But to himself he thought: "If that is at all true, the man must have
been consoling himself with whisky; one can smell it five paces away
from him."

However, the captain offered to let him dispense with riding; but
Heppner objected, and begged to be allowed to take part in the drill.
He felt that would help him to shake off his unpleasant sensations; an
hour's ride and he would be fresh again. A fine thing if a night's
dissipation could really upset a man like himself!

His commanding officer was pleased at such enthusiasm; and as during
the drill the deputy sergeant-major managed his horse--the most
troublesome of all the remounts--exceedingly well, he remarked to him,
"Heppner, I think I shall be able to bring you some good news at noon."

Afterwards it occurred to him that he had intended to raise objections
to the colonel with regard to Heppner's elevation to the rank of
sergeant-major, but now that he had committed himself to the man this
was no longer possible.

He did just mention his doubts in the colloquy with Falkenhein, but he
made no impression, and in the end the colonel himself covered the
retreat.

"What do you expect, my dear Wegstetten?" he said. "I ask you, just
take all your non-commissioned officers. Who is there you cannot accuse
of gambling? It is a fatal characteristic of these mongrels that they
will copy the officers, and unfortunately only in what is stupid or
bad. The fine gentlemen all play, drink, fool with women, gamble; it's
only a question of the one a little more, the other a little less."

Wegstetten objected modestly. "Pardon me, sir, not all. My old
sergeant-major----"

He got no further. Falkenhein interrupted quickly: "You mean Schumann?
Yes; there you are quite correct. But then he was the last of another
generation, one of the old type--steady, quiet, discreet, honest, and
trustworthy to the last fibre. But they are dying out, my dear
Wegstetten. Such perfect specimens of non-commissioned officers, that
used to be the rule, are now more and more the exception. I ask you for
the truth: since you entered the army, have our non-coms. become
better, or--well, less good? What do you say?"

"Less good, sir, unfortunately," replied the captain.

"Yes, unfortunately. Exactly my opinion."

The colonel rummaged among the papers lying on his desk, and selected
two.

"Now, my dear Wegstetten," he said, "here are the appointments. I can't
settle such details. That is not my business. I put it to you,
therefore; will you try with Heppner?"

"As you wish, sir."

"Good; I think you are right."

Falkenhein signed the document and gave it to the captain.

"There! now he is sergeant-major!" he said, and continued: "What I most
regret is, that you should partially lose him in the active work. That
was his real field. But a younger man cannot be promoted over his
head."

He took the second document and handed it to Wegstetten. "And here, at
the same time, is the other promotion. I have followed your advice.
Sergeant Heimert is to-day appointed deputy sergeant-major and relieved
of his present duty. He will report himself to you to-morrow.

"Thank you, sir," replied the captain.

Wegstetten stuck the documents into his sleeve and took leave. The
colonel accompanied him to the door and shook hands with him very
cordially.

The captain reflected, however, as he went down the steps, that every
one must have at least one fault. He, like the whole contingent, was of
opinion that Falkenhein was one of the finest officers in the army,
certain to become a major-general, if not a full general. And with an
artilleryman this was of double significance. But why, because a man
had had the good fortune to work under the sainted Moltke on the
general staff, he should, therefore, always describe anything that had
occurred since that time as "less good,"--that he could never
understand.

That evening after roll-call Heppner read out his own promotion to the
rank of sergeant-major, and that of Sergeant Heimert to the post of
deputy sergeant-major.

Everybody was surprised. Heimert? Who was Heimert? No one could say.

Ah! It went on: "Deputy sergeant-major Heimert will therefore be
relieved from his management of the forage department of the infantry
and artillery ammunition columns and will return to his battery."

So it really was that fellow with the gigantic nose, who was always
slouching about the coach-houses and baggage sheds!

Heppner returned to the orderly-room and sat down at his table, on
which lay a mass of unfinished writing. Now the wakeful night was
making itself felt. The sergeant yawned and took up his work
unwillingly. Evidently the post of sergeant-major had some drawbacks!
To be kept shut up in this room! It was not pleasant to retire from
drill, riding remounts, giving riding-lessons, and leading a line in
driving exercises--all that had been so much after his own heart. And
this eternal scribbling would be altogether against the grain.

If only he had a clever clerk, like Blechschmidt of the fifth battery,
who did not over-exert himself! But Käppchen was a lazy fellow; and yet
on Käppchen he must rely, asking his advice about all kinds of things,
because he himself did not know the routine yet.

It was very late before he locked his desk and went home.

His sister-in-law greeted him with news which did not improve his
temper. "The tailor has been here," she said, "and wanted the money for
your uniform, which you have owed for a month. He will come again
to-morrow."

Heppner grumbled: "The fellow must wait!" He had no more money. It had
nearly all vanished yesterday, and to-day he had been obliged to give
the greater part of what remained to the women for housekeeping.

With a surly face he sat down to his supper.

"Have you been made sergeant-major?" his wife asked.

He saw his sister-in-law's eyes too fixed on him questioningly. He
muttered, "Yes," to her, and then turned roughly on his wife: "What
business is it of yours?"

She lay back, and answered gently: "I am so glad." "Really?" he
sneered. He cast a sharp glance at her and snarled between his teeth:
"Don't gush!"

Then he pushed his plate away, tossed off two glasses of beer, and lay
down to rest in the bedroom.

The two sisters remained together, the invalid stretched on the sofa,
the other sewing near the lamp. They heard Heppner snoring.

His wife's face was in shadow, but her eyes blazed at her sister
and rested with an uncanny expression of hatred on the strong,
well-developed beauty of the young girl.

There was a knock at the door. The battery tailor had brought the
sergeant-major's tunic, on the sleeve of which he had stitched the
double stripes. Ida took it from him and hung it up silently.

The invalid watched her indifferently. A short time before she had been
mildly excited with joy at her husband's promotion; he had quite spoilt
this feeling for her. Now she was callous to everything.

Suddenly she pressed her lips together and clenched her hands
feverishly.

Had not her sister just handled his tunic lingeringly with a kind of
furtive tenderness?

Had the scandal already gone so far?


Julie Heppner believed that she would die betrayed and forsaken by all;
but during her last days she gained a sympathetic friend in the newly
appointed deputy sergeant-major Heimert.

Heimert had taken possession of the Schumanns' empty house. True that
at the time he was still single; but as his marriage was to take place
in a few weeks, the captain had at once allotted married quarters to
him. Now the deputy sergeant-major was furnishing the rooms and decking
the bare walls and windows with touching care. He would arrange and
rearrange the furniture, and would drape a curtain a thousand different
ways, and yet nothing was ever beautiful enough for him.

On holidays he was seldom able to visit his sweetheart, Albina Worzuba.
At other times he devoted every spare hour to her; but she was the
barmaid of a small tavern in the town, and had no time to spare for him
on holidays. Besides, Heimert did not like watching how the guests
would go up to the counter for glasses of beer, and joke with Albina,
or even dare to pinch her cheeks. He had on several occasions made
scenes about this till the landlord had almost forbidden him the place.
Albina herself, too, advised him to come as seldom as possible. She
considered that as long as she was a barmaid she must be friendly, and
not too sensitive to the chaff of the guests; and if it pained him to
see this, it was better that he should remain away. And with an ardent
glance she added that when she was his wife he would have her all to
himself. Heimert had constrained himself to agree to this.

On one of these Sundays it befell that Heimert was startled from his
carpentering by the sound of a groan. He went outside and listened; the
moaning sounds came from Heppner's quarters. He burst the door open and
entered.

The sick woman had been left alone. Her sister had gone for a walk, and
the sergeant-major was doubtless at a public-house. Such neglect of her
had often occurred before; but this time she had suddenly been seized
by an attack of pain so severe that she thought she was dying.

To die alone! With no one even to hold her hand; without a ray of light
from a living eye to brighten the dark porch of death!

Between the attacks of pain she called feverishly and breathlessly for
her husband: "Otto! Otto! Otto!!"

Heimert ran to her anxiously. He gave her his hand, which she seized
and held convulsively, spoke to her soothingly, and wiped the drops of
sweat from her brow with his handkerchief.

He quietly gave her time to recover from her exhaustion, then said to
her gently: "Frau Heppner, would you like me to send to find your own
people?"

She shook her head energetically: "No, no!" and whispered wearily: "But
if you would only stay just a little while, Herr Heimert!"

The sergeant nodded, and remained sitting silently beside her.

It was some time before Julie Heppner had the strength to explain to
him what had happened to her. While so doing she looked at him more
attentively, and was almost frightened by his ugliness. The coarse face
with the outstanding ears was made half grotesque, half repellent, by
an enormous nose, which was always red. What did it matter that two
beautiful, kindly child-like eyes shone from this countenance? Would
any one trouble to look for them in the midst of such hideousness?

The invalid remembered she had heard that Heimert was going to be
married. In the light of her own unhappiness she thought to herself
that this marriage could only turn out well if the man had chosen a
woman as ugly as himself, so that in their common misfortune the pair
could comfort each other.

As she gradually became able to talk to him she inquired about his
bride, and the enamoured swain raved to her unceasingly of Albina's
beauty and charm.

Heimert now appeared to her as a fellow-sufferer; only she was about to
lay down the heavy burden, and he was but just going to take the load
upon his back.

The two talked together as if they had known each other for years; they
were nearly always of the same opinion. Finally, the invalid invited
the deputy sergeant-major to come over often when she was alone; she
would always give him a sign, and he could bring his carpenter's bench
with him, the hammering would not disturb her in the least.

After this, Heimert always appeared directly Julie Heppner called him.
He gained distraction from his jealous fits in this way, and he thought
the sergeant-major's wife a really good woman, who had been unfortunate
enough to marry the wrong man, when with another she would perhaps have
been happy. The brutality with which Heppner treated the dying woman
was revolting to him, and his sympathy with the injured wife gradually
inspired him with a positive hatred for the sergeant-major.

The sergeant-major laughed at Heimert. "The Prince with the Nose" he
called him, and sneered at his wife about this "lover."

"You two would have suited each other well!" he jeered. "You would have
nothing to reproach each other with in the way of beauty!"

One day in passing he looked into the neighbouring quarters, and found
the deputy sergeant-major gazing at a cabinet photograph of his
betrothed. Heimert, startled, tried quickly to hide the portrait; but
Heppner begged to see it.

He had expected to see a girl,--well, something like his wife, or
perhaps uglier, for surely it would be impossible for any one else to
fall in love with Heimert; but as he took the picture in his hand an
involuntary expression of surprise escaped him: "By Jove! Isn't she
beautiful!"

From that moment he was always asking Heimert to take him with him to
see his sweetheart.

"Why?" Heimert asked suspiciously. "Do you want to cut me out with
her?"

Heppner laughed at him. "The devil!" he said. "I have two women in the
house myself, and that's more than enough. Surely one may make the
acquaintance of a comrade's sweetheart?"

"And," he added craftily, "have you so little confidence in her, then?"

Heimert burst out: "Oh, that's not the reason!"

"Well then," said the other, "you know you won't be able to lock her up
and hide her when she is your wife. Where's the harm in my just saying
good-day to her?"

The deputy sergeant-major was forced to agree that there was really
nothing against it. Moreover he was rather proud of having won such a
beautiful girl; he enjoyed see

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