A Little Garrison: A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day
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Title: A Little Garrison: A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day
Author: Fritz Oswald Bilse
Translator: Wolf von Schierbrand
Release date: February 10, 2010 [eBook #31248]
Most recently updated: January 6, 2021
Language: English
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A Little Garrison
A REALISTIC NOVEL _of_ GERMAN ARMY LIFE of TO-DAY
By FRITZ VON DER KYRBURG (Lieutenant Bilse) · _Translated, Edited and
with a Special Introduction by_ WOLF VON SCHIERBRAND Author of
"GERMANY: THE WELDING OF A WORLD POWER," "THE KAISER'S SPEECHES,"
ETC., ETC.
_NEW YORK_ · FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY · _Publishers_
_Copyright, 1904,_
BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY.
_All rights reserved._
This edition published in January, 1904.
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
Contents
PAGE
INTRODUCTION vii
CHAPTER
I. An Evening Party at Captain König's 1
II. What Happened at the Casino Dance 29
III. The Consequences of a May Bowl 63
IV. The Case of Sergeant Schmitz 80
V. Officers at a Masquerade 140
VI. A Sensational Event stirs the Garrison 161
VII. An Airy Structure Collapses 207
VIII. Changes in the Garrison 264
IX. Resignations are in Order 282
X. Unto This Last 301
Introduction
In his book, _Le Débâcle_, Zola shows in a vivid and intelligible
manner the downfall of Napoleon III. and his army, and paints in his
usual matter-of-fact tints the actual condition of the great host led
forth to destruction. He makes us read in the soul of the common
French soldier and in that of his commanding officer. The keen
analysis of the characters he portrays enables us humanly to
understand the catastrophe on the plains of Sedan. The whole Second
Empire undermined by corruption; the army, head and front, honeycombed
with loose morals, favoritism, and boundless conceit,--we begin to
perceive the main reasons underlying the utter defeat of a gallant
nation. And this all the more when, side by side with the sombre
painting of Zola, we read the God-fearing letters written home from
the reeking battlefields by William I. and his Iron Chancellor.
Indeed, when the conquering German legions returned, in the spring of
1871, to their own firesides, they presented a body of men of whom any
nation might have been proud. Elated they were at their unparalleled
successes, but not puffed-up or vainglorious.
A generation has passed since then. Is the German army of to-day still
of the same metal? Does it, as a body, still show the same sterling
qualities which led it to victory after victory on the soil of France?
Alas, no. On that point the best and clearest minds in Germany itself
are agreed. Foreign military leaders who have had opportunity to watch
the German soldier of to-day at play and at work, have sent home
reports to their respective governments, saying: "These are not the
men that won in 1870!"
A couple of years ago several American officers of high rank, fresh
from the Philippines, witnessed the great autumn manoeuvres of the
German army, conducted under the supreme command of William II. One of
them, after viewing in stark amazement the senseless attacks of whole
cavalry divisions up steep declivities or down slippery embankments,
exposed all the while to a withering fire from the rifles of infantry
masses, said to the present writer: "If this were actual war, not a
horse or man would be left alive!"
In the Reichstag, the national parliament of Germany, many have been
the heated debates and scorching has been the bitter satire passed
during recent years upon the German army of to-day. And not only the
solid phalanx of Socialists did the criticising on such occasions, but
also not a few members of every other party, even including those of
the Conservative Faction, composed of men who are the very
representatives of the caste from which the Empire's corps of officers
have sprung.
The German newspaper press has sounded of late years, again and again,
the note of alarm, dwelling in scathing articles on signs of decadence
in the nation's whilom pride,--the army. It has pointed out the
growing spirit of luxury in its ranks, the wholesale abuse of power by
the officers and sergeants, the looseness of discipline, the havoc
wrought by "army usurers," the "money marriages," so much in vogue
with debt-ridden officers, the hard drinking and lax morals
prevailing, the gaming for high stakes, which is another festering
sore, and leads to the ruin of so many,--and a whole train of other
evils. The professional, that is, the military, press has joined in
this chorus in more subdued tones.
Throughout the length and breadth of the Empire a spirit of disquiet,
nay, of apprehension, has spread. Are the very foundations trembling
on which the reunited "fatherland" rests?
If any reliance can be placed on an unbroken chain of evidence it
would seem so indeed.
It was in 1786 that Frederick the Great died, leaving an army that he
had raised to the pinnacle of fame. With this army he had faced and
vanquished, standing at bay against almost the whole of continental
Europe, his powerful foes. Little Prussia, a straggling strip of
territory stretching from the ice-bound Niemen to the vine-clad Rhine,
Frederick's genius had lifted until it took rank with the powers that
prescribe laws to the world.
A score of years later, just one short score, the hills of Jena
looked down upon the crushing, disgraceful defeat of this same
Prussian army. The country was dismembered, and as a political force
ceased to exist. The heel of the Corsican despot was on its neck. Even
after the restoration of Prussia by the Vienna Congress in 1815, it
required another half-century to give her back her lost prestige.
Sadowa and Sedan reinstated Prussia, and with her the allied states of
Germany in her former glory.
* * * * *
Is another Jena coming?
Are we on the eve of another international upheaval?
* * * * *
A little book has recently appeared in Germany. Its title is
unpretentious. _Aus einer kleinen Garnison_ ("A Little Garrison") does
not sound very sensational. The book, besides, was written by a simple
lieutenant, Bilse by name. There was apparently nothing to arouse
public attention in its appearance.
And yet, from the instant of its publication, this little book _did_
arouse such attention; more than that, it grew into an enormous
sensational event, and led to developments of such a serious
character that their consequences will be felt for many years to come.
Indeed it seems likely that this little book will indirectly be the
means of the moral reformation of the entire German army.
Shortly after its appearance the authorship of Lieutenant Bilse, who
had written under the pen name of Fritz von der Kyrburg, was
discovered. A court-martial was promptly convened, and he was summoned
to appear before this military tribunal.
Mail reports now to hand of this memorable trial show that it created
intense interest in Germany, that it was regarded, indeed, as a _cause
célèbre_ of the first magnitude. The interest in the case was largely
due to the belief that Lieutenant Bilse's novel--for he had given his
terrible arraignment of the army the outward semblance of a
novel--presented a true, if highly unflattering, picture of conditions
as they exist in many German garrison towns. This impression was borne
out by the evidence, which tended to corroborate the account given by
Lieutenant Bilse of the moral tone and the standard of discipline
prevailing among the officers. Part of the revelations have not been
made public, as the examination of some witnesses was conducted _in
camera_. It is understood that their evidence was of a highly
sensational character.
In his examination, Lieutenant Bilse stated that since entering the
service he had "lost all his illusions concerning the character and
duties of an officer's calling." He declared that the social and
regimental tone of the frontier garrison towns was extremely low, and
that the repeated instances of lax discipline, favoritism, and loose
living which he had observed had provoked him to write his book.
In not a single instance were the facts of the various incidents and
events which form, grouped in a loose tissue, the body of his book
disproved or even weakened by the testimony produced at the trial.
Nevertheless the court-martial sentenced the young officer to six
months' imprisonment and to dismissal from the service "for libelling
his superior and commanding officers by the publication of writings in
a peculiarly offensive and damaging form, and also for a breach of
service regulations."
The lieutenant was undoubtedly guilty of a breach of regulations, as
an officer in Germany is prohibited from publishing any printed matter
except over his true name, and is required to give notice of his
intention to the military authorities,--a rule which the young man had
violated.
The German press, in its comments on the case, admits that it has an
importance far beyond the person of the accused.
The Berlin _Post_, one of the chief organs of the aristocracy in
Germany, said:
"In the interest of the army's good name it is urgently
requisite that abuses such as have been partly disclosed
should be speedily and thoroughly eradicated."
The Berlin _Tageblatt_, a leading paper, said:
"Lieutenant Bilse's book should be seriously pondered in
high places."
The _Vossische Zeitung_, one of the oldest and most respected journals
at the German capital, made this comment:
"That such things could be possible in German military corps
would have seemed impossible to the most malevolent critic
... the public confidence must be restored."
The Hamburg _Nachrichten_, Bismarck's old organ, says:
"We regret to admit that the picture is not overdrawn."
And that is the tenor of all the comment of the entire German press.
In the neighboring countries, in the house of Germany's friends,
Austria and Italy, the comment was even more outspoken; while in
France and Russia, although their political affiliations are not
precisely friendly to Germany, more forbearance was shown.
The Bilse book and the Bilse case have since formed the theme of
divers debates in the Reichstag. On an interpellation from some of the
delegates, the Minister of War, General von Einem, made some
interesting admissions. He did not deny that Bilse had stated, in the
guise of fiction, established facts; nor did he repudiate the
statement that the conditions described by the author existed in
duplicate form or worse in many garrisons of the empire.
The Kaiser himself was forced, much against his will, to take notice
of Bilse's book. A detailed report was made to him by the chief of his
Private Military Cabinet, General von Hülsen-Häseler, on all the
essential facts underlying the plot of _A Little Garrison_. He
expressed himself as much grieved at the terrible revelations in it.
In their totality they presented a state of facts of which he himself,
thoroughly acquainted as he had deemed himself to be with conditions
in his army, had been ignorant.
The immediate outcome of this conviction on his part was the issuance
of a secret decree directed to the various commanders of the
twenty-three army corps composing his army. In this decree he called
the attention of these commanders to the awful conditions laid bare in
Bilse's book, and bade them watch hereafter with greater zeal over the
morals and discipline of their various corps. The decree he ordered to
be read by each commanding colonel to his subordinate officers,
threatening with expulsion from the army any officer who should
hereafter be guilty of such heinous behavior as exemplified by the
characters in Bilse's book.
It might, therefore, be supposed that a thorough reform of the whole
moral status of the German army was now under way, or that it had been
at least initiated by this action of the Kaiser. Certainly, there is
no one in all Germany who takes a deeper interest than he in the
welfare of his army, or who has a profounder conviction of its
importance in maintaining the empire's proud position as a world
power. On many occasions the Kaiser has emphasized his belief that
this, "the most precious legacy" left him by his grandfather, must be
kept intact to secure his own throne and the nation's predominance in
the heart of Europe.
* * * * *
But it would be short-sighted to assume this. The causes that have
been at work for thirty years past, undermining and honeycombing the
whole structure of the German army, are too manifold, too much
ingrained in the very fibre of the German people of to-day, and too
complex to yield at the mere bidding of even so imperious a voice as
the Kaiser's. Bilse, in his book, lays a pitiless finger on the ulcers
that have been festering and growing in the bosom of the army; but his
story, after all, is that of only one small garrison, and refers to
but a brief period in the very recent past.
It may be worth while, in order to give the reader a more
comprehensive and more general view of conditions in the German army
of to-day, briefly to survey some patent facts.
The wide spread of the gambling spirit is one of these. Against it the
Kaiser has inveighed in army orders since his accession to the throne,
but all in vain. This evil spirit is as strong to-day as ever. It was
but a few years ago that a monster trial took place in Hanover. It
showed a frightful state of rottenness within even the most renowned
regiments--those of the Guard Corps, in which the scions of nobility
hold it an honor to serve. The details of this trial were a shock to
the whole country, and it ended by dismissal or expulsion from the
army of a score of officers bearing, some of them, the most ancient
and honored names within the empire. Even one of the Kaiser's own
aides-de-camp issued from it with a reputation so besmirched as to
lead to his hasty retirement. More recently still the Club of
Innocents (_Club der Harmlosen_) became the cynosure of all eyes, but
unenviably so. It was not, strictly speaking, a military club, but it
counted in its membership list a majority of active army officers. I
will not go into details, but merely mention that one of the chief
victims of the diabolical machinations practised by a number of
high-titled black-legs--officers of this club--was young Prince
Alfred, a grandson of the late Queen Victoria, whose complete moral
and physical ruin was wrought, soon followed by his death. The Jockey
Club in Berlin, made up largely of officers, and similar organizations
in Potsdam, Charlottenburg, Hanover, Cassel, Dresden, Brunswick,
Cologne, and, in fact, nearly every other garrison town of any
importance within the empire, have all had their list of scandals
during recent years,--scandals brought about by unprincipled gamesters
belonging to their corps of officers. Probably several thousands of
resignations, semi-enforced retirements, or outright dismissals from
the army have been due during the last decade to this one evil of
high play alone.
The hard drinking indulged in throughout the army, to a degree which
to the ignorant outsider seems incredible, is another evil of perhaps
as great magnitude. Of that Bilse's book gives a faithful impression.
For these excessive drinking habits, and in an equal degree for the
luxurious habits of life, more particularly the indulgence in sybarite
banquets, the Kaiser himself must be held largely to blame, since, by
force of example at the many "love feasts" (_Liebesmähler_) and
anniversary celebrations of every kind which he not only attends at
the quarters of the various regiments throughout the German domain,
but which he very frequently arranges for or encourages himself, he
has taught his army officers a direful lesson. Certainly, the old
Spartan simplicity in food and drink which prevailed in German army
circles during the days of William I., grandfather of the present
ruler, has gone forever.
A direct outgrowth of the luxuriousness prevalent in the German army
of to-day is two other evils which in their consequences on the
morals of the officers can scarcely be overrated. They are epitomized
by the two words "army usury" and "money marriages." To live beyond
one's means leads to indebtedness. And there we have the simple
genesis of the army usurer, so-called. He exists and thrives in every
garrison in the empire, and the broad swath he mows within the ranks
of the army testifies to his diligence and to his successful methods.
It would be going too far to expatiate on this matter. Suffice it to
say that the system by which the usurer brings hundreds, nay
thousands, to disgrace and premature retirement from the army, usually
involving the impoverishment of the officers' families, is wellnigh
perfection in itself. Within his net are driven, at some time or
other, the vast majority of the younger men as well as a great many of
the older ones.
The favorite avenue of escape offered to the young spendthrift officer
is a so-called money marriage. He barters himself, his social
position, and the prestige which the ownership of an old and honored
name still carries with it in Germany, for the gold which his bride
brings him on the wedding day. Dowries must of course correspond in
some measure with the load of debt the young officer has been
accumulating for years, and also with his claims to distinction and
attractiveness. Such dowries vary between a paltry twenty thousand and
several million marks, strictly according to circumstances. There is
an unwritten code in force in this respect, every paragraph of which
is made and provided to cover the individual needs of such impecunious
officers. The matter is well understood throughout the land, and is
looked upon as an established institution, something in which
squeamish scruples are not allowed to interfere with concrete
requirements. No German maiden consciously feels the shame of being
thus made purely an object of barter and sale. She is to the manner
bred. But of course good, fat dowries are often taken by officers,
together with brides, who in other respects by no means realize their
ideas of what a wife should be. Enough said on this dreary subject!
Still another evil, and one which of late has been much ventilated in
Germany, is the abuse of power by officers and non-commissioned
officers towards their subordinates. There has always been too much
of this in the German army, and it would carry us too far afield to
trace here the causes. In itself it seems a strange anomaly that in an
army which calls itself by the proud term of a "nation in arms," and
whose membership is recruited from every stratum of society, there
should be such wholesale maltreatment of the privates by their
superior officers. And yet such is the fact, inexplicable as it seems
at first sight. Against this curse the Kaiser has likewise launched
his thunderbolts at some time or other. But they have had no effect.
If anything there has been an increase in such cases.
At a Reichstag session, in the middle of December, the Kaiser's
spokesman, General von Einem, made the formal admission that during
the preceding year no fewer than fifty officers and five hundred and
seventy-nine non-commissioned officers had been court-martialed and
sentenced for cruelly maltreating their subordinates. When we reflect
that scarcely in one case out of every hundred formal charges are
preferred by the victims, who know themselves completely in the power
of their tyrannous masters, the official record thus stated is indeed
appalling. But here again the Kaiser himself, as chief commander of
the army, must be held largely responsible; for his more than lenient
treatment of the convicted offenders is nothing less than a direct
encouragement to their fellows to continue in these fiendish
practices. One sergeant, a man by the name of Franzki, belonging to
the Eighty-fifth Regiment of the Infantry, was shown at the trial to
have been guilty of no less than twelve hundred and fifty individual
cases of cruelty and of one hundred cases of abuse of power. Another
man, Lieutenant Schilling, of the Ninety-eighth Regiment of Infantry,
stationed in Metz, had a record against him of over a thousand such
cases. Both men were recently tried and convicted, and the degree of
their punishment seems strangely inadequate. Yet in most instances the
Kaiser does not even allow these convicted offenders to serve out
their brief terms of confinement, but issues free pardons to them
after they have undergone but a small portion of their penalty.
However, from several points of view, the most serious evil of all
that has grown up within the German army since the close of the
Franco-German War of 1870-1871 is the cleavage in sentiment between
the army and the nation. That also has been demonstrable on many
occasions during recent years. I recall the case of Lieutenant von
Brüsewitz, of Carlsruhe. This young officer ran his sword through the
back of a defenceless civilian by whom he fancied himself insulted in
a restaurant, the man dying within a few hours of the deed. His
murderer attempted no other exculpation, or indeed explanation, than
by saying that according to the army code of honor he was forced to
avenge on the spot the insult offered him. Brüsewitz was sentenced to
merely a mild type of confinement for a term of two years, but was
pardoned by the Kaiser at the expiration of a twelvemonth. A more
recent case was that of a young navy lieutenant who likewise stabbed
to death with his sword a former schoolfellow and townsman who had not
saluted him on the street with sufficient ceremoniousness. That, he
said, was his only reason for killing the man, and he, too, received a
very mild sentence. Even worse was the case of two officers quartered
in a small garrison of the province of East Prussia, close to the
Russian border. These men, being somewhat in liquor on New Year's Eve,
mortally wounded one civilian and gravely wounded another for no other
reason than that these men had shouted a song distasteful to them, the
whole occurrence happening in the street after midnight. The officers
got off with a ludicrously small punishment.
Such facts as these--and they could be multiplied indefinitely--show,
above all, one thing: the striking difference in the conception of
what is termed "honor" obtaining between the officers in the army and
the bulk of the population, the citizen element. The so-called "army
code" embodies views which it is euphemism to call mediæval--remnants
of the dark ages. And yet these views are not excused; no, they are
upheld and endorsed by the Kaiser, his government, and by the army in
a body.
The "code" also brings about that other absurdity, the army duel, as a
mode of settling all serious "affairs of honor." About that enough has
been written in Germany itself to fill whole libraries, and yet the
foolish thing continues. The Kaiser, grown up in all the prejudices of
caste as held by his ancestors and by the present generation of the
upper classes in Germany, has done nothing to eradicate this evil. The
provisions made by him, and now carried out, for regulating the
practice of duelling in his army, have had only the effect of
rendering the duel as an institution still more respectable.
The main reason which impelled me to secure the authority for
presenting his little work in an English dress was the fact that it
tells a truthful tale about an organization of such first-rate
importance as the German army. It paints that organization not only as
he himself saw it, but as in its essential features it really is. In
doing this Lieutenant Bilse has not only rendered an enormous service
to his own country,--as indeed many thousands of Germans are
recognizing to-day,--but he has also enabled the rest of the world to
gain a clear insight into the inner mechanism of the most powerful
fighting-machine in the world, has shown its hidden flaws, its grave
organic defects, and has thus permitted us truly to gauge its
inherent power. But interwoven with his criticism there is the hope,
nay the conviction, that the main part of the machine is still sound.
A book of this kind, "written from the inside," has a strong merit of
its own not to be measured by its purely literary qualities; for
these, I am free to admit, are not of the highest order. There is
talent in it, when considering that it is the first effort of a
literary tyro; but its great value lies in its intense realism,
interpreting that word in its higher sense.
I have been compelled to make some alterations and omissions in my
work of translation. The omissions have been due to the conviction
both of myself and of my publisher, that the author has in certain
instances given a mass of unnecessary details to which serious
objection might be urged, in this country at least, on the score of
clean literary taste. The alterations were either dictated by similar
considerations or grew indirectly out of them.
With these exceptions mentioned, however, my translation may fairly
claim to be true to the spirit of the original. Even the strictest
moralist will not cavil at seeing equivocal situations painted in
Bilse's book when his purpose in doing so has been the radical
exposure of ills existing in a body around which cluster so many
traditions of honor and duty well done as is the case with the German
army. And there is no excuse to be offered by me for furthering that
task.
WOLF VON SCHIERBRAND.
NEW YORK, JANUARY 1, 1904.
A Little Garrison
CHAPTER I
AN EVENING PARTY AT CAPTAIN KÖNIG'S
Standing in the centre of her parlor, a spacious and cosy one, Frau
Clara König let her eyes glide over the arrangements made for the
reception of her guests.
For this was her regular _soirée musicale_, when she saw assembled
about her, one evening each week, those of her more intimate friends
who dallied habitually with Euterpe, loveliest of the Muses. To-night,
however, her invitations had not been so restricted, for she had asked
some other families to come, largely for the laudable purpose of
admiring the musical achievements of the "artists."
Here she placed a chair in its proper place; there she smoothed with
tapering fingers one or the other of the tidies, products of her own
skilful needle, which, in every hue and size, adorned the furniture.
She tested the various lamps; opened and shut piano and parlor organ
to convince herself of the absence of dust; and finally minutely
inspected sundry vases, deftly manipulating their lovely contents, so
that each flower and each enfolding leaf stood out to greatest
advantage. This was one of her specialties. At none of her parties,
even in mid-winter, was there a lack of tastefully grouped nosegays
and bits of green on mantel and corner brackets.
Frau Clara was a woman of about thirty, with a well-proportioned
figure and a rather pretty, rosy face. Her lively blue eyes and a
wealth of well-groomed hair combined to give her a look of pleasant
youthfulness.
These last touches done, she seated herself on a low stool, for her
thoughts pronounced it all good.
And now the heavy drapery was thrust aside, and her husband
appeared--a tall man with a black moustache. He, too, came to attend
to his share of the preparations. He lit up the chandelier. Usually he
gauged the number of gas jets lit by the number of guests expected,
one for each. But inasmuch as there were only five jets and about a
dozen guests to come, he indulged in the luxury of igniting them all.
He did this with various groans at the latest outrageous gas bill, and
next inspected the stoves. Then he also sank down into a seat.
Albrecht König was captain in the cavalry regiment quartered in the
town. His squadron was always in apple-pie order, for he devoted to it
his entire energy during waking hours. Brief intervals of leisure he
filled by glancing at the _Deutsche Zeitung_, studying the
money-market reports, toiling in the large garden behind the house,
which he always kept in almost as good order as his squadron, and
superintending his hennery, the useful output of which he sold to his
wife at more than current prices.[1] And if there was nothing else to
do, he had scientific skirmishes with his nine-year-old, attended
wine-tests,[2] or practised on the piano, an instrument which he
played almost as well as might have been wished by his friends.
[1] This has reference to the not uncommon habit in German
households, especially those of officers and the higher
classes, of keeping husband's and wife's exchequer strictly
separate.--TR.
[2] "Wine tests." In the wine-growing districts of Germany
men possessed of a delicate "wine tongue" delight in
attending public or private meetings where new vintages are
sampled and their prices and marketable qualities
determined.--TR.
A noise in the hall told of the arrival of the first guest. A heavy,
dragging step and a snorting breath told them who it was. The door
opened, and Agricultural Counsellor von Konradi made his appearance. A
rather fleshy sort of man, with glasses on his aristocratic nose, over
the tops of which his eyes sought the lady of the house. His hair was
dyed a fine dark shade, and envy proclaimed that this was done on
account of the fair sex; for he was unmarried. His two ideals in life,
however, were a good dinner and several bottles of even a better wine
to go with it. Since he realized both of these ideals in the captain's
house, he was fond of going there. As to the rest, he was held to be a
gentleman.
While he was at the critical point in a story embodying his profound
grief at the arrival from his estate of a pheasant in a scandalously
unripe condition, the door opened again and admitted the spouse of
Captain Kahle.
Of a dainty, petite figure, and with a face that seemed to belong to
a _gamin_, she presented on the whole a graceful enough _ensemble_.
But there were two drawbacks--her rather large mouth was wreathed in a
stereotyped smile, and when she opened it it gave utterance to a voice
of somewhat unpleasant, strident timbre.
Three youngish men followed on her heels. The first of them was
Lieutenant Pommer, who was somewhat of a general favorite because of
his unaffected, frank demeanor. Occasionally it became a trifle rough
or rude; but you always knew where you had him. With special ardor he
saluted Frau Kahle, and it looked almost droll to watch the contrast
between him, a burly, corpulent fellow, and this tiny, fragile figure
that resembled a Dresden china shepherdess.
The second one was Lieutenant Müller. Those who did not know him could
have guessed from his stiff, self-contained mien that he must be the
regimental adjutant. Housewives dreaded him, for his appetite was
Gargantuan. With stoic defiance of all warning glances he was in the
habit of demolishing thrice the quantity of the daintiest eatables
apportioned to each guest. After everybody else had put down his
fork, his invariable way was to help himself once more liberally,
saying it was his favorite dish.
The last of the trio was Lieutenant Kolberg, an amazingly pale young
man with _moustaches à la Kaiser_. He led a life against which
moralists might have urged arguments, and there had been various
scandals connected with his past.
While the other guests were waited for, a few groups were being
formed. Lieutenant Kolberg approached Frau Kahle and measured her from
top to toe with approval. The adjutant made a clever attempt to find
out from the hostess what particular dishes were in store for him.
Having ascertained this, he at once swore they were his special
delectation. Herr von Konradi was chatting with Captain König about a
wine-testing trip into the Moselle district which they were jointly
planning in order to replenish their respective cellars.
Another lady entered, one whose corpulency and unskilfully powdered
face and arms made an unpleasing contrast with a badly fitting robe
of black and yellow. She ran up to Frau Clara and squeezed her hand in
her wobbly fingers, expressing joy at the invitation. To the gentlemen
who sidled up to her one after the other she extended that same chubby
hand with a fatuous smile, but holding it so high that they could not
do otherwise than touch it with their lips.
This was Frau Captain Stark, the latest spouse in the regiment, though
probably past the demi-century line.
Her lord, likewise of rotund shape, came after her. He wore a black
Vandyke beard, and his special forte was a carefully trained and
extremely long nail on the little finger. It was said that this nail
demanded a goodly portion of his leisure hours. His voice told its own
story of bonhommie and unctuous Rhine wine.
Behind this couple hove in sight the figure of the commander.
Everybody stepped aside with a show of deference, and all around he
was saluted with deep bows, while he slowly stepped up to Captain
König and his lady. The bowlegs and the robust body were not relieved
by a face of finer mould, and thus it was that Colonel von Kronau
scarcely corresponded with the popular conception of a dashing cavalry
officer. Most striking about him was a tear that permanently glistened
in the corner of his eye. This tear he always allowed to grow to a
certain size, when he would, by a dexterous motion born of long
practice, propel it from its resting-place over at his _vis-à-vis_,
either at the latter's feet or in his face, as the case might be. It
largely depended on the size of the tear and the rank of his
_vis-à-vis_.
The lady who accompanied him and who had the face and manners of a
governess was his better half. She had squeezed herself on this
occasion into a dowdy dress of pearl-gray silk, with a purple collar
of velvet.
Almost simultaneously the remainder of the invited personages filed
in. There was First Lieutenant Borgert. His shifting eyes seldom
looked squarely at any one whom he deigned to address. He was fleshy,
but his movements were nevertheless elastic and suave. Behind him
stood First Lieutenant Leimann, under-sized and prematurely bent, with
a neck several sizes too short for him and a suspicion of deformity
between the shoulders. A pear-shaped head protruded from between them,
fitfully lit up by a pair of pig's eyes, which either restlessly shot
glances or else were so completely buried under their lids as to
become invisible. A monocle hung down his bosom from a broad ribbon,
but he never used it, for fear of becoming ridiculous.
These two gentlemen dwelt together in the same house, each occupying a
floor, and were inseparables. Though perennially short of cash, they
saw no reason to deny themselves the luxuries of this mundane sphere.
On the contrary, they lived like heirs to great fortunes.
"Pardon me, my gracious lady,"[3] remarked Leimann to the hostess,
"but my wife could not come immediately, having her old
complaint--nervous headache, you know!" In saying this he made a face
as though he didn't himself believe what he was saying. "But she will
doubtless come a bit later."
[3] "My gracious lady"--"Gnädige Frau"--a term of politeness
used to-day indiscriminately in Germany toward married
women.--TR.
"Sorry to hear it," Frau Clara sweetly answered, "but I hope she will
soon feel well enough to appear."
After little Lieutenant Bleibtreu, a special friend of the house and
the only subaltern in Captain König's squadron, had in his turn
saluted everybody, the servant announced that the meal was served. The
diners, in couples, ranged strictly according to rank, passed in. The
dining-room looked cheerful, and the table had been arranged with Frau
Clara's customary taste.
Everybody having been served, conversation started slowly. "The
weather has turned so fine of late that we can commence playing
tennis," remarked Frau Colonel von Kronau.
"Certainly," chimed in her husband, masticating vigorously. "I shall
call a meeting of the club next week, and then nothing will stand in
the way."
"Charming!" enthusiastically fluted Frau Stark. "I love it
passionately, and you, of course, will all join in? You, my dear Frau
Kahle, were one of the most zealous members last season. And how is it
with you, Frau König?"
"I'll have to forego the pleasure," she replied, "for it does not
agree with me."
"And your husband?"
"I don't know how to play," the captain said; "but I like to watch
graceful ladies at it."
Frau Stark bit her lips and shot an angry glance at the captain. "What
did he mean by 'graceful ladies,' anyway?" she thought. That was meant
for her, no doubt. And she remembered unpleasant comment made because
she with her fifty years had started riding a patient old mare
belonging to her husband's squadron. One of the sergeants was giving
her lessons.
"Some civilians, I believe, will join," broke in the colonel. "I will
have a list circulating."
Everybody knew this was buncombe, the colonel being extremely
unpopular in civilian circles, and they smiled incredulously.
"I will join you," said Herr von Konradi, "provided the heat is not
excessive. Next week, however, I have no leisure. I must sow my peas,
or it will be too late."
"Yes," put in König, "or they will not thrive."
"What? Not thrive? Peas will always turn out well if properly
attended to," said the colonel's wife, with a touch of asperity.
"I fear I must contradict you, my gracious lady," retorted the
captain. "Last year's did not turn out well anywhere."
"They must be sowed at moonlight, and not a word be spoken, then they
will do finely, every time," said the Frau Colonel, eagerly. "But
don't imagine that I am superstitious. I am simply stating a fact."
It was a bold thing to do, for whatever the colonel's wife said must
not be gainsaid, yet Lieutenant Bleibtreu could not help it. He
laughingly said: "Sowing, therefore, bacon in between while the sun is
shining, we'll have one of my favorite dishes ready made."
The colonel's lady merely transfixed him with an envenomed stare.
After a dramatic interval she resumed: "But, come to think of it, I
myself won't have leisure next week. My goose-liver _pâtés_ are not
yet finished."
"You prepare them yourself?" asked the agricultural counsellor with
deep interest.
"Of course. I do up six potfuls every year. The colonel dotes on this
kind of stuff."
"And where do you procure your truffles, may I ask? I am myself
looking for a trustworthy person."
"Truffles? Nonsense, it tastes every bit as good without them--that is
all imagination."
"Oh, but you must excuse me, my gracious lady; truffles are the very
soul of a goose-liver _pâté_. Without them it is insipid--'Hamlet'
with Hamlet left out."
"'Hamlet'?" rejoined the lady with the governess face. "We were
talking of truffles."
Herr von Konradi shrugged his shoulders. Nobody else said a word. Just
then Frau First Lieutenant Leimann entered. She looked as fresh and
bright as the morning star.
"A thousand pardons, Frau König," she smiled, "but I had to finish
some important letters." And she sat down in the place reserved for
her.
"We heard you were suffering from headache," was the general remark.
"Headache? Yes, I forgot--I did have it. But that is such an old story
with me that I scarcely think of mentioning it any more."
She was a handsome young woman, and the fact was made more apparent
by the really tasteful gown she wore.
During all this time the adjutant had not said a word. He attended
strictly to the business that had brought him here. His voracity
attracted no attention, because everybody was used to it. Off and on
he merely emitted a species of grunt in token of approval or dissent
of what had been said. He was still eating when the hostess finally
gave the signal to rise. Then everybody wished everybody else a
"blessed digestion,"[4] and made for the adjoining rooms, where the
ladies were served with coffee and the men with cordials, beer, and
cigars.
[4] "Blessed digestion"--"Gesegnete Mahlzeit"--is the
universal greeting in Germany after meals.--TR.
Informal chatting was indulged in. The colonel, after briefly
despatching a trifling matter connected with the service, for which
purpose he retained Müller, who was fairly oozing with good cheer,
retired to a quiet corner with Frau Stark. Since their conversation
was carried on in whispers, First Lieutenant Borgert, despite
strenuous efforts to overhear, could only catch a phrase or a single
word from time to time.
"You _must_ manage it," he heard her say.
"Let us hope that the annual inspection will turn out well," replied
the colonel. "Last time our direct superiors were finding fault with
your husband. It began in the stables, and I heard some talk about
it."
"Never mind all that, Colonel, my husband _must_ be promoted to be
major. I tell you plainly, if you drop him I shall--"
"Have no fears, my most gracious lady. I have given him a very
brilliant report, though he doesn't deserve it, as you know. But I
shall do my best."
"And you owe me your best, Colonel, as you very well know, for without
me you would be to-day--"
Captain König came up.
"Will the Herr Colonel not accompany us next week on a wine-testing
trip up the Moselle? Agricultural Counsellor von Konradi will make one
of the party. Some exquisite growths are to be sold."
"Certainly, my dear König. You know that I always join in such
expeditions. And with you in particular I like to go, for your dinner
has shown me once more that you own a faultless 'wine tongue.'"
"Very flattering, Colonel. But I see you are still cigarless;
everything is laid out in my room."
The colonel stepped into the next room. Frau Kahle was flirting with
Lieutenant Pommer in one corner, while several young men were doing
that with the pretty hostess in the other corner. Just then First
Lieutenant Leimann entered from the dining-room, and behind him his
spouse, making a wry face. Her mien became sunny, however, when First
Lieutenant Borgert stepped up to her and inquired with solicitude as
to the cause of grief.
"Oh! The usual thing," she snapped. "My husband has scolded me. You
know his ungentlemanly ways. Always rude and offensive."
"What was the trouble this time?"
"Merely the fact that I had excused my lateness at table by pleading
unfinished letters, while he had urged a headache. I am tired of his
eternal fault-finding."
"That is valid reason for a divorce, my bewitching lady," smiled
Borgert. "Look for another husband if you are tired of the present
one."
She peered into his face inquiringly. "You don't imagine how serious I
am."
"Ah, if that's the case, my dear lady, there is no time like the
present for planning a change. How, for instance, would I do for a
substitute? Now, honor bright?" and he playfully fondled her plump
little hand.
She took this just as smilingly. "Before I answer," she said,
coquettishly lowering her eyelids, "I must know what you have to offer
me."
"Let us sit down then and discuss this most alluring topic in its
various bearings," laughingly remarked he; and he led her to a divan,
where they sat down side by side.
"Now, then, pay close attention, please," continued he. "I offer you
an elegant home, a neat turnout, a tolerably groomed nag, a villa on
Lake Zurich, and a host of serving genii."
"And who is to pay for it all?"
"Pay?" His wonderment was great. "Pay for it? Why, what is the use of
doing that? It has become unfashionable, and besides, so much good
money is frittered away by paying. _I_ never pay, and yet I manage to
live pretty comfortably."
"All very well, but there is my husband to think of besides," joked
the pretty woman.
"Of course you still have him; but meanwhile you might try and
accustom yourself to me--as his successor, you know."
Frau Leimann nodded cheerfully and then buried her empty little head
in her hand, dreamily scanning the carpet. The others had left the two
in sole possession of the room. The eyes of the officer sought hers,
and there was a peculiar expression in them when they met.
"Why do you look at me that way?" said she. "You make me almost fear
you."
"Afraid of your most dutiful slave?" whispered he, and his breath
fanned her cheek. "Ah, no. But do not forget our conversation,
loveliest of women. Things spoken in jest often come true in the end."
She looked up and smiled as if enchanted at the idea. Then she rose,
and when he grasped one of her hands she made no effort to wrest it
away. He imprinted a long-drawn kiss on it. She shivered and then
rapidly glided into the adjoining room, where the jumble of sounds
produced by tuning a variety of musical instruments was now heard. The
strident notes of violins, the rumbling boom of a cello, and the
broken chords of a piano were confusedly mingling, and the male guests
were slowly dropping in or taking up a position, a half-smoked Havana
or cigarette between the lips, just outside the door, so as to combine
two sources of enjoyment. Borgert had remained behind in the next
room, and was now studying intently a letter the contents of which
plunged him in a painful reverie. At last he put back the letter in
his breast pocket, audibly cursing its sender, and then joined the
group nearest him.
At the parlor organ Captain König was seated, while his wife had taken
charge of the piano accompaniment. Herr von Konradi and First
Lieutenant Leimann stood ready with their violins, while Lieutenant
Bleibtreu, the violoncello pressed between the knees, occupied the
rear. The auditors, at least the majority of them, were comfortably
ensconced in chairs or sofas, near the mantelpiece, and around a
table on which a small battery of beer mugs, steins, and tankards was
solidly planted.
They began to play: a trio by Reinhardt. It sounded well, for the
performers had practised their respective parts thoroughly. But there
were some disturbing factors, as is always the case with amateurs. The
unwieldy agricultural counsellor rose on his creaking boots with every
note he drew, and frequently snorted in his zeal. Leimann, too, was
one of those one must not look at while performing, for his
queer-shaped head had sunk between his shoulders and his bowed back
presented a rather unæsthetic picture. The cellist, whose fingers were
rather thick, occasionally grasped the wrong string, but tried to make
up for this by bringing out the next tones with doubled vigor. The
trio was followed by violin solos, and lastly by a Liszt rhapsody,
played by the Königs with warm feeling and sufficient technique.
For _finale_ the small audience overwhelmed the players with praise,
and some more or less correct remarks were made about the different
compositions.
"Oh, my dear Lieutenant Bleibtreu," cried Frau Stark, "I must resume
my cello practice with you. It is such a soulful instrument, and I
used to play it with tolerable proficiency in my younger days."
Bleibtreu made a grimace, and Captain König whispered to him that the
elderly lady was unable to distinguish one note from another.
Borgert had looked on nonchalantly from the door during the concert.
Once in a while he glanced sharply at Frau Leimann, who was cosily
reclining in an arm-chair, her eyes half closed, a prey to thoughts.
The players had now taken seats at the large table, and the
conversation turned to trivial affairs of the day, the Frau Colonel
assuming the lion's share of it, for she was decidedly talkative. Thus
another hour passed; and when the clock on the mantel marked half-past
ten, Colonel von Kronau gave his better half a look of understanding,
and the latter slightly nodded in reply, and rose, saying to the lady
of the house, with a smile:
"Dear Frau König, it was charming of you to prepare such an enchanting
evening for us. But it is time for us to be going. Many thanks!"
The hostess made some polite objections; but when she saw that the
Starks too, and the agricultural counsellor began to take formal
leave, she desisted from any further attempts to retain her guests,
not dissatisfied, on the whole, that but a small circle remained. For
with them it was not necessary to weigh words as carefully as in the
presence of the colonel. It frequently happened that he, the day after
a social gathering, took occasion to reprove his captains and
lieutenants for a careless turn of phrase or for something which he
construed as a lack of respect shown to him or his wife.
Those five gone, the others moved their chairs closer together around
the table, and some fresh, foaming nectar was served. Borgert started
the talk.
"Did you notice how this Stark woman again had a whispered confab with
the colonel?" he said. "Such manners I think they ought to leave at
home, for there they are not very particular. Just fancy, the other
day I was witness when Stark threw a slipper at his wife, and she on
her part had received me in a horribly soiled and frowzy morning
gown."
"I saw worse than that," interrupted Leimann. "Last week they had in
my presence one of their frequent matrimonial disagreements, and the
fat one, her husband, clinched the matter by shouting at her: 'Hold
your tongue, woman!' A nice, lovable couple, those two!"
"Anyway, it seems as if she lorded it over him pretty effectually,"
broke in the adjutant. "Day before yesterday Stark had had his fill at
the White Swan, and when he became a trifle noisy and quarrelsome his
wife arrived on the scene and behaved simply disgracefully. Finally
she tucked him under her arm and took him home amidst the shouts and
laughter of the other guests. I don't think their meeting at home can
have been an angelic one."
"That sort of thing happens every little while," remarked Pommer; "at
least at the Casino[5] she appears whenever he does not depart
punctually at mealtime, and calls him hard names before the very
orderlies."
[5] "Casino"; the military club houses are so called.--ED.
"Well, she is keeping a sharp eye on him just now," said Captain
König, good-humoredly, "for he wants to get his promotion as major,
or, rather, it is her ambition to become Frau Major."
"Why, there can be no idea of that," interjected Borgert, with a great
show of righteous indignation. "If this totally incapable idiot
becomes major I ought to be made at least a general. Though it is
queer that the colonel is evidently moving heaven and earth in his
behalf."
"Good reason why," retorted Leimann, calmly.
"How so?"
"Don't you know the story? And yet it is in everybody's mouth."
"Then tell us, please, because we know not a word of it, and I scent
something fiendishly interesting!" And Borgert rubbed his hands in
anticipation.
"Why, last year the colonel had, with his usual want of tact, insulted
a civilian--a gentleman, you know. The latter sent him a challenge.
Our good colonel began to feel queer, for while he is constantly
doing heroic things with his mouth, he is by no means fond of risking
his skin. So after some talk with her, this Stark woman went to see
the gentleman in question as peacemaker. She told him that the colonel
was really innocent in the whole matter, and that she herself had been
the cause of the trouble, having spread a false report under an
erroneous impression. She managed to tell her yarn with so much
plausibility as entirely to deceive and bamboozle the other party, who
thereupon withdrew his challenge with expressions of his profound
regret. So, you see, she saved the colonel's life, for the civilian is
known as a dead shot. Since then she has the colonel completely in her
power, and no matter what she tells him to do, he executes her orders
like a docile poodle dog,--a fact which we all see illustrated every
day."
"Well, that explains the whole mystery, of course," delightedly
shouted Borgert. "Don't you know any more such stories? For it is
really high time to call a halt. He has manners like a ploughboy's,
and she like a washerwoman's. I'll collect a few more tales of the
sort. It is simply shameful that one must submit to the dictation of
this woman."
"There are rumors that she had peculiar relations with a well-known
nobleman in her younger days; but I know nothing positive, mind you."
"Where in the world did you hear that now?"
"My military servant told me. He happens to hail from the neighborhood
she comes from."
* * * * *
During this delectable interchange of gossip the wife of First
Lieutenant Leimann had listened with gleaming eyes and heightened
color; it seemed wonderfully interesting to her. Captain König, on the
other hand, sucked his cigar thoughtfully, and his wife toyed with the
embroidered border of the table-cover.
"Why so lost in thought, my gracious lady?" Borgert said.
"I was merely wondering what stories you gentlemen might hatch against
_us_," she said with some dignity.
He was about pathetically to disclaim any such fell designs, when it
was noticed that Frau Kahle had risen to bid farewell, and with her
Lieutenant Pommer, whose escort home she had accepted, her husband
being off on a short official trip.
They were barely gone, when Borgert remarked:
"I think we ought to subscribe for this poor Kahle woman, just enough
to enable her to buy a new dress. I don't think she has anything to
wear besides this faded, worn-out rag of hers. I am sick of seeing
it."
"But you ought to see her at home," interjected Müller, in a minor key
of disdain. "There she looks worse than a slovenly servant girl. And
she doesn't seem to find time to patch up her dirty gown, while her
boy, the only child she has, runs about the streets like a cobbler's
apprentice from the lower town. One thing, though, that urchin _does_
know--he can lie like Satan."
"Inherited from his mother, of course," remarked Borgert, when a cold
and reproachful look out of Frau Clara's eyes made him stop in the
middle of his sentence. There was an embarrassed silence for a minute,
and when the talk was resumed it no longer furnished such
"interesting" material. Captain König's yawning became more
pronounced, and Leimann was leaning back in his chair, dozing, with
mouth half open. His wife, too, showed unmistakable signs of ennui,
now that the scandal she loved no longer poured forth. Her features, a
moment ago smooth and animated, now looked worn and aged, losing all
their charm. Müller was still digesting audibly, and hence it seemed
the proper moment for adjourning.
Amid unanimous assurances that "this has been the most enjoyable
evening this season," the leave-taking was finally effected, and the
captain accompanied his last guests down the stairs, and returned
after shooting the strong bolt at the house door.
As he turned off the gas in the drawing-room, he said to Frau Clara:
"Quite interesting, this evening! These are two gentlemen we shall
have to be on our guard against."
CHAPTER II
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE CASINO DANCE
"Corporal Meyer! Have all this cleared out of the stable! Instantly!
What beastly filth is this? What? The stable guard is not present?
Then do it yourself; it won't hurt you. Forward, march! And then bring
me the parole book!"
"At your orders, gracious lady!"
Frau Captain Stark strode with rattling steps up and down in the
stable, followed by two ragged-looking dogs. She wore a badly fitting
riding habit of slate-colored cloth, with a black derby that had seen
better days. In her right hand she carried a whip with which now and
then she cut the rank atmosphere in a reckless manner, so that the
dogs slunk aside in affright. Her keen eye pierced everywhere. She
scanned the black register boards nailed above the different
partitions, and studied attentively the tablet on which was marked in
chalk the _ordre du jour_. She came to a full stop behind two horses,
the only ones left behind by the squadron which had gone off for drill
to the parade grounds. Wrathfully she glanced at the poor old beasts,
the bones sticking out of their wrinkled, badly groomed skin like
those of a skeleton. Then she lifted the hind feet of the brown
gelding and examined the hoofs. She drew a small note-book from her
habit, and entered on the dated page: "Remus No. 37. Left hind iron."
Next she climbed the steep wooden stairs leading up to the hayloft.
There they were, the culprits, two men of the stable guard, slumbering
peacefully, and not even awakened by the entrance of the "squadron's
mother." Quick as a flash her whip rained a shower of blows, while she
cried:
"Down with you; attend to your work, you lazy scum! I shall have you
reported to the colonel!"
And they flew down the stairs, and were at the feed-cutter as if the
devil himself were after them. She met Corporal Meyer at the door,
breathless from running, but handing her the parole book. He clapped
his heels together before her so that the spurs jingled.
She pushed the greasy book aside.
"What does the idiot think?" she cried. "Hold it before my eyes while
I read it. Here is an entry that the saddles and bridles are to be
inspected to-morrow. Have your men everything in good shape?"
"I will go and inquire of the sergeant-major."
"Away! Bring him here, but this very moment."
The sergeant-major made a black face when Meyer had delivered his
message, for the hours when the squadron was drilling or practising
were his choicest during the day. He spent them, as a rule, in
domestic bliss, having his cup of coffee before him and the wife of
his bosom in close proximity. He was peacefully enjoying his morning
cigar when Meyer reported to him the desire of the "gracious one."
He cursed his luck, but lost no time in girding his loins with his
sabre; shoved his cap on his bald brow, and went rattling down the
stairs.
The gracious one received him very ungraciously.
"Sergeant-major, is everything in readiness for to-morrow?"
"I think so, but will once more examine to-night."
"To-night? You are crazy. At once. Loafing must stop. And, mark you, I
demand a more respectful tone from you, or I shall report your case to
the colonel. Now bring me my horse!"
"Horse, my gracious lady? That is out with the rest of them. All
horses were ordered out, except these two lame ones," and he pointed
at the two sorry steeds.
"What? My horse ordered out? What new insolence is this? Let it be
brought to me instantly. One of the corporals can go on foot."
But this moment she heard steps approaching, and seeing Borgert she
called out to him in dulcet tones:
"Ah, what a pleasure, my dear First Lieutenant! So early out on duty?
I was just about to give some sugar to my husband's horses, but find
them already gone. My dear husband is so excessively punctual in all
that concerns the service."
"Your interest for the squadron is most praiseworthy, my gracious
lady," said Borgert with a malicious twinkle in his eye. "I have often
remarked you with secret admiration when issuing orders to the men
about the stable."
"Orders? Scarcely that, my dear Borgert. Once in a while I am the
messenger of my dear husband when he has forgotten something. Of
course, I take an interest in all that concerns him and the squadron."
"Frau Captain is quite right, and I can only congratulate you on the
successful way in which your interest in the squadron and in the whole
regiment takes concrete form."
"You are always jesting. But I suppose I shall see you at the Casino
to-night?"
"Assuredly, we are to meet at five to talk over some service matters."
"Yes, you remind me. But that will not last long. It concerns only
some trifling affairs."
"Much obliged for the exact information."
"Oh, of course, I take an interest in everything, as I said. I called
the colonel's attention to divers things, and I presume he will talk
them over with you gentlemen."
"I am curious to learn what they can be. But, pardon me, I see Captain
König coming, with whom I have to transact some business. Good
morning, my most gracious lady!"
"Good morning, _mon cher_!" And she held her hand up high to him,--a
big hand, which was encased in a soiled, worn-out gauntlet of her
husband's.
Then she turned once more to the sergeant-major, while Borgert
hastened to intercept König, who was on the point of turning into the
big courtyard of the third squadron.
"Good morning, Herr Captain! I must beg you to excuse me if I
interfere with your liberty for a moment, but a very pressing matter
induces me to ask of you a great favor."
"You astonish me. What is the matter? Is it anything of importance?"
retorted the captain.
"This afternoon the colonel will doubtless mention the unpaid Casino
bills, and it would be extremely painful to me, especially in the
presence of the junior officers, to have my name spoken of in that
connection."
"My dear fellow," said Captain König, "you'll have to go elsewhere
for the money. It was difficult enough for me to raise that hundred
for you a week ago."
"And if I repeat my request, nevertheless, Captain, it is because I
find myself in a horribly embarrassing situation. For if I don't
succeed in procuring four hundred marks till this evening, I shall
have to face the most annoying, possibly disastrous consequences."
"All very well, but I simply haven't the money," said the captain,
shrugging his shoulders.
For a moment or two there was silence, and each avoided looking at the
other. Then Borgert murmured, hesitatingly:
"May I make a proposition, Herr Captain?"
"Well?"
"But I must ask you not to misunderstand me. Would it not be possible
to borrow so small a sum from the funds of the squadron, since it
would be only a question of a few days?"
Captain König looked startled.
"But, my dear fellow, how can you suggest such a thing to me! You
can't expect me to touch the treasury."
"I do not think it would matter the least bit, since the Herr Captain
alone is responsible for that fund, and since this would practically
mean nothing but the transferring of four hundred marks from the
public fund in your own keeping to private funds of your own, to be
made good by you, without anybody being the wiser within a week or
so."
"No, no, that would never do," again said the other.
"But, Captain, you cannot leave me in the lurch. It would simply place
me in a beastly predicament," wailed Borgert, glancing appealingly at
his brother officer.
König began to think, twirling his moustache. On the whole, he
reflected, it might be a wise thing to place under an obligation this
man with the dangerously bitter tongue. Borgert's influence on the
younger officers was not to be underestimated, he knew, and a refusal
would turn him into an enemy. The money itself he had, locked up in a
drawer of his desk at home; but if he made Borgert believe that he had
to "borrow" it from the squadron funds,--whose custodian he was,--it
might be expected that the lieutenant would not so soon ask for
another loan, mindful of the great difficulties this present one was
causing. It was as the result of these cogitations that König resolved
to lend Borgert the sum he required, but to leave him in the belief
that to do so it was necessary to touch the funds in his care.
"All right, then," he said; "you shall have your money. When will you
pay it back without fail?"
"Within ten days, Captain. I give you my word on it."
"Very well, come to my office at noon, and you shall have it."
"Accept my most grateful thanks, Herr Captain!"
"Don't mention it; but I trust it won't occur again."
They shook hands, and the captain mounted and trotted off in a lively
tempo toward the parade grounds.
Borgert, elated and free of care, hastened home. His duties to-day did
not begin until ten. He really felt kindly towards König for the
moment. It was not the first time the captain had helped him out of a
dilemma. Ten days! Well, within ten days all sorts of things could
happen. Why not his ability to repay the loan? And if not, bah! What
is the use of speculating about the future? For the moment he was
safe; that was the main thing.
Leimann meanwhile was awaiting the coming of his friend in the
latter's study, and when Borgert entered, serene of brow and humming
an operatic tune, his face too brightened.
"Has he done it?" he shouted.
"Of course. Go to him at eleven, and he will do the same in your case,
all the more as you need it less."
And at noon, when the two friends met at the Casino over a bottle of
fragrant Moselle, you could tell from Leimann's exuberant gayety that
his own request had not been refused.
* * * * *
Punctually at five all the officers of the regiment were assembled,
with caps and sabres, in the reading-room of the Casino. And when the
different squadron commanders had stepped up and reported "Everybody
present," the colonel at once let them know his mind.
"Gentlemen," he said, in his most pompous manner, "I have commanded
your presence in order to talk over a few matters. First: I must
request that for the future, at balls and similar affairs, dancing
spurs be worn, so as to avoid such unpleasant accidents as we had
night before last. One gentleman, who shall be nameless,"--and as he
said it he fixed a basilisk eye on Lieutenant von Meckelburg--"tore
off with his spurs the whole edge on the robe of Frau Captain Stark.
This must not occur again, gentlemen, and from now on I shall
officially punish similar behavior. Furthermore, it is customary among
persons of education not to be first in stretching out a hand to shake
that of a lady. And if the lady herself offers her hand, good manners
in our circles requires that the gentleman salute it with his lips. It
was made evident to me by the complaints of one of the ladies of this
regiment that some of you gentlemen stand greatly in need of further
education on such points of etiquette." This particular passage
referred to the fact that Lieutenant Bleibtreu had omitted the
customary hand-kiss the other day, when Frau Captain Stark had thrust
her hand under his nose, his reason being that she had worn an old
pair of dogskin gloves, soiled and wet by the rain.
Casting a big tear, which had meanwhile gathered in his left eye,
several yards away, where it glittered in the sunshine, the commander
continued:
"Next, gentlemen, I formally forbid you to visit another town without
first obtaining leave of absence. Whoever will visit the neighboring
town must ask my formal permission first, no matter if the distance is
inconsiderable. You all remember that two of the gentlemen of this
regiment were forced to retire under peculiarly distressing
circumstances, because of large debts contracted in the adjoining
town."
"Will the Herr Colonel permit me a question?" interrupted Captain
König.
"If you please, Herr Captain!"
"Is this order intended to apply to married officers as far as
invitations to social entertainments, the theatre, concerts, _et
cetera_, are concerned?"
"Most assuredly; I must retain exact control of the movements of every
one of you gentlemen as often as he leaves the garrison.
Infringements I shall punish severely, in exact accordance with the
military penal code. Such infringements I shall regard not as mere
breaches of discipline, but as direct disobedience to my explicit
orders."
There was a pause, the colonel whisking his big bandanna out of the
breast pocket of his uniform coat, and carefully wiping his left eye.
This done, he looked about and saw disgust plainly printed on every
face around him.
Indeed there was disgust. Because two offenders in the past had got
themselves into trouble, the whole corps of officers in town was to
suffer vicariously, forced to remain shut up, even during their
leisure hours, in a place offering absolutely no intellectual and
worthy relaxation. The elder officers more especially felt all the
insulting tyranny that lay in this new order; but iron-clad military
discipline forbade even a murmur.
"And now, gentlemen," resumed the colonel, after scanning the clouded
faces around him for another minute, "let us proceed to the election
of president of the Casino management, for the term has just elapsed.
You, Captain Kahle, filled that position for a year past, and I
rejoice to say that the manner in which you have done so has found my
full approval. Indeed, gentlemen, all of us are indebted to Captain
Kahle, for he has done his best, by devoting the larger portion of his
leisure hours to the task, in improving the management of our Casino.
He has enlarged our funds, and has introduced a number of
well-considered and highly welcome ameliorations. It is for this, I
think, we cannot do better than to beg Captain Kahle to remain in an
office which he has administered so much to our joint benefit. If,
however, there should be among you, gentlemen, somebody to propose
another man, let him speak up, for in that case we must ballot in the
regular manner."
A unanimous murmur of approval, such as never before had greeted
utterances by the colonel, ran through the assembly, and Kahle issued
as the choice of everybody from the oral election. His office of
dictator of the Casino was one which involved much gratuitous labor
and frequent abuse, but was of the greatest importance to his fellows,
since it concerned so closely the most sensitive portion of a
soldier's anatomy--his stomach.
"It is not necessary to inspect the books," continued the colonel;
"for I feel quite sure that everything is in the best of order. But
one more thing, gentlemen! I cannot permit Casino bills to grow in
this avalanche fashion, such as has been the case for months past. It
is true that the two highest accounts have been settled to-day; but I
warn you that henceforth I shall proceed without leniency, if all the
outstanding bills are not settled by the first of next month. Consider
well what I have said! Thank you, gentlemen!"
Thus dismissed, most of the poor lieutenants felt and looked decidedly
blue. For some of them it meant another loan in Berlin or Cologne at
usurious interest, with no prospect of ever discharging the principal,
which meant nothing less than ultimate ruin and disgrace. For others,
less reckless or with less credit because of more modest family
connections, it meant the paying off in monthly instalments of their
debts, which always led to a black mark against their names in the
regimental list of conduct, minimizing their chances of promotion
when the list would reach the eyes of the commanding general and,
finally, those of the Kaiser and of his military cabinet. At best it
meant a tussle with the pater. But golden youth does not long indulge
in such gloomy reflections. That is its privilege. Thus, then, after
exchanging melancholy views, the younger swarm broke and fled into the
garden or into the cool veranda.
Meanwhile the ladies of the regiment convened in the reading-room, and
with them were two young civilian gentlemen who had not been able to
withstand their combined blandishments, and who had declared
themselves ready to join the tennis club. The main business of the
evening was to be transacted; namely, the election of a board for the
tennis club and the fixing of certain days for play in the courts near
the Casino building.
Frau König alone had not come, and her husband had had formally to
excuse her. The truth was, she avoided as much as she could to meet
the wives and sisters of her husband's comrades, for she was not fond
of the malicious, evil gossip that formed their chief pleasure in
life. This natural inclination on her part had become stronger since
her recent evening party, when she had heard how even most of the
officers themselves did not scruple to retail disgusting bits of
scandal. Of course, she was made to suffer for this exclusive
taste--or distaste rather--and she knew perfectly well that the
scandal-mongers were only awaiting the slightest opportunity to
besmirch her own name and that of Captain König; but even so, she
preferred her own way.
The negotiations in the reading-room lasted some time, for each one of
the ladies had a wish or an idea of her own to defend. Moreover, it
required the encouraging words of the elected club officers to induce
a number of newly arrived gentlemen to become candidates for
admission. Of course they knew, these sirens, that nearly all of these
candidates would never show up at the tennis courts; but at any rate
the initiation and membership fees were thus substantially increased,
and the ladies, of course, paid no dues.
At last, however, the folding-doors of the dining-room were thrown
open. A substantial but not very elaborate supper was to be served
there. The acrimonious and strident voice of the Frau Colonel floated
above all this babel of feminine noises. In the corners stood, in
little groups, a number of the younger and older officers, discussing,
in subdued accents, the latest decrees of their superior officer. They
were still vibrating with suppressed indignation.
Captains König and Hagemann made sport of Frau Stark, but in such
manner that she never suspected it. Lieutenant Pommer never quitted
the immediate vicinity of Captain Kahle's spouse.
Supper over, nearly all the men present had the lively desire to
escape from this promiscuous gathering, into which they had been
inveigled under pretence of an official matter. But such was not the
intention of Frau Stark, who cried out to the colonel in her
domineering way:
"How about this, Colonel; cannot we make a good use of this favorable
occasion and arrange a hop? Nobody, I suppose, would have any
objection? I myself would think it charming,--simply delicious."
The colonel took just one minute to ruminate; then he declared
himself equally delighted with the lady's idea. For her wish had
indeed become his law--_dura lex sed lex_.
The men were in a rage. What folly to dance, with the thermometer so
high! Much more sensible to sit down quietly on the veranda and drink
cool, frothy beer! Lieutenant Specht felt particularly enraged, for he
was to meet his flame at the train about ten. He exploded his anger,
saying to Borgert:
"The old woman is crazy, with her eternal dancing; but let us keep her
in perpetual motion to-night, just to teach her a lesson, until she
herself gives in!"
While the ballroom was being cleared of chairs and got ready for the
hop, couples were promenading in the garden. The golden sickle of the
moon shed dim rays over the landscape and made the towers and steeples
of the town, standing out at some distance, appear like misty
silhouettes. In the deep green of the bushes a nightingale pealed
forth his liquid plaint into the balmy night air, while from the
ballroom inside the tuning of violins mingled inharmoniously. From the
town gusts of warm wind carried snatches of a martial song, ground
out on the barrel-organ of a carrousel. All these noises rose in a
confused mass into the still air, mingling with the laughter of the
women and the calls of the servants and musicians.
Meanwhile Borgert gave a _gratis_ performance to a number of his
younger comrades. He had gathered them around him in the tennis
courts, where he strikingly imitated Frau Stark in the rôle of a
tennis player. He showed how she attempted to meet the balls with a
racquet, and how she picked them up, until these young men were fairly
dying with hilarity. He was too funny, they said, and played his
improvised part really to perfection. At last, however, Borgert tired
of this "manly" sport, and his audience dropped off, one by one,
joining the dancers inside. Borgert, though, enjoying the mild night
air, lit a fresh cigar and strolled about the garden, his habitual
cat-like tread barely audible on the soft ground. Puffing the fragrant
weed, he suddenly spied, in the uncertain glimmer of the moon, the
sheen of a white summer robe.
"Oho! A little intrigue," he thought to himself. "Maybe something of
interest. Let's reconnoitre!"
He glided like a shadow among the flowering lilacs, heavy with
perfume, and when a few paces from the figure in white, crouched and
hid himself behind one of the bushes. He could not distinguish the
outlines of the two figures clearly, but he heard whispering. First,
in low tones, he made out the voice of Frau Kahle, cooing like a
turtle, and next it was the _basso profundo_ of Lieutenant Pommer,
vainly endeavoring to compress its volume into a murmur.
"Amazing! Has this coarse elephant turned into a Romeo, sighing like a
furnace?" he said to himself, and listened with all his might.
The syllables and now and then the broken words that he was able to
understand from his point of vantage seemed to afford him the greatest
delight. When the couple at last rose and disappeared down the path
leading to the side entrance of the Casino, he left his hiding-place
and slowly followed in their footsteps. An unholy smile played around
his thin lips. "Two more in my power!" he whispered.
All this time the dancers inside were devoting themselves, without
interruption, to Terpsichorean pleasures,--mostly waltzes, they being
the special delight of Frau Stark. When Borgert entered the ballroom
the band struck up the latest waltz,--"Over the Waves,"--and he
noticed Frau Stark, flaming like a peony, perspiration streaming down
her rubicund face, being handed, true to his programme, by Lieutenant
Specht to his smiling comrade, von Meckelburg. Frau Stark just took
the time to gulp a glass of lemonade, and then was off again,
breathing hard, but still in the ring. The atmosphere in the room was
stifling, but all the ladies, at least, seemed to enjoy themselves.
Officers' wives are proverbially insatiable dancers.
After two rounds of the room von Meckelburg was seen steering his
victim towards a chair near the open window. Frau Stark sank into it,
literally exhausted. She looked indeed dripping. The young lieutenants
had had their revenge. She had "given in."
Borgert meanwhile had taken his stand in a corner, where he bent over
Frau Leimann, who was seated and fanning herself with her
handkerchief. Although fatigued from heat and dancing, she looked most
seductive in her pale blue tulle, whose filmy lace clouds around
throat and bosom heightened the effects of her charms. Borgert,
bending over her, sniffed with sensual delight a faint perfume, while
he carried on a whispered conversation in monosyllables with her--a
conversation which seemed to have meaning but for these two.
In the reading-room the orderlies were busy filling tulip glasses with
that fragrant mixture, a May bowl, so grateful in its delicious iced
condition, and yet so deceptive. Around a plain table in the small
side room, away from the throng and undisturbed, several of the
captains, the colonel, and two of the younger officers were playing
"skat" at a penny the point. One of the lieutenants, to judge from his
heated face and the anxious look on it, must be losing heavily. Had
this "little game" been arranged to encourage the men under him in the
economies Colonel von Kronau had but now so strongly recommended to
them?
Lieutenant Specht just then was taking French leave. It was necessary
for him to run to the station and meet the young lady--a lovesick,
pretty little milliner from Cologne--who for the time being dwelt in
his unstable heart.
Lieutenant Bleibtreu sat in a brown study, a few feet away from the
players, deep in his melancholy thoughts. The army, his military
career, intercourse with his brother officers and their ladies--it was
all a grave disappointment to him. His illusions were gone, though it
was but a couple of years since he had donned the bright, showy,
glittering dragoon uniform, so attractive to the neophyte. He was
thinking of home, of his dear, patient, loving mother, whose constant
preoccupation he was; of his lovely, self-denying sisters, whose dowry
was fast going while he was himself enjoying himself in the "king's
service." Was he? Was he "enjoying" himself? Was this--this hollow,
stupid round of the coarsest pleasures and the equally coarse and
stupid round of duties--really what he had looked forward to?
The young man sighed. The absence of the wife of his captain, Frau
König, rendered him still more melancholy. Bah, it was disgusting.
And to think that this was the profession most highly honored, most
envied in the fatherland! To think that it had always been drummed in
his ears, ever since early childhood, that to "wear the king's coat"
would exalt him high above his fellow mortals!
Comradeship! What a fine word when it bears out its full meaning,
thought Lieutenant Bleibtreu. But what was it here? What had he found
the practical construction of the term? To follow, day by day, step by
step, in the same treadmill of dull routine, only relieved by
occasional but all too brief glimpses of the freedom that lay beyond
"the service"--that was the meaning of comradeship. There was none of
that unselfish intimacy, that ready sympathy and help between the members
of the caste into which he had risen on the proud day he first read
his name among the Kaiser's appointments in the _Armee-Verordnungsblatt_.
Dead sea fruit! Ashes that taste bitter on the tongue.
Certainly there were exceptions. He himself had heard of some such
cases of comradeship as he had dreamed of when still a slim little
cadet in the military academy: cases where one comrade lifted the
other, the younger and less experienced, up to his higher level; cases
where one comrade sacrificed himself for the other. But these must be
very rare, he thought, for he had never seen such a case himself. What
he had seen was the casting into one stiff, unchanging form of so many
individualities not suited to each other. It was the hollow mockery of
the thing that palled so on him. And what would be the end?
Though young in the service, he had seen men meant for better things
broken as a reed on the wheel of military formalism; he had seen them
retiring when but in the prime of life, broken in spirit, unfit for
any new career, impaired in health, perfectly useless--victims of the
conventional ideas that rule supreme in the army. Others he had seen
forced to resign, overloaded with a burden of debt, ruined
financially, physically, morally bankrupt,--all due to the tinsel and
glitter, to the ceaseless temptations thrown into the path of the
German army officer. A young civilian, even when the son of wealthy
parents, is not coaxed and wheedled into a network of useless
expenditure, as is the youngest army officer, waylaid everywhere by
the detestable gang of "army usurers," who follow him to the bitter
end, knowing that to repudiate even the shadiest debt means disgrace
and dismissal from the army to every officer, no matter if his follies
have been committed at an age when other young boys are still subject
to closest supervision.
Deep lines had formed on Bleibtreu's smooth forehead, and he was
visibly startled when the cheery, round voice of his squadron
commander, Captain König, recalled him to his surroundings.
"And that's what they call pleasure," said he, sitting down on the
sofa beside his young lieutenant, for whom he felt something like
paternal affection. "If such entertainments were at least arranged
beforehand, with the consent or at the instance of the juniors
themselves,--for I will say nothing about us older men,--but no! Frau
Stark commands, and the whole regiment, from the colonel down to the
youngest cornet, has simply to obey. Disgraceful, I say. Why, we
cannot even choose our own tipple on such occasions. The colonel
simply orders that a May bowl be composed, and we have to brew it,
drink it, and--pay for it. This evening will cost us a pretty penny
again. A glass of apollinaris would be far more palatable, and
certainly much cheaper and appropriate at this temperature than this
confounded sweetish stuff, which gives one a headache fit to split the
skull next morning."
"Quite true, Captain," replied the young man. "This form of
quasi-official pressure, even in one's private expenditures, is one of
the worst curses of our profession. It has indirectly caused the ruin
of many a promising young officer, I've been told."
"Yes, my boy, you are quite right," answered König. "It is amazing how
many officers have been forced into retirement of recent years, solely
because of unpaid and unpayable debts. Things in this respect cannot
go on much longer. For the ruin of thousands of these young officers
means also the ruin of their families, and among them many of the
oldest and best in the Empire. An unhealthy craze for luxurious living
has seized upon the army, and God alone knows how it will end some
day. It is a thing which will and must frighten every true patriot,
and I wish our most gracious sovereign would take up this matter more
earnestly."
"Yes, H. M. does not attach enough importance to this chapter."
"And yet the remedy would be such a simple one," remarked the captain.
"If H. M. would simply issue a decree to the effect that no debts of
army officers up to captain's rank shall be recoverable in court, that
would be the end of army usury, and with it would be removed the worst
cancer of which the whole army suffers. Once the certainty that
ultimately they are sure of their money would be gone, these leeches
would no longer trouble the gay and shiftless young officer whom they
now pursue with the persistence of bloodhounds. But what is the use of
saying this? H. M. himself is not without blame in these things. As
long as his personal example all tells the other way, how can we
expect the army to become prudent and economical?"
"However, Captain, that is not the sole trouble. I think as long as we
as a class--or caste--are taught that we are something better than
the civilian population, so long as we are guided by another code of
ethics, erecting an insurmountable barrier around us, there can be no
real reform. Such prejudices, or rather such systematic teaching, must
inevitably lead to sharp separation between the professional soldier
class and the rest of the people. Good heavens, this is the twentieth
century, and no longer the middle ages, we're living in. Caste and
exclusive privileges must go, else--"
"Sh! Sh! Lower your voice, my dear boy--the colonel is looking our
way, and over there stands Müller, the adjutant, always ready for
tale-bearing. Let us get up and take a stroll in the moonlight, or,
better still, let us go home."
The lieutenant accompanied his superior officer as far as the door of
his dwelling, and on the way spoke in tones of real concern of the
fact that the cleavage between the private soldier and his superiors
was so great.
"After all," he remarked, "many of these poor devils are every bit as
well educated as we,--some of them even better,--and as long as this
is supposed to be a 'nation in arms,' and not, as in the eighteenth
century, an army of mercenaries, no such strict difference, socially,
ought to be made. Do you know, I often think the Socialists are not so
wrong in some things they urge."
"For goodness' sake, my dear Lieutenant, don't let any such remarks
escape you anywhere else," said Captain König, in a scared voice. But
they had reached the captain's door, and so they shook hands and
parted.
Bleibtreu lived at the other end of the straggling little town. In
walking leisurely home, he followed his train of thought. The
systematic brutality shown the common soldier--even the noncom.
(though not in so pronounced a manner)--by his fellow-officers had
from the start been very much against his taste. "They don't see the
defender of the fatherland in him," thought he, "but merely the green
man, unused to strict discipline and to the narrowly bound round of
dull duties, the clumsy, ungainly recruit, or the smarter, but even
more unsympathetic private of some experience whose drill is an
unpleasant task for them, and who, they know, hates and abominates
them in his heart." And he remembered scenes of such brutality, the
unwilling witness of which he had been. Such cruelty and abuse of
power, he felt, was playing into the hands of the Socialist Party.
"These young men, fresh from the plough or the workshop," he mused,
"cannot help losing all their love for the army. So long as they serve
in it, of course, they will not risk those punishments for expressing
their real thoughts which the military law metes out with such
draconic severity; they will prefer suffering in silence the
injustice, cruelty, and inhuman treatment to which, at one time or
another, nearly every one of them is subjected during their period of
active service. But once dismissed to the reserve, how many, many
thousands of them will naturally turn to the only political party with
us which dares to oppose with courage militarism and all its fearful
excrescences! And all this," he continued inwardly, "is the natural
result of a long period of deadening, enervating peace. Oh! If there
were but a war! All this dross would then glide off us, and the true
metal underneath would once more shine forth."
He went to bed with these ideas still humming in his brain.
Borgert had been enjoying himself meanwhile. His kind always does. He
had, for a few moments, tried to listen to the arguments of Captain
König and Lieutenant Bleibtreu, while they were seated on the sofa;
but, pshaw! how absurd to philosophize about these things, he thought.
Far better to take life as it comes. And so he had joined the party at
the gaming-table, where one of the winners was just then standing
treat for a battery of Veuve Clicquot, and as he slowly sipped the
delicious beverage, the bubbles rising like rosy pearls from the
depths of his chalice, he smiled with self-satisfaction.
But at last he, too, left the house and directed his steps toward the
far end of the garden, where a small gate led directly into the street
at the end of which he dwelt. There! Again Frau Kahle and uncouth,
elephantine Lieutenant Pommer! The May bowl, he thought, has been too
strong for his addled brain. And he stepped silently aside on the
velvety sward, under the clump of lilacs. The nightingale, from the
centre of a thicket a score of paces away, still fluted and trilled a
song of passion. And something like it, he made sure, big Pommer was
also pouring into the tiny ear of that conquering flirt, the volatile
spouse of Captain Kahle. Having ascertained this, First Lieutenant
Borgert rapidly strode toward the interesting pair, clinking his spurs
and drawling forth an accented "G-o-o-d evening!" as he came up to
them before they had had a chance to rise. Pommer looked indescribably
much like an idiot in returning the salute; but the little woman, with
the ready wit of her sex, assumed the air of an immaculate dove.
The players were the last to leave the Casino,--all of them with heavy
heads and some of them with much lighter purse. Among the latter was
Leimann.
CHAPTER III
THE CONSEQUENCES OF A MAY BOWL
Next morning the garrison--that is, the officers of it--was slower and
later in awakening than usual. That cursed May bowl! It was precisely
as Captain König had said: terrific headaches paid for indulgence in
its seductive potency. Pommer, poor Pommer, although waked by his
servant at the usual time, was still so much under the influence of
the fumes that had mounted to his silly head the night before, that
the only answer he was able to make to the shoutings of his
Masovian[6] man was an unintelligible grunt. Then he turned over on
the other side and settled down to a solid sleep.
[6] Masovians, the population of certain districts in eastern
Prussia; they are of Polish race.--TR.
At eleven he was still peacefully snoring, when his man stepped up to
his bed once more, and undertook such violent and persistent
manipulations with the extremities of his master that the latter
finally opened his eyes far enough to let a little daylight and some
sense into his dazed brain. The bulky lieutenant stretched himself,
yawned, and at last remembered his doings of the night before. With
both mighty fists he hammered his thick skull in disgust and despair.
"Holy smoke--that-- ---- May bowl!" he groaned, and then sat down in
the chair beside his couch to feel of his head, which seemed a
gigantic bass drum, hollow and reverberating. Like a flash his
desperate flirtation with the wife of his own squadron chief came back
to his muddled consciousness.
Vaclav, his man,--whom he, for short, called Watz,--brought in his
morning coffee, and after dressing with a great running commentary of
grunts and groans, he sat down to drink a mouthful of the reviving
decoction. But his brain was still in a whirl, and the scenes of a few
hours ago passed rapidly, but in nebulous form, before his clouded
inner vision.
Dimly he felt ashamed of himself. He knew he had not behaved like a
gentleman, and he thought he remembered that somebody had witnessed
the spectacle he had made of himself. Specht? Meckelburg? Or Müller?
No--he thought not. But Borgert? Yes, he thought it was Borgert. No,
no. But who? He gave it up with another groan, and took a mouthful of
the cold coffee.
Anyway, he had behaved in a beastly fashion. That he did know. But
stop! Had she not told him how badly she was treated by her
husband--how neglected--had she not appealed to his gallantry and
friendship? He felt uncertain. All he knew with certainty was that he
had been a brute.
He buried his head in his brawny hands.
How had it been possible for him so to forget himself?
He knew:--champagne luncheon with that fellow Borgert,--a fellow whose
powers of consumption had never been ascertained. Then, at dinner,
that heavy "Turk's blood"[7] to which Müller had to treat because of a
lost bet. And then, worst of all, that thrice-condemned May bowl! And
hadn't they noticed it, the other fellows, and hadn't they filled him
up notwithstanding, or rather because, they saw that he couldn't carry
any more liquid conveniently? His big fist slammed the table.
[7] "Turk's blood" ("Türkenblut") is the name of a mixture of
English porter, brandy, and French champagne very much in
vogue in the army.--TR.
There was a knock at the door.
The man with the sore conscience and the sorer head bade the unknown
enter.
It was First Lieutenant Borgert, helmet in hand. He pretended
astonishment at the evident condition of his comrade, but eyed him
sharply, and then said:
"Pardon me if I come inopportunely, but a rather delicate matter
induces me to see you this morning."
"Officially or privately?" grunted Pommer.
"Both, if you wish it," answered the other.
"If a private matter I beg you will postpone it," said Pommer. "Let us
talk about it some other day."
"I regret to say that I _must_ insist on discussing the matter now,"
retorted Borgert, stiffly. "You are aware, of course, that as the
elder man in the service I have the right, even the duty, to
remonstrate with you if I see occasion for it."
Pommer reflected a moment. In years he was the other man's senior, and
he had also visited a university for a triennium before joining the
army, while the other had simply completed the easy curriculum of the
military academy. But, true, Borgert was a twelvemonth ahead of him in
actual service. So he silently submitted.
"All right, then; to what matter do you refer, sir?"
Borgert assumed the air of a grand inquisitor.
"Accident made me, last night, witness to a scene which I am sorry to
say, Herr Comrade, I cannot otherwise describe than shocking. It was
in the most secluded spot of the grounds near the Casino. The lady in
question--"
"You need proceed no further, Herr Comrade. I know perfectly well that
I am to blame."
"May I ask you for an explanation?"
"I was intoxicated. That is the sole explanation I can offer."
"A strange one. Why, if you cannot drink without losing your
senses,--why, then, do you drink at all?"
"The fact that I was intoxicated was due in large measure to the very
gentleman I am now addressing, who would not--"
"You need not go into such details," Borgert interrupted him. "You do
not seem to understand the gravity of your offence, and it seems
necessary that I should enlighten you as a younger comrade on that
point."
Pommer felt indignant at this hypocritical lecture, but before he
could reply to it Borgert continued:
"Your offence is the most serious against comradeship which can be
conceived. Really, it would be my duty to call the attention of the
lady's husband to it if I did not trust in your sense of honor to
rectify the matter before any more mischief is done. If you will
promise me to go at once and ask the lady's pardon, and to do all in
your power to avoid any further cause for scandal, I will on my part
forbear to mention what I saw. You must know, of course, that to tell
Captain Kahle would mean a challenge, a duel, your enforced
resignation from the army, and maybe your death,--for he is a good
shot."
Borgert was very dramatic as he said this. The rôle of an austere
prophet, calling a sinner to repentance and amends, had all the spice
of novelty for him. Inwardly he smiled at himself, but outwardly he
drew up his tall, sinewy frame to its full height, and cast a
hypnotizing stare at the man before him, now slowly recovering his
usual sober frame of mind. And as the sense of his wrong-doing began
to overpower poor Pommer, he bowed his towzled head in misery. Two big
tears crept slowly down his tanned cheeks.
Borgert went on:
"It is, of course, your duty to go at once to the outraged husband as
well, and to confess your guilt. As I know Captain Kahle, he is not
the man to withstand a direct appeal to his clemency if couched in
appropriately contrite terms. If you will pledge me your word of honor
to do as requested and to obtain the pardon of husband and wife, you
may count on my silence."
Pommer glanced up. Tumultuous feelings were surging in his breast, and
so rapid had been the revulsion from his first sentiments when Borgert
had opened the conversation, that what was now uppermost in his mind
was gratitude for this discreet and wise friend. He rose, and with a
pathetic gesture stretched forth his great paw.
"Here is my hand," he said, with a hitch in his voice. "I promise."
Borgert clasped it a moment.
"Thanks, many thanks, for your sympathy and aid in this sorry
business," the junior mumbled, and surreptitiously wiped a briny drop
out of the corner of his eye.
Borgert left, very much satisfied with himself. He had now among the
younger officers of the regiment another one who would henceforth
swear by him. He noisily clanked down the shaky wooden stairs of the
humble house wherein Pommer occupied narrow quarters. And Frau Kahle,
too, was now in his power, he gleefully reflected. Besides all that,
there was something positively piquant about the little
adventure,--something which would frequently hereafter furnish him
with pleasant innuendoes and hints, understood only by those
immediately concerned, and which would supply him, Borgert, with an
endless fund of amusement. He intensely enjoyed this propitious ending
to his machinations.
Humming a tune, and feeling in the best of spirits, he went home, gave
his servant sabre, cloak, and helmet, and mounted the stairs leading
up to Frau Leimann's apartments.
She was not alone. The adjutant was present. Müller, in fact, had
shirked his duties to-day, the colonel being off on a hunting trip in
the adjacent extensive forest, having been invited thereto by the
royal head forester commanding that district. Frau Leimann greeted
Borgert warmly, and while the latter and the adjutant stepped to the
window, looking at the wife of Captain König and Lieutenant Bleibtreu,
who were riding past the house on horseback, Borgert seized the
opportunity and deftly appropriated the pretty woman's hands, which he
kissed passionately.
Then he told them of his interview with Pommer,--told it in such droll
terms and with such an abundance of mimicry, that his two hearers
could not help laughing immoderately. The picture of ungainly, rough
Pommer being in the sentimental stage and a prey to a lacerated
conscience was too exquisitely ludicrous.
Meanwhile Pommer sat at his desk, laboriously inditing a letter to
his mother, to whom he opened his whole heart, as in duty bound.
Several of the strongest passages in his letter were panegyrics on his
new-won friend, Borgert, whom he limned in colors so brilliant that
the original would indeed have had great trouble in recognizing
himself in the portrait.
The lieutenant had by this time calmed down a good deal, and the
blurred images of the past evening resolved themselves, one after
another, into sane recollections. He now distinctly recalled the part
in the ugly intrigue played by the woman; how she had skilfully led
him on to make advances; how she had smiled encouragingly at his terms
of endearment; how she had "fished" for dubious compliments, and how
she had, above all, so alluringly made the most intimate confidences
to him as to her marital troubles and as to her status of a _femme
incomprise_. Really, he thought after quiet reflection, he himself was
not so much to blame in this affair, disgraceful as it doubtless was
when all was said and done. For the woman herself, a change of feeling
took place simultaneously. The tender pity he had felt for her in his
maudlin condition made room for something akin to contempt and
dislike. She certainly could not be a pure woman, a faithful wife and
mother, he thought, thus to invite, almost provoke, the passionate
regard of a man much younger and less experienced than herself,--a
man, too, whom she had known but slightly and conventionally hitherto.
In his inmost consciousness he had almost absolved himself from guilt
in the matter. And as to writing to her husband, or confronting him
with the raw tale of her and his indiscretion, as Borgert had
suggested, why, the more he thought of it, the less advisable a step
it seemed to him, from every point of view. However, a promise was a
promise, and he would keep it.
He donned his full regimentals, and issued forth at the right time for
a visit of the kind.
He did not find Kahle himself in, he being still away at squadron
drill. But his wife flew to meet him as soon as the parlor door had
closed behind the announcing servant, and her reception was indeed
such an affectionate and even enthusiastic one that the words of
penitence perforce died on his lips. She drew him toward her on the
low lounge, and exuberantly babbled on about the comfort, the delight
his confidence had brought her. There was not the slightest word said
by her to show that she had disapproved his approaches now that the
glamour of the moment, the enervating effects of close communion in
the warm air of a spring night, were gone. Coquettishly she plied all
her wiles to captivate poor Pommer anew. His pulses hammered, his
senses were aflame; but he remained master of himself, and sternly he
resolved to sever these equivocal relations with a woman whom he could
no longer respect. The weak, purblind man had been steeled against
further temptation by seeing a few hours ago the abyss yawning at his
feet, in which an illicit love had threatened to engulf him forever.
The image of his mother, noble type of womanhood, rose before his
mind, and he remained strong.
Frau Kahle, on her part, at last becoming convinced that all her arts
were thrown away on this iceberg, suddenly changed her tactics, and
dismissed her visitor in somewhat abrupt fashion. She swept from the
room, leaving him to find his way out. Only the intoxicating perfume
which she used by preference lingered a moment longer in the close air
of the room as the lieutenant sought his way out; but despite a
curious feeling of defeat which he could not help instinctively
feeling, there was subdued exultation in his heart. His brow was
serene as, at the next crossing of the street, he encountered Borgert,
who hailed him:
"Well, Pommer," he shouted satirically, "how is your headache? And how
did you find things at Kahle's?--everything forgiven?"
"Oh, yes, everything forgiven," answered Pommer, demurely, without
going into any further details.
"Excellent. Was a wise thing for you to do to take counsel with an
elder comrade, my dear fellow. Well, I am glad for your sake
everything ended well."
"Yes, thanks to you," said Pommer; and the two shook hands and parted.
Pommer went home, well satisfied with himself.
He fancied that all was now over between him and Frau Kahle. His
acquaintance with women of her stamp had never been extensive, and to
read the soul of one so utterly false and grossly sensual as this
inveterate coquette, was quite beyond the ability of Lieutenant
Pommer, analysis of his own or anybody else's character not being his
strong point.
He had, however, miscalculated Frau Kahle's fascinations over his
unsophisticated self, and decidedly underestimated her craving for
admiration. He was made aware of this when he next met her, on the day
following. She greeted him with a smile so bewitching and a
half-expressed sense of intimacy so flattering to his _amour propre_,
that he was unable to resist. Soon these two became the talk of the
little town. No matter if Pommer, looking at his inner self within the
quiet retreat of his own bachelor quarters, bitterly bewailed his
renewed fall from grace, her influence over the coarser fibre in his
being easily triumphed over his qualms of conscience.
He frequently met Borgert during this period, but the latter, far from
training once more on him the battery of his eloquence, contented
himself with some facetious remark or with a Mephistophelian grin.
And for Kahle himself, he was probably the only one in the
garrison--as is the fate of husbands too often in such cases--who was
not in the slightest aware of the "goings-on" of his nominal partner
in the joys and sorrows of life. And, besides, his tasks as chairman
of the Casino's house committee kept him, together with his official
duties, practically away from home all day long, and frequently far
into the night.
Pommer was, as we have seen, not precisely of delicate stuff, either
bodily or in his psychic makeup. But the chains he was wearing
nevertheless galled him, and he not seldom manoeuvred with his charmer
to obtain release; but all in vain. More than once he thought
seriously of writing to Captain Kahle himself, confessing his guilt,
glossing over her own share of it, and offering all the reparation in
his power. That would mean, of course, exposing his own precious life
to the unerring bullet of the captain; but even that outlook appeared
to him preferable to his present life of deceit. He now regretted that
he had not followed, the morning after the Casino hop, his first
impulse of making a clean breast of it to Captain Kahle. Thus weeks
dragged on, and there was no prospect of a change in a situation which
gradually became intolerable to him.
But suddenly, without his having done anything to bring it about, the
day came that granted him escape from his degrading entanglement. The
imperial order arrived, promoting him to the grade of First Lieutenant
and transferring him to another garrison, far in the interior of the
country.
She was the first person he informed of it.
"Farewell! We shall not see each other again!" He spoke quite coolly,
almost callously, and he left her cowering on the sofa and weeping
hysterically. He felt a free man again. The abominable shackles had
fallen from him.
If he had seen Frau Kahle five minutes after he had left her he would
not even have retained for her a vestige of that first tenderness that
had swept over him that night in the Casino garden. For when he had
retired, and she had heard his step on the flagging of the hall below,
she had quickly risen and peered, from behind the lace curtains, into
the street after his vanishing figure. Then she had sat down at the
piano and intoned a merry Strauss waltz.
But then she reflected that they might call her heartless. So she had
indited a long, passionate farewell letter to him. He showed it, the
night before his going, to Borgert at the Casino. They were all his
guests that night. Borgert had screamed with laughter.
"What a devilish smart little woman she is, after all," he had
exclaimed. And then, poising in mid-air his champagne glass, he said,
nodding to Pommer:
"Here's to her and her simpleton!"
He spoke from experience.
CHAPTER IV
THE CASE OF SERGEANT SCHMITZ
Late in the forenoon of a raw day in autumn Vice-Sergeant-Major Roth
was seated in his comfortably heated room, and near him Sergeant
Schmitz. Each was enjoying a cup of coffee.
The quarters occupied by Roth were situated on the second story of the
regimental barracks, and made at first sight the impression of
elegance and almost wealth, precisely as though the occupant were a
member of the upper ten thousand.[8] It required a closer examination
to become convinced that a good deal of these apparently costly
trappings, as well as the furniture and wall decorations, was not what
it seemed, and that, to produce by all means the effect sought for,
taste and appropriateness had been sacrificed. The wall paper of
arabesques in green and blue, which the government had furnished, did
not harmonize with the hangings or carpets. The paintings on the wall
were cased in heavy gilt or oak frames, so unskilfully placed as to
conceal in spots the very wall itself. Above the scarlet plush sofa
hung a reproduction of Lenbach's "Prince Bismarck," and to right and
left of it abominable oil chromos representing horses. Against the
opposite wall stood a piano in stained oak, showing glittering
silver-plated candelabra. Neither Roth himself nor his worthy better
half, formerly saleswoman in a shop, possessed the slightest knowledge
of the art of manipulating such an instrument. But there was a story
connected with this showy piece of furniture--a story that even now,
years after the events themselves occurred, brought tears of rage to
the eyes of the "Vice." To the young corporal of his own squadron who
on Sunday afternoons strummed on the piano, he used to say in pathetic
accents, that those "one year's volunteers"[9] had treated him most
outrageously; and from his own point of view he was probably right.
[8] A vice-sergeant-major in the German cavalry receives in
legitimate pay and emoluments and rations, if married, about
one dollar per day. But it is notorious that peculations,
hush money, and bribes from privates often swell his income
to ten times that amount.--TR.
[9] "One year's volunteers" are those young soldiers in the
German army who, by reason of superior education and because
they pay for their own uniforms and accoutrements, serve but
one year in the active army. They belong, of course, mostly
to the well-to-do classes, and generally are promoted to the
rank of officers in the reserves.--TR.
During the first year of their married life the "Frau
Vice-Sergeant-Major," full of a sense of her new dignity, had
painfully felt the lack of an "upright" or, better still, a "grand,"
inasmuch as she regarded such an instrument as an irrefutable evidence
of belonging to the higher walks of life. She asserted, besides, that
in her girlhood she had received instruction on the piano,--an
assertion which nobody was able to dispute because that period lay
about a generation back. She admitted that she had forgotten whatever
of piano playing she might ever have known; but she felt quite sure
that a piano in her parlor would restore the lost nimbus, and
then--perhaps the most potent reason of all--the wife of her husband's
"colleague" in the second squadron owned a piano, and had taken great
care to let her know the fact soon after she had become Frau Roth.
Roth himself, probably under the influence of his partner's urgings,
had frequently and with due emphasis spoken to that year's crop of
"one year's men" about the great musical talents of his wife, now,
alas! lying fallow for want of a piano of her own, and he had coupled
these remarks with plaints that the smallness of his resources
prevented the purchase of such an instrument. These remarks, coming
from one who had it virtually in his power to obtain for each one of
the "one year's men" promotion after the fall manoeuvres, had at last
borne fruit. One day the aforesaid stained oak piano had been unloaded
at Roth's door, accompanied by a round-robin from the volunteers
themselves, in which they waxed duly enthusiastic over his wife's
imaginary musical proficiency. Of course, the supposed gift had been
accepted, and of course every one of the supposed donors was advanced
in rank the following autumn, due to Roth's brilliant testimonials of
their prowess and exceptional fitness for a higher grade.
Roth never saw these "one year's men" again, but about a week after
their departure from the regiment a cart stopped before his door, and
the driver said he had come to take the piano back to the factory, the
term of pre-paid hire having expired. Decidedly a dirty trick on the
part of these young fellows, all the more so as Frau Roth had by this
time bragged so much about her piano to every one of her female
friends and neighbors, to whom she had represented it as a belated
wedding gift from a far-away uncle! The couple agreed it would never
do to return the instrument to the makers, and thus it was that the
Roths were still paying for this piano in monthly instalments, one
"gold fox"[10] each time, a number of years afterwards, with quite a
long time yet to run. No reasonable person will blame Vice-Sergeant-Major
Roth for the aforementioned tears of rage.
[10] "Gold fox," a slang term for the German twenty-mark gold
pieces.--TR.
Hanging above the piano, one could admire a huge steel engraving of
Vernet's "Funeral Banquet," also in an expensive frame (the gift of a
parting young soldier, son of a wealthy farmer); while antlers,
Japanese fans, a peacock's tail, etc., helped to produce a somewhat
incongruous _ensemble_. There was a pretty mahogany stand, on the
various shelves of which stood a large china punch-bowl, six green
Rhine-wine glasses (both gifts from other "grateful" recruits). There
was also a solid oak writing-table, on one corner of which Frau Roth
had stood the cages for her canary birds, just then in the interesting
stage of breeding, and therefore voiceless. A huge portrait of the
Kaiser, with two crossed sabres and a pair of pistols under it, and a
cuckoo clock were exhibited on the wall close by. There was also a big
flower table, but on near view it was seen that its fine roses and
tulips had not originated in a hothouse, but under the scissors of an
artist in tissue paper.
On the floor were to be seen two white goat-skins and three small mats
of domestic make, as well as a genuine Kelim (gift from "one year's
men"), and a thick plush table-cover, as well as plush draperies,
helped to make an impression which, combined as it was of so many
ill-fitting details, was far from the one intended.
Glancing at the lowering sky through the east windows of this room,
big, shapeless clouds of gray could be observed slowly driving along;
it looked, in fact, like a cheerless and stormy ocean, monotonous in
its uniform tint. Now and then showers of cold hail or rain tore away
from this chaos, and, pitched hither and thither by howling winds,
swept across the town or over the desolate fields.
When the rain thus whipped the window-panes and the boisterous west
wind whistled and roared in the stove-pipe, it was, by very contrast,
all the more comfortable in this warm, cosy room, where one felt like
humanely pitying the poor comrades, now far out on the parade field,
drilling for dear life in the open.
This was the time of year when the regiment ordered into a shorter or
longer term of renewed active service its reserve men, who were then
temporarily quartered in the sheds and loosely constructed pavilions
erected behind the barracks proper. At such a time and in such weather
it was by no means pleasant to be out on the drill grounds for the
space of a whole afternoon, and then, returning, to find one's
quarters cold, dripping with rain; and to stand shivering in clothes
and boots thoroughly soaked. Those corporals and sergeants detailed
for the instruction of recruits under the roof of the big barracks
hall, and those told off for stable or other indoor service, were well
off in comparison.
For the non-commissioned officers generally, however, and especially
for Roth, there was profit connected with the annual recall of the
reserves; for it meant increased pay, and it meant a great increase in
pickings of every kind. Roth had been detailed as sergeant-major for
the first reserve squadron, and he was glad of it. There were among
these reserves a number of men he knew to be "flush" of money, and
whom he understood how to handle. There were also some "one year's
men," who, nearly all of them, had open hands and well-filled pockets.
By shutting an eye, or maybe both sometimes, thus easing the severe
discipline for them, he was sure, at the end of their brief term of
supplementary service, to have the larger portion of their "gold
foxes" in his own pocket. Roth was, therefore, with such prospects
before him, in the best of spirits. He was likewise in a confidential
mood.
Schmitz was "foddermaster" of the fourth squadron and detailed to the
reserve squadron for the time being. He was a very competent man.
Whoever wished to convince himself of that needed but to visit the
horses belonging to his squadron. He would have seen them with silky
coat, round in limb, and full of dash and life, standing above their
fetlocks in the clean, shining straw. His stable, too, was always a
model of neatness and cleanliness. Even the walls were always well
whitewashed and the grated windows shining. Sergeant Schmitz, in fact,
made a labor of love of his duties.
When he went down the main aisle of his big stable, and then turned
and walked between the rows of his smooth-coated darlings, it was
amusing to see these animals, all of them at once recognizing his
step, his voice, his touch; how they turned their heads around,
whinnying and glancing affectionately at him if he called to one or
the other of his favorites.
There was, for instance, Clairette, a charming little roan, which
followed him like a dog, and with her nostrils forever sniffed at his
pockets for sugar, and then rose on her hind legs or lifted her left
foreleg beggar-fashion. There was the "Ahnfrau," a dainty little
horse, though old as the hills, with a coat black as sloes, and which
because of long faithful service and because of the shrewd wisdom that
comes with age, was in favor with the whole regiment and was often fed
some sweet morsel. The special pride of the foddermaster, however, was
the "twelve Chinamen." They had been bought in China, had then gone
through the campaign against the Boxers, had had their share in the
capture of Peking, and had then, at the close of the Far Asiatic War,
been enrolled in the regiment. They were fine, powerful horses, with
shining coats and strong bones, even if some of them did not reach the
height of "Peiho," "Woo," and "Kwangsue," but were, strictly speaking,
but ponies. Each one of the horses had its special claim on the
affections of this man who now sat chatting with his "Vice" at the
table.
Just then Frau Roth entered, carrying a tray neatly covered with a
snowy napkin, on which stood a bottle of fragrant Moselle wine, three
glasses, and a narrow box of cigars.
"The devil! You're living high, Roth! I wish I had such easy times
myself. What's up?" said Schmitz, in amazement.
"I have my birthday anniversary but once a year," remarked Roth,
sententiously, "and on such occasions it's worth while spending
something."
His wife poured the wine into the green "Römer,"[11] and each of the
three raised a glass of wine whose delicious, flower-like perfume and
whose straw-yellow color told them that this noble grape-juice had
been distilled by the sun on one of the favored hills rising steeply
along the banks of the upper Moselle. Then they cried, "Prosit" and
clinked, so that the fine glass emitted a bell-like sound. Then they
sipped with the air of connoisseurs. The little scene was an
unconscious imitation of similar ones they had often noticed the
officers of the garrison enact with a certain solemnity. In
wine-growing countries they enshroud with a time-honored ceremonial
the ceremony of drinking wine of quality.
[11] "Römer," the name of prettily shaped glasses, usually of
amber or emerald hue, in which Rhine and Moselle wines are
served.--TR.
The two men lit their cigars, each bearing the well-known narrow band
of a famous importing firm, and next they refilled their glasses. They
had another hour until the time for the evening stable service should
come, and there was nothing to do meanwhile, for First Lieutenant
Specht, temporarily in command of the reserve squadron, never appeared
during the afternoon service. Hence, there would be no disturbance.
"Will you be off on leave at Christmas?" asked Roth of his friend.
"Don't know yet," Schmitz replied, with a shrug of his shoulders. "I
should like to, for I haven't been outside this dirty hole of a town
for two years; but it is hardly worth my while to undertake such a
long trip for the few days, for I don't suppose I should get more than
a week off, and it takes me forty-eight hours to reach my home--it's
at the other end of the world, you know--and that much to return. So I
should have but a couple of days to myself, after all my trouble and
expense."
"What is the fare?" asked Roth.
"About thirty marks, and I haven't that much to spare."
Roth laughed disdainfully.
"Such a trifle only! Ho ho ho!"
"Well, you can laugh, of course," retorted Schmitz, good-naturedly.
"It wouldn't mean anything to you. But suppose you haven't got that
much money, what then?"
"I'll lend you that trifle," said the "Vice," pompously.
"Say, you must have been winning in the lottery, old friend! You're
spending money like water for some time past. Every short while you're
making a run into town; you're smoking genuine Havanas; and you're
even ready to lend money! At the very least you must have come into an
inheritance."
"No, mine is not dead men's money," Roth sneered. "All it takes is to
be shrewd and to gather up all the money that crosses your path."
"I suppose you've slain a rich Jew!"[12]
[12] "Slain a rich Jew," a German phrase for "suddenly
acquired wealth."--TR.
"Not precisely," said Roth, mysteriously.
"Well, I don't catch your meaning," put in the other.
Roth winked at his wife and then at Schmitz, to show that she was not
to hear his confidences; but when she rose immediately after, to fetch
another bottle of wine, he said in whispers:
"I'll tell you, if you want to know; but--" he put his index finger
significantly to his mouth--"Mum's the word!"
"Oh, of course; don't be afraid. I never betray my pals!"
"Well, then, I will tell you. This is the second time I am in command
of the reserves. Last time we had a whole lot of one year's volunteers
amongst them, mostly well-to-do farmer boys. You remember 'Fatty'
Kramer, that swine, and Rossbach, whose father at home has twelve
horses in the stable, and Scheller, the fellow who was always running
after the girls, and that whole crowd? Fellows of that sort, you see,
don't know what to do with their money, and I wouldn't be such an ass
as to give them their pay, their uniform allowance, and so on; they
don't care about those measly few coins. Scheller, besides, gave me a
chance to make some money outside of that. The last night before he
had finished his two years, I happened to inspect his quarters, it
being considerably past taps. And what do I see but this very fellow,
Scheller, together with--well, you know--and as I was just about to
raise the deuce, he whispers in my ear: 'Don't say anything, please!'
Well, then, I kept my mouth shut, and at noon the following day there
was a 'blue rag'[13] in my overcoat pocket."
[13] "Blue rag," German slang term for bank notes of large
amount.--TR.
"The deuce you say! What luck! But supposing these fellows afterwards
give you away, especially if they don't get their promotions?"
"Oh, they won't say anything; they are glad enough if they can stay
away from the army. As to promotions, most of them were not the kind
to think about such a thing."
"Well, I in your place should be afraid there might be trouble some
time, and then think what a rumpus there would be!"
"Leave me alone for that. Just now there are a couple more of these
rich, stupid fellows; there is the son of a butcher in Brunswick whose
father must be worth a million or so, and the others, too, have lots
of money to burn. What do you suppose I'll make out of them before
they leave the squadron? They are worth at least a couple of hundred
apiece to me. Well, _Prosit!_" They clinked glasses.
The glasses rang out harmoniously, and the next instant they were
emptied of the last drops.
"How do you like this stuff? Costs six marks the bottle! Of course,
_I_ didn't pay for it,"--with another wink.
"Horribly expensive; where did you get it?"
"Last year, you remember, that one year's volunteer, Hoch? When he
wanted to become sergeant, I did my best for him with the Chief, and
so he got the chevrons. And he was not ungrateful. A whole box of
wine--two dozen of these bottles. Pretty decent, wasn't it?"
"You're lucky, sure enough!"
"You see, my friend, how these things must be done. Always practical:
that's my motto. Last year, for instance, I had charge of the mess
provisions. The butcher put in a good many bones now and then, and I
don't think that he ever gave over-weight. Naturally, I was after
him, and the result was a 'blue rag' every week from him, and my
family meat didn't cost me a red, either."
Roth broke into a hearty laughter. He slapped his pocket jocularly,
and the jingling sound of gold and silver met their ears. Then he
gulped down another glassful of the delicious wine.
"Why don't you drink, Schmitz? I suppose you are full."
"As to that, no; that takes longer. _Prosit!_"
In this style the conversation proceeded, and when they had emptied
their third bottle it was very evident that they had drunk about as
much as was good for them. Their eyes had assumed a glassy stare, and
their faces were scarlet. Moreover, their speech was loud and
blustering, and Roth, particularly, was unable longer to talk
coherently, except with difficulty.
Suddenly he looked at the clock. "Six, by thunder. Time to look after
the stables!"
"Yes, let's go," said Schmitz; "we must get to the stables, the beasts
are hungry!"
They arose reeling. Roth girded his loins with his sabre, and both of
them went clattering down the stone stairs of the barracks. The sabre
struck the steps all along, as Roth descended heavily, and there was a
terrific noise.
Several soldiers stuck out their heads as the two went along; and when
they noticed their intoxicated superiors they quickly retreated into
their own rooms, saying: "They surely have enough! If one of us went
about in that way we'd be ripe for a pretty long term in the cooler."
At the turn of the corridor Dietrich, a good-service man belonging to
the fourth squadron, stepped up to Roth and said: "I'd like to ask the
Herr 'Vice' for some coal for Room X. My men have been out in the rain
foraging, and all of us are wet to the skin. It is very cold upstairs,
and unless we can heat the stove our clothes will not dry till
to-morrow."
"What! Coal? Go to the quartermaster, you loafers; I haven't any coal
for you!" spluttered Roth with a heavy tongue.
"The quartermaster has gone to town, and the Herr 'Vice' keeps the
keys to the cellar in such cases!"
"Get out of my way, you ---- fool! You don't need coal every time a
few drops of rain fall. Lie down in bed, you pack of swine, if you are
cold, and leave me alone with your impudent complaints."
Dietrich stood for a moment in doubt, not knowing whether it would be
safe to make another rejoinder. But he saw plainly that the "Vice" was
in an irresponsible condition, and so silently, but with rage in his
heart, he turned on his heels so that the spurs jingled, and went back
to his men.
In the stables hardly anybody remained, the men having attended to
their duties and retired. Only the stable guard was to be seen.
For stable guards men are taken, by preference, whose health has
suffered in the hard service at this inclement season. One of them had
incipient consumption, the regimental surgeon having noticed the man's
condition only a week after his joining the squadron, and now the
colonel thought it was not worth while discharging the man. The second
one of these reserves had, since his civilian life, nursed himself so
well as to have acquired a regular paunch, so that the quartermaster
had been unable to fit him with any of the uniforms, and the man, put
into a soiled canvas suit, had been permanently assigned to stable
duty. The third of this interesting trio was something of an idiot,
hailing from the Polish districts. He grinned like a maniac, and he
was entirely unfit for drill or any other kind of service that
required even the faintest degree of intelligence; but, having been
laborer with a Polish peasant, he knew how to handle horses and to
clean the stable. He addressed, in his broken German, everybody,
including the officers, as "Thou," and doffed his cap in token of
military salute.
The foddermaster felt frightened when he became aware that feeding
time was already considerably past, for he regarded the horses under
his care with great affection. He therefore called up the stable
guards and hurried them with a "Quick, now, you lazybones!" The fodder
wagon was loaded with oats and chopped straw and then pushed into the
main aisle of the stable. The creaking of this vehicle was for the
horses the most joyful music every day. As soon as the sound struck
their ears they became lively, raised their heads, craned their necks,
and turned around, as far as their halters would permit, to watch the
operation. They evidently had thought themselves forgotten to-night,
and there was a keen edge to their appetites, so that some of them
became a little unruly, kicking, neighing, and nipping at their
neighbors out of sheer sportiveness. "Napoleon," the ancient stallion,
had been devoured by such an acute sensation of hunger that as soon as
the fat guard aforementioned came near him with the measure he tore it
out of the man's hands and gave him such a push against his paunch
that the guard dropped the oats and, pressing both hands against the
injured part, ran out into the aisle.
Roth, watching things, saw this incident, and shouted to him:
"Go on, you lazy lubber, pick the stuff up again! Your fat carcass
won't be damaged by such a little blow!"
The fat individual, however, made no move to obey, but continued to
hold his paunch, while tears of pain stood in his eyes, and his face
assumed a livid hue. Roth strode up to him and began to belabor him
with both fists, showering hard blows on neck and head. Then,
grasping him by the throat, Roth turned the man's head around and
administered such a well-aimed blow on his nose as to draw blood.
Under this punishment the ungainly soldier rose with difficulty, then
bent down and began to collect the overturned oats. Roth, however, in
his drunken fury gave the man a kick with his heavy boot, sending him
against "Napoleon," whose hind legs he embraced in an effort to
maintain his equilibrium.
But that was more than "Napoleon" would stand. First he didn't get his
oats, and then such practical jokes! He struck out with both hoofs,
hitting the poor devil of a guard against some of the most sensitive
portions of his anatomy, and hurling him into the aisle like one dead.
Roth was frightened. Fortunately for him nobody had seen the incident,
for Schmitz, with the other two men, happened just then to be busy at
the other end of the stable. So he merely called the other two reserve
men, and made them carry his unconscious victim to the reserve
quarters close by. The whole business, though, was very disagreeable
to him, for the poor fellow had been hit hard.
When the first lieutenant the next morning asked why the injured man
had been taken to the hospital, Roth answered:
"He was too clumsy in handling the horse,--frightened it, and the
beast naturally struck out. I understand he has got a good-sized hole
in his head."
"What a beastly fool," scolded the officer. "By rights the fellow
ought to be put in jail besides, as he will only spoil our horses."
But that was the next morning. On the evening in question, as soon as
the accident had happened, Roth felt in worse temper than ever. He
looked around for some one on whom to vent his spleen.
He looked in the fodder chest.
"Give the rest to 'Zeus'; he hasn't got quite enough, and he looks as
lean as a goat," he said to Schmitz.
"No," Schmitz retorted; "he won't get any more. He has got
enough--more than is good for him,--and this morning he struck out and
hit a man. The horses are getting crazy, standing all the time in the
stable and munching their oats."
"Oh, give it to him anyway; he can stand it!"
"But why? It's nonsense!"
Roth had a new access of fury; nothing enraged him as much as to be
contradicted.
"Give him the rest, I say!" he said roughly to Schmitz.
But Schmitz shut the lid of the chest and answered shortly:
"I'm glad when I can save some fodder!" And with that he pushed away
the cart.
Roth, quite beside himself, shouted:
"Sergeant Schmitz, you will not carry out my orders? I shall report
you."
In saying which he left the foddermaster in a huff, went with
uncertain steps and with black mien through the stable to his own
quarters, drank a big glassful of raw spirits "to quiet his nerves,"
and then threw himself full-clad on the bed.
The two guards in the stable, who had observed these occurrences with
considerable interest, stuck another handful of hay in front of each
horse, and then lay down on the straw in the corner of the stable to
sleep. Sergeant Schmitz, however, went to his room, completely
sobered.
The following noon the orderly transmitted to the reserve squadron of
the regiment a document reading as follows:
REPORT
On the occasion of the stable service last night
Vice-Sergeant-Major Roth gave to Foddermaster Sergeant
Schmitz a formal order, which the latter did not carry out.
When the said Vice-Sergeant-Major Roth emphatically repeated
the order, the aforementioned Schmitz refused once more to
comply therewith. This happened in the presence of the
stable guards, and it is charged by the aforesaid Roth that
Sergeant Schmitz was at the time in an intoxicated
condition.
SPECHT,
_First Lieutenant and Squadron Chief
of the 2d Reserve Squadron._
The foddermaster happened to be seated at his noon meal, when the
sergeant-major stepped up, announced his arrest to him, and took him
to the lock-up. There he was to remain until sentence should be
pronounced in his case, for his offence had been officially designated
as "Peremptory refusal of obedience in the presence of men
assembled." As such "men assembled" the two guards of the stable were
regarded in the eyes of the law.
The incident was reported from mouth to mouth throughout the regiment,
and by far the greater majority were indignant at Roth's action. Even
the officers themselves declared unanimously that such a superior as
Roth ought to be got rid of.
But Roth thought he had done something heroic, and seemed great in his
own eyes. When off duty he declared he liked comradeship, and was ever
ready for a good joke, not taking offence at anything. But when on
duty, why, the devil, they should see that he was not to be trifled
with. Every species of intimacy or friendship was at an end when on
duty. Then it was: I order, and you have to obey, else I'll break your
neck!
And Sergeant Schmitz all this time was in his gloomy, cold cell.
Lifeless and broken in courage, he was staring at the rough stone
flagging through the long hours of the day. He thought he was
dreaming, and could not or would not believe that he was behind lock
and key because of a military offence. Why, he had nine long years of
service behind him, in which he had conducted himself blamelessly,
never having been punished for a day.
Slowly, indeed, the seriousness of the situation dawned on him, and
with this consciousness grew up a violent hatred of the man whom he
had deemed his friend, and who now, under the influence of alcoholic
rage was about to destroy the fruits of all his life and those he had
counted to garner in the future. But he would show the regiment, once
he was a free man again, what a low character the fellow really had,
and how behind his hypocritical and insinuating manners were concealed
systematic dishonesty and fraudulent practices. Nobody should be
deceived by him again. He, Schmitz, would take care of that.
That he was to be court-martialed seemed to be beyond question. And as
a matter of fact he was charged, as he knew, with "peremptory refusal
to obey"; but the trial must certainly show that the peculiar
circumstances of his offence were of such a character as to deprive it
of all seriousness, and that really there had been but an exchange of
words which, although an official character might be attributed to it,
could not possibly be viewed with great severity when once all the
facts had been established. He counted, of course, among these facts
his intimate intercourse with Roth; but this point would have to be
clearly and skilfully brought out at the trial, for on that hinged the
issue.
Sergeant Schmitz prayed, therefore, formally, in a petition to the
regiment, for legal counsel, and at the same time for permission to
enter with such counsel into oral and written communication.
He was amazed when informed a few days later that legal counsel could
be provided by military courts only in those cases where the defendant
was accused of a crime. On the other hand, the communication said,
there was no objection to his retaining a suitable lawyer, but of
course at his own expense.
But where get the money for such a lawyer? Schmitz's slender means and
those of his parents at home were by no means sufficient for the
purpose, and yet he felt that he had no chance in his defence if he
were to face the judges of the military court, and Roth himself,
whose persuasive powers of language he knew so well. He would be
unable, with his very insufficient command of language, to enlighten
the court in an impressive manner as to intimate details. Somehow,
therefore, the money must be raised.
After three weeks of preliminary confinement, the term was at last
fixed at which the trial was to take place. Schmitz felt that he could
await its issue with a clear conscience. Even his counsel had told him
that an unfavorable end was not to be expected, as soon as the judges
had been made acquainted with the circumstances preceding the actual
trifling occurrence in the stable. Schmitz expected, therefore, that
the term at which he was to be tried would also be the day of
regaining his liberty; for the last few weeks, what with suffering
from hardships, from the insufficient and coarse jail diet, and from
worry, had been terrible ones indeed for him.
Even the formal indictment drawn up against him, of which a copy had
been sent him, could not repress his hopes. He knew that in such a
document everything concerning him and his offence was naturally
represented in the darkest colors, so as to leave the judge-advocate
sufficient grounds on which to bring the proceedings against him to
the point of actual trial.
The document read:
"Proceedings have been opened against Sergeant Ferdinand
Julius Schmitz, on motion to that effect, because of an
offence against Paragraph 94 of the Military Criminal Code.
"Although the defendant maintains that he has been on
particularly friendly terms with Vice-Sergeant-Major Roth,
that would in no way justify him in disobeying an order
issued while in the performance of duty. On the contrary,
his refusal to obey two peremptory and emphatic orders,
given in the presence of the stable guard, and therefore
before men assembled, was a most glaring instance of
insubordination.
"The excuse of defendant, that he was in an excited
condition by reason of indulgence in alcoholic liquors, in
nowise exculpates him. The circumstance that his offence has
been committed while intoxicated during the performance of
his duty, is rather an additional reason for increasing the
measure of his punishment.
"Defendant will be tried by court-martial."
That sounded indeed very dangerous, just as if he were a criminal of
the deepest dye,--he, who for nine years had conducted himself
blamelessly. He was almost tempted to laugh at this accusation, which
seemed to him so strongly tinctured with prejudice.
On October 20th, at noon precisely, the trial began.
The judges had come to town from the seat of the command of the army
corps. With faces severe and forbidding, they sat at a long table,--a
major, a captain, a first lieutenant, a judge-advocate to conduct the
proceedings according to the statutes, and a second one to conduct the
prosecution.
After Schmitz had given an intelligent account of the facts, Roth was
called as witness. He represented the affair in the most glaring
colors, denied all friendship with the defendant, and likewise denied
in the strongest language that he also had been intoxicated, as
Schmitz had stated. By hook or crook he had gained over as witnesses
for his sober condition on that evening the invalid afflicted with
lung trouble, and likewise the Pole. The latter, because of the
semi-idiotic state of his mind, and because of his insufficient
knowledge of German, he had instructed to simply nod his head to all
the questions asked him. As luck would have it, it so happened that
the questions put to this witness were of a kind to which his mute
nods were the answers most unfavorable to the defendant. The wonder
was, however, that the court made no objection to such testimony.
Finally the "Vice" swore, with a voice shaken by no tremor, to the
truth of his deposition.
This, of course, was an unexpected turn in the affair. Schmitz had not
expected, and he had not forearmed himself against such a tissue of
lies. His hopes sank considerably when he noticed that the major, as
chairman of the commission, was shaking his head in grave disapproval
on hearing the unfavorable testimony.
Next followed the address of the prosecuting judge-advocate, which
conformed in almost every detail to the substance of the act of
accusation.
Then Schmitz's counsel arose. In eloquent words he described the event
as it had actually occurred, weighed the peculiar circumstances, and
pointed with great emphasis to the former intimacy of accuser and
defendant,--an intimacy the existence of which had been corroborated
by several witnesses who had deposed during the preliminary stage of
the case. Lastly, he made as much as he could out of the fact that the
whole occurrence had been an outgrowth of a friendly birthday
celebration. In consideration of all these things, and also because of
the irreproachable conduct of the defendant for so many years of
active service, he moved for his acquittal.
The court-martial then retired for deliberation, and a long time
elapsed before its members, wearing a severe aspect, reappeared in the
session chamber.
Schmitz was in a dazed condition when he heard the sentence: two
months of jail!
He saw his life destroyed. In vain had been the long years which he
had given, at the sacrifice of his best strength, to his country. His
dream of a future free from care, and of an appointment, after another
three years of service, to a municipal office of an humble kind in his
native town, had been shattered at one blow. What would his parents
say, his sisters and brothers, and what would become of the girl to
whom he had been engaged for several years past?
A fierce rage seized him, and he could have throttled on the spot the
man who by perjury, out of vindictiveness and for selfish reasons, had
marred his existence forever. The blood rushed to his head as he saw
this same man striding past him now, a sneer on his lips, in haughty
indifference. Nay, worse, he heard the commander of the regiment say
to this dishonorable scoundrel:
"That is right, Roth. Unpitying in the service is what I want my
non-commissioned officers to be."
Schmitz was taken to a fortress on October 21st, where many hours of
mental torture and many days of hard, grinding labor of the lowest
kind awaited him.
Thus gradually approached Christmas time. The wide yard of the
barracks was covered with snow. All lay desolate, lifeless, and grim
in the severe cold which had supervened during the last days.
A large part of the regiment had been granted holiday leave, and every
one of the men did his utmost while on duty, in order not to forfeit
at the last moment the joys of home and friendship which awaited him.
Almost every evening the members of the corps of officers rode to the
neighboring city, there to make Christmas purchases; for only one of
them intended to go home for the holidays, and the others were
preparing a little celebration at the Casino for which mutual gifts
were being chosen.
Borgert and Leimann both returned from their divers trips, heavily
laden with packages. They bought everything that pleased them. It
might be that at some future time they would somehow have the money to
pay for it all. Meanwhile every tradesman continued to give them
unlimited credit.
After making their purchases, the officers usually met in a certain
restaurant, where they broke the necks of a few bottles of good wine.
And often it would happen that they boarded the midnight train, being
in a decidedly animated mood, returning to their garrison.
One night Lieutenant Müller, the regimental adjutant, found an
official telegram on his reaching home, and was obliged, despite the
late hour, to go to the chief clerk of the regiment, in order to talk
over its contents.
There had been a heavy fall of snow, and the keen east wind drove the
snowflakes in a wild dance through the cold air. It was all one could
do to recognize the path.
Müller, who did not like being disturbed at such a late hour,
continued grumbling to himself all the way to the barracks. Whenever
he had taken more than was good for him he was in a quarrelsome mood,
and in such a case he usually made trouble. His comrades claimed that
he was suffering from megalomania.
Through the thick snow Müller saw the illuminated windows of the guard
house, and inside the small detachment of men were peacefully
slumbering.
The officer _du jour_ had already visited them, and the men had now
made themselves comfortable, discarding their sabres and helmets,
contrary to the regulations, and, dozing in their chairs, had covered
themselves with warm blankets.
Private Röse had mounted guard outside. He stood, shivering in the
cold air, holding his sabre in his fist, barely able to maintain his
martial attitude without freezing on the spot.
His thoughts dwelt in his far-away home, with his parents and
brothers, whom he expected to meet again at Christmas, after a long
term of separation. His people were well-to-do farmers, and his
affection for the horses, cows, and plump pigs under his father's roof
was as sincere as that for the bipeds. He pictured to himself all
these pets, and was speculating as to what he was to do in the shape
of amusement during the holidays, when he was suddenly scared by the
shout:
"Guard!"
Röse pulled himself together and quickly glanced all around him in the
gloom; but he was unable to discover the owner of the voice. Another
similar shout reached him, and then at last he saw dimly in the
driving snowflakes a figure approaching him.
"Why don't you present arms, you swine?" bawled the regimental
adjutant.
"I humbly beg the Herr Lieutenant's pardon; but I did not see him
coming in the snowstorm."
"Shut your mouth, you lying beast; you've been sleeping. I have been
waiting an eternity for your salute; but I will show you, you hog,
what punishment awaits a fellow of your stripe!"
With that he passed the sentinel, and the latter was almost paralyzed
with fear. Arrived at the regimental headquarters, Müller made the
following report:
"The sentinel keeping guard between twelve and two o'clock
this night I found asleep during an inspection which I made.
He answered my call only after a considerable time. I must
declare in advance that the man, in case he should urge his
inability to recognize me in the dark, is stating what is
not true, since I noticed particularly that he was asleep."
This report he placed on the desk of the commander of the regiment.
Then he aroused the regimental chief clerk from a sound sleep in the
adjoining room, kept that poor fellow shivering in his night garments
in the corridor for about ten minutes, and then went home. Having
discharged what he considered a grave duty, he was able to sleep the
sleep of the just.
* * * * *
On the afternoon of December 22d, Sergeant Schmitz returned from jail.
The poor fellow had greatly changed. The black moustache, formerly
twisted and waxed so as to describe an angle in exact imitation of the
Kaiser's, was drooping, and his face was pale and worn. He looked
shyly at all the privates whom he met in the streets, and when one of
them saluted him, he deemed it a special act of courtesy. He thought
he read in everybody's eyes:
"This man is a criminal,--a man punished for grave insubordination!"
When he reported himself to the chief of the squadron, the latter
said, with some show of feeling:
"Sorry, my dear Schmitz, that I have to lose you. You were always a
man of whom I felt proud, and who did his duty as few others did. But
the colonel has commanded me to cancel the capitulation agreement[14]
and to dismiss you forthwith. Console yourself with the thought that
you have become the victim of a dirty intrigue. I wish you well, and
if I can be of any service to you, you know where to find me. And so,
farewell!"
[14] "Capitulation" means an arrangement by which a
non-commissioned officer agrees to serve the government for a
certain term of years.--TR.
Schmitz felt the tears spurting from his eyes, as his chief went
towards the stable. His captain was really sorry to lose him. Schmitz
had always been one of the pillars of discipline in the squadron, and
now this train of misfortune had removed him and plunged him into
misery. It was a most unfortunate thing.
Schmitz went to the sergeant-major, who gave him his papers and the
fifty marks due him. The sergeant-major, too, felt sorry for him. He
gave him a fervent shake of the hand.
"Have you any further claims on the regiment, Schmitz?" he asked.
"Since the manoeuvres last year I've been suffering with rheumatism."
"But you didn't tell me about that, Schmitz, at the time, and
considerably over a year has elapsed since then."
"Well, I didn't report it then because I did not want to disturb the
run of things by my absence. I knew the captain was bothered a good
deal at the time."
"Yes, yes, that is all very well. I will report your statement at once
to the regiment, but I'm afraid it will be too late. Meanwhile you had
better deliver up all the regimental property."
So then Schmitz went up to his room, packed all his things, and put
his private belongings in a small trunk. But before doffing his
uniform he went to the neighboring city and purchased for himself a
civilian's suit, a collar, and a hat. These took about all the money
which had been paid him.
Then he carried everything of the government's outfit to the
quartermaster, to whom he likewise sold some of the private
regimentals he had bought with his own money. The sabre he kept as a
memento.
And then came the hardest of all,--the farewell from his comrades and
his horses. Every one had a friendly word for him, for he had been a
good comrade and had never been puffed up with his own importance.
Many a mute pressure of the hand told him that they all felt sorry
for him, and that they, as much as he himself, thought the treatment
to which he had been subjected an act of injustice. The privates, too,
pressed up to him to say a word of good-bye. Often he had berated them
soundly, but they all knew him as a decent fellow, and as one who had
never badgered them unnecessarily.
As the noon service drew towards its close, Schmitz went into the
stable. What a pang for him! Never in his life had a thing seemed so
hard to him. All the beasts he loved so well turned and craned their
necks towards him, leaving the savory hay and their oats for a moment
as soon as they heard his voice, and gazing at him with such
intelligence as if they appreciated his woe to the full. The sense of
desolation almost overpowered him.
He had filled his pockets with sugar, and he began with "Clairette,"
feeding the sweet morsels to all his quadruped friends. "Clairette"
lifted her forefoot, begging for one more piece. He laid his head
against the velvety neck of the animal, stroking caressingly the silky
nostrils and around the fine eyes, then kissing her on the white spot
just below. The mare seemed to understand him. She whinnied softly,
and gave him a sad glance of parting. Next came old "Marie." How much
longer would she be able to stand the service? And thus he visited
them, one by one, in token of farewell. The last one was "Napoleon";
but even he showed to-day no trace of his accustomed ill temper. He
gave the strange man in civilian clothes a long look of doubt and
forbearance.
A last, lingering glance to his hundred darlings, and then he
painfully suppressed a tearful sob, and climbed up to his late
quarters to get his trunk.
There he met the sergeant-major of his squadron.
"Your invalid claims, Schmitz, have been disallowed. The colonel says
you would have had to make a report at the time. Now it is too late.
Just as I thought. Here is something for you,--the bill of your
attorney, who has asked the regiment to collect the amount due him.
It's a matter of sixty marks; and if you are unable to pay it he
threatens to seize your property."
Schmitz had almost forgotten about that.
"Within an hour I shall have the money," said he, after reflecting a
moment.
Then he went down to the city and entered the store of a watchmaker.
He laid on the counter his watch and chain and asked in a firm voice:
"What will you give me on this? I need money!"
The watchmaker examined both, and then said, with something of a
sneer:
"Twenty marks. That is all I can give you."
Schmitz calculated silently. He still had thirty-five, and twenty more
made fifty-five. So he needed another five marks. He removed a ring
from his finger, a little gift from his mother.
"What is this worth to you?"
"Ten marks!"
"Good, give it to me!"
Schmitz pocketed silently the two gold pieces, then went to the
barracks, paid the sergeant-major the sixty marks, and took his trunk
away. He was just in time to catch the evening train.
Those who saw this pale, downcast man, with his small trunk, seated
in the car, scarcely supposed that he was until recently a royal
Prussian sergeant, dismissed in disgrace from long service because of
a small offence, without a penny, but with rheumatism in all his
bones, and with his patriotism destroyed, thrust into the street to
seek a new and precarious means of living, after spending his best
strength, his health, and his youth in the service of his country.
On the summit of the hill, whence he could discern the barracks, the
snow glistening on its roof, he cast a last look at the spot where he
had spent so many years. He raised his arms with a threatening
gesture, and a curse escaped his lips.
In the train which carried him off there were numerous soldiers of his
regiment, singing and joking, on their way home for the holidays.
Christmas Eve had come. All the world--thousands, millions--were
happy. They felt the charm of this most beautiful Christian
festival,--a day which moves to softness the hardest hearts. But
Schmitz, an outcast, felt nothing but bitterness and shame. His glance
dwelt on the lighted windows where all these happy people were
celebrating, and he vowed vengeance.
* * * * *
Friedrich Röse meanwhile occupied a badly warmed cell, undergoing a
fortnight's confinement because of his alleged inattention while on
duty as sentinel.
Through the narrow window of his cell he could espy the quarters
occupied by the third squadron, a couple of stories higher, in the
same building; the row of windows was shining with the brilliant
lights of a gigantic Christmas tree, standing in the centre of the
large hall. The sounds of a pathetic Christmas hymn were floating down
to him, as it was intoned by the throats of the men. Shivering with
cold, he sat on the edge of his hard pallet, and a tear rolled down
his cheek. Again his thoughts dwelt with his friends at home, far
away, and wrath filled his soul.
What disillusionment the year had brought him since he had begun his
term as volunteer! His father, once sergeant-major in a regiment of
Guard Cuirassiers, had often described to him a soldier's life in
vivid colors, and had expressed his hope to see, some day, his boy
himself advanced to the grade of sergeant.
But that prospect was now gone. His punishment brought with it as a
consequence the impossibility of ever rising from the ranks.
His one-time zeal for his calling had changed suddenly to a violent
distaste for everything connected with the service. At one blow the
enthusiastic, ambitious recruit had turned into one of the many
soldiers who serve in the army simply because they are compelled to do
so, and who are longing for the day when they will be able to doff the
uniform forever.
And why all this?
Not because he had knowingly neglected his duty, but because one of
the officers, one of the men whom he had until recently looked up to
as demigods, had in his drunken spleen selected him for a victim. And
that which this officer had maintained in his report had to stand as
an absolute fact, no matter how untrue; and if he or anybody else
should express doubts of its accuracy it would mean a new and
punishable offence.
In answer to the questions asked by the chief of his squadron, Röse
had stated the occurrence quite truthfully, and had assured him
solemnly of his innocence. But the adjutant had replied to this that
the man wanted to exculpate himself by untrue statements. The report
was, therefore, accepted as it read.
Was it to be expected that Müller would admit his own wrong, admit
that he had in his semi-drunkenness misinterpreted the facts, and that
he had been in an unpleasant frame of mind at the time? Of course not.
That would have meant charging himself with an offence. How could he,
the infallible regimental adjutant, own up to an error? No, he was
never mistaken; and what difference did it make, anyway, if this raw
recruit did get a fortnight's term in the "cooler"?
What difference?
This difference,--that there was now one more of those who proclaim
that the private soldier in the German army is a man forced into a
yoke, the prey of every whim of his superiors, a man exposed to the
bad humor of those above him, one who has to suffer, without a sign of
resistance, undeserved harshness and injustice. Such a man was now
this young recruit.
And what further harm was there in it?
This,--that everybody in the future, when Röse should be asked for his
testimonials, would shrug his shoulders, thinking: "This man cannot be
trustworthy, for he has undergone severe punishment for neglect of
duty as a sentinel, and that is a bad sign!"
Towards nine o'clock in the evening Röse was aroused from his sombre
reflections by a rattling of keys at his door. The key turned in the
lock, and in stepped the officer on duty, making his round, behind him
the guard.
Röse jumped up, assumed a rigid military posture, and reported
himself.
"Private Röse, sentenced to a fortnight's confinement for neglect of
duty while on guard!"
The officer cast a searching glance into the dark cell, trying to make
out whether he could discover a forbidden object in it beside the
blanket and the water-pitcher, and then he turned to go. But Röse
hesitatingly and in humble tones said:
"Will the Herr Lieutenant permit me to make a respectful request?"
"Ask the guard if you want anything," answered the officer shortly,
and then descended the stone steps, his sword clanking.
The corporal on guard then turned and went back to Röse's cell.
"What is it you want?" he asked, with a show of good-nature.
"I should like to know, Herr Corporal, whether a letter from home has
arrived for me, and whether I could not have it!" answered Röse,
shyly.
"Well, my boy," laughed the corporal, "strictly speaking, that is
something not permitted--first serve your sentence, then you can find
out."
But as he scanned closely the features of Röse, who was of his own
squadron, and whom he rather liked,--noticing the melancholy face,--he
felt pity for the poor fellow. It was really a hard thing to spend
Christmas in jail for what probably was a mere oversight, or for what,
according to Röse himself, he had not even committed. Therefore he
said pleasantly:
"Well, I will inquire."
He locked the door, and sent a man to Röse's quarters with a request
to the corporal there to call on him. When the man came over he asked
him:
"Is there a letter for Röse?"
"A letter? No, but a package has come for him."
"Let me tell you!" whispered the corporal. "Open the box and bring
something of the contents over here. I feel sorry for the poor devil."
The other nodded and disappeared, soon to return with a letter that he
had found inside the package together with some dainty eatables. The
corporal took it all and brought it up to Röse, and then he told a man
to carry up a pail of coal to the cell.
In a few minutes the sheet-iron stove was aglow, and sent waves of
warmth into the cold cell. Röse stood in front of it, and by the
flickering light of the flames he slowly perused the letter of his
parents. While he read tears were streaming down his face. Then he hid
away under his pillow the other treasures,--a sausage and a
cake,--wrapped himself into his blanket and lay down to sleep. In his
dreams Röse was standing beneath the Christmas tree, and around him
were his dear ones at home.
The twenty-eighth of December was a day of mourning for the fourth
squadron.
All the men, including those who had just returned from leave, gave
the last escort to a dead comrade. It was Dietrich, the good-service
man, who was carried out to the cemetery.
He had always been of a weakly constitution; but he had been seized by
a violent fever the day when he had returned, overheated, and wet to
the bones from rain, after hard drill on the parade ground, and had
had to spend the evening and the night in a cold room, because Roth
had refused to furnish coal. Two days later the surgeon of the
regiment established the fact that inflammatory rheumatism had
supervened, and this had taken so bad a turn within a short time that
the heart had become affected. On Christmas Day the poor fellow had
died.
His parents had been summoned by telegraph to attend the funeral of
their only son; but sickness in the family and other circumstances
had prevented their coming, and thus the funeral took place without a
single friend or relative being present.
The day afterward the fat reserve man, the one who had been injured by
"Napoleon," left the hospital. His injuries seemed healed; but the
whole face was horribly disfigured by livid marks left from the
sutures of the surgeon's needle, and the left eye had been removed by
an operation, since it had been feared that the other eye might also
be lost unless prompt and radical measures were taken.
Maimed and crippled for life, the man returned to his home, discharged
from the army for physical inability. A monthly pension of nine marks
had been "generously" allowed him by the government.
* * * * *
Schmitz, the ex-sergeant, on New Year's Eve sat in a scantily
furnished room.
To earn a living, even if but a very poor one, he had been forced to
take work as a common laborer in a large factory of the neighboring
city. He had engaged board in a tenement house, with the family of a
fellow-workman.
There he sat now, his head buried in his hands. On a plate before him
were the remnants of a frugal supper, and a small lamp with broken
chimney threw a reddish sheen on his immobile figure. Against the
wall, above his bed, were hung his sabre and its scabbard, crosswise.
On a small wooden stool stood a bowl, in which he had performed his
ablutions, and a soiled towel hung from it. The fire in the small
stove had long ago died down, and but a few coals were still
glimmering feebly.
To see the man one would have imagined him asleep; but Schmitz was
very much awake, and in his head wild thoughts were whirling. He was
thinking of times past and gone; and the more his present
circumstances contrasted with former ones, the more grimly rose his
hatred against the man who had brought him to his present plight. He
was planning his revenge, ruminating deeply how best he should punish
the rascal, and how to brand him with a life-long reminder of his
infamous deed.
A while longer he thus sat, brooding darkly; then he rose with clouded
face and stepped to the window. He breathed against the pane covered
with rime, until a small space had been formed through which he could
peer out into the open. He saw the dial opposite on the church
steeple, from which the bells melodiously rang out in full-toned peals
the closing moments of the old year, and proclaiming the advent of a
new one.
Midnight. Schmitz seized his hat, clapped it on, took his heavy cane
into the right hand, blew out the lamp, and cautiously descended the
dark staircase. On the ice-crusted step in front of the housedoor he
lingered a moment, listening to the vibrations of the solemn bells. No
other sound was audible; no human step could be heard--only the
distant rush of air which, like the breath of a gigantic being, told
of the thronged streets of a busy city.
Schmitz shiveringly turned up his coat collar, sank both his hands
into his pockets, and went briskly, the cane under his arm, to the
railway station. There he bought a ticket for his former garrison, but
a few minutes away by rail, and stepped on board the train which had
just rolled in.
Arrived there, he found the small town buried under a thick blanket
of snow. From the barracks row upon row of lighted windows glimmered
like stars from the distance. Every little while snatches of song or
single chords, wafted towards him by the wind, gave sound in the
night. Far away the ringing of church bells could be heard, coming not
only from the steeples of the town itself, but from the villages and
hamlets surrounding it,--a joyful greeting to the new year. From out
of the dramshops and restaurants floated the sounds of loud talking,
laughter, and singing of merry people, celebrating in hot punch the
gladsome hour.
Schmitz went fleet-footed towards the end of the town where the
barracks were situated. But when he came to a restaurant in the
vicinity of the spacious building he made a halt. Cautiously he peered
into the gloom around him, to make sure that nobody was near, and then
he climbed to the top of a wall and looked intently into the lighted
window below.
Sure enough, there sat Roth, a conspicuous figure in a company of
fellow-drinkers; for in this place he habitually spent his evening
hours, frequently far into the night, drinking and playing at cards.
Then carefully and noiselessly he climbed down and strolled on in the
direction of the barracks. He turned into a rural pathway, lined on
both sides by snow-capped hedges, and then stopped at a certain spot.
He knew that Roth would pass him on his way home.
Schmitz had to wait a long while in the nipping air, but his blood
bounded tumultuously through his veins; for his revenge, longed for
with all his heart, was close at hand.
The keen-edged wind drove particles of snow before it and pricked his
heated face like needle-points. The dead leaves of a tall beech-tree
rustled over him, and he felt like a victor. Patiently, triumphantly,
he waited.
Down below, where the pathway opened into the street, he now and then
saw a dark shape reel past and disappear in the night like a shadow,
the soft snow deadening the footfall. These were jolly roysterers,
returning from their carousal.
From the steeple, some distance away, came the metallic voice of a
bell striking the first hour of the new year, and Schmitz reckoned on
the probability that his foe would soon wend his way homeward.
But in this he deceived himself, for it was close unto two o'clock
when the "Vice" at last turned into the lane. Schmitz could not be
mistaken. His sharp eyes, by this time habituated to the dark, clearly
made out the burly figure. He grasped his cane firmly in his hand, and
his heart hammered in his bosom. Nearer and nearer Roth approached,
now but a few steps away, his face almost completely hidden in the
upturned collar of his cloak; but Schmitz saw the cruel, hard eyes,
now dull and fishy from excessive indulgence in New Year's punch. Roth
was in a good humor, however, whistling to himself and dragging his
sabre at his feet, walking with unsteady gait.
At this moment Schmitz stepped out from beside the hedge, and, his
cane on his shoulder, he planted himself before the other.
Roth was startled, and looked keenly at the man who stopped his
progress. He did not recognize him.
"What is it you want?" He mumbled thickly.
"To settle accounts with you," was the brief answer. At the sound of
the voice Roth visibly paled. For a moment the two stared at each
other.
"Oh, I see, it is you, old fellow. And what do you want of me?"
"This is what I want!" shouted Schmitz, and with terrific force his
cane came down on Roth's head. A second blow followed, almost as hard,
which hit him on the cheek, so that the blood rushed out of the wound.
The "Vice," taken unawares, made no motion to defend himself while
Schmitz rained a shower of strokes on his body. Then at last Roth,
wide awake now, felt for his sabre, partly drawing it from its
scabbard; but Schmitz gave him no chance to use it. Like a famished
wolf he seized his enemy by the throat, throttling him, and, dropping
his cane, with his clenched fist he dealt him several fearful blows on
forehead and mouth, winding up with a tattoo that sounded like the
beating of a drum on the man's skull. A violent push made Roth stumble
and fall to his knees.
"So, now, you miserable cur, I have paid my debt to you!" and saying
which, he kicked his fallen foe. Then he turned on his heels and said,
as a parting shot:
"Now go and report me again, you swine; but if you do I shall have
another reckoning with you, and tell about some of your thieving!"
The former "foddermaster" felt that he had meted out justice, and he
was fully prepared to take the consequences, no matter what they might
be. Revenge is a sweet morsel.
Roth had to spend several weeks in the hospital, until he had
recovered from his injuries. It was the hardest drubbing he had ever
received in his life. Vanity forbade him to give a true version of the
assault. He reported that he had been attacked by several drunken
laborers, and claimed to have used his sabre with effect on one of
them; but nobody believed his tale, for no wounded laborer was heard
of in the little town, and physicians there and in the vicinity were
equally ignorant of such a case. It was, therefore, generally assumed
that Roth had met with his deserts at the hands of the ex-sergeant,
and nobody pitied him.
CHAPTER V
OFFICERS AT A MASQUERADE
During the last days of January the Casino was in an uproar. A number
of mechanics, painters, and florists were busy transforming the rooms
and corridors, even the veranda, with its adjoining conservatory, into
a suite of daintily decorated festal halls. Numerous booths and tents
were being erected, and all other preparations were made worthily to
receive Prince Carnival, whose coming was timed for the first week in
February.
Hundreds of potted plants and orange and laurel trees from the
conservatory gave a gay and summer-like appearance to the ballroom.
Placards painted and inscribed in suitable manner hung from the walls.
In the booths and tents the usual array of eatables and "wet goods" of
every description could be seen, to be sold by pretty womenfolk. One
stage had been fitted up for variety performances, while on another a
circus was to be seen, in which a number of private soldiers,
disguised as wild beasts, were to play leading parts under the eyes
and whip of the trainer--none other than Captain Kahle. These men had
been drilled for the purpose throughout the whole month.
There was also a stretch of natural greensward, laid down by the
Casino gardener. This was to produce the illusion of a small park.
Benches placed on it invited the guests to rest and to enjoy the music
of a band upon a suitable stand, while Pilsen beer was to be handed to
the audience by waiters. In an adjoining room mock marriages were to
be performed, the fee to the officiating justice of the peace to
consist in the purchase of a bottle of champagne. And, to complete the
scene, arrangements had also been made to obtain a quick decree of
divorce (by the same official) for all those couples who deemed
themselves mismated after a short experience of an hour or so.
The large dining-room represented picnic grounds. On a platform
wreathed in green there was room for an orchestra, and the trumpeters
of the regiment had been ransacking the whole town for weeks in order
to find ragged costumes and discarded garments of every kind, clad in
which they were to represent village musicians.
Even photographers were there, to ply their trade in several tents,
the outside of which showed a collection of ludicrous portraits and
prints of various kinds. The purpose of this stratagem was, of course,
to attract customers.
Naturally all these festivities, planned for weeks, formed the main
topic of conversation with the members of the club, and the whole
garrison was for the time being turned topsy-turvy. Every one intended
to appear in as original and amusing a guise as possible, and there
was much mutual consulting and guessing as to which particular rôle
was to be assumed by each person.
Thus the opening night of the fête drew near. During the afternoon a
crowd of hairdressers moved into the Casino, to assist members of the
club in getting themselves up properly. The regimental tailor, with
his aides, went from one officer's house to another, making
alterations or needed repairs on the uniforms and costumes to be
donned.
At seven in the evening the orderlies, in the black garments of
waiters, were expecting the guests and members, and half an hour later
these began to arrive in crowds.
It was a multi-colored, vivid picture, as all these persons, many of
them good-looking and picturesquely attired, in all sorts of
disguises, began to move in the brilliantly lighted halls, while the
several bands, placed at coigns of vantage, struck up lively and
inspiring airs. Dancing began at once, and champagne flowed in
streams. At a garden table under an orange tree one could see a
powerfully limbed peasant, his hawthorn stick between his knees,
devouring a plateful of caviare, while his neighbor, a circus clown,
was dissecting a lobster.
The most ludicrous figure, however, was Colonel von Kronau in his
Polish farmer's costume, wearing a fur cap on his head, and a tippet
around his neck. If he had appeared in this disguise at the hog market
in a Pomeranian town, every purchaser would have supposed him to be
the "genuine article," namely, a breeder of porkers. And it was quite
evident that he did not have to take much pains correctly to imitate
the manners and gestures of the person he represented.
The champagne was paid for out of a common fund specially raised by
all the members of the Casino. It was, therefore, not astonishing that
the Herr Colonel was, after the lapse of one brief hour, deep in his
cups.
His adjutant had not done well to disguise himself as a Polish Jew,
for in that way he looked indeed too much his part.
Frau König was charming as a chambermaid, and her blue eyes radiated
the pleasure she felt. As a young gamekeeper, Lieutenant Bleibtreu
paid assiduous court to the aforementioned chambermaid. He had already
proposed to her to visit the "marriage booth" in the adjoining room,
and the justice of the peace was getting ready his paraphernalia. Only
late at night, when the captain, her every-day husband, carried her
home, did the pretty maid relinquish her newer claims upon the
gamekeeper.
Frau Leimann presented herself as a peasant girl from the
"Vierlande,"--a district near Hamburg,--and her costume looked indeed
very picturesque, and became her well. Borgert noticed this fact with
great pleasure, and the dainty figure and small nimble feet made a
strong impression on his susceptible heart.
Frau Kahle, as a flower girl, was flirting desperately with the
younger men. She also played her part very well, for the champagne in
which she had liberally indulged began to exert its effects.
Lieutenant Kolberg, as a modish dandy, had already purchased nearly
her entire supply of flowers, and when, soon after, the remnant had
gone, he claimed and obtained her as his partner for the dance.
Frau Captain Stark alone did not seem to belong in this _milieu_. The
choice of a costume, to begin with, had occasioned her deep and
anxious thought. She felt that to follow her inclinations and appear
at the masquerade in either the guise of a ballet dancer or of a
flower girl would too markedly invite criticism. Her fifty years and
her towering shape would really have made her too conspicuous in such
parts. On the other hand, to show herself as a peddler woman or
fishwife would have, so she feared, made her look "too natural."
Having, therefore, discarded these notions, her fancy roved in the
realms of the beautiful and fantastic, until it settled down upon a
costume which, bespangled and with its garland of rushes, she declared
to be that of a "mermaid of middle age." Nobody was in a condition to
contradict her, inasmuch as nobody recollected ever having seen a
"middle-aged" mermaid before. She floated, as a matter of fact, in a
cloud of pink and sea-green laces. The capacious bosom this cloud
concealed from view rolled and heaved quite realistically, thus
producing the effect of ocean waves, and her enormous arms were
awe-inspiring enough to keep away all evening those in the crowd who
had not got their sea-legs,--and that meant practically all the
younger officers. At all other times her most dutiful slaves, these
young men seemed to have conspired to leave the dreaded chief of the
regiment's nominal chief severely alone. Of course she felt this as an
unpardonable offence, and this all the more as the colonel at an early
hour was in an irresponsible condition, and hence listened to her
violent plaint with stolid equanimity.
There was a male trio, too, that claimed some attention. They
represented to the life merry, devil-may-care vagabonds, and so well
did they act their parts that one would have supposed they had just
been picked up on the miry highway outside. They deemed it, of course,
strictly within their privileges to get drunk with all due speed,--an
endeavor in which they admirably succeeded. From that hour on they
became an unmitigated nuisance, not even atoned for by some humor or
merry pranks. After midnight they were always seen in a bunch,
steadying each other as they lurched along.
Lieutenant von Meckelburg, during the earlier part of the evening,
stuck resolutely and almost silently to his assigned duty, it being
that of an organ-grinder. He had picked up somewhere a villainous
specimen of this instrument of torture, and with it had retired into a
corner, wearing the ragged and faded clothes of an impecunious veteran
of the wars, with his visorless, crumpled cap pulled over his eyes,
and with a face which for unadulterated melancholy could not be
duplicated. Hardly any one took notice of him, and his physiognomy
grew sadder and sadder. At last, however, he left his organ in its
corner, and visited the various bars where champagne could be had.
With each generous libation his features cleared, and finally he got
himself into a decidedly hilarious condition, and not only moved with
his organ into the centre of the greensward, where he placed it on one
of the benches, but accompanied its shrill and squeaking notes with a
mellow basso of his own.
The bands meanwhile played their best and merriest, and as several
casks of beer and some dozen bottles of cheap spirits had been
provided for them, the members, both trumpeters of the regiment and
civilian musicians hired for the night, devoted no inconsiderable
portion of the intervals between their playing to frequent and
prolonged visits to that small side-room where these drinkables had
been placed ready for use. After a while they dispensed even with such
formalities. They rolled the remaining casks up the steps of their
podium, and shortly the faucet could be espied from among the
greenery, and the musicians hovering about it. As a matter of course,
their playing soon showed the effects of all this tippling. One man
particularly, one of the flageolets, became quite unmanageable,--or
rather the instrument on which he was performing,--so that it usually
was the space of a second or two ahead of the others. This weird music
only ended with the removal of flageolet and man from the scene.
At eleven began the festal performance on the small stage constructed
for the purpose.
One of the lieutenants led off with two topical songs rather too
outspoken in the lessons they tried to convey. He was disguised as a
prima ballerina for the purpose, and as a windup he danced, with great
skill and abandon, a can-can. The ladies tittered and the men
guffawed. After more of the same kind there was enacted a parody on
Shakespeare's "Hamlet." The gentleman responsible for this version had
employed radical means to clear the stage of all the _dramatis
personæ_, at the end. Murder, suicide, poison, dagger, lightning even
decimated their ranks, and when the curtain dropped there was not a
soul of them left alive. The crowning effect of this parody was the
appearance of the prompter himself before the footlights. In a few
tear-choked words he informed the audience that after seeing the
actors all die, and nothing but corpses around him, he could and would
not survive, and so he made an end of himself, too, using a rope for
the purpose.
The humor of the whole audience after that grew rapidly boisterous,
and by midnight the tone of this carnival fête given by officers and
their ladies could scarcely be distinguished from that rampant at a
village kermess. If anything, it was a trifle more unconventional.
Lieutenant Kolberg had in the meantime found a cosy arbor into which
to retire with Frau Captain Kahle, and more effectually to exclude
intruders had placed a tall screen before the entrance.
A little "flirtation," more or less serious, was something he could
not do without, and since the garrison with its staid citizens and
their staider wives and daughters did not furnish the material
required for him, he had made up his mind to lay violent siege to the
heart of the lady. He knew that it was a susceptible one, and from
Pommer he had heard, in hours of bibulous intercourse, that siege in
her case meant speedy surrender. He had already progressed with her
beyond mere preliminary skirmishes, and in their conversations with
nobody near they had begun to use the intimate "thou," and to call
each other by their given names.
For his purpose, then, no better time could have been found than this
very festivity, with all the allurements which champagne, music, the
dance, and the hurly-burly of a huge crowd afforded. Shielded against
indiscreet spies by the interlacing vines creeping all over this
arbor, his love-making had proceeded at such a rapid pace that within
an hour the little woman did not thrust her gallant wooer aside when
he dared imprint a kiss on her swelling lips.
In another arbor, more in proximity to the champagne bar, First
Lieutenant Leimann sat in lonely misery and shed rivulets of tears.
His intoxication, in its more advanced stage, always took that form
known technically as "howling desolation." On this occasion it had
seized him promptly after the ninth glassful.
His condition was in ludicrous contrast with the magnificence and dash
of his attire, for he was dressed, regardless of expense, as a
Hungarian magnate of the first water, and he rejected with sombre
scorn all attempts made by friends to commiserate him. His nearer
acquaintances knew for a certainty that he would thus remain seated on
top of an empty wine cask until the very close of the ball. For
whenever the black devils of drink cast their spell over him in this
fashion it required from four to six hours to emerge into a saner and
somewhat soberer frame of mind. Just now his sobs shook his whole bony
body. The divers orderlies who passed him held their sides with
laughter, but he heeded them not.
His wife found the situation very annoying, and she therefore resolved
to get one of her sudden attacks of headache. She retired, with signs
of disgust on her pretty face, to another corner, and when Borgert
joined her soon afterward, she requested him in mellifluous tones to
escort her home.
As they reached the door of the house in which she with her husband
occupied the upper part, while Borgert had his smaller lodgings on the
ground floor, she sighed with some satisfaction and said in a low
voice:
"The air has done me good; I feel much better now."
"Then may I take you back to the Casino?" was Borgert's answer, and
the tone of his voice was full of disappointment.
"No, no, we will go up and have a cup of coffee; that will do us good,
and I really do not feel like returning to that crowd of drunken
people; it is simply disgusting!"
"Just as it pleases you, my most gracious lady!"
With that he inserted the key into the lock, opened the door, and both
of them silently scaled the rather steep stairs, dark as Erebus.
When they had reached her cosy parlor, Borgert brought the lamp and
lit it. He knew exactly the spot where he would find it in the dark,
for his acquaintance with every nook of the apartments had come in the
course of time with their mutual intimacy. Then he took up a newspaper
and sat down in the sofa corner.
Frau Leimann had disappeared in the adjoining room; but it took her
only a very few minutes to return, bearing in her hands the Vienna
coffee machine, and presenting, now that she had resumed a
comfortable and coquettish kimono in lieu of her masquerade costume, a
most seductive picture.
"So," said she, letting the heavy window curtains down, "now at last
we are again where we can have a comfortable, undisturbed chat
together."
* * * * *
The first rosy dawn showed on the horizon as a heavy, lurching step
was heard on the stone stairs outside. Frau Leimann blew out the lamp,
and then resumed her seat on the sofa, leaning her head against the
soft cushions.
Meanwhile Leimann had noisily opened the door leading into the
corridor, and now stepped into the room where his wife was waiting.
For a moment he halted at the door. He thought he discovered the scent
of cigarette smoke. Then he felt his way towards the table, found a
box of matches, and lighted a candle. Then he saw his wife recumbent
on the sofa.
The sight touched him. Had this faithful soul awaited his coming so
long, in order to offer him a cup of coffee? Doubtless sleep had
overtaken her, and she had not heard his step. So he cautiously
approached her and imprinted a kiss on her forehead.
A nervous cry escaped her, and she quickly rose.
"Oh, it is you, Franz. Where did you stay so long?"
"Do not be angry with me, my angel, that I kept you awake so long; but
I really never dreamed that you would do this. Why did you not retire
long ago?"
The words sounded so full of affection,--almost like an excuse, like a
prayer for forgiveness,--but they did not touch her; she simply yawned
with some affectation, and stretched her arms as if dying for a sound
sleep.
"Why, you know, Franz, that I had to wait for you; you were again in a
fearful condition. When I saw you sitting in that way I felt so
miserable that I could bear it no longer, and went home."
"Alone,--so late at night? Why did you not have one of the orderlies
escort you?"
"Borgert took me as far as the door; he offered to be my escort."
"Well, I'll have to thank him for that to-morrow, and, come to think
of it, he is always very attentive to you. Where did he go afterwards;
I never set eyes on him again the whole night."
"He complained of a headache, and seemed to have had enough of the
whole show. I suppose he went to bed long ago."
"Why didn't you offer him a cup of coffee?"
"But, Franz, what would the servants think if they heard me coming
home with a gentleman so late at night? That would never do. Our maid,
Marie, anyway, is listening and spying continually, and one has to
take care not to let her hear things. I presume she has been telling
tales out of school as it is."
"Send her away then, if you have no confidence in her."
"I would have done it long ago, but I can't let her go until we have
paid her wages. We're several months behind with her."
"Then pay her to-morrow."
"What with? Have you any money?"
"I? What an idea. You know perfectly well that the few marks of my pay
could never keep this household running. Hasn't your mother sent the
allowance this month?"
"No, she hasn't anything to spare this time."
"Oh, of course,--the old story."
"Is that meant for reproach? You knew yourself that we were not rich.
Do me the favor, therefore, to spare me your hints and complaints. I
find them tactless and inappropriate at this late time."
"Yes, you never want to hear about that. You ought to have known
before you married me that to keep house without money is a beastly
nuisance. Now we have this ceaseless dunning every day: one day it's
the butcher, the next the baker, and the day after the laundress,--and
they all want money. I can't cut it out of my hide."
"But wasn't it yourself who kept on urging and urging me until I
promised to marry you? Didn't you gainsay all my objections and insist
on our marriage?"
"True enough; but you and your mother ought to have known better. You
never ought to have consented, even if I was fool enough to insist on
it. Your mother knew how much it costs to keep house, and I didn't.
And now it is too late."
"That I know myself, and you needn't drive me crazy by constantly
nagging at me. And it isn't my fault, either; for if everything had
turned out the way my mother desired, you would not have had to
complain to-day that you are married to a woman without money. You
were not the only one from whom I had proposals."
"That you ought to have told me then," replied her husband, with an
ugly sneer. "I'm awfully sorry if I have interfered with your fine
prospects."
"You are more vulgar, Franz, than I thought you."
"Oh, yes, women can never bear the truth. If one doesn't flatter you
the whole time and play on the tuneful lyre of love, you at once begin
to find fault."
"Well, I haven't been surfeited with terms of affection by you."
"That is merely because I don't know how you have deserved them of me.
Is it perhaps because I don't know how to pay my shoemaker, or how to
meet a whole bunch of bills that have come in the last fortnight? Oh,
what a fool I have been! Instead of leading this dog's life with you,
I might to-day attend the Academy of War and lead a decent existence."
"Hold your tongue, you vulgar brute; you have no right to insult me!
Leave my room, or I shall leave the house!"
"Instantly, and with the greatest pleasure, my gracious lady! Pleasant
dreams to you!"
So saying, Leimann violently slammed the door behind him so that the
windows shook, and then went to his own bedroom.
But his wife buried her face in the sofa cushions and sobbingly sought
relief in tears. That gave a vent to her feelings of hatred and rage
against her heartless husband. Her whole soul rebelled against this
brutal man whom she had married because he had sworn on his knees to
her that he could not live without her. And now he roughly stamped
into the ground the affection which she once had borne him. He
desecrated all those recollections which are so dear to a woman's
heart, and which at critical points in her life are meant to be a stay
and a comfort, and to make the burden of misfortune lighter to her.
And if, a short time before, when she had hastily parted from Borgert,
she had felt something like remorse,--something of shame in having
abused the confidence placed in her by her husband,--she now regarded
herself as a victim, and her fault only in the light of a just revenge
for his heartless conduct.
For at no time is the heart of woman more susceptible to temptation
than at the moment when she feels herself betrayed and outraged in her
best feelings.
CHAPTER VI
A SENSATIONAL EVENT STIRS THE GARRISON
It was plain daylight when the last guests left the Casino. Without
exception, liberal indulgence in champagne and brandy had done its
work, and the motley crowd that left the building thus "early" was in
a decidedly boisterous mood, and the limits of decency and good
manners had been passed by them hours before.
The nearby church bell struck the hour of seven as Captain Stark and
his wife, as well as the colonel and his better half, climbed into the
capacious vehicle that had been waiting for them at the door of the
club-house for several hours. The horses had become stiff in the
joints, and, with a cold and raw blustering wind to chill them, they
were now forced to pull their heavy load on the miry highway leading
toward town. The coachman had to use his whip freely to make the poor
beasts break into a sorry trot; but at last the human load had been
deposited before their doors.
Lieutenant von Meckelburg and First Lieutenant Specht could scarcely
keep on their legs; but, nevertheless, they walked straight from the
Casino to the barracks, where they were to give, each of them, an
hour's instruction to the recruits. They quickly doffed their
fantastic gear--the organ had been left behind by the lieutenant; but
when they appeared before their pupils the latter could scarcely
suppress a shout of laughter. For Specht had in his hurry forgotten to
remove his artificial moustache, and this gave him such an unusual
appearance that it was only when his voice, somewhat shaken by
alcoholic excesses, met the soldiers' ears that they felt sure whom
they had before them. The "instruction" he thus imparted was certainly
very far from enlightening their minds on the duties falling to the
share of a defender of the fatherland.
Most of the other officers preferred, however, a good long sleep, and
simply ignored the work of the day. It was only towards noon when the
first captain showed his face at the barracks.
Captain König and his faithful Lieutenant Bleibtreu were, in fact, the
only officers of the whole regiment who attended to their duties in
the forenoon, they having gone home at reasonable hours. Their
principle was: first the work, and then the amusement.
Captain Hagemann showed himself in the streets, mounted on his
favorite horse, as the noon hour struck. He had not yet recovered his
equilibrium, and the horse seemed to appreciate that fact
instinctively. He carried his master with such tender commiseration
for the condition of the latter that he picked his way as carefully as
if walking on ice.
Stark himself preferred to remain altogether at home. His "Kater"[15]
was inexorable, and demanded a long, unbroken rest to find its way out
of the muddled brain of its owner. His place in the regiment was, as
usual, filled by his tireless lady. Holding her husband's official
note-book in her hand, she went her rounds, noticing the presence of
all the men and non-commissioned officers, and making a black mark
against the name of Lieutenant Kolberg, as he was absent without
leave.
[15] "Kater," a slang term for the demoralized condition
consequent upon alcoholic overindulgence.--TR.
At 1.30 she received a visit from Hagemann, who came to make most
elaborate and humble excuses because he had been audacious enough to
indulge in gibes at the expense of the doughty lady during the ball.
In fact, while in the enterprising stage which forms so interesting a
part of the effects produced on human bipeds by champagne, he had been
bold enough to pay her some strongly ironical compliments in her
capacity of "mermaid." He had told her incidentally that she was
eminently fitted for her part, as it was a well-known physiological
fact that fat kept afloat on water. Frau Stark, who was proof at all
times both against flattery and against the insinuating allurements of
the foamy liquid, and who was as much matter-of-fact to-day as she had
been the night before, merely deigned to accept these excuses with a
small nod and a dry "That will do!"
Leimann, on his part, likewise started out on a tour of visits, the
sole purpose of which was to offer much-needed explanations and
apologies to nearly every member of the club whom he had offended
more or less seriously during the period of his "howling
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