He recollected how, amidst the jubilation of his home-coming, he had been disquieted by a presentiment of evil, a visionary dream that now confronted him in such cruel reality.
It was during his first visit to Frau von Gropphusen that the shadow had fallen upon him. He saw the room again before him in the dim light from its darkened window, and it seemed to him filled with gloom and hopelessness.
The suffering woman lay wearily on the big sofa under the picture of the "Blue Boy." She drew up the silken covering with her fair white hands, leant her chin on her knees, and gazed at him with her wonderful sad eyes.
Suddenly he became aware of the reason why he only thought of Marie Falkenhein with gentle resignation, with that fugitive feeling which seemed to himself scarcely compatible with grief for a real attachment: he had never ceased to love Hannah Gropphusen.
Had his eyes been struck with blindness?
His pa.s.sion now revived in him as with the throes of an intermittent fever. His spirit was free from all other prepossession. Enthusiasm for his country, for his calling, had been driven out of him. His whole being was defenceless against the might of this love, and he was carried away by it as on the wings of a tempest.
He now only lived in the thought of Hannah Gropphusen. How long was it since he had seen her last?
He had to go far back in his memory to the beginning of the past winter. She had been the fairest at one of the first b.a.l.l.s of the season. Her face had shone with seductive charm; a black dress, glittering with sequins, had enveloped her slender form, leaving bare the tender whiteness of her arms and shoulders. She bore the palm of beauty, and every one had acknowledged her sovereignty. And as he had sat idly in one of the most distant rooms, a morose observer of the gay throng, she had come gliding up to him like some dazzling messenger of joy. She had spoken to him, few words only and on indifferent topics, with a hasty, excited voice; but in her eyes had been once more that expression of utter self-abandonment which had made him so happy on their return from the tennis-ground during the previous spring.
He had stood before her, his shoulders bowed beneath his adverse fate, and had not dared to raise his eyes to hers.
Since the night of that ball, Frau von Gropphusen had been absent for the whole winter; she had gone on a visit to her parents, after (so the gossips whispered) a terrible scene with her husband. And on this occasion even the women had taken the side of their own s.e.x. For Gropphusen had been getting wilder and wilder; it could hardly fail that legal proceedings would before very long be undertaken against him for his scandalous behaviour.
The injured wife had returned only a few days ago, probably for a last painful attempt to preserve appearances. Gropphusen himself would be leaving the garrison for the gun-practice, and she would at least remain there during that time; but she did not go out, and n.o.body had yet seen her face to face.
Reimers was possessed with a restless impatience to meet the woman he loved; he had wasted too much time already to brook delay.
Then again he was thrown into dull inaction by an agonising doubt. How could he think of approaching Hannah Gropphusen--he, a marked man, a condemned man? He set it before himself a thousand times, and dinned it into his own ears: he desired nothing, he wanted nothing but to be allowed to live in her soothing presence.
He racked his brains to discover a pretext for visiting her but could find none. He directed his goings from day to day so as to pa.s.s by the Gropphusen villa as often as possible. He sauntered near the house by the hour together, possessed by the foolish hope of catching sight of his beloved. Perhaps she would come to the window to breathe the fresh air of the night, to cool her burning forehead in the soft breeze, or to refresh her tear-stained eyes with a sight of the starry heaven.
He waited in vain.
On the morning of their march to the practice-camp, Captain von Gropphusen, the head of the second battery, was missing.
Major Lischke sent his adjutant to the Gropphusens" villa to ask for news. The lieutenant came back with the answer that Captain von Gropphusen had as usual gone to town the evening before, and had not yet returned.
Lischke grumbled. "The dissipated scoundrel has missed the early train, of course. He might at least have telegraphed."
Naturally Gropphusen could not be waited for. Senior-lieutenant Frommelt took charge of the battery, and the regiment set off on its march.
But even at their first halting-place the missing man failed to put in an appearance, and now came some enlightenment as to his proceedings.
The police had made a raid upon the club to which Gropphusen belonged.
Rumours were spread abroad of unlawful and immoral practices carried on there. A certain number of the members, Gropphusen among them, had managed to escape; the rest were already in custody.
Thereanent the regiment received an official letter, in which it was pointed out to the authorities that Captain von Gropphusen was accused of desertion, and was to be reported at once in case of his reappearance. This was, of course, only a matter of form, for Gropphusen had no doubt left the kingdom long before.
Senior-lieutenant Frommelt was entrusted with the command of the battery, and as Lieutenant Weissenhagen, the other officer belonging to the detachment, had already been sent on to the practice-camp to look over the barracks and stables, Senior-lieutenant Reimers was attached to the second battery during the march, and until further orders.
Reimers rejoiced that a fortunate turn of events had released the woman he loved from her tormentor he was glad also that this alteration in the arrangements for the march would withdraw him from surroundings in which his thoughts had now become so completely and dizzily changed.
Finally, a faint hope sprang up in his mind: perhaps at the practice-camp, where the capacity of the army was put to its sharpest test in time of peace, he might regain some of his old belief in the unimpeachable superiority of the German forces.
He greeted the open expanse of heath with joyful eyes.
The battery had crossed a river, one of those quiet waters of the flat country that glide along lazily between their sandy banks, and conceal beneath their harmless-looking surface deep holes and dangerous under-currents.
From the rear came riding a troop of hussars, apparently engaged in scouting-practice. The bridge was supposed to have been destroyed, and they were trying to find a place for fording the river. The officer first drove his horse into the water, and the animal sank at once up to its neck, but then began to swim, and soon reached the opposite side.
The hussars followed smartly and quickly, and the troop proceeded onward from the other bank, leaving wet traces on the light sandy soil.
The officer galloped up closer to the marching battery.
Reimers recognised an old companion from the Military Academy.
"You, Ottensen?" he cried. "What a strange chance!"
"Isn"t it?" said the hussar. "Pity I"ve no time to stop. I must teach my chaps to scout!"
They exchanged a pressure of the hand; then the cavalry officer spurred on his horse, and disappeared in a cloud of yellow dust.
Shortly after this the battery came upon the hussars for a second time.
The riders had dismounted at the edge of a fir plantation. One hussar after another was being made to buckle on the climbing-irons and climb up a tree-trunk in order to survey the surrounding country with a telescope.
The lieutenant was examining them, and testing their reports by the map.
"Not seen you for a long time, Reimers!" he laughed, as the battery marched by. "Just look; these chaps climb like monkeys!"
Reimers nodded gaily to his lively friend. It was indeed a pleasure to watch the agile hussars.
"Wait a bit!" said Ottensen, "I"ll ride a little way with you." He asked Senior-lieutenant Frommelt politely for permission, and sent his men back in charge of a sergeant. Then he joined the battery, chattering away gaily in his droll, staccato fashion, and making his horse leap the ditch from time to time. He sat his magnificent steed splendidly, and with his slender, neatly-made figure, looked the perfect model of a cavalry officer.
Reimers looked at him with honest admiration and pleasure.
"Your hussars are smart fellows!" he said.
Ottensen smiled, well pleased, and said: "Well, perhaps so!"
"They climb the trees well," continued the artilleryman.
"I should think so!" said Ottensen. "Trees, corn-stacks, church-towers, roofs of houses, telegraph-posts, and devil knows what besides--mountain-tops too, only there aren"t any hereabouts."
"Perhaps there will be during the manuvres."
The hussar let his single eye-gla.s.s fall, and showed an astonished face.
"Manuvres, my dear fellow? Why, all"s plain sailing in them!"
"How do you mean? Plain sailing?"
"The rendezvous all fixed up beforehand, with friends on the enemy"s side; simultaneous luncheons arranged for when possible. Every detail settled in advance."
The little hussar suddenly burst out laughing: "Reimers! my dear fellow!" he cried, "don"t pull a face like a funeral march! Do you mean to say you didn"t know it? You didn"t? Well!"