But as soon as the stable-door closed behind him the soft look would vanish; and as he opened the door of his own quarters an evil expression would overspread his face, as if he were ready at once to fall upon his defenceless wife.
Through grief and illness the unfortunate woman became at last incapable of attending to her domestic duties. She cast about for an a.s.sistant, and at last wrote to her sister Ida, who was in service in Lusatia. Ida willingly threw up her situation, came to her brother-in-law"s dwelling, and immediately took over the management of the little household and of the invalid.
For a time it seemed as if the loathsome atmosphere of hate and squalor must disappear in presence of the tall fresh country girl; the deputy sergeant-major put a restraint upon himself before his sister-in-law, and the sickly wife found comfort and relief in talking to her. But eventually the presence of this third party transformed the house into a veritable h.e.l.l.
The eyes of hatred are as keen as those of love. Julie Heppner soon discovered that her husband loved her sister with his usual coa.r.s.e pa.s.sion, as he had loved so many others before. She recognised the ardent fixed gaze that rested l.u.s.tfully on the young girl, following her every movement. This, then, was to be the last, bitterest, deadliest drop in her cup; this betrayal, in her own home, under her very eyes.
The sick woman watched her sister"s conduct in agonised suspense. At first Ida had been honestly indifferent to the behaviour of her brother-in-law; after a while, however, a faint embarra.s.sed flush would sometimes overspread her pretty youthful countenance. From the fugitive glances which she now and then intercepted between the two, the invalid foresaw the most sinister results.
Heppner himself, not being particularly quick-witted, and being used only to coa.r.s.e a.s.sociates, did not quite know what to make of his sister-in-law. Of only one thing was he certain, this beautiful girl must be his. He was even prepared, if he could not otherwise succeed, to resort to violence.
One evening Heppner had been exercising Walkure, Wegstetten"s charger, for an hour. Having seen her wisped down in the stable and covered with a horse cloth, he went towards the canteen for a drink, when he remembered that there was a bottle of beer in his own kitchen. He strolled slowly and somewhat stiffly towards his quarters.
Ida was washing in the kitchen. He said briefly, "Good evening," poured out the beer, and drank it in great gulps. Then he shook the last drops in the gla.s.s to make them froth up, silently watching his sister-in-law the while. She had round white arms; and as she bent over the tub, the outline of her hips showed broad and firm.
Through the open door came the shrill hoa.r.s.e voice of his wife.
"Ida, who is there?"
"Who else should it be but Otto?" answered the girl.
Again the shrill voice called, yet more insistently, "Why does he not come in?"
Heppner finished his gla.s.s, put it down, and said: "Because I won"t.
Because I"m better off here. Because Ida"s a pretty girl, and you"re an old crone."
At this, as though in fun, he put his arm round the girl and pressed her to him.
Ida kept still for a moment. She shivered. Then she shook him off: "Let go, stupid! Go to your wife."
Heppner let her go. The single moment that she had permitted his embrace convinced him that here, too, he would conquer. How she had quivered in his arms! He understood such signs.
Meanwhile Sergeant Schumann, only separated from the Heppners by a part.i.tion wall, sat at the round table by the sofa with his wife.
Their room, with its antimaca.s.sars, its upholstered furniture, its flower-pots and canary-bird, its sewing-machine in the window, was more like an old maid"s best parlour than a soldier"s sitting-room. The small, neat-featured mistress herself, who was not very strong, and always, even in summer, wore a little shawl round her shoulders, suited her surroundings admirably.
She had a thousand small cares, and one great grief: that they were childless. But she never troubled her husband with her sorrow, taking care to bear it alone. He had bothers enough in the service; how often did she not hear his voice storming outside! He should have peace at home. One thing only she could not bear without complaining to him: the terrible quarrellings of their neighbours. She shuddered whenever she heard the strife begin afresh; and gradually out of this had grown an aversion from all this noisy life. She became a most zealous advocate of her husband"s plans for retiring; and could scarcely find patience to await the moment when he would put off the richly-laced coat beside which she had formerly been so proud to walk. In her heart she had always been rather against the martial calling, and would take Schumann"s sword from him as though it dripped blood.
All this would cease when he changed his military coat or the handsome dark uniform of a railway-official; all this discomfort would come to an end; above all, this noise: the shouts and curses with which recalcitrant recruits had to be knocked into shape, the trampling of nailed boots on the stone stairs, the bellowing of commands on the parade-ground, and--last, but not least--the hideous racket next door.
The sergeant-major had almost finished his time of service. A post awaited him as a.s.sistant at a small railway-station in the neighbourhood; and once when Schumann was away at the practice-camp, she had not been able to resist the temptation to see the place for herself. It was on a branch-line, which wound up among the hills. The station was a little distance from the village in a green plantation.
She yearned after the peaceful spot.
And now Schumann had again begun to speak of remaining on in the army!
His wife let him talk, listening patiently. She sat quietly opposite to him, giving him his supper as usual, as busy and attentive as though he were only speaking on indifferent topics. But when he had finished she spoke out, saying that, as a rule, she was not the woman to meddle in her husband"s affairs, but that _this_ was a matter which concerned herself as well. His notion that to quit the service now would make him feel like a deserter and a scoundrel seemed to her utter unpractical nonsense. He would be sacrificing a couple of years to a mere fancy.
Finally she produced her trump-card. She knew that the rural quiet of the little station had wound itself round her husband"s heart during the week of trial he had already pa.s.sed there. So she confessed her own secret journey.
And she conquered.
Each could describe as well as the other the charms of the una.s.suming little retreat. What one omitted the other supplied. Thus the picture in the sergeant-major"s mind was revived afresh, and in such vivid colours that it regained its old power over him, dissipating the cloud of self-reproachful doubt. He saw before him a calm bright future in the narrow valley between wooded heights, and it came over him suddenly that there in the stillness, where one could live in touch with nature, he would for the first time begin really to live.
CHAPTER III
"I vow to thee my duty, My heart and my hand, O land of love and beauty, My German fatherland!"
(_Ma.s.smann._)
Lieutenant Reimers had reported himself to the colonel of the regiment and to the major.
These officers had given him a hearty welcome, each after his own fashion.
Major Schrader, who never let pa.s.s an opportunity of making a joke, received his report at first in a very stiff official manner, a.s.suring him with a frown that he was very loth to have in his division officers who had been in disgrace; then almost fell on his neck, and asked him if it were true that the Kaffir girls had such an abominable smell.
Colonel Falkenhein gave him only a prolonged handshake; but Reimers could read the great gladness in his eyes.
The colonel had treated the young man almost as a son; and a year before, when the doctors had sent Reimers to Egypt as a consumptive patient with a very doubtful prospect of recovery, had seen him depart with a heavy heart. Now, looking upon him once more, he was doubly glad. Reimers had not developed into a broad-chested, red-cheeked, powerful man, but every trace of illness had vanished from the bronzed face; the thin features and the rather spare rigid figure gave an impression of tough endurance, a characteristic of greater value in resisting disease than mere well-nourished sleekness.
"You are well out of that, thank G.o.d! Reimers," he said, once more shaking the lieutenant"s hand; "and it looks as if the improvement would be permanent, considering the test to which your health has been put."
"It was rather _va banque_, sir," replied the lieutenant. "Either all or nothing."
"I decidedly prefer the all," said Falkenhein, in such a hearty, affectionate tone that a rush of devotion carried the lieutenant past the barriers of formality. He bent quickly over the colonel"s hand and kissed it. Tears stood in his eyes--tears of grateful pleasure. Now he indeed felt himself back in his native country.
How he had longed for it, day after day, during this year of furlough!
At first when, in Cairo, he was again laid low by the fatigues of the journey, he had thought of his country with pensive melancholy. Later, as his strength returned, homesickness a.s.serted itself increasingly; he suffered from it more than from his gradually-subsiding bodily malady, and the aimless life of a health-resort only increased his sufferings.
He could never have resigned himself to pa.s.s long months of such inaction in a strange land; and when he joined the Boer forces, it was to no small extent in order to counteract the torturing longing for Germany.
He loved his country with a pa.s.sionate ardour. The ideas of greatness, power and sovereignty were inseparably connected in his mind with the name of the German Empire. But his chief enthusiasm was reserved for the diligent, unostentatious work, quietly accomplished and conscious of its aim, which, begun by Stein, Scharnhorst and Boyen, had led through long struggles to such a glorious result. He reviewed the whole story with the eye of a soldier from the collapse at Jena onward to the last great war he seemed to trace an uninterruptedly ascending line, not diverted even by Prussia"s temporary political defeats. In the unparalleled siege of Sedan a height of military efficiency had been reached from which no further ascent was possible. He could not imagine anything in the whole world more honourable than to belong to that splendid army of Sedan; and he wore his officer"s sword-knot with a pride far removed from any kind of conceit: in fact, nearly akin to religious veneration.
As a boy, it had been his bitterest grief that his mother"s wishes and the doctor"s opinion were against his becoming a soldier,--an officer like his dead father, who had fought in the great campaign. His mother and the doctor had feared that he was too weakly for the military profession. In order to remove this objection, the boy voluntarily subjected himself to heroic discipline, and by strictly following a graduated system of physical exercises inured his body to hardships, until he was actually found fit for service. Conquered by such persistent devotion, his mother at last yielded to his wishes; but she saw him wear his father"s familiar old uniform only a few times, for she died shortly after, barely forty years old.
Bernhard Reimers thus became doubly an orphan. But he had far more than the death of a mother to deplore. With his mother he also lost the only person who had loved him, and the only one whom he in return had loved.
So closely was the boy encircled by his mother"s love, that the need which led his schoolfellows at the gymnasium to form friendships was never felt by him. Whenever he wanted to learn something, to solve a doubt or to confide a secret, he could count on his mother"s tenderness; she would explain, soothe, or sympathise, as the joys and sorrows of the growing youth became ever more serious. From this relation he retained a touch of womanliness in his character, even after he had left home to enter the regiment: a shrinking from everything coa.r.s.e, a reserve before all that was unlovely. This instinctive feeling did not, indeed, altogether protect him from temptation, but it withheld him from yielding to excess. He joined in the little drink and love follies of the other young subalterns from a sense of comradeship; alone they would never have appealed to him.
As at school, so in the regiment, he had many comrades, but no friend.
He did not trouble himself about this, and until his mother"s death he felt no want. Then he recognised sadly that he was quite alone; but he was incapable of setting to work to seek a friend, so he just waited for some happy chance to bring the right person across his path.
When, at last, he found the friendship he sought, it did not come in the way he had dreamed, suddenly, like a gift from heaven thrown into his lap; but was a gradual strong growth, a slow mutual recognition.