Jena or Sedan? Part 20

Reimers started. The ominous word struck his pride like a lash. He drew himself up stiffly. "Why not before Sedan?"

The other calmly answered: "Sedan? Jena? Perhaps you are right, perhaps I am. No one knows."

After this conversation Guntz avoided such topics with his friend. If Reimers tried to draw him again on the subject, he answered evasively, "I have told you I must fight it out with myself. Until then I don't want to talk at random."

But for all that he grew calmer and more equable. The biting, sarcastic tone he had adopted gradually disappeared; and it almost seemed as if the mood had been merely a survival of his Berlin experience.

At Easter a small event occurred in the little garrison,

During Holy Week Colonel von Falkenhein took a short leave of absence in order to fetch his daughter Marie home from school at Neuchatel.

After Easter she was to come out into society.

Reimers debated whether he ought not to pay his respects to the Falkenheins during the holidays. Most of the unmarried officers had gone away on leave, and on Easter Monday he was alone in the mess-room at the mid-day meal.

Finally he decided to pay his visit that afternoon.

He was not in the least curious about the young lady. He remembered her as Falkenhein's little Marie, three years ago, before she went to school; a pretty, rather slender little girl, with a thick plait of bright gold hair down her back, blus.h.i.+ng scarlet when one spoke to her and responding quickly and daintily with the regulation childish curtsey.

She was now just seventeen; still slender, and her little face framed by the same bright golden hair, that seemed almost too great a weight for her head. Beautiful clear grey eyes she had also; and Reimers particularly remarked her delicate straight nose, by the trembling of whose nostrils one could judge if the little lady were excited about anything. She bore the dignity of being the colonel's daughter with modest pride. She handled the tea-things with the style of an accomplished matron, and led the conversation with a sort of old-fas.h.i.+oned self-possession.

Falkenhein never took his eyes off his child. Sometimes he smiled to himself, as he noted how unconcernedly she did the honours to her first guest, knowing well her secret anxiety to play her new part with success.

When Reimers rose to go, the colonel invited him to supper. The lieutenant accepted with pleasure. He was sure that intercourse with his commander would be of a thousand times more value to him than the dry wisdom of books.

Hitherto when Reimers had supped at the colonel's, after the meal, as they sat smoking, the senior officer would dilate on his reminiscences and experiences.

This time, however, there was a little alteration. Before a young girl the two men could not discuss specially military matters. Nevertheless, Reimers was not bored.

When Fraulein Marie showed symptoms of beginning again in her quaint universal-conversationalist style her father interrupted her.

"Little one," he said, "leave that sort of chatter alone! Keep it for others. Lieutenant Reimers does not care for that kind of thing. And I know him well, I a.s.sure you, my child; he is one of my best officers."

The little lady opened her eyes wide on the young soldier. "If papa says that," she said gravely, "I congratulate you, Herr Reimers."

The colonel laughed aloud. Conversation flowed fast and free after this. The young girl could talk brightly of her little life, and asked intelligent questions.

She began confidentially to question her guest about the ladies of the regiment, whereupon Falkenhein said abruptly: "Tell me, Reimers; you often go to the Guntzes', don't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Of course Guntz is an old friend of yours. Do you know, I am much taken by his wife. She seems to me to be amiable, straightforward, sensible. We are neighbours; I should like Marie to see something of her. But they keep themselves to themselves rather, don't they?"

"Oh, not altogether. Only Guntz finds ordinary shallow society uncongenial."

"So do I, and so do you; eh, Reimers? But I see what you mean."

Next day Lieutenant Guntz and Frau Klare called at the colonel's, and regular intercourse soon established itself between the neighbours.

Marie von Falkenhein was secretly enraptured with Klare Guntz and her "sweet baby"; while Klare took to her heart the fair young girl who had so early lost a mother's love.

From this time the social status of the former governess was completely changed. Frau Lischke invited that "delightful" Frau Guntz to her select coffee parties. But Klare excused herself on the plea that she was nursing her baby and could not be away from him for more than two hours together.

Later in the year, when the evenings were warmer, and it was tempting to linger in the open air, the neighbours took to meeting together for supper in one garden or the other. The occupants of Waisenhaus Stra.s.se No. 55 and those of No. 57 alternately provided the comestibles.

Reimers was always free of the table. Once he triumphantly contributed a liver sausage with truffles; but he was ruthlessly snubbed by Klare for bringing such a thing in the dog-days.

The little clique was much censured by the regiment. Such familiar intercourse, it was thought, undermined the authority of the colonel.

Nevertheless, people were eager for the goodwill of Frau Guntz.

Thus it came about that Guntz had the satisfaction of seeing his wife one of the most popular ladies of the regiment, and was able to tease her with the new discovery that she was "exclusive, not to say stuck up and proud."

In reality Klare had only become intimate with two of the ladies. After Marie von Falkenhein she foregathered chiefly with Hannah von Gropphusen.

The latter was a real puzzle to her new friends. She was always alternating in her moods from one extreme to the other. Sometimes she would not appear for weeks at a time; then she would come down day after day, each time seeming unable to tear herself away. Now she would be full of nervous, overwrought vivacity, and again would sit perfectly silent, staring gloomily before her.

Guntz fled from her presence; he said she made him feel creepy. Once he whispered mysteriously in his wife's ear: "Do you know, I believe she and Gropphusen have committed a murder between them: and this terrible bond holds them together, although they fight like cat and dog."

But Klare strongly objected to such jokes. "How can you tell what that poor woman may have to bear? There may have been a murder in her history; but it was done by Gropphusen, and on her soul. Joke about something else, Fatty."

The happy young wife entertained the warmest sympathy for the other unhappy one, who always had the look of being pursued by some terrible evil. More than once a sisterly feeling impelled her, not from curiosity, but from genuine sympathy, to put a question to Hannah about her sorrow; but she read in the sombre, hopeless eyes of the sufferer that the burden must be borne alone; so she left Frau von Gropphusen in peace. She listened patiently when the nervous woman talked ceaselessly about a thousand different things, in short, jerky sentences as if to drown some inner voice; neither would Klare interrupt with a single question the heavy silence in which, at other times, Hannah would sit for hours, watching her as she busied herself with her little housewifely tidyings and mendings. It was only in watching this peaceful activity that Frau von Gropphusen recovered her equanimity.

Her face would then lose its unnatural fixity of expression, and she would draw a deep breath, as though eased of a heavy burden.

"It is so peaceful here with you, Frau Klare," she said sometimes. "It does one good."

Guntz shook his head over her weird conduct. One thing gratified him concerning her, however: it was that she admired his little son unreservedly, and could be given no greater treat than to be allowed to hold the boy on her lap. She would sit as though wors.h.i.+pping the child, who, indeed, was no angel, only a quite ordinary, fat, chubby infant.

At such times her small finely-chiselled features would light up with a glorious beauty; so that Guntz one day whispered to his wife, "Do you know what the Gropphusen needs? A child!"

And in his open-hearted way he once said jokingly to Hannah: "Wouldn't you like a beautiful boy like that for yourself, dear lady?"

At that Hannah Gropphusen sprang up wildly. Her hands shook so that she could scarcely hold the baby, whom Klare s.n.a.t.c.hed from her only just in time.

"I, a child?" she cried. "For the love of G.o.d, never, never!"

A look of horror was in her eyes. She held her hands before her face as though to shut out something horrible.

Guntz drew back shocked, and stole softly from the room, taking with him the baby, who had set up a mighty howling. Klare put her arm round the trembling woman, led her to a seat, and soothed her like a child.

Sitting motionless, Frau von Gropphusen listened to the gentle, comforting sound of the words, without taking in their meaning, Suddenly she sprang up and said in a voice of enforced calm:

"Forgive me, dear kind Frau Klare, for having caused such a disturbance. It is wrong of me not to be able to control myself better.

Don't be vexed, or angry with me, but please just forget what has happened."

She began hurriedly to prepare for leaving. Her hands still shook as she pinned on her hat before the mirror.

"Let me go with you, dear Frau von Gropphusen," urged Klare.