Part 3 (2/2)
Wegstetten walked up and down the room for a few moments, plunged in thought; then came to a stand in front of the sergeant-major.
”Thank you for being so open with me, Schumann,” he said; ”but I don't see how we can avoid it. Heppner has served eleven years, the colonel likes him well enough,--and he really is a capable man in all practical work.”
He looked at the clock and went on: ”Thank goodness, you will be here another six months, and we shall be able to get this year's recruits well started. Now it's half-past ten, and I must be off to the riding-school. What else was there? Oh yes, Frielinghausen. Have him here at eleven.” And with a friendly ”Good morning, Schumann,” he left the room.
Schumann sat down again to his writing; but he did not take up the pen.
What his captain had said about ”desertion” kept running in his head.
He himself sometimes had the feeling that it would be wrong of him to quit the service. Especially now, when these new-fangled ways made men of the good old stamp all the more necessary.
He had worked his way upwards through long years of service, only getting promotion by slow degrees; and eight years ago he had been made sergeant-major, Wegstetten getting his battery on the self-same day.
Nowadays any young fool of a gunner might be made bombardier in a year, in another six months corporal, and then be set to teach others. Raw, empty-headed fellows that only thought of their own comfort, and disappeared from barracks the moment their time of service had expired, without leaving a trace behind. Chaps without the least pride or interest in the service;--nice sort of non-commissioned officers!
He looked round. Just so; Kappchen was still away. Where was that lazy beggar? and where was the bombardier? He shut up his book and went off on the hunt.
The bombardier was waiting outside the door: he ”thought the captain was still in the orderly-room.” That might be true, of course. He didn't know where Kappchen was.
The sergeant-major knew where to look, and went straight to the canteen. There indeed was Kappchen, just lighting a cigarette, after wiping from his thin black beard the froth of a freshly-drawn gla.s.s of beer.
Schumann would not make a fuss before the other non-commissioned officers who were standing about, so only said: ”Kappchen, you're wanted in the orderly-room.” Whereupon the corporal was off like a shot, not even finis.h.i.+ng his beer.
Wegstetten sauntered along the sandy road that led from the riding-school to the barracks. Now and then he stopped to switch off the dust scattered over him by the galloping hoofs. Now and then he flung an oath or so at the riders, but on the whole he was contented enough. It could not be gainsaid, Heppner was the man for him. Yes, the battery was all right, and he, Wegstetten, would see to it that it remained so. On every speech-making occasion when the chief held it up as an example, he had rejoiced to see the envious faces with which the commanders of the other batteries congratulated him.
Undoubtedly on this account he was given extra hard nuts to crack--such as this case of Frielinghausen.
Baron Walter von Frielinghausen was a second-year student, expelled from the gymnasium for repeated misdemeanours. His mother, a very poor widow, had not the means to continue his education, neither was the family ready to do so. They had therefore suggested that the young scapegrace should be brought under strict soldierly discipline, with the view to his eventually entering the Fire-Workers' Corps, and perhaps being made an officer therein.
And it was the sixth battery that was selected as the scene of action for this young man's talents! Wegstetten resolved to take all the nonsense out of him, and to destroy any delusions the youth might have as to his being in any way privileged.
But when Frielinghausen stood before him, an overgrown stripling, whose somewhat angular limbs looked still more immature in the coa.r.s.e, ready-made uniform; and when he met a pair of anxious young eyes fixed on him, his tone softened perceptibly. There occurred to him, too, the consciousness of another bond: Frielinghausen, like himself, belonged to the old Thuringian n.o.bility--possibly even to an older family than Wegstetten's. Although this youngster had undoubtedly caused his mother grave anxiety, yet he had not stolen copper-wire, nor taken part in any socialistic demonstration. Wegstetten at the moment did not know of what worse he could be accused. Naturally he would see to it that this sympathy with the fate of a common soldier should not be wasted on an unworthy object. Directly Frielinghausen did amiss, he would be down on him; just as with that other sprig of n.o.bility, Count Egon Plettau, who had actually managed to serve nearly eight years and of that time to spend, first six months, then two and then five years confined in a fortress--always on account of insubordination. Now this incarnate disgrace to the German n.o.bility was nearing his release, and was expected to be back again soon in the battery. Accident would determine whether he would finish his remaining two months before he was put on the Reserve, or would again get himself into prison.
Wegstetten had sufficient knowledge of men to recognise the difference between the two. Count Plettau was a mere hopeless idler and vagabond.
Frielinghausen was at least inspired with a wish to pull himself together and become good for something.
Accordingly Wegstetten spoke to him like a father; told him in a few pointed words that he must try to be independent and steady, and must not expect to be treated exceptionally; enjoining him by zeal and good conduct to earn promotion as quickly as possible. But at the door he added softly, for he did not wish the non-commissioned officers to hear: ”Be worthy of the name you bear! That alone should be sufficient inducement to make you try to get on.”
Frielinghausen stood breathless for a moment after he had closed the door of the orderly-room. His heart was full of grat.i.tude for the warm, humane words, which, after all the dry exhortations and admonitions, put new life into his heart. He earnestly resolved to repay his chief by his deeds, and to take all possible pains to please him.
The boy, than whom a few weeks ago none had been more light-hearted and careless, had been forced into serious reflections the night before. He had been a favourite with all his fellow-students, even outdoing the others in boyish exuberance, looking only at the sunny side of life and laughing at the censure of his teachers. Now suddenly he found himself banished to surroundings the misery of which made sweet by comparison even the bitterest hours of the past, which he could only remember with shame. He thought of the times when his mother had implored him with anxious, fervent words to be good. How ill he had succeeded as to that ”goodness”! That dear tender mother had not grudged him the freedom of youth; often she had told him that she had no wish to see him a priggish, model boy, but had urged him not to lag behind the others, nor to fall short of his goal. This was chiefly because of the stingy, well-to-do relations, whose goodwill she had to secure in order that he might not have an utterly joyless youth. She had borne every burden, and was prematurely aged through her anxiety that he should attain the object which had shone so brightly in the future: namely, the family scholars.h.i.+p at the University of Jena, an endowment founded by a Frielinghausen of old for the benefit of his descendants.
Then came the catastrophe. Never in all his life would he forget the blank dismay of his mother when the head of the gymnasium interviewed her and told her of the inevitable expulsion. ”Levity, carelessness, lack of industry, superficiality in almost every subject,” thus ran the reports of his teachers.
Hereupon followed a period of dreary inaction, and again a feverish succession of pet.i.tions and persuasions, with the object of obtaining means for three years' private coaching, but the relations declined to open their purses. So they had fallen upon this last expedient for providing him with a career as a sort of mongrel, half officer, half non-com.
He envied the simple lads who were his comrades. They had, it is true, entered into new and strange conditions, but after all they remained in their natural environment. Many of them had never been so well off as in barracks. There was no bridge between the heights of culture to which he had aspired and the uncivilised depths in which his comrades dwelt so contentedly. Possibly they numbered among them fine and loveable natures: he was most attracted by the shabby clerk Klitzing, and by Vogt, the rough peasant-boy; but all these men, with their scanty words and awkward gestures, fought shy of him, fearing to be despised by an educated gentleman.
The prospect of intercourse with the non-commissioned officers, who, on promotion, would be his comrades, promised to be but little better than with the recruits. Among them he met, for the most part, with the same distrustful reticence that he had experienced among the men, though a few of them made up to him, thinking him the _protege_ of the captain, and this he resented. Kappchen, in particular, a little man, with unpleasant cunning eyes, offered to his ”future comrade” sundry little favours which, being battery-clerk, were in his power to bestow.
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