Part 26 (1/2)

But it was no use fighting against it, he could not take his eyes off his son. What a well set-up, vigorous young fellow his Franz had grown!

Yet he was still the same good honest lad; that was written in his face.

And Franz's friend, with his frank open countenance, inspired confidence at once. He looked, to be sure, as if he had never in his life had enough to eat. He must be properly fed up for once. While he was on leave, at any rate, he should not want for anything.

The two gunners settled down very quickly, and nothing could prevent Franz from going round the fields the very first evening while his father milked and fed the cows. He had almost hoped to find something or other left neglected because he had not been there when it was put in hand. But no, his father had allowed nothing to go wrong anywhere.

And now in the company of the two young soldiers the old turnpike-keeper became quite a different creature. He realised suddenly that the quiet, sluggish peasant's blood had not quite replaced in him the old, quick-flowing blood of the soldier. He listened, fascinated, to the tales told by the two gunners about their soldier's life. How things had changed since his time! He could never hear enough about it all.

Then Franz came to tell of his reflections during the gun-practice: how through the fence he had seen the infantry battalion tormented with drill for hours at a time; how the dried-up looking major had foamed with fury; and how the poor devil of a private had been struck down bodily and mentally in the middle of it all.

Old Vogt quietly heard his son out, although he was burning to speak.

Then he began: ”Look here, youngster, you as a simple soldier can't understand it all. But depend upon it, this drill is the most important thing that every soldier must first be made to learn. For it alone teaches military obedience, soldierly subordination, discipline. It alone can give that unity which preserves a company from utter demoralisation if one of your horrible new-fangled shrapnel bursts among them. But for drill the cowards would turn tail without further ceremony, and take to their heels; and in the end even the brave ones would follow them. It is the drill that teaches them to stay on and stick together.”

He held to it, in spite of all his son could say about what he had seen of the kind of drill that the troops were kept at.

”You could not have seen aright,” said his father.

The elder Vogt would not allow his son to put his hand to anything in the afternoons. He always insisted on sending the two young fellows out by themselves.

”Be off with you, youngsters,” he would say. ”Take a walk, drink a gla.s.s of beer somewhere or other--whatever you like. Enjoy your few days of freedom!”

Then the two young men would march off and let the hot sun and the fresh air burn them and brown them. Vogt had shown his friend his favourite spot, whence they could look out over the river to the castle in the neighbouring town. There they lay in the gra.s.s.

The peasant felt impelled to get up every now and then. He was restless; he felt that he must keep looking at the fields that lay around them. But the clerk lay quite still in the short gra.s.s, and with blinking half-closed eyes gazed up into the summer sky.

CHAPTER VIII

[Ill.u.s.tration: Reveille]

Baron Walther von Frielinghausen was made bombardier on July 1st.

He had now got his foot on the ladder of military distinction, but he felt no special elation at the fact. What signified this little piece of promotion in a career which had now no attraction for him?

Wegstetten had arranged that he should at once begin doing some of the work of a corporal; but this, too, had its inconvenient side. When merely a gunner he had always imagined that he knew better than those uneducated fellows the non-coms.; and he had occasionally looked forward to the moment when he would be put in authority, and would be able to show off some of his knowledge. But now to command had become more difficult than to obey, and there was certainly just as much blame going. One was scolded as if one were a silly boy, and the men always took notice of the fact.

Only one thing caused him pleasant antic.i.p.ations: he would have riding lessons. But this, too, proved unlike his expectations. Heppner, after his fas.h.i.+on, kept him hard at it. Like every recruit, he had to begin with riding bareback; then after a time came the more difficult task of balancing on the slippery saddle without stirrups; and only after considerable practice would the sergeant-major occasionally allow him to let the stirrups down. There were days on which he had more than twenty falls from his horse; and at last it was always in fear and trembling that he went to riding instruction. Whenever his horse dashed away riderless after a jump, Frielinghausen rejoiced in the few minutes' respite that shortened by that much the hour of his lesson. He could never manage to go over a hurdle with his hands placed on his hips; at every jump they s.n.a.t.c.hed at the horse's mane. Heppner raged over this cowardice; but storm and shout as he would, Frielinghausen's hands were for ever clutching at his only means of safety.

At last the sergeant-major left the long-limbed youth alone in his incompetence. He had an impression that Wegstetten wished to hear good of the bombardier, and after all, in the fire-workers, it would not be necessary for Frielinghausen to be a proficient at riding. But the less Frielinghausen knew about horses the more he boasted of his acquirements, when once the riding instruction had come to an end.

As soon as he was made bombardier he was removed from Room IX. to the non-commissioned officers' quarters.

Wegstetten thought to do his _protege_ a favour by this; but Frielinghausen felt no happier in his new surroundings than in the company of the recruits. The mental atmosphere was hardly more enlightened than that of his former room-mates. The service, horses, and women: these were the chief subjects of conversation. They all appeared to be great riders before the Lord, though had Heppner been questioned in the matter he might have expressed a contrary opinion; but every mounted non-com, thinks it necessary to be a bit of a Munchausen. He would far rather be called a blockhead than be told he cannot ride. Though, of course, Frielinghausen contributed his mite to such conversations, on the whole he felt very much in doubt which he preferred: the narrow interests of the common soldiers in Room IX., or the well-meant rough good nature of the non-commissioned officers. He rather inclined to Room IX.

All this was changed when the non-commissioned officers' room received a new inmate, the one-year volunteer Trautvetter.