Part 67 (1/2)

In front of Weise stood Senior-lieutenant Brettschneider as leader of the first column. With his stiffened neck and proudly erect carriage he gave the impression of wis.h.i.+ng to point out what an immense gulf separated him from the men. Between this officer and his subordinates there was no kind of sympathy.

And at that sight the commander of the battery looked still more glum.

Brettschneider might have been quite brilliant at the Staff College in tactics and military history, but he was of no real use as an officer; still less could he instil into the men either military efficiency or convinced patriotism.

When Vogt arrived at the station the train he had meant to take had already gone.

Well, that couldn't be helped. He must wait for the next.

The dull February day was drawing towards its close when he stepped out upon the road that led to his native village. Joylessly he saw the familiar details of the neighbourhood appearing out of the fog, and he gave a casual, uninterested glance over the fields that bordered the highway.

Before the turnpike-keeper's cottage he stood still a moment. The dusty windows looked strange and dead; and the closed door over the well-worn threshold seemed to warn him off.

The little side-gate into the yard was not locked. Franz Vogt entered by it upon his paternal inheritance.

Just then old Wackwitz came hobbling with his wooden leg across the yard, carrying a pot of steamed potatoes.

”n.o.body has any business here!” he cried out to the intruder.

Then he recognised ”young Herr Vogt.” He took him at once across the yard, and pointed out to him, in his clumsy, babbling way, the fine glossy appearance of the cows and the appetising sleekness of the pigs.

Who could be found to take more trouble with the beasts than he? And he had been very economical with the food, although the local authorities had not given him too liberal an allowance!

Vogt listened perfunctorily. He nodded a.s.sent to all the garrulous old man said. It was quite true, the beasts looked well cared-for.

He patted the strawberry cow, who was in calf; and she turned her head towards him as she lay in her stall comfortably chewing the cud. Yet he could not feel easy. With his foot he pushed aside some straw that was littering about the place, and he carefully avoided the dung that lay on the stones of the yard.

He went down to the village and got the keys. A stuffy, chilly atmosphere met him in the pa.s.sage and exhaled from every room. Thick dust lay everywhere on floors and furniture.

Nothing had been moved from its place, and every picture hung as usual on the wall. But it seemed to Vogt as if the rooms were empty and the walls bare. He shuddered with cold and with the sense of loneliness.

In the living-room his father's plain easy-chair was pushed up to the table, and beside it the stool on which the son had usually sat. It looked as if they had both only been out into the field for a moment and would return immediately; but yet he could not feel at home.

Franz Vogt looked about him sadly. All else was as of old; but his father lay in the churchyard beneath the heaped-up clay of his newly-made grave, and the son stood like a stranger in his father's house.

The lowing of the cows aroused him from his dismal brooding. He had sent away old Wackwitz after rewarding him liberally: for he meant to do as his father had done, and manage all the work himself.

He gave the beasts their food, which had already been prepared for them. There was not a sc.r.a.p of bread nor of b.u.t.ter in the house for himself. He made his way down to the village in the dark, and was glad to find that the baker's shop was not yet shut, and that a neighbour could provide him with some b.u.t.ter.

And when, dead tired after the varying experiences of the day, he went upstairs, there were no sheets on his bed. He could not take the trouble to rummage in the linen-chest, and crept heavy-heartedly between the rough woollen blankets.

Early next morning he was aroused by the uneasy mooing of the cows. He sprang from bed and scarcely gave himself time to wash. He had to bestir himself, and the f.a.gging and worry lasted without intermittence from morning until night. He had hardly time to go down to the village inn in the middle of the day and get a hot meal.

He would not allow himself to fall short in any way, and was unremitting in his exertions.

But was this the condition on which, while a soldier, he had looked back with such longing? This haste and breathless labour, this hurrying from one thing to another without pause or rest?

He smiled bitterly to himself, and looked about him with dull, joyless eyes. He was tired with his day's work, and his back ached with fatigue; where was that joy of labour, which had formerly sustained him, and had lightened the burden on his shoulders?

Seed-time was coming on; when the young leaves of the lime-tree began to show as tender brown buds on the twigs, then the corn must be sown for the summer's harvest. But before that the fields, which had lain fallow through the winter, must be ploughed and harrowed.