Jena or Sedan? Part 61

"Do you know, my Klare," he said, "I don't quite like the look of it myself."

The answer to this letter was very long in coming, unreasonably long, Klare thought. Her husband comforted her: "Do you think people can come to a decision in a week about a matter over which I pondered for many years?"

At last came a letter bearing the stamp of the gun-foundry.

Guntz was just changing his coat for his smoking-jacket. He skimmed through the doc.u.ment, and read aloud to Klare the most important phrase: "... plans extremely promising, ... their construction must certainly be undertaken at once."

Then followed a most dazzling proposal for Guntz to enter the factory and occupy a leading position there. Compared with the modest pay of a captain, the suggested salary of fifteen thousand marks seemed positively fabulous.

Frau Klare's was an eminently practical nature, and she had often lamented over the miserable income on which the claims of an officer's position made such serious inroads; but now these words escaped her: "Good G.o.d, Fatty! Isn't that far too much?"

Guntz had not heard her exclamation. He had just taken off his coat; he held it for a moment in his hand and stroked the epaulettes caressingly. Then he hung it carefully over the back of a chair.

"Of course I shall accept," he said, in a voice which was meant to be calm, but in which strong emotion was evident. "I hope I shall be able to serve my country and my king better than I could in that dear old coat."

Klare stretched out her hand to him in silence; then she went softly out of the room. It is better for a man to have that sort of thing out with himself alone.

What might have taken an enormous expenditure of time and writing proved, as a matter of fact, to be very simply and easily accomplished.

Captain Guntz sent in his papers, and they were accepted before Easter.

At the farewell dinner, Major Mohbrinck spoke of the heartfelt concern with which the regiment must lose such a charming companion and promising officer, and of the good wishes with which all the officers would follow him to his new and important sphere of activity.

All this came from the heart. Who could know whether, as retired lieutenant-colonel or colonel, a man holding such a post in a gun-foundry might not be a very useful acquaintance?

When Guntz took his departure from the little station he had got over all his regrets. He only left behind one man for whom he cared--Reimers.

He looked out of the window of the railway-carriage and saw his friend standing on the narrow platform, gazing after the departing train. That thin face, with its sad eyes, became by degrees undistinguishable, and at last he could hardly recognise the slender, slightly bent figure.

He waved his handkerchief for the last time; but his friend probably did not see, for he stood motionless.

Then the train ran round a corner of rock; the carriage swayed slightly, and the little station was out of sight. Guntz sat back sighing in his corner. He had been able to give his friend no consolation, and only one piece of good advice--to work.

Little Dr. von Froben accompanied Senior-lieutenant Reimers to the examinations at the Staff College.

"One can only be plucked," he said in excuse when he was teased about his presumption. Of course if he compared his knowledge with that of his companion, Reimers, his candidature seemed to himself an unwarrantable piece of bravado. And Reimers went on studying with an indefatigable, almost feverish energy.

"My dear Reimers," said the little doctor, "there will be nothing more for you to learn at the Staff College, if you work like this. You had better slack off, dear boy!"

Reimers smiled a little half-heartedly. The good progress he was making gave him no joy. He no longer prosecuted his studies with the inspired devotion that had formerly possessed him; and only the strong feeling of duty, which had become habitual with him, spurred him on to further efforts. He often said to himself: "After all, what is the good of it?"

There was no sign of any obstacle in his path; despite all that had happened he was in a very fair way to achieve a distinguished military career. But he could not rid himself of an oppressive feeling that all his labour was in vain.

And then again after a moment of hopeless depression he would be possessed anew by the old fair vision, his enthusiasm for the wonderful German army, to belong to which had been his pride and his salvation.

With eyes full of rapture he pored over the pages of the military history, and for the thousandth time followed the army on its path of conquest.

Then suddenly he checked himself. Was the army of to-day, of which he was a member, really that old victorious army?

Guntz had handed over to him the justification for his resignation which he had written out before the duel with Landsberg. It had been unnecessary to add or to erase anything.

Reimers had often in old days wished to have his friend's opinions in black and white before him, in order to overthrow them singly, point by point, brilliantly to overthrow them. He now held in his hand Guntz's views, succinctly and definitely expressed; but whither had flown his former keen spirit? He could no longer summon up the old impetuous dash with which he had meant to fall upon his opponent's arguments one after another, raze them to the ground and trample them underfoot like the entrenchments and fortifications in some mock combat.

He compared Guntz's statement with the notes he had taken of his conversations with Falkenhein, during the short period of his adjutancy. There was much in which they agreed, and this agreement staggered him. Here were two men of fundamentally different nature whose judgment concurred; both of them were distinguished by clarity of perception and exhaustive knowledge of the circ.u.mstances with which they were dealing, and both were ent.i.tled to their opinions by a past record that excluded all idea of bias.

Were they both right, then? The one with his vague uneasiness, the other with his heavy disquietude?

Reimers could not dismiss the doubts of these two men. At most he might reply to Guntz that this unsatisfactory state of affairs was not so widespread as his friend a.s.serted.

This inclination to outward show was a universal sign of the times, and was not confined to Germany. In France a cavalry charge had been made upon the grand stand where the President was seated beside the Tsar.

Was that not more theatrical than some of the impossible evolutions undertaken in the German manuvres?

But to this consolation was opposed the old teaching of experience, that a nation in extremity is capable of the most unheard-of exertions in reparation of its errors. The cheerful self-sacrifice of Prussia in 1813 was almost without parallel in the history of the world; and yet the sensitive, heavily-chastened French nation was effecting a similar arduous work, the more striking by reason of its long persistence.

France had, besides, this advantage; in actual fact a great number of the French people, through an artificially nourished feeling of embitterment, were keen for war with their eastern neighbour. Germans, on the contrary, thought no more of the "hereditary enemy" of 1870; in the progress of science and the development of art they felt themselves closely connected with France. Germany had linked herself to France that they might march together arm-in-arm in the forefront of civilisation.

Germany _desired_ peace. It was not exactly that the German had become unwarlike; but, because of his Teutonic thoroughness and sobriety, he was deeply impressed with the necessity and utility of peace, as the most truly rational condition of things. Once the danger of vengeance from the west had blown over, any and every war would have been unpopular in Germany, except perhaps one with England, which, as a naval war, would less immediately affect the ma.s.ses of the people, and everybody in Germany held the conviction that warlike developments would never arise from an irresistible outbreak of popular feeling, but only from political or dynastic mismanagement.

In this way--that is, as a failing in warlike ardour--did Reimers account for the want of patriotism which Guntz pointed to as the most significant inward danger of the present military system.

Reimers had never interested himself particularly in parliamentary or political controversies,--an officer should hold aloof from such matters,--he was therefore not inclined to lay so much stress as his friend did on the influence of revolutionary politicians.

The evil was great enough without that. Was not an army that went into the field without enthusiasm beaten beforehand? And the thoughts suggested to him by the reflections of the colonel and of his friend all pointed to a similar conclusion. They seemed to stand like warning signposts beside the road on which the German army was marching; and all, all, bore upon their outstretched pointing arms the ominous word--Jena.

The sinister idea haunted Reimers like a ghost. If he sat down to his books it was there; and it fell across his vision like a dark shadow when the sun shone its bravest on the imposing array of the batteries at exercise.

His old friends had gone far away; and if Reimers looked into his own mind he was obliged to admit that he could not greatly regret this. It was indeed better so. The delightful intimate relations between himself and those dear people had already been destroyed by scarcely perceptible degrees.

The thought of Marie Falkenhein weighed on him the least heavily. When he had once got over the first bitter sorrow at his ill fortune he thought of her, strangely enough, with no desperate longing, but rather with a feeling of shame. The young girl did not represent the immediate necessity of his life which he now found lacking. That lay in a different sphere.

For this reason he was glad that Falkenhein and Guntz had left the garrison. No one should be there to see how the guiding star which he had followed so ardently all his days was now setting in diminished glory: no one should be by when his whole life suffered s.h.i.+pwreck.

The regiment was now under orders to march to the practice-camp. A few days before the departure Reimers ordered his man to bring him his portmanteau.

He wanted to see if the faithful old trunk, which had accompanied him on all his travels, was still in proper condition. It needed no attention.

"Shall I take off the labels?" asked his servant. "Then perhaps, I could freshen it up a little with varnish."

The trunk displayed a vast number of hotel and luggage labels. His journey to Egypt, in particular, had left brightly-coloured traces.

Reimers stood buried in thought. Suddenly he observed the waiting servant.

"Yes, of course," he said; "see to it."

He had been thinking of his return from that long furlough.

What renewed vigour he had then felt in every limb! With what exhilaration he had set foot on the quay at Hamburg, his first step on German soil after a whole long year in foreign lands! He would have liked to fall on the neck of the first gunner he met; and he could hardly wait for the moment when he might again don the unpretending coat that outshone in his eyes the most gorgeous robe of state in the world, attired in which he might again perform the dear old wearisome duty.

Were those high hopes to end in this sordid fas.h.i.+on?