A Little Garrison Part 6

And to think that this was the profession most highly honored, most envied in the fatherland! To think that it had always been drummed in his ears, ever since early childhood, that to "wear the king's coat"

would exalt him high above his fellow mortals!

Comrades.h.i.+p! What a fine word when it bears out its full meaning, thought Lieutenant Bleibtreu. But what was it here? What had he found the practical construction of the term? To follow, day by day, step by step, in the same treadmill of dull routine, only relieved by occasional but all too brief glimpses of the freedom that lay beyond "the service"--that was the meaning of comrades.h.i.+p. There was none of that unselfish intimacy, that ready sympathy and help between the members of the caste into which he had risen on the proud day he first read his name among the Kaiser's appointments in the _Armee-Verordnungsblatt_.

Dead sea fruit! Ashes that taste bitter on the tongue.

Certainly there were exceptions. He himself had heard of some such cases of comrades.h.i.+p as he had dreamed of when still a slim little cadet in the military academy: cases where one comrade lifted the other, the younger and less experienced, up to his higher level; cases where one comrade sacrificed himself for the other. But these must be very rare, he thought, for he had never seen such a case himself. What he had seen was the casting into one stiff, unchanging form of so many individualities not suited to each other. It was the hollow mockery of the thing that palled so on him. And what would be the end?

Though young in the service, he had seen men meant for better things broken as a reed on the wheel of military formalism; he had seen them retiring when but in the prime of life, broken in spirit, unfit for any new career, impaired in health, perfectly useless--victims of the conventional ideas that rule supreme in the army. Others he had seen forced to resign, overloaded with a burden of debt, ruined financially, physically, morally bankrupt,--all due to the tinsel and glitter, to the ceaseless temptations thrown into the path of the German army officer. A young civilian, even when the son of wealthy parents, is not coaxed and wheedled into a network of useless expenditure, as is the youngest army officer, waylaid everywhere by the detestable gang of "army usurers," who follow him to the bitter end, knowing that to repudiate even the shadiest debt means disgrace and dismissal from the army to every officer, no matter if his follies have been committed at an age when other young boys are still subject to closest supervision.

Deep lines had formed on Bleibtreu's smooth forehead, and he was visibly startled when the cheery, round voice of his squadron commander, Captain Konig, recalled him to his surroundings.

"And that's what they call pleasure," said he, sitting down on the sofa beside his young lieutenant, for whom he felt something like paternal affection. "If such entertainments were at least arranged beforehand, with the consent or at the instance of the juniors themselves,--for I will say nothing about us older men,--but no! Frau Stark commands, and the whole regiment, from the colonel down to the youngest cornet, has simply to obey. Disgraceful, I say. Why, we cannot even choose our own tipple on such occasions. The colonel simply orders that a May bowl be composed, and we have to brew it, drink it, and--pay for it. This evening will cost us a pretty penny again. A gla.s.s of apollinaris would be far more palatable, and certainly much cheaper and appropriate at this temperature than this confounded sweetish stuff, which gives one a headache fit to split the skull next morning."

"Quite true, Captain," replied the young man. "This form of quasi-official pressure, even in one's private expenditures, is one of the worst curses of our profession. It has indirectly caused the ruin of many a promising young officer, I've been told."

"Yes, my boy, you are quite right," answered Konig. "It is amazing how many officers have been forced into retirement of recent years, solely because of unpaid and unpayable debts. Things in this respect cannot go on much longer. For the ruin of thousands of these young officers means also the ruin of their families, and among them many of the oldest and best in the Empire. An unhealthy craze for luxurious living has seized upon the army, and G.o.d alone knows how it will end some day. It is a thing which will and must frighten every true patriot, and I wish our most gracious sovereign would take up this matter more earnestly."

"Yes, H. M. does not attach enough importance to this chapter."

"And yet the remedy would be such a simple one," remarked the captain.

"If H. M. would simply issue a decree to the effect that no debts of army officers up to captain's rank shall be recoverable in court, that would be the end of army usury, and with it would be removed the worst cancer of which the whole army suffers. Once the certainty that ultimately they are sure of their money would be gone, these leeches would no longer trouble the gay and s.h.i.+ftless young officer whom they now pursue with the persistence of bloodhounds. But what is the use of saying this? H. M. himself is not without blame in these things. As long as his personal example all tells the other way, how can we expect the army to become prudent and economical?"

"However, Captain, that is not the sole trouble. I think as long as we as a cla.s.s--or caste--are taught that we are something better than the civilian population, so long as we are guided by another code of ethics, erecting an insurmountable barrier around us, there can be no real reform. Such prejudices, or rather such systematic teaching, must inevitably lead to sharp separation between the professional soldier cla.s.s and the rest of the people. Good heavens, this is the twentieth century, and no longer the middle ages, we're living in. Caste and exclusive privileges must go, else--"

"s.h.!.+ s.h.!.+ Lower your voice, my dear boy--the colonel is looking our way, and over there stands Muller, the adjutant, always ready for tale-bearing. Let us get up and take a stroll in the moonlight, or, better still, let us go home."

The lieutenant accompanied his superior officer as far as the door of his dwelling, and on the way spoke in tones of real concern of the fact that the cleavage between the private soldier and his superiors was so great.

"After all," he remarked, "many of these poor devils are every bit as well educated as we,--some of them even better,--and as long as this is supposed to be a 'nation in arms,' and not, as in the eighteenth century, an army of mercenaries, no such strict difference, socially, ought to be made. Do you know, I often think the Socialists are not so wrong in some things they urge."

"For goodness' sake, my dear Lieutenant, don't let any such remarks escape you anywhere else," said Captain Konig, in a scared voice. But they had reached the captain's door, and so they shook hands and parted.

Bleibtreu lived at the other end of the straggling little town. In walking leisurely home, he followed his train of thought. The systematic brutality shown the common soldier--even the noncom.

(though not in so p.r.o.nounced a manner)--by his fellow-officers had from the start been very much against his taste. "They don't see the defender of the fatherland in him," thought he, "but merely the green man, unused to strict discipline and to the narrowly bound round of dull duties, the clumsy, ungainly recruit, or the smarter, but even more unsympathetic private of some experience whose drill is an unpleasant task for them, and who, they know, hates and abominates them in his heart." And he remembered scenes of such brutality, the unwilling witness of which he had been. Such cruelty and abuse of power, he felt, was playing into the hands of the Socialist Party.

"These young men, fresh from the plough or the workshop," he mused, "cannot help losing all their love for the army. So long as they serve in it, of course, they will not risk those punishments for expressing their real thoughts which the military law metes out with such draconic severity; they will prefer suffering in silence the injustice, cruelty, and inhuman treatment to which, at one time or another, nearly every one of them is subjected during their period of active service. But once dismissed to the reserve, how many, many thousands of them will naturally turn to the only political party with us which dares to oppose with courage militarism and all its fearful excrescences! And all this," he continued inwardly, "is the natural result of a long period of deadening, enervating peace. Oh! If there were but a war! All this dross would then glide off us, and the true metal underneath would once more s.h.i.+ne forth."

He went to bed with these ideas still humming in his brain.

Borgert had been enjoying himself meanwhile. His kind always does. He had, for a few moments, tried to listen to the arguments of Captain Konig and Lieutenant Bleibtreu, while they were seated on the sofa; but, pshaw! how absurd to philosophize about these things, he thought.

Far better to take life as it comes. And so he had joined the party at the gaming-table, where one of the winners was just then standing treat for a battery of Veuve Clicquot, and as he slowly sipped the delicious beverage, the bubbles rising like rosy pearls from the depths of his chalice, he smiled with self-satisfaction.

But at last he, too, left the house and directed his steps toward the far end of the garden, where a small gate led directly into the street at the end of which he dwelt. There! Again Frau Kahle and uncouth, elephantine Lieutenant Pommer! The May bowl, he thought, has been too strong for his addled brain. And he stepped silently aside on the velvety sward, under the clump of lilacs. The nightingale, from the centre of a thicket a score of paces away, still fluted and trilled a song of pa.s.sion. And something like it, he made sure, big Pommer was also pouring into the tiny ear of that conquering flirt, the volatile spouse of Captain Kahle. Having ascertained this, First Lieutenant Borgert rapidly strode toward the interesting pair, clinking his spurs and drawling forth an accented "G-o-o-d evening!" as he came up to them before they had had a chance to rise. Pommer looked indescribably much like an idiot in returning the salute; but the little woman, with the ready wit of her s.e.x, a.s.sumed the air of an immaculate dove.

The players were the last to leave the Casino,--all of them with heavy heads and some of them with much lighter purse. Among the latter was Leimann.

CHAPTER III

THE CONSEQUENCES OF A MAY BOWL

Next morning the garrison--that is, the officers of it--was slower and later in awakening than usual. That cursed May bowl! It was precisely as Captain Konig had said: terrific headaches paid for indulgence in its seductive potency. Pommer, poor Pommer, although waked by his servant at the usual time, was still so much under the influence of the fumes that had mounted to his silly head the night before, that the only answer he was able to make to the shoutings of his Masovian[6] man was an unintelligible grunt. Then he turned over on the other side and settled down to a solid sleep.

[6] Masovians, the population of certain districts in eastern Prussia; they are of Polish race.--TR.

At eleven he was still peacefully snoring, when his man stepped up to his bed once more, and undertook such violent and persistent manipulations with the extremities of his master that the latter finally opened his eyes far enough to let a little daylight and some sense into his dazed brain. The bulky lieutenant stretched himself, yawned, and at last remembered his doings of the night before. With both mighty fists he hammered his thick skull in disgust and despair.

"Holy smoke--that-- ---- May bowl!" he groaned, and then sat down in the chair beside his couch to feel of his head, which seemed a gigantic ba.s.s drum, hollow and reverberating. Like a flash his desperate flirtation with the wife of his own squadron chief came back to his muddled consciousness.

Vaclav, his man,--whom he, for short, called Watz,--brought in his morning coffee, and after dressing with a great running commentary of grunts and groans, he sat down to drink a mouthful of the reviving decoction. But his brain was still in a whirl, and the scenes of a few hours ago pa.s.sed rapidly, but in nebulous form, before his clouded inner vision.

Dimly he felt ashamed of himself. He knew he had not behaved like a gentleman, and he thought he remembered that somebody had witnessed the spectacle he had made of himself. Specht? Meckelburg? Or Muller?

No--he thought not. But Borgert? Yes, he thought it was Borgert. No, no. But who? He gave it up with another groan, and took a mouthful of the cold coffee.

Anyway, he had behaved in a beastly fas.h.i.+on. That he did know. But stop! Had she not told him how badly she was treated by her husband--how neglected--had she not appealed to his gallantry and friends.h.i.+p? He felt uncertain. All he knew with certainty was that he had been a brute.

He buried his head in his brawny hands.

How had it been possible for him so to forget himself?

He knew:--champagne luncheon with that fellow Borgert,--a fellow whose powers of consumption had never been ascertained. Then, at dinner, that heavy "Turk's blood"[7] to which Muller had to treat because of a lost bet. And then, worst of all, that thrice-condemned May bowl! And hadn't they noticed it, the other fellows, and hadn't they filled him up notwithstanding, or rather because, they saw that he couldn't carry any more liquid conveniently? His big fist slammed the table.

[7] "Turk's blood" ("Turkenblut") is the name of a mixture of English porter, brandy, and French champagne very much in vogue in the army.--TR.

There was a knock at the door.

The man with the sore conscience and the sorer head bade the unknown enter.

It was First Lieutenant Borgert, helmet in hand. He pretended astonishment at the evident condition of his comrade, but eyed him sharply, and then said:

"Pardon me if I come inopportunely, but a rather delicate matter induces me to see you this morning."

"Officially or privately?" grunted Pommer.

"Both, if you wish it," answered the other.

"If a private matter I beg you will postpone it," said Pommer. "Let us talk about it some other day."

"I regret to say that I _must_ insist on discussing the matter now,"

retorted Borgert, stiffly. "You are aware, of course, that as the elder man in the service I have the right, even the duty, to remonstrate with you if I see occasion for it."

Pommer reflected a moment. In years he was the other man's senior, and he had also visited a university for a triennium before joining the army, while the other had simply completed the easy curriculum of the military academy. But, true, Borgert was a twelvemonth ahead of him in actual service. So he silently submitted.

"All right, then; to what matter do you refer, sir?"

Borgert a.s.sumed the air of a grand inquisitor.