A Little Garrison Part 13

"Oh, I see, it is you, old fellow. And what do you want of me?"

"This is what I want!" shouted Schmitz, and with terrific force his cane came down on Roth's head. A second blow followed, almost as hard, which hit him on the cheek, so that the blood rushed out of the wound.

The "Vice," taken unawares, made no motion to defend himself while Schmitz rained a shower of strokes on his body. Then at last Roth, wide awake now, felt for his sabre, partly drawing it from its scabbard; but Schmitz gave him no chance to use it. Like a famished wolf he seized his enemy by the throat, throttling him, and, dropping his cane, with his clenched fist he dealt him several fearful blows on forehead and mouth, winding up with a tattoo that sounded like the beating of a drum on the man's skull. A violent push made Roth stumble and fall to his knees.

"So, now, you miserable cur, I have paid my debt to you!" and saying which, he kicked his fallen foe. Then he turned on his heels and said, as a parting shot:

"Now go and report me again, you swine; but if you do I shall have another reckoning with you, and tell about some of your thieving!"

The former "foddermaster" felt that he had meted out justice, and he was fully prepared to take the consequences, no matter what they might be. Revenge is a sweet morsel.

Roth had to spend several weeks in the hospital, until he had recovered from his injuries. It was the hardest drubbing he had ever received in his life. Vanity forbade him to give a true version of the a.s.sault. He reported that he had been attacked by several drunken laborers, and claimed to have used his sabre with effect on one of them; but n.o.body believed his tale, for no wounded laborer was heard of in the little town, and physicians there and in the vicinity were equally ignorant of such a case. It was, therefore, generally a.s.sumed that Roth had met with his deserts at the hands of the ex-sergeant, and n.o.body pitied him.

CHAPTER V

OFFICERS AT A MASQUERADE

During the last days of January the Casino was in an uproar. A number of mechanics, painters, and florists were busy transforming the rooms and corridors, even the veranda, with its adjoining conservatory, into a suite of daintily decorated festal halls. Numerous booths and tents were being erected, and all other preparations were made worthily to receive Prince Carnival, whose coming was timed for the first week in February.

Hundreds of potted plants and orange and laurel trees from the conservatory gave a gay and summer-like appearance to the ballroom.

Placards painted and inscribed in suitable manner hung from the walls.

In the booths and tents the usual array of eatables and "wet goods" of every description could be seen, to be sold by pretty womenfolk. One stage had been fitted up for variety performances, while on another a circus was to be seen, in which a number of private soldiers, disguised as wild beasts, were to play leading parts under the eyes and whip of the trainer--none other than Captain Kahle. These men had been drilled for the purpose throughout the whole month.

There was also a stretch of natural greensward, laid down by the Casino gardener. This was to produce the illusion of a small park.

Benches placed on it invited the guests to rest and to enjoy the music of a band upon a suitable stand, while Pilsen beer was to be handed to the audience by waiters. In an adjoining room mock marriages were to be performed, the fee to the officiating justice of the peace to consist in the purchase of a bottle of champagne. And, to complete the scene, arrangements had also been made to obtain a quick decree of divorce (by the same official) for all those couples who deemed themselves mismated after a short experience of an hour or so.

The large dining-room represented picnic grounds. On a platform wreathed in green there was room for an orchestra, and the trumpeters of the regiment had been ransacking the whole town for weeks in order to find ragged costumes and discarded garments of every kind, clad in which they were to represent village musicians.

Even photographers were there, to ply their trade in several tents, the outside of which showed a collection of ludicrous portraits and prints of various kinds. The purpose of this stratagem was, of course, to attract customers.

Naturally all these festivities, planned for weeks, formed the main topic of conversation with the members of the club, and the whole garrison was for the time being turned topsy-turvy. Every one intended to appear in as original and amusing a guise as possible, and there was much mutual consulting and guessing as to which particular role was to be a.s.sumed by each person.

Thus the opening night of the fete drew near. During the afternoon a crowd of hairdressers moved into the Casino, to a.s.sist members of the club in getting themselves up properly. The regimental tailor, with his aides, went from one officer's house to another, making alterations or needed repairs on the uniforms and costumes to be donned.

At seven in the evening the orderlies, in the black garments of waiters, were expecting the guests and members, and half an hour later these began to arrive in crowds.

It was a multi-colored, vivid picture, as all these persons, many of them good-looking and picturesquely attired, in all sorts of disguises, began to move in the brilliantly lighted halls, while the several bands, placed at coigns of vantage, struck up lively and inspiring airs. Dancing began at once, and champagne flowed in streams. At a garden table under an orange tree one could see a powerfully limbed peasant, his hawthorn stick between his knees, devouring a plateful of caviare, while his neighbor, a circus clown, was dissecting a lobster.

The most ludicrous figure, however, was Colonel von Kronau in his Polish farmer's costume, wearing a fur cap on his head, and a tippet around his neck. If he had appeared in this disguise at the hog market in a Pomeranian town, every purchaser would have supposed him to be the "genuine article," namely, a breeder of porkers. And it was quite evident that he did not have to take much pains correctly to imitate the manners and gestures of the person he represented.

The champagne was paid for out of a common fund specially raised by all the members of the Casino. It was, therefore, not astonishing that the Herr Colonel was, after the lapse of one brief hour, deep in his cups.

His adjutant had not done well to disguise himself as a Polish Jew, for in that way he looked indeed too much his part.

Frau Konig was charming as a chambermaid, and her blue eyes radiated the pleasure she felt. As a young gamekeeper, Lieutenant Bleibtreu paid a.s.siduous court to the aforementioned chambermaid. He had already proposed to her to visit the "marriage booth" in the adjoining room, and the justice of the peace was getting ready his paraphernalia. Only late at night, when the captain, her every-day husband, carried her home, did the pretty maid relinquish her newer claims upon the gamekeeper.

Frau Leimann presented herself as a peasant girl from the "Vierlande,"--a district near Hamburg,--and her costume looked indeed very picturesque, and became her well. Borgert noticed this fact with great pleasure, and the dainty figure and small nimble feet made a strong impression on his susceptible heart.

Frau Kahle, as a flower girl, was flirting desperately with the younger men. She also played her part very well, for the champagne in which she had liberally indulged began to exert its effects.

Lieutenant Kolberg, as a modish dandy, had already purchased nearly her entire supply of flowers, and when, soon after, the remnant had gone, he claimed and obtained her as his partner for the dance.

Frau Captain Stark alone did not seem to belong in this _milieu_. The choice of a costume, to begin with, had occasioned her deep and anxious thought. She felt that to follow her inclinations and appear at the masquerade in either the guise of a ballet dancer or of a flower girl would too markedly invite criticism. Her fifty years and her towering shape would really have made her too conspicuous in such parts. On the other hand, to show herself as a peddler woman or fishwife would have, so she feared, made her look "too natural."

Having, therefore, discarded these notions, her fancy roved in the realms of the beautiful and fantastic, until it settled down upon a costume which, bespangled and with its garland of rushes, she declared to be that of a "mermaid of middle age." n.o.body was in a condition to contradict her, inasmuch as n.o.body recollected ever having seen a "middle-aged" mermaid before. She floated, as a matter of fact, in a cloud of pink and sea-green laces. The capacious bosom this cloud concealed from view rolled and heaved quite realistically, thus producing the effect of ocean waves, and her enormous arms were awe-inspiring enough to keep away all evening those in the crowd who had not got their sea-legs,--and that meant practically all the younger officers. At all other times her most dutiful slaves, these young men seemed to have conspired to leave the dreaded chief of the regiment's nominal chief severely alone. Of course she felt this as an unpardonable offence, and this all the more as the colonel at an early hour was in an irresponsible condition, and hence listened to her violent plaint with stolid equanimity.

There was a male trio, too, that claimed some attention. They represented to the life merry, devil-may-care vagabonds, and so well did they act their parts that one would have supposed they had just been picked up on the miry highway outside. They deemed it, of course, strictly within their privileges to get drunk with all due speed,--an endeavor in which they admirably succeeded. From that hour on they became an unmitigated nuisance, not even atoned for by some humor or merry pranks. After midnight they were always seen in a bunch, steadying each other as they lurched along.

Lieutenant von Meckelburg, during the earlier part of the evening, stuck resolutely and almost silently to his a.s.signed duty, it being that of an organ-grinder. He had picked up somewhere a villainous specimen of this instrument of torture, and with it had retired into a corner, wearing the ragged and faded clothes of an impecunious veteran of the wars, with his visorless, crumpled cap pulled over his eyes, and with a face which for unadulterated melancholy could not be duplicated. Hardly any one took notice of him, and his physiognomy grew sadder and sadder. At last, however, he left his organ in its corner, and visited the various bars where champagne could be had.

With each generous libation his features cleared, and finally he got himself into a decidedly hilarious condition, and not only moved with his organ into the centre of the greensward, where he placed it on one of the benches, but accompanied its shrill and squeaking notes with a mellow ba.s.so of his own.

The bands meanwhile played their best and merriest, and as several casks of beer and some dozen bottles of cheap spirits had been provided for them, the members, both trumpeters of the regiment and civilian musicians hired for the night, devoted no inconsiderable portion of the intervals between their playing to frequent and prolonged visits to that small side-room where these drinkables had been placed ready for use. After a while they dispensed even with such formalities. They rolled the remaining casks up the steps of their podium, and shortly the faucet could be espied from among the greenery, and the musicians hovering about it. As a matter of course, their playing soon showed the effects of all this tippling. One man particularly, one of the flageolets, became quite unmanageable,--or rather the instrument on which he was performing,--so that it usually was the s.p.a.ce of a second or two ahead of the others. This weird music only ended with the removal of flageolet and man from the scene.

At eleven began the festal performance on the small stage constructed for the purpose.

One of the lieutenants led off with two topical songs rather too outspoken in the lessons they tried to convey. He was disguised as a prima ballerina for the purpose, and as a windup he danced, with great skill and abandon, a can-can. The ladies t.i.ttered and the men guffawed. After more of the same kind there was enacted a parody on Shakespeare's "Hamlet." The gentleman responsible for this version had employed radical means to clear the stage of all the _dramatis personae_, at the end. Murder, suicide, poison, dagger, lightning even decimated their ranks, and when the curtain dropped there was not a soul of them left alive. The crowning effect of this parody was the appearance of the prompter himself before the footlights. In a few tear-choked words he informed the audience that after seeing the actors all die, and nothing but corpses around him, he could and would not survive, and so he made an end of himself, too, using a rope for the purpose.

The humor of the whole audience after that grew rapidly boisterous, and by midnight the tone of this carnival fete given by officers and their ladies could scarcely be distinguished from that rampant at a village kermess. If anything, it was a trifle more unconventional.

Lieutenant Kolberg had in the meantime found a cosy arbor into which to retire with Frau Captain Kahle, and more effectually to exclude intruders had placed a tall screen before the entrance.

A little "flirtation," more or less serious, was something he could not do without, and since the garrison with its staid citizens and their staider wives and daughters did not furnish the material required for him, he had made up his mind to lay violent siege to the heart of the lady. He knew that it was a susceptible one, and from Pommer he had heard, in hours of bibulous intercourse, that siege in her case meant speedy surrender. He had already progressed with her beyond mere preliminary skirmishes, and in their conversations with n.o.body near they had begun to use the intimate "thou," and to call each other by their given names.

For his purpose, then, no better time could have been found than this very festivity, with all the allurements which champagne, music, the dance, and the hurly-burly of a huge crowd afforded. Shielded against indiscreet spies by the interlacing vines creeping all over this arbor, his love-making had proceeded at such a rapid pace that within an hour the little woman did not thrust her gallant wooer aside when he dared imprint a kiss on her swelling lips.

In another arbor, more in proximity to the champagne bar, First Lieutenant Leimann sat in lonely misery and shed rivulets of tears.

His intoxication, in its more advanced stage, always took that form known technically as "howling desolation." On this occasion it had seized him promptly after the ninth gla.s.sful.

His condition was in ludicrous contrast with the magnificence and dash of his attire, for he was dressed, regardless of expense, as a Hungarian magnate of the first water, and he rejected with sombre scorn all attempts made by friends to commiserate him. His nearer acquaintances knew for a certainty that he would thus remain seated on top of an empty wine cask until the very close of the ball. For whenever the black devils of drink cast their spell over him in this fashion it required from four to six hours to emerge into a saner and somewhat soberer frame of mind. Just now his sobs shook his whole bony body. The divers orderlies who pa.s.sed him held their sides with laughter, but he heeded them not.

His wife found the situation very annoying, and she therefore resolved to get one of her sudden attacks of headache. She retired, with signs of disgust on her pretty face, to another corner, and when Borgert joined her soon afterward, she requested him in mellifluous tones to escort her home.

As they reached the door of the house in which she with her husband occupied the upper part, while Borgert had his smaller lodgings on the ground floor, she sighed with some satisfaction and said in a low voice:

"The air has done me good; I feel much better now."

"Then may I take you back to the Casino?" was Borgert's answer, and the tone of his voice was full of disappointment.

"No, no, we will go up and have a cup of coffee; that will do us good, and I really do not feel like returning to that crowd of drunken people; it is simply disgusting!"

"Just as it pleases you, my most gracious lady!"

With that he inserted the key into the lock, opened the door, and both of them silently scaled the rather steep stairs, dark as Erebus.

When they had reached her cosy parlor, Borgert brought the lamp and lit it. He knew exactly the spot where he would find it in the dark, for his acquaintance with every nook of the apartments had come in the course of time with their mutual intimacy. Then he took up a newspaper and sat down in the sofa corner.

Frau Leimann had disappeared in the adjoining room; but it took her only a very few minutes to return, bearing in her hands the Vienna coffee machine, and presenting, now that she had resumed a comfortable and coquettish kimono in lieu of her masquerade costume, a most seductive picture.