A Little Garrison Part 24

His wife sat opposite to him, her eyes red and swollen with recent weeping. She did not touch the food before her, but every little while cast a searching and anxious look at her husband.

Throughout the evening harmony was not restored; not even a bottle of Eckel succeeded in bringing gaiety back into this small circle.

Leimann remained in an ugly mood, and whenever that seized him nothing could be done with him. Therefore the parting took place at an early hour, and it was cooler than it had been on similar occasions.

Next morning Borgert had just risen when the second-hand dealer arrived.

The officer saluted him pleasantly and bade him enter. Then he completed his toilet and began negotiations with the Hebrew merchant.

"Will you, please, take the trouble to examine the furniture and all the other equipments in these apartments?" said he. "I mean to sell all of it, just as it stands, since I have been transferred to another garrison. But as to this point--I mean my transference--I must beg to preserve silence for the moment, as it is not yet generally known. How much could you offer me?"

The Jew pensively let his keen eyes wander all about the dwelling, mentally going through a rapid process of addition, subtraction, and silence. Then he proceeded to a more minute examination. He handled every single piece, using his knuckles to ascertain its exact condition; he subjected hangings, rugs, and carpets, as well as the expensive carving of the book-cases and stands, to a similar process.

Then he drew forth a small note-book, greasy and worn, and squinted at each single object as he noted down its price. Finally he turned to Borgert and said, with an obsequious smile:

"Fifteen hundred marks, Herr First Lieutenant, counting it out in gold on this table."

"What! fifteen hundred marks?" and Borgert gave a snort of disapproval. "Why, man, you must be dreaming. I have paid almost ten thousand marks for the things."

"Sorry, Herr First Lieutenant," the Jew said, shrugging his shoulders in deprecation of such high figures. "Old things are not new things, and you won't get any more from anybody."

"That is not enough; that would be giving the things away."

"Well, I will pay you two thousand marks, then, but not a penny more."

Borgert sat down at his desk. He began to see that there was no time to lose, and that the man had him at a great disadvantage. Meanwhile the dealer had his eyes fastened on the officer's face, and wore the same expectant and obsequious smile.

"All right, give me the money; you can have the whole stuff," said Borgert, briefly.

With a smile that now broke over his face until it illuminated every nook and corner of the parchment-like wrinkles, the Jew drew a formal doc.u.ment, a bill of sale, from his breast pocket, stepped up to the desk, and wrote a few words on it. Then he requested Borgert to sign it.

After the dealer had left and Borgert had securely stowed away the purchase price, he felt that the last hindrance to his flight had now been removed, for a certain amount of cash was an indispensable requisite. Then he stepped into his bed-chamber, where he took from the clothes-press an elegant travelling suit. The remainder of his civilian clothes he packed carefully and compactly in the large trunk which Leimann meanwhile had sent down. He placed them next to Frau Leimann's finery in the huge trunk, and on top of them the few other trifles above enumerated. Then he had the trunk taken to the station.

Leimann meanwhile was on his way to Berlin. His wife, however, was still very busy,--burning up packages of letters which she did not wish either her husband or her companion to read, and then put into a handbag a few objects of the kind which only women cherish, and the sole value of which lies in the recollections clinging to them. It is astonishing what resplendent images a woman can conjure before her inner vision when in the possession of such faded flowers, bits of ribbon, and the like.

Lastly came the leave-taking from Bubi, her little two-year-old son, and this she had fancied the day before a much harder achievement than it now turned out. She felt some qualms of conscience as she now, with a light heart, without a tear, left behind her her only child,--left it motherless, exposed to a future probably troubled and cheerless.

It was strange, she thought. From the first moment on she had experienced something like aversion for this child with the broad nose, the large mouth, and the small, shifting eyes. When but a couple of weeks old, the baby had shown a striking resemblance to his father, and the more the estrangement grew between his parents, the more dwindled the small remnant of her mother love. She regarded this tiny human being, ugly and eternally crying, as solely _his_ child. It was in this way that the poor little fellow had spent nearly the whole of his short existence,--either in the kitchen or with the servants, fondled, scolded, and educated by hirelings. The mother herself frequently had not seen her child even for a minute a day.

She had the conviction that her husband had deserved no better treatment at her hands, and because of that she scarcely gave him a thought during these last hours spent at her home. When she boarded, at three o'clock in the afternoon, a first-cla.s.s compartment of the express train for Frankfort, she did so with a spirit light and almost gay.

And the same was true of Borgert. He likewise cast to the winds any slight sentiments of regret at leaving the garrison, and as the train, some hours after Frau Leimann's departure, went shrieking and thundering out of the little station, he felt that he was being carried on to a brighter future. That was enough for him.

When he and Frau Leimann met, late the same evening, in the dining-room of an elegant hotel, all their life seemed to lie before them draped in rosy hue, and no shadows of coming evils troubled them.

After they had ladled their soup in comfort, and with the appearance of a fine game pie, for which this hotel is famous among _gourmets_, the ex-officer motioned to the black-frocked waiter with the immaculate shirt front, and said, curtly:

"A bottle of Mumm, _sec!_"

Thus these two celebrated the event of their flight.

CHAPTER VIII

CHANGES IN THE GARRISON

The flight of First Lieutenant Borgert could not long remain a secret.

When he did not return at the expiration of his short leave, and a telegraphic query brought the answer from his father that he had not seen him, the a.s.sumption began to take shape that he had tried to escape the consequences of his misdoings by deserting.

It is true that no one aside from Leimann had known precisely his bad financial status. But when the Jewish dealer came to claim the furniture sold him, and at the same time the bailiff arrived with the intention of seizing the very same objects on the strength of a new process of attachment begun in court, the catastrophe could no longer be hidden from the world. Everybody then began to see, detail after detail, the whole system of fraud erected by Borgert, with the pa.s.sive connivance of his friend Leimann.

The court ordered that the entire property of the deserter be placed in legal custody. A term was fixed when the horde of creditors whom he had so shamefully deceived were to be adjudged _pro-rata_ shares of the whole. Advertis.e.m.e.nts were inserted in the papers, calling upon all those having claims against the estate of the defaulter to come forward. Hundreds of bills came by mail from all the cities and towns, and even from the villages surrounding the little garrison, and the amounts in their totality figured up to a considerable sum.

Borgert's father, too,--a worthy old gentleman, broken-hearted at the downfall of his only son,--had to appear in court and depose as to his son's past and present misdoings, as far as he was aware of them. Even that portion of the estate which, according to the father's intentions, was to fall to his son's share at his father's death, was sequestrated by a mandate of the court and added to the a.s.sets left behind by Borgert. In addition, the state's attorney issued a "_Steckbrief_"[20] against the ex-officer, in which he was charged with a whole list of offences.

[20] "Steckbrief," a term in German law meaning a circular demand on all domestic or foreign authorities to arrest and hold in custody for extradition an escaped criminal.--TR.

The dwelling itself had the court seals attached to it, and even the poor horses in the stable had fastened to their manes small, leaden seals tied on with string, to denote that the state had taken possession of them.

It stands to reason that all these interesting events travelled through the little town on the wings of gossip, and no village or city within a radius of ten miles failed to regard the matter as a delicious bit of local scandal. The small penny sheets printed in a number of these places were in clover. Nothing like such a genuine sensation had come to their hands for some time.

Colonel von Kronau, the pompous and infallible, was very much cast down. There were some smart gentlemen in the regiment who now claimed to have suspected the facts for a long time, and to have seen such a catastrophe approaching. But there are always such people, and as a matter-of-fact neither these wiseacres nor their less astute comrades had ever expected Borgert to turn out badly. For his case, although somewhat worse, was substantially the epitome of their own cases, and it is a truism that we never see ourselves as others see us.

The colonel remarked to Captain Konig, shaking his head with a melancholy smile, that this new turn of affairs was the "last nail in his coffin," and henceforth he was seen going about with a face gloomy and expectant of the worst. For gradually he came to the conclusion that to keep in good order a garrison and its corps of officers, some other methods must be employed than those to which he had clung, at the advice of Frau Stark, for years. It dawned on him that his type of discipline had wrought a train of evils which had grown avalanche-like, and which now at last was likely to bury his official head under a load of opprobrium.

The fact that Frau Leimann had followed the First Lieutenant became known a few days later. This was when her husband returned from Berlin and found a letter from her, in which she implored his forgiveness, and a.s.sured him she had acted under an impulse too strong to resist.

Of their unhappy married life she said nothing.

Thus Leimann was punished doubly. He had been made ridiculous before the world, and was laughed at behind his back by all those who belonged to his extensive circle of acquaintances. And Borgert's flight had precipitated Leimann's own financial downfall. His creditors and those of Borgert obtained orders in court which forced him to sell the larger part of his small private fortune, consisting of sound investments, to satisfy their claims. A goodly proportion of his enforced payments was for those sums guaranteed by him in Borgert's behalf. When all his affairs had been unravelled, he had but a very small sum remaining to him.

Meanwhile no trace of Frau Leimann and of her companion was found, although detectives of various countries were several times on their tracks. n.o.body knew where they had found a refuge.

A fortnight after his desertion poor Rose was discovered and arrested.

He had been seized at the Belgian frontier. A court-martial was quickly summoned, and during the trial it became apparent that the motive which alone had driven him to desertion had been the brutal maltreatment to which his master, Borgert, had subjected him. The court regarded that, however, as a mitigating circ.u.mstance of such slight value that it reduced the measure of the punishment meted out to him in only a small degree. The poor fellow was universally commiserated by high and low, and even among the officers a voice was raised now and then in exculpation. Many of their subordinates expressed privately the opinion that a poor soldier, even if only the son of an humble peasant, like Rose, ought to have some rights, and that he ought to be treated humanely by his superiors. But these were but private opinions, stated in a barely audible voice, and in the seclusion of the men's own quarters. As such, naturally, they had not the slightest value in changing the fortunes of poor Rose, who was sentenced to undergo a term of many years of hard labor in a military penitentiary.

At the divorce trial, which took place at Leimann's instance, a great many unpalatable facts were brought to light.

The two servant-maids in his house, as well as the orderly, gave testimony of such a character that the few remaining hairs on Leimann's pear-shaped skull rose in affright. He could not understand how he had been so blind as not to have perceived the treachery of his friend and the faithlessness of his wife. A decree of divorce was p.r.o.nounced by the court, and Leimann shortly after handed in his resignation. He was forced to that step by several considerations. On the one hand he was compelled to turn to a more profitable calling than that of serving his country in the army, since he had now but very slender means at his command; on the other hand, all the events in which he had been a conspicuous figure had damaged his reputation so greatly as to make his further stay in the corps of officers almost impossible.

He accepted a position for which he was eminently qualified by natural taste and long experience,--that of drummer for a wholesale wine firm.

His little boy he intrusted to the care of some humble relatives, and his pension as First Lieutenant was just sufficient to pay for the little fellow's board.