Jena or Sedan? Part 21

Hannah von Gropphusen, however, was smiling once more; though in sooth on her pallid countenance the smile had something of a ghastly look.

"No, no, Frau Klare," she a.s.sured her; "I am better alone."

Once more saying, "Forgive me, won't you?" she departed.

Guntz meanwhile had not been able to quiet the little screamer, and was glad enough when Klare took the child from him.

"What is the matter with her?" he asked.

Klare shrugged her shoulders. "She did not tell me; perhaps she could not. The trouble may be too profound, too terrible."

"You have left her alone?"

"She has gone."

The senior-lieutenant looked out of window. His wife, with the baby in her arms, came and stood beside him.

"See!" he cried. "There she goes! Young, beautiful, rich, fas.h.i.+onable--has she not everything to make her happy?" And shaking his head he added, "Poor, poor woman!"

He vowed to himself not to make depreciatory remarks about the Gropphusen in the future. One thing, however, he felt he must impress on his wife: "Look here, Klare," he cautioned her, "you won't let her hold the boy often, will you?"

With the returning spring Hannah von Gropphusen seemed to awaken from her depression. She had one great pa.s.sion, to which she eagerly resorted as soon as the days became fit for it: this was tennis.

In their small garrison she had no real match; the only person who came anywhere near her was Reimers. He had, of course, been absent from the tennis club for a whole year, and she was all the more delighted at the approach of fine weather.

Frau von Gropphusen and Reimers were always the last to leave the ground, when the b.a.l.l.s were often hardly discernible in the gathering twilight. She soon found that her opponent had, during his absence, come on very much in his play. At Cairo he had played with English people, acknowledged masters of the game; whilst she herself, through playing with indifferent performers, had lost much of her former facility; so now they were well matched.

Feeling this, Reimers played more easily and surely than of old, and consequently had greater leisure to remark what he had formerly been indifferent to--the beauty and grace of his opponent.

Meeting her during the winter in society, when she was as though bowed down by her secret sorrow, and took little part in the gay life around her, he had thought her looking older. But now, in the budding springtime, in the warm suns.h.i.+ne, animated by the game, she seemed to have bathed in the fountain of youth.

Her tennis costume--with which, of course, she wore no corset, but only a narrow belt--was very becoming: a light blouse, a mouse-coloured skirt, close fitting over the hips and not reaching to her ankles, grey silk stockings, and white suede shoes guiltless of heels.

The ladies of the regiment p.r.o.nounced this attire "indecent"; though not one of them would have hesitated to dress similarly, if it had suited her as well as it did Frau von Gropphusen.

Frau Kauerhof (_nee_ von Luben) had indeed once attempted to appear in a like toilet, only her skirt was navy-blue. It was difficult to say wherein the difference consisted,--perhaps her skirt was a little longer than the other's,--but the whole effect was not so successful.

And yet Frau Kauerhof was a pretty creature enough; not exactly slim, but rather of a blonde plumpness, and this was somewhat noticeable in her loose s.h.i.+rt. The glances of the young lieutenants dwelt rather insistently thereon. They were also able to make another interesting discovery. Frau Kauerhof's calves began immediately above her ankles.

They were very fat calves.

Furthermore, Frau Kauerhof's white shoes advertised the fact that her feet were enormous. This the ladies decided with absolute unanimity; and they begged Frau Wegstetten, the highest in rank among the women tennis-players, to give her a hint.

That lady shrank from the commission. It was unpleasant to offend one whose papa was in the Ministry of War; and the situation might therefore have continued, perhaps to the satisfaction of the younger officers, if a fortunate chance had not brought Kauerhof himself to the tennis-ground.

He escorted his wife chivalrously home, and led her, without a word, to the mirror.

Her starched s.h.i.+rt was crumpled, and wet through with perspiration, also her shoes were trodden all out of shape.

"Dear Marion," he said, "I have no objection to your going to b.a.l.l.s as _decolletee_ as ever you please, for you are beautiful ..." and he kissed her neck; "but I do beg you not to exhibit yourself like this again."

Marion coloured and answered: "Yes, you're right, Hubby! Now I know why Froben and Landsberg were staring at me so."

Then she pouted: "But Frau von Gropphusen looked nice dressed like this!"

Her husband answered quietly: "My child, '_quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi._'"

"What? What does that mean?"

Kauerhof translated gallantly, "You are prettier than the Gropphusen, my Marion; but she is thinner than you."

For one must be polite to a wife who is by birth a von Luben, and the daughter of the head of a department in the War Office.

Reimers was not, like his comrades, accustomed to spend the greater part of his leisure in frivolity and flirting. It therefore never occurred to him to conceal his admiration for Frau von Gropphusen.

It often happened that he missed the easiest b.a.l.l.s, fascinated in watching the movements and graceful att.i.tudes of his opponent. Her feet, which even in the unflattering tennis-shoes looked small and dainty, seemed merely to skim over the ground like the wings of a pa.s.sing swallow; and the most daring bounds and leaps, which in others would have been grotesque, she accomplished with the easy agility of a cat.

Reimers asked himself where his eyes had been that all this should hitherto have pa.s.sed him unnoticed. He thought he had never seen anything so exquisite. But Hannah Gropphusen would scold him when he stood gazing thus in nave admiration.

"Herr Reimers," she would cry, "how inattentive you are. You must really look after the b.a.l.l.s better!"

But when she noted the direction of his admiring glances, a delicate flush would overspread her face and mount to her white brow, on which a single premature furrow was curiously noticeable.

"You see, Herr Reimers," she said, one evening in May, "we are the last again."

The sun had just set. A light mist rising from the river was faintly coloured by the last red rays.

Frau von Gropphusen rested her foot on a garden chair and refastened the strap of her shoe. Reimers stood watching, with his racquet in his hand. The stooping posture, though unusual, was so graceful, that he said simply and with conviction, but without the least pa.s.sion or sentimentality in his voice: "Dear lady, how wonderfully beautiful you are!"

Hannah von Gropphusen bent closer over her shoe-lace. She wanted to say something in reply just as simple as his own words had been; but she could find nothing except the ba.n.a.l rejoinder: "Please do not flatter me, Herr Reimers!" and her voice rang a little sharply.

They walked silently side by side towards the town, by the footpath across the meadows, and then along a little bit of the high-road until they came to the first houses.

Reimers was under a spell. He could not speak. He listened to the light rapid footfall that accompanied his longer stride to the rhythm of her silk-lined skirt as she walked; and as the evening breeze from the river wafted a faint perfume towards him, he thought of the lovely slender arm he had seen through the transparent material of her sleeve.

This perfume must come from that fair soft skin. He felt a sudden longing to kiss the beautiful arms.

Frau von Gropphusen avoided looking at her companion. Once only she stole a glance at him with a shy, questioning, dubious expression. It chanced that Reimers was looking at her. Their eyes met, and parted reluctantly.

At the garden gate he kissed her hand in farewell. She started a little and said with an a.s.sumption of gaiety, "Heavens! what can have come to us? On a warm spring evening like this our hands are as cold as ice!"

Reimers hastened homewards, much perturbed in spirit. He was due at the Guntzes' to supper at half-past eight. It had already struck the hour, and he had yet to dress; for the colonel, who would probably be there too, objected to see his officers in mufti, except when shooting or some great sporting occasion was the excuse.

He found everything ready to his hand. Gahler was very satisfactory and most thoughtful, even to setting a bottle of red wine and a carafe of cool spring water on a table. A gla.s.s of water with a dash of wine in it was the best thing to quench one's thirst after playing tennis.

He hastily tossed off a gla.s.sful. It cooled him wonderfully. He poured out a second and drank it more slowly. The water was so cold as to dew the gla.s.s, yet it seemed powerless to quench the fire which consumed his throat, his breast, his head.

He began to dress hurriedly. He had but a few minutes. He was ready but for his coat, when suddenly everything around him seemed to vanish into endless distance. He felt loosed from time and s.p.a.ce.

Mechanically he let himself slip into a chair, covering his face with his hands and closing his eyes.