Wiegandt had fully intended to dance the next dance with Frau Heimert; but he dutifully abandoned the idea, and conducted Frieda into a secluded little plantation, where other couples wandered lovingly entwined like themselves.
They chatted about the future, which now lay plain before them. Wiegandt had not again signed on, and by the following autumn he would have a good position in the town-police, with thirteen hundred marks a year, free quarters, and a hundred and twenty marks allowance for clothes. The burgo-master of the little town, being a senior-lieutenant of the reserve, had been present at the performance of some exercises by the sixth battery, and had personally chosen out his man. Wegstetten was furious at losing his best non-commissioned officer, and pressed Wiegandt to stick to the flag; but the sergeant was not to be prevailed upon, for he was impatient now to quit the service. With such a noble competency in view, therefore, he might well venture on marriage.
"All right, even when the children come," he whispered to his sweetheart; and Frieda nodded sagaciously, whispering back: "They'll come, sure enough!"
Albina Heimert never noticed that such a humble and inconspicuous little person gave her the go-by. As the wife of the deputy sergeant-major, she felt herself at last on firm solid ground. She carried her head high in the barrack-yard, and ordered her house with a fine matronly dignity.
She met the admiring glances of her neighbours, even if only prompted by some matter of domestic economy, with an indescribable little smile. No word might be spoken, but it would be quite evident that she was gratified by the admiration. It was Venus triumphing over Mars.
The person who was least affected by the beautiful Frau Heimert's charms was, curiously enough, Sergeant Heppner. Once, when Albina chanced to meet him in the corridor, she said: "When I first met you, Herr Heppner--you remember that day at Grundmann's--you were perfectly different--ever so much smarter and livelier! Really, I almost think you must be ageing, Herr Heppner!" And she burst into a shrill, affected laugh, which rang rather unpleasantly in his ears.
As Heppner sat in his armchair by the stove he contrasted his pretty, healthy, buxom Ida with the woman next door, and would be seized with a veritable horror of the all-pervasive odour of the scent she used.
He would make a disdainful grimace when Albina, in a huge hat, rustled past him, and would greet her carelessly, almost discourteously.
But with the spring the old spirit of restlessness possessed the sergeant-major.
Ida was expecting her confinement in May, and had no thoughts but for the child. Heppner began to marvel at himself for having been so domestic all the winter. Surely his limbs must have been benumbed and this brain addled! He really must rouse himself now and get a few new ideas into his head. So he easily slipped back into his old wild ways of life, and could less and less understand how he had come to live otherwise during so many months.