All this would cease when he changed his military coat or the handsome dark uniform of a railway-official; all this discomfort would come to an end; above all, this noise: the shouts and curses with which recalcitrant recruits had to be knocked into shape, the trampling of nailed boots on the stone stairs, the bellowing of commands on the parade-ground, and--last, but not least--the hideous racket next door.
The sergeant-major had almost finished his time of service. A post awaited him as assistant at a small railway-station in the neighbourhood; and once when Schumann was away at the practice-camp, she had not been able to resist the temptation to see the place for herself. It was on a branch-line, which wound up among the hills. The station was a little distance from the village in a green plantation. She yearned after the peaceful spot.
And now Schumann had again begun to speak of remaining on in the army!
His wife let him talk, listening patiently. She sat quietly opposite to him, giving him his supper as usual, as busy and attentive as though he were only speaking on indifferent topics. But when he had finished she spoke out, saying that, as a rule, she was not the woman to meddle in her husband's affairs, but that this was a matter which concerned herself as well. His notion that to quit the service now would make him feel like a deserter and a scoundrel seemed to her utter unpractical nonsense. He would be sacrificing a couple of years to a mere fancy.
Finally she produced her trump-card. She knew that the rural quiet of the little station had wound itself round her husband's heart during the week of trial he had already passed there. So she confessed her own secret journey.
And she conquered.
Each could describe as well as the other the charms of the unassuming little retreat. What one omitted the other supplied. Thus the picture in the sergeant-major's mind was revived afresh, and in such vivid colours that it regained its old power over him, dissipating the cloud of self-reproachful doubt. He saw before him a calm bright future in the narrow valley between wooded heights, and it came over him suddenly that there in the stillness, where one could live in touch with nature, he would for the first time begin really to live.
CHAPTER III
"I vow to thee my duty,
My heart and my hand,
O land of love and beauty,
My German fatherland!"