The little clique was much censured by the regiment. Such familiar intercourse, it was thought, undermined the authority of the colonel. Nevertheless, people were eager for the goodwill of Frau Güntz.
Thus it came about that Güntz had the satisfaction of seeing his wife one of the most popular ladies of the regiment, and was able to tease her with the new discovery that she was "exclusive, not to say stuck up and proud."
In reality Kläre had only become intimate with two of the ladies. After Marie von Falkenhein she foregathered chiefly with Hannah von Gropphusen.
The latter was a real puzzle to her new friends. She was always alternating in her moods from one extreme to the other. Sometimes she would not appear for weeks at a time; then she would come down day after day, each time seeming unable to tear herself away. Now she would be full of nervous, overwrought vivacity, and again would sit perfectly silent, staring gloomily before her.
Güntz fled from her presence; he said she made him feel creepy. Once he whispered mysteriously in his wife's ear: "Do you know, I believe she and Gropphusen have committed a murder between them: and this terrible bond holds them together, although they fight like cat and dog."
But Kläre strongly objected to such jokes. "How can you tell what that poor woman may have to bear? There may have been a murder in her history; but it was done by Gropphusen, and on her soul. Joke about something else, Fatty."
The happy young wife entertained the warmest sympathy for the other unhappy one, who always had the look of being pursued by some terrible evil. More than once a sisterly feeling impelled her, not from curiosity, but from genuine sympathy, to put a question to Hannah about her sorrow; but she read in the sombre, hopeless eyes of the sufferer that the burden must be borne alone; so she left Frau von Gropphusen in peace. She listened patiently when the nervous woman talked ceaselessly about a thousand different things, in short, jerky sentences as if to drown some inner voice; neither would Kläre interrupt with a single question the heavy silence in which, at other times, Hannah would sit for hours, watching her as she busied herself with her little housewifely tidyings and mendings. It was only in watching this peaceful activity that Frau von Gropphusen recovered her equanimity. Her face would then lose its unnatural fixity of expression, and she would draw a deep breath, as though eased of a heavy burden.
"It is so peaceful here with you, Frau Kläre," she said sometimes. "It does one good."
Güntz shook his head over her weird conduct. One thing gratified him concerning her, however: it was that she admired his little son unreservedly, and could be given no greater treat than to be allowed to hold the boy on her lap. She would sit as though worshipping the child, who, indeed, was no angel, only a quite ordinary, fat, chubby infant. At such times her small finely-chiselled features would light up with a glorious beauty; so that Güntz one day whispered to his wife, "Do you know what the Gropphusen needs? A child!"
And in his open-hearted way he once said jokingly to Hannah: "Wouldn't you like a beautiful boy like that for yourself, dear lady?"