“Thanks, many thanks, for your sympathy and aid in this sorry business,” the junior mumbled, and surreptitiously wiped a briny drop out of the corner of his eye.
Borgert left, very much satisfied with himself. He had now among the younger officers of the regiment another one who would henceforth swear by him. He noisily clanked down the shaky wooden stairs of the humble house wherein Pommer occupied narrow quarters. And Frau Kahle, too, was now in his power, he gleefully reflected. Besides all that, there was something positively piquant about the little adventure,—something which would frequently hereafter furnish him with pleasant innuendoes and hints, understood only by those immediately concerned, and which would supply him, Borgert, with an endless fund of amusement. He intensely enjoyed this propitious ending to his machinations.
Humming a tune, and feeling in the best of spirits, he went home, gave his servant sabre, cloak, and helmet, and mounted the stairs leading up to Frau Leimann’s apartments.
She was not alone. The adjutant was present. Müller, in fact, had shirked his duties to-day, the colonel being off on a hunting trip in the adjacent extensive forest, having been invited thereto by the royal head forester commanding that district. Frau Leimann greeted Borgert warmly, and while the latter and the adjutant stepped to the window, looking at the wife of Captain König and Lieutenant Bleibtreu, who were riding past the house on horseback, Borgert seized the opportunity and deftly appropriated the pretty woman’s hands, which he kissed passionately.
Then he told them of his interview with Pommer,—told it in such droll terms and with such an abundance of mimicry, that his two hearers could not help laughing immoderately. The picture of ungainly, rough Pommer being in the sentimental stage and a prey to a lacerated conscience was too exquisitely ludicrous.
Meanwhile Pommer sat at his desk, laboriously inditing a letter to his mother, to whom he opened his whole heart, as in duty bound. Several of the strongest passages in his letter were panegyrics on his new-won friend, Borgert, whom he limned in colors so brilliant that the original would indeed have had great trouble in recognizing himself in the portrait.
The lieutenant had by this time calmed down a good deal, and the blurred images of the past evening resolved themselves, one after another, into sane recollections. He now distinctly recalled the part in the ugly intrigue played by the woman; how she had skilfully led him on to make advances; how she had smiled encouragingly at his terms of endearment; how she had “fished” for dubious compliments, and how she had, above all, so alluringly made the most intimate confidences to him as to her marital troubles and as to her status of a femme incomprise. Really, he thought after quiet reflection, he himself was not so much to blame in this affair, disgraceful as it doubtless was when all was said and done. For the woman herself, a change of feeling took place simultaneously. The tender pity he had felt for her in his maudlin condition made room for something akin to contempt and dislike. She certainly could not be a pure woman, a faithful wife and mother, he thought, thus to invite, almost provoke, the passionate regard of a man much younger and less experienced than herself,—a man, too, whom she had known but slightly and conventionally hitherto. In his inmost consciousness he had almost absolved himself from guilt in the matter. And as to writing to her husband, or confronting him with the raw tale of her and his indiscretion, as Borgert had suggested, why, the more he thought of it, the less advisable a step it seemed to him, from every point of view. However, a promise was a promise, and he would keep it.
He donned his full regimentals, and issued forth at the right time for a visit of the kind.
He did not find Kahle himself in, he being still away at squadron drill. But his wife flew to meet him as soon as the parlor door had closed behind the announcing servant, and her reception was indeed such an affectionate and even enthusiastic one that the words of penitence perforce died on his lips. She drew him toward her on the low lounge, and exuberantly babbled on about the comfort, the delight his confidence had brought her. There was not the slightest word said by her to show that she had disapproved his approaches now that the glamour of the moment, the enervating effects of close communion in the warm air of a spring night, were gone. Coquettishly she plied all her wiles to captivate poor Pommer anew. His pulses hammered, his senses were aflame; but he remained master of himself, and sternly he resolved to sever these equivocal relations with a woman whom he could no longer respect. The weak, purblind man had been steeled against further temptation by seeing a few hours ago the abyss yawning at his feet, in which an illicit love had threatened to engulf him forever. The image of his mother, noble type of womanhood, rose before his mind, and he remained strong.
Frau Kahle, on her part, at last becoming convinced that all her arts were thrown away on this iceberg, suddenly changed her tactics, and dismissed her visitor in somewhat abrupt fashion. She swept from the room, leaving him to find his way out. Only the intoxicating perfume which she used by preference lingered a moment longer in the close air of the room as the lieutenant sought his way out; but despite a curious feeling of defeat which he could not help instinctively feeling, there was subdued exultation in his heart. His brow was serene as, at the next crossing of the street, he encountered Borgert, who hailed him: