Chapter Thirty-Three

What's italicized is what I'm unsure about.

    Dear Hans!  I am using the opportunity of a car that is going through here to send a heartfelt greeting to you and Else.  Do not be surprised at the scribbled handwriting; I am a little wounded in the arm and must lie in bed for a few days.  That is unacceptable, insofar as it keeps me away from the battleground on which every man, otherwise insignificant, is now indispensable.

    But the Reckensteiner has fallen.  The splinter of an exploding grenade killed him near the battle-shrouded Malkaynen train station, whose commander he was, as you probably know.  A beautiful death!  The rescue and recovery of a great number of wounded was his work; he died faithfully keeping watch over their endangered carriage.  He is therefore not to be lamented.  But Edith loses much with him; father and daughter had, especially after the mother's going away, tenderly stuck close to each other.  Now she really has no one more and was always concerned about the old man.  I hoped to find her here in Pronitten, where I have been brought to a quick recovery.  Miss Hanna Teichgräber, my loyal nurse, tells me however that after a short period of work here, she was called to a Rodenburg hospital that should be under your and Else's management.  So the heavy duty falls to you to inform her gently of the death of the old man, and I am writing to you as quickly as possible so that she hears about it from no other.  Tell her that he has fallen as a hero.

    If I should yet relate something of myself, such is it:  it's going well for me, actually too well for a soldier in such a war.  But the idylls and quiet of a parsonage in peacetime are so dear to me, too, and I am so well lookt after here,

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in the war, every soldier burns against the enemy.  I hope in a short time to be able to be in the field again and with my troops and by this prospect rein in my impatience.  Yester-day and the day before yester-day, it was hot here.  We have fought bravely.  But it has also cost very heavy casualties.  Be well!

    Your Fritz."

    Hans set the letter, which he had just read aloud to Else, before himself on the desk.  It was already late in the evening; they had just come out of the hospital, and Else had taken care of her refugees.

    "It will be hard on Edith," she said.

    "Wonderful," he replied, "I was never well-disposed towards the old man, nor he to me.  But now, after this death, I see him in a different light, like everything, actually.  He really was quite a guy!  To go into the war at such an age and to die like that... tremendous!"

    He fought against the movement that wanted to overcome him.  He was now easily moved.  Previously, it had never been like him.  "I will have Edith called over," he said.

    "Don't you want to wait until to-morrow?  She has the night watch to-day.  In the afternoon, when she has had a good night's sleep, you can tell her about it; she'll still find out about it early enough."

    He was undecided for a moment.  "No," he said then, "it's not right to delay it until to-morrow; she must hear it immediately.  It was for this purpose that Fritz has written so quickly.  Of him you say nothing at all."

    "In this time, one concern always drives out the others; the greatest comes first.  His injury appears to be only of a light nature, thanks be to God."

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    "But all that he must have seen and experienced in such a short time!"

    The telephone, which stood on Hans' work table, rang.

    The mayor.  A larger carriage of wounded would just be arriving with the railway.  The city hospital would take a few, but now there would be no more free beds.  Would a few admissions in the parish hall still be possible?  His wife had also volunteered the lodge.

    Certainly, a few could still be accommodated.

    How many at most?

    Six, perhaps even seven.

    Good.  They would come immediately by ambulance; it went to the lodge first and from there to the parish hall.  There would probably be four.

    Would there be anything else?

    Yes, the refugees were rapidly increasing.  A few new cities would be evacuated; one must prepare oneself for a larger influx.  He would hold a conference to-morrow at the town hall, to which he had invited a number of men. It seemed desirable to him that Hans would also take part in it.

    At what time?

    One o'clock in the morning.

    Good, he would arrive.

    "Again new cities evacuated!" said Hans as he put down the receiver.  "The misery marches on.  Our poor country!"

    "It must take it upon itself.  It is like one of the severely wounded warriors; it sacrifices itself so that the whole will be saved."

    "Yes - it sacrifices itself."

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    He lookt before himself for a long time.  An endless sadness was on his face.  She walkt over to him and laid her hand on his shoulder.

    "You must tear yourself away from your melancholy thoughts, Hans," she said with a warm, urging voice, "one must not think about all this so deeply."

    "Yes," he replied, "you are right:  one must not brood over all that; then one does not endure it.  We must give even the last and the best, some their body, others their home.  The work is our only escape.  Come, we must go over; the ambulance can be there right away."

    Again the telephone rang.  Lodge for the Golden Key:  Mrs. Lisa Stoltzmann.  Of the four wounded announced, only three would come; one had just died upon arrival.  A Russian.  A captain even, a wonderful guy.  He had sat upright on his mattress and stared at them with large, glazed eyes, as if he wanted to devour them even in death.  He hadn't said a word when they had spoken to him, only gathered the thick coat tightly to himself with his hand, which - by the way - was very delicate and slender; so had he collapsed.  Well, it wouldn't come further into consideration; he was indeed only a Russian.

    How then did it go otherwise?  The time would probably be difficult, but yet also great and uplifting.

    "It is undoubtedly the carriage that the Reckensteiner led," said Hans, as he went over to the hospital with Else, "we must keep Edith at a distance so that she does not find out about it from a hasty man."

    The wagon drove straight up; the stretchers were lifted out; the lightly wounded

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went propped up on the arm of the attendants or nurses; Doctor Moll was on hand; the patients were laid in bed; the bandages were inspected and in some cases replaced; everything was proceeding quickly and surely; everyone was already settled in to work.

    "Perhaps you would come to my room for a moment, Miss von Barrnhoff," Hans askt Edith after the most important work had been done.

    "I have the nightwatch to-day."

    "I would like to speak to you."

    "My father has fallen."

    Fixed and calm, her eye lingered on his face, a quiet trembling in her voice, otherwise no agitation, only a certainty that did not let itself be shaken.

    "You need not say anything to me; it would be pointless."

    "Who told it to you?"

    "No one.  I've known it the whole day.  He had the train station in Malkaynen; the battle was there."

    "He has accomplished a great thing.  The whole carriage that arrived to-day with the train is his work.  He led his locomotive through the enemy fire."

    She turned her head.

    "Fritz was also on his train."

    She said nothing.

    "He lies wounded in Pronitten."

    "I knew that he would be at his post.  He has died as he has lived."

    He said nothing in reply.  Her pain was sacred for him; an empty world would have been desecration.

    "Your brother wrote to you about it?  I would like to read the letter."

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    "I have it over in my room.  Come over to us now; my sister will also be there soon.  A substitution for you at night has already been provided."

    "I am staying here.  Perhaps you will be so good to send the letter over to me."

    He attempted an objection.

    "I thank you.  I find myself most at ease when I am doing my duty."

    In this moment, he had to be able to do something for her in her pain, which she took upon herself so grandly and bravely, he who knew what it was about, when he was able to destroy this strangeness that still piled up between them!  Yet nothing remained for him but silence.

    But to Else he expressed himself.  "This war also makes women into heroes; one sees it in you both."

    "For myself, I must refuse this designation.  But in Edith, there's been something heroic all along.  Now, the fruits of upbringing and of education are showing themselves, above all of self-education.  What is in a person and what he has trained himself to, that is what suffering makes evident."

    In the large hall of the hospital, Edith sat and kept the nightwatch.  The green-veiled lamp threw its pale light on a sheet of paper on the small table in front of her.  It was Fritz's letter; she had read it over and over.

    Around her lay the wounded.  Some slept; their breaths sounded steadily through the quiet of the hall; others sighed loudly now and then and groaned; still others lay completely still; sleepless, with wide open eyes, they lookt into the pale, dawning light.  These were they who had suffered most heavily.  Now and then

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one askt to drink, or he wanted to be laid differently, or his wounds ached and he sought relief.

    Edith preferred when she had something to do.  But it lasted only a short time, and again she sat in her place inactive, tormented by her thoughts.

    Outside, the storm raged; it broke the branches and boughs in the garden; it beat on the window with a heavy hand and drove the rain that had started fiercely around midnight, splashing and pattering on the panes.

    She thought of so many nights when storm and rain had likewise raged around the old Reckenstein manor house, when she was awakened in the middle of a sound sleep by its noise and had felt only so much more cozy and secure in her soft bed.  Altogether, how peaceful and beautiful had her youth been, with what warm love she had surrounded her father, how tender a bond existed between them, despite the dissimilarity of her nature and his sometimes severe and irascible manner!  But she knew him and the valiant center of his heart.

    Now he had fallen out there, and she sat here and watched over the wounded whom his heroic death had saved.  And everything that she saw and experienced was so great and tremendous that one was not allowed to complain and grumble, even if one had personally to make the most difficult sacrifice.

    Now she was alone; she no longer had anyone who was close to her.  The old man had been both her father and mother.  Who took care of her life and her health now?  It was good that she could care for others.

    Again, her glance fell on the letter; again

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she read it.  He who had written it had been much to her in the past, a faithful comrade of her youth.  But it was just good comradeship, nothing else.  Sometimes she had probably believed she felt more for him; now it was clear to her that it was sisterly affection that she felt for him.

    The image of his older brother stood before her soul.  Previously, he had been distant to her, indeed not once pleasant.  To be only on the spiritual side of the directed striving, that quite easily overlookt the ordinary mortals and their being there; she had kept away from him.  Still even now, certainly, there was something in him that she felt as dividing, even now he lived with all the trouble that he gave himself in the world of his thoughts; she noted it well in him, how in his spiritual and religious line of thought he still could not find his way in the hardship and in the frights of this war.  But now she saw this inner wrestling, this seeking and striving upwards in a different light.

    The morning dawned shyly and hesitating through the darkness outside.  The storm had died down a little, but the rain still hammered hard on the panes.  Edith turned off the lamp; a wounded man called her; the morning work began.