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But that, of course, made no difference to Heimert's plans. He learned from the stablemen that Heppner would be at the White Horse with Blechschmidt, the sergeant-major of the fifth, that evening. That was capital. He would catch him as he came home, and the affair would be arranged in two minutes. Heimert ate his supper in silence.
During the winter the sergeant-major had treated her as a cast-off love; he should suffer awhile for that. She exercised all her arts to augment his pain; it gave her a half fearful, half delicious pleasure to note his impatience. One evening Heppner seized an opportunity when he imagined himself alone with her.
Heimert watched them closely; every word, every movement, almost every look. But his suspicions were not justified. Heppner was polite, easy, and perfectly unconstrained; while Albina chatted easily and naturally, and accepted the homage of their guest with a kind of haughty tranquillity. Towards her husband she displayed quite unusual tenderness, so long as the sergeant-major was present.
But to himself he thought: "If that is at all true, the man must have been consoling himself with whisky; one can smell it five paces away from him." However, the captain offered to let him dispense with riding; but Heppner objected, and begged to be allowed to take part in the drill. He felt that would help him to shake off his unpleasant sensations; an hour's ride and he would be fresh again.
For it is impossible that a man so regular in his duties, who never has to be found fault with, can be as violent as you make out. You exaggerate a bit, my good woman." After this she resigned herself angrily to her miserable fate. Wegstetten was not wrong in his praise of Heppner.
A few steps from the White Horse the trumpeter suddenly stopped, felt in his pocket, and exclaimed, "Damnation! I've left my money behind at home!" "Never mind!" said Heppner, in his genial mood. "You shall eat and drink free to-day, and I'll lend you a thaler into the bargain. There, catch hold!"
From the fugitive glances which she now and then intercepted between the two, the invalid foresaw the most sinister results. Heppner himself, not being particularly quick-witted, and being used only to coarse associates, did not quite know what to make of his sister-in-law. Of only one thing was he certain, this beautiful girl must be his.
Heppner chose a place from which he could gaze undisturbed at the girl's profile. She pleased him. She was just to his taste, this full-bosomed girl with salient hips and rounded arms. In his opinion her face was more than pretty; her eager, passionate eyes, and her mouth with the full, rather pouting lips, on which one longed to plant a big kiss, seemed to him quite beautiful.
Now they had to calculate the gains and losses of the night. The trumpeter got through quickest. He tossed Heppner the borrowed thaler, and laughed contentedly to himself. He had every reason to be cheerful, he, who had not brought a single red pfennig with him, and who now had more than a hundred marks chiefly in silver, but with a few gold pieces also clinking in his pocket!
Here he would earnestly think it out, whether he would not remain for a few more years with the battery. Two families were quartered at the end of the corridor, that of Sergeant-major Schumann and that of the deputy sergeant-major, Heppner; each had a bedroom, sitting-room, and kitchen, and they shared the entrance-hall between them.
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