Good Blood | Page 6

the
best in his class. And right here appeared the difference between the
brothers; Big L kept his knowledge to himself, and never prompted;
Little L, he prompted, he fairly shouted--yes, to be sure he did--"
A tender smile passed over the face of the old man.
"If any one on the front form was called upon and did not know the
answer--Little L hissed right across all the forms what he ought to say:
when it came the turn of the back benches little L spoke the answer
half-aloud to himself.
"There was there an old professor from whom we took Latin. During
nearly every lesson he would stop short in the middle of the class; 'L
No. II,' he would say, 'you are prompting again! And that, too, in a
most shameless fashion. Have a care, L No. II, next time I will make an

example of you. I say it to you now for the last time!"
The old colonel laughed to himself. "But it always remained the next to
last time, and the example was never made. For though Little L was no
model boy, more often quite the contrary, he was loved by both
teachers and officers as well--but how indeed could it have been
otherwise? He was always in high spirits, as if receiving a new present
every day, yet nothing ever got sent to him, for the father of the two
was in desperately poor circumstances, a major in some infantry
regiment or other, and the boys received hardly a groschen (2.4 cents)
for pocket money. And always as if just peeled out of the egg, so
fresh,--without and within--eh, eh, altogether--"
Here the colonel paused, as if searching for an expression that would
contain the whole of his love for this former little comrade.
"As if Nature had been for once in a proudly good-humor," he said,
"and had stood that little follow upright on his feet and cried: 'There
you have him!'
"Now this was to be observed," he continued, "that just so much as the
brothers differed, one from the other, the more they seemed to cling to
each other. In Big L, indeed, one did not notice it so much; he was
always sullen and displayed no feeling; but Little L could never
conceal anything. And because Little L felt conscious of this, how
much better he himself was treated by the other cadets, it made him
sorry for his brother. When we took our walks around the courtyard,
then one could see how Little L would look at his brother from time to
time, to see if he, too, had some one to walk with. That he prompted his
brother in class and allowed him to copy from himself when
sight-exercises were dictated was all a matter of course; but he also
took care that no one teased his brother, and when he observed him
quietly from the side, as he often did, without drawing his brother's
attention to it, then his little face was quite noticeably sad, almost as if
he were a great care to him--"
The old man pulled hard at his pipe. "All that I put together for myself
afterward," said he, "when everything happened that was to happen; he

knew at the time much better than we did how matters stood with Big L,
and what was his brother's character.
"This was, of course, understood among the cadets, and it helped Big L
none the more, for he remained disliked after it as before, yet it made
Little L all the more popular, and he was generally called 'Brother
Love.'
"Now the two lived together in one room, and Little L, as I said, was
very clean and neat; the big one, on the contrary, was very slovenly.
And so Little L fairly made himself servant to his brother, and it turned
out that he even cleaned the brass buttons on his uniform for him, and
just before the ranks formed for roll-call would place himself, with
clothes-brush in hand, in front of his brother, and once more regularly
brush and scrub him--especially on those days when the 'cross
lieutenant' was on duty and received roll-call.
"Well, in the morning the cadets had to go down into the court for
roll-call, and there the officer on duty went up and down between the
lines and inspected their uniforms to see if they were in order.
"And when the 'cross lieutenant' attended to this, then there reigned the
most woful anxiety throughout the company, for he always found
something. He would go behind the cadets and flip at their coats with
his finger to make the dust fly, and if none came, then he would lift
their coat-pockets and snap at them, and so, beat our