"Why, Effi, child, that is empty folly. You are not going to St. Petersburg or Archangel."

"No, but I am a part of the way."

"Certainly, child, you are a part of the way; but what does that mean? If you go from here to Nauen you are, by the same train of reasoning, a part of the way to Russia. However, if you want some furs you shall have them. But let me tell you beforehand, I advise you not to buy them. Furs are proper for elderly people; even your old mother is still too young for them, and if you, in your seventeenth year, come out in mink or marten the people of Kessin will consider it a masquerade."

It was on the second of September that these words were spoken, and the conversation would doubtless have been continued, if it had not happened to be the anniversary of the battle of Sedan. But because of the day they were interrupted by the sound of drum and fife, and Effi, who had heard before of the proposed parade, but had meanwhile forgotten about it, rushed suddenly away from the work-table, past the circular plot and the pond, in the direction of a balcony built on the churchyard wall, to which one could climb by six steps not much broader than the rungs of a ladder. In an instant she was at the top and, surely enough, there came all the school children marching along, Jahnke strutting majestically beside the right flank, while a little drum major marched at the head of the procession, several paces in advance, with an expression on his countenance as though it were incumbent upon him to fight the battle of Sedan all over again. Effi waved her handkerchief and he promptly returned the greeting by a salute with his shining baton.

A week later mother and daughter were again sitting in the same place, busy, as before, with their work. It was an exceptionally beautiful day; the heliotrope growing in a neat bed around the sundial was still in bloom, and the soft breeze that was stirring bore its fragrance over to them.

"Oh, how well I feel," said Effi, "so well and so happy! I can't think of heaven as more beautiful. And, after all, who knows whether they have such wonderful heliotrope in heaven?"

"Why, Effi, you must not talk like that. You get that from your father, to whom nothing is sacred. Not long ago he even said: 'Niemeyer looks like Lot.' Unheard of. And what in the world can he mean by it? In the first place he doesn't know how Lot looked, and secondly it shows an absolute lack of consideration for Hulda. Luckily, Niemeyer has only the one daughter, and for this reason the comparison really falls to the ground. In one regard, to be sure, he was only too right, viz., in each and every thing that he said about 'Lot's wife,' our good pastor's better half, who again this year, as was to be expected, simply ruined our Sedan celebration by her folly and presumption. By the by it just occurs to me that we were interrupted in our conversation when Jahnke came by with the school. At least I cannot imagine that the furs, of which you were speaking at that time, should have been your only wish. So let me know, darling, what further things you have set your heart upon."

"None, mama."

"Truly, none?"

"No, none, truly; perfectly in earnest. But, on second thought, if there were anything—"

"Well?"

"It would be a Japanese bed screen, black, with gold birds on it, all with long crane bills. And then perhaps, besides, a hanging lamp for our bedroom, with a red shade."

Mrs. von Briest remained silent.

"Now you see, mama, you are silent and look as though I had said something especially improper."

"No, Effi, nothing improper. Certainly not in the presence of your mother, for I know you so well. You are a fantastic little person, you like nothing better than to paint fanciful pictures of the future, and the richer their coloring the more beautiful and desirable they appear to you. I saw that when we were buying the traveling articles. And now you fancy it would be altogether adorable to have a bed screen with a variety of fabulous beasts on it, all in the dim light of a red hanging lamp. It appeals to you as a fairy tale and you would like to be a princess."

Effi took her mother's hand and kissed it. "Yes, mama, that is my nature."

"Yes, that is your nature. I know it only too well. But, my dear Effi, we must be circumspect in life, and we women especially. Now when you go to Kessin, a small place, where hardly a streetlamp is lit at night, the people will laugh at such things. And if they would only stop with laughing! Those who are ill-disposed toward you—and there are always some—will speak of your bad bringing-up, and many will doubtless say even worse things."

"Nothing Japanese, then, and no hanging lamp either. But I confess I had thought it would be so beautiful and poetical to see everything in a dim red light."

Mrs. von Briest was moved. She got up and kissed Effi. "You are a child. Beautiful and poetical. Nothing but fancies. The reality is different, and often it is well that there should be dark instead of light and shimmer."

Effi seemed on the point of answering, but at this moment Wilke came and brought some letters. One was from Kessin, from Innstetten. "Ah, from Geert," said Effi, and putting the letter in her pocket, she continued in a calm tone: "But you surely will allow me to set the grand piano across one corner of the room. I care more for that than for the open fireplace that Geert has promised me. And then I am going to put your portrait on an easel. I can't be entirely without you. Oh, how I shall be homesick to see you, perhaps even on the wedding tour, and most certainly in Kessin. Why, they say the place has no garrison, not even a staff surgeon, and how fortunate it is that it is at least a watering place. Cousin von Briest, upon whom I shall rely as my chief support, always goes with his mother and sister to Warnemunde. Now I really do not see why he should not, for a change, some day direct our dear relatives toward Kessin. Besides, 'direct' seems to suggest a position on the staff, to which, I believe, he aspires. And then, of course, he will come along and live at our house. Moreover Kessin, as somebody just recently told me, has a rather large steamer, which runs over to Sweden twice a week. And on the ship there is dancing (of course they have a band on board), and he dances very well."

"Who?"

"Why, Dagobert."

"I thought you meant Innstetten. In any case the time has now come to know what he writes. You still have the letter in your pocket, you know."

"That's right. I had almost forgotten it." She opened the letter and glanced over it.

"Well, Effi, not a word? You are not beaming and not even smiling. And yet he always writes such bright and entertaining letters, and not a word of fatherly wisdom in them."

"That I should not allow. He has his age and I have my youth. I should shake my finger at him and say: 'Geert, consider which is better.'"

"And then he would answer: 'You have what is better.' For he is not only a man of most refined manners, he is at the same time just and sensible and knows very well what youth means. He is always reminding himself of that and adapting himself to youthful ways, and if he remains the same after marriage you will lead a model married life."

"Yes, I think so, too, mama. But just imagine—and I am almost ashamed to say it—I am not so very much in favor of what is called a model married life."

"That is just like you. And now tell me, pray, what are you really in favor of?"

"I am—well, I am in favor of like and like and naturally also of tenderness and love. And if tenderness and love are out of the question, because, as papa says, love is after all only fiddle-faddle, which I, however, do not believe, well, then I am in favor of wealth and an aristocratic house, a really aristocratic one, to which Prince Frederick Charles will come for an elk or grouse hunt, or where the old Emperor will call and have a gracious word for every lady, even for the younger ones. And then when we are in Berlin I am for court balls and gala performances at the Opera, with seats always close by the grand central box."

"Do you say that out of pure sauciness and caprice?"

"No, mama, I am fully in earnest. Love comes first, but right after love come splendor and honor, and then comes amusement—yes, amusement, always something new, always something to make me laugh or weep. The thing I cannot endure is ennui."

"If that is the case, how in the world have you managed to get along with us?"

"Why, mama, I am amazed to hear you say such a thing. To be sure, in the winter time, when our dear relatives come driving up to see us and stay for six hours, or perhaps even longer, and Aunt Gundel and Aunt Olga eye me from head to foot and find me impertinent—and Aunt Gundel once told me that I was—well, then occasionally it is not very pleasant, that I must admit. But otherwise I have always been happy here, so happy—"

As she said the last words she fell, sobbing convulsively, at her mother's feet and kissed her hands.

"Get up, Effi. Such emotions as these overcome one, when one is as young as you and facing her wedding and the uncertain future. But now read me the letter, unless it contains something very special, or perhaps secrets."

"Secrets," laughed Effi and sprang to her feet in a suddenly changed mood. "Secrets! Yes, yes, he is always coming to the point of telling me some, but the most of what he writes might with perfect propriety be posted on the bulletin board at the mayor's office, where the ordinances of the district council are posted. But then, you know, Geert is one of the councillors."

"Read, read."

"Dear Effi: The nearer we come to our wedding day, the more scanty your letters grow. When the mail arrives I always look first of all for your handwriting, but, as you know, all in vain, as a rule, and yet I did not ask to have it otherwise. The workmen are now in the house who are to prepare the rooms, few in number, to be sure, for your coming. The best part of the work will doubtless not be done till we are on our journey. Paper-hanger Madelung, who is to furnish everything, is an odd original. I shall tell you about him the next time. Now I must tell you first of all how happy I am over you, over my sweet little Effi. The very ground beneath my feet here is on fire, and yet our good city is growing more and more quiet and lonesome. The last summer guest left yesterday. Toward the end he went swimming at nine degrees above zero (Centigrade), and the attendants were always rejoiced when he came out alive. For they feared a stroke of apoplexy, which would give the baths a bad reputation, as though the water were worse here than elsewhere. I rejoice when I think that in four weeks I shall row with you from the Piazzetta out to the Lido or to Murano, where they make glass beads and beautiful jewelry. And the most beautiful shall be yours. Many greetings to your parents and the tenderest kiss for yourself from your Geert."

Effi folded the letter and put it back into the envelope.

"That is a very pretty letter," said Mrs. von Briest, "and that it observes due moderation throughout is a further merit."

"Yes, due moderation it surely does observe."

"My dear Effi, let me ask a question. Do you wish that the letter did not observe due moderation? Do you wish that it were more affectionate, perhaps gushingly affectionate?"

"No, no, mama. Honestly and truly no, I do not wish that. So it is better as it is."

"So it is better as it is. There you go again. You are so queer. And by the by, a moment ago you were weeping. Is something troubling you? It is not yet too late. Don't you love Geert?"

"Why shouldn't I love him? I love Hulda, and I love Bertha, and I love Hertha. And I love old Mr. Niemeyer, too. And that I love you and papa I don't even need to mention. I love all who mean well by me and are kind to me and humor me. No doubt Geert will humor me, too. To be sure, in his own way. You see he is already thinking of giving me jewelry in Venice. He hasn't the faintest suspicion that I care nothing for jewelry. I care more for climbing and swinging and am always happiest when I expect every moment that something will give way or break and cause me to tumble. It will not cost me my head the first time, you know."

"And perhaps you also love your Cousin von Briest?"

"Yes, very much. He always cheers me."

"And would you have liked to marry Cousin von Briest?"

"Marry? For heaven's sake no. Why, he is still half a boy. Geert is a man, a handsome man, a man with whom I can shine and he will make something of himself in the world. What are you thinking of, mama?"

"Well, that is all right, Effi, I am glad to hear it. But there is something else troubling you."

"Perhaps."

"Well, speak."

"You see, mama, the fact that he is older than I does no harm. Perhaps that is a very good thing. After all he is not old and is well and strong and is so soldierly and so keen. And I might almost say I am altogether in favor of him, if he only—oh, if he were only a little bit different."

"How, pray, Effi."

"Yes, how? Well, you must not laugh at me. It is something that I only very recently overheard, over at the parsonage. We were talking about Innstetten and all of a sudden old Mr. Niemeyer wrinkled his forehead, in wrinkles of respect and admiration, of course, and said: 'Oh yes, the Baron. He is a man of character, a man of principles."

"And that he is, Effi."

"Certainly. And later, I believe, Niemeyer said he is even a man of convictions. Now that, it seems to me, is something more. Alas, and I—I have none. You see, mama, there is something about this that worries me and makes me uneasy. He is so dear and good to me and so considerate, but I am afraid of him."



CHAPTER V

The days of festivity at Hohen-Cremmen were past; all the guests had departed, likewise the newly married couple, who left the evening of the wedding day.

The nuptial-eve performance had pleased everybody, especially the players, and Hulda had been the delight of all the young officers, not only the Rathenow Hussars, but also their more critically inclined comrades of the Alexander regiment. Indeed everything had gone well and smoothly, almost better than expected. The only thing to be regretted was that Bertha and Hertha had sobbed so violently that Jahnke's Low German verses had been virtually lost. But even that had made but little difference. A few fine connoisseurs had even expressed the opinion that, "to tell the truth, forgetting what to say, sobbing, and unintelligibility, together form the standard under which the most decided victories are won, particularly in the case of pretty, curly red heads." Cousin von Briest had won a signal triumph in his self-composed role. He had appeared as one of Demuth's clerks, who had found out that the young bride was planning to go to Italy immediately after the wedding, for which reason he wished to deliver to her a traveling trunk. This trunk proved, of course, to be a giant box of bonbons from Hoevel's. The dancing had continued till three o'clock, with the effect that Briest, who had been gradually talking himself into the highest pitch of champagne excitement, had made various remarks about the torch dance, still in vogue at many courts, and the remarkable custom of the garter dance. Since these remarks showed no signs of coming to an end, and kept getting worse and worse, they finally reached the point where they simply had to be choked off. "Pull yourself together, Briest," his wife had whispered to him in a rather earnest tone; "you are not here for the purpose of making indecent remarks, but of doing the honors of the house. We are having at present a wedding and not a hunting party." Whereupon von Briest answered: "I see no difference between the two; besides, I am happy."

The wedding itself had also gone well, Niemeyer had conducted the service in an exquisite fashion, and on the way home from the church one of the old men from Berlin, who half-way belonged to the court circle, made a remark to the effect that it was truly wonderful how thickly talents are distributed in a state like ours. "I see therein a triumph of our schools, and perhaps even more of our philosophy. When I consider how this Niemeyer, an old village preacher, who at first looked like a hospitaler—why, friend, what do you say? Didn't he speak like a court preacher? Such tact, and such skill in antithesis, quite the equal of Koegel, and in feeling even better. Koegel is too cold. To be sure, a man in his position has to be cold. Generally speaking, what is it that makes wrecks of the lives of men? Always warmth, and nothing else." It goes without saying that these remarks were assented to by the dignitary to whom they were addressed, a gentleman as yet unmarried, who doubtless for this very reason was, at the time being, involved in his fourth "relation." "Only too true, dear friend," said he. "Too much warmth—most excellent—Besides, I must tell you a story, later."

The day after the wedding was a clear October day. The morning sun shone bright, yet there was a feeling of autumn chilliness in the air, and von Briest, who had just taken breakfast in company with his wife, arose from his seat and stood, with his hands behind his back, before the slowly dying open fire. Mrs. von Briest, with her fancy work in her hands, moved likewise closer to the fireplace and said to Wilke, who entered just at this point to clear away the breakfast table: "And now, Wilke, when you have everything in order in the dining hall—but that comes first—then see to it that the cakes are taken over to the neighbors, the nutcake to the pastor's and the dish of small cakes to the Jahnkes'. And be careful with the goblets. I mean the thin cut glasses."

Briest had already lighted his third cigarette, and, looking in the best of health, declared that "nothing agrees with one so well as a wedding, excepting one's own, of course."

"I don't know why you should make that remark, Briest. It is absolutely news to me that you suffered at your wedding. I can't imagine why you should have, either."

"Luise, you are a wet blanket, so to speak. But I take nothing amiss, not even a thing like that. Moreover, why should we be talking about ourselves, we who have never even taken a wedding tour? Your father was opposed to it. But Effi is taking a wedding tour now. To be envied. Started on the ten o'clock train. By this time they must be near Ratisbon, and I presume he is enumerating to her the chief art treasures of the Walhalla, without getting off the train—that goes without saying. Innstetten is a splendid fellow, but he is pretty much of an art crank, and Effi, heaven knows, our poor Effi is a child of nature. I am afraid he will annoy her somewhat with his enthusiasm for art."

"Every man annoys his wife, and enthusiasm for art is not the worst thing by a good deal."

"No, certainly not. At all events we will not quarrel about that; it is a wide field. Then, too, people are so different. Now you, you know, would have been the right person for that. Generally speaking, you would have been better suited to Innstetten than Effi. What a pity! But it is too late now."

"Extremely gallant remark, except for the fact that it is not apropos. However, in any case, what has been has been. Now he is my son-in-law, and it can accomplish nothing to be referring back all the while to the affairs of youth."

"I wished merely to rouse you to an animated humor."

"Very kind of you, but it was not necessary. I am in an animated humor."

"Likewise a good one?"

"I might almost say so. But you must not spoil it.—Well, what else is troubling you? I see there is something on your mind."

"Were you pleased with Effi? Were you satisfied with the whole affair? She was so peculiar, half naive, and then again very self-conscious and by no means as demure as she ought to be toward such a husband. That surely must be due solely to the fact that she does not yet fully know what she has in him. Or is it simply that she does not love him very much? That would be bad. For with all his virtues he is not the man to win her love with an easy grace."

Mrs. von Briest kept silent and counted the stitches of her fancy work. Finally she said: "What you just said, Briest, is the most sensible thing I have heard from you for the last three days, including your speech at dinner. I, too, have had my misgivings. But I believe we have reason to feel satisfied."

"Has she poured out her heart to you?"

"I should hardly call it that. True, she cannot help talking, but she is not disposed to tell everything she has in her heart, and she settles a good many things for herself. She is at once communicative and reticent, almost secretive; in general, a very peculiar mixture."

"I am entirely of your opinion. But how do you know about this if she didn't tell you?"

"I only said she did not pour out her heart to me. Such a general confession, such a complete unburdening of the soul, it is not in her to make. It all came out of her by sudden jerks, so to speak, and then it was all over. But just because it came from her soul so unintentionally and accidentally, as it were, it seemed to me for that very reason so significant."

"When was this, pray, and what was the occasion?"

"Unless I am mistaken, it was just three weeks ago, and we were sitting in the garden, busied with all sorts of things belonging to her trousseau, when Wilke brought a letter from Innstetten. She put it in her pocket and a quarter of an hour later had wholly forgotten about it, till I reminded her that she had a letter. Then she read it, but the expression of her face hardly changed. I confess to you that an anxious feeling came over me, so intense that I felt a strong desire to have all the light on the matter that it is possible to have under the circumstances."

"Very true, very true."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, I mean only—But that is wholly immaterial. Go on with your story; I am all ears."

"So I asked her straight out how matters stood, and as I wished to avoid anything bordering on solemnity, in view of her peculiar character, and sought to take the whole matter as lightly as possible, almost as a joke, in fact, I threw out the question, whether she would perhaps prefer to marry Cousin von Briest, who had showered his attentions upon her in Berlin."

"And?"

"You ought to have seen her then. Her first answer was a saucy laugh. Why, she said, her cousin was really only a big cadet in lieutenant's uniform. And she could not even love a cadet, to saying nothing of marrying one. Then she spoke of Innstetten, who suddenly became for her a paragon of manly virtues."

"How do you explain that?"

"It's quite simple. Lively, emotional, I might almost say, passionate as she is, or perhaps just because she is so constituted, she is not one of those who are so particularly dependent upon love, at least not upon what truly deserves the name. To be sure, she speaks of love, even with emphasis and a certain tone of conviction, but only because she has somewhere read that love is indisputably the most exalted, most beautiful, most glorious thing in the world. And it may be, perhaps, that she has merely heard it from that sentimental person, Hulda, and repeats it after her. But she does not feel it very deeply. It is barely possible that it will come later. God forbid. But it is not yet at hand."

"Then what is at hand? What ails her?"

"In my judgment, and according to her own testimony, she has two things: mania for amusement and ambition."

"Well, those things can pass away. They do not disturb me."

"They do me. Innstetten is the kind of a man who makes his own career. I will not call him pushing, for he is not, he has too much of the real gentleman in him for that. Let us say, then, he is a man who will make his own career. That will satisfy Effi's ambition."

"Very well. I call that good."

"Yes, it is good. But that is only the half. Her ambition will be satisfied, but how about her inclination for amusement and adventure? I have my doubts. For the little entertainment and awakening of interest, demanded every hour, for the thousand things that overcome ennui, the mortal enemy of a spiritual little person, for these Innstetten will make poor provision. He will not leave her in the midst of an intellectual desert; he is too wise and has had too much experience in the world for that, but he will not specially amuse her either. And, most of all, he will not even bother to ask himself seriously how to go about it. Things can go on thus for a while without doing much harm, but she will finally become aware of the situation and be offended. And then I don't know what will happen. For gentle and yielding as she is, she has, along with these qualities, a certain inclination to fly into a fury, and at such times she hazards everything."

At this point Wilke came in from the dining hall and reported that he had counted everything and found everything there, except that one of the fine wine glasses was broken, but that had occurred yesterday when the toast was drunk. Miss Hulda had clinked her glass too hard against Lieutenant Nienkerk's.

"Of course, half asleep and always has been, and lying under the elder tree has obviously not improved matters. A silly person, and I don't understand Nienkerk."

"I understand him perfectly."

"But he can't marry her."

"No."

"His purpose, then?"

"A wide field, Luise."

This was the day after the wedding. Three days later came a scribbled little card from Munich, with all the names on it indicated by two letters only. "Dear mama: This morning we visited the Pinakothek. Geert wanted to go over to the other museum, too, the name of which I will not mention here, because I am in doubt about the right way to spell it, and I dislike to ask him. I must say, he is angelic to me and explains everything. Generally speaking, everything is very beautiful, but it's a strain. In Italy it will probably slacken somewhat and get better. We are lodging at the 'Four Seasons,' which fact gave Geert occasion to remark to me, that 'outside it was autumn, but in me he was having spring.' I consider that a very graceful compliment. He is really very attentive. To be sure, I have to be attentive, too, especially when he says something or is giving me an explanation. Besides, he knows everything so well that he doesn't even need to consult a guide book. He delights to talk of you two, especially mama. He considers Hulda somewhat affected, but old Mr. Niemeyer has completely captivated him. A thousand greetings from your thoroughly entranced, but somewhat weary Effi."

Similar cards now arrived daily, from Innsbruck, from Vicenza, from Padua. Every one began: "We visited the famous gallery here this morning," or, if it was not the gallery, it was an arena or some church of "St. Mary" with a surname. From Padua came, along with the card, a real letter. "Yesterday we were in Vicenza. One must see Vicenza on account of Palladio. Geert told me that everything modern had its roots in him. Of course, with reference only to architecture. Here in Padua, where we arrived this morning, he said to himself several times in the hotel omnibus, 'He lies in Padua interred,' and was surprised when he discovered that I had never heard these words. But finally he said it was really very well and in my favor that I knew nothing about them. He is very just, I must say. And above all he is angelic to me and not a bit overbearing and not at all old, either. I still have pains in my feet, and the consulting of guide books and standing so long before pictures wears me out. But it can't be helped, you know. I am looking forward to Venice with much pleasure. We shall stay there five days, perhaps even a whole week. Geert has already begun to rave about the pigeons in St. Mark's Square, and the fact that one can buy there little bags of peas and feed them to the pretty birds. There are said to be paintings representing this scene, with beautiful blonde maidens, 'a type like Hulda,' as he said. And that reminds me of the Jahnke girls. I would give a good deal if I could be sitting with them on a wagon tongue in our yard and feeding our pigeons. Now, you must not kill the fan tail pigeon with the big breast; I want to see it again. Oh, it is so beautiful here. This is even said to be the most beautiful of all. Your happy, but somewhat weary Effi."

When Mrs. von Briest had finished reading the letter she said: "The poor child. She is homesick."

"Yes," said von Briest, "she is homesick. This accursed traveling—"

"Why do you say that now! You might have hindered it, you know. But it is just your way to play the wise man after a thing is all over. After a child has fallen into the well the aldermen cover up the well."

"Ah, Luise, don't bother me with that kind of stuff. Effi is our child, but since the 3d of October she has been the Baroness of Innstetten. And if her husband, our son-in-law, desires to take a wedding tour and use it as an occasion for making a new catalogue of every gallery, I can't keep him from doing it. That is what it means to get married."

"So now you admit it. In talking with me you have always denied, yes, always denied that the wife is in a condition of restraint."

"Yes, Luise, I have. But what is the use of discussing that now? It is really too wide a field."



CHAPTER VI

Innstetten's leave of absence was to expire the 15th of November, and so when they had reached Capri and Sorrento he felt morally bound to follow his usual habit of returning to his duties on the day and at the hour designated. So on the morning of the 14th they arrived by the fast express in Berlin, where Cousin von Briest met them and proposed that they should make use of the two hours before the departure of the Stettin train to pay a visit to the Panorama and then have a little luncheon together. Both proposals were accepted with thanks. At noon they returned to the station, shook hands heartily and said good-by, after both Effi and her husband had extended the customary invitation, "Do come to see us some day," which fortunately is never taken seriously. As the train started Effi waved a last farewell from her compartment. Then she leaned back and made herself comfortable, but from time to time sat up and held out her hand to Innstetten.

It was a pleasant journey, and the train arrived on time at the Klein-Tantow station, from which a turnpike led to Kessin, ten miles away. In the summer time, especially during the tourist season, travelers were accustomed to avoid the turnpike and take the water route, going by an old sidewheel steamer down the Kessine, the river from which Kessin derived its name. But the "Phoenix"—about which the wish had long been vainly cherished, that, at some time when there were no passengers on board, it might justify its name and burn to ashes—regularly stopped running on the 1st of October. For this reason Innstetten had telegraphed from Stettin to his coachman Kruse: "Five o'clock, Klein-Tantow station. Open carriage, if good weather."

It certainly was good weather, and there sat Kruse in the open carriage at the station. He greeted the newly arrived couple with all the prescribed dignity of a first-class coachman.

"Well, Kruse, everything in order?"

"At your service, Sir Councillor."

"Then, Effi, please get in." As Effi was doing as bid, and one of the station porters was finding a place for a small satchel by the coachman, in front, Innstetten left orders to send the rest of the luggage by the omnibus. Then he, too, took his seat and after condescendingly asking one of the bystanders for a light called to Kruse: "Drive on, Kruse." The carriage rolled quickly over the rails of the many tracks at the crossing, then slantingly down the slope of the embankment, and on the turnpike past an inn called "The Prince Bismarck." At this point the road forked, one branch leading to the right to Kessin, the other to the left to Varzin. In front of the inn stood a moderately tall, broad-shouldered man in a fur coat and a fur cap. The cap he took off with great deference as the District Councillor drove by. "Pray, who was that?" said Effi, who was extremely interested in all she saw and consequently in the best of humor. "He looked like a starost, though I am forced to confess I never saw a starost before."

"Which is no loss, Effi. You guessed very well just the same. He does really look like a starost and is something of the sort, too. I mean by that, he is half Polish. His name is Golchowski, and whenever we have an election or a hunt here, he is at the top of the list. In reality he is a very unsafe fellow, whom I would not trust across the road, and he doubtless has a great deal on his conscience. But he assumes an air of loyalty, and when the quality of Varzin go by here he would like nothing better than to throw himself before their carriages. I know that at the same time he is hostile to the Prince. But what is the use? We must not have any misunderstandings with him, for we need him. He has this whole region in his pocket and understands electioneering better than any one else. Besides, he is considered well-to-do and lends out money at usury which is contrary to the ordinary practice of the Poles."

"But he was good-looking."

"Yes, good-looking he is. Most of the people here are good-looking. A handsome strain of human beings. But that is the best that can be said of them. Your Brandenburg people look more unostentatious and more ill-humored, and in their conduct they are less respectful, in fact, are not at all respectful, but their yes is yes and no is no, and one can depend upon them. Here everybody is uncertain."

"Why do you tell me that, since I am obliged to live here among them now?"

"Not you. You will not hear or see much of them. For city and country are here very different, and you will become acquainted with our city people only, our good people of Kessin."

"Our good people of Kessin. Is that sarcasm, or are they really so good?"

"That they are really good is not exactly what I mean to say, but they are different from the others; in fact, they have no similarity whatever to the country inhabitants here."

"How does that come?"

"Because they are entirely different human beings, by ancestry and association. The people you find in the country here are the so-called Cassubians, of whom you may have heard, a Slavic race, who have been living here for a thousand years and probably much longer. But all the inhabitants of our seaports, and the commercial cities near the coast, have moved here from a distance and trouble themselves very little about the Cassubian backwoods, because they derive little profit from that source and are dependent upon entirely different sources. The sources upon which they are dependent are the regions with which they have commercial relations, and as their commerce brings them into touch with the whole world you will find among them people from every nook and corner of the earth, even here in our good Kessin, in spite of the fact that it is nothing but a miserable hole."

"Why, that is perfectly charming, Geert. You are always talking about the miserable hole, but I shall find here an entirely new world, if you have not exaggerated. All kinds of exotics. That is about what you meant, isn't it?"

He nodded his head.

"An entirely new world, I say, perhaps a negro, or a Turk, or perhaps even a Chinaman."

"Yes, a Chinaman, too. How well you can guess! It may be that we still have one. He is dead now and buried in a little fenced-in plot of ground close by the churchyard. If you are not easily frightened I will show you his grave some day. It is situated among the dunes, with nothing but lyme grass around it, and here and there a few immortelles, and one always hears the sea. It is very beautiful and very uncanny."

"Oh, uncanny? I should like to know more about it. But I would better not. Such stories make me have visions and dreams, and if, as I hope, I sleep well tonight, I should certainly not like to see a Chinaman come walking up to my bed the first thing."

"You will not, either."

"Not, either? Upon my word, that sounds strange, as though, after all, it were possible. You seek to make Kessin interesting to me, but you carry it a trifle too far. And have you many such foreigners in Kessin?"

"A great many. The whole population is made up of such foreigners, people whose parents and grandparents lived in an entirely different region."

"Most remarkable. Please tell me more about them. But no more creepy stories. I feel that there is always something creepy about a Chinaman."

"Yes, there is," laughed Geert, "but the rest, thank heaven, are of an entirely different sort, all mannerly people, perhaps a little bit too commercial, too thoughtful of their own advantage, and always on hand with bills of questionable value. In fact, one must be cautious with them. But otherwise they are quite agreeable. And to let you see that I have not been deceiving you I will just give you a little sample, a sort of index or list of names."

"Please do, Geert."

"For example, we have, not fifty paces from our house, and our gardens are even adjoining, the master machinist and dredger Macpherson, a real Scotchman and a Highlander."

"And he still wears the native costume?"

"No, thank heaven, he doesn't, for he is a shriveled up little man, of whom neither his clan nor Walter Scott would be particularly proud. And then we have, further, in the same house where this Macpherson lives, an old surgeon by the name of Beza, in reality only a barber. He comes from Lisbon, the same place that the famous general De Meza comes from. Meza, Beza; you can hear the national relationship. And then we have, up the river by the quay, where the ships lie, a goldsmith by the name of Stedingk, who is descended from an old Swedish family; indeed, I believe there are counts of the empire by that name. Further, and with this man I will close for the present, we have good old Dr. Hannemann, who of course is a Dane, and was a long time in Iceland, has even written a book on the last eruption of Hekla, or Krabla."

"Why, that is magnificent, Geert. It is like having six novels that one can never finish reading. At first it sounds commonplace, but afterward seems quite out of the ordinary. And then you must also have people, simply because it is a seaport, who are not mere surgeons or barbers or anything of the sort. You must also have captains, some flying Dutchman or other, or—"

"You are quite right. We even have a captain who was once a pirate among the Black Flags."

"I don't know what you mean. What are Black Flags?"

"They are people away off in Tonquin and the South Sea—But since he has been back among men he has resumed the best kind of manners and is quite entertaining."

"I should be afraid of him nevertheless."

"You don't need to be, at any time, not even when I am out in the country or at the Prince's for tea, for along with everything else that we have, we have, thank heaven, also Rollo."

"Rollo?"

"Yes, Bollo. The name makes you think of the Norman Duke, provided you have ever heard Niemeyer or Jahnke speak of him. Our Rollo has somewhat the same character. But he is only a Newfoundland dog, a most beautiful animal, that loves me and will love you, too. For Rollo is a connoisseur. So long as you have him about you, you are safe, and nothing can get at you, neither a live man nor a dead one. But just see the moon over yonder. Isn't it beautiful?"



Effi, who had been leaning back quietly absorbed, drinking in every word, half timorously, half eagerly, now sat erect and looked out to the right, where the moon had just risen behind a white mass of clouds, which quickly floated by. Copper-colored hung the great disk behind a clump of alders and shed its light upon the expanse of water into which the Kessine here widens out. Or perhaps it might be looked upon as one of the fresh-water lakes connected with the Baltic Sea.

Effi was stupefied. "Yes, you are right, Geert, how beautiful! But at the same time there is something uncanny about it. In Italy I never had such a sensation, not even when we were going over from Mestre to Venice. There, too, we had water and swamps and moonlight, and I thought the bridge would break. But it was not so spooky. What is the cause of it, I wonder? Can it be the northern latitude?"

Innstetten laughed. "We are here seventy-five miles further north than in Hohen-Cremmen, and you have still a while to wait before we come to the first polar bear. I think you are nervous from the long journey and the Panorama, not to speak of the story of the Chinaman."

"Why, you didn't tell me any story."

"No, I only mentioned him. But a Chinaman is in himself a story."

"Yes," she laughed.

"In any case you will soon recover. Do you see the little house yonder with the light? It is a blacksmith's shop. There the road bends. And when we have passed the bend you will be able to see the tower of Kessin, or to be more exact, the two."

"Has it two?"

"Yes, Kessin is picking up. It now has a Catholic church also."

A half hour later the carriage stopped at the district councillor's residence, which stood clear at the opposite end of the city. It was a simple, rather old-fashioned, frame-house with plaster between the timbers, and stood facing the main street, which led to the sea-baths, while its gable looked down upon a grove, between the city limits and the dunes, which was called the "Plantation." Furthermore this old-fashioned frame-house was only Innstetten's private residence, not the real district councillor's office. The latter stood diagonally across the street.

It was not necessary for Kruse to announce their arrival with three cracks of his whip. The servants had long been watching at the doors and windows for their master and mistress, and even before the carriage stopped all the inmates of the house were grouped upon the stone doorstep, which took up the whole width of the sidewalk. In front of them was Rollo, who, the moment the carriage stopped, began to circle around it. Innstetten first of all helped his young wife to alight. Then, offering her his arm, he walked with a friendly bow past the servants, who promptly turned and followed him into the entrance-hall, which was furnished with splendid old wardrobes and cases standing around the walls. The housemaid, a pretty girl, no longer very young, whose stately plumpness was almost as becoming to her as the neat little cap on her blonde head, helped her mistress take off her muff and cloak, and was just stooping down to take off her fur-lined rubber shoes. But before she had time to make a beginning, Innstetten said: "I suppose the best thing will be for me to introduce to you right here all the occupants of our house, with the exception of Mrs. Kruse, who does not like to be seen, and who, I presume, is holding her inevitable black chicken again." Everybody smiled. "But never mind Mrs. Kruse. Here is my old Frederick, who was with me when I was at the university. Good times then, weren't they, Frederick?—This is Johanna, a fellow countrywoman of yours, if you count those who come from the region of Pasewalk as full-fledged Brandenburgians; and this is Christel, to whom we trust our bodily welfare every noon and evening, and who knows how to cook, I can assure you.—And this is Rollo. Well, Rollo, how goes it?"

Rollo seemed only to have waited for this special greeting, for the moment he heard his name he gave a bark for joy, stood up on his hind legs and laid his forepaws on his master's shoulders.

"That will do, Rollo, that will do. But look here; this is my wife. I have told her about you and said that you were a beautiful animal and would protect her." Hereupon Rollo ceased fawning and sat down in front of Innstetten, looking up curiously at the young wife. And when she held out her hand to him he frisked around her.

During this introduction scene Effi had found time to look about. She was enchanted, so to speak, by everything she saw, and at the same time dazzled by the abundant light. In the forepart of the hall were burning four or five wall lights, the reflectors themselves very primitive, simply of tin-plate, which, however, only improved the light and heightened the splendor. Two astral lamps with red shades, a wedding present from Niemeyer, stood on a folding table between two oak cupboards. On the front of the table was the tea service, with the little lamp under the kettle already lighted. There were, beside these, many, many other things, some of them very queer. From one side of the hall to the other ran three beams, dividing the ceiling into sections. From the front one was suspended a ship under full sail, high quarter-deck, and cannon ports, while farther toward the front door a gigantic fish seemed to be swimming in the air. Effi took her umbrella, which she still held in her hand, and pushed gently against the monster, so that it set up a slow rocking motion.

"What is that, Geert?" she asked.

"That is a shark."

"And that thing, clear at the end of the hall, that looks like a huge cigar in front of a tobacco store?"

"That is a young crocodile. But you can look at all these things better and more in detail tomorrow. Come now and let us take a cup of tea. For in spite of shawls and rugs you must have been chilled. Toward the last it was bitter cold."

He offered Effi his arm and the two maids retired. Only Frederick and Rollo followed the master of the house as he took his wife into his sitting room and study. Effi was as much surprised here as she had been in the hall, but before she had time to say anything, Innstetten drew back a portiere, which disclosed a second, larger room looking out on the court and garden. "Now this, Effi, is your room. Frederick and Johanna have tried to arrange it the best they could in accordance with my orders. I find it quite tolerable and should be happy if you liked it, too."

She withdrew her arm from his and stood up on her tip-toes to give him a hearty kiss. "Poor little thing that I am, how you do spoil me! This grand piano! and this rug! Why, I believe it is Turkish. And the bowl with the little fishes, and the flower table besides! Luxuries, everywhere I look."

"Ah, my dear Effi, you will have to put up with that. It is to be expected when one is young and pretty and amiable. And I presume the inhabitants of Kessin have already found out about you, heaven knows from what source. For of the flower table, at least, I am innocent. Frederick, where did the flower table come from?"

"Apothecary Gieshuebler. There is a card on it."

"Ah, Gieshuebler, Alonzo Gieshuebler," said Innstetten, laughingly and almost boisterously handing the card with the foreign-sounding first name to Effi. "Gieshuebler. I forgot to tell you about him. Let me say in passing that he bears the doctor's title, but does not like to be addressed by it. He says it only vexes the real doctors, and I presume he is right about that. Well, I think you will become acquainted with him and that soon. He is our best number here, a bel-esprit and an original, but especially a man of soul, which is after all the chief thing. But enough of these things; let us sit down and drink our tea. Where shall it be? Here in your room or over there in mine! There is no other choice. Snug and tiny is my cabin."

Without hesitating she sat down on a little corner sofa. "Let us stay here today; you will be my guest today. Or let us say, rather: Tea regularly in my room, breakfast in yours. Then each will secure his rights, and I am curious to know where I shall like it best."

"That will be a morning and evening question."

"Certainly. But the way it is put, or better, our attitude toward it, is the important thing."

With that she laughed and cuddled up to him and was about to kiss his hand.

"No, Effi, for heaven's sake, don't do that. It is not my desire to be a person looked up to with awe and respect. I am, for the inhabitants of Kessin, but for you I am—"

"What, pray?"

"Ah, let that pass. Far be it from me to say what."



CHAPTER VII

The sun was shining brightly when Effi awoke the next morning. It was hard for her to get her bearings. Where was she? Correct, in Kessin, in the house of District Councillor von Innstetten, and she was his wife, Baroness Innstetten. Sitting up she looked around with curiosity. During the evening before she had been too tired to examine very carefully all the half-foreign, half-old-fashioned things that surrounded her. Two pillars supported the ceiling beam, and green curtains shut off from the rest of the room the alcove-like sleeping apartment in which the beds stood. But in the middle a curtain was either lacking or pulled back, and this afforded her a comfortable orientation from her bed. There between the two windows stood the narrow, but very high, pier-glass, while a little to the right, along the hall wall, towered the tile stove, the door of which, as she had discovered the evening before, opened into the hall in the old-fashioned way. She now felt its warmth radiating toward her. How fine it was to be in her own home! At no time during the whole tour had she enjoyed so much comfort, not even in Sorrento.

But where was Innstetten? All was still round about her, nobody was there. She heard only the tick-tock of a small clock and now and then a low sound in the stove, from which she inferred that a few new sticks of wood were being shoved in from the hall. Gradually she recalled that Geert had spoken the evening before of an electric bell, for which she did not have to search long. Close by her pillows was the little white ivory button, and she now pressed softly upon it.

Johanna appeared at once. "At your Ladyship's service."

"Oh, Johanna, I believe I have overslept myself. It must be late."

"Just nine."

"And my—" She couldn't make herself speak straightway of her "husband." "His Lordship, he must have kept very quiet. I didn't hear anything."

"I'm sure he did. And your Ladyship has slept soundly. After the long journey—"

"Yes, I have. And his Lordship, is he always up so early?"

"Always, your Ladyship. On that point he is strict; he cannot endure late sleeping, and when he enters his room across the hall the stove must be warm, and the coffee must not be late."

"So he has already had his breakfast?"

"Oh, no, your Ladyship—His Lordship—"

Effi felt that she ought not to have asked the question and would better have kept to herself the suspicion that Innstetten might not have waited for her. So she was very eager to correct her mistake the best she could, and when she had got up and taken a seat before the pier-glass she resumed the conversation, saying: "Moreover, his Lordship is quite right. Always to be up early was likewise the rule in my parents' home. When people sleep away the morning, everything is out of gear the rest of the day. But his Lordship will not be so strict with me. For a long time last night I couldn't sleep, and was even frightened a little bit."

"What must I hear, your Ladyship? What was it, pray?"

"There was a very strange noise overhead, not loud, but very penetrating. At first it sounded as though gowns with long trains were dragging over the floor, and in my excitement it seemed a few times as though I heard little white satin slippers. It seemed as though they were dancing overhead, but quite softly."

As the conversation ran on thus Johanna glanced over the shoulder of the young wife at the tall narrow mirror in order the better to observe Effi's facial expressions. In reply she said: "Oh, yes, that is up in the social room. We used to hear it in the kitchen, too. But now we don't hear it any more; we have become accustomed to it."

"Is there anything unusual about it?"

"God forbid, not in the least. For a while no one knew for sure what it came from, and even the preacher looked embarrassed, in spite of the fact that Dr. Gieshuebler always simply laughed at it. But now we know that it comes from the curtains. The room is inclined to be musty and damp, and for that reason the windows are always left open, except when there is a storm. And so, as there is nearly always a strong draft upstairs, the wind sweeps the old white curtains, which I think are much too long, back and forth over the floor. That makes a sound like silk dresses, or even satin slippers, as your Ladyship just said."

"That is it, of course. But what I cannot understand is why the curtains are not taken down. Or they might be made shorter. It is such a queer noise that it gets on one's nerves. And now, Johanna, give me the little cape and put just a little dab of powder on my forehead. Or, better still, take the 'refresher' from my traveling bag—Ah, that is fine and refreshes me. Now I am ready to go over. He is still there, isn't he, or has he been out?"

"His Lordship went out earlier; I believe he was over at the office. But he has been back for a quarter of an hour. I will tell Frederick to bring the breakfast."

With that Johanna left the room. Effi took one more look into the mirror and then walked across the hall, which in the daylight lost much of its charm of the evening before, and stepped into Geert's room.

He was sitting at his secretary, a rather clumsy cylindrical desk, which, however, he did not care to part with, as it was an heirloom. Effi was standing behind him, and had embraced and kissed him before he could rise from his chair.

"So early?"

"So early, you say. Of course, to mock me."

Innstetten shook his head. "How can I?" Effi took pleasure in accusing herself, however, and refused to listen to the assurances of her husband that his "so early" had been meant in all seriousness. "You must know from our journey that I have never kept you waiting in the morning. In the course of the day—well, that is a different matter. It is true, I am not very punctual, but I am not a late sleeper. In that respect my parents have given me good training, I think."

"In that respect? In everything, my sweet Effi."

"You say that just because we are still on our honeymoon,—why no, we are past that already. For heaven's sake, Geert, I hadn't given it a single thought, and—why, we have been married for over six weeks, six weeks and a day. Yes, that alters the case. So I shall not take it as flattery, I shall take it as the truth."

At this moment Frederick came in and brought the coffee. The breakfast table stood across the corner of the sitting room in front of a sofa made just in the right shape and size to fill that corner. They both sat down upon the sofa.

"The coffee is simply delicious," said Effi, as she looked at the room and its furnishings. "This is as good as hotel coffee or that we had at Bottegone's—you remember, don't you, in Florence, with the view of the cathedral? I must write mama about it. We don't have such coffee in Hohen-Cremmen. On the whole, Geert, I am just beginning to realize what a distinguished husband I married. In our home everything was just barely passable."

"Nonsense, Effi. I never saw better house-keeping than in your home."

"And then how well your house is furnished. When papa had bought his new weapon cabinet and hung above his writing desk the head of a buffalo, and beneath that a picture of old general Wrangel, under whom he had once served as an adjutant, he was very proud of what he had done. But when I see these things here, all our Hohen-Cremmen elegance seems by the side of them merely commonplace and meagre. I don't know what to compare them with. Even last night, when I took but a cursory look at them, a world of ideas occurred to me."

"And what were they, if I may ask?"

"What they were? Certainly. But you must not laugh at them. I once had a picture book, in which a Persian or Indian prince (for he wore a turban) sat with his feet under him on a silk cushion, and at his back there was a great red silk bolster, which could be seen bulging out to the right and left of him, and the wall behind the Indian prince bristled with swords and daggers and panther skins and shields and long Turkish guns. And see, it looks just like that here in your house, and if you will cross your legs and sit down on them the similarity will be complete."

"Effi, you are a charming, dear creature. You don't know how deeply I feel that and how much I should like to show you every moment that I do feel it."

"Well, there will be plenty of time for that. I am only seventeen, you know, and have not yet made up my mind to die."

"At least not before I do. To be sure, if I should die first, I should like to take you with me. I do not want to leave you to any other man. What do you say to that?"

"Oh, I must have some time to think about it. Or, rather, let us not think about it at all. I don't like to talk about death; I am for life. And now tell me, how shall we live here? On our travels you told me all sorts of queer things about the city and the country, but not a word about how we shall live here. That here nothing is the same as in Hohen-Cremmen and Schwantikow, I see plainly, and yet we must be able to have something like intercourse and society in 'good Kessin,' as you are always calling it. Have you any people of family in the city?"

"No, my dear Effi. In this regard you are going to meet with great disappointments. We have in the neighborhood a few noble families with which you will become acquainted, but here in the city there is nobody at all."

"Nobody at all? That I can't believe. Why, you are upward of three thousand people, and among three thousand people there certainly must be, beside such inferior individuals as Barber Beza (I believe that was his name), a certain elite, officials and the like."

Innstetten laughed. "Yes, officials there are. But when you examine them narrowly it doesn't mean much. Of course, we have a preacher and a judge and a school principal and a commander of pilots, and of such people in official positions I presume there may be as many as a dozen altogether, but they are for the most part, as the proverb says, good men, but poor fiddlers. And all the others are nothing but consuls."

"Nothing but consuls! I beg you, Geert, how can you say 'nothing but consuls?' Why, they are very high and grand, and, I might almost say, awe-inspiring individuals. Consuls, I thought, were the men with the bundles of rods, out of which an ax blade projected."

"Not quite, Effi. Those men are called lictors."

"Right, they are called lictors. But consuls are also men of very high rank and authority. Brutus was a consul, was he not?"

"Yes, Brutus was a consul. But ours are not very much like him and are content to handle sugar and coffee, or open a case of oranges and sell them to you at ten pfennigs apiece."

"Not possible."

"Indeed it is certain. They are tricky little tradesmen, who are always at hand with their advice on any question of business, when foreign vessels put in here and are at a loss to know what to do. And when they have given advice and rendered service to some Dutch or Portuguese vessel, they are likely in the end to become accredited representatives of such foreign states, and so we have just as many consuls in Kessin as we have ambassadors and envoys in Berlin. Then whenever there is a holiday, and we have many holidays here, all the flags are hoisted, and, if we happen to have a bright sunny morning, on such days you can see all Europe flying flags from our roofs, and the star-spangled banner and the Chinese dragon besides."

"You are in a scoffing mood, Geert, and yet you may be right. But I for my part, insignificant though I be, must confess, that I consider all this charming and that our Havelland cities are nothing in comparison. When the Emperor's birthday is celebrated in our region the only flags hoisted are just the black and white, with perhaps a bit of red here and there, but that is not to be compared with the world of flags you speak of. Generally speaking, I find over and over again, as I have already said, that everything here has a certain foreign air about it, and I have not yet seen or heard a thing that has not more or less amazed me. Yesterday evening, for example, there was that remarkable ship out in the hall, and behind it the shark and the crocodile. And here your own room. Everything so oriental and, I cannot help repeating, everything as in the palace of an Indian prince."

"Well and good! I congratulate you, Princess."

"And then upstairs the social room with its long curtains, which sweep over the floor."

"Now what, pray, do you know about that room?"

"Nothing beyond what I just told you. For about an hour while I lay awake in the night it seemed to me as though I heard shoes gliding over the floor, and as though there were dancing, and something almost like music, too. But all very quiet. I told Johanna about it this morning, merely in order to excuse myself for sleeping so long afterwards. She told me that it came from the long curtains up in the social room. I think we shall put a stop to that by cutting off a piece of the curtains or at least closing the windows. The weather will soon turn stormy enough, anyhow. The middle of November is the time, you know."

Innstetten was a trifle embarrassed and sat with a puzzled look on his face, seemingly undecided whether or not he should attempt to allay all these fears. Finally he made up his mind to ignore them. "You are quite right, Effi, we can shorten the long curtains upstairs. But there is no hurry about it, especially as it is not certain whether it will do any good. It may be something else, in the chimney, or a worm in the wood, or a polecat. For we have polecats here. But, in any case, before we undertake any changes you must first examine our whole house, under my guidance; that goes without saying. We can do it in a quarter of an hour. Then you make your toilette, dress up just a little bit, for in reality you are most charming as you are now. You must get ready for our friend Gieshuebler. It is now past ten, and I should be very much mistaken in him if he did not put in his appearance here at eleven, or at twelve at the very latest, in order most devotedly to lay his homage at your feet. This, by the way, is the kind of language he indulges in. Otherwise he is, as I have already said, a capital man, who will become your friend, if I know him and you aright."



CHAPTER VIII

It was long after eleven, but nothing had been seen of Gieshuebler as yet. "I can't wait any longer," Geert had said, whose duties called him away. "If Gieshuebler comes while I am gone, receive him as kindly as possible and the call will go especially well. He must not become embarrassed. When he is ill at ease he cannot find a word to say, or says the queerest kind of things. But if you can win his confidence and put him in a good humor he will talk like a book. Well, you will do that easily enough. Don't expect me before three; there is a great deal to do over across the way. And the matter of the room upstairs we will consider further. Doubtless, the best thing will be to leave it as it is."

With that Innstetten went away and left his young wife alone. She sat, leaning back, in a quiet, snug corner by the window, and, as she looked out, rested her left arm on a small side leaf drawn out of the cylindrical desk. The street was the chief thoroughfare leading to the beach, for which reason there was a great deal of traffic here in the summer time, but now, in the middle of November, it was all empty and quiet, and only a few poor children, whose parents lived in thatched cottages clear at the further edge of the "Plantation" came clattering by in their wooden shoes. But Effi felt none of this loneliness, for her fancy was still engaged with the strange things she had seen a short time before during her examination of the house.

This examination began with the kitchen, which had a range of modern make, while an electric wire ran along the ceiling and into the maids' room. These two improvements had only recently been made, and Effi was pleased when Innstetten told her about them. Next they went from the kitchen back into the hall and from there out into the court, the first half of which was little more than a narrow passage-way running along between the two side wings of the house. In these wings were to be found all the other rooms set apart for house-keeping purposes. In the right the maids' room, the manservant's room, and the mangling room; to the left the coachman's quarters, situated between the stable and the carriage shed and occupied by the Kruse family. Over this room was the chicken house, while a trap door in the roof of the stable furnished ingress and egress for the pigeons. Effi had inspected all these parts of the house with a great deal of interest, but this interest was exceeded by far when, upon returning from the court to the front of the house, she followed Innstetten's leading and climbed the stairway to the upper story. The stairs were askew, ramshackly, and dark; but the hall, to which they led, almost gave one a cheerful sensation, because it had a great deal of light and a good view of the surrounding landscape. In one direction it looked out over the roofs of the outskirts of the city and the "Plantation," toward a Dutch windmill standing high up on a dune; in the other it looked out upon the Kessine, which here, just above its mouth, was rather broad and stately. It was a striking view and Effi did not hesitate to give lively expression to her pleasure. "Yes, very beautiful, very picturesque," answered Innstetten, without going more into detail, and then opened a double door to the right, with leaves hanging somewhat askew, which led into the so-called social room. This room ran clear across the whole story. Both front and back windows were open and the oft-mentioned curtains swung back and forth in the strong draft. From the middle of one side wall projected an open fireplace with a large stone mantlepiece, while on the opposite wall there hung a few tin candlesticks, each with two candle sockets, just like those downstairs in the hall, except that everything looked dingy and neglected. Effi was somewhat disappointed and frankly said so. Then she remarked that she would rather look at the rooms across the hall than at this miserable, deserted social room. "To tell the truth, there is absolutely nothing over there," answered Innstetten, but he opened the doors nevertheless. Here were four rooms with one window each, all tinted yellow, to match the social room, and all completely empty, except that in one there stood three rush-bottomed chairs, with seats broken through. On the back of one was pasted a little picture, only half a finger long, representing a Chinaman in blue coat and wide yellow trousers, with a low-crowned hat on his head. Effi saw it and said: "What is the Chinaman doing here?" Innstetten himself seemed surprised at the picture and assured her that he did not know. "Either Christel or Johanna has pasted it there. Child's play. You can see it is cut out of a primer." Effi agreed with that and was only surprised that Innstetten took everything so seriously, as though it meant something after all.

Then she cast another glance into the social room and said, in effect, that it was really a pity all that room should stand empty. "We have only three rooms downstairs and if anybody comes to visit us we shall not know whither to turn. Don't you think one could make two handsome guest rooms out of the social room? This would just suit mama. She could sleep in the back room and would have the view of the river and the two moles, and from the front room she could see the city and the Dutch windmill. In Hohen-Cremmen we have even to this day only a German windmill. Now say, what do you think of it? Next May mama will surely come."

Innstetten agreed to everything, only he said finally: "That is all very well. But after all it will be better if we give your mama rooms over in the district councillor's office building. The whole second story is vacant there, just as it is here, and she will have more privacy there."

That was the result, so to speak, which the first walk around through the house accomplished. Effi then made her toilette, but not so quickly as Innstetten had supposed, and now she was sitting in her husband's room, turning her thoughts first to the little Chinaman upstairs, then to Gieshuebler, who still did not come. To be sure, a quarter of an hour before, a stoop-shouldered and almost deformed little gentleman in an elegant short fur coat and a very smooth-brushed silk hat, too tall for his proportions, had walked past on the other side of the street and had glanced over at her window. But that could hardly have been Gieshuebler. No, this stoop-shouldered man, who had such a distinguished air about him, must have been the presiding judge, and she recalled then that she had once seen such a person at a reception given by Aunt Therese, but it suddenly occurred to her that Kessin had only a lower court judge.

While she was still following out this chain of thought the object of her reflections, who had apparently been taking a morning stroll, or perhaps a promenade around the "Plantation" to bolster up his courage, came in sight again, and a minute later Frederick entered to announce Apothecary Gieshuebler.

"Ask him kindly to come in."

The poor young wife's heart fluttered, for it was the first time that she had to appear as a housewife, to say nothing of the first woman of the city.

Frederick helped Gieshuebler take off his fur coat and then opened the door.

Effi extended her hand to the timidly entering caller, who kissed it with a certain amount of fervor. The young wife seemed to have made a great impression upon him immediately.

"My husband has already told me—But I am receiving you here in my husband's room,—he is over at the office and may be back any moment. May I ask you to step into my room?"

Gieshuebler followed Effi, who led the way into the adjoining room, where she pointed to one of the arm chairs, as she herself sat down on the sofa. "I wish I could tell you what a great pleasure it was yesterday to receive the beautiful flowers with your card. I straightway ceased to feel myself a stranger here and when I mentioned the fact to Innstetten he told me we should unquestionably be good friends."

"Did he say that? The good councillor. In the councillor and you, most gracious Lady,—I beg your permission to say it—two dear people have been united. For what kind of a man your husband is, I know, and what kind of a woman you are, most gracious Lady, I see."

"Provided only you do not look at me with too friendly eyes. I am so very young. And youth—"

"Ah, most gracious Lady, say nothing against youth. Youth, even with all its mistakes, is still beautiful and lovable, and age, even with its virtues, is not good for much. Personally I have, it is true, no right to say anything about this subject. About age I might have, perhaps, but not about youth, for, to be frank, I was never young. Persons with my misfortune are never young. That, it may as well be said, is the saddest feature of the case. One has no true spirit, one has no self-confidence, one hardly ventures to ask a lady for the honor of a dance, because one does not desire to cause her an embarrassment, and thus the years go by and one grows old, and life has been poor and empty."

Effi gave him her hand. "Oh, you must not say such things. We women are by no means so bad."

"Oh, no, certainly not."

"And when I recall," continued Effi, "what all I have experienced—it is not much, for I have gone out but little, and have almost always lived in the country—but when I recall it, I find that, after all, we always love what is worthy of love. And then I see, too, at once that you are different from other men. We women have sharp eyes in such matters. Perhaps in your case the name has something to do with it. That was always a favorite assertion of our old pastor Niemeyer. The name, he loved to say, especially the forename, has a certain mysterious determining influence; and Alonzo Gieshuebler, in my opinion, opens to one a whole new world, indeed I feel almost tempted to say, Alonzo is a romantic name, a fastidious name."

Gieshuebler smiled with a very unusual degree of satisfaction and mustered up the courage to lay aside his silk hat, which up to this time he had been turning in his hand. "Yes, most gracious Lady, you hit the nail on the head that time."

Oh, I understand. I have heard about the consuls, of Kessin is said to have so many, and at the home of the Spanish consul your father presumably made the acquaintance of the daughter of a sea-captain, a beautiful Andalusian girl, I suppose; Andalusian girls are always beautiful."

"Precisely as you suppose, most gracious Lady. And my mother really was a beautiful woman, ill as it behooves me personally to undertake to prove it. But when your husband came here three years ago she was still alive and still had the same fiery eyes as in her youth. He will confirm my statement. I personally take more after the Gieshueblers, who are people of little account, so far as external features are concerned, but otherwise tolerably well favored. We have been living here now for four generations, a full hundred years, and if there were an apothecary nobility—"

"You would have a right to claim it. And I, for my part, accept your claim as proved, and that beyond question. For us who come of old families it is a very easy matter, because we gladly recognize every sort of noble-mindedness, no matter from what source it may come. At least that is the way I was brought up by my father, as well as by my mother. I am a Briest by birth and am descended from the Briest, who, the day before the battle of Fehrbellin, led the sudden attack on Rathenow, of which you may perhaps have heard."

"Oh, certainly, most gracious Lady, that, you know, is my specialty."

"Well then I am a von Briest. And my father has said to me more than a hundred times: Effi,—for that is my name—Effi, here is our beginning, and here only. When Froben traded the horse, he was that moment a nobleman, and when Luther said, 'here I stand,' he was more than ever a nobleman. And I think, Mr. Gieshuebler, Innstetten was quite right when he assured me you and I should be good friends."

Gieshuebler would have liked nothing better than to make her a declaration of love then and there, and to ask that he might fight and die for her as a Cid or some other campeador. But as that was out of the question, and his heart could no longer endure the situation, he arose from his seat, looked for his hat, which he fortunately found at once, and, after again kissing the young wife's hand, withdrew quickly from her presence without saying another word.



CHAPTER IX

Such was Effi's first day in Kessin. Innstetten gave her half a week further time to become settled and write letters to her mother, Hulda, and the twins. Then the city calls began, some of which were made in a closed carriage, for the rains came just right to make this unusual procedure seem the sensible thing to do. When all the city calls had been made the country nobility came next in order. These took longer, as in most cases the distances were so great that it was not possible to make more than one visit on any one day. First they went to the Borckes' in Rothenmoor, then to Morgnitz, Dabergotz, and Kroschentin, where they made their duty call at the Ahlemanns', the Jatzkows', and the Grasenabbs'. Further down the list came, among other families, that of Baron von Gueldenklee in Papenhagen. The impression that Effi received was everywhere the same. Mediocre people, whose friendliness was for the most part of an uncertain character, and who, while pretending to speak of Bismarck and the Crown Princess, were in reality merely scrutinizing Effi's dress, which some considered too pretentious for so youthful a woman, while others looked upon it as too little suited to a lady of social position. Everything about her, they said, betrayed the Berlin school,—sense in external matters and a remarkable degree of uncertainty and embarrassment in the discussion of great problems. At the Borckes', and also at the homes in Morgnitz and Dabergotz, she had been declared "infected with rationalism," but at the Grasenabbs' she was pronounced point-blank an "atheist." To be sure, the elderly Mrs. Grasenabb, nee Stiefel, of Stiefelstein in South Germany, had made a weak attempt to save Effi at least for deism. But Sidonie von Grasenabb, an old maid of forty-three, had gruffly interjected the remark: "I tell you, mother, simply an atheist, and nothing short of an atheist, and that settles it." After this outburst the old woman, who was afraid of her own daughter, had observed discreet silence.

The whole round had taken just about two weeks, and at a late hour on the second day of December the Innstettens were returning home from their last visit. At the Gueldenklees' Innstetten had met with the inevitable fate of having to argue politics with old Mr. Gueldenklee. "Yes, dearest district councillor, when I consider how times have changed! A generation ago today, or about that long, there was, you know, another second of December, and good Louis, the nephew of Napoleon—if he was his nephew, and not in reality of entirely different extraction—was firing grape and canister at the Parisian mob. Oh well, let him be forgiven for that; he was just the man to do it, and I hold to the theory that every man fares exactly as well and as ill as he deserves. But when he later lost all appreciation and in the year seventy, without any provocation, was determined to have a bout with us, you see, Baron, that was—well, what shall I say?—that was a piece of insolence. But he was repaid for it in his own coin. Our Ancient of Days up there is not to be trifled with and He is on our side."

"Yes," said Innstetten, who was wise enough to appear to be entering seriously into such Philistine discussions, "the hero and conqueror of Saarbruecken did not know what he was doing. But you must not be too strict in your judgment of him personally. After all, who is master in his own house? Nobody. I myself am already making preparations to put the reins of government into other hands, and Louis Napoleon, you know, was simply a piece of wax in the hands of his Catholic wife, or let us say, rather, of his Jesuit wife."

"Wax in the hands of his wife, who proceeded to bamboozle him. Certainly, Innstetten, that is just what he was. But you don't think, do you, that that is going to save him? He is forever condemned. Moreover it has never yet been shown conclusively"—at these words his glance sought rather timorously the eye of his better half—"that petticoat government is not really to be considered an advantage. Only, of course, it must be the right sort of a wife. But who was this wife? She was not a wife at all. The most charitable thing to call her is a 'dame,' and that tells the whole story. 'Dame' almost always leaves an after-taste. This Eugenie—whose relation to the Jewish banker I gladly ignore here, for I hate the 'I-am-holier-than-thou' attitude—had a streak of the cafe-chantant in her, and, if the city in which she lived was a Babylon, she was a wife of Babylon. I don't care to express myself more plainly, for I know"—and he bowed toward Effi—"what I owe to German wives. Your pardon, most gracious Lady, that I have so much as touched upon these things within your hearing."

Such had been the trend of the conversation, after they had talked about the election, the assassin Nobiling, and the rape crop, and when Innstetten and Effi reached home they sat down to chat for half an hour. The two housemaids were already in bed, for it was nearly midnight.

Innstetten put on his short house coat and morocco slippers, and began to walk up and down in the room; Effi was still dressed in her society gown, and her fan and gloves lay beside her.

"Now," said Innstetten, standing still, "we really ought to celebrate this day, but I don't know as yet how. Shall I play you a triumphal march, or set the shark going out there, or carry you in triumph across the hall? Something must be done, for I would have you know, this visit today was the last one."

"Thank heaven, if it was," said Effi. "But the feeling that we now have peace and quiet is, I think, celebration enough in itself. Only you might give me a kiss. But that doesn't occur to you. On that whole long road not a touch, frosty as a snow-man. And never a thing but your cigar."

"Forget that, I am going to reform, but at present I merely want to know your attitude toward this whole question of friendly relations and social intercourse. Do you feel drawn to one or another of these new acquaintances? Have the Borckes won the victory over the Grasenabbs, or vice versa, or do you side with old Mr. Gueldenklee? What he said about Eugenie made a very noble and pure impression, don't you think so?"

"Aha, behold! Sir Geert von Innstetten is a gossip. I am learning to know you from an entirely new side."

"And if our nobility will not do," continued Innstetten, without allowing himself to be interrupted, "what do you think of the city officials of Kessin? What do you think of the club? After all, life and death depend upon your answer. Recently I saw you talking with our judge, who is a lieutenant of the reserves, a neat little man that one might perhaps get along with, if he could only rid himself of the notion that he accomplished the recapture of Le Bourget by attacking him on the flank. And his wife! She is considered our best Boston player and has, besides, the prettiest counters. So once more, Effi, how is it going to be in Kessin? Will you become accustomed to the place? Will you be popular and assure me a majority when I want to go to the Imperial Diet? Or do you favor a life of seclusion, holding yourself aloof from the people of Kessin, in the city as well as in the country?"

"I shall probably decide in favor of a secluded life, unless the Apothecary at the sign of the Moor draws me out. To be sure, that will make me fall still lower in Sidonie's estimation, but I shall have to take the risk. This fight will simply have to be fought. I shall stand or fall with Gieshuebler. It sounds rather comical, but he is actually the only person with whom it is possible to carry on a conversation, the only real human being here."

"That he is," said Innstetten. "How well you choose!"

"Should I have you otherwise?" said Effi and leaned upon his arm.

That was on the 2d of December. A week later Bismarck was in Varzin, and Innstetten now knew that until Christmas, and perhaps even for a longer time, quiet days for him were not to be thought of. The Prince had cherished a fondness for him ever since the days in Versailles, and would often invite him to dinner, along with other guests, but also alone, for the youthful district councillor, distinguished alike for his bearing and his wisdom, enjoyed the favor of the Princess also.

The first invitation came for the 14th. As there was snow on the ground Innstetten planned to take a sleigh for the two hours' drive to the station, from which he had another hour's ride by train. "Don't wait for me, Effi. I can't be back before midnight; it will probably be two o'clock or even later. But I'll not disturb you. Good-by, I'll see you in the morning." With that he climbed into the sleigh and away the Isabella-colored span flew through the city and across the country toward the station.

That was the first long separation, for almost twelve hours. Poor Effi! How was she to pass the evening? To go to bed early would be inadvisable, for she would wake up and not be able to go to sleep again, and would listen for every sound. No, it would be best to wait till she was very tired and then enjoy a sound sleep. She wrote a letter to her mother and then went to see Mrs. Kruse, whose condition aroused her sympathy. This poor woman had the habit of sitting till late at night with the black chicken in her lap. The friendliness the visit was meant to show was by no means returned by Mrs. Kruse, who sat in her overheated room quietly brooding away the time. So when Effi perceived that her coming was felt as a disturbance rather than a pleasure she went away, staying merely long enough to ask whether there was anything the invalid would like to have. But all offers of assistance were declined.

Meanwhile it had become evening and the lamp was already burning. Effi walked over to the window of her room and looked out at the grove, whose trees were covered with glistening snow. She was completely absorbed in the picture and took no notice of what was going on behind her in the room. When she turned around she observed that Frederick had quietly put the coffee tray on the table before the sofa and set a place for her. "Why, yes, supper. I must sit down, I suppose." But she could not make herself eat. So she got up from the table and reread the letter she had written to her mother. If she had had a feeling of loneliness before, it was doubly intense now. What would she not have given if the two sandy-haired Jahnkes had just stepped in, or even Hulda? The latter, to be sure, was always so sentimental and as a usual thing occupied solely with her own triumphs. But doubtful and insecure as these triumphs were, nevertheless Effi would be very happy to be told about them at this moment. Finally she opened the grand piano to play some music, but she could not play. "No, this will make me hopelessly melancholy; I will read, rather." She looked for a book, and the first to fall into her hands was a thick red tourist's handbook, an old edition, perhaps from the days when Innstetten was a lieutenant. "Yes, I will read in this book; there is nothing more quieting than books like this. Only the maps should always be avoided. But I shall guard against this source of sand in the eyes, which I hate."

She opened the book at random at page 153. In the adjoining room she heard the tick-tock of the clock, and out of doors Rollo, who at nightfall had left his place in the shed, as was his custom every evening, and had stretched himself out on the large woven mat just outside the bedroom door. The consciousness that he was near at hand decreased Effi's feeling that she was forsaken. In fact, it almost put her in a cheerful mood, and so she began, without further delay, to read. On the page lying open before her there was something about the "Hermitage," the well country-seat of the Margrave in the neighborhood of Beireuth. It attracted her attention. Beireuth, Richard Wagner. So she read: "Among the pictures in the 'Hermitage' let us mention one more, which not because of its beauty, but because of its age and the person it represents, may well claim our interest. It is a woman's portrait, which has grown dark with age. The head is small, the face has harsh, rather uncanny features, and she wears a ruff which seems to support her head. Some think it is an old margravine from the end of the 15th century, others are of the opinion that it is the Countess of Orlamunde. All are agreed that it is the picture of the Lady who since that time has achieved a certain notoriety in the history of the Hohenzollern dynasty under the name of the 'Lady in white.'"

"That was a lucky accident!" said Effi, as she shoved the book aside. "I seek to quiet my nerves, and the first thing I run into is the story of the 'Lady in white,' of whom I have been afraid as long as I can remember. But inasmuch as I already have a creepy feeling I might as well finish the story."

She opened the book again and read further: "This old portrait itself, the original of which plays such a role in Hohenzollern history, has likewise a significance as a picture in the special history of the Hermitage. No doubt, one circumstance that has something to do with this is the fact that the picture hangs on a papered door, which is invisible to the stranger and behind which there is a stairway leading down into the cellar. It is said that when Napoleon spent the night here the 'Lady in white' stepped out of the frame and walked up to his bed. The Emperor, starting with fright, the story continues, called for his adjutant, and to the end of his life always spoke with exasperation of this 'cursed palace.'"

"I must give up trying to calm myself by reading," said Effi. "If I read further, I shall certainly come to a vaulted cellar that the devil once rode out of on a wine cask. There are several of these in Germany, I believe, and in a tourist's handbook all such things have to be collected; that goes without saying. So I will close my eyes, rather, and recall my wedding-eve celebration as well as I can,—how the twins could not get any farther because of their tears, and how, when everybody looked at everybody else with embarrassment, Cousin von Briest declared that such tears opened the gate to Paradise. He was truly charming and always in such exuberant spirits. And look at me now! Here, of all places! Oh, I am not at all suited to be a grand Lady. Now mama, she would have fitted this position, she would have sounded the key-note, as behooves the wife of a district councillor, and Sidonie Grasenabb would have been all homage toward her and would not have been greatly disturbed about her belief or unbelief. But I—I am a child and shall probably remain one, too. I once heard that it is a good fortune. But I don't know whether that is true. Obviously a wife ought always to adapt herself to the position in which she is placed."

At this moment Frederick came to clear off the table.

"How late is it, Frederick?"

"It is going on nine, your Ladyship."

"Well, that is worth listening to. Send Johanna to me."

* * * * *

"Your Ladyship sent for me."

"Yes, Johanna; I want to go to bed. It is still early, to be sure, but I am so alone. Please go out first and post this letter, and when you come back it will surely be time. And even if it isn't."

Effi took the lamp and walked over to her bedroom. Just as she had expected, there lay Rollo on the rush mat. When he saw her coming he arose to make room for her to pass, and rubbed his ear against her hand. Then he lay down again.

Meanwhile Johanna had gone over to the office to post the letter. Over there she had been in no particular hurry; on the contrary, she had preferred to carry on a conversation with Mrs. Paaschen, the wife of the janitor of the building. About the young wife, of course.

"What kind of a woman is she anyhow?" asked Mrs. Paaschen.

"She is very young."

"Well, that is no misfortune, but rather the opposite. Young wives, and that is just the good thing about them, never do anything but stand before the mirror and pull at themselves and put on some ornament. They don't see much or hear much and have not yet formed the habit of counting the stubs of candles in the kitchen, and they don't begrudge a maid a kiss if she gets one, simply because she herself no longer gets any."