Effi was not much pleased with this company and would rather have made the journey alone; but she had no choice, and so Fräulein Sidonie climbed in and hardly had the two ladies taken their seats when Kruse gave the horses a crack of his whip, and they set off down the head forester’s drive, from which they had a magnificent view of the sea, down some rather steep dunes towards the beach road which ran in an almost straight line for five miles to the Kessin Strand Hotel and then took a right turn through the Plantation and on into the town. No snow had fallen for a few hours, the air was fresh and the dim light of the crescent moon fell on the wide expanse of the darkening sea. Kruse drove along the very edge of the water, sometimes cutting through the foam on the breakers, and Effi, who was shivering a little, wrapped herself up tighter in her cloak, maintaining a prolonged and deliberate silence. She knew very well that the talk about the ‘stuffy coach’ had simply been a pretext, and that Sidonie had only joined her in order to tell her something unpleasant, which she was in no hurry to hear. Besides, she really was tired, perhaps from the walk in the forest, perhaps from the head forester’s punch too. Persuaded by Frau von Flemming who had been sitting beside her, she had addressed herself to it with a will. So she pretended to be asleep, closed her eyes and leaned her head further and further to the left.
‘You shouldn’t lean so far to the left, my dear lady. If the sleigh goes over a stone you’ll be thrown out. Your sleigh doesn’t even have a safety strap, I see, not even the hook for one.’
‘I can’t bear safety straps, there’s something rather prosaic about them. And then, the idea of being thrown out appeals to me, especially straight into the breakers. Rather a chilly bath of course, but what of it… Can you hear anything by the way?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t hear something like music?’
‘An organ?’
‘No, not an organ. That would make me think it was just the sea. No, it’s something else, an infinitely delicate sound, almost like a human voice…’
‘It’s a hallucination,’ said Sidonie who judged that the moment had come for her to strike. ‘You’re ill, it’s your nerves. You’re hearing voices. Pray God that you may hear the right voice too.’
‘I hear… well, of course it’s too silly, I know, otherwise I’d imagine I’d heard the mermaids singing… But tell me, what’s that? There’s something flashing high up into the sky. It must be the northern lights.’
‘Yes,’ said Sidonie. ‘Your ladyship behaves as if it were one of the wonders of the world. It’s no such thing. And if it were, we have to be on our guard against the cult of nature. It’s lucky by the way that we’re out of range and don’t have to listen to the head forester, that vainest of men, talking about the northern lights. He’d imagine the heavens were doing it for his benefit, I’ll be bound, to add a still more festive touch to his festivities. He’s a fool. Güldenklee could have found something better to do than toast him. And now he’s currying favour with the church, he recently made a presentation of an altar-cloth. Perhaps Cora had a hand in the embroidery. These hypocrites are to blame for everything, because their material interests are always uppermost and are added to the burden of those of us who are earnestly trying to save their souls.’
‘It’s so difficult to see into people’s hearts.’
‘Yes. It is. Except that in some cases it’s quite easy.’ Saying which she directed a penetrating look at the young woman, indeed one that bordered on effrontery.
Effi was silent and turned aside impatiently.
‘I say, in some cases it’s quite easy,’ repeated Sidonie, who had achieved her object, and so continued with an unruffled smile, ‘and our head forester is one of those transparent puzzles. I pity anybody who brings up children as he does, but there is one good thing about it, namely that it’s all plain to see in his case. And it’s just as true of his daughters. Cora will go to America and become a millionairess, or a Methodist preacher; whichever it is, she’s a lost woman. I’ve never seen a fourteen-year-old…’
At that moment the sleigh stopped and when the two ladies looked round to discover what the matter was, they noticed that to their right, about thirty paces from them, the other two sleighs had also stopped – farthest away on the right the one Innstetten was driving, closer to them Crampas’s.
‘What is it?’ asked Effi.
Kruse turned half-round and said, ‘The Schloon, m’lady.’
‘The Schloon? What’s that? I don’t see anything.’
Kruse shook his head from one side to the other as if to say the question was more easily asked than answered. In which he was right. For nobody could say in so many words what the Schloon was. But at this awkward moment Fräulein Sidonie quickly came to his assistance, knowing as she did all about everything in these parts including, naturally, the Schloon.
‘Yes, my dear lady,’ said Sidonie, ‘things look bad. Not so much for me, I shall get through easily enough; because the coaches will be along soon, and they have big wheels and anyway our horses are used to this. But with these sleighs it’s a different matter; they get bogged down in the Schloon, so for better or worse you will have to make a detour.’
‘Bogged down! I’m afraid, my dear Fräulein Sidonie, I still don’t see at all. Is the Schloon a crevasse or something that will swallow up man and beast? I can’t imagine anything like that in this part of the world.’
‘Well, it is something very like that, but on a smaller scale; the Schloon is actually nothing but a miserable little stream that comes down here on the right from Lake Gothen and trickles through the dunes. In the summer it sometimes dries up completely and you drive over it without even noticing.’
‘And in the winter?’
‘Ah well, in the winter it’s a different story; not always, but often. Then it turns into a Soog.’
‘Goodness me, all these names, these words!’
‘Then it turns into a Soog, which is at its worst when the wind is blowing off the sea. Then the wind drives the sea water up into the little channel, but not so that you can see it. That’s the worst part of the whole thing. That’s what’s really dangerous. It all happens underground and the sand on the beach is saturated and full of water to a fair depth. And if you try to cross a stretch of sand like that, which actually isn’t sand any more, you sink in as if it were a marsh or a bog.’
‘I know about that,’ said Effi brightly. ‘It’s just like our Luch’, and in the midst of her fears she had a sudden sense of melancholy pleasure.
As this conversation was going on Crampas had got down from his sleigh and walked over to Gieshübler’s which had stopped on the far right, to arrange with Innstetten what was to be done now. Knut, he announced, was willing to chance going through, but Knut was stupid and didn’t know what he was talking about; it was something local people must decide. Innstetten, to Crampas’s astonishment, was also for ‘chancing it’, they had to give it another try – he had seen it before, it was always the same story: these folk had some superstition based on their fears, which were quite unjustified. And it wasn’t to be Knut, who didn’t know what he was doing, but Kruse who would take another run at it, and Crampas was to climb in with the ladies (there was a small seat free at the back), to be on hand if the sleigh overturned. That was after all the worst that could happen.
Crampas now appeared alongside the two ladies with the message from Innstetten and laughed as he carried out his orders, installing himself as instructed on the small seat, which was actually only a cloth-covered rail, and shouting, ‘Off we go then Kruse!’
Kruse had already brought the horses back a hundred paces and was hoping to bring the sleigh through safely by taking a good run at it. But the moment the horses touched the Schloon they sank over their ankles into the sand, and had difficulty in backing out again.
‘It can’t be done,’ said Crampas, and Kruse nodded.
While all this was happening the coaches had come up at last, the Grasenabbs’ in the lead, and once Sido
nie had taken her leave with a brief word of thanks to Effi and had taken her back seat facing her father who was smoking his Turkish pipe, the coach advanced on the Schloon without further ado; the horses sank in deep, but the wheels cleared all danger easily, and in less than half a minute the Grasenabbs were trotting away on the other side. The other coaches followed. Effi looked after them, not without envy. But not for long, because in the meantime a solution had been worked out for the sleighs too, a simple one: Innstetten had decided not to force the issue further, but to take the more peaceful alternative, a detour. Exactly, then, what Sidonie had envisaged in the first place. The Landrat’s orders rang out incisively from the right: to stay for the time being on the present side and follow him through the dunes to a wooden bridge further up. When both drivers, Knut and Kruse, had received the message, the major, who had descended with Sidonie to be of assistance, came back to Effi and said, ‘I can’t leave you alone, my lady.’
Effi was momentarily undecided, then moved quickly from one side to the other and Crampas took the seat to her left.
All this might perhaps have been open to misinterpretation, but Crampas knew women well enough not to flatter his own vanity. He could see quite clearly that Effi was only doing the one thing that was proper in the circumstances. It was impossible for her to refuse his company. And so they raced after the other two sleighs, always staying close to the water, with thick dark woods towering on the other side. Effi looked at them and assumed they would eventually travel along the far, landward side of the forest, exactly the same way as they had come in the early afternoon. Innstetten now had other plans however, and as soon as his sleigh was over the wooden bridge, instead of taking the outer path, he turned into a narrower one through the thick woods. Effi shuddered. Up to that point she had had air and light about her, but not any longer, now the dark treetops arched over her. She began to shake and clenched her fingers together to get a hold on herself. Thoughts and images flashed through her mind, and one of them was the little mother in the poem ‘God’s Wall’, and just as the mother prayed, so too did she pray now that God might build a wall round her. Twice or three times the prayer passed her lips, but then all of a sudden she realized that these words were lifeless. She was afraid, but at the same time she felt as if she were under a spell from which she had no wish to escape.
‘Effi,’ she heard softly in her ear, his voice quivering. Then he took her hand and opened her fingers which she still held clasped together, and covered them with passionate kisses. She felt as if she were about to faint.
When she opened her eyes again they were out of the wood, and a short distance away she heard the bells of the sleighs hurrying on ahead. They became more and more audible, and as they turned from the dunes into the town just before Utpatel’s mill, the little houses with their snow-covered roofs lay on their right.
Effi looked around, and the next moment the sleigh stopped in front of the Landrat’s house.
20
Innstetten, who had watched Effi closely as he lifted her from the sleigh, though he had avoided any utterance about the strange ride à deux, was up early next morning and tried to master the displeasure, which still lingered, as best he could.
‘Did you sleep well?’ he said, when Effi came to breakfast.
‘Yes.’
‘Good for you. I can’t say the same myself. I dreamt you had an accident with the sleigh in the Schloon, and Crampas tried to rescue you; at least that’s how I have to describe it, but he went down with you.’
‘The way you said all that was quite peculiar, Geert. There’s some hidden reproach behind it and I can guess why.’
‘How very remarkable.’
‘You don’t think it was right for Crampas to come and offer us his help.’
‘Us?’
‘Yes, us. Sidonie and me. You must have completely forgotten that it was you who sent Crampas. And once he was sitting opposite me, uncomfortably enough by the way on that painfully narrow rail, was I supposed to turn him out when the Grasenabbs arrived and then all of a sudden the journey went on? I would have made myself look ridiculous, and that’s something you’re so sensitive about. You’ll recall that with your concurrence I’ve gone riding with him on many occasions, and on this occasion I was supposed not to ride with him? It’s wrong, we used to say at home, to show distrust towards a gentleman.’
‘Towards a gentleman,’ said Innstetten pointedly.
‘Isn’t he one? You yourself called him a cavalier, in fact a perfect cavalier.’
‘Yes,’ Innstetten went on, his voice becoming more friendly, though there was still a slight edge of derision in his tone. ‘A cavalier he is, and a perfect cavalier he most definitely is. But a gentleman! My dear Effi, a gentleman is something rather different. Have you ever seen a trace of the gentleman in the man? I haven’t.’
Effi avoided his gaze and said nothing.
‘We seem to be of one mind. And in any case, as you said, it was my own fault; I wouldn’t call it a faux pas, not exactly a happy expression in the circumstances. So, my fault and it won’t happen again, not if I can help it. But you too, if I may offer a word of advice, should be on your guard. He’s a man who doesn’t think twice about what he does and says, and he has his own ideas about young women. I know him of old.’
‘I shall bear in mind what you’ve said. Only, I think you misjudge him.’
‘I do not misjudge him.’
‘Or me,’ she said with an effort, and tried to meet his gaze.
‘Nor you either, my dear Effi. You’re a charming young woman, but firmness isn’t exactly your speciality.’
He got up to go. As he reached the door Friedrich came in to deliver a note from Gieshübler, which was of course addressed to the baroness. Effi took it. ‘A secret correspondence with Gieshübler,’ she said. ‘Further grounds for jealousy for my lord and master. Or isn’t it?’
‘No, not quite, my dear Effi. I’m foolish enough to make a distinction between Crampas and Gieshübler. They are not of the same carat. Carats can be a measure of purity in people too. I personally, if I may say so, far prefer Gieshübler’s white jabot, although nobody wears jabots any more, to Crampas’s golden red sapper’s beard. But I don’t imagine that’s the woman’s view.’
‘You think us weaker than we are.’
‘A comfort that is for practical purposes extraordinarily inconsequential. But let’s drop this. Read the letter instead.’
And Effi read:
May I enquire how my dear lady finds herself? All I know is that you safely escaped the Schloon: but there were hazards enough in travelling through the woods. Dr Hannemann is just back from Uvagla and has set my mind at rest regarding Mirambo; yesterday he thought the injury was more serious than he wanted to tell us, but not today. It was a delightful trip.
In three days we shall celebrate New Year. We shall have to make do without festivities the like of last year’s; but there will of course be a ball, and to have you favour the dancers with an appearance would bring joy to the entire assembly, not least to
Your humble servant,
Alonzo G.
Effi laughed. ‘Well, what do you say?’
‘What I said before, that I prefer to see you with Gieshübler than with Crampas.’
‘Because you take Crampas too seriously and Gieshübler not seriously enough.’
Innstetten wagged a finger at her in jest.
Three days later it was New Year’s Eve. Effi appeared in a charming ball-gown, one of her Christmas presents; she did not dance, but took a seat with the older ladies for whom armchairs were provided close by the musicians’ gallery. From the aristocratic families with whom the Innstettens consorted for preference no one had come, because shortly before a little contretemps had occurred with the town’s Club committee, which had yet again been accused by old Güldenklee of ‘radical tendencies’; three or four other aristocratic families had come however, who were not members but always came as guests, and whose estate
s lay on the other side of the Kessine; some of them had travelled a long distance over the frozen river, and they were delighted to join in the celebrations. Effi sat between the widow of old Ritterschaftsrat von Padden and the somewhat younger Frau von Titzewitz. The Ritterschaftsrat’s widow, a wonderful old lady and a real eccentric, attempted to counterbalance what nature had bestowed on her from the heathen, Wendish side, especially in the form of prominent high cheekbones, with strict observance of the Germanic Christian faith. She carried this strictness to such lengths that even Sidonie von Grasenabb seemed like a freethinker by comparison, but against this – perhaps because the Radegast and Swantowit branches of the family were united in her – she had the old von Padden sense of humour which had reposed in the family like a blessing for many a year, and delighted all who came into contact with her, even if they were opponents in church and politics.
‘Now tell me my child,’ said the Ritterschaftsrat’s widow, ‘how is life treating you, really?’
‘Well, my lady, I have a most excellent husband.’
‘I know. But that doesn’t always help. I also had an excellent husband. What about here? No hostility?’
Effi was startled and touched at the same time. There was something uncommonly pleasant in the free and natural tone in which the old lady spoke, and the fact that she was such a devout woman made it even more pleasant.
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