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. Gieshübler 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 élite, 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 Gieshübler. 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."