CHAPTER XXXII
Three years had passed and for almost that length of time Effi had been living in a small apartment on Königgrätz Street—a front room and back room, behind which was the kitchen with a servant's bedroom, everything as ordinary and commonplace as possible. And yet it was an unusually pretty apartment, that made an agreeable impression on everybody who saw it, the most agreeable perhaps on old Dr. Rummschüttel, who called now and then and had long ago forgiven the poor young wife, not only for the rheumatism and neuralgia farce of bygone years, but also for everything else that had happened in the meantime—if there was any need of forgiveness on his part, considering the very different cases he knew about. He was now far along in the seventies, but whenever Effi, who had been ailing considerably for some time, wrote a letter asking him to call, he came the following forenoon and would not listen to any excuses for the number of steps he had to climb. "No excuse, please, dear, most gracious Lady; for in the first place it is my calling, and in the second I am happy and almost proud that I am still able to climb the three flights so well. If I were not afraid of inconveniencing you,—since, after all, I come as a physician and not as a friend of nature or a landscape enthusiast,—I should probably come oftener, merely to see you and sit down for a few minutes at your back window. I don't believe you fully appreciate the view."
"Oh, yes I do," said Effi; but Rummschüttel, not allowing himself to be interrupted, continued: "Please, most gracious Lady, step here just for a moment, or allow me to escort you to the window. Simply magnificent again today! Just see the various railroad embankments, three, no, four, and how the trains glide back and forth continually, and now that train yonder disappears again behind a group of trees. Really magnificent! And how the sun shines through the white smoke! If St. Matthew's Churchyard were not immediately behind it it would be ideal."
"I like to look at churchyards."
"Yes, you dare say that. But how about us? We physicians are unavoidably confronted with the question, might there, perhaps, not have been some fewer graves here? However, most gracious Lady, I am satisfied with you and my only complaint is that you will not listen to anything about Ems. For your catarrhal affections—"
Effi remained silent.
"Ems would work miracles. But as you don't care to go there—and I understand your reasons—drink the water here. In three minutes you can be in the Prince Albrecht Garden, and even if the music and the costumes and all the diversions of a regular watering-place promenade are lacking, the water itself, you know, is the important thing."
Effi was agreed, and Rummschüttel took his hat and cane, but stepped once more to the window. "I hear people talking about a plan to terrace the Hill of the Holy Cross. God bless the city government! Once that bare spot yonder is greener—A charming apartment! I could almost envy you—By the way, gracious Lady, I have been wanting for a long time to say to you, you always write me such a lovely letter. Well, who wouldn't enjoy that? But it requires an effort each time. Just send Roswitha for me."
"Just send Roswitha for me," Rummschüttel had said. Why, was Roswitha at Effi's? Instead of being on Keith Street was she on Königgrätz Street? Certainly she was, and had been for a long time, just as long as Effi herself had been living on Königgrätz Street. Three days before they moved Roswitha had gone to see her dear mistress and that was a great day for both of them, so great that we must go back and tell about it.
The day that the letter of renunciation came from Hohen-Cremmen and Effi returned from Ems to Berlin she did not take a separate apartment at once, but tried living in a boarding house, which suited her tolerably well. The two women who kept the boarding house were educated and considerate and had long ago ceased to be inquisitive. Such a variety of people met there that it would have been too much of an undertaking to pry into the secrets of each individual. Such things only interfered with business. Effi, who still remembered the cross-questionings to which the eyes of Mrs. Zwicker had subjected her, was very agreeably impressed with the reserve of the boarding house keepers. But after two weeks had passed she felt plainly that she could not well endure the prevailing atmosphere of the place, either the physical or the moral. There were usually seven persons at the table. Beside Effi and one of the landladies—the other looked after the kitchen—there were two Englishwomen, who were attending the university, a noblewoman from Saxony, a very pretty Galician Jewess, whose real occupation nobody knew, and a precentor's daughter from Polzin in Pomerania, who wished to become a painter. That was a bad combination, and the attempts of each to show her superiority to the others were unrefreshing. Remarkable to relate, the Englishwomen were not absolutely the worst offenders, but competed for the palm with the girl from Polzin, who was filled with the highest regard for her mission as a painter. Nevertheless Effi, who assumed a passive attitude, could have withstood the pressure of this intellectual atmosphere if it had not been combined with the air of the boarding house, speaking from a purely physical and objective point of view. What this air was actually composed of was perhaps beyond the possibility of determination, but that it took away sensitive Effi's breath was only too certain, and she saw herself compelled for this external reason to go out in search of other rooms, which she found comparatively near by, in the above-described apartment on Königgrätz St. She was to move in at the beginning of the autumn quarter, had made the necessary purchases, and during the last days of September counted the hours till her liberation from the boarding house. On one of these last days, a quarter of an hour after she had retired from the dining room, planning to enjoy a rest on a sea grass sofa covered with some large-figured woolen material, there was a gentle rap at her door.
"Come in!"
One of the housemaids, a sickly looking person in the middle thirties, who by virtue of always being in the hall of the boarding house carried the atmosphere stored there with her everywhere, in her wrinkles, entered the room and said: "I beg your pardon, gracious Lady, but somebody wishes to speak to you."
"Who?"
"A woman."
"Did she tell you her name?"
"Yes. Roswitha."
Before Effi had hardly heard this name she shook off her drowsiness, sprang up, ran out into the corridor, grasped Roswitha by both hands and drew her into her room.
"Roswitha! You! Oh, what joy! What do you bring? Something good, of course. Such a good old face can bring only good things. Oh, how happy I am! I could give a kiss. I should not have thought such joy could ever come to me again. You good old soul, how are you anyhow? Do you still remember how the ghost of the Chinaman used to stalk about? Those were happy times. I thought then they were unhappy, because I did not yet know the hardness of life. Since then I have come to know it. Oh, there are far worse things than ghosts. Come, my good Roswitha, come, sit down by me and tell me—Oh, I have such a longing. How is Annie?"
Roswitha was unable to speak, and so she let her eyes wander around the strange room, whose gray and dusty-looking walls were bordered with narrow gilt molding. Finally she found herself and said that his Lordship was back from Glatz. That the old Emperor had said, "six weeks were quite sufficient (imprisonment) in such a case," and she had only waited for his Lordship's return, on Annie's account, who had to have some supervision. Johanna was no doubt a proper person, but she was still too pretty and too much occupied with herself, and God only knows what all she was thinking about. But now that his Lordship could again keep an eye on Annie and see that everything was right, she herself wanted to try to find out how her Ladyship was getting on.
"That is right, Roswitha."
"And I wanted to see whether your Ladyship lacked anything, and whether you might need me. If so I would stay right here and pitch in and do everything and see to it that your Ladyship was getting on well again."
Effi had been leaning back in the corner of the sofa with her eyes closed, but suddenly she sat up and said: "Yes, Roswitha, what you were saying there is an idea, there is something in it. For I must tell you that I am not going to stay in this boarding house. I have rented an apartment farther down the street and have bought furniture, and in three more days I shall move in. And if, when I arrive there, I could say to you: 'No, Roswitha, not there, the wardrobe must stand here and the mirror there,' why, that would be worth while, and I should like it. Then when we got tired of all the drudgery I should say: 'Now, Roswitha, go over there and get us a decanter of Munich beer, for when one has been working one is thirsty for a drink, and, if you can, bring us also something good from the Habsburg Restaurant. You can return the dishes later.' Yes, Roswitha, when I think of that it makes my heart feel a great deal lighter. But I must ask you whether you have thought it all over? I will not speak of Annie, to whom you are so attached, for she is almost your own child; nevertheless Annie will be provided for, and Johanna is also attached to her, you know. So leave her out of the consideration. But if you want to come to me remember how everything has changed. I am no longer as I used to be. I have now taken a very small apartment, and the porter will doubtless pay but little attention to you and me. We shall have to be very economical, always have what we used to call our Thursday meal, because that was cleaning day. Do you remember? And do you remember how good Mr. Gieshübler once came in and was urged to sit down with us, and how he said he had never eaten such a delicate dish? You probably remember he was always so frightfully polite, but really he was the only human being in the city who was a connoisseur in matters of eating. The others called everything fine."
Roswitha was enjoying every word and could already see everything running smoothly, when Effi again said: "Have you considered all this? For, while it is my own household, I must not overlook the fact that you have been spoiled these many years, and formerly no questions were ever asked, for we did not need to be saving; but now I must be saving, for I am poor and have only what is given me, you know, remittances from Hohen-Cremmen. My parents are very good to me, so far as they are able, but they are not rich. And now tell me what you think."
"That I shall come marching along with my trunk next Saturday, not in the evening, but early in the morning, and that I shall be there when the settling process begins. For I can take hold quite differently from your Ladyship."
"Don't say that, Roswitha. I can work too. One can do anything when obliged to."
"And then your Ladyship doesn't need to worry about me, as though I might think: 'that is not good enough for Roswitha.' For Roswitha anything is good that she has to share with your Ladyship, and most to her liking would be something sad. Yes, I look forward to that with real pleasure. Your Ladyship shall see I know what sadness is. Even if I didn't know, I should soon find out. I have not forgotten how I was sitting there in the churchyard, all alone in the world, thinking to myself it would probably be better if I were lying there in a row with the others. Who came along? Who saved my life? Oh, I have had so much to endure. That day when my father came at me with the red-hot tongs—"
"I remember, Roswitha."
"Well, that was bad enough. But when I sat there in the churchyard, so completely poverty stricken and forsaken, that was worse still. Then your Ladyship came. I hope I shall never go to heaven if I forget that."
As she said this she arose and went toward the window. "Oh, your
Ladyship must see him too."
Effi stepped to the window. Over on the other side of the street sat
Rollo, looking up at the windows of the boarding house.
A few days later Effi, with the aid of Roswitha, moved into the apartment on Königgrätz St., and liked it there from the beginning. To be sure, there was no society, but during her boarding house days she had derived so little pleasure from intercourse with people that it was not hard for her to be alone, at least not in the beginning. With Roswitha it was impossible, of course, to carry on an esthetic conversation, or even to discuss what was in the paper, but when it was simply a question of things human and Effi began her sentence with, "Oh, Roswitha, I am again afraid," then the faithful soul always had a good answer ready, always comfort and usually advice.
Until Christmas they got on excellently, but Christmas eve was rather sad and when New Year's Day came Effi began to grow quite melancholy. It was not cold, only grizzly and rainy, and if the days were short, the evenings were so much the longer. What was she to do! She read, she embroidered, she played solitaire, she played Chopin, but nocturnes were not calculated to bring much light into her life, and when Roswitha came with the tea tray and placed on the table, beside the tea service, two small plates with an egg and a Vienna cutlet carved in small slices, Effi said, as she closed the piano: "Move up, Roswitha. Keep me company."
Roswitha joined her. "I know, your Ladyship has been playing too much again. Your Ladyship always looks like that and has red spots. The doctor forbade it, didn't he?"
"Ah, Roswitha, it is easy for the doctor to forbid, and also easy for you to repeat everything he says. But what shall I do? I can't sit all day long at the window and look over toward Christ's Church. Sundays, during the evening service, when the windows are lighted up, I always look over that way; but it does me no good, it always makes my heart feel heavier."
"Well, then, your Ladyship ought to go to church. Your Ladyship has been there once."
"Oh, many a time. But I have derived little benefit from it. He preaches quite well and is a very wise man, and I should be happy if I knew the hundredth part of it all. But it seems as though I were merely reading a book. Then when he speaks so loud and saws the air and shakes his long black locks I am drawn, entirely out of my attitude of worship."
"Out of?"
Effi laughed. "You think I hadn't yet got into such an attitude. That is probably true. But whose fault is it? Certainly not mine. He always talks so much about the Old Testament. Even if that is very good it doesn't edify me. Anyhow, this everlasting listening is not the right thing. You see, I ought to have so much to do that I should not know whither to turn. That would suit me. Now there are societies where young girls learn housekeeping, or sewing, or to be kindergarten teachers. Have you ever heard of these?"
"Yes, I once heard of them. Once upon a time little Annie was to go to a kindergarten."
"Now you see, you know better than I do. I should like to join some such society where I can make myself useful. But it is not to be thought of. The women in charge wouldn't take me, they couldn't. That is the most terrible thing of all, that the world is so closed to one, that it even forbids one to take a part in charitable work. I can't even give poor children a lesson after hours to help them catch up."
"That would not do for your Ladyship. The children always have such greasy shoes on, and in wet weather there is so much steam and smoke, your Ladyship could never stand it."
Effi smiled. "You are probably right, Roswitha, but it is a bad sign that you should be right, and it shows me that I still have too much of the old Effi in me and that I am still too well off."
Roswitha would not agree to that. "Anybody as good as your Ladyship can't be too well off. Now you must not always play such sad music. Sometimes I think all will be well yet, something will surely turn up."
And something did turn up. Effi desired to become a painter, in spite of the precentor's daughter from Polzin, whose conceit as an artist she still remembered as exceedingly disagreeable. Although she laughed about the plan herself, because she was conscious she could never rise above the lowest grade of dilettantism, nevertheless she went at her work with zest, because she at last had an occupation and that, too, one after her own heart, because it was quiet and peaceful. She applied for instruction to a very old professor of painting, who was well-informed concerning the Brandenburgian aristocracy, and was, at the same time, very pious, so that Effi seemed to be his heart's delight from the outset. He probably thought, here was a soul to be saved, and so he received her with extraordinary friendliness, as though she had been his daughter. This made Effi very happy, and the day of her first painting lesson marked for her a turning point toward the good. Her poor life was now no longer so poor, and Roswitha was triumphant when she saw that she had been right and something had turned up after all.
Thus things went on for considerably over a year. Coming again in contact with people made Effi happy, but it also created within her the desire to renew and extend associations. Longing for Hohen-Cremmen came over her at times with the force of a true passion, and she longed still more passionately to see Annie. After all she was her child, and when she began to turn this thought over in her mind and, at the same time, recalled what Miss Trippelli had once said, to wit: "The world is so small that one could be certain of coming suddenly upon some old acquaintance in Central Africa," she had a reason for being surprised that she had never met Annie. But the time finally arrived when a change was to occur. She was coming from her painting lesson, close by the Zoological Garden, and near the station stepped into a horse car. It was very hot and it did her good to see the lowered curtains blown out and back by the strong current of air passing through the car. She leaned back in the corner toward the front platform and was studying several pictures of blue tufted and tasseled sofas on a stained window pane, when the car began to move more slowly and she saw three school children spring up with school bags on their backs and little pointed hats on their heads. Two of them were blonde and merry, the third brunette and serious. This one was Annie. Effi was badly startled, and the thought of a meeting with the child, for which she had so often longed, filled her now with deadly fright. What was to be done? With quick determination she opened the door to the front platform, on which nobody was standing but the driver, whom she asked to let her get off in front at the next station. "It is forbidden, young lady," said the driver. But she gave him a coin and looked at him so appealingly that the good-natured man changed his mind and mumbled to himself: "I really am not supposed to, but perhaps once will not matter." When the car stopped he took out the lattice and Effi sprang off.
She was still greatly excited when she reached the house.
"Just think, Roswitha, I have seen Annie." Then she told of the meeting in the tram car. Roswitha was displeased that the mother and daughter had not been rejoiced to see each other again, and was very hard to convince that it would not have looked well in the presence of so many people. Then Effi had to tell how Annie looked and when she had done so with motherly pride Roswitha said: "Yes, she is what one might call half and half. Her pretty features and, if I may be permitted to say it, her strange look she gets from her mother, but her seriousness is exactly her father. When I come to think about it, she is more like his Lordship."
"Thank God!" said Effi.
"Now, your Ladyship, there is some question about that. No doubt there is many a person who would take the side of the mother."
"Do you think so, Roswitha? I don't."
"Oh, oh, I am not so easily fooled, and I think your Ladyship knows very well, too, how matters really stand and what the men like best."
"Oh, don't speak of that, Roswitha."
The conversation ended here and was never afterward resumed. But even though Effi avoided speaking to Roswitha about Annie, down deep in her heart she was unable to get over that meeting and suffered from the thought of having fled from her own child. It troubled her till she was ashamed, and her desire to meet Annie grew till it became pathological. It was not possible to write to Innstetten and ask his permission. She was fully conscious of her guilt, indeed she nurtured the sense of it with almost zealous care; but, on the other hand, at the same time that she was conscious of guilt, she was also filled with a certain spirit of rebellion against Innstetten. She said to herself, he was right, again and again, and yet in the end he was wrong. All had happened so long before, a new life had begun—he might have let it die; instead poor Crampas died.
No, it would not do to write to Innstetten; but she wanted to see Annie and speak to her and press her to her heart, and after she had thought it over for days she was firmly convinced as to the best way to go about it.
The very next morning she carefully put on a decent black dress and set out for Unter den Linden to call on the minister's wife. She sent in her card with nothing on it but "Effi von Innstetten, née von Briest." Everything else was left off, even "Baroness." When the man servant returned and said, "Her Excellency begs you to enter," Effi followed him into an anteroom, where she sat down and, in spite of her excitement, looked at the pictures on the walls. First of all there was Guido Reni's Aurora, while opposite it hung English etchings of pictures by Benjamin West, made by the well known aquatint process. One of the pictures was King Lear in the storm on the heath.
Effi had hardly finished looking at the pictures when the door of the adjoining room opened and a tall slender woman of unmistakably prepossessing appearance stepped toward the one who had come to request a favor of her and held out her hand. "My dear most gracious Lady," she said, "what a pleasure it is for me to see you again." As she said this she walked toward the sofa and sat down, drawing Effi to a seat beside her.
Effi was touched by the goodness of heart revealed in every word and movement. Not a trace of haughtiness or reproach, only beautiful human sympathy. "In what way can I be of service to you?" asked the minister's wife.
Effi's lips quivered. Finally she said: "The thing that brings me here is a request, the fulfillment of which your Excellency may perhaps make possible. I have a ten-year-old daughter whom I have not seen for three years and should like to see again."
The minister's wife took Effi's hand and looked at her in a friendly way.
"When I say, 'not seen for three years,' that is not quite right. Three days ago I saw her again." Then Effi described with great vividness how she had met Annie. "Fleeing from my own child. I know very well that as we sow we shall reap and I do not wish to change anything in my life. It is all right as it is, and I have not wished to have it otherwise. But this separation from my child is really too hard and I have a desire to be permitted to see her now and then, not secretly and clandestinely, but with the knowledge and consent of all concerned."
"With the knowledge and consent of all concerned," repeated the minister's wife. "So that means with the consent of your husband. I see that his bringing up of the child is calculated to estrange her from her mother, a method which I do not feel at liberty to judge. Perhaps he is right. Pardon me for this remark, gracious Lady."
Effi nodded.
"You yourself appreciate the attitude of your husband, and your only desire is that proper respect be shown to a natural impulse, indeed, I may say, the most beautiful of our impulses, at least we women all think so. Am I right?"
"In every particular."
"So you want me to secure permission for occasional meetings, in your home, where you can attempt to win back the heart of your child."
Effi expressed again her acquiescence, and the minister's wife continued: "Then, most gracious Lady, I shall do what I can. But we shall not have an easy task. Your husband—pardon me for calling him by that name now as before—is a man who is not governed by moods and fancies, but by principles, and it will be hard for him to discard them or even give them up temporarily. Otherwise he would have begun long ago to pursue a different method of action and education. What to your heart seems hard he considers right."
"Then your Excellency thinks, perhaps, it would be better to take back my request!"
"Oh, no. I wished only to explain the actions of your husband, not to say justify them, and wished at the same time to indicate the difficulties we shall in all probability encounter. But I think we shall overcome them nevertheless. We women are able to accomplish a great many things if we go about them wisely and do not make too great pretensions. Besides, your husband is one of my special admirers and he cannot well refuse to grant what I request of him. Tomorrow we have a little circle meeting at which I shall see him and the day after tomorrow morning you will receive a few lines from me telling you whether or not I have approached him wisely, that is to say, successfully. I think we shall come off victorious, and you will see your child again and enjoy her. She is said to be a very pretty girl. No wonder."