CHAPTER XXXVI

May was beautiful, June more beautiful, and after Effi had happily overcome the first painful feeling aroused in her by Rollo's arrival, she was full of joy at having the faithful dog about her again. Roswitha was praised and old von Briest launched forth into words of recognition for Innstetten, who, he said, was a cavalier, never petty, but always stout-hearted. "What a pity that the stupid affair had to come between them! As a matter of fact, they were a model couple." The only one who remained calm during the welcoming scene was Rollo himself, who either had no appreciation of time or considered the separation as an irregularity which was now simply removed. The fact that he had grown old also had something to do with it, no doubt. He remained sparing with his demonstrations of affection as he had been with his evidences of joy, during the welcoming scene. But he had grown in fidelity, if such a thing were possible. He never left the side of his mistress. The hunting dog he treated benevolently, but as a being of a lower order. At night he lay on the rush mat before Effi's door; in the morning, when breakfast was served out of doors by the sundial, he was always quiet, always sleepy, and only when Effi arose from the breakfast table and walked toward the hall to take her straw hat and umbrella from the rack, did his youth return. Then, without troubling himself about whether his strength was to be put to a hard or easy test, he ran up the village road and back again and did not calm down till they were out in the fields. Effi, who cared more for fresh air than for landscape beauty, avoided the little patches of forest and usually kept to the main road, which 'at first was bordered with very old elms and then, where the turnpike began, with poplars. This road led to the railway station about an hour's walk away. She enjoyed everything, breathing in with delight the fragrance wafted to her from the rape and clover fields, or watching the soaring of the larks, and counting the draw-wells and troughs, to which the cattle went to drink. She could hear a soft ringing of bells that made her feel as though she must close her eyes and pass away in sweet forgetfulness. Near the station, close by the turnpike, lay a road roller. This was her daily resting place, from which she could observe what took place on the railroad. Trains came and went and sometimes she could see two columns of smoke which for a moment seemed to blend into one and then separated, one going to the right, the other to the left, till they disappeared behind the village and the grove. Rollo sat beside her, sharing her lunch, and when he had caught the last bite, he would run like mad along some plowed furrow, doubtless to show his gratitude, and stop only when a pair of pheasants scared from their nest flew up from a neighboring furrow close by him.

"How beautiful this summer is! A year ago, dear mama, I should not have thought I could ever again be so happy," said Effi every day as she walked with her mother around the pond or picked an early apple from a tree and bit into it vigorously, for she had beautiful teeth. Mrs. von Briest would stroke her hand and say: "Just wait till you are well again, Effi, quite well, and then we shall find happiness, not that of the past, but a new kind. Thank God, there are several kinds of happiness. And you shall see, we shall find something for you."

"You are so good. Really I have changed your lives and made you prematurely old."

"Oh, my dear Effi, don't speak of it. I thought the same about it, when the change came. Now I know that our quiet is better than the noise and loud turmoil of earlier years. If you keep on as you are we can go away yet. When Wiesike proposed Mentone you were ill and irritable, and because you were ill, you were right in saying what you did about conductors and waiters. When you have steadier nerves again you can stand that. You will no longer be offended, but will laugh at the grand manners and the curled hair. Then the blue sea and white sails and the rocks all overgrown with red cactus—I have never seen them, to be sure, but that is how I imagine them. I should like to become acquainted with them."

Thus the summer went by and the meteoric showers were also past. During these evenings Effi had sat at her window till after midnight and yet never grew tired of watching. "I always was a weak Christian, but I wonder whether we ever came from up there and whether, when all is over here, we shall return to our heavenly home, to the stars above or further beyond. I don't know and don't care to know. I just have the longing."

Poor Effi! She had looked up at the wonders of the sky and thought about them too long, with the result that the night air, and the fog rising from the pond, made her so ill she had to stay in bed again. When Wiesike was summoned and had examined her he took Briest aside and said: "No more hope; be prepared for an early end."

What he said was only too true, and a few days later, comparatively early in the evening, it was not yet ten o'clock, Roswitha came down stairs and said to Mrs. von Briest: "Most gracious Lady, her Ladyship upstairs is very ill. She talks continually to herself in a soft voice and sometimes it seems as though she were praying, but she says she is not, and I don't know, it seems to me as though the end might come any hour."

"Does she wish to speak to me?"

"She hasn't said so, but I believe she does. You know how she is; she doesn't want to disturb you and make you anxious. But I think it would be well."

"All right, Roswitha, I will come."

Before the clock began to strike Mrs. von Briest mounted the stairway and entered Effi's room. Effi lay on a reclining chair near the open window. Mrs. von Briest drew up a small black chair with three gilt spindles in its ebony back, took Effi's hand and said: "How are you, Effi! Roswitha says you are so feverish."

"Oh, Roswitha worries so much about everything. I could see by her looks she thought I was dying. Well, I don't know. She thinks everybody ought to be as much worried as she is."

"Are you so calm about dying, dear Effi?"

"Entirely calm, mama."

"Aren't you deceiving yourself? Everybody clings to life, especially the young, and you are still so young, dear Effi."

Effi remained silent for a while. Then she said: "You know, I haven't read much. Innstetten was often surprised at it, and he didn't like it."

This was the first time she had mentioned Innstetten's name, and it made a deep impression on her mother and showed clearly that the end was come.

"But I thought," said Mrs. von Briest, "you were going to tell me something."

"Yes, I was, because you spoke of my still being so young. Certainly I am still young; but that makes no difference. During our happy days Innstetten used to read aloud to me in the evening. He had very good books, and in one of them there was a story about a man who had been called away from a merry table. The following morning he asked how it had been after he left. Somebody answered: 'Oh, there were all sorts of things, but you really didn't miss anything.' You see, mama, these words have impressed themselves upon my memory—It doesn't signify very much if one is called away from the table a little early."

Mrs. von Briest remained silent. Effi lifted herself up a little higher and said: "Now that I have talked to you about old times and also about Innstetten, I must tell you something else, dear mama."

"You are getting excited, Effi."

"No, no, to tell about the burden of my heart will not excite me, it will quiet me. And so I wanted to tell you that I am dying reconciled to God and men, reconciled also to him."

"Did you cherish in your heart such great bitterness against him? Really—pardon me, my dear Effi, for mentioning it now—really it was you who brought down sorrow upon yourself and your husband."

Effi assented. "Yes, mama, and how sad that it should be so. But when all the terrible things happened, and finally the scene with Annie—you know what I mean—I turned the tables on him, mentally, if I may use the ridiculous comparison, and came to believe seriously that he was to blame, because he was prosaic and calculating, and toward the end cruel. Then curses upon him crossed my lips."

"Does that trouble you now?"

"Yes. And I am anxious that he shall know how, during my days of illness here, which have been almost my happiest, how it has become clear to my mind that he was right in his every act. In the affair with poor Crampas—well, after all, what else could he have done? Then the act by which he wounded me most deeply, the teaching of my own child to shun me, even in that he was right, hard and painful as it is for me to admit it. Let him know that I died in this conviction. It will comfort and console him, and may reconcile him. He has much that is good in his nature and was as noble as anybody can be who is not truly in love."

Mrs. von Briest saw that Effi was exhausted and seemed to be either sleeping or about to go to sleep. She rose quietly from her chair and went out. Hardly had she gone when Effi also got up, and sat at the open window to breathe in the cool night air once more. The stars glittered and not a leaf stirred in the park. But the longer she listened the more plainly she again heard something like soft rain falling on the plane trees. A feeling of liberation came over her. "Rest, rest."

* * * * *

It was a month later and September was drawing to an end. The weather was beautiful, but the foliage in the park began to show a great deal of read and yellow and since the equinox, which had brought three stormy days, the leaves lay scattered in every direction. In the circular plot a slight change had been made. The sundial was gone and in the place where it had stood there lay since yesterday a white marble slab with nothing on it but "Effi Briest" and a cross beneath. This had been Em's last request. "I should like to have back my old name on my stone; I brought no honor to the other." This had been promised her.

The marble slab had arrived and been placed in position yesterday, and
Briest and his wife were sitting in view of it, looking at it and the
heliotrope, which had been spared, and which now bordered the stone.
Rollo lay beside them with his head on his paws.

Wilke, whose spats were growing wider and wider, brought the breakfast and the mail, and old Mr. von Briest said: "Wilke, order the little carriage. I am going to drive across the country with my wife."

Mrs. von Briest had meanwhile poured the coffee and was looking at the circle and its flower bed. "See, Briest, Rollo is lying by the stone again. He is really taking it harder than we. He wont eat any more, either."

"Well, Luise, it is the brute creature. That is just what I have always said. We don't amount to as much as we think. But here we always talk about instinct. In the end I think it is the best."

"Don't speak that way. When you begin to philosophize—don't take offense—Briest, you show your incompetence. You have a good understanding, but you can't tackle such questions."

"That's true."

"And if it is absolutely necessary to discuss questions there are entirely different ones, Briest, and I can tell you that not a day passes, since the poor child has been lying here, but such questions press themselves on me."

"What questions?"

"Whether after all we are perhaps not to blame?"

"Nonsense, Luise. What do you mean?"

"Whether we ought not to have disciplined her differently. You and I particularly, for Niemeyer is only a cipher; he leaves everything in doubt. And then, Briest, sorry as I am—your continual use of ambiguous expressions—and finally, and here I accuse myself too, for I do not desire to come off innocent in this matter, I wonder if she was not too young, perhaps?"

Rollo, who awoke at these words, shook his head gravely and Briest said calmly: "Oh, Luise, don't—that is too wide a field."

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