Effi Briest: Theodor Fontane: Effi Briest: Textausgabe by Fontane Theodor

Author:Fontane, Theodor [Fontane, Theodor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Classics, Romance
ISBN: 9788026817345
Amazon: B00L2CSYXU
Goodreads: 23813636
Publisher: Schroedel Verlag GmbH
Published: 1894-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Christmas Eve came and went just as in the previous year; presents and letters arrived from Hohen-Cremmen; Gieshübler again paid homage with a poem, and Cousin Briest sent a card, a snowscape with telegraph poles and a little bird sitting huddled on the wires. There were treats for Annie too, a tree with lights, and the child reached out her little hands to it. Innstetten was relaxed and jolly and seemed to revel in the joys of domesticity, lavishing much attention on the child. Roswitha was surprised to see the Master at once so affectionate and so good-humoured. Effi too spoke and laughed a lot, but none of it came from her innermost soul. She felt depressed and didn’t know who to hold responsible for it, herself or Innstetten. There had been no Christmas greeting from Crampas; actually she was pleased, but then again not pleased, his attentions filled her with a certain apprehension and she was put out by his indifference; she could see that all was not as it should be.

‘You’re so restless,’ said Innstetten after a while.

‘Yes. Everybody has treated me so well, you most of all; it depresses me, because I feel I don’t deserve it.’

‘That’s not something to agonize about, Effi. It comes down to one thing in the end: what you get is what you deserve.’

Effi listened intently, and her bad conscience prompted her to ask herself whether he had deliberately put it in such an ambiguous way.

Later, towards evening, Pastor Lindequist called to offer congratulations and enquire about the outing to the head forester’s at Uvagla, which of course had to be a sleighride. Crampas had offered him a place in his sleigh, but since neither the major nor his groom, who was to take charge of the horses as well as everything else, knew the way, it was suggested that they might all make the trip together, with the Landrat’s sleigh in the lead and Crampas’s following on. And Gieshübler’s too, probably. For Mirambo, to whom friend Alonzo, normally so cautious, seemed inexplicably intent on entrusting himself, probably had less knowledge of the paths than even the freckled Treptow Uhlan. Innstetten, who was tickled by these embarrassing little details, was fully in agreement with Lindequist’s proposal and arranged that he would drive across the market square at two o’clock precisely and lead off the convoy without further ado.

This arrangement was duly observed and promptly at two, as Innstetten crossed the market square, Crampas first greeted Effi from his own sleigh and then fell in behind Innstetten’s. The pastor sat beside him. Gieshübler’s sleigh with Gieshübler himself and Dr Hannemann followed, the first in an elegant buffalo coat trimmed with marten, the latter in a bearskin coat that had clearly seen thirty years’ sevice. Hannemann had been a ship’s doctor in his younger days on the Greenland run. Mirambo sat at the front, rather on edge because he was unused to handling a sleigh, just as Lindequist had predicted.

In two minutes they were past Utpatel’s mill.

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