Read Effi Briest for Free Online Page B

to that?’
    ‘Nothing. He’s not like that. And he knows Mamma. He just teases her.’
    At that moment it struck noon, and before the chimes had stopped, Wilke, the Briests’ old butler and general factotum, appeared with a message for Effi: ‘Her ladyship would like Miss Effi to make herself presentable in good time. The Baron will arrive at one o’clock sharp.’ And as he announced this Wilke began to clear the ladies’ work-table, reaching first for the sheet of newspaper the gooseberry skins were lying on.
    ‘No Wilke, don’t do that, we’re going to see to the skins… Hertha, it’s time to make the paper bag; and put in a stone so it all sinks. Then we’ll have a long funeral procession and bury the bag at sea.’
    Wilke smiled. ‘A real caution, our young lady’ he must have been thinking; but Effi, placing the bag in the middle of the swiftly tidied tablecloth, said: ‘Now each of the four of us takes a corner and we sing something sad.’
    ‘Yes, well, you say that, Effi. But what exactly are we supposed to sing?’
    ‘Anything; it doesn’t matter, except that it must have a rhyme with “ee”; “ee” is the vowel for keening. So we’ll sing:
    “In the deepest deep,
Let it peacefully sleep.”’
    And as Effi solemnly intoned this litany, all four began to move towards the jetty, climbed into the boat that was moored there, and from that slowly lowered the bag and its stone weight into the pond.
    ‘Hertha, your guilt is now consigned to the deep,’ said Effi, ‘oh and that reminds me, this is how they used to drown poor unfortunate women, from boats like this, for infidelity of course.’
    ‘But not here.’
    ‘No, not here,’ Effi laughed, ‘that kind of thing doesn’t happen here. But in Constantinople it does, now I come to think of it, you must know that just as well as I do, you were there when ordinand Holzapfel told us about it in geography.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Hulda, ‘Holzapfel was always talking about that kind of thing. But then that’s the kind of thing you forget.’
    ‘Not me. I remember that kind of thing.’

2
    They continued to talk in this vein for a while, recalling with indignation and satisfaction lessons they had attended together and a whole series of Holzapfel’s improprieties. There would have been no end to it had Hulda not suddenly said, ‘But it’s high time you went in Effi. You look, well, how shall I put it, you look as if you had just come from picking cherries, all crumpled and crushed; linen always gets so many creases, and with that big white floppy collar… yes, I’ve got it, you look like a cabin-boy.’
    ‘Midshipman, if you please. I must have something for my nobility. Anyway, midshipman or cabin-boy, Papa promised me a mast the other day, right here by the swing, with spars and rigging. Won’t that be something, and I’ll put my own pennant on the masthead, and no-one is going to stop me. And Hulda, you’ll shin up the other side and at the top we’ll shout hurrah and kiss one another. Splice the mainbrace, won’t that be fun!’
    ‘“Splice the mainbrace”… listen to that… You really do talk like a midshipman. But I wouldn’t dream of climbing up after you, I’m not such a daredevil. Jahnke is right when he says there’s a lot of the Bellings in you, from your mother’s side. I’m just a pastor’s daughter.’
    ‘Oh, get away with you. Still waters run deep. Do you remember the time Cousin Briest was here, still a cadet, but grown up for all that, and you slid all the way along the barn roof? And why was that? I’m not going to let on. Come on, let’s have a swing, two on each end, I don’t think the ropes will snap, or if you don’t want to – for I can see you pulling long faces – we’ll play tag. I still have a quarter of an hour. I don’t want to go in yet, just to say good afternoon to a Landrat, and a Landrat from Eastern Pomerania at that. He’s a bit old too, he could almost be my father, and if he