However, there was help for it. He renounced cards and such other costly
diversions as was possible without lowering his standard as a gentleman
and an officer, and of course the real privation was borne by the women
of the family. He even ceased to rage at his wife, for she merely sat in
her favorite chair, her hands folded, and looked at him with her subtle
ironic smile.
When Gisela met them, Frau von Erkel and her three daughters (all in
their late twenties and unmarried) were living in a dingy old house in a
respectable quarter, with one beer-sodden maid to relieve them of the
heavy work and bake the cake for the Sunday "Coffee."
Colonel von Erkel and his three sons lived in bachelor quarters and
called upon the women of the family every Sunday afternoon at precisely
four o'clock. In full uniform, and imposing specimens of the German
officer, they sat stiffly upon the uncomfortable chairs for about thirty
minutes and then simultaneously escaped and were seen no more for a
week.
At first Gisela was intensely amused at the vagaries of the Erkels, but
when she saw the four narrow beds in a row in one small monastic room
(the first floor was let to lodgers to pay the rent), and still more of
their almost hopeless contriving to hold their position in Munich
society, to say nothing of a bare sufficiency of food and raiment, her
sympathies, always more deep than quick, were permanently aroused.
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