Part
VII
I
A christening—a christening in Broad Street!
All, everything is there that was dreamed of by Madame Permaneder in the days of her expectancy. In the dining-room, the maidservant, moving noiselessly so as not to disturb the services in the next room, is filling the cups with steaming hot chocolate and whipped cream. There are quantities of cups, crowded together on the great round tray with the gilded shell-shaped handles. And Anton the butler is cutting a towering layer-cake into slices, and Mamsell Jungmann is arranging flowers and sweets in silver dessert-dishes, with her head on one side, and both little fingers stuck out.
Soon the company will have seated themselves in the salon and sitting-room, and all these delicacies will be handed round. It is to be hoped they will hold out, since it is the whole family which has gathered here, in the broader, if not quite in the broadest sense of the word. For it is, through the Överdiecks, connected distantly with the Kistenmakers, and through them with the Möllendorpfs—and so on. One simply must draw the line somewhere! But the Överdiecks are represented, and, indeed, by no less a personage than the head of the family, the venerable Doctor Kaspar Överdieck, reigning Burgomaster, more than eighty years old.
He came in a carriage, and mounted the steps leaning on his staff and Thomas Buddenbrook’s arm. His presence enhances the dignity of the occasion—and, beyond a question, this occasion is worthy of every dignity!
For within, in the salon, there is a flower-decked small table, serving as an altar, with a young priest in black vestments and a stiff snowy ruff like a millstone round his neck, reciting the service; and there is a great, strapping, particularly well-nourished person, richly arrayed in red and gold, bearing upon her billowing arms a small something, half smothered in laces and satin bows: an heir—a firstborn son! A Buddenbrook! Do we really grasp the meaning of the fact?
Can we realize the thrill of that first whisper, that first little hint that travelled from Broad Street to Mengstrasse? Or Frau Permaneder’s speechless ecstasy, as she embraced her mother, her brother, and—very gently—her sister-in-law? And now, with the spring—the spring of the year 1861—he has come: he, the heir of so many hopes, whom they have expected for so many years, talked of him, longed for him, prayed to God and tormented Dr. Grabow for him; at length he has come—and looks most unimposing.
His tiny hands play among the gilt trimmings of his nurse’s waist; his head, in a lace cap trimmed with pale blue ribbons, lies sidewise on the pillow, turned heedlessly away from the preacher; he stares out into the room, at all his relatives, with an old, knowing look. Those eyes, under their long-lashed lids, blend the light blue of the Father’s and the brown of the Mother’s iris into a pale, indefinite, changeful golden-brown; but bluish shadows lie in the deep corners on both sides of the nose, and these give the little face, which is hardly yet a face at all, an aged look not suited to its four weeks of existence. But, please God, they mean nothing—for has not his Mother the same? And she is in perfectly good health. And anyhow, he lives—he lives, and is a son; which was the cause, four weeks ago, for great rejoicing.
He lives—and it might have been otherwise. The Consul will never forget the grip of good Dr. Grabow’s hand, as he said to him, four weeks ago, when he could leave the mother and child: “Give thanks to God, my dear friend—there wasn’t much to spare.” The Consul has not dared to ask his meaning. He put from him in horror the thought that his son—this tiny creature, yearned for in vain so many years—had slipped into the world without breath to cry out, almost—almost—like Antonie’s second daughter. But he knows that that hour, four weeks ago, was a desperate one for mother and child; and he bends tenderly over Gerda, who reclines in an easy-chair in front of him, next his Mother, her feet, in patent-leather shoes, crossed before her on a velvet cushion.
How pale she still is! And how strangely lovely in her pallor, with that heavy dark-red hair and those mysterious eyes that rest upon the preacher in half-veiled mockery! Herr Andreas Pringsheim, pastor marianus, succeeded thus young to the headship of St. Mary’s after old Kölling’s sudden death. He holds his chin in the air and his hands prayerfully folded beneath it. He has short, curly blond hair and a smooth-shaven, bony face, with a somewhat theatrical range of expression, from fanatical zeal to an exalted serenity. He comes from Franconia, where he has been for some years, serving a small Lutheran community among Catholics; and his effort after a clear and moving delivery has resulted in exaggerated mannerisms; an r rolled upon his front teeth and long, obscure, or crudely accented vowel-sounds.
He gives thanks to God, in a voice now low and soft, now loud and swelling—and the family listen: Frau Permaneder, clothed in a dignity that hides her pride and her delight; Erica Grünlich, now almost fifteen years old, a blooming young girl with a long braid and her father’s rosy skin; and Christian, who has arrived that morning, and sits letting his deep-set eyes rove from side to side all over the room. Pastor Tiburtius and his wife have not shrunk from the long journey, but have come from Riga to be present at the ceremony. The ends of Sievert Tiburtius’ long, thin whiskers are parted over his shoulders, and his small grey eyes now and then open wider and wider, most unexpectedly, and grow larger and more prominent till they almost jump out of his head. Clara’s gaze is dark and solemn and severe, and she sometimes lifts her hand to a head that always seems to ache. But they have brought a splendid present to the Buddenbrooks: a huge brown bear stuffed in a standing position. A relative of the Pastor’s shot him somewhere in the heart of Russia, and now he stands below in the vestibule with a card-tray between his paws.
The Krögers have their son Jürgen visiting them; he is a post-office official in Rostock, a quiet, simply-dressed man. Where Jacob is, nobody knows but his mother, who was an Överdieck. She, poor, weak woman, secretly sells the household silver to send money to the disinherited son. And the ladies Buddenbrook are there, deeply rejoiced over the happy family event—which does not prevent Pfiffi from remarking that the child looks rather unhealthy: a view which the Frau Consul, born Stüwing, and likewise Friederike and Henriette, feel bound to endorse. But poor Clothilde, lean, grey, resigned, and hungry, is moved by the words of Pastor Pringsheim and the prospect of layer-cake and chocolate. The guests not belonging to the family are Herr Friedrich Wilhelm Marcus and Sesemi Weichbrodt.
Now the Pastor turns to the godparents and instructs them in their duty. Justus Kröger is one. Consul Buddenbrook refused at first to ask him. “Why invite the old man to commit a piece of folly?” he says. “He has frightful scenes with his wife every day over Jacob; their little property is slowly melting away—out of pure worry he is even beginning to be careless in his dress! But you know what will happen: if we ask him, he will send the child a heavy gold service and refuse to be thanked for it!” But when Uncle Justus heard who was to be asked in his place—Stephan Kistenmaker had been mentioned—he was so enormously piqued that they had to ask him after all. The gold mug he presented was, to Thomas’s great relief, not exaggeratedly heavy.
And the second godfather? It is this dignified old gentleman with the snow-white hair, high neckband, and soft black broadcloth coat with the red handkerchief sticking out of the back pocket, sitting here bent over his stick, in the most comfortable armchair in the house. It is, of course, Burgomaster Dr. Överdieck. It is a great event—a triumph! Good heavens, how could it have come about? he is hardly even a relative! The Buddenbrooks must have dragged the old man in by the hair! In fact, it is rather a feat: a little intrigue planned by the Consul and Madame Permaneder. At first it was merely a joke, born of the great relief of knowing that mother and child were safe. “A boy, Tony,” cried the Consul. “He ought to have the Burgomaster for godfather!” But she took it up in earnest, whereupon he considered the matter seriously and agreed to make a trial. They hid behind Uncle Justus, and got him to send his wife to her sister-in-law, the wife of Överdieck the lumber dealer. She accepted the task of preparing the old father-in-law; then Thomas Buddenbrook made a visit to the head of the state and paid his respects—and the thing was done.
Now the nurse lifts up the child’s cap, and the Pastor cautiously sprinkles two or three drops out of the gilt-lined silver basin in front of him, upon the few hairs of little Buddenbrook, as he slowly and impressively names the names with which he is baptizing him: Justus, Johann, Kaspar. Follows a short prayer, and then the relatives file by to bestow a kiss upon the brow of the unconcerned little creature. Therese Weichbrodt comes last, to whom the nurse has to stoop with her burden; in return for which Sesemi gives him two kisses, that go off with small explosions, and says, between them: “You good che-ild!”
Three minutes later, the guests have disposed themselves in salon and living-room, and the sweets are passed. Even Pastor Pringsheim, the toes of his broad, shiny boots showing under his black vestments, sits and sips the cool whipped cream off his hot chocolate, chatting easily the while, and wearing his serene expression, which is most effective by way of contrast with his sermon. His manner says, as plainly as words: “See how I can lay aside the priest and become the jolly ordinary guest!” He is a versatile, an accommodating sort of man. To the Frau Consul he speaks rather unctuously, to Thomas and Gerda like a man of the world, and with Frau Permaneder he is downright jocose, making jokes and gesturing fluently. Now and then, whenever he thinks of it, he folds his hands in his lap, tips back his head, glooms his brows, and makes a long face. When he laughs he draws the air in through his teeth in little jerks.
Suddenly there is a stir in the corridor, the servants are heard laughing, and in the doorway appears a singular figure, come to offer congratulations. It is Grobleben: Grobleben, from whose thin nose, no matter what the time of year, there ever hangs a drop, which never falls. Grobleben is a workman in one of the Consul’s granaries, and he has an extra job, too, at the house, as boots. Every morning early he appears in Broad Street, takes the boots from before the door, and cleans them below in the court. At family feasts he always appears in holiday attire, presents flowers, and makes a speech, in a whining, unctuous voice, with the drop pendent from his nose. For this, he always gets a piece of money—but that is not why he does it!
He wears a black coat—an old one of the Consul’s—greased leather top-boots, and a blue woollen scarf round his neck. In his wizened red hand he holds a bunch of pale-coloured roses, which are a little past their best, and slowly shed their petals on the carpet. He blinks with his small red eyes, but apparently sees nothing. He stands still in the doorway, with his flowers held out in front of him, and begins straightway to speak. The old Frau Consul nods to him encouragingly and makes soothing little noises, the Consul regards him with one eyebrow lifted, and some of the family—Frau Permaneder, for instance—put their handkerchiefs to their mouths.
“I be a poor man, yer honour ’n’ ladies ’n’ gentlemen, but I’ve a feelin’ hairt; ’n’ the happiness of my master comes home to me, it do, seein’s he’s allus been so good t’ me; ’n’ so I’ve come, yer honour ’n’ ladies ’n’ gentlemen, to congratulate the Herr Consul ’n’ the Frau Consul, ’n’ the whole respected family, from a full hairt, ’n’ that the child may prosper, for that they desarve fr’m God ’n’ man, for such a master as Consul Buddenbrook there aren’t so many, he’s a noble gentleman, ’n’ our Lord will reward him for all. …”
“Splendid, Grobleben! That was a beautiful speech. Thank you very much, Grobleben. What are the roses for?”
But Grobleben has not nearly done. He strains his whining voice and drowns the Consul out.
“… ’n’ I say th’ Lord will reward him, him and the whole respected family; ’n’ when his time has come to stan’ before His throne, for stan’ we all must, rich and poor, ’n’ one’ll have a fine polished hardwood coffin ’n’ ’tother ’n old box, yet all on us must come to mother earth at th’ last, yes, we must all come to her at th’ last—to mother earth—to mother—”
“Oh, come, come, Grobleben! This isn’t a funeral, it’s a christening. Get along with your mother earth!”
“… ’n’ these be a few flowers,” concludes Grobleben.
“Thank you, Grobleben, thank you. This is too much—what did you pay for them, man? But I haven’t heard such a speech as that for a long time! Wait a minute—here, go out and give yourself a treat, in honour of the day!” And the Consul puts his hand on the old man’s shoulder and gives him a thaler.
“Here, my good man,” says the Frau Consul. “And I hope you love our blessed Lord?”
“I be lovin’ him from my hairt, Frau Consul, thet’s the holy truth!” And Grobleben gets another thaler from her, and a third from Frau Permaneder, and retires with a bow and a scrape, taking the roses with him by mistake, except for those already fallen on the carpet.
The Burgomaster takes his leave now, and the Consul accompanies him down to his carriage. This is the signal for the party to break up—for Gerda Buddenbrook must rest. The old Frau Consul, Tony, Erica, and Mamsell Jungmann are the last to go.
“Well, Ida,” says the Consul, “I have been thinking it over: you took care of us all, and when little Johann gets a bit older—He still has the monthly nurse now, and after that he will still need a day-nurse, I suppose—but will you be willing to move over to us when the time comes?”
“Yes, indeed, Herr Consul, if your wife is satisfied.”
Gerda is content to have it so, and thus it is settled.
In the act of leaving, however, and already at the door, Frau Permaneder turns. She comes back to her brother and kisses him on both cheeks, and says: “It has been a lovely day, Tom. I am happier than I have been for years. We Buddenbrooks aren’t quite at the last gasp yet, thank God, and whoever thinks we are is mightily mistaken. Now that we have little Johann—it is so beautiful that he is christened Johann—it looks to me as if quite a new day will dawn for us all!”
II
Christian Buddenbrook, proprietor of the firm of H. C. F. Purmeister and Company of Hamburg, came into his brother’s living-room, holding in his hand his modish grey hat and his walking-stick with the nun’s bust. Tom and Gerda sat reading together. It was half-past nine on the evening of the christening day.
“Good evening,” said Christian. “Oh, Thomas, I must speak with you at once.—Please excuse me, Gerda.—It is urgent, Thomas.”
They went into the dark dining-room, where the Consul lighted a gas-jet on the wall, and looked at his brother. He expected nothing good. Except for the first greeting, he had had no opportunity to speak with Christian, but he had looked at him, during the service, and noted that he seemed unusually serious, and even more restless than common: in the course of Pastor Pringsheim’s discourse he had left the room for several minutes. Thomas had not written him since the day in Hamburg when he had paid over into his brother’s hands an advance of 10,000 marks current on his inheritance, to settle his indebtedness. “Just go on as you are going,” he had said, “and you’ll soon run through all your money. As far as I am concerned, I hope you will cross my path very little in future. You have put my friendship to too hard a test in these three years.” Why was he here now? Something must be driving him.
“Well?” asked the Consul.
“I’m done,” Christian said. He let himself down sidewise on one of the high-backed chairs around the dining-table, and held his hat and stick between his thin knees.
“May I ask what it is you are done with, and what brings you to me?” said the Consul. He remained standing.
“I’m done,” repeated Christian, shaking his head from side to side with frightful earnestness and letting his little round eyes stray restlessly back and forth. He was now thirty-three years old, but he looked much older. His reddish-blond hair was grown so thin that nearly all the cranium was bare. His cheeks were sunken, the cheekbones protruded sharply, and between them, naked, fleshless, and gaunt, stood the huge hooked nose.
“If it were only this—!” he went on, and ran his hand down the whole of his left side, very close, but not touching it. “It isn’t a pain, you know—it is a misery, a continuous, indefinite ache. Dr. Drögemuller in Hamburg tells me that my nerves on this side are all too short. Imagine, on my whole left side, my nerves aren’t long enough! Sometimes I think I shall surely have a stroke here, on this side, a permanent paralysis. You have no idea. I never go to sleep properly. My heart doesn’t beat, and I start up suddenly, in a perfectly terrible fright. That happens not once but ten times before I get to sleep. I don’t know if you know what it is. I’ll tell you about it more precisely. It is—”
“Not now,” the Consul said coldly. “Am I to understand that you have come here to tell me this? I suppose not.”
“No, Thomas. If it were only that—but it is not that—alone. It is the business. I can’t go on with it.”
“Your affairs are in confusion again?” The Consul did not start, he did not raise his voice. He asked the question quite calmly, and looked sidewise at his brother, with a cold, weary glance.
“No, Thomas. For to tell you the truth—it is all the same now—I never really was in order, even with the ten thousand, as you know yourself. They only saved me from putting up the shutters at once. The thing is—I had more losses at once, in coffee—and with the failure in Antwerp—That’s the truth. So then I didn’t do any more business; I just sat still. But one has to live—so now there are notes and other debts—five thousand thaler. You don’t know the hole I’m in. And on top of everything else, this agony—”
“Oh, so you just sat still, did you?” cried the Consul, beside himself. His self-control was gone now. “You let the wagon stick in the mud and went off to enjoy yourself! You think I don’t know the kind of life you’ve been living—theatres and circus and clubs—and women—”
“You mean Aline. Yes, Thomas, you have very little understanding for that sort of thing, and it’s my misfortune, perhaps, that I have so much. You are right when you say it has cost me too much; and it will cost me a goodish bit more, for—I’ll tell you something, just here between two brothers—the third child, the little girl, six months old, she is my child.”
“You fool, you!”
“Don’t say that, Thomas. You should be just, even if you are angry, to her and to—why shouldn’t it be my child? And as for Aline, she isn’t in the least worthless, and you ought not to say she is. She is not at all promiscuous; she broke with Consul Holm on my account, and he has much more money than I have. That’s how decent she is. No, Thomas, you simply can’t understand what a splendid creature she is—and healthy—she is as healthy—!” He repeated the word, and held up one hand before his face with the fingers crooked, in the same gesture as when he used to tell about “Maria” and the depravity of London. “You should see her teeth when she laughs. I’ve never found any other teeth to compare with them, not in Valparaiso, or London, or anywhere else in the world. I’ll never forget the evening I first met her, in the oyster-room, at Uhlich’s. She was living with Consul Holm then. Well, I told her a story or so, and was a bit friendly; and when I went home with her afterwards—well, Thomas, that’s a different sort of feeling from the one you have when you do a good stroke of business! But you don’t like to hear about such things—I can see that already—and anyhow, it’s over with. I’m saying goodbye to her, though I shall keep in touch with her on account of the child. I’ll pay up everything I owe in Hamburg, and shut up shop. I can’t go on. I’ve talked with Mother, and she is willing to give me the five thousand thaler to start with, so I can put things in order; and I hope you will agree to it, for it is much better to say quite simply that Christian Buddenbrook is winding up his business and going abroad, than for me to make a failure. You think so too, don’t you? I intend to go to London again, Thomas, and take a position. It isn’t good for me to be independent—I can see that more and more. The responsibility—whereas in a situation one just goes home quite carefree, at the end of the day. And I liked living in London. Do you object?”
During this exposition, the Consul had turned his back on his brother, and stood with his hands in his pockets, describing figures on the floor with his foot.
“Very good, go to London,” he said, shortly, and without turning more than halfway toward his brother, he passed into the living-room.
But Christian followed him. He went up to Gerda, who sat there alone, reading, and put out his hand.
“Good night, Gerda. Well, Gerda, I’m off for London. Yes, it’s remarkable how one gets tossed about hither and yon. Now it’s again into the unknown, into a great city, you know, where one meets an adventure at every third step, and sees so much of life. Strange—do you know the feeling? One gets it here—sort of in the pit of the stomach—it’s very odd.”
III
James Möllendorpf, the oldest of the merchant senators, died in a grotesque and horrible way. The instinct of self-preservation became very weak in this diabetic old man; and in the last years of his life he fell a victim to a passion for cakes and pastries. Dr. Grabow, as the Möllendorpf family physician, had protested energetically, and the distressed relatives employed gentle constraint to keep the head of the family from committing suicide with sweet bake-stuffs. But the old Senator, mental wreck as he was, rented a room somewhere, in some convenient street, like Little Groping Alley, or Angelswick, or Behind-the-Wall—a little hole of a room, whither he would secretly betake himself to consume sweets. And there they found his lifeless body, the mouth still full of half-masticated cake, the crumbs upon his coat and upon the wretched table. A mortal stroke had supervened, and put a stop to slow dissolution.
The horrid details of the death were kept as much as possible from the family, but they flew about the town, and were discussed at length on the Bourse, in the club, and at the Harmony, in all the business offices, in the Assembly of Burgesses—likewise at all the balls, dinners, and evening parties, for the death occurred in February of the year ’62, and the season was in full swing. Even the Frau Consul’s friends talked about it, on the Jerusalem evenings, in the pauses of Lea Gerhardt’s reading aloud; the little Sunday-school children discussed it in awesome whispers as they crossed the Buddenbrook entry; and Herr Stuht, in Bell-Founders’ Street, went into ample detail over it with his wife, who moved in the highest circles.
But interest could not long remain concentrated upon the past. And even with the first rumour of the old man’s death, the great question had at once sprung up: who was to succeed him?
What suspense, what subterranean activity! A stranger, intent on the sights of the medieval town, would have noticed nothing; but beneath the surface there was unimaginable bustle and commotion, as one firm and unassailable honest conviction after another was exploded; and slowly, slowly the while, divergent views approached each other! Passions are stirred, Ambition and Vanity wrestle together in silence. Dead and buried hopes spring once more to life—and again are blasted. Old Kurz, the merchant, in Bakers’ Alley, who gets three or four votes at every election, will sit quaking at home on the fatal day, and listen to the shouting, but he will not be elected this time either. He will continue to take his walks abroad, displaying outwardly his usual mingling of civic pride and self-satisfaction: but he will bear down with him into the grave the secret chagrin of never having been elected Senator.
James Möllendorpf’s death was discussed at the Buddenbrook Thursday dinner-table; and Frau Permaneder, after the proper expressions of sympathy, began to let her tongue play upon her upper lip and look across artfully at her brother. The Buddenbrook ladies marked the look. They exchanged piercing glances, and with one accord shut their eyes and their lips tightly together. The Consul had, for a second, responded to the sly smile his sister gave him, and then given the talk another turn. He knew that the thought which Tony hugged to her breast in secret was being spoken in the street.
Names were suggested and rejected, others came up and were sifted out. Henning Kurz in Bakers’ Alley was too old. They needed new blood. Consul Huneus, the lumber dealer, whose millions would have weighted the scale heavily in his favour, was constitutionally ineligible, as his brother already sat in the Senate. Consul Eduard Kistenmaker, the wine dealer, and Consul Hermann Hagenström were names that kept their places on the list. But from the very first was heard the name of Thomas Buddenbrook; and as election-day approached, it grew constantly plainer that he and Hermann Hagenström were the favoured candidates.
Hermann Hagenström had his admirers and hangers-on—there was no doubt of that. His zeal in public affairs, the spectacular rise of the firm of Strunck and Hagenström, the showy house the Consul kept, the luxurious life he led, the pâtés-de-foie-gras he ate for breakfast—all these could not fail to make an impression. This large, rather over-stout man with the short, full, reddish beard and the snub nose coming down flat on his upper lip, this man whose grandfather nobody knew, not even himself, and whose father had made himself socially impossible by a rich but doubtful marriage; this man had become a brother-in-law of the Huneus’ and the Möllendorpfs, had ranged his name alongside those of the five or six reigning families in the town, and was undeniably a remarkable and a respected figure. The novel and therewith the attractive element in his personality—that which singled him out for a leading position in the eyes of many—was its liberal and tolerant strain. His light, large way of making money and spending it again differed fundamentally from the patient, persistent toil and the inherited principles of his fellow merchants. This man stood on his own feet, free from the fetters of tradition and ancestral piety; and all the old ways were foreign to him. His house was not one of the ancient patrician mansions, built with senseless waste of space, in tall white galleries mounting above a stone-paved ground floor. His home on Sand Street, the southern extension of Broad Street, was a modern dwelling, not conforming to any set style of architecture, with a simple painted façade, but furnished inside with every luxury and planned with the cleverest economy of space. Recently, on the occasion of one of his large evening parties, he had invited a prima donna from the government theatre, to sing after dinner to his guests—among them his witty, art-loving brother—and had paid her an enormous fee for her services. Hermann Hagenström was not the man to vote in the Assembly for the application of large sums of money to preserve and restore the town’s medieval monuments. But it was a fact that he was the first, absolutely the first man in town to light his house and his offices with gas. Yes, if Consul Hagenström could be said to represent any tradition whatever, it was the free, progressive, tolerant, unprejudiced habit of thought which he had inherited from his father, old Heinrich—and on this was based all the admiration people undoubtedly felt for him.
Thomas Buddenbrook’s prestige was of a different kind. People honoured in him not only his own personality, but the personalities of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather as well: quite apart from his own business and public achievement, he was the representative of a hundred years of honourable tradition. And the easy, charming way, indeed, with which he carried the family standard made no small part of his success. What distinguished him, even among his professional fellow-citizens, was an unusual degree of formal culture, which, wherever he went, aroused both wonder and respect in about equal degrees.
On Thursdays at the Buddenbrooks’, the coming election received only brief and passing comment in the presence of the Consul. Whenever it was mentioned, the old Frau Consul discreetly averted her light eyes. But Frau Permaneder, now and then, could not refrain from displaying her astonishing knowledge of the Constitution. She had gone very thoroughly into the decrees touching the election of a member of the Senate, precisely as once she thoroughly informed herself on the laws governing divorce. She talked about voting chambers, ballots, and electors, she weighed all the possible eventualities, she could recite verbatim and glibly the oath taken by the voters. She spoke of the “free and frank discussion” which the Constitution ordains must be held over each name upon the list of candidates, and vivaciously wished she might be present when Hermann Hagenström’s character was being pulled to pieces! A moment later she leaned over and began to count the prune-pits on her brother’s dessert-plate: tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor—finishing triumphantly with “senator” when she came to the last pit. But after dinner she could not hold in any longer. She took her brother’s arm and drew him into the bow-window.
“Oh, Tom! Tom! Suppose you are really elected—if our coat-of-arms is put up in the Senate-chamber at the Town Hall I shall just die of joy, I know I shall. I shall fall dead at the news—you’ll see!”
“Now, Tony dear! Have a little self-control, a little dignity, I beg of you. You are not usually lacking in dignity. Am I going around like Henning Kurz? We amount to something even without the ‘Senator.’ And I hope you won’t die, whichever way it turns out!”
And the agitations, the consultations, the struggles of opinion took their course. Consul Peter Döhlmann, the rake with a business now entirely ruined, which existed only in name, and the twenty-seven-year-old daughter whose inheritance he was eating up, played his part by attending two dinners, one given by Thomas Buddenbrook and the other by Herman Hagenström, and both times addressing his host, in his loud, resounding voice, as “Senator.” But Siegismund Gosch, old Gosch the broker, went about like a raging lion, and engaged to throttle anybody, out of hand, who wasn’t minded to vote for Consul Buddenbrook.
“Consul Buddenbrook, gentlemen—ah, there’s a man for you! I stood at his father’s side in the ’48, when, with a word, he tamed the unleashed fury of the mob. His father, and his father’s father before him, would have been Senator were there any justice on this earth!”
But at bottom it was not so much Consul Buddenbrook himself whose personality fired Gosch’s soul to its innermost depths. It was rather the young Frau Consul, Gerda Arnoldsen. Not that the broker had ever exchanged a word with her. He did not belong to her circle of wealthy merchant families, nor sit at their tables, nor pay visits to them. But, as we have seen, Gerda Buddenbrook had but to arrive in the town to be singled out by the roving fancy of the sinister broker, ever on the lookout for the unusual. With unerring instinct he divined that this figure was calculated to add content to his unsatisfied existence, and he made himself the slave of one who had scarcely ever heard his name. Since then he encompassed in his reveries this nervous, exceedingly reserved lady, to whom he had not even been presented: he lifted his Jesuit hat to her, on the street, to her great surprise, and treated her to a pantomime of cringing treachery, gloating over her the while in his thoughts as a tiger might over his trainer. This dull existence would afford him no chance of committing atrocities for this woman’s sake—ah, if it only would, with what devilish indifference would he answer for them! Its stupid conventions prevented him from raising her, by deeds of blood and horror, to an imperial throne!—And thus, nothing was left but for him to go to the Town Hall and cast his vote in favour of her furiously respected husband—and, perhaps, one day, to dedicate to her his forthcoming transition of Lope de Vega.
IV
Every vacant seat in the Senate must, according to the Constitution, be filled within four weeks. Three of them have passed, and this is election-day—a day of thaw, at the end of February.
It is about one o’clock, and people are thronging into Broad Street. They are thronging before the Town Hall, with its ornamental glazed-brick façade, its pointed towers and turrets mounting toward a whitish grey sky, its covered steps supported on outstanding columns, its pointed arcades, through which there is a glimpse of the marketplace and the fountain. The crowd stands steadfastly in the dirty slush that melts beneath their feet; they look into each other’s faces and then straight ahead again, and crane their necks. For beyond that portal, in the Council Room, in fourteen armchairs arranged in a semicircle sit the electors, who have been chosen from the Senate and the Assembly and await the proposals of the voting chambers.
The affair has spun itself out. It appears that the debate in the chambers will not die down; the struggle is so bitter that up to now not one single unanimous choice has been put before the Council—otherwise the Burgomaster would at once announce an election. Extraordinary! Rumours—nobody knows whence, nobody knows how—come from within the building and circulate in the street. Perhaps Herr Kaspersen, the elder of the two beadles, who always refers to himself as a “servant of the State,” is standing inside there and telling what he hears, out of the corner of his mouth, through his shut teeth, with his eyes turned the other way! The story goes that proposals have been laid before the sitting, but that each of the three chambers has turned in a different name: namely Hagenström, Kistenmaker, and Buddenbrook. A secret ballot must now be taken, with ballot-papers—it is to be hoped that it will show a clear plurality! For people without overshoes are suffering, and stamping their feet to warm them.
The waiting crowd is made up of all sorts and conditions. There are seafaring characters, with bare tattoed necks and their hands in the pockets of their sailor trousers; grain-porters with their incomparably respectable countenances, and their blouses and knee-breeches of black glazed calico; drivers who have clambered down from their wagons of piled-up sacks, and stand whip in hand to wait for the decision; servant-maids in neckerchiefs, aprons and thick striped petticoats with little white caps perched on the backs of their heads and market-baskets hanging on their bare arms; fish and vegetable women with their flat straw baskets—even a couple of pretty farm girls with Dutch caps, short skirts, and long flowing sleeves coming out from their gaily-embroidered stay-bodies. Mingled among these, burghers, shopkeepers who have come out hatless from neighbouring shops to exchange their views, sprucely-dressed young men who are apprentices in the business of their fathers or their fathers’ friends—and schoolboys with satchels and bundles of books.
Two labourers with bristling sailor beards, stand chewing their tobacco; behind them is an excited lady, craning her neck this way and that to get a glimpse of the Town Hall between their powerful shoulders. She wears a long evening cloak trimmed with brown fur, which she holds together from the inside with both hands. Her face is well covered with a thick brown veil. She shifts her feet about in the melting snow.
“Gawd! Kurz bain’t gettin’ it this time, nuther, be he?” says the one labourer to the other.
“Naw, ye muttonhead, ’tis certain he bain’t. There’s no more talk o’ him. Th’ votin’s between Hagenström, Buddenbrook, ’n’ Kistenmaker. ’Tis all about they—now.”
“ ’Tis whether which one o’ th’ three be ahead o’ the others, eh?”
“So ’tis; yes, they do say so.”
“Then I’m minded they’ll be choosin’ Hagenström.”
“Eh, smarty—so they’ll be choosin’ Hagenström? Ye can tell that to yer grandmother!” And therewith he spits his tobacco-juice on the ground close to his own feet, the crowd being too dense to admit of a trajectory. He takes hold of his trousers in both hands and pulls them up higher under his belt, and goes on: “Hagenström, he’s a great pig—he be so fat he can’t breathe through his own nose! If so be it’s all o’er wi’ Kurz then I’m fer Buddenbrook. ’Tis a very shrewd chap.”
“So ’tis, so ’tis. But Hagenström, he’s got the money.”
“That bain’t the question—’tis no matter o’ riches.”
“ ’n’ then this Buddenbrook—he be so devilish fine wi’ his cuffs ’n’ his silk tie ’n’ his stickin’-out moustaches; hast seen him walk? He hops along like a bird.”
“Ye ninny, that bain’t the question, no more’n th’ other.”
“They say his sister’ve put away two men a’ready.” The lady in the fur cloak trembles visibly.
“Eh, that soart o’ thing—what do we know about it? Likely the Consul he couldn’t help it hisself.”
The lady in the veil thinks to herself, “He couldn’t, indeed! Thank God for that,” and presses her hands together, inside her cloak.
“ ’n’ then,” adds the Buddenbrook partisan, “didn’t the Burgomaster his own self stan’ godfeyther to his son? Can’t ye tell somethin’ by that?”
“Yes, can’t you indeed?” thinks the lady. “Thank heaven, that did do some good.” She starts. A fresh rumour from the Town Hall, running zigzag through the crowd, has reached her ears. The balloting, it seems, has not been decisive. Eduard Kistenmaker, indeed, has received fewer votes than the other two candidates, and his name has been dropped. But the struggle goes on between Buddenbrook and Hagenström. A sapient citizen remarks that if the voting continues to be even, it will be necessary to appoint five arbitrators.
A voice, down in front at the entrance steps, shouts suddenly: “Heine Seehas is ’lected—’rah for Heine Seehas!” Heine Seehas, be it known, is an habitual drunkard, who peddles hot bread on a little wagon through the streets. Everybody roars with laughter, and stands on tiptoe to see the wag who is responsible for the joke. The lady in the veil is seized with a nervous giggle; her shoulders shake for a moment, and then give a shrug which expresses as plainly as words: “Is this the time for tomfoolery like that?” She collects herself again, and stares with intensity between the two labourers at the Town Hall. But almost at the same moment her hands slip from her cloak, so that it opens in front, her figure relaxes, her shoulders droop, she stands there entirely crushed.
Hagenström!—The word seems to have come from nobody knows where—down from the sky, or up from the earth. It is everywhere at once. There is no contradiction. So it is decided. Hagenström! Hagenström it is, then. One may as well go home. The lady in the veil might have known. It was ever thus. She will go home—she feels the tears rising in her throat.
This state of things has lasted a second or so, when there occurs a shouting and a backward jostling of the throng. It runs through the whole assemblage, as those in front press back those behind, and at the same time something red appears in the doorway. It is the coats of the beadles Kaspersen and Uhlefeldt. They are in full-dress uniform, with white riding breeches, three-cornered hats, yellow gauntlet gloves, and short dress swords. They appear side by side, and make their way through the crowd, which falls back before them.
They move like fate: silent, resolved, inexorable, not looking to right or left, with gaze directed toward the ground. They take, according to instructions, the route marked out by the election. And it is not in the direction of Sand Street! They have turned to the right—they are going down Broad Street!
The lady in the veil cannot believe her eyes. However, all about her, people are seeing just what she sees; they are pushing on after the beadles, and saying to each other: “It isn’t Hagenström, it’s Buddenbrook!” And a group of gentlemen emerge from the portal, in excited conversation, and hurry with rapid steps down Broad Street, to be the first to offer congratulations.
Then the lady holds her cloak together and runs for it. She runs, indeed, as seldom lady runs. Her veil blows up, revealing her flushed face—no matter for that; and one of her furred goloshes keeps flapping open in the sloppy snow and hindering her frightfully: yet she outruns them all! She gains the house at the corner of Bakers’ Street, she rings the alarm-bell at the vestibule door—fire, murder, thieves!—she shouts at the maid who opens: “They’re coming, Kathrin, they’re coming,” takes the stairs, and storms into the living-room. Her brother himself sits there, certainly a little pale. He puts down his paper and makes a gesture, almost as if to ward her off. But she puts her arms about him, and repeats: “They’re coming, Tom, they’re coming! You are the man—and Hermann Hagenström is out!”
That was Friday. On the following day, Senator Buddenbrook stood in the Council Hall, in the seat of the deceased James Möllendorpf, and in the presence of the City Fathers there assembled, and the Delegation of Burgesses, he took the oath: “I will conscientiously perform the duties of my office, strive with all my power for the good of the State, faithfully obey the Constitution, honourably pursue the public weal, and in the discharge of my office, regard neither my own advantage nor that of my relatives and friends. I will support the laws of the State and do justice on all alike, whether rich or poor. In all things where secrecy is needful, I will not speak, and especially will I not reveal what is given me to keep silent. So help me God!”
V
Our desires and our performance are conditioned by certain needs of our nervous systems which are very hard to define in words. What people called Thomas Buddenbrook’s “vanity”—his care for his personal appearance, his extravagant dressing—was at bottom not vanity but something else entirely. It was, originally, no more than the effort of a man of action to be certain, from head to toe, of the adequacy and correctness of his bearing. But the demands made by himself and by others upon his talents and his capacities were constantly increased. He was overwhelmed by public and private affairs. When the Senate sat to appoint its committees, one of the main departments, the administration of the taxes, fell to his lot. But tolls, railways, and other administrative business claimed his time as well; and he presided at hundreds of committees that called into play all the capacities he possessed: he had to summon every ounce of his flexibility, his foresight, his power to charm, in order not to wound the sensibilities of his elders, to defer constantly to them, and yet to keep the reins in his own hands. If his so-called vanity notably increased at the same time, if he felt a greater and greater need to refresh himself bodily, to renew himself, to change his clothing several times a day, all this meant simply that Thomas Buddenbrook, though he was barely thirty-seven years old, was losing his elasticity, was wearing himself out fast.
When good Dr. Grabow begged him to relax a little, he answered, “Oh, my dear Doctor, I haven’t reached that point yet!” By which he meant that he still had an interminable deal of work to do before he arrived at the goal and could settle back to enjoy himself. The truth was, he hardly believed himself in such a condition. Yet it drove him on, it left him no peace. Even when he seemed to rest, as he sat with the paper after dinner, a thousand ideas whirled about in his brain, while the veins stood out on his temples, and he twisted the ends of his moustaches with a certain still intensity of passion. He concentrated with equal violence whether the subject of his thought was a business manoeuvre, a public speech, or a decision to renew his entire stock of body linen, in order to be sure that he had enough, for a while, at least.
If such wholesale buying afforded him passing relief and satisfaction, he could indulge himself in it without scruple, for his business at this time was as brilliant as ever it had been in his grandfather’s day. The repute of the firm grew, not only in the town but round about, and throughout the whole community he continued to be held in ever greater regard. His talents were admitted on all hands, with admiration or envy as the case might be; while he himself wrestled ceaselessly, at times despairingly, to evolve an order and method of work which should enable him to overtake the flights of his own restless imagination.
Thus, when, in the summer of 1863, Senator Buddenbrook went about with his mind full of plans for the building of a great new house, it was not arrogance which impelled him. He was driven by his own inability to be quiet—which his fellow-burghers would have been right in ascribing to his “vanity”—for it was another manifestation of the same thing. To make a new home, and a radical change in his outward life; to pack up, to reinstall himself afresh, to weed out all the accumulations of bygone years and set aside everything old or superfluous: all this, even in imagination, gave him feelings of freshness, newness, spotlessness, stimulation. All of which he must have craved indeed, for he attacked the plan with great enthusiasm, and already had his eye on a suitable location.
There was a property of considerable extent at the lower end of Fishers’ Lane. The house, grey with age, in bad repair, was offered for sale on the death of its owner, an ancient spinster, the relic of a forgotten family, who had dwelt there alone. On this piece of land the Senator thought to build his house; and he surveyed it with a speculative eye when he passed the spot on his way to the harbour. The neighbourhood was pleasant enough—good burgher-houses, the most modest among them being the narrow little façade opposite, with a small flower-shop on the ground floor.
He threw himself into the affair. He made a rough estimate of the expense involved, and though the sum he fixed provisionally was by no means a small one, he felt he could compass it without undue effort. But then he would suddenly have the thought that the whole thing was a senseless folly, and confess to himself that his present house had plenty of room for himself, his wife, their child, and their servants. But the half-conscious cravings were stronger; and in the desire to have them strengthened and justified from outside, he first revealed his plan to his sister.
“Well, Tony, what do you say to it? The whole house is a sort of hand-box, isn’t it?—and the winding stair is really a joke. It isn’t quite the thing, is it? and now that you’ve had me made Senator—in a word, don’t you think I owe it to myself?”
Ah, in the eyes of Madame Permaneder, what was there he did not owe to himself? She was full of practical enthusiasm. She crossed her arms on her breast and walked up and down with her shoulders raised and her head in the air.
“Of course you do, Tom; goodness gracious, yes! What possible objection could there be? And when you have married an Arnoldsen, with a hundred thousand thaler to boot—I’m very proud to be the first you’ve told it to. It was lovely of you. And if you do do it, Tom, why, you must do it well, that’s what I say. It must be grand.”
“H’m, well, yes, I agree with you. I’m willing to spend something on it. I’ll have Voigt, and we’ll go over the plans together. Voigt has a great deal of taste.”
The second opinion which Thomas called in was Gerda’s. She praised the idea unreservedly. The confusion of moving would not be pleasant, but the prospect of a large music-room with good acoustic properties impressed her most happily. As for the old Frau Consul, she was quite prepared to think of the new house as a logical consequence of all the other blessings which had fallen to her lot, and to give thanks to God therefor, accordingly. Since the birth of the heir, and the recent election, she gave freer expression to her motherly pride, and had a way of saying “my son, the Senator,” which the Broad Street Buddenbrooks found most offensive.
These aging spinsters felt that all too little shadow set off the sunshine through which Thomas’s outward life ran its brilliant course. It was no great consolation—at the Thursday family gatherings—to pour contempt on poor, good-natured Clothilde. As for Christian—Christian, through the good offices of Mr. Richardson, his former chief, had found a situation in London, whence he had lately telegraphed a fantastic desire to marry Fräulein Puvogel, an idea upon which his mother had firmly set her foot—Christian now belonged, quite simply, to Jacob Kröger’s class, and was, as it were, a dead issue. They consoled themselves, to some extent, with the little weaknesses of the old Frau Consul and Frau Permaneder. They would bring the conversation round to the subject of coiffures: the Frau Consul was capable of saying, in the blandest way, that she always wore “her” hair very simply, whereas it was plain to anyone gifted by God with intelligence, and certainly to the Misses Buddenbrook, that the immutable red-blonde hair under the old lady’s cap could no longer by any stretch be called “her” hair. Still more gratifying was it to get Cousin Tony started on the subject of those nefarious persons who had formerly had an influence on her life. Teary Trietschke! Grünlich! Permaneder! Hagenström!—Tony, when she was egged on to it, would utter these names into the air like so many little trumpetings of disgust, with her shoulders well up. They had a sweet sound in the ears of the daughters of Uncle Gotthold.
They could not dissimulate, and they would accept no responsibility for omitting to say that little Johann was frightfully slow about learning to walk and talk. They were really quite right: it was an admitted fact that Hanno—this was the nickname adopted by the Frau Senator for her son—at a time when he was able to call all the members of his family by name with fair correctness, was incapable of pronouncing the names Friederike, Henriette, and Pfiffi so that anyone could understand what he said. And at fifteen months he had not taken a single step alone. The Misses Buddenbrook, shaking their heads pessimistically, declared that the child would be halt and tongue-tied to the end of his days.
They later admitted the error of their gloomy prophecy; but nobody, in fact, denied that Hanno was a little backward. His early infancy was a struggle for life, and his family was in constant anxiety. At birth he had been too feeble to cry out; and soon after the christening a three-day attack of cholera-infantum was almost enough to still forever the little heart set pumping, in the first place, with such difficulty. But he survived; and good Dr. Grabow did his best, by the most painstaking care and nourishment, to strengthen him for the difficult period of teething. The first tiny white point had barely pricked through the gum, when the child was attacked by convulsions, which repeated themselves with greater and greater violence, until again the worst was to be feared. Once more the old doctor speechlessly pressed the parents’ hands. The child lay in profound exhaustion, and the vacant look in the shadowy eyes indicated an affection of the brain. The end seemed almost to be wished for.
But Hanno regained some little strength, consciousness returned; and though the crisis which he had survived greatly hindered his progress in walking and talking, there was no longer any immediate danger to be feared.
The child was slender of limb, and rather tall for his age. His hair, pale brown and very soft, began to grow rapidly, and fell waving over the shoulders of his full, pinafore-like frocks. The family likenesses were abundantly clear, even now. From the first he possessed the Buddenbrook hand, broad, a little too short, but finely articulated, and his nose was precisely the nose of his father and great-grandfather, though the nostrils would probably remain more delicate. But the whole lower part of his face, longish and narrow, was neither Buddenbrook nor Kröger, but from the mother’s side of the house. This was true of the mouth in particular, which, when closed, began very early to wear an anxious, woebegone expression that later matched the look of his strange, gold-brown, blue-shadowed eyes.
So he began to live: brooded over by his father’s reserved tenderness, clothed and nurtured under his mother’s watchful eye; prayed over by Aunt Antonie, presented with tops and hobbyhorses by the Frau Consul and Uncle Justus; and when his charming little perambulator appeared on the streets, it was looked after with interest and expectation. Madame Decho, the stately nurse, had attended the child up to now; but it had been settled that when they moved into the new house, not she, but Ida Jungmann, should move in with them, and the latter’s place with the old Frau Consul be filled by somebody else.
Senator Buddenbrook carried out his plans. He had no difficulty in obtaining title to the property in Fishers’ Lane. The Broad Street house was turned over to Gosch the broker, who dramatically declared himself prepared to assume the task of disposing of it. Stephan Kistenmaker, who had a growing family, and, with his brother Eduard, made good money in the wine business, bought it at once. Herr Voigt undertook the new building, and soon there was a clean plan to unroll before the eyes of the family on Thursday afternoons, when they could, in fancy, see the façade already before them: an imposing brick façade with sandstone caryatides supporting the bow-window, and a flat roof, of which Clothilde remarked, in her pleasant drawl, that one might drink afternoon coffee there. The Senator planned to transfer the business offices to his new building, which would, of course, leave empty the ground floor of the house in Meng Street. But here also things turned out well: for it appeared that the City Fire Insurance Company wanted to rent the rooms by the month for their offices—which was quickly arranged.
Autumn came, and the grey walls crumbled to heaps of rubbish, and Thomas Buddenbrook’s new house rose above its roomy cellars, while winter set in and slowly waned again. In all the town there was no pleasanter topic of conversation. It was “tip-top”—it was the finest dwelling-house far and wide. But it must cost like the deuce—the old Consul would never have spent money so recklessly. Thus the neighbours, the middle-class dwellers in the gabled houses, looking out at the workmen on the scaffoldings, enjoying the sight of the rising walls, and speculating on the date of the carpenters’ feast.
It came at length, and was celebrated with due circumstance. Up on the flat-topped roof an old master mason made the festal speech and flung the champagne bottle over his shoulder, while the tremendous wreath, woven of roses, green garlands, and gay-coloured leaves, swayed between standards, heavily in the breeze. The workmen’s feast was held at a neighbouring inn, at long tables, with beer, sandwiches, and cigars; and Senator Buddenbrook and his wife and his little son on Madame Decho’s arm, walked through the narrow space between the tables and bowed his thanks at the cheers they gave him.
When they got outside, they put little Hanno back into his carriage, and Thomas and Gerda crossed the road to have another look at the red façade with the white caryatides. They stood before the flower-shop with the narrow door and the poor little show-window, in which only a few pots of onions stood on a green glass slab. Iwersen, the proprietor, a blond giant of a man, in a woollen jacket, was in the doorway with his wife. She was of a quite different build, slender and delicate, with a dark, southern-looking face. She held a four- or five-year-old boy by one hand, while with the other she was pushing a little carriage back and forth, in which a younger child lay asleep; and she was plainly expecting a third blessing.
Iwersen made a low, awkward bow; his wife, continuing to push the little carriage back and forth, looked calmly and observantly at the Frau Senator with her narrow black eyes, as the lady approached them on her husband’s arm.
Thomas paused and pointed with his walking-stick at the great garland far above them.
“You did a good job, Iwersen,” said he.
“No, Herr Sen’tor. That’s the wife’s work. She’s the one fer these affairs.”
“Oh,” said the Senator, raised his head with a little jerk, and gave, for a second, a clear friendly look straight into Frau Iwersen’s face. Then, without adding a word, he courteously waved his hand, and they moved on their way.
VI
One Sunday at the beginning of July—Senator Buddenbrook had moved some four weeks before—Frau Permaneder appeared at her brother’s house toward evening. She crossed the cool ground floor, paved with flags and decorated with reliefs by Thorwaldsen, whence there was a door leading into the bureau; she rang at the vestibule door—it could be opened from the kitchen by pressing on a rubber bulb—and entered the spacious lobby, where, at the foot of the steps, stood the bear presented by Tiburtius and Clara. Here she learned from Anton that the Senator was still at work.
“Very good, Anton,” she said. “I will go to him.”
Yet she did not go at once into the office, but passed the door that led into it and stood at the bottom of the splendid staircase, which as far as the first storey had a cast-iron balustrade, but at the distance of the second storey became a wide pillared balcony in white and gold, with a great gilt chandelier hanging down from the skylight’s dizzy height.
“Very elegant,” said Frau Permaneder, softly, in a tone of great satisfaction, gazing up into this spacious magnificence. To her it meant, quite simply, the power, the brilliance, and the triumph of the Buddenbrook family. But now it occurred to her that she was not, in fact, come upon a very cheerful errand, and she slowly turned away and passed through the door into the office.
Thomas sat there quite alone, in his place by the window, writing a letter. He glanced up, raised an eyebrow, and put out his hand to his sister.
“ ’Evening, Tony. What’s the good word?”
“Oh, nothing very good, Tom. Oh, your staircase—it’s just too splendid! Why are you sitting here writing in the dark?”
“It was a pressing letter. Well—nothing very good, eh? Come into the garden, a little. It is pleasanter out there.”
As they crossed the entry, a violin adagio came trillingly down from the storey above.
“Listen,” said Tony, and paused a moment. “Gerda is playing. How heavenly! What a woman! She isn’t a woman, she’s a fairy. How is Hanno, Tom?”
“Just having his supper, with Jungmann. Too bad he is so slow about walking—”
“Oh, that will come, Tom, that will come. Are you pleased with Ida?”
“Why not?”
They crossed the flags at the back, leaving the kitchen on the right, went through a glass door and up two steps into the lovely, scented flower-garden.
“Well?” the Senator asked.
It was warm and still. The fragrance from the neat beds and borders hung in the evening air, and the fountain, surrounded by tall pale purple iris, sent its stream gently plashing heavenward, where the first stars began to gleam. In the background, an open flight of steps flanked by low obelisks, led up to a gravelled terrace, with an open wooden pavilion, a closed marquee, and some garden chairs. On the left hand was the property wall between them and the next garden; on the right the sidewall of the next house was covered with a wooden trellis intended for climbing plants. There were a few currant and gooseberry bushes at the sides of the terrace steps, but there was only one tree, a large, gnarled walnut by the left-hand wall.
“The thing is this,” answered Frau Permaneder, with some hesitation, as the brother and sister began to pace the gravel path of the fore part of the garden. “Tiburtius has written—”
“Clara?” questioned Thomas. “Please don’t make a long story of it.”
“Yes, Tom. She is in bed; she is very bad—the doctor is afraid of tuberculosis—of the brain.—I can hardly speak the words. Here is the letter Tiburtius wrote me, and enclosed another for Mother, which we are to give her when we have prepared her a little. It tells the same story. And there is this second enclosure, to Mother, from Clara herself—written in pencil, in a shaky hand. And Tiburtius wrote that she herself said they were the last she should write, for it seems the sad thing is she makes no effort to live. She was always longing for Heaven—” finished Frau Permaneder, and wiped her eyes.
The Senator walked at her side, his hands behind his back, his head bowed.
“You are so quiet, Tom. But you are right—what is there to say? Just now, too, when Christian lies ill in Hamburg—”
For this was, in fact, the state of things. Christian’s “misery” in the left side had increased so much of late that it had become actual pain, severe enough to make him forget all smaller woes. He was quite helpless, and had written to his mother from London that he was coming home, for her to take care of him. He quit his situation in London and started off; but at Hamburg had been obliged to take to his bed; the doctor diagnosed his ailment as rheumatism of the joints, and he had been removed from his hotel to a hospital. Any further journey was for the time impossible. There he lay, and dictated to his attendant letters that betrayed extreme depression.
“Yes,” said the Senator, quietly. “It seems as if one thing just followed on another.”
She put her arm for an instant across his shoulders.
“But you musn’t give way, Tom. This is no time for you to be downhearted. You need all your courage—”
“Yes, God knows I need it.”
“What do you mean, Tom? Tell me, why were you so quiet Thursday afternoon at dinner, if I may ask?”
“Oh—business, my child. I had to sell no very small quantity of grain not very advantageously—or, rather, I had to sell a large quantity very much at a loss.”
“Well, that happens, Tom. You sell at a loss today, and tomorrow you make it good again. To get discouraged over a thing of that kind—”
“Wrong, Tony,” he said, and shook his head. “My courage does not go down to zero because I have a piece of bad luck. It’s the other way on. I believe in that, and events show it.”
“But what is the matter with it, then?” she asked, surprised and alarmed. “One would think you have enough to make you happy, Tom. Clara is alive, and with God’s help she will get better. And as for everything else—here we are, walking about, in your own garden, and it all smells so sweet—and yonder is your house, a dream of a house—Hermann Hagenström’s is a dog-kennel beside it! And you have done all that—”
“Yes, it is almost too beautiful, Tony. I’ll tell you—it is too new. It jars on me a little—perhaps that is what is the matter with me. It may be responsible for the bad mood that comes over me and spoils everything. I looked forward immensely to all this; but the anticipation was the best part of it—it always is. Everything gets done too slowly—so when it is finished the pleasure is already gone.”
“The pleasure is gone, Tom? At your age?”
“A man is as young, or as old, as he feels. And when one gets one’s wish too late, or works too hard for it, it comes already weighted with all sorts of small vexatious drawbacks—with all the dust of reality upon it, that one did not reckon with in fancy. It is so irritating—so irritating—”
“Oh yes.—But what do you mean by ‘as old as you feel’?”
“Why, Tony—it is a mood, certainly. It may pass. But just now I feel older than I am. I have business cares. And at the Directors’ meeting of the Buchen Railway yesterday, Consul Hagenström simply talked me down, refuted my contentions, nearly made me appear ridiculous. I feel that could not have happened to me before. It is as though something had begun to slip—as though I haven’t the firm grip I had on events.—What is success? It is an inner, an indescribable force, resourcefulness, power of vision; a consciousness that I am, by my mere existence, exerting pressure on the movement of life about me. It is my belief in the adaptability of life to my own ends. Fortune and success lie with ourselves. We must hold them firmly—deep within us. For as soon as something begins to slip, to relax, to get tired, within us, then everything without us will rebel and struggle to withdraw from our influence. One thing follows another, blow after blow—and the man is finished. Often and often, in these days, I have thought of a Turkish proverb; it says, ‘When the house is finished, death comes.’ It doesn’t need to be death. But the decline, the falling-off, the beginning of the end. You know, Tony,” he went on, in a still lower voice, putting his arm underneath his sister’s, “when Hanno was christened, you said: ‘It looks as if quite a new life would dawn for us all!’ I can still hear you say it, and I thought then that you were right, for I was elected Senator, and was fortunate in my business, and this house seemed to spring up out of the ground. But the ‘Senator’ and this house are superficial after all. I know, from life and from history, something you have not thought of: often, the outward and visible material signs and symbols of happiness and success only show themselves when the process of decline has already set in. The outer manifestations take time—like the light of that star up there, which may in reality be already quenched, when it looks to us to be shining its brightest.”
He ceased to speak, and they walked for a while in silence, while the fountain gently murmured, and a whispering sounded from the top of the walnut tree. Then Frau Permaneder breathed such a heavy sigh that it sounded like a sob.
“How sadly you talk, Tom. You never spoke so sadly before. But it is good to speak out, and it will help you to put all that kind of thoughts out of your mind.”
“Yes, Tony, I must try to do that, I know, as well as I can. And now give me the enclosures from Clara and the Pastor. It will be best, won’t it, for me to take over the matter, and speak tomorrow morning with Mother? Poor Mother! If it is really tuberculosis, one may as well give up hope.”
VII
“You don’t even ask me? You go right over my head?”
“I have done as I had to do.”
“You have acted like a distracted person, in a perfectly unreasonable way.”
“Reason is not the highest thing on earth.”
“Please don’t make phrases. The question is one of the most ordinary justice, which you have most astonishingly ignored.”
“Let me suggest to you, my son, that you yourself are ignoring the duty and respect which you owe to your mother.”
“And I answer you, my dear Mother, by telling you that I have never for a moment forgotten the respect I owe you; but that my attributes as a son became void when I took my father’s place as head of the family and of the firm.”
“I desire you to be silent, Thomas!”
“No, I will not be silent, so long as you fail to realize the extent of your own weakness and folly.”
“I have a right to dispose of my own property as I choose!”
“Within the limits of justice and reason.”
“I could never have believed you would have the heart to wound me like this!”
“And I could never have believed that my own Mother would slap me in the face!”
“Tom! Why, Tom!” Frau Permaneder’s anguished voice got itself a hearing at last. She sat at the window of the landscape-room, wringing her hands, while her brother paced up and down in a state of high excitement, and the Frau Consul, beside herself with angry grief, sat on the sofa, leaning with one hand on its upholstered arm, while the other struck the table to emphasize her words. All three wore mourning for Clara, who was now no longer of this earth; and all three were pale and excited.
What was going on? Something amazing, something dreadful, something at which the very actors in the scene themselves stood aghast and incredulous. A quarrel, an embittered disagreement between mother and son!
It was a sultry August afternoon. Only ten days after the Senator had gently prepared his mother and given her the letters from Clara and Tiburtius, the blow fell, and he had the harder task of breaking to the old lady the news of death itself. He travelled to Riga for the funeral, and returned with his brother-in-law, who spent a few days with the family of his deceased wife, and also visited Christian in the hospital at Hamburg. And now, two days after the Pastor had departed for home, the Frau Consul, with obvious hesitation, made a certain revelation to her son.
“One hundred and twenty-seven thousand, five hundred marks current,” cried he, and shook his clasped hands in front of him. “If it were the dowry, even! If he wanted to keep the eighty thousand marks! Though, considering there’s no heir, even that—! But to promise him Clara’s whole inheritance, right over my head! Without saying aye, yes, or no!”
“Thomas, for our blessed Lord’s sake, do me some sort of justice, at least. Could I act otherwise? Tell me, could I? She who has been taken from us, and is now with God, she wrote me from her deathbed, with faltering hand, a pencilled letter. ‘Mother,’ she wrote, ‘we shall see each other no more on this earth, and these are, I know, my dying words to you. With my last conscious thoughts, I appeal to you for my husband. God gave us no children; but when you follow me, let what would have been mine if I had lived go to him to enjoy during his lifetime. Mother, it is my last request—my dying prayer. You will not refuse it.’—No, Thomas, I did not refuse it—I could not. I sent a dispatch to her, and she died in peace.” The Frau Consul wept violently.
“And you never told me a syllable. Everybody conceals things from me, and acts without my authority,” repeated the Senator.
“Yes, Thomas, I have kept silent. For I felt I must fulfil the last wish of my dying child, and I knew you would have tried to prevent me!”
“Yes! By God, I would have!”
“You would have had no right to, for three of my children would have been on my side.”
“I think my opinion has enough weight to balance that of two women and a degenerate fool.”
“You speak of your brother and sisters as heartlessly as you do to me.”
“Clara was a pious, ignorant woman, Mother. And Tony is a child—and, anyhow, she knew nothing about the affair at all until now—or she might have talked at the wrong time, eh? And Christian? Oh, he got Christian’s consent, did Tibertius! Who would have thought it of him? Do you know now, or don’t you grasp it yet—what he is, this ingenious pastor? He is a rogue, and a fortune-hunter!”
“Sons-in-law are always rogues,” said Frau Permaneder, in a hollow voice.
“He is a fortune-hunter! What does he do? He travels to Hamburg, and sits down by Christian’s bed. He talks to him—‘Yes,’ says Christian, ‘yes, Tibertius, God bless you! Have you any idea of the pain I suffer in my left side?’—Oh, the idiots, the scoundrels! They joined hands against me!” And the Senator, perfectly beside himself, leaned against the wrought-iron fire-screen and pressed his clenched hands to his temples.
This paroxysm of anger was out of proportion to the circumstances. No, it was not the hundred and twenty-seven thousand marks that had brought him to this unprecedented state of rage. It was rather that his irritated senses connected this case with the series of rebuffs and misfortunes which had lately attended him in both public and private business. Nothing went well any more. Nothing turned out as he intended it should. And now, had it come to this, that in the house of his fathers they “went over his head” in matters of the highest importance? That a pastor from Riga could thus bamboozle him behind his back? He could have prevented it if he had only been told! But events had taken their course without him. It was this which he felt could not have happened earlier—would not have dared to happen earlier! Again his faith tottered—his faith in himself, his luck, his power, his future. And it was nothing but his own inward weakness and despair that broke out in this scene before mother and sister.
Frau Permaneder stood up and embraced her brother. “Tom,” she said, “do control yourself. Try to be calm. You will make yourself ill. Are things so very bad? Tibertius doesn’t need to live so very long, perhaps, and the money would come back after he dies. And if you want it to, it can be altered—can it not be altered, Mamma?”
The Frau Consul answered only with sobs.
“Oh, no, no,” said the Consul, pulling himself together, and making a weak gesture of dissent. “Let it be as it is. Do you think I would carry it into court and sue my own mother, and add a public scandal to the family one? It may go as it is,” he concluded, and walked lifelessly to the glass door, where he paused and stood.
“But you need not imagine,” he said in a suppressed voice, “that things are going so brilliantly with us. Tony lost eighty thousand marks, and Christian, beside the setting up of fifty thousand that he has run through with, has already had thirty thousand in advance, and will need more, as he is not earning anything, and will have to take a cure at Öynhausen. And now Clara’s dowry is permanently lost, and her whole inheritance besides for an indefinite period. And business is poor; it seems to have gone to the devil precisely since the time when I spent more than a hundred thousand marks on my house. No, things are not going well in a family where there are such scenes as this today. Let me tell you one thing; if Father were alive, if he were here in this room, he would fold his hands and commend us to the mercy of God.”
VIII
Wars and rumours of war, billeting and bustle! Prussian officers tread the parquetry floors of Senator Buddenbrook’s bel-étage, kiss the hand of the lady of the house, and frequent the club with Christian, who is back from Öynhausen. In Meng Street Mamsell Severin, Riekchen Severin, the Frau Consul’s new companion, helps the maids to drag piles of mattresses into the old garden-house, which is full of soldiers.
Confusion, disorder, and suspense reign. Troops march off through the gate, new ones come in. They overrun the town; they eat, sleep, fill the ears of the citizens with the noise of rolling drums, commands, and trumpet calls—and march off again. Royal princes are fêted, entry follows entry. Then quiet again—and suspense.
In the late autumn and winter the victorious troops return. Again they are billeted in the town for a time, are mustered out and go home—to the great relief of the cheering citizens. Peace comes—the brief peace, heavy with destiny, of the year 1865.
And between two wars, little Johann played. Unconscious and tranquil, with his soft curling hair and voluminous pinafore frocks, he played in the garden by the fountain, or in the little gallery partitioned off for his use by a pillared railing from the vestibule of the second storey—played the plays of his four and a half years—those plays whose meaning and charm no grown person can possibly grasp: which need no more than a few pebbles, or a stick of wood with a dandelion for a helmet, since they command the pure, powerful, glowing, untaught and unintimidated fancy of those blissful years before life touches us, when neither duty nor remorse dares to lay upon us a finger’s weight, when we may see, hear, laugh, dream, and feel amazement, when the world yet makes upon us not one single demand; when the impatience of those whom we should like so much to love does not yet torment us for evidence of our ability to succeed in the impending struggle. Ah, only a little while, and that struggle will be upon us—and they will do their best to bend us to their will and cut us to their pattern, to exercise us, to lengthen us, to shorten us, to corrupt us. …
Great things happened while little Hanno played. The war flamed up, and its fortunes swayed this way and that, then inclined to the side of the victors; and Hanno Buddenbrook’s native city, which had shrewdly stuck to Prussia, looked on not without satisfaction at wealthy Frankfort, which had to pay with her independence for her faith in Austria.
But with the failure in July of a large firm of Frankfort wholesale dealers, immediately before the armistice, the firm of Johann Buddenbrook lost at one fell sweep the round sum of twenty thousand thaler.