Buddenbrooks (11 page)

CHAPTER VI

IN her neat little room with the flower-covered furniture, Tony woke next morning with the fresh, happy feeling which one has at the beginning of a new chapter, She sat up in bed and, with her hands clasped round her knees and her tousled head flung back, blinked at the stream of light that poured through the closed shutters into the room. She began to sort out the experiences of the previous day. Her thoughts scarcely touched upon the Gr� affair. The town, his hateful apparition in the landscape room, the exhortations of her family and Pastor K�ng--all that lay far behind her. Here, every morning, there would be a care-free waking. These Schwarzkopfs were splendid people. Last night there had been pineapple punch, and they had made part of a happy family circle. It had been very jolly. Herr Schwarzkopf had told his best sea tales, and young Schwarzkopf stories about student life at G�ngen. How odd it was, that she still did not know his first name! And she had strained her ear to hear too, but even at dinner she did not succeed, and somehow it did not seem proper to ask. She tried feverishly to think how it sounded--was it Moor--Mori--? Anyhow, she had liked him pretty well, this young Moor or Mord. He had such a sly, good-natured laugh when he asked for the water and called it by letters and numbers, so that his father got quite furious. But it was only the scientific formula for water--that is, for ordinary water, for the Travem�roduct was a much more complicated affair, of course. Why, one could find a jelly-fish in it, any time! The authorities, of course, might have what notions they chose about fresh water. For this he only got another scolding 125 from his father, for speaking slightingly of the authorities. But Frau Schwarzkopf watched Tony all the time, to see how much she admired the young man--and really, it was most interesting, he was so learned and so jolly, all at the same time. He had given her considerable attention. She had complained that her head felt hot, while eating, and that she must have too much blood. What had he replied? He had given her a careful scrutiny, and then said, Yes, the arteries in the temples might be full; but that did not prove that she had too much blood. Perhaps, instead, it meant she had too little--or rather, that there were too few red corpuscles in it. In fact, she was perhaps a little anemic. The cuckoo sprang out of his carven house on the wall and cuckooed several times, clear and loud. "Seven, eight, nine," counted Tony. "Up with you!" She jumped out of bed and opened the blinds. The sky was partly overcast, but the sun was visible. She looked out over the Leuchtenfeld with its tower, to the ruffled sea beyond. On the right it was bounded by the curve of the Mecklenburg coast; but before her it stretched on and on till its blue and green streaks mingled with the misty horizon. "I'll bathe afterwards," she thought, "but first I'll eat a big breakfast, so as not to be consumed by my metabolism." She washed and dressed with quick, eager movements. It was shortly after half-past nine when she left her room. The door of the chamber in which Tom had slept stood open; he had risen early and driven back to town. Even up here in the upper story, it smelled of coffee--that seemed to be the characteristic odour of the little house, for it grew stronger as she descended the simple staircase with its plain board baluster and went down the corridor, where lay the living-room, which was also the dining-room and the office of the pilot-captain. She went out into the verandah, looking, in her while pique frock, perfectly fresh, and in the gayest of tempers. Frau Schwarzkopf sat with her son at the table. It was already partly cleared away, and the housewife wore a blue checked kitchen apron over her brown frock. A key- basket stood beside her. "A thousand pardons for not waiting,' ' she said, as she stood up. "We simple folk rise early. There is so much to be done! Schwarzkopf is in his office. I hope you don't take it ill?" Tony excused herself in her turn. "You must not think I always sleep so late as this," she said. "I feel very guilty. But the punch last night--" The young man began to laugh. He stood behind the table with his short pipe in his hand and a newspaper before him. "Good morning," Tony said. "Yes, it is your fault. You kept urging me. Now I deserve only cold coffee. I ought to have had breakfast and a bathe as well, by this time." "Oh, no, that would be rather too early, for a young lady. At seven o'clock the water was rather cold--eleven degrees. That's pretty sharp, after a warm bed." "How do you know I wanted a warm bath, monsieur?" and Tony sat down beside Frau Schwarzkopf. "Oh, you have kept the coffee hot for me, Frau Schwarzkopf! But I will pour it out myself, thank you so much." The housewife looked on as her guest began to eat. "Fr�lein slept well, the first night? The mattress, dear knows, is only stuffed with sea-weed--we are simple folk! And now, good appetite, and a good morning. You will surely find many friends on the beach. If you like, my son shall bear you company. Pardon me for not sitting longer, but I must look after the dinner. The joint is in the oven. We will feed you as well as we can." "I shall stick to the honeycomb," Tony said when the two were alone. "You know what you are getting." Young Schwarzkopf laid his pipe on the verandah rail. "But please smoke. I don't mind it at all. At home, when I come down to breakfast, Papa's cigar-smoke is already in the room. Tell me," she said suddenly. "Is it true that an egg is as good as a quarter of a pound of meat?" He grew red all over. "Are you making fun of me?" he asked, partly laughing but partly vexed. "I got another wig-ging from my Father last night for what he calls my silly professional airs." "No, really, I was asking because I wanted to know." Tony stopped eating in consternation. "How could anybody call them airs? I should be so glad to learn something. I'm such a goose, you see. At Sesemi Weichbrodt's I was always one of the very laziest. I'm sure you know a great deal." Inwardly her thoughts ran: "Everybody puts his best foot foremost, before strangers. We all take care to say what will be pleasant to hear--that is a commonplace...." "Well, you see they are the same thing, in a way. The chemical constituents of food-stuffs--" And so on, while Tony breakfasted. Next they talked about Tony's boarding-schoDl days, and Sesemi Weichbrodt, and Gerda Arnoldsen, who had gone back to Amsterdam, and Armgard von Schel-ling, whose home, a large white house, could be seen from the beach here, at least in clear weather. Tony finished eating, wiped her mouth, and asked, pointing to the paper, "Is there any news?" Young Schwarzkopf shook his head and laughed cynically. "Oh, no. What would there be? You know these little provincial news-sheets are wretched affairs." "Oh, are they? Papa and Mamma always take it in." He reddened again. "Oh, well, you see I always read it, too. Because I can't get anything else. But it is not very thrilling to hear that So-and-So, the merchant prince, is about to celebrate his silver wedding. Yes, you laugh. But you ought to read other papers--the K�sberg Gazette, for in-stance, or the Rhenish Gazette. You'd find a different story there, entirely. There it's what the King of Prussia says." "What does he say?" "Well--er--I really couldn't repeat it to a lady." He got red again. "He expressed himself rather strongly on the subject of this same press," he went on with another cynical laugh, which, for a moment, made a painful impression on Tony. "The press, you know, doesn't feel any too friendly toward the government or the nobility or the parsons and junkers. It knows pretty well how to lead the censor by the nose." "Well, and you? Aren't you any too friendly with the nobility, either?" "I?" he asked, and looked very embarrassed. Tony rose. "Shall we talk about this again another time?" she sug-gested. "Suppose I go down to the beach now. Look, the sky is blue nearly all over. It won't rain any more. I am simply longing to jump into the water. Will you go down with me?"

CHAPTER VII

SHE had put on her big straw hat, and she raised her sun-shade; for it was very hot, though there was a little sea-breeze. Young Schwarzkopf, in his grey felt, book in hand, walked beside her and sometimes gave her a shy side-glance. They went along the front and walked through the garden of the Kurhouse, which lay there in the sun shadeless and still, with its rose-bushes and pebbly paths. The music pavilion, hidden among pine trees, stood opposite the Kurhouse, the pastry-cook's, and the two Swiss cottages, which were con-nected by a long gallery. It was about half-past eleven, and the hotel guests were probably down on the beach. They crossed the playground, where there were many benches and a large swing, passed close to the building where one took the hot baths, and strolled slowly across the Leuch-tenfeld. The sun brooded over the grass, and there rose up a spicy smell from the warm weeds and clover; blue-bottle flies buzzed and droned about. A dull, booming roar came up from the ocean, whose waters now and then lifted a crested head of spray in the distance. "What is that you are reading?" Tony asked. The young man took the book in both hands and ran it quickly through, from cover to cover. "Oh, that is nothing for you, Fr�ein Buddenbrook. Nothing but blood and entrails and such awful things. This part treats of nodes in the lungs. What we call pulmonary ca-tarrh. The lungs get filled up with a watery fluid. It is a very dangerous condition, and occurs in inflammation of the lungs. In bad cases, the patient simply chokes to death. And that is all described with perfect coolness, from a sci-entific point of view." "Oh, horrors! But if one wants to be a doctor--I will see that you become our family physician, when old Grabow re-tires. You'll see!" "Ha, ha! And what are you reading, if I may ask, Fra'u-lein Buddenbrook?" "Do you know Hoffmann?" Tony asked. "About the chair-master, and the gold pot? Yes, that's very pretty. But it is more for ladies. Men want something different, you know." "I must ask you one thing," Tony said, taking a sudden resolution, after they had gone a few steps. "And that is, do, I beg of you, tell me your first name. I haven't been able to understand it a single time I've heard it, and it is making me dreadfully nervous. I've simply been racking my brains--I have, quite." "You have been racking your brains?" "Now don't make it worse--I'm sure it couldn't have been proper for me to ask, only I'm naturally curious. There's really no reason whatever why I should know." "Why, my name is Morten," said he, and became redder than ever. "Morten? That is a nice name." "Dh--nice!" "Yes, indeed. At least, it's prettier than to be called some-thing like Hinz, or Kunz. It is unusual; it sounds foreign." "You are romantic, Fraulein Buddenbrook. You have read too much Hoffmann. My grandfather was half Norwegian, and I was named after him. That is all there is to it." Tony picked her way through the rushes on the edge of the beach. In front of them was a row of round-topped wooden pavilions, and beyond they could see the basket-chairs at the water's edge and people camped by families on the warm sand--ladies with blue sun-spectacles and books out of the loan-library; gentlemen in light suits idly drawing pictures in the sand with their walking-sticks; sun-burnt children in enormous straw hats, tumbling about, shovelling sand, digging for water, baking with wooden moulds, paddling bare-legged 131 in the shallow pools, floating little ships. To the right, the wooden bathing-pavilion ran out into the water. "We are going straight across to M�ndorpf's pier," said Tony. ' 'Let's turn off." "Certainly; but don't you want to meet your friends? I can sit down yonder on those boulders." "Well, I suppose I ought to just greet them. But I don't want to, you know. I came here to be in peace and quiet." "Peace? From what?" "Why--from--from--" "Listen, Fr�ein Buddenbrook. I must ask you something. No, I'll wait till another day--till we have more time. Now I will say au revoir and go and sit down there on the rocks." "Don't you want me to introduce you, then?" Tony asked, importantly. "Dh, no," Morten said, hastily. "Thanks, but I don't fit very well with thoss people, you see. I'll just sit down over there on the rocks." It was a rather large company which Tony was approaching while Morten Schwarzkopf betook himself to the great heap of boulders on the right, near to the bathing-house and washed by the waves. The party was encamped before the Mbllendorpfs' pier, and was composed of the Mbllendorpf, Hagenstrbm, Kistenmaker, and Fritsche families: Except for Herr Fritsche, the owner, from Hamburg, and Peter D�mann, the idler, the group consisted of women, for it was a week-day, and most of the men were in their offices. Con-sul Fritsche, an elderly, smooth-shaven gentleman with a dis-tinguished face, was up on the open pier, busy with a tele-scope, which he trained upon a sailboat visible in the distance. Peter Dbhlmann, with a broad-brimmed straw hat and a beard with a nautical cut, stood chatting with the ladies perched on camp-stools or stretched out on rugs on the sand. There were Frau Senator M�ndorpf, born Langhals, with her long-handled lorgnon and untidy grey hair; Frau Hagenstrbm, with Julchen, who had not grown much, but already wore diamonds in her ears, like her mother; Frau Consul Kisten-maker and her daughters; and Frau Consul Fritsche, a wrinkled little lady in a cap, who performed the duties of hospitality at the bath and went about perpetually hot and tired, thinking only about balls and routs and raffles, chil-dren's parties and sailboat excursions. At a little distance sat her paid companion. Kistenmaker and Son was the new firm of wine-merchants which had, in the last few years, managed to put C. F. K�n rather in the shade. The two sons, Edouard and Stephan, worked in their father's office. Consul D�ann possessed none of those graces of manner upon which Justus Kr� laid such stress. He was an idler pure and simple, whose special characteristic was a sort of rough good humour. He could and did take a good many liberties in society, being quite aware that his loud, brusque voice and bluff ways caused the ladies to set him down as an original. Once at a dinner at the Buddenbrooks, when a course failed to come in promptly and the guests grew dull and the hostess flustered, he came to the rescue and put them into a good humour by bellowing in his big voice the whole length of the table: "Please don't wait for me, Frau Consul!" Just now, in this same rever-berating voice, he was relating questionable anecdotes seasoned with low-German idioms. Frau Senator M�ndorpf, in paroxysms of laughter, was crying out over and over again: "Stop, Herr D�ann, stop! for heaven's sake, don't tell any more." They greeted Tony--the Hagenstrbms coldly, the others with great cordiality. Consul Fritsche even came down the steps of the pier, for he hoped that the Buddenbrooks would return next year to swell the population of the baths. "Yours to command, Fraulein Buddenbrook," said Consul Dohlmann, with his very best pronunciation; for he was aware that Mademoiselle did not especially care for his manners. "Mademoiselle Buddenbrook!" "You here?" "How lovely!" "When did you come?" "What a sweet frock!" "Where are you stopping?" "At the Schwarzkopfs'?" "With the pilot-captain? How original!" "How frightfully original." "You are stopping in the town?" asked Consul Fritsche, the owner of the baths. He did not betray that he felt the blow. "Will you come to our next assembly?" his wife asked. "Dh, you are only here for a short time?"--this from another lady. "Don't you think, darling, the Buddenbrooks rather give themselves airs?" Frau Hagenstrb'm whispered to Frau Sena-tor M�ndorpf. "Have you been in yet?" somebody asked. "Which of the rest of you hasn't bathed yet, young ladies? Marie? Julie, Louise? Your friends will go bathing with you, of course, Fraulein Antonie." Some of the young girls rose, and Peter D�ann insisted on accompanying them up the beach. "Do you remember how we used to go back and forth to school together?" Tony asked Julie Hagenstr� "Yes, and you were always the one that got into mischief," Julie said, joining in her laugh. They went across the beach on a foot-bridge made of a few boards, and reached the bath-house. As they passed the boulders where Morten Schwarz-kopf sat, Tony nodded to him from a distance, and somebody asked, "who is that you are bowing to, Tony?" "That was young Schwarzkopf," Tony answered. "He walked down here with me." "The son of the pilot-captain?" Julchen asked, and peered across at Morten with her staring black eyes. He on his side watched the gay troop with rather a melancholy air. Tony said in a loud voice: "What a pity August is not here. It must be stupid on the beach."