Buddenbrooks (14 page)

CHAPTER XII

THOMAS appeared with the Kroger caleche. The day was at hand. The young man arrived at ten o'clock in the forenoon and took a bite with the family in the living-room. They sat together as on the first day, except that now summer was over; it was too cold and windy to sit in the verandah; and--Morten was not there. He was in Gottingen. Tony and he had not even been able to say good-bye. The Captain had stood there and said, "Well, so that's the end of that, eh!" At eleven the brother and sister mounted into the wagon, where Tony's trunk was already fastened at the back. She was pale and shivered in her soft autumn coat--from cold, weariness, excitement, and a grief that now and then rose up suddenly and filled her breast with a painful oppres-sion. She kissed little Meta, pressed the house-wife's hand, and nodded to Herr Schwarzkopf when he said, "Well, you won't forget us, little Miss, will you? And no bad feeling, eh? And a safe journey and best greetings to your honoured Father and the Frau Consul." Then the coach door slammed, the fat brown horses pulled at their traces, and the three Schwarzkopfs waved their handkerchiefs. Tony crooked her neck in the corner of the coach, in order to peer out of the window. The sky was covered with white cloud-flakes; the Trave broke into little waves that hurried before the wind. Now and then drops of rain pattered against the glass. At the end of the front people sat in the doors of their cottages and mended nets; barefoot children came run-ning to look curiously at the carriage. They did not have to go away!

BUDDENBRODK5

As they left the last houses behind, Tony bent forward to look at the lighthouse; then she leaned back and closed her tired and burning eyes. She had hardly slept for excitement. She had risen early to finish her packing, and discovered no desire for breakfast. There was a dull taste in her mouth, and she felt so weak that she made no effort to dry the slow, hot tears that kept rising every minute. But directly her eyes were shut, she found herself again in Travemiinde, on the verandah. She saw Morten in the flesh before her; he seemed to speak and to lean toward her as he always did, and then look good-naturedly and searchingly at the next person, unconsciously showing his beautiful teeth as he smiled. Slowly her mini grew calm and peaceful again. She recalled everything that she had heard and learned from him in many a talk, and it solaced her to promise herself that she would preserve all this as a secret holy and inviolate and cherish it in her heart. That the King of Prussia had committed a great wrong against his people; that the local newspaper w, as a lamentable sheet; yes, that the laws of the League concerning universities had been renewed four years ago--all these were from now on consoling and edifying truths, a hidden treasure which she might store up within her-self and contemplate whenever she chose. On the street, in the family circle, at the table she would think of them. Who knew? Perhaps she might even go on in the path prescribed for her and marry Herr Gr�--that was a detail, after all--but when he spoke to her she could always say to her-self, "I know something you don't: the nobility is in principle despicable." She smiled to herself and was assuaged. But suddenly, in the noise of the wheels, she heard Morten's voice with miracu-lous clearness. She distinguished every nuance of his kindly, dragging speech as he said: "To-day we must both 'sit on the rocks,' Fraulein Tony," and this little memory over-powered her. Her breast contracted with her grief, and she let the tears flow down unopposed. Bowed in her corner, she 155 held her handkerchief before her face and wept bitterly. Thomas, his cigarette in his mouth, looked somewhat blankly at the high-road. "Poor Tony," he said at last, stroking her jacket. "I feel so sorry--I understand so well, you know. But what can you do? One has to bear these things. Believe me, I do understand what you feel." "Oh, you don't understand at all, Tom," sobbed Tony. "Don't say that. Did you know it is decided that I am to go to Amsterdam at the beginning of next year? Papa has obtained a place for me with van der Kellen and Company. That means I must say good-bye for a long, long time." "Oh, Tom! Saying good-bye to your father and mother and sisters and brothers--that isn't anything." "Yees," he said, slowly. He sighed, as if he did not wish to say more, and was silent. He let the cigarette rove from one corner of his mouth to the other, lifted one eyebrow, and turned his head away. "Well, it doesn't last for ever," he began again after a while. "Naturally one forgets." "But I don't want to forget," Tony cried out in desperation. "Forgetting--is that any consolation?"

CHAPTER XIII

THEN came the ferry, and Israelsdorf Avenue, Jerusalem Hill, the Castle Field. The wagon passed the Castle Gate, with the walls of the prison rising on the right, and rolled along Castle Street and over the Koberg. Tony looked at the grey gables, the oil lamps hung across the streets, Holy Ghost Hospital with the already almost bare lindens in front of it. Dh, how everything was exactly as it had been! It had been standing here, in immovable dignity, while she had thought of it as a dream worthy only to be forgotten. These grey gables were the old, the accustomed, the traditional, to which she was re-turning, in the midst of which she must live. She wept no more. She Iooked about curiously. The pain of parting was almost dulled at the sight of these well-known streets and faces. At that moment--the wagon was rolling through Broad Street--the porter Matthiesen passed and took off his stove-pipe hat so obsequiously that it seemed he must be thinking, "Bow, you dog of a porter--you can't bow low enough." The equipage turned into the Mengstrasse, and the fat brown horses stood snorting and stamping before the Buddenbrook door. Tom was very attentive in helping his sister out, while Anton and Line hastened up to unfasten the trunk. But they had to wait before they could enter the house. Three great lorries were being driven through, one close behind another, piled high with full corn sacks, with the firm name written on them in big black letters. They jolted along over the great boards and down the shallow steps to the cart-yard with a heavy rumbling noise. Part of the corn was evidently to be unloaded at the back of the house and the rest taken to the "Walrus," the "Lion," or the "Oak." 157 BUDDENBRDDK5 The Consul came out of the office with his pen behind his ear as the brother and sister reached the entry, and stretched out his arms to his daughter. "Welcome home, my dear Tony!" She kissed him, looking a little shame-faced, her eyes still red with weeping. But he was very tactful; he made no al-lusions; he only said: "It is late, but we waited with the second breakfast." The Frau Consul, Christian, Clothilde, Clara, and Ida Jungmann stood above on the landing to greet her. Tony slept soundly and well the first night in Mengstrasse. She rose the next morning, the twenty-second of September, re-freshed and calmed, and went down into the breakfast-room. It was still quite early, hardly seven o'clock. Only Mamsell Jungmann was there, making the morning coffee. "Well, well, Tony, my little child," she said, looking round with her small, blinking brown eyes. "Up so early?" Tony sat down at the open desk, clasped her hands behind her head, and looked for a while at the pavement of the court, gleaming black with wet, and at the damp, yellow garden. Then she began to rummage curiously among the visiting-cards and letters on the desk. Close by the inkstand lay the well-known large copy-book with the stamped cover, gilt edges, and leaves of various qualities and colours. It must have been used the evening before, and it was strange that Papa had not put it back in its leather portfolio and laid it in its special drawer. She took it and turned over the pages, began to read, and became absorbed. What she read were mostly simple facts well known to her; but each successive writer had followed his predecessor in a stately but simple chronicle style which was no bad mirror of the family attitude, its modest but hon-ourable self-respect, and its reverence for tradition and his-tory. The book was not new to Tony; she had sometimes been allowed to read in it. But its contents had never made the impression upon her that they did this morning. She was BUDDENBROOK5 thrilled by the reverent particularity with which the simplest facts pertinent to the family were here treated. She propped herself on her elbows and read with growing absorption, seriousness and pride. No point in her own tiny past was lacking. Her birth, her childish illnesses, her first school, her boarding-school days at Mademoiselle Weichbrodt's, her confirmation--everything was carefully entered, with an almost reverent observation of facts, in the Consul's small, flowing business hand; for was not the least of them the will and work of Cod, who wonder-fully guided the destinies of the family? What, she mused, would there be entered here in the future after her name, which she had received from her grandmother Antoinette? All that was yet to be written there would be conned by later mem-bers of the family with a piety equal to her own. She leaned back sighing; her heart beat solemnly. She was filled with reverence for herself: the familiar feeling of personal importance possessed her, heightened by all she had been reading: She felt thrilled and shuddery. "Like a link in a chain," Papa had written. Yes, yes. She was important precisely as a link in this chain. Such was her significance and her responsibility, such her task: to share by deed and word in the history of her family. She turned back to the end of the great volume, where on a rough folio page was entered the genealogy of the whole Buddenbrook family, with parentheses and rubrics, indicated in the Consul's hand, and all the dates set down: from the marriage of the earliest scion of the family with Brigitta Schuren, the pastor's daughter, down to the wedding of Consul Johann Buddenbrook with Elizabeth Kroger in 1825. From this marriage, it said, four children had resulted: whereupon these were all entered, with the days and years of their birth, and their baptismal names, one after another. Under that of the eldest son it was recorded that he had entered as appren-tice in his father's business in the Easter of 1842. Tony looked a long time at her name and at the blank 159 space next it. Then, suddenly, with a jerk, with a nervous, feverish accompaniment of sobbing breaths and quick-moving lips--she clutched the pen, plunged it rather than dipped it into the ink, and wrote, with her forefinger crooked, her hot head bent far over on her shoulder, in her awkward hand-writing that climbed up the page from left to right: "Be-trothed, on Sept .22, 1845, to Herr Bendix Gr�, Merchant, of Hamburg."

CHAPTER XIV

"I ENTIRELY agree with you, my good friend. This important matter must be settled. In short, then: the usual dowry of a young girl of our family is seventy thousand marks." Herr Gr� cast at his future father-in-law a shrewd, calculating glance--the glance of the genuine man of business. "As a matter of fact," he said--and this "matter of fact" was of precisely the same length as his left-hand whisker, which he was drawing reflectively through his fingers; he let go of the end just as "of fact" was finished. "You know, my honoured father," he began again, "the deep respect I have for traditions and principles. Dnly--in the present case is not this consideration for the tradition a little exaggerated? A business increases--a family prospers--in short, conditions change and improve." "My good friend," said the Consul, "you see in me a fair-dealing merchant. You have not let me finish, or you would have heard that I am ready and willing to meet you in the circumstances, and add ten thousand marks to the seventy thousand without more ado." "Eighty thousand, then," said Herr Grunlich, making motions with his mouth, as though to say: "Not too much; but it will do." Thus they came to an affectionate settlement; the Consul jingled his keys like a man satisfied as he got up. And, in fact, his satisfaction was justified; for it was only with the eighty thousand marks that they had arrived at the dowry traditional in the family. Herr Gr� now said good-bye and departed for Hamburg. Tony as yet realized but little of her new estate. She still 161 BUDDENBRDOKS went to dances at the Mollendorpfs', Kistenmakers', and Lang-hdls', and in her own home; she skated on the Burgfield and the meadows of the Trave, and permitted the attentions of the young gentlemen of the town. In the middle of October she went to the betrothal feast at the Mbllendorpfa' for the oldest son of the house and Juliet Hagenstrbm. "Tom," she said, "I won't go. It is disgusting." But she went, and en-joyed herself hugely. And, as for the rest, by the entry with the pen in the family history-book, she had won the privilege of going, with the Frau Consul or alone, into all the shops in town and making purchases in a grand style for her trous-seau. It was to be a brilliant trousseau. Two seamstresses sat all day in the breakfast-room window, sewing, embroidering monograms, and eating quantities of house-bread and green cheese. "Is the linen come from Lentfohr, Mamma?" "No,, but here are two dozen tea-serviettes." "That is nice. But he promised it by this afternoon. My goodness, the sheets still have to be hemmed." "Mamsell Bitter Huh wants to know about the lace for the pillow-cases, Ida." "It is in the righthand cupboard in the entry, Tony, my child." "Line--!" "You could go yourself, my dear." "Dh, if I'm marrying for the privilege of running up and down stairs--!" "Have you made up your mind yet about the material for the wedding-dress, Tony?" "Moire antique, Mamma--I won't marry without moire antique!" So passed October and November. At Christmas time Herr Criinliuh appeared, to spend Christmas in the Buddenbrook family circle and also to take part in the celebration at the Krbgers'. His conduct toward his bride showed all the deli-cacy one would have expected from him. No unnecessary formality, no importunity, no tactless tenderness. A light, discreet kiss upon the forehead, in the presence of the parents, sealed the betrothal. Tony sometimes puzzled over this, the least in the world. Why, she wondered, did his present hap-piness seem not quite commensurate with the despair into which her refusal had thrown him? He regarded her with the air of a satisfied possessor. Now and then, indeed, if they happened to be alone, a jesting and teasing mood seemed to overcome him; once he attempted to fall on his knees and approach his whiskers to her face, while he asked in a voice apparently trembling with joy, "Have I indeed captured you? Have I won you for my own?" To which Tony answered, "You are forgetting yourself," and got away with all pos-sible speed. Soon after the holidays Herr Gr� went back to Ham-burg, for his flourishing business demanded his personal at-tention; and the Buddenbrooks agreed with him that Tony had had time enough before the betrothal to make his ac-quaintance.. The question of a house was quickly arranged. Tony, who looked forward extravagantly to life in a large city, had expressed the wish to settle in Hamburg itself, and indeed in the Spitalstrasse, where Herr Gr�'s office was. But the bridegroom, by manly persistence, won her over to the pur-chase of a villa outside the city, near Eimsbiittel, a romantic and retired spot, an ideal nest for a newly-wedded pair--"procul negotiis."--Ah, he had not yet forgotten quite all his Latin! Thus December passed, and at the beginning of the year '46 the wedding was celebrated. There was a splendid wed-ding feast, to which half the town was bidden. Tony's friends--among them Armgard von Schilling, who arrived in a towering coach--danced with Tom's and Christian's friends, among them Andreas Gieseke, son of the Fire Commissioner and now studivsus juris; also Stephan and Edward Kisten-macher, of Kistenmacher and Son. They danced in the dining-163 room and the hall, which had been strewn with talc for the occasion. Among the liveliest of the lively was Consul Peter Dbhlmann; he got hold of all the earthenware crocks he could find and broke them on the flags of the big passage. Frau Sluht from Bell-Founders' Street had another oppor-tunity to mingle in the society of the great; for it was she who helped Mam sell Jungmann and the two seamstresses to adjust Tony's toilette on the great day. She had, as God was her judge, never seen a more beautiful bride. Fat as she was, she went on her knees; and, with her eyes rolled up in admiration, fastened the myrtle twigs on the white moire an-tique. This was in the breakfast-room. Herr Criinlich, in his long-skirted frock-coat and silk waistcoat, waited at the door. His rosy face had a correct and serious expression, his wart was powdered, and his gold-yellow whiskers carefully curled. Above in the hall, where the marriage was to take place, the family gathered--a stately assemblage. There sat the old Krogers, a little ailing both of them, but distinguished figures always. There was Consul Kroger with his sons J�and Jacob, the latter having come from Hamburg, like the Du-champs. There were Gottfried Buddenbrook and his wife, born Stiiwing, with their three offspring, Friederike, Henri-ette, and Pfiffi, none of whom was, unfortunately, likely to marry. There was the Mecklenburg branch, represented by Clothilde's father, Herr Bernhard Buddenbrook, who had come in from Thankless and looked with large eyes at the seignorial house of his rich relations. The relatives from Frankfort had contented themselves with sending presents; the journey was too arduous. In their place were the only guests not members of the family. Dr. Crabow, the family physician, and Mile. Weichbrodt, Tony's motherly friend--Sesemi Weichbrodt, with fresh ribbons on her cap over the side curls, and a little black dress. "Be happy, you good child," she said, when Tony appeared at Herr Gr�'s BUDDENBRODKS side in the hall. She reached up and kissed her with a little explosion on the forehead. The family was satisfied with the bride: Tony looked pretty, gay, and at her ease, if a little pale from excitement and tension. The hall had been decorated with flowers and an altar ar-ranged on the right side. Pastor Kolling of St. Mary's per-formed the service, and laid special stress upon moderation. Everything went according to custom and arrangement, Tony brought out a hearty yes, and Herr Gr� gave his little ahem, beforehand, to clear his throat. Afterward, everybody ate long and well. While the guests continued to eat in the salon, with the pastor in their midst, the Consul and his wife accompanied the young pair, who had dressed for their journey, out into the snowy, misty air, where the great travelling coach stood be-fore the door, packed with boxes and bags. After Tony had expressed many times her conviction that she should soon be back again on a visit, and that they too would not delay long to come to Hamburg to see her, she climbed in good spirits into the coach and let herself be care-fully wrapped up by the Consul in the warm fur rug. Her husband took his place by her side, "And, Gr�," said the Consul, "the new laces are in the small satchel, on top. You take a little in under your overcoat, don't you? This excise--one has to get around it the best one can. Farewell, farewell! Farewell, dear Tony. God bless you." "You will find good accommodation in Arensburg, won't you?" asked the Frau Consul. "Already reserved, my dear Mamma," answered Herr Gr�. Anton, Line, Trine, and Sophie took leave of Ma'am Griin-lich. The coach door was about to be slammed, when Tony was overtaken by a sudden impulse. Despite all the trouble it took, she unwound herself again from her wrappings, climbed ruthlessly over Herr Grunlich, who began to grumble, 165 and embraced her Father with passion. "Adieu, Papa, adieu, my good Papa." And then she whispered softly: "Are you satisfied with me?" The Consul pressed her without words to his heart, then put her from him and shook her hands with deep feeling. Now everything was ready. The coach door slammed, the coachman cracked his whip, the horses dashed away so that the coach windows rattled; the Frau Consul let fly her little white handkerchief; and the carriage, rolling down the street, disappeared in the mist. The Consul stood thoughtfully next to his wife, who drew her cloak about her shoulders with a graceful movement. "There she goes, Betsy." "Yes, Jean, the first ID leave us. Do you think she is happy with him?" "Oh, Betsy, she is satisfied with herself, which is better; it is the most solid happiness we can have on this earth." They went back to their guests.