Buddenbrooks (23 page)

CHAPTER IV

IN May it happened that Uncle Gotthold--Consul Gotthold Buddenbrook, now sixty years old--was seized with a heart attack one night and died in the arms of his wife, born Stiiwing. The son of poor Madame Josephine had had the worst of it in life, compared with the younger and stronger brother and sister born of Madame Antoinette. But he had long since resigned himself to his fortunes; and in his later years, especially after his nephew turned over to him the Consulate of the Netherlands, he ate his lozenges out of his tin box and harboured the friendliest feelings. It was his ladies who kept up the feud now: not so much his good-natured wife as the three elderly damsels, who could not look at Frau Consul, or Antonie, or Thomas, without a spark in their eyes. On the traditional "children's day," at four o'clock, they all gathered in the big house in Meng Street, to eat dinner and spend the evening. Sometimes Consul Kroger or Sesemi Weichbrodt came too, with her simple sister. On these oc-casions the three Miss Buddenbrooka from Broad Street loved to turn the conversation to Tony's former marriage and to dart sharp glances at each other while they egged Madame Griinlirh on to use strong language. Or they would make general remarks on the subject of the undignified vanity of dyeing one's hair. Or they would enquire particularly after Jacob Kroger, the Frau Consul's nephew. They made jokes at the expense of poor, innnocent, Clothilde--jokes not so harmless as those which the charity girl received in good part every day from Tom and Tony. They made fun of Clara's austerity and bigotry. They were quick to find out that Tom 273 and Christian were not on the best of terms; also, that they did not need to pay much attention to Christian anyhow, for he was a sort of Tom-fool. As for Thomas himself, who had no weak point for them to ferret out, and who always met them with a good-humoured indulgence, that signified "I understand what you mean, and I am very sorry"--him they treated with respect tinctured with bitterness. Next came the turn of little Erica. Rosy and plump as she was, they found her alarmingly* backward in her growth. And Pfiffi in a series of little shakes drew attention several times to the child's shocking resemblance to the deceiver Gr�. But now they stood with their mother about their Father's death-bed, weeping; and a message was sent to Meng Street, though the feeling was not entirely wanting that their rich relations were somehow or other to blame for this misfortune too. In the middle of the night the great bell downstairs rang; and as Christian had come home very late and was not feeling up to much, Tom set out alone in the spring rain. He came just in time to see the last convulsive motions of the old gentleman. Then he stood a long time in the death-chamber and looked at the short figure under the covers, at the dead face with the mild features and white whiskers. "You haven't had a very good time, Uncle Gotthold," he thought. "You learned too late to make concessions and shnw consideration. But that is what one has to do. If I had been like you, I should have married a shop girl years ago. But for the sake of appearances--! I wonder if you really wanted anything different? You were proud, and probably felt that your pride was something idealistic; but your spirit ^lad little power to rise. To cherish the vision of an abstract good; to carry in your heart, like a hidden love, only far sweeter, the dream of preserving an ancient name, an old family, an old business, of carrying it on, and adding to it more and more honour and lustre--ah, that takes imagi-nation, Uncle Gotthold, and imagination you didn't have. The sense of poetry escaped you, though you were brave tinuugh to love and marry against the will of your father. And you had no ambition, Uncle Cotthold. The old name is only a burgher name, it is true, and one cherishes it by making the grain business flourish, and oneself beloved and powerful in a little corner of the earth. Did you think: 'I will marry her whom I love, and pay no attention to prac-tical considerations, for they are petty and provincial?' Oh, we are travelled and educated enough to realize that the limits set to our ambition are small and petty enough, looked at from outside and above. But everything in this world is com-parative, Uncle Gotthuld. Did you know one can be a great man, even in a small place; a Caesar even in a little commercial town on the Baltic? But that takes imagination and idealism--and you didn't have it, whatever you may have thought yourself." Thomas Buddenbrook turned away. He went to the window and looked out at the dim grey gothic facade of the Town Hall opposite, shrouded in rain. He had his hands behind his back and a smile on his intelligent face. The office and title of the Royal Consulate of the Nether-lands, whirh Thomas Buddenbrook might have taken after his father's death, went back to him now, to the boundless satisfaction of Tony Gr�; and the curving shield with the lions, the arms, and the crown was once more to be seen on the gabled front of the house in Meng Street, under the "Dorninus providebit." Soon after this was accomplished, in June of the same year, the young Consul set out to Amsterdam on a business journey the duration of which he did not know.

CHAPTER V

DEATHS in the family usually induce a religious mood. It was not surprising, after the decease of the Consul, to hear from the mouth of his widow expressions which she had not been accustomed to use. But it was soon apparent that this was no passing phase. Even in the last years of the Consul's life, his wife had more and more sympathized with his spiritual cravings; and it now became plain that she was determined to honour the memory of her dead by adopting as her own all his pious conceptions. She strove to fill the great house with the spirit of the deceased--that mild and Christlike spirit which yet had not excluded a certain dignified and hearty good cheer. The morning and evening prayers were continued and lengthened. The family gathered in the dining-room, and the servants in the hall, to hear the Frau Consul or Clara read a chapter out of the great family Bible with the big letters. They also sang a few verses out of the hymn-book, accompanied by the Frau Consul on the little organ. Or, often, in place of the chapter from the Bible, they had a reading from one of those edifying or devotional books with the black binding and gilt edges--those Little Treasuries, Jewel-Caskets, Holy Hours, Morning Chimes, Pilgrims' Staffs, and the like, whose common trait was a sickly and languishing tenderness for the little Jesus, and of which there were all too many in the house. Christian did not often appear at these devotions. Thomas once chose a favourable moment to disparage the practice, half-jestingly; but his objection met with a gentle rebuff. As for Madame Gr�, she did not, unfortunately, always con- BUDDENBROOK5 duct herself correctly at the exercises. One morning when there was a strange clergyman stopping with the Buddenbrooks, they were invited to sing to a solemn and devout melody the following words:-- I am a reprobate, A warped and hardened sinner; I gobble evil down Just like the joint for dinner.

Lord, fling thy cur a bone

Of righteousness to chew

And take my carcass home

To Heaven and to you. Whereat Frau Gr� threw down her book and left the room, bursting with suppressed giggles. But the Frau Consul made more demands upon herself than upon her children. She instituted a Sunday School, and on Sunday afternoon only little board-school pupils rang at the door of the house in Meng Street. Stine Voss, who lived by the city wall, and Mike Stuht from Bell-Founders' Street, and Fike Snut from the river-bank or Groping Alley, their straw-coloured locks smoothed back with a wet comb, crossed the entry into the garden-room, which for a long time now had not been used as an office, and in which rows of benches had been arranged and Frau Consul Buddenbrook, born Kroger, in a gown of heavy black satin, with her white re-fined face and still whiter lace cap, sat opposite to them at a little table with a glass of sugar-water and catechized thrm for an hour. Also, she founded the "Jerusalem evenings," which not only Clara and Clothilde but also Tony were obliged to at-tend, willy-nilly. Dnce a week they sat at the extension table in the dining-room by the light of lamps and candles. Some twenty ladies, all of an age when it is profitable to begin to look after a good place in heaven, drank tea or bishop, ate delicate sandwiches and puddings, read hymns and ser-mons aloud to each other, and did embroidery, which at the 277 end of the year was sold at a bazaar and the proceeds sent to the mission in Jerusalem. This pious society was formed in the main from ladies of the Frau Consul's own social rank: Frau Senator Lang-rials, Frau Consul Moll end orpf, and old Frau Consul Kisten-maker belonged; but other, more worldly and profane old ladies, like Mme. Kb'ppen, made fun of their friend Betsy. The wives of the clergymen of the town were all members, likewise the widowed Frau Consul Buddenbrook, born Stiiwing, and Sesemi Weichbrodt and her simple sister. There is, how-ever, no rank and no discrimination before Jesus; and so cer-tain humble oddities were also guests at the Jerusalem eve-nings--for example, a little wrinkled creature, rich in the grace of God and knitting-patterns, who lived in the Holy Ghost Hospital and was named Himmelsburger. She was the last of her name--"the last Himmelsburger," she called her-self humbly, and ran her knitting-needle under her cap to scratch her head. But far more remarkable were two other extraordinary old creatures, twins, who went about hand in hand through the town doing good deeds, in shepherdess hats out of the eight-eenth century and faded clothes out of the long, long ago. They were named Gerhardt, and asserted that they descended in a direct line from Paul Gerhardt. People said they were by no means poor; but they lived wretchedly and gave away all they had. "My dears," remarked the Frau Consul, who was sometimes rather ashamed of them, "God sees the heart, I know; but your clothes are really a little--one must take some thought for oneself." But she could not prevent them kissing their elegant friend on the brow with the fore-bearing, yearning, pitying superiority of the poor in heart over the worldly great who seek salvation. They were not at all stupid. In their homely shrivelled heads--for all the world like ancient parrots--; they had bright soft brown eyes and they looked out at the world with a wonderful ex-pression of gentleness and understanding. Their hearts were full of amazing wisdom. They knew that in the last day all our beloved gone before us to God will come with song and salvation to fetch us home. They spoke the words "the Lord" with the fluent authority of early Christians, as if they had heard out of the Master's own mouth the words, "Yet a little while and ye shall see me." They possessed the most re-markable theories concerning inner light and intuition and the transmission of thought. One of them, named Lea, was deaf, and yet she nearly always knew what was being talked about! It was usually the deaf Gerhardt who read aloud at the Jerusalem evenings, and the ladies found that she read beauti-fully and very aifectingly. She took out of her bag an old book of a. very disproportionate shape, much taller than it was broad, with an inhumanly chubby presentment of her ancestor in the front. She held it in both hands and read in a tremendous voice, in order to catch a little herself of what she read. It sounded as if the wind were imprisoned in the chimney: "If Satan me would swallow." "Goodness!" thought Tony Gr�, "how could Satan want to swallow her?" But she said nothing and devoted herself to" the pudding, wondering if she herself would ever become as ugly as the two Miss Grerhardts. She was not happy. She felt bored and out of pa-tience with all the pastors and missionaries, whose visits had increased ever since the death of the Cansul. According to Tony they had too much to say in the house and received entirely too much money. But this last was Tom's affair, and he said nothing, while his sister now and then murmured something about people who consumed widows' homes and made long prayers. She hated these black gentlemen bitterly. As a mature woman who knew life and was no longer a silly innocent, 279 she found herself unable to believe in their irreproachable sanctity. "Mother," she said, "oh dear, I know I must not speak evil of my neighbours. But one thing I must say, and I should be surprised if life had not taught you that too, and that is that not all those who wear a long coat and say 'Lord, Lord' are always entirely without blemish." History does not say what Tom thought of his sister's opinion on this point. Christian had no opinion at all. He confined himself to watching the gentlemen with his nose wrinkled up, in order to imitate them afterward at the club or in the family circle. But it is true that Tony was the chief sufferer from the pious visitants. One day it actually happened that a mis-sionary named Jonathan, who had been in Arabia and Syria--a man with great, reproachful eyes and baggy cheeks was stopping in the house, and challenged her to assert that the curls she wore on her forehead were consistent with true Christian humility. He had not reckoned with Tony Criin-lich's skill at repartee. She was silent a moment, while her mind worked rapidly; and then out it came. "May I ask you, Herr Pastor, to concern yourself with your own curls?" With that she rustled out, shoulders up, head back, and chin well tucked in. Pastor Jonathan had very few curls on his head--it would be nearer truth to say that he was quite bald. And once she had an even greater triumph. There was a certain Pastor Trieschke from Berlin. His nickname was Teary Trieschke, because every Sunday he began to weep at an appropriate place in his sermon. Teary Trieschke had a pale face, red eyes, and cheek-bones like a horse's. He had been stopping for eight or ten days with the Budden-brooks, conducting devotions and holding eating contests with poor Clothilde, turn about. He happened to fall in love with Tony--not with her immortal soul, oh no, but with her up-per lip, her thick hair, her pretty eyes and charming figure. And the man of God, who had a wife and numerous children BUDDENBRO DKS in Berlin, was not ashamed to have Anton leave a letter in Madame Gr�'s bedroom in the upper storey, wherein Bible texts and a kind of fawning sentimentality were sur-passingly mingled. She found it when she went to bed, read it, and went with a firm step downstairs into the Frau Con-sul's bedroom, where by the candle-light she read aloud the words of the soul-saver to her Mother, quite unembarrassed and in a loud voice; so that Teary Trieschke became impos-sible in Meng Street. "They are all alike," said Madame Gr�; "ah, they are all alike. Oh, heavens, what a goose I was once! But life has destroyed my faith in men. Most of them are scoun-drels--alas, it is the truth. Gr�--" The name was, as always, like a summons to battle. She uttered it with her shoulders lifted and her eyes rolled up.