Buddenbrooks. Thomas Mann
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rights. I hear that he has taken advantage of the present visit of the young lady to extract certain promises from her.”
“What?” shouted the pilot-captain, gripping the arms of his chair and springing up. “That we shall soon—we can soon see—!” With two steps he was at the door, tore it open, and shouted down the corridor in a voice that would have outroared the wildest seas: “Meta, Morten! Come in here, both of you.”
“I shall regret it exceedingly if the assertion of my prior rights runs counter to your fatherly hopes, Herr Captain.”
Diederich Schwarzkopf turned and stared, with his sharp blue eyes in their wrinkled setting, straight into the stranger’s face, as though he strove in vain to comprehend his words.
“Sir!” he said. Then, with a voice that sounded as though he had just burnt his throat with hot grog, “I’m a simple sort of a man, and don’t know much about landlubber’s tricks and skin games; but if you mean, maybe, that—well, sir, you can just set it down right away that you’ve got on the wrong tack, and are making a pretty bad miscalculation about my fatherly hopes. I know who my son is, and I know who Mademoiselle Buddenbrook is, and there’s too much respect and too much pride in my carcase to be making any plans of the sort you’ve mentioned.—And now,” he roared, jerking his head toward the door, “it’s your turn to talk, boy. You tell me what this affair is; what is this I hear—hey?”
Frau Schwarzkopf and her son stood in the doorway, she innocently arranging her apron, he with the air of a hardened sinner. Herr Grünlich did not rise at their entrance. He waited, erect and composed, on the edge of the sofa, buttoned up tight in his ulster.
“So you’ve been behaving like a silly fool?” bellowed the captain to Morten.
The young man had his thumb stuck between the buttons of his jacket. He scowled and puffed out his cheeks defiantly.
“Yes, Father,” he said, “Fräulein Buddenbrook and I—”
“Well, then, I’ll just tell you you’re a perfect Tom-fool, a young ninny, and you’ll be packed off to-morrow for Göttingen—to-morrow, understand? It’s all damned childish nonsense, and rascality into the bargain.”
“Good heavens, Diederich,” said Frau Schwarzkopf, folding her hands, “you can’t just say that, you know. Who knows—?” She stopped, she said no more; but it was plain from her face that a mother’s beautiful dream had been shattered in that moment.
“Would the gentleman like to see the young lady?” Schwarzkopf turned to Herr Grünlich and spoke in a harsh voice.
“She is upstairs in her room asleep,” Frau Schwarzkopf said with feeling.
“I regret,” said Herr Grünlich, and he got up, obviously relieved. “But I repeat that my time is limited, and the carriage waits. I permit myself,” he went on, describing with his hat a motion in the direction of Herr Schwarzkopf, “to acknowledge to you, Herr Captain, my entire recognition of your manly and high-principled bearing. I salute you. Good-bye.”
Diederich Schwarzkopf did not offer to shake hands with him. He merely gave a jerky bow with the upper part of his heavy figure, that had an air or saying: “This is the proper thing, I suppose.”
Herr Grünlich, with measured tread, passed between Morten and his mother and went out the door.
Chapter Twelve
Thomas appeared with the Kröger calèche. 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 Göttingen. 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 oppression. 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 running to look curiously at the carriage. They did not have to go away!
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 Travemünde, 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 mind 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 was 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 herself 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 Grünlich—that was a detail, after all—but when he spoke to her she could always say to herself, “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 miraculous clearness. She distinguished every nuance of his kindly, dragging speech as he said: “To-day we must both ‘sit on the rocks,’ Fräulein Tony,” and this little memory overpowered her. Her breast contracted with her grief, and she let the tears flow down unopposed. Bowed in her corner, she 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.”
“Ye-es,” 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?”