In the spring of 1868, one evening towards ten o’clock, Frau Permaneder
entered the first story of her brother’s house. Senator Buddenbrook sat
alone in the living-room, which was done in olive-green rep, with a
large round centre-table and a great gas-lamp hanging down over it from
the ceiling. He had the _Berlin Financial Gazette_ spread out in front
of him on the table, and was reading it, with a cigarette held between
the first and second fingers of his left hand, and a gold pince-nez
on his nose--he had now for some time been obliged to use glasses for
reading. He heard his sister’s footsteps as she passed through the
dining-room, took off his glasses, and peered into the darkness until
Tony appeared between the portières and in the circle of light from the
lamp.
“Oh, it is you? How are you? Back from Pöppenrade? How are your
friends?”
“Evening, Tom. Thanks, Armgard is very well. Are you here alone?”
“Yes; I’m glad you have come. I ate my dinner all alone to-night like
the Pope. I don’t count Mamsell Jungmann, because she is always popping
up to look after Hanno. Gerda is at the Casino. Christian fetched her,
to hear Tamayo play the violin.”
“Bless and save us--as Mother says.--Yes, I’ve noticed lately that
Gerda and Christian get on quite well together.”
“Yes, I have too. Since he came back for good, she seems to have
taken to him. She sits and listens to him when he tells about his
troubles--dear me, I suppose he entertains her. She said to me lately:
‘There is nothing of the burgher about Christian, Thomas--he is even
less of a burgher than you are, yourself!’”
“Burgher, Tom? What did she mean? Why, it seems to me there is no
better burgher on top of the earth than you are!”
“Oh, well--she didn’t mean it just in that sense. Take off your things
and sit down a while, my child. How splendid you look! The country air
did you good.”
“I’m in very good form,” she said, as she took off her mantle and the
hood with lilac silk ribbons and sat down with dignity in an easy-chair
by the table. “My sleep and my digestion both improved very much in
this short time. The fresh milk, and the farm sausages and hams--one
thrives like the cattle and the crops. And the honey, Tom, I have
always considered honey one of the very best of foods. A pure nature
product--one knows just what one’s eating. Yes, it was really very
sweet of Armgard to remember an old boarding-school friendship and send
me the invitation. Herr von Maiboom was very polite, too. They urged me
to stay a couple of weeks longer, but I know Erica is rather helpless
without me, especially now, with little Elisabeth--”
“How is the child?”
“Doing nicely, Tom. She is really not bad at all, for four months, even
if Henriette and Friederike and Pfiffi did say she wouldn’t live.”
“And Weinschenk? How does he like being a father? I never see him
except on Thursdays--”
“Oh, he is just the same. You know he is a very good, hard-working
man, and in a way a model husband; he never stops in anywhere, but
comes straight home from the office and spends all his free time
with us. But--you see, Tom--we can speak quite openly, just between
ourselves--he requires Erica to be always lively, always laughing and
talking, because when he comes home tired and worried from the office,
he needs cheering up, and his wife must amuse him and divert him.”
“Idiot!” murmured the Senator.
“What? Well, the bad thing about it is, that Erica is a little bit
inclined to be melancholy. She must get it from me, Tom. Sometimes
she is very serious and quiet and thoughtful; and then he scolds and
grumbles and complains, and really, to tell the truth, is not at all
sympathetic. You can’t help seeing that he is a man of no family, and
never enjoyed what one would call a refined bringing-up. To be quite
frank--a few days before I went to Pöppenrade, he threw the lid of the
soup-tureen on the floor and broke it, because the soup was too salt.”
“How charming!”
“Oh, no, it wasn’t, not at all! But we must not judge. God knows, we
are all weak creatures--and a good, capable, industrious man like
that--Heaven forbid! No, Tom, a rough shell with a sound kernel inside
is not the worst thing in this life. I’ve just come from something far
sadder than that, I can tell you! Armgard wept bitterly, when she was
alone with me--”
“You don’t say! Is Herr von Maiboom--?”
“Yes, Tom--that is what I wanted to tell you. We sit here visiting, but
I really came to-night on a serious and important errand.”
“Well, what is the trouble with Herr von Maiboom?”
“He is a very charming man, Ralf von Maiboom, Thomas; but he is very
wild--a hail-fellow-well-met with everybody. He gambles in Rostock, and
he gambles in Warnemünde, and his debts are like the sands of the sea.
Nobody could believe it, just living a couple of weeks at Pöppenrade.
The house is lovely, everything looks flourishing, there is milk
and sausage and ham and all that, in great abundance. So it is hard
to measure the actual situation. But their affairs are in frightful
disorder--Armgard confessed it to me, with heart-breaking sobs.”
“Very sad.”
“You may well say so. But, as I had already suspected, it turned out
that I was not invited over there just for the sake of my _beaux yeux_.”
“How so?”
“I will tell you, Tom. Herr von Maiboom needs a large sum of money
immediately. He knew the old friendship between his wife and me, and he
knew that I am your sister. So, in his extremity, he put his wife up to
it, and she put me up to it.--You understand?”
The Senator passed his finger-tips across his hair and screwed up his
face a little.
“I think so,” he said. “Your serious and important business evidently
concerns an advance on the Pöppenrade harvest--if I am not mistaken.
But you have come to the wrong man, I think, you and your friends.
In the first place, I have never done any business with Herr von
Maiboom, and this would be a rather strange way to begin. In the second
place--though, in the past, Grandfather, Father, and I myself have
made advances on occasion to the landed gentry, it was always when
they offered a certain security, either personally or through their
connections. But to judge from the way you have just characterized Herr
von Maiboom and his prospects, I should say there can be no security in
his case.”
“You are mistaken, Tom. I have let you have your say, but you are
mistaken. It is not a question of an advance, at all. Maiboom has to
have thirty-five thousand marks current--”
“Heavens and earth!”
“--five-and-thirty thousand marks current, to be paid within two weeks.
The knife is at his throat--to be plain, he has to sell at once,
immediately.”
“In the blade--oh, the poor chap!” The Senator shook his head as he
stood, playing with his pince-nez on the table-cloth. “That is a rather
unheard-of thing for our sort of business,” he went on. “I have heard
of such things, mostly in Hesse, where a few of the landed gentry are
in the hands of the Jews. Who knows what sort of cut-throat it is that
has poor Herr von Maiboom in his clutches?”
“Jews? Cut-throats?” cried Frau Permaneder, astonished beyond measure.
“But it’s _you_ we are talking about, Tom!”
Thomas Buddenbrook suddenly threw down his pince-nez on the table so
that it slid along on top of the newspaper, and turned toward his
sister with a jerk.
“Me?” he said, but only with his lips, for he made no sound. Then he
added aloud: “Go to bed, Tony. You are tired out.”
“Why, Tom, that is what Ida Jungmann used to say to us, when we were
just beginning to have a good time. But I assure you I was never
wider awake in my life than now, coming over here in the dead of
night to make Armgard’s offer to you--or rather, indirectly, Ralf von
Maiboom’s--”
“And I will forgive you for making a proposal which is the product of
your naïveté and the Maibooms’ helplessness.”
“Helplessness? Naïveté, Thomas? I don’t understand you--I am very far
from understanding you. You are offered an opportunity to do a good
deed, and at the same time the best stroke of business you ever did in
your life--”
“Oh, my darling child, you are talking the sheerest nonsense,”
cried the Senator, throwing himself back impatiently in his chair.
“I beg your pardon, but you make me angry with your ridiculous
innocence. Can’t you understand that you are asking me to do something
discreditable, to engage in underhand manœuvres? Why should I go
fishing in troubled waters? Why should I fleece this poor land-owner?
Why should I take advantage of his necessity to do him out of a year’s
harvest at a usurious profit to myself?”
“Oh, is that the way you look at it!” said Frau Permaneder, quite taken
aback and thoughtful. But she recovered in a moment and went on: “But
it is not at all necessary to look at it like that, Tom. How are you
forcing him, when it is he who comes to you? He needs the money, and
would like the matter arranged in a friendly way, and under the rose.
That is why he traced out the connection between us, and invited me to
visit.”
“In short, he has made a mistake in his calculations about me and
the character of my firm. I have my own traditions. We have been in
business a hundred years without touching that sort of transaction, and
I have no idea of beginning at this late day.”
“Certainly, Tom, you have your traditions, and nobody respects them
more than I do. And I know Father would not have done it--God forbid!
Who says he would? But, silly as I am, I know enough to know that you
are quite a different sort of man from Father, and since you took over
the business it has been different from what it was before. That is
because you were young and had enterprise and brains. But lately I am
afraid you have let yourself get discouraged by this or that piece of
bad luck. And if you are no longer having the same success you once
did, it is because you have been too cautious and conscientious, and
let slip your chances for good _coups_ when you had them--”
“Oh, my dear child, stop, please; you irritate me!” said the Senator
sharply, and turned away. “Let us change the subject.”
“Yes, you are vexed, Tom, I can see it. You were from the beginning,
and I have kept on, on purpose, to show you you are wrong to feel
yourself insulted. But I know the real reason why you are vexed: it
is because you are not so firmly decided not to touch the business.
I know I am silly; but I have noticed about myself--and about other
people too--that we are most likely to get angry and excited in our
opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our
own position, and are inwardly tempted to take the other side.”
“Very fine,” said the Senator, bit his cigarette-holder, and was silent.
“Fine? No, it’s very simple--one of the simplest things life has
taught me. But let it go, Tom. I won’t urge you. Don’t imagine that
I think I could persuade you--I know I don’t know enough. I’m only a
silly female. It’s a pity. Well, never mind.--It interested me very
much. On the one hand I was shocked and upset about the Maibooms, but
on the other I was pleased for you. I said to myself: ‘Tom has been
going about lately feeling very down in the mouth. He used to complain,
but now he does not even complain any more. He has been losing money,
and times are poor--and all that just now, when God has been good
to me, and I am feeling happier than I have for a long time.’ So I
thought, ‘This would be something for him: a stroke of luck, a good
_coup_. It would offset a good deal of misfortune, and show people that
luck is still on the side of the firm of Johann Buddenbrook.’ And if
you had undertaken it, I should have been so proud to have been the
means--for you know it has always been my dream and my one desire, to
be of some good to the family name.--Well, never mind. It is settled
now. What I feel vexed about is that Maiboom has to sell, in any case,
and if he looks around in the town here, he will find a purchaser--and
it will be that rascal Hermann Hagenström!”
“Oh, yes--he probably would not refuse it,” the Senator said bitterly;
and Frau Permaneder answered, three times, one after the other: “You
see, you see, you see!”
Thomas Buddenbrook suddenly began to shake his head and laugh angrily.
“We are silly. We sit here and work ourselves up--at least, you
do--over something that is neither here nor there. So far as I know,
I have not even asked what the thing is about--what Herr von Maiboom
actually has to sell. I do not know Pöppenrade.”
“Oh, you would have had to go there,” she said eagerly. “It’s not far
from here to Rostock--and from there it is no distance at all. And as
for what he has to sell--Pöppenrade is a large estate, I know for a
fact that it grows more than a thousand sacks of wheat. But I don’t
know details. About rye, oats, or barley, there might be five hundred
sacks of them, more or less. Everything is of the best, I can say that.
But I can’t give you any figures, I am such a goose, Tom. You would
have to go over.”
A pause ensued.
“No, it is not worth wasting words over,” the Senator said decidedly.
He folded his pince-nez and put it into his pocket, buttoned up his
coat, and began to walk up and down the room with firm and rapid
strides, which studiously betrayed no sign that he was giving the
subject any further consideration.
He paused by the table and turned toward his sister, drumming lightly
on the surface with his bent forefinger as he said: “I’ll tell you
a little story, my dear Tony, which will illustrate my attitude
toward this affair. I know your weakness for the nobility, and the
Mecklenburg nobility in particular--please don’t mind if one of these
gentry gets rapped a bit. You know, there is now and then one among
them who doesn’t treat the merchant classes with any great respect,
though perfectly aware that he can’t do without them. Such a man is too
much inclined to lay stress on the superiority--to a certain extent
undeniable--of the producer over the middleman. In short, he sometimes
acts as if the merchant were like a peddling Jew to whom one sells old
clothes, quite conscious that one is being over-reached. I flatter
myself that in my dealings with these gentry I have not usually made
the impression of a morally inferior exploiter; to tell the truth, the
boot has sometimes been on the other foot--I’ve run across men who
were far less scrupulous than I am! But in one case, it only needed
a single bold stroke to bring me into social relations. The man was
the lord of Gross-Poggendorf, of whom you have surely heard. I had
considerable dealings with him some while back: Count Strelitz, a
very smart-appearing man, with a square eye-glass (I could never make
out why he did not cut himself), patent-leather top-boots, and a
riding-whip with a gold handle. He had a way of looking down at me from
a great height, with his eyes half-shut and his mouth half open. My
first visit to him was very telling. We had had some correspondence. I
drove over, and was ushered by a servant into the study, where Count
Strelitz was sitting at his writing-table. He returns my bow, half
gets up, finishes the last lines of a letter; then he turns to me and
begins to talk business, looking over the top of my head. I lean on
the sofa-table, cross my arms and my legs, and enjoy myself. I stand
five minutes talking. After another five minutes, I sit down on the
table and swing my leg. We get on with our business, and at the end of
fifteen minutes he says to me, very graciously, ‘won’t you sit down?’
‘Beg pardon?’ I say. ‘Oh, don’t mention it--I’ve been sitting for some
time!’”
“Did you say that? Really?” cried Frau Permaneder, enchanted. She had
straightway forgotten all that had gone before, and lived for the
moment entirely in the anecdote.
“‘I’ve been sitting for some time’--oh, that is too good!”
“Well, and I assure you that the Count altered his tune at once. He
shook hands when I came, and asked me to sit down--in the course of
time we became very friendly. But I have told you this in order to ask
you if you think I should have the right, or the courage, or the inner
self-confidence to behave in the same way to Herr von Maiboom if, when
we met to discuss the bargain, he were to forget to offer me a chair?”
Frau Permaneder was silent. “Good,” she said then, and got up. “You may
be right; and, as I said, I’m not going to press you. You know what you
must do and what leave undone, and that’s an end of it. If you only
feel that I spoke in good part--you do, don’t you? All right. Good
night, Tom. Or--no, wait--I must go and say ‘How do you do’ to the good
Ida and give Hanno a little kiss. I’ll look in again on my way out.”
With that she went.