Was it forgetfulness, or was it intention, which would have made
Senator Buddenbrook pass over in silence a certain fact, had not his
sister Tony, the devotee of the family papers, announced it to all the
world: the fact, namely, that in those documents the founding of the
firm of Johann Buddenbrook was ascribed to the date of the 7th of July,
1768, the hundredth anniversary of which was now at hand?
Thomas seemed almost disturbed when Tony, in a moving voice, called
his attention to the fact. His good mood had not lasted. All too soon
he had fallen silent again, more silent than before. He would leave
the office in the midst of work, seized with unrest, and roam about
the garden, sometimes pausing as if he felt confined in his movements,
sighing, and covering his eyes with his hand. He said nothing, gave
his feelings no vent--to whom should he speak, then? When he told
his partner of the Pöppenrade matter, Herr Marcus had for the first
time in his life been angry with him, and had washed his hands of the
whole affair. But Thomas betrayed himself to his sister Tony, when
they said good-bye on the street one Thursday evening, and she alluded
to the Pöppenrade harvest. He gave her hand a single quick squeeze,
and added passionately “Oh, Tony, if I had only sold it already!” He
broke off abruptly, and they parted, leaving Frau Permaneder dismayed
and anxious. The sudden hand-pressure had something despairing, the
low words betrayed pent-up feeling. But when Tony, as chance offered,
tried to come back to the subject, he wrapped himself in silence, the
more forbidding because of his inward mortification over having given
way--his inward bitterness at being, as he felt, feeble and inadequate
to the situation in hand.
He said now, slowly and fretfully: “Oh, my dear child, I wish we might
ignore the whole affair!”
“Ignore it, Tom? Impossible! Unthinkable! Do you think you could
suppress the fact? Do you imagine the whole town would forget the
meaning of the day?”
“I don’t say it is possible--I only say I wish it were. It is pleasant
to celebrate the past, when one is gratified with the present and the
future. It is agreeable to think of one’s forefathers when one feels
at one with them and conscious of having acted as they would have
done. If the jubilee came at a better time--but just now, I feel small
inclination to celebrate it.”
“You must not talk like that, Tom. You don’t mean it; you know
perfectly that it would be a shame to let the hundredth anniversary
of the firm of Johann Buddenbrook go by without a sign or a sound of
rejoicing. You are a little nervous now, and I know why, though there
is really no reason for it. But when the day comes, you will be as
moved as all the rest of us.”
She was right; the day could not be passed over in silence. It was
not long before a notice appeared in the papers, calling attention to
the coming anniversary and giving a detailed history of the old and
estimable firm--but it was really hardly necessary. In the family,
Justus Kröger was the first to mention the approaching event, on the
Thursday afternoon; and Frau Permaneder saw to it that the venerable
leather portfolio was solemnly brought out after dessert was cleared
away, and the whole family, by way of foretaste, perused the dates
and events in the life of the first Johann Buddenbrook, Hanno’s
great-great-grandfather: when he had varioloid and when genuine
smallpox, when he fell out of the third-storey window on to the floor
of the drying-house, and when he had fever and delirium--she read all
that aloud with pious fervour. Not content with that, she must go back
into the 16th century, to the oldest Buddenbrook of whom there was
knowledge, to the one who was Councillor in Grabau, and the Rostock
tailor who had been “very well off” and had so many children, living
and dead. “What a splendid man!” she cried; and began to rummage
through yellow papers and read letters and poems aloud.
On the morning of the seventh of July, Herr Wenzel was naturally the
first with his congratulations.
“Well, Herr Sen’ter, many happy returns!” he said, gesturing freely
with razor and strop in his red hands. “A hundred years! And nearly
half of it, I may say, I have been shaving in the respected family--oh,
yes, one goes through a deal with the family, when one sees the head of
it the first thing in the morning! The deceased Herr Consul was always
the most talkative in the morning, too: ‘Wenzel,’ he would ask me,
‘Wenzel, what do you think about the rye? Should I sell or do you think
it will go up again?’”
“Yes, Wenzel, and I cannot think of these years without you, either.
Your calling, as I’ve often said to you, has a certain charm about
it. When you have made your rounds, you are wiser than anybody: you
have had the heads of nearly all the great houses under your hand, and
know the mood of each one. All the others can envy you that, for it is
really valuable information.”
“’s a good bit of truth in that, Herr Sen’ter. But what about the Herr
Sen’ter’s own mood, if I may be so bold to ask? Herr Sen’ter’s looking
a trifle pale again this morning.”
“Am I? Well, I have a headache--and so far as I can see, it will get
worse before it gets better, for I suspect they’ll put a good deal of
strain on it to-day.”
“I’m afraid so, Herr Sen’ter. The interest is great--the interest is
very great. Just look out o’ window when I’ve done with you. Hosts of
flags! And down at the bottom of the Street the ‘Wullenwewer’ and the
‘Friederike Överdieck’ with all their pennons flying.”
“Well, let’s be quick, then, Wenzel; there’s no time to lose, evidently.”
The Senator did not don his office jacket, as he usually did of a
morning, but put on at once a black cutaway coat with a white waistcoat
and light-coloured trousers. There would certainly be visits. He
gave a last glance in the mirror, a last pressure of the tongs to
his moustache, and turned with a little sigh to go. The dance was
beginning. If only the day were well over! Would he have a single
minute to himself, a single minute to relax the muscles of his face?
All day long he should certainly have to receive, with tact and
dignity, the congratulations of a host of people, find just the right
word and just the right tone for everybody, be serious, hearty, ironic,
jocose, and respectful by turns; and from afternoon late into the night
there would be the dinner at the Ratskeller.
It was not true that his head ached. He was only tired. Already, though
he had just risen, with his nerves refreshed by sleep, he felt his old,
indefinable burden upon him. Why had he said his head ached--as though
he always had a bad conscience where his own health was concerned? Why?
Why? However, there was no time now to brood over the question.
He went into the dining-room, where Gerda met him gaily. She too was
already arrayed to meet their guests, in a plaid skirt, a white blouse,
and a thin silk zouave jacket over it, the colour of her heavy hair.
She smiled and showed her white teeth, so large and regular, whiter
than her white face; her eyes, those close-set, enigmatic brown eyes,
were smiling too, to-day.
“I’ve been up for hours--you can tell from that how excited I am,” she
said, “and how hearty my congratulations are.”
“Well, well! So the hundred years make an impression on you too?”
“Tremendous. But perhaps it is only the excitement of the celebration.
What a day! Look at that, for instance.” She pointed to the
breakfast-table, all garlanded with garden flowers. “That is Fräulein
Jungmann’s work. But you are mistaken if you think you can drink
tea now. The family is in the drawing-room already, waiting to make
a presentation--something in which I too have had a share. Listen,
Thomas. This is, of course, only the beginning of a stream of callers.
At first I can stand it, but at about midday I shall have to withdraw,
I am sure. The barometer has fallen a little, but the sky is still the
most staring blue. It makes the flags look lovely, of course, and the
whole town is flagged--but it will be frightfully hot. Come into the
salon. Breakfast must wait. You should have been up before. Now the
first excitement will have to come on an empty stomach.”
The Frau Consul, Christian, Clothilde, Ida Jungmann, Frau Permaneder,
and Hanno were assembled in the salon, the last two supporting, not
without difficulty, the family present, a great commemorative tablet.
The Frau Consul, deeply moved, embraced her eldest-born.
“This is a wonderful day, my dear son--a wonderful day,” she repeated.
“We must thank God unceasingly, with all our hearts, for His
mercies--for all His mercies.” She wept.
The Senator was attacked by weakness in her embrace. He felt as though
something within him freed itself and flew away. His lips trembled.
An overwhelming need possessed him to lay his head upon his mother’s
breast, to close his eyes in her arms, to breathe in the delicate
perfume that rose from the soft silk of her gown, to lie there at
rest, seeing nothing more, saying nothing more. He kissed her and
stood erect, putting out his hand to his brother, who greeted him
with the absent-minded embarrassment which was his usual bearing on
such occasions. Clothilde drawled out something kindly. Ida Jungmann
confined herself to making a deep bow, while she played with the silver
watch-chain on her flat bosom.
“Come here, Tom,” said Frau Permaneder uncertainly. “We can’t hold
it any longer, can we, Hanno?” She was holding it almost alone, for
Hanno’s little arms were not much help; and she looked, what with her
enthusiasm and her effort, like an enraptured martyr. Her eyes were
moist, her cheeks burned, and her tongue played, with a mixture of
mischief and nervousness, on her upper lip.
“Here I am,” said the Senator. “What in the world is this? Come, let me
have it; we’ll lean it against the wall.” He propped it up next to the
piano and stood looking at it, surrounded by the family.
In a large, heavy frame of carved nut-wood were the portraits of
the four owners of the firm, under glass. There was the founder,
Johann Buddenbrook, taken from an old oil painting--a tall, grave old
gentleman, with his lips firmly closed, looking severe and determined
above his lace jabot. There was the broad and jovial countenance
of Johann Buddenbrook, the friend of Jean Jacques Hoffstede. There
was Consul Johann Buddenbrook, in a stiff choker collar, with his
wide, wrinkled mouth and large aquiline nose, his eyes full of
religious fervour. And finally there was Thomas Buddenbrook himself,
as a somewhat younger man. The four portraits were divided by
conventionalized blades of wheat, heavily gilded, and beneath, likewise
in figures of brilliant gilt, the dates 1768-1868. Above the whole, in
the tall, Gothic hand of him who had left it to his descendants, was
the quotation: “My son, attend with zeal, to thy business by day; but
do none that hinders thee from thy sleep at night.”
The Senator, his hands behind his back gazed for a long time at the
tablet.
“Yes, yes,” he said abruptly, and his tone was rather mocking, “an
undisturbed night’s rest is a very good thing.” Then, seriously, if
perhaps a little perfunctorily, “Thank you very much, my dear family.
It is indeed a most thoughtful and beautiful gift. What do you
think--where shall we put it? Shall we hang it in my private office?”
“Yes, Tom, over the desk in your office,” answered Frau Permaneder, and
embraced her brother. Then she drew him into the bow-window and pointed.
Under a deep blue sky, the two-coloured flag floated above all the
houses, right down Fishers’ Lane, from Broad Street to the wharf, where
the “Wullenwewer” and the “Friederike Överdieck” lay under full flag,
in their owner’s honour.
“The whole town is the same,” said Frau Permaneder, and her voice
trembled. “I’ve been out and about already. Even the Hagenströms have
a flag. They couldn’t do otherwise.--I’d smash in their window!”
He smiled, and they went back to the table together. “And here are
the telegrams, Tom, the first ones to come--the personal ones, of
course; the others have been sent to the office.” They opened a few
of the dispatches: from the family in Hamburg, from the Frankfort
Buddenbrooks, from Herr Arnoldsen in Amsterdam, from Jürgen Kröger in
Wismar. Suddenly Frau Permaneder flushed deeply.
“He is a good man, in his way,” she said, and pushed across to her
brother the telegram she had just opened: it was signed Permaneder.
“But time is passing,” said the Senator, and looked at his watch.
“I’d like my tea. Will you come in with me? The house will be like a
bee-hive after a while.”
His wife, who had given a sign to Ida Jungmann, held him back.
“Just a moment, Thomas. You know Hanno has to go to his lessons. He
wants to say a poem to you first. Come here, Hanno. And now, just as if
no one else were here--you remember? Don’t be excited.”
It was the summer holidays, of course, but little Hanno had private
lessons in arithmetic, in order to keep up with his class. Somewhere
out in the suburb of St. Gertrude, in a little ill-smelling room, a man
in a red beard, with dirty fingernails, was waiting to discipline him
in the detested “tables.” But first he was to recite to Papa a poem
painfully learned by heart, with Ida Jungmann’s help, in the little
balcony on the second floor.
He leaned against the piano, in his blue sailor suit with the white
V front and the wide linen collar with a big sailor’s knot coming
out beneath. His thin legs were crossed, his body and head a little
inclined in an attitude of shy, unconscious grace. Two or three weeks
before, his hair had been cut, as not only his fellow-pupils, but the
master as well, had laughed at it; but his head was still covered with
soft abundant ringlets, growing down over the forehead and temples. His
eyelids drooped, so that the long brown lashes lay over the deep blue
shadows; and his closed lips were a little wry.
He knew well what would happen. He would begin to cry, would not be
able to finish for crying; and his heart would contract, as it did
on Sundays in St. Mary’s, when Herr Pfühl played on the organ in a
certain piercingly solemn way. It always turned out that he wept when
they wanted him to do something--when they examined him and tried to
find out what he knew, as Papa so loved to do. If only Mamma had not
spoken of getting excited! She meant to be encouraging, but he felt
it was a mistake. There they stood, and looked at him. They expected,
and feared, that he would break down--so how was it possible _not_ to?
He lifted his lashes and sought Ida’s eyes. She was playing with her
watch-chain, and nodded to him in her usual honest, crabbed way. He
would have liked to cling to her and have her take him away; to hear
nothing but her low, soothing voice, saying “There, little Hanno, be
quiet, you need not say it.”
“Well, my son, let us hear it,” said the Senator, shortly. He had
sat down in an easy-chair by the table and was waiting. He did not
smile--he seldom did on such occasions. Very serious, with one eyebrow
lifted, he measured little Hanno with cold and scrutinizing glance.
Hanno straightened up. He rubbed one hand over the piano’s polished
surface, gave a shy look at the company, and, somewhat emboldened by
the gentle looks of Grandmamma and Aunt Tony, brought out, in a low,
almost a hard voice: “‘The Shepherd’s Sunday Hymn,’ by Uhland.”
“Oh, my dear child, not like that,” called out the Senator. “Don’t
stick there by the piano and cross your hands on your tummy like that!
Stand up! Speak out! That’s the first thing. Here, stand here between
the curtains. Now, hold your head up--let your arms hang down quietly
at your sides.”
Hanno took up his position on the threshold of the living-room and let
his arms hang down. Obediently he raised his head, but his eyes--the
lashes drooped so low that they were invisible. They were probably
already swimming in tears.
“‘This is the day of our--’”
he began, very low. His father’s voice sounded loud by contrast when
he interrupted: “One begins with a bow, my son. And then, much louder.
Begin again, please: ‘Shepherd’s Sunday Hymn’--”
It was cruel. The Senator was probably aware that he was robbing the
child of the last remnant of his self-control. But the boy should
not let himself be robbed. He should have more manliness by now.
“‘Shepherd’s Sunday Hymn,’” he repeated encouragingly, remorselessly.
But it was all up with Hanno. His head sank on his breast, and the
small, blue-veined right hand tugged spasmodically at the brocaded
portière.
“‘I stand alone on the vacant plain,’”
he said, but could get no further. The mood of the verse possessed him.
An overmastering self-pity took away his voice, and the tears could not
be kept back: they rolled out from beneath his lashes. Suddenly the
thought came into his mind: if he were only ill, a little ill, as on
those nights when he lay in bed with a slight fever and sore throat,
and Ida came and gave him a drink, and put a compress on his head, and
was kind-- He put his head down on the arm with which he clung to the
portière, and sobbed.
“Well,” said the Senator, harshly, “there is no pleasure in that.” He
stood up, irritated. “What are you crying about? Though it is certainly
a good enough reason for tears, that you haven’t the courage to do
anything, even for the sake of giving me a little pleasure! Are you a
little girl? What will become of you if you go on like that? Will you
always be drowning yourself in tears, every time you have to speak to
people?”
“I never _will_ speak to people, never!” thought Hanno in despair.
“Think it over till this afternoon,” finished the Senator, and went
into the dining-room. Ida Jungmann knelt by her fledgling and dried his
eyes, and spoke to him, half consoling, half reproachful.
The Senator breakfasted hurriedly, and the Frau Consul, Tony,
Clothilde, and Christian meanwhile took their leave. They were to
dine with Gerda, as likewise were the Krögers, the Weinschenks, and
the three Misses Buddenbrook from Broad Street, while the Senator,
willy-nilly, must be present at the dinner in the Ratskeller. He hoped
to leave in time to see his family again at his own house.
Sitting at the be-garlanded table, he drank his hot tea out of a
saucer, hurriedly ate an egg, and on the steps took two or three puffs
of a cigarette. Grobleben, wearing his woollen scarf in defiance of
the July heat, with a boot over his left forearm and the polish-brush
in his right, a long drop pendent from his nose, came from the garden
into the front entry and accosted his master at the foot of the stairs,
where the brown bear stood with his tray.
“Many happy returns, Herr Sen’ter, many happy--’n’ one is rich ’n’
great, ’n’ t’other’s pore--”
“Yes, yes, Grobleben, you’re right, that’s just how it is!” And the
Senator slipped a piece of money into the hand with the brush, and
crossed the entry into the anteroom of the office. In the office the
cashier came up to him, a tall man with honest, faithful eyes, to
convey, in carefully selected phrases, the good wishes of the staff.
The Senator thanked him in a few words, and went on to his place by the
window. He had hardly opened his letters and glanced into the morning
paper lying there ready for him, when a knock came on the door leading
into the front entry, and the first visitors appeared with their
congratulations.
It was a delegation of granary labourers, who came straddling in like
bears, the corners of their mouths drawn down with befitting solemnity
and their caps in their hands. Their spokesman spat tobacco-juice on
the floor, pulled up his trousers, and talked in great excitement about
“a hun’erd year” and “many more hun’erd year.” The Senator proposed to
them a considerable increase in their pay for the week, and dismissed
them. The office staff of the revenue department came in a body to
congratulate their chief. As they left, they met in the doorway a
number of sailors, with two pilots at the head, from the “Wullenwewer”
and the “Friederike Överdieck,” the two ships belonging to the firm
which happened at the time to be in port. Then there was a deputation
of grain-porters, in black blouses, knee-breeches, and top-hats. And
single citizens, too, were announced from time to time: Herr Stuht from
Bell-Founders’ Street came, with a black coat over his flannel shirt,
and Iwersen the florist, and sundry other neighbours. There was an old
postman, with watery eyes, earrings, and a white beard--an ancient
oddity whom the Senator used to salute on the street and call him Herr
Postmaster: he came, stood in the doorway, and cried out “Ah bain’t
come fer _that_, Herr Sen’ter! Ah knows as iverybody gits summat as
comes here to-day, but ah bain’t come fer that, an’ so ah tells ye!”
He received his piece of money with gratitude, none the less. There was
simply no end to it. At half-past ten the servant came from the house
to announce that the Frau Senator was receiving guests in the salon.
Thomas Buddenbrook left his office and hurried upstairs. At the door of
the salon he paused a moment for a glance into the mirror to order his
cravat, and to refresh himself with a whiff of the eau-de-cologne on
his handkerchief. His body was wet with perspiration, but his face was
pale, his hands and feet cold. The reception in the office had nearly
used him up already. He drew a long breath and entered the sunlit
room, to be greeted at once by Consul Huneus, the lumber dealer and
multi-millionaire, his wife, their daughter, and the latter’s husband,
Senator Dr. Gieseke. These had all driven in from Travemünde, like many
others of the first families of the town, who were spending July in a
cure which they interrupted only for the Buddenbrook jubilee.
They had not been sitting for three minutes in the elegant arm-chairs
of the salon when Consul Överdieck, son of the deceased Burgomaster,
and his wife, who was a Kistenmaker, were announced. When Consul Huneus
made his adieux, his place was taken by his brother, who had a million
less money than he, but made up for it by being a senator.
Now the ball was open. The tall white door, with the relief of the
singing cupids above it, was scarcely closed for a moment; there was
a constant view from within of the great staircase, upon which the
light streamed down from the skylight far above, and of the stairs
themselves, full of guests either entering or taking their leave. But
the salon was spacious, the guests lingered in groups to talk, and
the number of those who came was for some time far greater than the
number of those who went away. Soon the maid-servant gave up opening
and shutting the door that led into the salon and left it wide open,
so that the guests stood in the corridor as well. There was the drone
and buzz of conversation in masculine and feminine voices, there were
handshakings, bows, jests, and loud, jolly laughter, which reverberated
among the columns of the staircase and echoed from the great glass
panes of the skylight. Senator Buddenbrook stood by turns at the top
of the stairs and in the bow-window, receiving the congratulations,
which were sometimes mere formal murmurs and sometimes loud and hearty
expressions of good will. Burgomaster Dr. Langhals, a heavily built
man of elegant appearance, with a shaven chin nestling in a white
neck-cloth, short grey mutton-chops, and a languid diplomatic air, was
received with general marks of respect. Consul Eduard Kistenmaker, the
wine-merchant, his wife, who was a Möllendorpf, and his brother and
partner Stephan, Senator Buddenbrook’s loyal friend and supporter, with
his wife, the rudely healthy daughter of a landed proprietor, arrive
and pay their respects. The widowed Frau Senator Möllendorpf sits
throned in the centre of the sofa in the salon, while her children,
Consul August Möllendorpf and his wife Julchen, born Hagenström, mingle
with the crowd. Consul Hermann Hagenström supports his considerable
weight on the balustrade, breathes heavily into his red beard, and
talks with Senator Dr. Cremer, the Chief of Police, whose brown beard,
mixed with grey, frames a smiling face expressive of a sort of gentle
slyness. State Attorney Moritz Hagenström, smiling and showing his
defective teeth, is there with his beautiful wife, the former Fräulein
Puttfarken of Hamburg. Good old Dr. Grabow may be seen pressing Senator
Buddenbrook’s hand for a moment in both of his, to be displaced next
moment by Contractor Voigt. Pastor Pringsheim, in secular garb, only
betraying his dignity by the length of his frock-coat, comes up the
steps with outstretched arms and a beaming face. And Herr Friedrich
Wilhelm Marcus is present, of course. Those gentlemen who come as
delegates from any body such as the Senate, the Board of Trade, or the
Assembly of Burgesses, appear in frock-coats. It is half-past eleven.
The heat is intense. The lady of the house withdrew a quarter of an
hour ago.
Suddenly there is a hubbub below the vestibule door, a stamping and
shuffling of feet, as of many people entering together; and a ringing,
noisy voice echoes through the whole house. Everybody rushes to the
landing, blocks up the doors to the salon, the dining-room, and the
smoking-room, and peers down. Below is a group of fifteen or twenty men
with musical instruments, headed by a gentleman in a brown wig, with a
grey nautical beard and yellow artificial teeth, which he shows when he
talks. What is happening? It is Consul Peter Döhlmann, of course: he is
bringing the band from the theatre, and mounts the stairs in triumph,
swinging a packet of programmes in his hand!
The serenade in honour of the hundredth anniversary of the firm of
Johann Buddenbrook begins: in these impossible conditions, with the
notes all running together, the chords drowning each other, the loud
grunting and snarling of the big bass trumpet heard above everything
else. It begins with “Now let us all thank God,” goes over into the
adaptation of Offenbach’s “La Belle Hélène,” and winds up with a
_pot-pourri_ of folk-songs--quite an extensive programme! And a pretty
idea of Döhlmann’s! They congratulate him on it; and nobody feels
inclined to break up until the concert is finished. They stand or sit
in the salon and the corridor; they listen and talk.
Thomas Buddenbrook stood with Stephan Kistenmaker, Senator Dr. Gieseke,
and Contractor Voigt, beyond the staircase, near the open door of
the smoking-room and the flight of stairs up to the second storey.
He leaned against the wall, now and then contributing a word to the
conversation, and for the rest looking out into space across the
balustrade. It was hotter than ever, and more oppressive; but it would
probably rain. To judge from the shadows that drove across the skylight
there must be clouds in the sky. They were so many and moved so rapidly
that the changeful, flickering light on the staircase came in time to
hurt the eyes. Every other minute the brilliance of the gilt chandelier
and the brass instruments below was quenched, to blaze out the next
minute as before. Once the shadows lasted a little longer, and six or
seven times something fell with a slight crackling sound upon the panes
of the skylight--hail-stones, no doubt. Then the sunlight streamed down
again.
There is a mood of depression in which everything that would ordinarily
irritate us and call up a healthy reaction, merely weighs us down with
a nameless, heavy burden of dull chagrin. Thus Thomas brooded over
the break-down of little Johann, over the feelings which the whole
celebration aroused in him, and still more over those which he would
have liked to feel but could not. He sought again and again to pull
himself together, to clear his countenance, to tell himself that this
was a great day which was bound to heighten and exhilarate his mood.
And indeed the noise which the band was making, the buzz of voices,
the sight of all these people gathered in his honour, did shake his
nerves; did, together with his memories of the past and of his father,
give rise in him to a sort of weak emotionalism. But a sense of the
ridiculous, of the disagreeable, hung over it all--the trumpery music,
spoiled by the bad acoustics, the banal company chattering about
dinners and the stock market--and this very mingling of emotion and
disgust heightened his inward sense of exhaustion and despair.
At a quarter after twelve, when the musical program was drawing to
a close, an incident occurred which in no wise interfered with the
prevailing good feeling, but which obliged the master of the house to
leave his guests for a short time. It was of a business nature. At a
pause in the music the youngest apprentice in the firm appeared, coming
up the great staircase, overcome with embarrassment at sight of so many
people. He was a little, stunted fellow; and he drew his red face down
as far as possible between his shoulders and swung one long, thin arm
violently back and forth to show that he was perfectly at his ease.
In the other hand he had a telegram. He mounted the steps, looking
everywhere for his master, and when he had discovered him he passed
with blushes and murmured excuses through the crowds that blocked his
way.
His blushes were superfluous--nobody saw him. Without looking at him
or breaking off their talk, they slightly made way, and they hardly
noticed when he gave his telegram to the Senator, with a scrape, and
the latter turned a little away from Kistenmaker, Voigt, and Gieseke
to read it. Nearly all the telegrams that came to-day were messages of
congratulation; still, during business hours, they had to be delivered
at once.
The corridor made a bend at the point where the stairs mounted to the
second storey, and then went on to the back stairs, where there was
another, a side entrance into the dining-room. Opposite the stairs was
the shaft of the dumbwaiter, and at this point there was a sizable
table, where the maids usually polished the silver. The Senator paused
here, turned his back to the apprentice, and opened the dispatch.
Suddenly his eyes opened so wide that any one seeing him would have
started in astonishment, and he gave a deep, gasping intake of breath
which dried his throat and made him cough.
He tried to say “Very well,” but his voice was inaudible in the clamour
behind him. “Very well,” he repeated; but the second word was only a
whisper.
As his master did not move or turn round or make any sign, the
hump-backed apprentice shifted from one foot to the other, then made
his outlandish scrape again and went down the back stairs.
Senator Buddenbrook still stood at the table. His hands, holding the
dispatch, hung weakly down in front of him; he breathed in difficult,
short breaths through his mouth; his body swayed back and forth, and
he shook his head meaninglessly, as if stunned. “That little bit of
hail,” he said, “that little bit of hail.” He repeated it stupidly.
But gradually his breathing grew longer and quieter, the movement of
his body less; his half-shut eyes clouded over with a weary, broken
expression, and he turned around, slowly nodding his head, opened the
door into the dining-room, and went in. With bent head he crossed the
wide polished floor and sat down on one of the dark-red sofas by the
window. Here it was quiet and cool. The sound of the fountain came up
from the garden, and a fly buzzed on the pane. There was only a dull
murmur from the front of the house.
He laid his weary head on the cushion and closed his eyes. “That’s
good, that’s good,” he muttered, half aloud, drawing a deep breath of
relief and satisfaction; “Oh, that _is_ good!”
He lay five minutes thus, with limbs relaxed and a look of peace upon
his face. Then he sat up, folded the telegram, put it in his breast
pocket, and rose to rejoin his guests.
But in the same minute he sank back with a disgusted groan upon the
sofa. The music--it was beginning again; an idiotic racket, meant to
be a galop, with the drum and cymbals marking a rhythm in which the
other instruments all joined either ahead of or behind time; a naïve,
insistent, intolerable hullabaloo of snarling, crashing, and feebly
piping noises, punctuated by the silly tootling of the piccolo.