And now began for Tony Buddenbrook a stretch of beautiful summer
weeks, briefer, lovelier, than any she had ever spent in Travemünde.
She bloomed as she felt her burden no longer upon her; her gay,
pert, careless manner had come back. The Consul looked at her with
satisfaction when he came on Sundays with Tom and Christian. On those
days they ate at the table-d’hôte, sat under the awnings at the
pastry-cook’s, drinking coffee and listening to the band, and peeped
into the roulette-room at the gay folk there, like Justus Kröger and
Peter Döhlmann. The Consul himself never played. Tony sunned herself,
took baths, ate sausages with ginger-nut sauce, and took long walks
with Morten. They went out on the high-road to the next village, or
along the beach to the “ocean temple” on its height, whence a wide view
was to be had over land and sea; or to the woods behind the Kurhouse,
where was a great bell used to call the guests to the table-d’hôte.
Sometimes they rowed across the Trave to the Prival, to look for amber.
Morten made an entertaining companion, though his opinions were often
dogmatic, not to say heated. He had a severe and righteous judgment for
everything, and he expressed it with finality, blushing all the time.
It saddened Tony to hear him call the nobility idiots and wretches and
to see the contemptuous if awkward gesture that accompanied the words.
She scolded him, but she was proud to have him express so freely in
her presence the views and opinions which she knew he concealed from
his parents. Once he confided in her: “I’ll tell you something: I’ve a
skeleton in my room at Göttingen--a whole set of bones, you know, held
together by wire. I’ve put an old policeman’s uniform on it. Ha, ha!
Isn’t that great? But don’t say anything to my Father about it.”
Tony was naturally often in the society of her town friends, or drawn
into some assembly or boating party. Then Morten “sat on the rocks.”
And after their first day this phrase became a convenient one. To “sit
on the rocks” meant to feel bored and lonely. When a rainy day came and
a grey mist covered the sea far and wide till it was one with the deep
sky; when the beach was drenched and the roads streaming with wet, Tony
would say: “To-day we shall both have to sit on the rocks--that is, in
the verandah or sitting-room. There is nothing left to do but for you
to play me some of your student songs, Morten--even if they do bore me
horribly.”
“Yes,” Morten said, “come and sit down. But you know that when you are
here, there are no rocks!” He never said such things when his father
was present. His mother he did not mind.
“Well, what now?” asked the pilot-captain, as Tony and Morten both rose
from table and were about to take their leave. “Where are the young
folk off to?”
“I was going to take a little walk with Fräulein Antonie, as far as the
temple.”
“Oh, is that it? Well, my son Filius, what do you say to going up to
your room and conning over your nerves? You’ll lose everything out of
your head before you get back to Göttingen.”
But Frau Schwarzkopf would intervene: “Now, Diederich, aren’t these his
holidays? Why shouldn’t he take a walk? Is he to have nothing of our
visitor?” So Morten went.
They paced along the beach close to the water, on the smooth, hard
sand that made walking easy. It was strewn with common tiny white
mussel-shells, and others too, pale opalescent and longish in shape;
yellow-green wet sea-weed with hollow round fruit that snapped when
you squeezed it; and pale, translucent, reddish-yellow jelly-fish,
which were poisonous and burned your leg when you touched one bathing.
“I used to be frightfully stupid, you know,” Tony said. “I wanted
the bright star out of the jelly-fish, so I brought a lot home in
my pocket-handkerchief and put them on the balcony, to dry in the
sunshine. When I looked at them again, of course there was just a big
wet spot that smelled of sea-weed.”
The waves whispered rhythmically beside them as they walked, and the
salt wind blew full in their faces, streaming over and about them,
closing their ears to other sounds and causing a pleasant slight
giddiness. They walked in this hushed, whispering peacefulness by the
sea, whose every faint murmur, near or far, seemed to have a deep
significance.
To their left was a precipitous cliff of lime and boulders, with
jutting corners that came into view as they rounded the bay. When
the beach was too stony to go on, they began to climb, and continued
upward through the wood until they reached the temple. It was a round
pavilion, built of rough timbers and boards, the inside of which was
covered with scribbled inscriptions and poetry, carved hearts and
initials. Tony and Morten seated themselves in one of the little rooms
facing the sea; it smelled of wood, like the cabins at the bathhouse.
It was very quiet, even solemn, up here at this hour of the afternoon.
A pair of birds chattered, and the faint rustling of the leaves mingled
with the sound of the sea spread out below them. In the distance they
could see the rigging of a ship. Sheltered now from the wind that had
been thrumming at their ears, they suddenly experienced a quiet, almost
pensive mood.
Tony said, “Is it coming or going?”
“What?” asked Morten, his subdued voice sounding as if he were coming
back from a far distance. “Oh--going-- That is the _Burgermeister
Steenbock_, for Russia.” He added after a pause: “I shouldn’t like to
be going with it. It must be worse there than here.”
“Now,” Tony said, “you are going to begin again on the nobility. I see
it in your face. And it’s not at all nice of you. Tell me, did you ever
know a single one of them?”
“No!” Morten shouted, quite insulted. “Thank God, no.”
“Well, there, then, I have--Armgard von Schilling over there, that I
told you about. She was much better-natured than either of us; she
hardly knew she was a _von_--she ate sausage-meat and talked about her
cows.”
“Oh, of course. There are naturally exceptions. Listen, Fräulein
Tony. You are a woman, you see, so you take everything personally.
You happen to know a single member of the nobility, and you say she
is a good creature--certainly! But one does not need to know any of
them to be able to judge them all. It is a question of the principle,
you understand--of--the organization of the state. You can’t answer
that, can you? They need only to be born to be the pick of everything,
and look down on all the rest of us. While we, however hard we
strive, cannot climb to their level.” Morten spoke with a naïve,
honest irritation. He tried to fit his speech with gestures, then
perceived that they were awkward, and gave it up. But he was in the
vein to talk, and he went on, sitting bent forward, with his thumb
between the buttons of his jacket, a defiant expression in his usually
good-natured eyes. “We, the bourgeoisie--the Third Estate, as we have
been called--we recognize only that nobility which consists of merit;
we refuse to admit any longer the rights of the indolent aristocracy,
we repudiate the class distinctions of the present day, we desire that
all men should be free and equal, that no person shall be subject to
another, but all subject to the law. There shall be no more privilege
and arbitrary rule. All shall be sovereign children of the state; and
as no middlemen exist any longer between the people and almighty God,
so shall the citizen stand in direct relation to the State. We will
have freedom of the press, of trade and industry, so that all men,
without distinction, shall be able to strive together and receive their
reward according to their merit. We are enslaved, muzzled!--What was
it I wanted to say? Oh, yes! Four years ago they renewed the laws of
the Confederation touching the universities and the press. Fine laws
they are! No truth may be written or taught which might not agree
with the established order of things. Do you understand? The truth is
suppressed--forbidden to be spoken. Why? For the sake of an obsolete,
idiotic, decadent class which everybody knows will be destroyed some
day, anyhow. I do not think you can comprehend such meanness. It is the
stupid, brutal application of force, the immediate physical strength
of the police, without the slightest understanding of new, spiritual
forces. And apart from all that, there is the final fact of the great
wrong the King of Prussia has done us. In 1813, when the French were in
the country, he called us together and promised us a Constitution. We
came to the rescue, we freed Germany from the invader--”
Tony, chin in hand, stole a look at him and wondered for a moment if he
could have actually helped to drive out Napoleon.
“--but do you think he kept his promise? Oh, no! The present king is
a fine orator, a dreamer; a romantic, like you, Fräulein Tony. But
I’ll tell you something: take any general principle or conception of
life. It always happens that, directly it has been found wanting and
discarded by the poets and philosophers, there comes along a King to
whom it is a perfectly new idea, and who makes it a guiding principle.
That is what kings are like. It is not only that kings are men--they
are even very distinctly average men; they are always a good way in the
rear. Oh, yes, Germany is just like a students’ society; it had its
brave and spirited youth at the time of the great revolution, but now
it is just a lot of fretful Philistines.”
“Ye--es,” Tony said. “But let me ask you this: Why are you so
interested in Prussia? You aren’t a Prussian.”
“Oh, it is all the same thing, Fräulein Buddenbrook. Yes, I said
Fräulein Buddenbrook on purpose, I ought even to have said Demoiselle
Buddenbrook, and given you your entire title. Are the men here freer,
more brotherly, more equal than in Prussia? Conventions, classes,
aristocracy, here as there. You have sympathy for the nobility. Shall
I tell you why? Because you belong to it yourself. Yes, yes, didn’t
you know it? Your father is a great gentleman, and you are a princess.
There is a gulf between you and us, because we do not belong to your
circle of ruling families. You can walk on the beach with one of us for
the sake of your health, but when you get back into your own class,
then the rest of us can go and sit on the rocks.” His voice had grown
quite strangely excited.
“Morten,” said Tony, sadly. “You have been angry all the time, then,
when you were sitting on the rocks! And I always begged you to come and
be introduced.”
“Now you are taking the affair personally again, like a young lady,
Fräulein Tony, I’m only speaking of the principle. I say that there
is no more fellowship of humanity with us than in Prussia.--And even
if I were speaking personally,” he went on, after a little pause,
with a softer tone, out of which, however, the strange excitement had
not disappeared, “I shouldn’t be speaking of the present, but rather,
perhaps, of the future. When you as Madame So-and-So finally vanish
into your proper sphere, one is left to sit on the rocks all the rest
of one’s life.”
He was silent, and Tony too. She did not look at him, but in the other
direction, at the wooden partition. There was an uneasy stillness for
some time.
“Do you remember,” Morten began again, “I once said to you that there
was a question I wanted to ask you? Yes, I have wanted to know, since
the first afternoon you came. Don’t guess. You couldn’t guess what I
mean. I am going to ask you another time; there is no hurry; it has
really nothing to do with me; it is only curiosity. No, to-day I will
only show you one thing. Look.” He drew out of the pocket of his jacket
the end of a narrow gaily-striped ribbon, and looked with a mixture of
expectation and triumph into Tony’s eyes.
“How pretty,” she said uncomprehendingly. “What is it?”
Morten spoke solemnly: “That means that I belong to a students’
fraternity in Göttingen.--Now you know. I have a cap in the same
colours, but my skeleton in the policeman’s uniform is wearing it
for the holidays. I couldn’t be seen with it here, you understand. I
can count on your saying nothing, can’t I? Because it would be very
unfortunate if my father were to hear of it.”
“Not a word, Morten. You can rely on me. But I don’t understand--have
you all taken a vow against the nobility? What is it you want?”
“We want freedom,” Morten said.
“Freedom?” she asked.
“Yes, freedom, you know--_Freedom!_” he repeated; and he made a vague,
awkward, fervent gesture outward and downward, not toward the side
where the coast of Mecklenburg narrowed the bay, but in the direction
of the open sea, whose rippling blue, green, yellow, and grey stripes
rolled as far as eye could see out to the misty horizon.
Tony followed his gesture with her eye; they sat, their hands lying
close together on the bench, and looked into the distance. Thus they
remained in silence a long time, while the sea sent up to them its soft
enchanting whispers.... Tony suddenly felt herself one with Morten in a
great, vague yearning comprehension of this portentous something which
he called “Freedom.”