Yet it was Frau Antonie’s most ardent hope, especially after she herself had “failed in business,” as she said, that her daughter might realize her own unfulfilled dream of a happy and advantageous marriage, which should redound to the glory of the family and sink the mother’s failure in final oblivion. Tony longed for this beyond everything, and chiefly now for her brother’s sake, who had latterly shown so little optimism, as a sign to him that the luck of the family was not yet lost, that they were by no means “at the end of their rope.” Her second dowry, the eighteen thousand thaler so magnanimously returned by Herr Permaneder, lay waiting for Erica; and directly Frau Antonie’s practiced glance marked the budding tenderness between her daughter and the Director, she began to trouble Heaven with a prayer that Herr Weinschenk might be led to visit them.
He was. He appeared in the first storey, where he was received by the three ladies, mother, daughter, and granddaughter, talked for ten minutes, and promised to return another day for coffee and more leisurely conversation.
This too came to pass, and the acquaintance progressed. The Director was a Silesian by birth. His old father, in fact, still lived in Silesia; but the family seemed not to come into consideration, Hugo being, evidently, a “self-made man.” He had the self-consciousness of such men: a not quite native, rather insecure, mistrustful, exaggerated air. His grammar was not perfect, and his conversation was distinctly clumsy. And his countrified frock-coat had shiny spots; his cuffs, with large jet cuff-buttons, were not quite fresh; and the nail on the middle finger of his left hand had been crushed in some accident, and was shrivelled and blackened. The impression, on the whole, was rather unpleasing; yet it did not prevent Hugo Weinschenk from being a highly worthy young man, industrious and energetic, with a yearly salary of twelve thousand marks current; nor from being, in Erica Grünlich’s eyes, handsome to boot.
Frau Permaneder quickly looked him over and summed him up. She talked freely with her mother and the Senator. It was clear to her that here was a case of two interests meeting and complementing each other. Director Weinschenk was, like Erica, devoid of every social connection: the two were thus, in a manner, marked out for each other—it was plainly the hand of God himself. If the Director, who was nearing the forties, his hair already sprinkled with grey, desired to found a family appropriate to his station and connections, here was an opening for him into one of the best circles in town, calculated to advance him in his calling and consolidate his position. As for Erica’s welfare, Frau Permaneder could feel confident that at least her own lot would be out of the question. Herr Weinschenk had not the faintest resemblance to Herr Permaneder; and he was differentiated from Bendix Grünlich by his position as an old-established official with a fixed salary—which, of course, did not preclude a further career.
In a word, much good will was shown on both sides. Herr Weinschenk’s visits followed each other in quick succession, and by —he permitted himself to make a brief and manly offer for Erica Grünlich’s hand.
From now on he belonged to the family. He came on children’s day, and was received civilly by the relatives of his betrothed. He must soon have seen that he did not fit in very well; but he concealed the fact under an increased assurance of manner, while the Frau Consul, Uncle Justus, and the Senator—though hardly the Broad Street Buddenbrooks—practised a tactful complaisance toward the socially awkward, hardworking official.
And tact was needed. For pauses would come at the family table, when Director Weinschenk tried to make conversation by asking if “orange marmalade” was a “pudden”; when he gave out the opinion that Romeo and Juliet was a piece by Schiller; when his manner with Erica’s cheek or arm became too roguish. He uttered his views frankly and cheerfully, rubbing his hands like a man whose mind is free from care, and leaning back sidewise against the arm of his chair. Someone always needed to fill in the pause by a sprightly or diverting remark.
He got on best with the Senator, who knew how to steer a safe course between politics and business. His relations with Gerda Buddenbrook were hopeless. This lady’s personality put him off to such a degree that he was incapable of finding anything to talk about with her for two minutes on end. The fact that she played the violin made a strong impression upon him; and he finally confined himself, on each Thursday afternoon encounter, to the jovial enquiry, “Well, how’s the fiddle?” After the third time, however, the Frau Senator refrained from reply.
Christian, on the other hand, used to look at his new relative down his nose, and the next day imitate him and his conversation with full details. The second son of the deceased Consul Buddenbrook had been relieved of his rheumatism in Öynhausen; but a certain stiffness of the joints was left, as well as the periodic misery in the left side, where all the nerves were too short, and sundry other ills to which he was heir, as difficulty in breathing and swallowing, irregularity of the heart action, and a tendency to paralysis—or at least to a fear of it. He did not look like a man at the end of the thirties. His head was entirely bald except for vestiges of reddish hair at the back of the neck and on the temples; and his small round roving eyes lay deeper than ever in their sockets. And his great bony nose and his lean, sallow cheeks were startlingly prominent above his heavy drooping red moustaches. His trousers, of
