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
