Upstairs, Johann Buddenbrook sat by the sickbed, his old Netta’s limp hand in his, and stared into space with his brows knitted and his lower lip hanging. A clock hung on the wall and ticked dully, with long pauses between; not so long, however, as the pauses between the dying woman’s fluttering breaths. A black-robed sister of mercy busied herself about the beef-tea which they still sought to make the patient take. Now and then some member of the family would appear at the door and disappear again.
Perhaps the old man was thinking how he had sat at the deathbed of his first wife, forty-six years before. Perhaps he recalled his frenzy of despair and contrasted it with the gentle melancholy which he felt now, as an old man, gazing into the face of his old wife—a face so changed, so listless, so void of expression. She had never given him either a great joy or a great sorrow; but she had decorously played her part beside him for many a long year—and now her life was ebbing away.
He was not thinking a great deal. He was only looking with fixed gaze back into his own past life and at life in general. It all seemed to him now quite strange and far away, and he shook his head a little. That empty noise and bustle, in the midst of which he had once stood, had flowed away imperceptibly and left him standing there, listening in wonder to sounds that died upon his ear. “Strange, strange,” he murmured.
Madame Buddenbrook breathed her last brief, effortless sigh; and they prayed by her side in the dining-room, where the service was held; and the bearers lifted the flower-covered coffin to carry it away. But old Johann did not weep. He only gave the same gentle, bewildered head-shake, and said, with the same half-smiling look: “Strange, strange!” It became his most frequent expression. Plainly, the time for old Johann too was near at hand.
He would sit silent and absent in the family circle; sometimes with little Clara on his knee, to whom he would sing one of his droll catches, like
“The omnibus drives through the town”
or perhaps
“Look at the blue-fly a-buzzin’ on the wall.”
But he might suddenly stop in the middle, like one aroused out of a train of thought, put the child down on the floor, and move away, with his little head-shake and murmur “Strange, strange!” One day he said: “Jean—it’s about time, eh?”
It was soon afterward that neatly printed notices signed by father and son were sent about through the town, in which Johann Buddenbrook senior respectfully begged leave to announce that his increasing years obliged him to give up his former business activities, and that in consequence the firm of Johann Buddenbrook, founded by his late father anno , would as from that day be transferred, with its assets and liabilities, to his son and former partner Johann Buddenbrook as sole proprietor; for whom he solicited a continuance of the confidence so widely bestowed upon him. Signed, with deep respect, Johann Buddenbrook—who would from now on cease to append his signature to business papers.
These announcements were no sooner sent out than the old man refused to set foot in the office; and his apathy so increased that it took only the most trifling cold to send him to bed, one day two months after the death of his wife. One night more—then came the hour when the family gathered round his bed and he spoke to them: first to the Consul: “Good luck, Jean, and keep your courage up!” And then to Thomas: “Be a help to your Father, Tom!” And to Christian: “Be something worth while!” Then he was silent, gazing at them all; and finally, with a last murmured “Strange!” he turned his face to the wall. …
To the very end, he did not speak of Gotthold, and the latter encountered with silence the Consul’s written summons to his father’s deathbed. But early the next morning, before the announcements were sent out, as the Consul was about to go into the office to attend to some necessary business, Gotthold Buddenbrook, proprietor of the linen firm of Siegmund Stüwing and Company, came with rapid steps through the entry. He was forty-six years old, broad and stocky, and had thick ash-blond whiskers streaked with grey. His short legs were cased in baggy trousers of rough checked material. On the steps he met the Consul, and his eyebrows went up under the brim of his grey hat.
He did not put out his hand. “Johann,” he said, in a high-pitched, rather agreeable voice, “how is he?”
“He passed away last night,” the Consul said, with deep emotion, grasping his brother’s hand, which held an umbrella. “The best of fathers!”
Gotthold drew down his brows now, so low that the lids nearly closed. After a silence, he said pointedly: “Nothing was changed up to the end?”
The Consul let his hand drop and stepped back. His round, deep-set blue eyes flashed as he answered, “Nothing.”
Gotthold’s eyebrows went up again under his hat, and his eyes fixed themselves on his brother with an expression of suspense.
“And what have I to expect from your sense of justice?” he asked in a lower voice.
It was the Consul’s turn to look away. Then, without lifting his eyes, he made that downward gesture with his hand that always betokened decision; and in a quiet voice, but firmly, he answered:
“In this sad and solemn moment I have offered you my brotherly hand. But if it is your intention to
