The two physicians were in favour of sending for a sister of charity—at least for the night. They sent for Sister Leandra, and she came. There was no trace of surprise or alarm in her face as she entered. Again she laid aside her leather bag, her outer hood and cloak, and again she set to work in her gentle way.
Little Johann sat hour after hour on the bedclothes, watching everything and listening to the gurgling noises. He was to have gone to an arithmetic lesson; but he understood perfectly that what was happening here was something over which the worsted-coats had no jurisdiction. He thought of his lessons only for a moment, and with scorn. He wept, sometimes, when Frau Permaneder came up and pressed him to her; but mostly he sat dry-eyed, with a shrinking, brooding gaze, and his breath came irregularly and cautiously, as if he expected any moment to smell that strange and yet familiar smell.
Toward Frau Permaneder took a sudden resolve. She asked Dr. Langhals to come with her into the next room; and there she folded her arms and laid back her head, with the chin dropped.
“Herr Doctor,” she said, “there is one thing you can do, and I beg you to do it. Tell me the truth. I am a woman steeled by adversity; I have learned to bear the truth. You may depend upon me. Please tell me plainly: Will my brother be alive tomorrow?”
Dr. Langhals turned his beautiful eyes aside, looked at his fingernails, and spoke of our human powerlessness, and the impossibility of knowing whether Frau Permaneder’s brother would outlive the night, or whether he would be called away the next minute.
“Then I know what I have to do,” said she; went out of the room; and sent for Pastor Pringsheim.
Pastor Pringsheim appeared, without his vestments or neck-ruff, in a long black gown. He swept Sister Leandra with an icy stare, and seated himself in the chair which they placed for him by the bedside. He asked the patient to recognize and hear him. Then, as this appeal was unsuccessful, he addressed himself at once to God and prayed in carefully modulated tones, with his Frankish pronunciation, with emphasis now solemn and now abrupt, while waves of fanaticism and sanctimony followed each other across his face. He pronounced his r in a sleek and oily way peculiar to himself alone, and little Johann received an irresistible impression that he had just been eating rolls and coffee.
He said that he and the family there present no longer importuned God for the life of this dear and beloved sufferer, for they saw plainly that it was God’s will to take him to Himself. They only begged Him for the mercy of a gentle death. And then he recited, appropriately and with effect, two of the prayers customary on such occasions. Then he got up. He pressed Gerda Buddenbrook’s hand, and Frau Permaneder’s, and held little Johann’s head for a moment between both his hands, regarding the drooping eyelashes with an expression of the most fervent pity. He saluted Ida Jungmann, stared again at Sister Leandra, and took his leave.
Dr. Langhals had gone home for a little. When he came back there had been no change. He spoke with the nurse, and went again. Dr. Grabow came once more, to see that everything was being done. Thomas Buddenbrook went on babbling and gurgling, with his eyes rolled up. Twilight was falling. There was a pale winter glow at sunset, and it shone through the window upon the soiled clothing lying across the chair.
At Frau Permaneder let herself be carried away by her feelings, and committed an indiscretion. She suddenly began to sing, in her throaty voice, her hands folded before her.
“Come, Lord,”
she sang, quite loud, and they all listened without stirring.
“Come, Lord, receive his failing breath;
Strengthen his hands and feet, and lead him unto death.”
But in the devoutness of her prayer, she thought only of the words as they welled up from her heart, and forgot that she did not know the whole stanza; after the third line she was left hanging in the air, and had to make up for her abrupt end by the increased dignity of her manner. Everybody shivered with embarrassment. Little Johann coughed so hard that the coughs sounded like sobs. And then, in the sudden pause, there was no sound but the agonizing gurgles of Thomas Buddenbrook.
It was a relief when the servant announced that there was something to eat in the next room. But they had only begun, sitting in Gerda’s bedroom, to take a little soup, when Sister Leandra appeared in the doorway and quietly beckoned.
The Senator was dying. He hiccuped gently two or three times, was silent, and ceased to move his lips. That was the only change. His eyes had been quite dead before.
Dr. Langhals, who was on the spot a few minutes later, put the black stethoscope to the heart, listened, and, after this scientific test, said “Yes, it is over.”
And Sister Leandra, with the forefinger of her gentle white hand, softly closed the eyes of the dead.
Then Frau Permaneder flung herself down on her knees by the bed, pressed her face into the coverlet, and wept aloud, surrendering herself utterly and without restraint to one of those refreshing bursts of feeling which her happy nature had always at its command. Her face still streamed with tears, but she was soothed and comforted and entirely herself as she rose to her feet and began straightway to occupy her mind with the announcements of the death—an enormous number of elegant cards, which must be ordered at once.
Christian appeared. He had heard the news of the Senator’s stroke in the club, which he had left at once. But he was so afraid of seeing some awful sight that he went instead
