“Yes,” Tony said thoughtfully. She was well aware of her responsibilities toward the family and the firm, and she was proud of them. She was saturated with her family history—she, Tony Buddenbrook, who, as the daughter of Consul Buddenbrook, went about the town like a little queen, before whom Matthiesen the porter took off his hat and made a low bow! The Rostock tailor had been very well off, to begin with; but since his time, the family fortunes had advanced by leaps and bounds. It was her vocation to enhance the brilliance of family and firm in her allotted way, by making a rich and aristocratic marriage. To the same end, Tom worked in the office. Yes, the marriage was undoubtedly precisely the right one. But—but—She saw him before her, saw his gold-yellow whiskers, his rosy, smiling face, the wart on his nose, his mincing walk. She could feel his woolly suit, hear his soft voice. …
“I felt sure,” the Consul’s wife said, “that we were accessible to quiet reason. Have we perhaps already made up our mind?”
“Oh, goodness, no!” cried Tony, suddenly. She uttered the “Oh” with an outburst of irritation. “What nonsense! Why should I marry him? I have always made fun of him. I never did anything else. I can’t understand how he can possibly endure me. The man must have some sort of pride in his bones!” She began to drip honey upon a slice of bread.
III
the Buddenbrooks took no holiday during Christian’s and Clara’s vacation. The Consul said he was too busy; but it was Tony’s unsettled affair as well, that kept them lingering in Mengstrasse. A very diplomatic letter, written by the Consul himself, had been dispatched to Herr Grünlich; but the progress of the wooing was hindered by Tony’s obstinacy. She expressed herself in the most childish way. “Heaven forbid, Mamma,” she would say. “I simply can’t endure him!” with tremendous emphasis on the second syllable. Or she would explain solemnly, “Father” (Tony never otherwise said anything but “Papa”), “I can never yield him my consent.”
And at this point the matter would assuredly have stuck, had it not been for events that occurred some ten days after the talk in the breakfast-room—in other words, about the middle of .
It was afternoon—a hot blue afternoon. The Frau Consul was out, and Tony sat with a book alone at the window of the landscape-room, when Anton brought her a card. Before she had time to read the name, a young man in a bell-skirted coat and pea-green pantaloons entered the room. It was, of course, Herr Grünlich, with an expression of imploring tenderness upon his face.
Tony started up indignantly and made a movement to flee into the next room. How could one possibly talk to a man who had proposed for one’s hand? Her heart was in her throat and she had gone very pale. While he had been at a safe distance she had hugely enjoyed the solemn conferences with her Father and Mother and the suddenly enhanced importance of her own person and destiny. But now, here he was—he stood before her. What was going to happen? And again she felt that she was going to weep.
At a rapid stride, his head tipped on one side, his arms outstretched, with the air of a man who says: “Here I am, kill me if you will!” he approached. “What a providence!” he cried. “I find you here, Antonie—” (He said “Antonie”!)
Tony stood erect, her novel in her right hand. She stuck out her lips and gave her head a series of little jerks upward, relieving her irritation by stressing, in that manner, each word as she spoke it. She got out “What is the matter with you?”—But the tears were already rising. And Herr Grünlich’s own excitement was too great for him to realize the check.
“How could I wait longer? Was I not driven to return?” he said in impassioned tones. “A week ago I had your Father’s letter, which filled me with hope. I could bear it no longer. Could I thus linger on in half-certainty? I threw myself into a carriage, I hastened hither, I have taken a couple of rooms at the City of Hamburg—and here I am, Antonie, to hear from your lips the final word which will make me happier than I can express.”
Tony was stunned. Her tears retreated abashed. This, then, was the effect of her Father’s careful letter, which had indefinitely postponed the decision. Two or three times she stammered: “You are mistaken—you are mistaken.”
Herr Grünlich had drawn an armchair close to her seat in the window. He sat down, he obliged her to sit as well, and, bowing over her hand, which, limp with indecision, she resigned to him, he went on in a trembling voice: “Fräulein Antonie, since first I saw you, that afternoon—do you remember that afternoon, when I saw you, a vision of loveliness, in your own family circle?—Since then, your name has been indelibly written on my heart.” He went back, corrected himself, and said “graven”: “Since that day, Fräulein Antonie, it has been my only, my most ardent wish, to win your beautiful hand. What your Father’s letter permitted me only to hope, that I implore you to confirm to me now in all certainty. I may feel sure of your consent—I may be assured of it?” He took her other hand in his and looked deep into her wide-open, frightened eyes. He had left off his worsted gloves today, and his hands were long and white, marked with blue veins. Tony stared at his pink face, at his wart, at his eyes, which were as blue as a goose’s.
“Oh, no, no,” she broke out, rapidly, in terror. And then she added, “No, I will never yield my consent.” She took great pains to speak firmly, but she was already in tears.
“How have
