Perhaps he had the idea of giving her a tip if she professed herself on the side of the Saviour.
“Lord, Herr Pastor,” said Stina, trembling and blushing, with wide eyes. “Which one do Herr Pastor mean? T’ old un or t’ young un?” Madame Grünlich did not fail to tell the story at the table, so that even the Frau Consul burst out into her sputtering Kröger laugh. The Consul, however, looked down in displeasure at his plate.
“A misunderstanding,” said Herr Mathias, highly embarrassed.
XI
What follows happened in the late summer of , on a Sunday afternoon. The Buddenbrooks were sitting in the landscape-room waiting for the Consul, who was below dressing himself. They had arranged to take a holiday walk to a pleasure garden outside the City Gate, where, all except Clara and Clothilde, they were to drink coffee and, if the weather permitted, go for a row on the river. Clara and Clothilde went always on Sunday evenings to the house of a friend, where they knitted stockings for little negro children.
“Papa is ridiculous,” Tony said, using her habitual strong language. “Can he never be ready on time? He sits and sits and sits at his desk: something or other must be finished—good heavens, perhaps it is something really necessary, I don’t know. But I don’t believe we should actually become bankrupt if he put down his pen a quarter of an hour sooner. Well, when it is already ten minutes too late, he remembers his appointment and comes upstairs, always two steps at a time, although he knows he will get palpitation at the top. And it is like that at every company, before every expedition. Isn’t it possible for him to leave himself time enough? And stop soon enough? It’s so irresponsible of him; you ought to talk to him about it, Mamma.” She sat on the sofa beside her Mother, dressed in the changeable silk that was fashionable that summer; while the Frau Consul wore a heavy grey ribbed silk trimmed with black lace, and a cap of lace and stiffened tulle, tied under her chin with a satin bow. The lappets of her cap fell down on her breast. Her smooth hair was still inexorably reddish-blond in colour, and she held a workbag in both her white delicately veined hands. Tom was lounging in an easy-chair beside her smoking his cigarette, while Clara and Clothilde sat opposite each other at the window. It was a mystery how much good and nourishing food that poor Clothilde could absorb daily without any result whatever! She grew thinner and thinner, and her shapeless black frock did not conceal the fact. Her face was as long, straight, and expressionless as ever, her hair as smooth and ash-coloured, her nose as straight, but full of large pores and getting thick at the end.
“Don’t you think it will rain?” said Clara. The young girl had the habit of not elevating her voice at the end of a question and of looking everybody straight in the face with a pronounced and rather forbidding look. Her brown frock was relieved only by a little stiff turnover collar and cuffs. She sat straight up, her hands in her lap. The servants had more respect for her than for anyone else in the family; it was she who held the services morning and evening now, for the Consul could not read aloud without getting a feeling of oppression in the head.
“Shall you take your new Bashlik?” she asked again. “The rain will spoil it. It would be a pity. I think it would be better to put off the party.”
“No,” said Tom. “The Kistenmakers are coming. It doesn’t matter. The barometer went down so suddenly—. There will be a storm—it will pour, but not last long. Papa is not ready yet; so we can wait till it is over.”
The Frau Consul raised a protesting hand. “You think there will be a severe storm, Tom? You know I am afraid of them.”
“No,” Tom answered. “I was down at the harbour this morning talking to Captain Kloot. He is infallible. There will be a heavy rain, but no wind.”
The second week in had brought belated hot weather with it. There was a southwest wind, and the city suffered more than in . A strange-looking dark blue sky hung above the rooftops, pale on the skyline as it is in the desert. After sunset a sultry breath, like a hot blast from an oven, streamed out of the small houses and up from the pavement of the narrow streets. Today the wind had gone round to the west, and at the same time the barometer had fallen sharply. A large part of the sky was still blue, but it was slowly being overcast by heavy grey-blue clouds that looked like feather pillows.
Tom added: “It would be a good thing if it did rain, I think. We should collapse if we had to walk in this atmosphere. It is an unnatural heat. Hotter than it ever was in Pau.”
Ida Jungmann, with little Erica’s hand in hers, came into the room. The child looked a droll little figure in her stiffly starched cotton frock; she smelled of starch and soap. She had Herr Grünlich’s eyes and his rosy skin, but the upper lip was Tony’s.
The good Ida was already quite grey, almost white, although not out of the forties. It was a trait of her family: the uncle that died had had white hair at thirty. But her little brown eyes looked as shrewd and faithful as
