The office and title of the Royal Consulate of the Netherlands, which Thomas Buddenbrook might have taken after his father’s death, went back to him now, to the boundless satisfaction of Tony Grünlich; and the curving shield with the lions, the arms, and the crown was once more to be seen on the gabled front of the house in Meng Street, under the “Dominus providebit.”
Soon after this was accomplished, in , the young Consul set out to Amsterdam on a business journey the duration of which he did not know.
V
Deaths in the family usually induce a religious mood. It was not surprising, after the decease of the Consul, to hear from the mouth of his widow expressions which she had not been accustomed to use.
But it was soon apparent that this was no passing phase. Even in the last years of the Consul’s life, his wife had more and more sympathized with his spiritual cravings; and it now became plain that she was determined to honour the memory of her dead by adopting as her own all his pious conceptions.
She strove to fill the great house with the spirit of the deceased—that mild and Christlike spirit which yet had not excluded a certain dignified and hearty good cheer. The morning and evening prayers were continued and lengthened. The family gathered in the dining-room, and the servants in the hall, to hear the Frau Consul or Clara read a chapter out of the great family Bible with the big letters. They also sang a few verses out of the hymnbook, accompanied by the Frau Consul on the little organ. Or, often, in place of the chapter from the Bible, they had a reading from one of those edifying or devotional books with the black binding and gilt edges—those Little Treasuries, Jewel-Caskets, Holy Hours, Morning Chimes, Pilgrims’ Staffs, and the like, whose common trait was a sickly and languishing tenderness for the little Jesus, and of which there were all too many in the house.
Christian did not often appear at these devotions. Thomas once chose a favourable moment to disparage the practice, half-jestingly; but his objection met with a gentle rebuff. As for Madame Grünlich, she did not, unfortunately, always conduct herself correctly at the exercises. One morning when there was a strange clergyman stopping with the Buddenbrooks, they were invited to sing to a solemn and devout melody the following words:—
I am a reprobate,
A warped and hardened sinner;
I gobble evil down
Just like the joint for dinner.
Lord, fling thy cur a bone
Of righteousness to chew
And take my carcass home
To Heaven and to you.
Whereat Frau Grünlich threw down her book and left the room, bursting with suppressed giggles.
But the Frau Consul made more demands upon herself than upon her children. She instituted a Sunday School, and on Sunday afternoon only little board-school pupils rang at the door of the house in Meng Street. Stine Voss, who lived by the city wall, and Mike Stuht from Bell-Founders’ Street, and Fike Snut from the riverbank or Groping Alley, their straw-coloured locks smoothed back with a wet comb, crossed the entry into the garden-room, which for a long time now had not been used as an office, and in which rows of benches had been arranged and Frau Consul Buddenbrook, born Kröger, in a gown of heavy black satin, with her white refined face and still whiter lace cap, sat opposite to them at a little table with a glass of sugar-water and catechized them for an hour.
Also, she founded the “Jerusalem evenings,” which not only Clara and Clothilde but also Tony were obliged to attend, willy-nilly. Once a week they sat at the extension-table in the dining-room by the light of lamps and candles. Some twenty ladies, all of an age when it is profitable to begin to look after a good place in heaven, drank tea or bishop, ate delicate sandwiches and puddings, read hymns and sermons aloud to each other, and did embroidery, which at the end of the year was sold at a bazaar and the proceeds sent to the mission in Jerusalem.
This pious society was formed in the main from ladies of the Frau Consul’s own social rank: Frau Senator Langhals, Frau Consul Möllendorpf, and old Frau Consul Kistenmaker belonged; but other, more worldly and profane old ladies, like Mme. Köppen, made fun of their friend Betsy. The wives of the clergymen of the town were all members, likewise the widowed Frau Consul Buddenbrook, born Stüwing, and Sesemi Weichbrodt and her simple sister. There is, however, no rank and no discrimination before Jesus; and so certain humble oddities were also guests at the Jerusalem evenings—for example, a little wrinkled creature, rich in the grace of God and knitting-patterns, who lived in the Holy Ghost Hospital and was named Himmelsburger. She was the last of her name—“the last Himmelsburger,” she called herself humbly, and ran her knitting-needle under her cap to scratch her head.
But far more remarkable were two other extraordinary old creatures, twins, who went about hand in hand through the town doing good deeds, in shepherdess hats out of the eighteenth century and faded clothes out of the long, long ago. They were named Gerhardt, and asserted that they descended in a direct line from Paul Gerhardt. People said they were by no means poor; but they lived wretchedly and gave away all they had. “My dears,” remarked the Frau Consul, who was sometimes rather ashamed of them, “God sees the heart, I know; but your clothes are really a little—one must take some thought for oneself.” But she could not prevent them kissing their elegant friend on the brow with the forebearing, yearning, pitying superiority of the poor in heart over the worldly great who seek salvation. They were not at all stupid. In their homely shrivelled heads—for all the world like ancient parrots—; they had bright soft brown eyes
