I must close this letter, dear Mother; considering that in a few days, we shall be talking over my good fortune together, it is already too long. I wish you a pleasant and beneficial stay at the baths, and beg you to greet all the family most heartily for me. Your loving and obedient son,
VIII
That year there was indeed a merry midsummer holiday in the Buddenbrook home. At the end of Thomas returned to Meng Street and visited his family at the shore several times, like the other business men in the town. Christian had allotted full holidays unto himself, as he complained of an indefinite ache in his left leg. Dr. Grabow did not seem to treat it successfully, and Christian thought of it so much the more.
“It is not a pain—one can’t call it a pain,” he expatiated, rubbing his hand up and down his leg, wrinkling his big nose, and letting his eyes roam about. “It is a sort of ache, a continuous, slight, uneasy ache in the whole leg and on the left side, the side where the heart is. Strange. I find it strange—what do you think about it, Tom?”
“Well, well,” said Tom, “you can have a rest and the sea-baths.”
So Christian went down to the shore to tell stories to his fellow-guests, and the beach resounded with their laughter. Or he played roulette with Peter Döhlmann, Uncle Justus, Dr. Gieseke, and other Hamburg highfliers.
Consul Buddenbrook went with Tony, as always when they were in Travemünde, to see the old Schwarzkopfs on the front. “Good day, Ma’am Grünlich,” said the pilot-captain, and spoke low German out of pure good feeling.
“Well, well, what a long time ago that was! And Morten, he’s a doctor in Breslau and has all the practice in the town, the rascal.” Frau Schwarzkopf ran off and made coffee, and they supped in the green verandah as they used to—only all of them were a good ten years older, and Morten and little Meta were not there, she having married the magistrate of Haffkrug. And the captain, already white-haired and rather deaf, had retired from his office—and Madame Grünlich was not a goose any more! Which did not prevent her from eating a great many slices of bread and honey, for, as she said: “Honey is a pure nature product—one knows what one is getting.”
At the beginning of the Buddenbrooks, like most of the other families, returned to town; and then came the great moment when, almost at the same time, Pastor Tiburtius from Prussia and the Arnoldsens from Holland arrived for a long visit in Meng Street.
It was a very pretty scene when the Consul led his bride for the first time into the landscape-room and took her to his mother, who received her with outstretched arms. Gerda had grown tall and splendid. She walked with a free and gracious bearing; with her heavy dark-red hair, her close-set brown eyes with the blue shadows round them, her large, gleaming teeth which showed when she smiled, her straight strong nose and nobly formed mouth, this maiden of seven-and-twenty years had a strange, aristocratic, haunting beauty. Her face was white and a little haughty, but she bowed her head as the Frau Consul with gentle feeling took it between her hands and kissed the pure, snowy forehead. “Yes, you are welcome to our house and to our family, you dear, beautiful, blessed creature,” she said. “You will make him happy. Do I not see already how happy you make him?” And she drew Thomas forward with her other arm, to kiss him also.
Never, except perhaps in Grandfather’s time, was there more gay society in the great house, which accommodated its guests with ease. Pastor Tiburtius had modestly chosen a bedchamber in the back building next the billiard-room. But the rest divided the unoccupied space on the ground floor next the hall and in the first storey: Gerda; Herr Arnoldsen, a quick, clever man at the end of the fifties, with a pointed grey beard and a pleasant impetuosity in every motion; his oldest daughter, an ailing-looking woman; and his son-in-law, an elegant man of the world, who was turned over to Christian for entertainment in the town and at the club.
Antonie was overjoyed that Sievert Tiburtius was the only parson in the house. The betrothal of her adored brother rejoiced her heart. Aside from Gerda’s being her friend, the parti was a brilliant one, gilding the family name and the firm with such new glory! And the three-hundred-thousand mark dowry and the thought of what the town and particularly the Hagenströms would say to it, put her in a state of prolonged and delightful enchantment. Three times daily, at least, she passionately embraced her future sister-in-law.
“Oh, Gerda,” she cried, “I love you—you know I always did love you. I know you can’t stand me—you used to hate me; but—”
“Why, Tony!” said Fräulein Arnoldsen. “How could I have hated you? Did you ever do anything to me?” For some reason, however—probably out of mere wantonness and love of talking—Tony asserted stoutly that Gerda had always hated her, while she on her side had always returned the hate with love. She took Thomas aside and told him: “You have done very well, Tom. Oh, heavens, how well you have done! If Father could only see this—it is just dreadful that he cannot! Yes, this wipes out a lot of things—not least the affair with that person whose name I do not even like to speak.”
Which put it into her head to take Gerda into an empty room and tell her with awful
