“Yes, yes,” Tony said. She had given her brother the closest attention. It was nearly dark, and she had not thought of lighting the lamps.
The corridor door opened, and there stood before them in the twilight, in a pleated piqué house-frock, white as snow, a slender figure. The heavy dark-red hair framed her white face, and blue shadows lay about her close-set brown eyes. It was Gerda, mother of future Buddenbrooks.
Part VI
I
Thomas Buddenbrook took a solitary early breakfast in his pretty dining-room. His wife usually left her room late, as she was subject to headaches and vapours in the morning. The Consul went at once to Meng Street, where the offices still were, took his second breakfast with his mother, Christian and Ida Jungmann in the entresol, and met Gerda only at dinner, at four in the afternoon.
The ground floor of the old house still preserved the life and movement of a great business; but the upper storeys were empty and lonely. Little Erica had been received as a boarder by Mademoiselle Weichbrodt, and poor Clothilde had moved with her few sticks of furniture into a cheap pension with the widow of a high-school teacher, a Frau Dr. Krauseminz. Even Anton had left the house, and gone over to the young pair, where he was more needed. When Christian was at the club, the Frau Consul and Ida Jungmann sat at four o’clock dinner alone at the round table, in which there was now not a single extra leaf. It looked quite lost in the great spaces of the dining-temple with its images of the gods.
The social life of Meng Street had been extinguished with the death of Consul Johann Buddenbrook. Except for the visits of this or that man of God, the Frau Consul saw no guests but the members of her family, who still came on Thursday afternoons. But the first great dinner had already been given by the young pair in Broad Street. Tables were laid in both dining- and living-room, and there were a hired cook and waiters and Kistenmaker wines. It began at five o’clock, and its sounds and smells were still in the air at eleven. All the business and professional men were present, married pairs and bachelors as well: all the tribe of Langhals, Hagenströms, Huneus’, Kistenmakers, Överdiecks, and Möllendorpfs. It finished off with whist and music. They talked about it in glowing terms on the Bourse for a whole week. The young Frau Consul certainly knew how to entertain! When she and the Consul were alone, in the room lighted by burned-down candles, with the furniture disarranged and the air thick with heavy odours of rich food, wine, cigars, coffee, perfume, and the scent of the flowers from the ladies’ toilettes and the table decorations, he pressed her hand and said: “Very good, Gerda. We do not need to be ashamed. This sort of thing is necessary. I have no great fondness for balls, and having the young people jumping about here; and, besides, there is not room. But we must entertain the settled people. A dinner like that costs a bit more—but it is well spent.”
“You are right,” she had answered, and arranged the laces through which her bosom shimmered like marble. “I much prefer the dinners to the balls myself. A dinner is so soothing. I had been playing this afternoon, and felt a little queer. My brain feels quite dead now. If I were to be struck by lightning I should not change colour.”
Next morning at half-past eleven the Consul sat down beside his Mother at the breakfast-table, and she read a letter aloud to him:
Munich,
Marienplatz 5My dear Mother,
I must beg your pardon—it is a shame that I have not written before in the eight days I have been here. My time has been so taken up with all the things there are to see—I’ll tell you about them afterwards. Now I must ask if all the dear ones, you and Tom and Gerda and Erica and Christian and Tilda and Ida, are well—that is the most important thing.
Ah, what all I have seen in these days!—the Pinakothek and the Glyptothek and the Hofbräuhaus and the Court Theatre and the churches, and quantities of other things! I must tell you of them when I see you; otherwise I should kill myself writing. We have also had a drive in the Isar valley, and for tomorrow an excursion to the Wurmsee is arranged. So it goes on. Eva is very sweet to me, and her husband, Herr Niederpaur, the brewery superintendent, is an agreeable man. We live in a very pretty square in the town, with a fountain in the middle, like ours at home in the market place, and the house is quite near the Town Hall. I have never seen such a house. It is painted from top to bottom, in all colours—St. Georges killing dragons, and old Bavarian princes in full robes and arms. Imagine!
Yes, I like Munich extremely. The air is very strengthening to the nerves, and for the moment I am quite in order with my stomach trouble. I enjoy drinking the beer—I drink a good deal, the more so as the water is not very good. But I cannot quite get used to the food. There are too few vegetables and too
