“What is the matter with you, Thomas?” said Christian. He was seized with unaccustomed anger, standing there in a position common to bowlegged people, like a questionmark, with head, stomach, and knees all prominent. His little deep eyes were wide open and surrounded by red rims down to the cheekbones, as his Father’s used to be in anger. “How are you speaking to me? What have I done to you? I’ll go, without being thrown out. Shame on you!” he added with downright reproach, accompanying the word with a short, snapping motion in front of him, as if he were catching a fly.
Strange to say, Thomas did not meet this outburst by more anger. He bent his head and slowly took his way around the garden. It seemed to quiet him, actually to do him good to have made his brother angry at last—to have pushed him finally to the energy of a protest.
“Believe me,” he said quietly, putting his hands behind his back again, “this conversation is truly painful to me. But it had to take place. Such scenes in the family are frightful, but we must speak out once for all. Let us talk the thing over quietly, young one. You do not like your present position, it seems?”
“No, Tom; you are right about that. You see, at first I was very well satisfied. I know I’m better off here than in a stranger’s business. But what I want is the independence, I think. I have always envied you when I saw you sit there and work, for it is really no work at all for you. You work not because you must, but as master and head, and let others work for you, and you have the control, make your calculations, and are free. It is quite different.”
“Good, Christian. Why couldn’t you have said that before? You can make yourself free, or freer, if you like. You know Father left you as well as me an immediate inheritance of fifty thousand marks current; and I am ready at any moment to pay out this sum for a reasonable and sound purpose. In Hamburg, or anywhere else you like, there are plenty of safe but limited firms where they could use an increase of capital, and where you could enter as a partner. Let us think the matter over quietly, each by himself, and also speak to Mother at a good opportunity. I must get to work, and you could for the present go on with the English correspondence.” As they crossed the entry, he added, “What do you say, for instance, to H. C. F. Burmeester and Company in Hamburg? Import and export. I know the man. I am certain he would snap at it.”
That was in the end of . At the beginning of Christian travelled via Buchen to Hamburg—a heavy loss to the club, the theatre, the Tivoli, and the liberal livers of the town. All the “good fellows,” among them Dr. Gieseke and Peter Döhlmann, took leave of him at the station, and brought him flowers and cigars, and laughed to split their sides—recalling, no doubt, all the stories Christian had told them. And Lawyer Gieseke, amidst general applause, fastened to Christian’s overcoat a great favour made out of gold paper. This favour came from a sort of inn in the neighbourhood of the port, a place of free and easy resort where a red lantern burned above the door at night, and it was always very lively. The favour was awarded to the departing Chris Buddenbrook for his distinguished services.
IV
The outer bell rang, and Frau Grünlich appeared on the landing to look down into the court—a habit she had lately formed. The door was hardly opened below when she started, leaned over still more, and then sprang back with one hand pressing her handkerchief to her mouth and the other holding up her gown. She hurried upstairs.
On the steps to the second storey she met Ida Jungmann, to whom she whispered in a suffocated voice. Ida gave a joyous shriek and answered with some Polish gibberish.
The Frau Consul was sitting in the landscape-room, crocheting a shawl or some such article with two large wooden needles. It was eleven o’clock in the morning.
The servant came through the hall, knocked on the glass door, and waddled in to bring the Frau Consul a visiting-card. She took the card, got out her sewing-glasses, and read it. Then she looked again at the girl’s red face; then read again; then looked up again at the girl. Finally she said calmly but firmly:
“What is this, my dear? What does it mean?”
On the card was printed: “X. Noppe and Company.” The “X.
