“Certainly, Mother, with the greatest of pleasure. To tell the truth, I promise myself much pleasure from this guest, don’t you? He is something different from your ministers, in any case.”
“Everybody to his taste, Tom.”
“Of course. I must go now.—Oh, Tony,” he said, the door-handle in his hand, “you have made a great impression on him. No, no joke. Do you know what he called you down there just now? A great girl! Those were his very words.”
But here Frau Grünlich turned around and said clearly: “Very good, Tom. You are repeating his words—and I don’t know that he would mind; but even so I am not sure it was just the nicest thing to do. But this much I do know: and this much I am going to say: that in this life it does not depend on how things are said and expressed, but on how they are felt and meant in the heart; and if you make fun of Herr Permaneder’s language and find him ridiculous—”
“Who? Why? Tony, what an idea! Why are you getting excited—?”
“Assez,” said the Frau Consul, casting an imploring glance at her son. It meant “Spare her!”
“Please don’t be angry, Tony,” he said. “I didn’t mean to provoke you. And now I will go and see that somebody from the warehouse brings Herr Permaneder’s trunk. Au revoir.”
V
Herr Permaneder moved into Meng Street; he ate dinner with Thomas Buddenbrook and his wife the following day; and on the third, a Thursday, he made the acquaintance of Justus Kröger and his wife, the three ladies from Broad Street, who found him “frightfully funny” (they said fr‑right‑fully), Sesemi Weichbrodt, who was rather stern with him, and poor Clothilde and little Erica, to whom he gave a bag of bonbons.
The man was invincibly good-humoured. His sighs, in fact, meant nothing, and seemed to arise out of an excess of comfort. He smoked his pipe, talked in his curious dialect, and displayed an inexhaustible power of sitting still. He kept his place long after the meal was finished, in the most easy attitude possible, and smoked, drank, and chatted. His presence gave to the life in the old home a new and strange tone; his very being brought something unharmonious into the room. But he disturbed none of the traditional customs of the house. He was faithful to morning and evening prayers, asked permission to attend one of the Frau Consul’s Sunday School classes, and even appeared on a Jerusalem evening in the drawing-room and was presented to the guests, but withdrew affrighted when Lea Gerhardt began to read aloud.
He was soon known in the town. They spoke in the great houses about the Buddenbrooks’ guest from Bavaria; but neither in the family nor on the Bourse did he make connections, and as it was already the time when people were making ready to go to the shore, the Consul refrained from introducing Herr Permaneder into society. But he devoted himself with zeal to the guest, taking time from his business and civic engagements to show him about the town and point out the medieval monuments—churches, gates, fountains, market, Town Hall, and Ship Company. He made him acquainted with his own nearest friends on Exchange and entertained him in every way. His mother took occasion one day to thank him for his self-sacrifice; but he only remarked drily: “Why, ye‑es, Mother—what wouldn’t one do?”
The Frau Consul left this unanswered. She did not even smile or move her eyelids, but shifted the gaze of her light eyes and changed the subject.
She preserved an even, hearty friendliness toward Herr Permaneder—which could hardly be said of her daughter. On the third or fourth day after his arrival the hop dealer let it be known that he had concluded his business with the local brewery. But a week and a half had passed since then, and he had been present for two children’s afternoons. On these occasions, Frau Grünlich had sat blushing and watching his every motion, casting quick embarrassed glances at Thomas and the three Buddenbrook cousins. She talked hardly at all, sat for long minutes stiff and speechless, or even got up and left the room.
The green blinds in Frau Grünlich’s sleeping-room were gently stirred by the mild air of a June night, for the windows were open. It was a large room, with simple furniture covered in grey linen. On the night-table at the side of the high bed several little wicks burned in a glass with oil and water in it, filling the room with faint, even light. Frau Grünlich was in bed. Her pretty head was sunk softly in the lace-edged pillow, and her hands lay folded on the quilted coverlet. But her eyes, too thoughtful to close themselves, slowly followed the movements of a large insect with a long body, which perpetually besieged the glass with a million soundless motions of his wings. Near the bed there was a framed text hanging on the wall, between two old copperplate views of the town in the Middle Ages. It said: “Commit your ways unto the Lord.” But what good is a text like that when you are lying awake at midnight, and you have to decide for your whole life, and other people’s too, whether it shall be yes or no?
It was very still. The clock ticked away on the wall, and the only other sound was Mamsell Jungmann’s occasional cough. Her room was next to Tony’s, divided only by curtains from it. She still had a light. The born-and-bred Prussian was sitting under the hanging lamp at her extension-table, darning stockings for little Erica. The child’s deep, peaceful breathing could be heard in the room, for Sesemi’s pupils were having summer holidays and Erica was at home again.
Frau Grünlich sighed and sat up a little, propping her head on her hand. “Ida,” she called softly, “are you still sitting there mending?”
“Yes, yes, Tony, my child,” Ida answered.
