and walked slowly across the echoing floor of the great entry. The cook was coming down the stairs with a tray of glasses in her hands, and he asked her, “Where’s the master, Trina?”
“In the dining-room, Herr Consul,” said she, and her face went as red as her arms, for she came from the country and was very bashful.
As he passed through the dark hall, he felt in his pocket for the letter. Then he went quickly into the dining-room, where a few small candle-ends in one of the candelabra cast a dim light over the empty table. The sour smell of the onion sauce still hung on the air.
Over by the windows Johann Buddenbrook was pacing comfortably up and down, with his hands behind his back.
10
“WELL, JOHANN, MY son, where are you going?” He stood still and put his hand out to his son – his white Buddenbrook hand, a little too short, though finely modelled. His active figure showed indistinctly against the dark red curtains, the only gleams of white being from his powdered hair and the lace frill at his throat.
“Aren’t you sleepy? I’ve been here listening to the wind; the weather is something fearful Captain Kloht is on his way from Riga. …”
“Oh, Father, with God’s help all will be well.”
“Well, do you think I can depend on that? I know you are on intimate terms with the Almighty –”
The Consul felt his courage rise at this display of good humour.
“Well, to get to the point,” he began, “I came in here not to bid you good night, but to – you won’t be angry, will you, Papa? … I didn’t want to disturb you with this letter on such a festive occasion … it came this afternoon. …”
“Monsieur Gotthold, voild!” The old man affected to be quite unmoved as he took the sealed blue paper. “Herr Johann Buddenbrook, Senior. Personal. A careful man, your step-brother, Jean! Have I answered his second letter, that came the other day? And so now he writes me a third.” The old man’s rosy face grew sterner as he opened the seal with one finger, unfolded the thin paper, and gave it a smart rap with the back of his hand as he turned about to catch the light from the candles. The very handwriting of this letter seemed to express revolt and disloyalty. All the Buddenbrooks wrote a fine, flowing hand; but these tall straight letters were full of heavy strokes, and many of the words were hastily underlined.
The Consul had drawn back a little to where the row of chairs stood against the wall; he did not sit down, as his father did not; but he grasped one of the high chair-backs nervously and watched the old man while he read, his lips moving rapidly, his brows drawn together, and his head on one side.
Father,
I am probably mistaken in entertaining any further hope of your sense of justice or any appreciation of my feelings at receiving no reply from my second pressing letter concerning the matter in question. I do not comment again on the character of the reply I received to my first one. I feel compelled to say, however, that the way in which you, by your lamentable obstinacy, are widening the rift between us, is a sin for which you will one day have to answer grievously before the judgment seat of God. It is sad enough that when I followed the dictates of my heart and married against your wishes, and further wounded your insensate pride by taking over a shop, you should have repulsed me so cruelly and remorselessly; but the way in which you now treat me cries out to Heaven, and you are utterly mistaken if you imagine that I intend to accept your silence without a struggle. The purchase price of your newly acquired house in the Mengstrasse was a hundred thousand marks; and I am aware that Johann, your business partner and your son by your second marriage, is living with you as your tenant, and after your death will become the sole proprietor of both house and business. With my step-sister in Frankfort, you have entered into agreements which are no concern of mine. But what does concern me, your eldest son, is that you carry your un-Christian spirit so far as to refuse me a penny of compensation for my share in the house. When you gave me a hundred thousand marks on my marriage and to set me up in business, and told me that a similar sum and no more should be bequeathed me by will, I said nothing, for I was not at the time sufficiently informed as to the amount of your fortune. Now I know more: and not regarding myself as disinherited in principle, I claim as my right the sum of thirty-three thousand and three hundred and thirty-three marks current, or a third of the purchase price. I make no comment on the damnable influences which are responsible for the treatment I have received. But I protest against them with my whole sense of justice as a Christian and a business man. Let me tell you for the last time that, if you cannot bring yourself to recognize the justice of my claims, I shall no longer be able to respect you as a Christian, a parent, or a man of business.
Gotthold Buddenbrook.
“You will excuse me for saying that I don’t get much pleasure out of reading that rigmarole all over again. – Voild! ” And Johann Buddenbrook tossed the letter to his son, with a contemptuous gesture. The Consul picked it up as it fluttered to his feet, and looked at his father with troubled eyes, while the old man took the long candle-snuffers from their place by the window and with angry strides crossed the room to the candelabrum in the corner.
“Assez, I say. N’en parlons plus! To bed with you – en event! ” He quenched one flame after another under the little metal cap. There were only two candles left when the elder turned again to his son, whom he could hardlly see at the far end of the room.
“Eh bien – what are you standing there for? Why don’t you say something?”
“What shall I say, Father? I am thoroughly taken aback.”
“You are pretty easily taken aback, then,” Johann Buddenbrook rapped out irritably, though he knew that the reproach was far from being a just one. His son was in fact often his superior when it came to a quick decision upon the advantageous course.
“‘Damnable influences,’” the Consul quoted. “That is the first line I can make out. Do you know how it makes me feel, Father? And he reproaches us with ‘unchristian behaviour!’”
“You’ll let yourself be bluffed by this miserable scribble, will you?” Johann Buddenbrook strode across to his son, dragging the extinguisher on its long stick behind him. “‘Unchristian behaviour!’ Ha! He shows good taste, doesn’t he, this canting money-grabber? I don’t know what to make of you young people! Your heads are full of fantastic religious humbug – practical idealism, the July Monarchy, and what not: and we old folk are supposed to be wretched cynics. And then you abuse your poor old Father in the coarsest way rather than give up a few thousand thaler.… So he deigns to look down upon me as a business man, does he? Well, as a business man, I know what faux-frais are! – Faux-frais,” he repeated, rolling the r in his throat. “I shan’t make this high-falutin scamp of a son any fonder of me by giving him what he asks for, it seems to me.”
“What can I say, Father? I don’t care to feel that he has any justification when he talks of ‘influences.’ As an interested party I don’t like to tell you to stick out, but – It seems to me I’m as good a Christian as Gotthold … but still …”
“‘Still’ – that is exactly it, Jean, you are right to say ‘still.’ What is the real state of the case? He got infatuated with his Mademoiselle Stüwing and wouldn’t listen to reason; he made scene after scene, and finally he married her, after I had absolutely refused to give my consent. Then I wrote to him: ‘Mon très cber fils: you are marrying your shop – very well, that’s an end of it. We cease to be on friendly terms from now on. I won’t
