Venus Anadyomene,
And cunning Vulcan’s busy hand
she looked at Tom and Gerda and let her tongue play over her lips. Regard for historical veracity also caused her to narrate events connected with a certain person whose name she did not like to mention!
On Thursday at four o’clock the usual guests came. Uncle Justus brought his feeble wife, with whom he lived an unhappy existence. The wretched mother continued to scrape together money out of the housekeeping to send to the degenerate and disinherited Jacob in America, while she and her husband subsisted on almost nothing but porridge. The Buddenbrook ladies from Broad Street also came; and their love of truth compelled them to say, as usual, that Erica Grünlich was not growing well and that she looked more than ever like her wretched father. Also that the Consul’s bride wore a rather conspicuous coiffure. And Sesemi Weichbrodt came too, and standing on her tip-toes, kissed Gerda with her little explosive kiss on the forehead and said with emotion: “Be happy, my dear child.”
At table Herr Arnoldsen gave one of his witty and fanciful toasts in honour of the two bridal pairs. While the rest drank their coffee he played the violin, like a gipsy, passionately, with abandonment—and with what dexterity!... Gerda fetched her Stradivarius and accompanied him in his passages with her sweet cantilena. They performed magnificent duets at the little organ in the landscape-room, where once the Consul’s grandfather had played his simple melodies on the flute.
“Sublime!” said Tony, lolling back in her easy-chair. “Oh, heavens, how sublime that is!” And she rolled up her eyes to the ceiling to express her emotions. “You know how it is in life,” she went on, weightily. “Not everybody is given such a gift. Heaven has unfortunately denied it to me, though I used to pray for it at night. I am a goose, a silly creature. You know, Gerda—I am the elder and have learned to know life—let me tell you, you ought to thank your Creator every day on your knees, for being such a gifted creature!”
“Oh, please,” said Gerda, with a laugh, showing her beautiful large white teeth.
Later they all ate wine jelly and discussed their plans for the near future. At the end of that month or the beginning of September, it was decided, Sievert Tiburtius and the Arnoldsens would go home. Then, directly after Christmas, Clara’s wedding would be celebrated with due solemnity in the great hall. The Frau Consul, health permitting, would attend Tom’s wedding in Amsterdam. But it must be put off until the beginning of the next year, that there might be a little pause for rest between. It was no use for Thomas to protest. “Please,” said the Frau Consul, and laid her hand on his sleeve. “Sievert should have the precedence, I think.”
The Pastor and his bride had decided against a wedding journey. Gerda and Thomas, however, were to take a trip to northern Italy, as far as Florence, and be gone about two months. In the meantime Tony, with the help of the upholsterer Jacobs in Fish Street, was to make ready the charming little house in Broad Street, the property of a bachelor who had moved to Hamburg. The Consul was already arranging for its purchase. Oh, Tony would furnish it to the Queen’s taste. “It will be perfect,” she said. They were all sure it would.
Christian looked on while the two bridal pairs held hands, and listened to the talk about weddings and trousseaux and bridal journeys. His nose looked bigger and his legs more crooked than ever. He felt an indefinite sort of pain in the left one, and stared solemnly at them all out of his little round deep-set eyes. Finally, in the accents of Marcellus Stengel, he said to his cousin Clothilde, who sat elderly, dried-up, silent, and hungry, at table among the happy throng: “Well, Tilda, let’s us get married too—I mean, of course each one for himself.”