“You are right, Ida. But the engagement!—and if I have to feel the whole time mortified to death before the family and the Kistenmakers and the Möllendorpfs, because they think he is common— Oh, Grünlich was much more refined, though he was certainly black within, as Herr Stengel would have said.—Oh, Ida, my head! do wet the compress again.”
“But it must be so, in the end,” she went on again, drawing a long breath as the compress went on; “for the main point is and remains that I must get married again, and not stick about here any longer as a divorced woman. Ah, Ida, I think so much about the past these days: about the time when Grünlich first appeared, and the scenes he made me—scandalous, Ida!—and then about Travemünde and the Schwarzkopfs—” She spoke slowly, and her eyes rested for a while dreamily on a darn in Erica’s stocking. “And then the betrothal, and Eimsbüttel, and our house. It was quite elegant, Ida. When I think of my morning-gowns— It would not be like that with Permaneder; one gets more modest as life goes on— And Dr. Klaasen and the baby, and Banker Kesselmeyer—and then the end. It was frightful; you can’t imagine how frightful it was. And when you have had such dreadful experiences in life— But Permaneder would never go in for anything filthy like that. That is the last thing in the world I should expect of him, and we can rely on him too in a business way, for I really think he makes a good deal with Noppe at the Niederpaur brewery. And when I am his wife, you’ll see, Ida, I will take care that he has ambition and gets ahead and makes an effort and is a credit to me and all of us. That, at least, he takes upon himself when he marries a Buddenbrook!”
She folded her hands under her head and looked at the ceiling. “Yes, ten years ago and more, I married Grünlich. Ten years! And here I am at the same place again, saying yes to somebody else. You know, Ida, life is very, very serious. Only the difference is that then it was a great affair, and they all pressed me and tormented me, whereas now they are all perfectly quiet and take it for granted that I am going to say yes. Of course you know, Ida, that this engagement to Alois—I say Alois, because of course it is to be—has nothing very gay or festive about it, and it isn’t really a question of my happiness at all. I am making this second marriage with my eyes open, to make good the mistake of my first one, as a duty which I owe our name. Mother thinks so, and so does Tom.”
“But oh, dear, Tony—if you don’t like him, and if he won’t make you happy—”
“Ida, I know life, and I am not a little goose any more. I have the use of my senses. I don’t say that Mother would actually insist on it—when there is a dispute over anything she usually avoids it and says ‘Assez!’ But Tom wants it. I know Tom. He thinks: ‘Anybody! Anybody who isn’t absolutely impossible.’ For this time it is not a question of a brilliant match, but just one that will make good the other one. That is what he thinks. As soon as Permaneder appeared, you may be sure that Tom made all the proper inquiries about his business, and found it was all right—and then, as far as he was concerned, the matter was settled. Tom is a politician—he knows what he wants. Who was it threw Christian out? That is strong language, Ida, but that was really the truth of it. And why? Because he was compromising the firm and the family. And in his eyes I do the same thing—not with words or acts, but by my very existence as a divorced woman. He wants that put an end to, and he is right. I love him none the less for that—nor, I hope, does he me. In all these years, I have always longed to be out in the world again; it is so dull here in this house. God punish me if that is a sin: but I am not much more than thirty, and I still feel young. People differ about that. You had grey hair at thirty, like all your family and that uncle that died at Marienwerder.”
More and more observations of the same kind followed as the night wore on; and every now and again she would say: “It is to be, after all.” But at length she went to sleep, and slept for five hours on end, deeply and peacefully.
CHAPTER VI
A mist lay over the town. But—or so said Herr Longuet, the livery man in John Street, as he himself drove the covered char-à-banc up to the door of the house in Meng Street: “The sun will be out before an hour is over”—which was most encouraging.
The Frau Consul, Antonie, Herr Permaneder, Erica, and Ida had breakfast together and gathered one after another, ready for the expedition, in the great entry, to wait for Gerda and Tom. Frau Grünlich, in a cream-coloured frock with a satin tie, looked her best, despite the loss of sleep the night before. Her doubts and fears seemed to be laid to rest, and her manner was assured, calm, and almost formal as she talked with their guest and fastened her glove-button. She had regained the tone of the old days. The well-known conviction of her own importance, of the weightiness of her own decisions, the consciousness that once more a day had come when she was to inscribe herself decisively in the family history—all this filled her heart and made it beat higher. She had dreamed of seeing that page in the family papers on which she would write down the fact of her betrothal—the fact that should obliterate and make void the black spot which the page contained. She looked forward to the moment when Tom would appear and she would greet him with a meaning nod.
He came with his wife, somewhat tardily, for the young Frau Consul was not used to make such an early toilette. He looked well and happy in his light-brown checked suit, the broad revers of which showed the white waistcoat beneath; and his eyes had a smile in them as he noted Tony’s incomparably dignified mien. Gerda, with her slightly exotic, even morbid beauty, which was always in great contrast to her sister-in-law’s healthy prettiness, was not in a holiday mood. Probably she had risen too early. The deep lilac background of her frock suited oddly with her dark-red hair and made her skin look whiter and more even-toned than ever, and the bluish shadows deeper and darker in the corners of her close-set brown eyes. She rather coldly offered her mother-in-law her brow to kiss, gave her hand to Herr Permaneder with an almost ironical expression on her face, and answered only by a deprecating smile when Tony clapped her hands and cried out in her hearty way: “Oh, Gerda, how lovely you always look!”