“And I will forgive you for making a proposal which is the product of your naïveté and the Maibooms’ helplessness.”
“Helplessness? Naïveté, Thomas? I don’t understand you—I am very far from understanding you. You are offered an opportunity to do a good deed, and at the same time the best stroke of business you ever did in your life—”
“Oh, my darling child, you are talking the sheerest nonsense,” cried the Senator, throwing himself back impatiently in his chair. “I beg your pardon, but you make me angry with your ridiculous innocence. Can’t you understand that you are asking me to do something discreditable, to engage in underhand manœuvres? Why should I go fishing in troubled waters? Why should I fleece this poor land-owner? Why should I take advantage of his necessity to do him out of a year’s harvest at a usurious profit to myself?”
“Oh, is that the way you look at it!” said Frau Permaneder, quite taken aback and thoughtful. But she recovered in a moment and went on: “But it is not at all necessary to look at it like that, Tom. How are you forcing him, when it is he who comes to you? He needs the money, and would like the matter arranged in a friendly way, and under the rose. That is why he traced out the connection between us, and invited me to visit.”
“In short, he has made a mistake in his calculations about me and the character of my firm. I have my own traditions. We have been in business a hundred years without touching that sort of transaction, and I have no idea of beginning at this late day.”
“Certainly, Tom, you have your traditions, and nobody respects them more than I do. And I know Father would not have done it—God forbid! Who says he would? But, silly as I am, I know enough to know that you are quite a different sort of man from Father, and since you took over the business it has been different from what it was before. That is because you were young and had enterprise and brains. But lately I am afraid you have let yourself get discouraged by this or that piece of bad luck. And if you are no longer having the same success you once did, it is because you have been too cautious and conscientious, and let slip your chances for good coups when you had them—”
“Oh, my dear child, stop, please; you irritate me!” said the Senator sharply, and turned away. “Let us change the subject.”
“Yes, you are vexed, Tom, I can see it. You were from the beginning, and I have kept on, on purpose, to show you you are wrong to feel yourself insulted. But I know the real reason why you are vexed: it is because you are not so firmly decided not to touch the business. I know I am silly; but I have noticed about myself—and about other people too—that we are most likely to get angry and excited in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position, and are inwardly tempted to take the other side.”
“Very fine,” said the Senator, bit his cigarette-holder, and was silent.
“Fine? No, it’s very simple—one of the simplest things life has taught me. But let it go, Tom. I won’t urge you. Don’t imagine that I think I could persuade you—I know I don’t know enough. I’m only a silly female. It’s a pity. Well, never mind.—It interested me very much. On the one hand I was shocked and upset about the Maibooms, but on the other I was pleased for you. I said to myself: ‘Tom has been going about lately feeling very down in the mouth. He used to complain, but now he does not even complain any more. He has been losing money, and times are poor—and all that just now, when God has been good to me, and I am feeling happier than I have for a long time.’ So I thought, ‘This would be something for him: a stroke of luck, a good coup. It would offset a good deal of misfortune, and show people that luck is still on the side of the firm of Johann Buddenbrook.’ And if you had undertaken it, I should have been so proud to have been the means—for you know it has always been my dream and my one desire, to be of some good to the family name.—Well, never mind. It is settled now. What I feel vexed about is that Maiboom has to sell, in any case, and if he looks around in the town here, he will find a purchaser—and it will be that rascal Hermann Hagenström!”