“Oh, so you just sat still, did you?” cried the Consul, beside himself. His self-control was gone now. “You let the wagon stick in the mud and went off to enjoy yourself! You think I don’t know the kind of life you’ve been living—theatres and circus and clubs—and women—”
“You mean Aline. Yes, Thomas, you have very little understanding for that sort of thing, and it’s my misfortune, perhaps, that I have so much. You are right when you say it has cost me too much; and it will cost me a goodish bit more, for—I’ll tell you something, just here between two brothers—the third child, the little girl, six months old, she is my child.”
“You fool, you!”
“Don’t say that, Thomas. You should be just, even if you are angry, to her and to—why shouldn’t it be my child? And as for Aline, she isn’t in the least worthless, and you ought not to say she is. She is not at all promiscuous; she broke with Consul Holm on my account, and he has much more money than I have. That’s how decent she is. No, Thomas, you simply can’t understand what a splendid creature she is—and healthy—she is as healthy—!” He repeated the word, and held up one hand before his face with the fingers crooked, in the same gesture as when he used to tell about “Maria” and the depravity of London. “You should see her teeth when she laughs. I’ve never found any other teeth to compare with them, not in Valparaiso, or London, or anywhere else in the world. I’ll never forget the evening I first met her, in the oyster-room, at Uhlich’s. She was living with Consul Holm then. Well, I told her a story or so, and was a bit friendly; and when I went home with her afterwards—well, Thomas, that’s a different sort of feeling from the one you have when you do a good stroke of business! But you don’t like to hear about such things—I can see that already—and anyhow, it’s over with. I’m saying good-bye to her, though I shall keep in touch with her on account of the child. I’ll pay up everything I owe in Hamburg, and shut up shop. I can’t go on. I’ve talked with Mother, and she is willing to give me the five thousand thaler to start with, so I can put things in order; and I hope you will agree to it, for it is much better to say quite simply that Christian Buddenbrook is winding up his business and going abroad, than for me to make a failure. You think so too, don’t you? I intend to go to London again, Thomas, and take a position. It isn’t good for me to be independent—I can see that more and more. The responsibility—whereas in a situation one just goes home quite care-free, at the end of the day. And I liked living in London. Do you object?”
During this exposition, the Consul had turned his back on his brother, and stood with his hands in his pockets, describing figures on the floor with his foot.
“Very good, go to London,” he said, shortly, and without turning more than half-way toward his brother, he passed into the living-room.
But Christian followed him. He went up to Gerda, who sat there alone, reading, and put out his hand.
“Good night, Gerda. Well, Gerda, I’m off for London. Yes, it’s remarkable how one gets tossed about hither and yon. Now it’s again into the unknown, into a great city, you know, where one meets an adventure at every third step, and sees so much of life. Strange—do you know the feeling? One gets it here—sort of in the pit of the stomach—it’s very odd.”
CHAPTER III
James Möllendorpf, the oldest of the merchant senators, died in a grotesque and horrible way. The instinct of self-preservation became very weak in this diabetic old man; and in the last years of his life he fell a victim to a passion for cakes and pastries. Dr. Grabow, as the Möllendorpf family physician, had protested energetically, and the distressed relatives employed gentle constraint to keep the head of the family from committing suicide with sweet bake-stuffs. But the old Senator, mental wreck as he was, rented a room somewhere, in some convenient street, like Little Groping Alley, or Angelswick, or Behind-the-Wall—a little hole of a room, whither he would secretly betake himself to consume sweets. And there they found his lifeless body, the mouth still full of half-masticated cake, the crumbs upon his coat and upon the wretched table. A mortal stroke had supervened, and put a stop to slow dissolution.