# Buddenbrooks/Volume 1/Part 5/Chapter 8

CHAPTER VIII
That year there was indeed a merry midsummer holiday in the Buddenbrook home. At the end of July Thomas returned to Meng Street and visited his family at the shore several times, like the other business men in the town. Christian had allotted full holidays unto himself, as he complained of an indefinite ache in his left leg. Dr. Grabow did not seem to treat it successfully, and Christian thought of it so much the more.
“It is not a pain—one can’t call it a pain,” he expatiated, rubbing his hand up and down his leg, wrinkling his big nose, and letting his eyes roam about. “It is a sort of ache, a continuous, slight, uneasy ache in the whole leg and on the left side, the side where the heart is. Strange. I find it strange—what do you think about it, Tom?”
“Well, well,” said Tom, “you can have a rest and the sea-baths.”
So Christian went down to the shore to tell stories to his fellow-guests, and the beach resounded with their laughter. Or he played roulette with Peter Döhlmann, Uncle Justus, Dr. Gieseke, and other Hamburg high-fliers.
Consul Buddenbrook went with Tony, as always when they were in Travemünde, to see the old Schwarzkopfs on the front. “Good-day, Ma’am Grünlich,” said the pilot-captain, and spoke low German out of pure good feeling.
“Well, well, what a long time ago that was! And Morten, he’s a doctor in Breslau and has all the practice in the town, the rascal.” Frau Schwarzkopf ran off and made coffee, and they supped in the green verandah as they used to—only all of them were a good ten years older, and Morten ​and little Meta were not there, she having married the magistrate of Haffkrug. And the captain, already white-haired and rather deaf, had retired from his office—and Madame Grünlich was not a goose any more! Which did not prevent her from eating a great many slices of bread and honey, for, as she said: “Honey is a pure nature product—one knows what one is getting.”
At the beginning of August the Buddenbrooks, like most of the other families, returned to town; and then came the great moment when, almost at the same time, Pastor Tiburtius from Prussia and the Arnoldsens from Holland arrived for a long visit in Meng Street.
It was a very pretty scene when the Consul led his bride for the first time into the landscape-room and took her to his mother, who received her with outstretched arms. Gerda had grown tall and splendid. She walked with a free and gracious bearing; with her heavy dark-red hair, her close-set brown eyes with the blue shadows round them, her large, gleaming teeth which showed when she smiled, her straight strong nose and nobly formed mouth, this maiden of seven-and-twenty years had a strange, aristocratic, haunting beauty. Her face was white and a little haughty, but she bowed her head as the Frau Consul with gentle feeling took it between her hands and kissed the pure, snowy forehead. “Yes, you are welcome to our house and to our family, you dear, beautiful, blessed creature,” she said. “You will make him happy. Do I not see already how happy you make him?” And she drew Thomas forward with her other arm, to kiss him also.
Never, except perhaps in Grandfather’s time, was there more gay society in the great house, which accommodated its guests with ease. Pastor Tiburtius had modestly chosen a bed-chamber in the back building next the billiard-room. But the rest divided the unoccupied space on the ground floor next the hall and in the first storey: Gerda; Herr Arnoldsen, a quick, clever man at the end of the fifties, with a pointed grey beard and a pleasant impetuosity in every mo​tion; his oldest daughter, an ailing-looking woman; and his son-in-law, an elegant man of the world, who was turned over to Christian for entertainment in the town and at the club.
Antonie was overjoyed that Sievert Tiburtius was the only parson in the house. The betrothal of her adored brother rejoiced her heart. Aside from Gerda’s being her friend, the parti was a brilliant one, gilding the family name and the firm with such new glory! And the three-hundred-thousand mark dowry and the thought of what the town and particularly the Hagenströms would say to it, put her in a state of prolonged and delightful enchantment. Three times daily, at least, she passionately embraced her future sister-in-law.
“Oh, Gerda,” she cried, “I love you—you know I always did love you. I know you can’t stand me—you used to hate me; but—”
“Why, Tony!” said Fraulein Arnoldsen. “How could I have hated you? Did you ever do anything to me?” For some reason, however—probably out of mere wantonness and love of talking—Tony asserted stoutly that Gerda had always hated her, while she on her side had always returned the hate with love. She took Thomas aside and told him: “You have done very well, Tom. Oh, heavens, how well you have done! If Father could only see this—it is just dreadful that he cannot! Yes, this wipes out a lot of things—not least the affair with that person whose name I do not even like to speak.”
Which put it into her head to take Gerda into an empty room and tell her with awful detail the story of her married life with Bendix Grünlich. Then they talked for hours about boarding-school days and the bed-time gossip; of Armgard von Schilling in Mecklenburg and Eva Ewers in Munich. Tony paid little or no attention to Sievert Tiburtius and his betrothed—which troubled them not at all. The lovers sat quietly together hand in hand, and spoke gently and earnestly of the beautiful future before them.
As the year of mourning was not quite over, the two be​trothals were celebrated only in the family. But Gerda quickly became a celebrity in the town. Her person formed the chief subject of conversation on the Bourse, at the club, at the theatre, and in society. “Tip-top,” said the gallants, and clucked their tongues, for that was the latest Hamburg slang for a superior article, whether a brand of claret, a cigar, or a “deal.” But among the solid, respectable citizens there was much head-shaking. “Something queer about her,” they said. “Her hair, her face, the way she dresses—a little too unusual.” Sorenson expressed it: “She has a certain something about her!” He made a face as if he were on the Bourse and somebody had made him a doubtful proposition. But it was all just like Consul Buddenbrook: a little pretentious, not like his forebears. Everybody knew—not least Benthien the draper—that he ordered his clothes from Hamburg: not only the fine new-fashioned materials for his suits—and he had a great many of them, cloaks, coats, waistcoats, and trousers—but his hats and cravats and linen as well. He changed his shirt every day, sometimes twice a day, and perfumed his handkerchief and his moustache, which he wore cut like Napoleon III. All this was not for the sake of the firm, of course—the house of Johann Buddenbrook did not need that sort of thing—but to gratify his own personal taste for the superfine and aristocratic—or whatever you might call it. And then the quotations from Heine and other poets which he dropped sometimes in the most practical connections, in business or civic matters! And now, his bride—well, Consul Buddenbrook himself had “a certain something” about him! All this, of course, with the greatest respect; for the family was highly esteemed, the firm very, very “good,” and the head of it an able and charming man who loved his city and would still serve her well. It was really a devilishly fine match for him; there was talk of a hundred thousand thaler down; but of course . . . Among the ladies there were some who found Gerda “silly”; which, it will be recalled, was a very severe judgment.
​But the man who gazed with furious ardour at Thomas Buddenbrook’s bride, the first time he saw her on the street, was Gosch the broker. “Ah!” he said in the club or the Ships’ Company, lifting his glass and screwing up his face absurdly, “what a woman! Hera and Aphrodite, Brunhilda and Melusine all in one! Oh, how wonderful life is!” he would add. And not one of the citizens who sat about with their beer on the hard wooden benches of the old guild-house, under the models of sailing vessels and big stuffed fish hanging down from the ceiling, had the least idea what the advent of Gerda Arnoldsen meant in the yearning life of Gosch the broker.
The little company in Meng Street, not committed, as we have seen, to large entertainments, had the more leisure for intimacy with each other. Sievert Tiburtius, with Clara’s hand in his, talked about his parents, his childhood, and his future plans. The Arnoldsens told of their people, who came from Dresden, only one branch of them having been transplanted to Holland.
Madame Grünlich asked her brother for the key of the secretary in the landscape-room, and brought out the portfolio with the family papers, in which Thomas had already entered the new events. She proudly related the Buddenbrook history, from the Rostock tailor on; and when she read out the old festival verses:
Industry and beauty chaste See we linked in marriage band: 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 un​happy 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 voilin, 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.”