MY DEAR TONY,
Your letter duly received. As regards its contents, I must tell you that I did not fail to communicate them to Herr Grünlich: the result was of such a nature as to shock me very much. You are a grown girl, and at a serious time of life, so I need not scruple to tell you the consequences that a frivolous step of yours may draw after it. Herr Grünlich, then, burst into despair at my announcement, declaring that he loved you so dearly, and could so little console himself for your loss, that he would be in a state to take his own life if you remain firm in your resolve. As I cannot take seriously what you write me of another attachment, I must beg you to master your excitement over the ring, and consider everything again very carefully. It is my Christian conviction, my dear daughter, that one must have regard for the feelings of others. We do not know that you may not be made responsible by the most high Judge if a man whose feelings you have coldly and obstinately scorned should trespass against his own life. But the thing I have so often told you by word of mouth, I must recall again to your remembrance, and I am glad to have the occasion to repeat it in writing; for though speech is more vivid and has the more immediate effect, the written word has the advantage that it can be chosen with pains and fixed in a form well-weighed and calculated by the writer, to be read over and over again, with proportionate effect.—My child, we are not born for that which, with our short-sighted vision, we reckon to be our own small personal happiness. We are not free, separate, and independent entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way, by following the straight and narrow path, not looking to right or left. Your path, it seems to me, has lain all these weeks sharply marked out for you, and you would not be my daughter, nor the granddaughter of your Grandfather who rests in God, nor a worthy member of our own family, if you really have it in your heart, alone, wilfully, and light-headedly to choose your own unregulated path. Your Mother, Thomas, Christian, and I beg you, my dear Antonie, to weigh all this in your heart. Mlle. Jungmann and Clara greet you affectionately, likewise Clothilde, who has been the last several weeks with her father at Thankless. We all rejoice at the thought of embracing you once more.
With unfailing affection,
YOUR LOVING FATHER.
Chapter Eleven
It rained in streams. Heaven, earth, and sea were in flood, while the driving wind took the rain and flung it against the panes as though not drops but brooks were flowing down and making them impossible to see through. Complaining and despairing voices sounded in the chimney.
When Morten Schwarzkopf went out into the verandah with his pipe shortly after dinner to look at the sky, he found there a gentleman with a long, narrow yellow-checked ulster and a grey hat. A closed carriage, its top glistening with wet, its wheels clogged with mud, was before the door. Morten stared irresolutely into the rosy face of the gentleman. He had mutton-chop whiskers that looked as though they had been dressed with gold paint.
The gentleman in the ulster looked at Morten as one looks at a servant, blinking gently without seeing him, and said in a soft voice: “Is Herr Pilot-Captain Schwarzkopf at home?”
“Yes,” stammered Morten, “I think my Father—”
Hereupon the gentleman fixed his eyes upon him; they were as blue as a goose’s.
“Are you Herr Morten Schwarzkopf?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” answered Morten, trying to keep his face straight.
“Ah—indeed!” remarked the gentleman in the ulster, and went on, “Have the goodness to announce me to your Father, young man. My name is Grünlich.”
Morten led the gentleman through the verandah, opened for him the right-hand door that led into the office, and went back into the sitting-room to tell his Father. Then the youth sat down at the round table, resting his elbow on it, and seemed, without noticing his Mother, who was sitting at the dark window mending stockings, to busy himself with the “wretched news-sheet” which had nothing in it except the announcements of the silver wedding of Consul So-and-So. Tony was resting in her room.
The pilot-captain entered his office with the air of a man satisfied with his meal. His uniform-coat stood open over the usual white waistcoat. His face was red, and his ice-grey beard coldly set off against it; his tongue travelled about agreeably among his teeth, making his good mouth take the most extraordinary shapes. He bowed shortly, jerkily, with the air of one conforming to the conventions as he understood them.
“Good afternoon,” he said. “At your service.”
Herr Grünlich, on his side, bowed with deliberation, although one corner of his mouth seemed to go down. He said softly: “Ahem!”
The office was rather a small room, the walls of which had wainscoting for a few feet and then simple plaster. Curtains, yellow with smoke, hung before the window, on whose panes the rain beat unceasingly. On the right of the door was a rough table covered with papers, above it a large map of Europe, and a smaller one of the Baltic Sea fastened to the wall. From the middle of the ceiling hung the well-cut model of a ship under full sail.
The Captain made his guest take the sloping sofa, covered with cracked oil-cloth, that stood opposite the door, and made himself comfortable in a wooden arm-chair, folding his hands across his stomach; while Herr Grünlich, his ulster tightly buttoned up, his hat on his knees, sat bolt upright on the edge of the sofa.
“My name is, I repeat, Grünlich,” he said; “from Hamburg. I may say by way of introduction that I am a close business friend of Herr Buddenbrook.”
“Servant, Herr Grünlich; pleased to make your acquaintance. Won’t you make yourself comfortable? Have a glass of grog after your journey? I’ll send right into the kitchen.”
“I must permit myself to remark that my time is limited, my carriage is waiting, and I am really obliged to ask for the favour of a few words with you.”
“At your service,” repeated Herr Schwarzkopf, taken aback. There was a pause.
“Herr Captain,” began Herr Grünlich, wagging his head with determination and throwing himself back on his seat. After this he was silent again; and by way of enhancing the effect of his address he shut his mouth tight, like a purse drawn together with strings.
“Herr Captain,” he repeated, and went on without further pause, “The matter about which I have come to you directly concerns the young lady who has been for some weeks stopping in your house.”
“Mademoiselle Buddenbrook?” asked the Consul.
“Precisely,” assented Herr Grünlich. He looked down at the floor, and spoke in a voice devoid of expression. Hard lines came out at the corners of his mouth.
“I am obliged to inform you,” he went on in a sing-song tone, his sharp eyes jumping from one point in the room to another and then to the window, “that some time ago I proposed for the hand of Mademoiselle Buddenbrook. I am in possession of the fullest confidence of both parents, and the young lady herself has unmistakably given me a claim to her hand, though no betrothal has taken place in form.”
“You don’t say—God keep us!” said Herr Schwarzkopf, in a sprightly tone. “I never heard that before! Congratulations, Herr—er—Grünlich. She’s a good girl—genuine good stuff.”
“Thank you for the compliment,” said Herr Grünlich, coldly. He went on in his high sing-song: “What brings me to you on this occasion, my good Herr Captain, is the circumstance that certain difficulties have just arisen—and these difficulties—appear to have their source in your house—?” He spoke the last words in a questioning tone, as if to say, “Can this disgraceful state of things be true, or have my ears deceived me?”
Herr Schwarzkopf answered only by lifting his eyebrows as high as they would go, and clutching the arms of his chair with his brown, blond-felled fisherman’s hands.
“Yes.