Page:Buddenbrooks vol 1 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0001mann).pdf/127

RV 115 (BUDDENBROOKS) hear there is an affair! I hope you are going to listen to reason, child.”

One Sunday, as she sat in St. Mary’s with her parents and brothers, Pastor Kölling began preaching from the text about the wife leaving father and mother and cleaving only to her husband. His language was so violent that she began listening with a jump, staring up to see if he were looking at her. No, thank goodness, his head was turned in the other direction, and he seemed to be preaching in general to all the faithful. Still, it was plain that this was a new attack upon her,&mdash;every word struck home. A young, a still childish girl, he said, could have as yet no will and no wisdom; and if she set herself up against the loving advice of her parents she was as deserving of punishment as the guilty are; she was one of those whom the Lord spews out of his mouth. With this phrase, which the kind Pastor Kölling adored, she encountered a piercing glance from his eyes, as he made a threatening gesture with his right arm. Tony saw how her Father, sitting next to her, raised his hand, as though he would say, “Not so hard.” But it was perfectly plain that either he or her Mother had let the Pastor into the secret. Tony crouched in her place with her face like fire, and felt the eyes of all the world upon her. Next Sunday she flatly refused to go to church.

She moved dumbly about the house, she laughed no more, she lost her appetite. Sometimes she gave such heart-breaking sighs as would move a stone to pity. She was growing thinner too, and would soon lose her freshness. It would not do. At length the Consul said:

“This cannot go on, Betsy. We must not ill-use the child. She must get away a bit, to rest and be able to think quietly. You’ll see she will listen to reason then. I can’t leave, and the holidays are almost over. But there is no need for us to go. Yesterday old Schwarzkopf from Travemünde was here, and I spoke to him. He said he would be glad to take the

RV 115 (115)