Page:Buddenbrooks vol 1 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0001mann).pdf/248

RV 236 (BUDDENBROOKS) great deal. It is exactly as if there were a spot of ink in the book here. But never mind. That is my affair. I will erase it. I am still young. Don’t you think I am still quite pretty? Though Frau Stuht, when she saw me again, said to me: ‘Oh, Heavens, Mme. Grünlich, how old you’ve grown!’ Well, I certainly couldn’t remain all my life the goose I was four years ago! Life takes one along with it. Anyhow, I shall marry again. You will see, everything can he put right by a good marriage.”

“That is in God’s hand, my child. It is most unfitting to speak of such things.”

Tony began at this time to use very frequently the expression “Such is life”; and with the word “life” she would open her eyes wide with a charming serious look, indicating the deep insight she had acquired into human affairs and human destinies.

Thomas returned from Pau in August of that year. The dining-table was opened out again, and Tony had a fresh audience for her tale. She loved and looked up to her brother, who had felt for her pain in that departure from Travemünde, and she respected him as the future head of the firm and the family.

“Yes, yes,” he said; “we’ve both of us gone through things, Tony.”

The corner of his eyebrow went up, and his cigarette moved from one corner of his mouth to the other: his thoughts were probably with the little flower-girl with the Malay face, who had lately married the son of her employer and now herself carried on the shop in Fishers’ Lane.

Thomas Buddenbrook, though still a little pale, was strikingly elegant. The last few years had entirely completed his education. His hair was brushed so that it stood out in two clumps above his ears, and his moustache was trimmed in the French mode, with sharp points that were stiffened with the tongs and stuck straight out. His stocky broad-shouldered figure had an almost military air. RV 236 (236)