Page:Buddenbrooks vol 1 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0001mann).pdf/266

RV 254 (BUDDENBROOKS) “Yes, Justus, he is coming. May God watch over him on the seas! I wrote to him the next day after Jean’s death, but he hasn’t even had the letter yet, and then he will take about two months with the sailing-vessel after that. But he must come, Justus; I must see him. Tom says Jean would never have been willing for Christian to give up his position in Valparaiso; but I ask you&mdash;nearly eight years since I have seen him! And then, under the circumstances! No, I must have them all about me in this painful time&mdash;that is a natural feeling for a mother.”

“Surely, surely,” said Consul Kröger; for she had begun to eep.

“Thomas agrees with me now, too,” she went on; “for where will Christian be better off than in his own father’s business, in Tom’s business? He can stay here, work here. I have been in constant fear that the climate over there might be bad for him&mdash;”

Thomas Buddenbrook, accompanied by Herr Marcus, came into the room. Friederich Wilhelm Marcus, for years the dead Consul’s confidential clerk, was a tall man in a brown-skirted coat with a mourning band. He spoke softly, hesitatingly, stammering a little and considering each word before he uttered it. He had a habit of slowly and cautiously stroking the red-brown moustache that grew over his mouth with the extended middle and index fingers of his left hand; or he would rub his hands together and let his round brown eyes wander so aimlessly about that he gave the impression of complete confusion and absent-mindedness, though he was always most watchfully bent on the matter in hand.

Thomas Buddenbrook, now the youthful head of the great house, displayed real dignity in manner and bearing. But he was pale. His hands in particular, on one of which shone the Consul’s signet ring with the green stone, were as white as the cuffs beneath his black sleeves&mdash;a frozen whiteness which showed that they were quite dry and cold. He had extraordinarily sensitive hands, with beautifully cared-for

RV 254 (254)