Page:Buddenbrooks vol 1 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0001mann).pdf/67

RV 55 (BUDDENBROOKS) poems. Sons travelling for the firm to Stockholm or Amsterdam had written back, to the parent or partner at home, letters in which business was touchingly mingled with inquiries after wife and child. There was a separate diary of the Consul’s journey through England and Brabant; the cover had an engraving of Edinburgh Castle and the Grass-market. Lastly, there were Gotthold’s late angry letters to his father&mdash;painful documents, to offset which was the poem written by Jean Jacques Hoffstede to celebrate the house-warming.

A faint, rapid chime came from above the secretary, where there hung a dull-looking painting of an old market-square, with a church-tower that possessed a real clock of its own. It was now striking the hour, in authentic if tiny tones. The Consul closed the portfolio and stowed it away carefully in a drawer at the back of the desk. Then he went into the bed-chamber.

Here the walls and the high old bed were hung with dark flowered chintz, and there was in the air a feeling of repose, of convalescence&mdash;of calm after an anxious and painful ordeal. A mingled odour of cologne and drugs hung in the mild, dim-lighted atmosphere. The old pair bent over the cradle side by side and watched the slumbering child; and the Consul’s wife lay pale and happy, in an exquisite lace jacket, her hair carefully dressed. As she put out her hand to her husband, her gold bracelets tinkled slightly. She had a characteristic way of stretching out her hand with the palm upward, in a sweeping gesture that gave it added graciousness.

“Well, Betsy, how are you?”

“Splendid, splendid, my dear Jean.”

He still held her hand as he bent over and looked at the child, whose rapid little breaths were distinctly audible. For a moment he inhaled the tender warmth and the indescribable odour of well-being and herishing care that came up from the cradle. Then he kissed the little creature on the brow

RV 55 (55)