Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/114

RV 104 (BUDDENBROOKS) ment of his body less; his half-shut eyes clouded over with a weary, broken expression, and he turned around, slowly nodding his head, opened the door into the dining-room, and went in. With bent head he crossed the wide polished floor and sat down on one of the dark red sofas by the window. Here it was quiet and cool. The sound of the fountain came up from the garden, and a fly buzzed on the pane. There was only a dull murmur from the front of the house.

He laid his weary head on the cushion and closed his eyes. “That’s good, that’s good,” he muttered, half aloud, drawing a deep breath of relief and satisfaction; “Oh, that is good!”

He lay five minutes thus, with limbs relaxed and a look of peace upon his face. Then he sat up, folded the telegram, put it in his breast pocket, and rose to rejoin his guests.

But in the same minute he sank back with a disgusted groan upon the sofa. The music—it was beginning again; an idiotic racket, meant to be a galop, with the drum and cymbals marking a rhythm in which the other instruments all joined either ahead of or behind time; a naïve, insistent, intolerable hullabaloo of snarling, crashing, and feebly piping noises, punctuated by the silly tootling of the piccolo.

RV 104 (104)