Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/277

RV 267 (BUDDENBROOKS) phrase, which he repeated on every occasion and often on none at all.

And the Senator? How was he feeling? How long were the gentlemen thinking of stopping?

Oh, Dr. Langhals had sent him out on account of his nerves. He had obeyed orders, of course, despite the frightful weather—what doesn’t one do out of fear of one’s physician? He was really feeling more or less miserable, and they would probably remain till there was a little improvement.

“Yes, I’m pretty wretched too,” said Christian, irritated at Thomas’s speaking only of himself. He was about to fetch out his repertoire—the nodding man, the spirit-bottle, the open window—when the Senator interrupted him by going to engage the rooms.

The rain did not stop. It washed away the earth, it danced upon the sea, which was driven back by the southwest wind and left the beaches bare. Everything was shrouded in grey. The steamers went by like wraiths and vanished on the dim horizon.

They met the strange guests only at table. The Senator, in mackintosh and goloshes, went walking with Gosch; Christian drank Swedish punch with the barmaid in the pastry-shop.

Two or three times in the afternoon it looked as though the sun were coming out; and a few acquaintances from town appeared—people who enjoyed a holiday away from their families: Senator Dr. Gieseke, Christian’s friend, and Consul Peter Döhlmann, who looked very ill indeed, and was killing himself with Hunyadi-Janos water. The gentlemen sat together in their overcoats, under the awnings of the pastry-shop, opposite the empty bandstand, drinking their coffee, digesting their five courses, and talking desultorily as they gazed over the empty garden.

The news of the town—the last high water, which had gone into the cellars and been so deep that in the lower part of the town people had to go about in boats; a fire in the dockyard

RV 267 (267)