Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/48

RV 38 (BUDDENBROOKS) “What do you mean, Tom? Tell me, why were you so quiet Thursday afternoon at dinner, if I may ask?”

“Oh—business, my child. I had to sell no very small quantity of grain not very advantageously—or, rather, I had to sell a large quantity very much at a loss.”

“Well, that happens, Tom. You sell at a loss to-day, and to-morrow you make it good again. To get discouraged over a thing of that kind—”

“Wrong, Tony,” he said, and shook his head. “My courage does not go down to zero because I have a piece of bad luck. It’s the other way on. I believe in that, and events show it.”

“But what is the matter with it, then?” she asked, surprised and alarmed. “One would think you have enough to make you happy, Tom. Clara is alive, and with God’s help she will get better. And as for everything else—here we are, walking about, in your own garden, and it all smells so sweet—and yonder is your house, a dream of a house—Hermann Hagenström’s is a dog-kennel beside it! And you have done all that—”

“Yes, it is almost too beautiful, Tony. I’ll tell you—it is too new. It jars on me a little—perhaps that is what is the matter with me. It may be responsible for the bad mood that comes over me and spoils everything. I looked forward immensely to all this; but the anticipation was the best part of it—it always is. Everything gets done too slowly—so when it is finished the pleasure is already gone.”

“The pleasure is gone, Tom? At your age?”

“A man is as young, or as old, as he feels. And when one gets one’s wish too late, or works too hard for it, it comes already weighted with all sorts of small vexatious drawbacks—with all the dust of reality upon it, that one did not reckon with in fancy. It is so irritating—so irritating—”

“Oh yes.—But what do you mean by ‘as old as you feel’?”

“Why, Tony—it is a mood, certainly. It may pass. But just now I feel older than I am. I have business cares. And

RV 38 (38)