One Sunday, as she sat in St. Mary’s with her parents and brothers, Pastor Kölling began preaching from the text about the wife leaving father and mother and cleaving only to her husband. His language was so violent that she began listening with a jump, staring up to see if he were looking at her. No, thank goodness, his head was turned in the other direction, and he seemed to be preaching in general to all the faithful. Still, it was plain that this was a new attack upon her,—every word struck home. A young, a still childish girl, he said, could have as yet no will and no wisdom; and if she set herself up against the loving advice of her parents she was as deserving of punishment as the guilty are; she was one of those whom the Lord spews out of his mouth. With this phrase, which the kind Pastor Kölling adored, she encountered a piercing glance from his eyes, as he made a threatening gesture with his right arm. Tony saw how her Father, sitting next to her, raised his hand, as though he would say, “Not so hard.” But it was perfectly plain that either he or her Mother had let the Pastor into the secret. Tony crouched in her place with her face like fire, and felt the eyes of all the world upon her. Next Sunday she flatly refused to go to church.

She moved dumbly about the house, she laughed no more, she lost her appetite. Sometimes she gave such heart-breaking sighs as would move a stone to pity. She was growing thinner too, and would soon lose her freshness. It would not do. At length the Consul said:

“This cannot go on, Betsy. We must not ill-use the child. She must get away a bit, to rest and be able to think quietly. You’ll see she will listen to reason then. I can’t leave, and the holidays are almost over. But there is no need for us to go. Yesterday old Schwarzkopf from Travemünde was here, and I spoke to him. He said he would be glad to take the child for a while. I’d give them something for it. She would have a good home, where she could bathe and be in the fresh air and get clear in her mind. Tom can take her— so it’s all arranged. Better to-morrow than day after.”

Tony was much pleased with this idea. True, she hardly ever saw Herr Grünlich, but she knew he was in town, in touch with her parents. Any day he might appear before her and begin shrieking and importuning. She would feel safer at Travemünde, in a strange house. So she packed her trunk with alacrity, and on one of the last days in July she mounted with Tom into the majestic Kröger equipage. She said good-bye in the best of spirits; and breathed more freely as they drove out of the Castle Gate.

CHAPTER V

The road to Travemünde first crosses the ferry and then goes straight ahead. The grey high-road glided away under the hoofs of Lebrecht Kröger’s fat brown Mecklenburgs. The sound of their trotting was hollow and rhythmical, the sun burned hot, and dust concealed the meagre view. The family had eaten at one o’clock, an hour earlier than usual, and the brother and sister set out punctually at two. They would arrive shortly after four; for what a hired carriage could do in three hours, the Kröger pair were mettlesome enough to make in two.

Tony sat half asleep, nodding under her broad straw hat and her lace-trimmed parasol, which she held tipped back against the hood of the chaise. The parasol was twine-grey, with cream-coloured lace, and matched her neat, simply cut frock. She reclined in the luxurious ease proper to the equipage, with her feet, in their white stockings and strap shoes, daintily crossed before her.

Tom was already twenty years old. He wore an extremely well cut blue suit, and sat smoking Russian cigarettes, with his hat on the back of his head. He was not very tall; but already he boasted a considerable moustache, darker in tone than his brows and eyelashes. He had one eyebrow lifted a trifle—a habit with him—and sat looking at the dust and the trees that fled away behind them as the carriage rolled on.

Tony said: “I was never so glad to come to Travemünde before—for various reasons. You needn’t laugh, Tom. I wish I could leave a certain pair of yellow mutton-chops even further behind! And then, it will be an entirely different Travemünde at the Schwarzkopfs’, on the sea front. I shan’t be bothered with the Kurhouse society, I can tell you that much. I am not in the mood for it. Besides, that that man could come there too as well as not. He has nerve enough—it wouldn’t trouble him at all. Some day he’d be bobbing up in front of me and putting on all his airs and graces.”

Tom threw away the stub of his cigarette and took a fresh one out of the box, a pretty little affair with an inlaid picture inside the lid, of an overturned troika being set upon by wolves. It was a present from a Russian customer of the Consul. The cigarettes, those biting little trifles with the yellow mouthpiece, were Tom’s passion. He smoked quantities of them, and had the bad habit of inhaling the smoke, breathing it slowly out again as he talked.

“Yes,” he said. “As far as that goes, the garden of the Kurhouse is alive with Hamburgers. Consul Fritsche, who has bought it, is a Hamburger himself. He must be doing a wonderful business now, Papa says. But you’ll miss something if you don’t take part in it a bit. Peter Döhlmann is there—he never stops in town this time of year. His business goes on at a jog-trot, all by itself, I suppose. Funny! Well—and Uncle Justus comes out for a little on a Sunday, of course, to visit the roulette table. Then there are the Möllendorpfs and the Kistenmakers, I suppose, in full strength, and the Hagenströms—”

“H’m. Yes, of course. They couldn’t get on without Sarah Semlinger!”

“Her name is Laura, my child. Let us be accurate.”

“And Julchen with her, of course. Julchen ought to get engaged to August Möllendorpf this summer—and she will do it, too. After all, they belong together. Disgusting, isn’t it, Tom? This adventurer’s family—”

“Yes, but good heavens, they are the firm of Strunck and Hagenström. That is the point.”

“Naturally, they make the firm. Of course. And everybody knows how they do it. With their elbows. Pushing and shoving—entirely without courtesy or elegance. Grandfather said that Heinrich Hagenström could coin money out of paving-stones. Those were his very words.”

“Yes, yes, that is exactly it. It is money talks. And this match is perfectly good business. Julchen will be a Möllendorpf, and August will get a snug position—”

“Oh, you just want to make me angry, Tom, that’s all. You know how I despise that lot.”

Tom began to laugh. “Goodness, one has to get along with them,” he replied. “As Papa said the other day, they are the coming people; while the Möllendorpfs, for example— And one can’t deny that the Hagenströms are clever. Hermann is already useful in the business, and Moritz is very able. He finished school brilliantly, in spite of his weak chest; and he is going to study law.”

“That’s all very well, Tom, but all the same I am glad there are families that don’t have to knuckle down to them. For instance, we Buddenbrooks—”

“Oh,” Tom said, “don’t let’s begin to boast. Every family has its own skeleton,” he went on in a lower voice, with a glance at Jock’s broad back. “For instance, God knows what state Uncle Julius’ affairs are in. Papa shakes his head when he speaks of him, and Grandfather Kröger has had to come forward once or twice with large sums, I hear. The cousins aren’t just the thing, either. Jürgen wants to study, but he still hasn’t come up for his finals; and they are not very well satisfied with Jacob, at Dalbeck and Company. He is always in debt, even with a good allowance, and when Uncle Justus refuses to send any more, Aunt Rosalie does— No, I find it doesn’t do to throw stones. If you want to balance the scale with the Hagenströms, you’d better marry Grünlich.”

“Did we get into this wagon to discuss that subject?—Oh, yes, I suppose you’re right. I ought to marry him—but I won’t think about it now! I want to forget it. We are going to the Schwarzkopfs’. I’ve never seen them to know them: are they nice people?”

“Oh, old Diederich Schwarzkopf—he’s not such a bad old chap. Doesn’t speak such atrocious dialect, unless he’s had more than five glasses of grog. Once he was at the office, and we went together to the Ships’ Company. He drank like a tank. His father was born on a Norwegian freighter and grew up to be captain on the very same line. Diederich has had a good education; the pilot command is a responsible office, and pretty well paid. Diederich is an old bear—but very gallant with the ladies. Look out: he’ll flirt with you.”

“Ah—well, and his wife?”

“I don’t know her, myself. She must be nice, I should think. There is a son, too. He was in first or second, in my time at school, and is a student now, I expect. Look, there’s the sea. We shall be there inside a quarter of an hour.”

They drove for a while along the shore on an avenue bordered with young beech-trees. There was the water, blue and peaceful in the sunshine; the round yellow light-house tower came into view, then the bay and the breakwater, the red roofs of the little town, the harbour with its sails, tackle, and shipping. They drove between the first houses, passed the church, and rolled along the front close to the water and up to a pretty little house, the verandah of which was overhung with vines.

Pilot-Captain Schwarzkopf stood before his door and took off his seaman’s cap as the calèche drove up. He was a broad, stocky man with a red face, sea-blue eyes, and a bristling grizzled beard that ran fan-shaped from one ear to the other. His mouth turned down at the corners, in one of which he held a wooden pipe. His smooth-shaven, red upper lip was hard and prominent; he looked thoroughly solid and respectable, with big bones and well-rounded paunch; and he wore a coat decorated with gold braid, underneath which a white piqué waistcoat was visible.

“Servant, Mademoiselle,” he said, as he carefully lifted Tony from the calèche. “We know it’s an honour you do us, coming to stop with us like this. Servant, Herr Buddenbrook. Papa well? And the honoured Frau Consul? Come in, come in! My wife has some sort of a bite ready, I suppose. Drive over to Peddersen’s Inn,” he said in his broadest dialect to the coachman, who was carrying in the trunk. “You’ll find they take good care of the horses there.” Then, turning to Thomas, “you’ll stop the night with us, Herr Buddenbrook? Oh, yes, you must. The horses want a bait and a rest, and you wouldn’t get home until after dark.”

“Upon my word, one lives at least as well here as at the Kurhouse,” Tony said a quarter of an hour later, as they sat around the coffee-table in the verandah. “What wonderful air! You can smell the sea-weed from here. How frightfully glad I am to be in Travemünde again!”

Between the vine-clad columns of the verandah one could look out on the broad river-mouths, glittering in the sun; there were the piers and the boats, and the ferry-house on the “Prival” opposite, the projecting peninsula of Mecklenburg.—The clumsy, blue-bordered cups on the table were almost like basins. How different from the delicate old porcelain at home! But there was a bunch of flowers at Tony’s place, the food looked inviting, and the drive had whetted her appetite.

“Yes, Mademoiselle will see, she will pick up here fast enough,” the housewife said. “She looks a little poorly, if I might say so. That is the town air, and the parties.”

Frau Schwarzkopf was the daughter of a Schlutup pastor. She was a head shorter than Tony, rather thin, and looked to be about fifty. Her hair was still black, and neatly dressed in a large-meshed net. She wore a dark brown dress with white crocheted collar and cuffs. She was spotless, gentle, and hospitable, urging upon her guests the currant bread that lay in a boat-shaped basket surrounded by cream, butter, sugar, and honeycomb. This basket had a border of bead-work embroidery, done by little Meta, the eight-year-old daughter, who now sat next her mother, dressed in a plaid frock, her flaxen hair in a thick pigtail.

Frau Schwarzkopf made excuses for Tony’s room, whither she had already been to make herself tidy after the journey. It was so very simple—

“Oh, all the better,” Tony said. It had a view of the ocean, which was the main thing. And she dipped her fourth piece of currant bread into her coffee. Tom talked with the pilot-captain about the Wullenwewer, now undergoing repairs in the town.

There came suddenly into the verandah a young man of some twenty years. He took off his grey felt hat, blushed, and bowed rather awkwardly.

“Well, my son,” said Herr Schwarzkopf, “you are late.” He presented him to the guests: “This is my son, studying to be a doctor. He is spending his vacation with us.” He had mentioned the young man’s name, but Tony failed to understand it.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Tony, primly. Tom rose and and shook hands. Young Schwarzkopf bowed again, put down his book, and took his place at the table, blushing afresh. He was of medium height, very slender, and as fair as he could possibly be. His youthful moustaches, colourless as the hair which covered his long head, were scarcely visible; and he had a complexion to match, a tint like translucent porcelain, which grew pink on the slightest provocation. His eyes, slightly darker than his father’s, had the same not very animated but good-natured quizzical expression; and his features were regular and rather pleasing. When he began to eat he displayed unusually regular teeth, glistening in close ranks of polished ivory. For the rest, he wore a grey jacket buttoned up, with flaps on the pockets, and an elastic belt at the back.

“Yes, I am sorry I am late,” he said. His speech was somewhat slow and grating. “I was reading on the beach, and did not look soon enough at my watch.” Then he ate silently, looking up now and then to glance at Tom and Tony.

Later on, Tony being again urged by the housewife to take something, he said, “You can rely on the honey, Fräulein Buddenbrook; it is a pure nature product—one knows what one is eating. You must eat, you know. The air here consumes one—it accelerates the process of metabolism. If you do not eat well, you will get thin.” He had a pleasant, naïve, way of now and then bending forward as he spoke and looking at some other person than the one whom he addressed.

His mother listened to him tenderly and watched Tony’s face to see the impression he made. But old Schwarzkopf said, “Now, now, Herr Doctor. Don’t be blowing off about your metabolism— we don’t know anything about that sort of talk.” Whereupon the young man laughed, blushed again, and looked at Tony’s plate.

The pilot-captain mentioned more than once his son’s Christian name, but Tony could never quite catch what it was. It sounded like Moor—or Mort; but the Father’s broad, flat pronunciation was impossible to understand.

They finished their meal. Herr Diederich sat blinking in the sun, his coat flung wide open over his white waistcoat, and he and his son took out their short pipes. Tom smoked his cigarettes, and the young people began a lively conversation, the subject of which was their old school and all the old school recollections. Tony took part gaily. They quoted Herr Stengel: “What! You were to make a line, and what are you making? A dash!” What a pity Christian was not here! he could imitate him so much better.

Once Tom pointed to the flowers at Tony’s place and said to his sister: “That trims things up uncommonly well, as Herr Grünlich would say!” Whereat Tony, red with anger, gave him a push and darted an embarrassed glance at young Schwarzkopf.

The coffee-hour had been unusually late, and they had prolonged it. It was already half-past six, and twilight was beginning to descend over the Prival, when the captain got up.

“The company will excuse me,” he said; “I’ve some work down at the pilot-house. We’ll have supper at eight o’clock, if that suits the young folk. Or even a little later to-night, eh, Meta? And you” (here he used his son’s name again), “don’t be lolling about here. Just go and dig up your bones again. Fräulein Buddenbrook will want to unpack. Or perhaps the guests would like to go down on the beach. Only don’t get in the way.”

“Diederich, for pity’s sake, why shouldn’t he sit still a bit?” Frau Schwarzkopf said, with mild reproach. “And if our guests like to go down on the beach, why shouldn’t he go along? Is he to see nothing at all of our visitors?”

CHAPTER VI

In her neat little room with the flower-covered furniture, Tony woke next morning with the fresh, happy feeling which one has at the beginning of a new chapter. She sat up in bed and, with her hands clasped round her knees and her tousled head flung back, blinked at the stream of light that poured through the closed shutters into the room. She began to sort out the experiences of the previous day.

Her thoughts scarcely touched upon the Grünlich affair. The town, his hateful apparition in the landscape room, the exhortations of her family and Pastor Kölling—all that lay far behind her. Here, every morning, there would be a care-free waking. These Schwarzkopfs were splendid people. Last night there had been pineapple punch, and they had made part of a happy family circle. It had been very jolly. Herr Schwarzkopf had told his best sea tales, and young Schwarzkopf stories about student life at Göttingen. How odd it was, that she still did not know his first name! And she had strained her ear to hear too, but even at dinner she did not succeed, and somehow it did not seem proper to ask. She tried feverishly to think how it sounded—was it Moor—Mord—? Anyhow, she had liked him pretty well, this young Moor or Mord. He had such a sly, good-natured laugh when he asked for the water and called it by letters and numbers, so that his father got quite furious. But it was only the scientific formula for water—that is, for ordinary water, for the Travemünde product was a much more complicated affair, of course. Why, one could find a jelly-fish in it, any time! The authorities, of course, might have what notions they chose about fresh water. For this he only got another scolding from his father, for speaking slightingly of the authorities. But Frau Schwarzkopf watched Tony all the time, to see how much she admired the young man—and really, it was most interesting, he was so learned and so jolly, all at the same time. He had given her considerable attention. She had complained that her head felt hot, while eating, and that she must have too much blood. What had he replied? He had given her a careful scrutiny, and then said, Yes, the arteries in the temples might be full; but that did not prove that she had too much blood. Perhaps, instead, it meant she had too little—or rather, that there were too few red corpuscles in it. In fact, she was perhaps a little anæmic.

The cuckoo sprang out of his carven house on the wall and cuckooed several times, clear and loud. “Seven, eight, nine,” counted Tony. “Up with you!” She jumped out of bed and opened the blinds. The sky was partly overcast, but the sun was visible. She looked out over the Leuchtenfeld with its tower, to the ruffled sea beyond. On the right it was bounded by the curve of the Mecklenburg coast; but before her it stretched on and on till its blue and green streaks mingled with the misty horizon. “I’ll bathe afterwards,” she thought, “but first I’ll eat a big breakfast, so as not to be consumed by my metabolism.” She washed and dressed with quick, eager movements.

It was shortly after half-past nine when she left her room. The door of the chamber in which Tom had slept stood open; he had risen early and driven back to town. Even up here in the upper story, it smelled of coffee—that seemed to be the characteristic odour of the little house, for it grew stronger as she descended the simple staircase with its plain board baluster and went down the corridor, where lay the living-room, which was also the dining-room and the office of the pilot-captain. She went out into the verandah, looking, in her white piqué frock, perfectly fresh, and in the gayest of tempers. Frau Schwarzkopf sat with her son at the table. It was already partly cleared away, and the housewife wore a blue checked kitchen apron over her brown frock. A key-basket stood beside her.

“A thousand pardons for not waiting,” she said, as she stood up. “We simple folk rise early. There is so much to be done! Schwarzkopf is in his office. I hope you don’t take it ill?”

Tony excused herself in her turn. “You must not think I always sleep so late as this,” she said. “I feel very guilty. But the punch last night—”

The young man began to laugh. He stood behind the table with his short pipe in his hand and a newspaper before him.

“Good morning,” Tony said. “Yes, it is your fault. You kept urging me. Now I deserve only cold coffee. I ought to have had breakfast and a bathe as well, by this time.”

“Oh, no, that would be rather too early, for a young lady. At seven o’clock the water was rather cold—eleven degrees. That’s pretty sharp, after a warm bed.”

“How do you know I wanted a warm bath, monsieur?” and Tony sat down beside Frau Schwarzkopf. “Oh, you have kept the coffee hot for me, Frau Schwarzkopf! But I will pour it out myself, thank you so much.”

The housewife looked on as her guest began to eat. “Fräulein slept well, the first night? The mattress, dear knows, is only stuffed with sea-weed—we are simple folk! And now, good appetite, and a good morning. You will surely find many friends on the beach. If you like, my son shall bear you company. Pardon me for not sitting longer, but I must look after the dinner. The joint is in the oven. We will feed you as well as we can.”

“I shall stick to the honeycomb,” Tony said when the two were alone. “You know what you are getting.”

Young Schwarzkopf laid his pipe on the verandah rail.

“But please smoke. I don’t mind it at all. At home, when I come down to breakfast, Papa’s cigar-smoke is already in the room. Tell me,” she said suddenly. “Is it true that an egg is as good as a quarter of a pound of meat?”

He grew red all over. “Are you making fun of me?” he asked, partly laughing but partly vexed. “I got another wigging from my Father last night for what he calls my silly professional airs.”

“No, really, I was asking because I wanted to know.” Tony stopped eating in consternation. “How could anybody call them airs? I should be so glad to learn something. I’m such a goose, you see. At Sesemi Weichbrodt’s I was always one of the very laziest. I’m sure you know a great deal.” Inwardly her thoughts ran: “Everybody puts his best foot foremost, before strangers. We all take care to say what will be pleasant to hear—that is a commonplace. . . .”

“Well, you see they are the same thing, in a way. The chemical constituents of food-stuffs—” And so on, while Tony breakfasted. Next they talked about Tony’s boarding-school days, and Sesemi Weichbrodt, and Gerda Arnoldsen, who had gone back to Amsterdam, and Armgard von Schelling, whose home, a large white house, could be seen from the beach here, at least in clear weather. Tony finished eating, wiped her mouth, and asked, pointing to the paper, “Is there any news?” Young Schwarzkopf shook his head and laughed cynically.

“Oh, no. What would there be? You know these little provincial news-sheets are wretched affairs.”

“Oh, are they? Papa and Mamma always take it in.”

He reddened again. “Oh, well, you see I always read it, too. Because I can’t get anything else. But it is not very thrilling to hear that So-and-So, the merchant prince, is about to celebrate his silver wedding. Yes, you laugh. But you ought to read other papers—the Königsberg Gazette, for instance, or the Rhenish Gazette. You’d find a different story there, entirely. There it’s what the King of Prussia says.”

“What does he say?”

“Well—er—I really couldn’t repeat it to a lady.” He got red again. “He expressed himself rather strongly on the subject of this same press,” he went on with another cynical laugh, which, for a moment, made a painful impression on Tony. “The press, you know, doesn’t feel any too friendly toward the government or the nobility or the parsons and junkers. It knows pretty well how to lead the censor by the nose.”

“Well, and you? Aren’t you any too friendly with the nobility, either?”

“I?” he asked, and looked very embarrassed. Tony rose.

“Shall we talk about this again another time?” she suggested. “Suppose I go down to the beach now. Look, the sky is blue nearly all over. It won’t rain any more. I am simply longing to jump into the water. Will you go down with me?”

CHAPTER VII

She had put on her big straw hat, and she raised her sun-shade; for it was very hot, though there was a little sea-breeze. Young Schwarzkopf, in his grey felt, book in hand, walked beside her and sometimes gave her a shy side-glance. They went along the front and walked through the garden of the Kurhouse, which lay there in the sun shadeless and still, with its rose-bushes and pebbly paths. The music pavilion, hidden among pine trees, stood opposite the Kurhouse, the pastry-cook’s, and the two Swiss cottages, which were connected by a long gallery. It was about half-past eleven, and the hotel guests were probably down on the beach.

They crossed the playground, where there were many benches and a large swing, passed close to the building where one took the hot baths, and strolled slowly across the Leuchtenfeld. The sun brooded over the grass, and there rose up a spicy smell from the warm weeds and clover; blue-bottle flies buzzed and droned about. A dull, booming roar came up from the ocean, whose waters now and then lifted a crested head of spray in the distance.

“What is that you are reading?” Tony asked. The young man took the book in both hands and ran it quickly through, from cover to cover.

“Oh, that is nothing for you, Fräulein Buddenbrook. Nothing but blood and entrails and such awful things. This part treats of nodes in the lungs. What we call pulmonary catarrh. The lungs get filled up with a watery fluid. It is a very dangerous condition, and occurs in inflammation of the lungs. In bad cases, the patient simply chokes to death. And that is all described with perfect coolness, from a scientific point of view.”

“Oh, horrors! But if one wants to be a doctor—I will see that you become our family physician, when old Grabow retires. You’ll see!”

“Ha, ha! And what are you reading, if I may ask, Fräulein Buddenbrook?”

“Do you know Hoffmann?” Tony asked.

“About the choir-master, and the gold pot? Yes, that’s very pretty. But it is more for ladies. Men want something different, you know.”

“I must ask you one thing,” Tony said, taking a sudden resolution, after they had gone a few steps. “And that is, do, I beg of you, tell me your first name. I haven’t been able to understand it a single time I’ve heard it, and it is making me dreadfully nervous. I’ve simply been racking my brains—I have, quite.”

“You have been racking your brains?”

“Now don’t make it worse—I’m sure it couldn’t have been proper for me to ask, only I’m naturally curious. There’s really no reason whatever why I should know.”

“Why, my name is Morten,” said he, and became redder than ever.

“Morten? That is a nice name.”

“Oh— nice! ”

“Yes, indeed. At least, it’s prettier than to be called something like Hinz, or Kunz. It is unusual; it sounds foreign.”

“You are romantic, Fraulein Buddenbrook. You have read too much Hoffmann. My grandfather was half Norwegian, and I was named after him. That is all there is to it.”

Tony picked her way through the rushes on the edge of the beach. In front of them was a row of round-topped wooden pavilions, and beyond they could see the basket-chairs at the water’s edge and people camped by families on the warm sand—ladies with blue sun-spectacles and books out of the loan-library; gentlemen in light suits idly drawing pictures in the sand with their walking-sticks; sun-burnt children in enormous straw hats, tumbling about, shovelling sand, digging for water, baking with wooden moulds, paddling bare-legged in the shallow pools, floating little ships. To the right, the wooden bathing-pavilion ran out into the water.

“We are going straight across to Möllendorpf’s pier,” said Tony. “Let’s turn off.”

“Certainly; but don’t you want to meet your friends? I can sit down yonder on those boulders.”

“Well, I suppose I ought to just greet them. But I don’t want to, you know. I came here to be in peace and quiet.”

“Peace? From what?”

“Why—from—from—”

“Listen, Fräulein Buddenbrook. I must ask you something. No, I’ll wait till another day—till we have more time. Now I will say au revoir and go and sit down there on the rocks.”

“Don’t you want me to introduce you, then?” Tony asked, importantly.

“Oh, no,” Morten said, hastily. “Thanks, but I don’t fit very well with those people, you see. I’ll just sit down over there on the rocks.”

It was a rather large company which Tony was approaching while Morten Schwarzkopf betook himself to the great heap of boulders on the right, near to the bathing-house and washed by the waves. The party was encamped before the Möllendorpfs’ pier, and was composed of the Möllendorpf, Hagenström, Kistenmaker, and Fritsche families. Except for Herr Fritsche, the owner, from Hamburg, and Peter Döhlmann, the idler, the group consisted of women, for it was a week-day, and most of the men were in their offices. Consul Fritsche, an elderly, smooth-shaven gentleman with a distinguished face, was up on the open pier, busy with a telescope, which he trained upon a sailboat visible in the distance. Peter Döhlmann, with a broad-brimmed straw hat and a beard with a nautical cut, stood chatting with the ladies perched on camp-stools or stretched out on rugs on the sand. There were Frau Senator Möllendorpf, born Langhals, with her longhandled lorgnon and untidy grey hair; Frau Hagenström, with Julchen, who had not grown much, but already wore diamonds in her ears, like her mother; Frau Consul Kistenmaker and her daughters; and Frau Consul Fritsche, a wrinkled little lady in a cap, who performed the duties of hospitality at the bath and went about perpetually hot and tired, thinking only about balls and routs and raffles, children’s parties and sailboat excursions. At a little distance sat her paid companion.

Kistenmaker and Son was the new firm of wine-merchants which had, in the last few years, managed to put C. F. Köppen rather in the shade. The two sons, Edouard and Stephan, worked in their father’s office. Consul Döhlmann possessed none of those graces of manner upon which Justus Kröger laid such stress. He was an idler pure and simple, whose special characteristic was a sort of rough good humour. He could and did take a good many liberties in society, being quite aware that his loud, brusque voice and bluff ways caused the ladies to set him down as an original. Once at a dinner at the Buddenbrooks, when a course failed to come in promptly and the guests grew dull and the hostess flustered, he came to the rescue and put them into a good humour by bellowing in his big voice the whole length of the table: “Please don’t wait for me, Frau Consul!” Just now, in this same reverberating voice, he was relating questionable anecdotes seasoned with low-German idioms. Frau Senator Möllendorpf, in paroxysms of laughter, was crying out over and over again: “Stop, Herr Döhlmann, stop! for heaven’s sake, don’t tell any more.”

They greeted Tony—the Hagenströms coldly, the others with great cordiality. Consul Fritsche even came down the steps of the pier, for he hoped that the Buddenbrooks would return next year to swell the population of the baths.

“Yours to command, Fräulein Buddenbrook,” said Consul Döhlmann, with his very best pronunciation; for he was aware that Mademoiselle did not especially care for his manners.

“Mademoiselle Buddenbrook!”

“You here?”

“How lovely!”

“When did you come?”

“What a sweet frock!”

“Where are you stopping?”

“At the Schwarzkopfs’?”

“With the pilot-captain? How original!”

“How frightfully original.”

“You are stopping in the town?” asked Consul Fritsche, the owner of the baths. He did not betray that he felt the blow.

“Will you come to our next assembly?” his wife asked.

“Oh, you are only here for a short time?”—this from another lady.

“Don’t you think, darling, the Buddenbrooks rather give themselves airs?” Frau Hagenström whispered to Frau Senator Möllendorpf.

“Have you been in yet?” somebody asked. “Which of the rest of you hasn’t bathed yet, young ladies? Marie? Julie, Louise? Your friends will go bathing with you, of course, Fräulein Antonie.” Some of the young girls rose, and Peter Döhlmann insisted on accompanying them up the beach.

“Do you remember how we used to go back and forth to school together?” Tony asked Julie Hagenström.

“Yes, and you were always the one that got into mischief,” Julie said, joining in her laugh. They went across the beach on a foot-bridge made of a few boards, and reached the bath-house. As they passed the boulders where Morten Schwarzkopf sat, Tony nodded to him from a distance, and somebody asked, “who is that you are bowing to, Tony?”

“That was young Schwarzkopf,” Tony answered. “He walked down here with me.”

“The son of the pilot-captain?” Julchen asked, and peered across at Morten with her staring black eyes. He on his side watched the gay troop with rather a melancholy air. Tony said in a loud voice: “What a pity August is not here. It must be stupid on the beach.”

CHAPTER VIII

And now began for Tony Buddenbrook a stretch of beautiful summer weeks, briefer, lovelier, than any she had ever spent in Travemünde. She bloomed as she felt her burden no longer upon her; her gay, pert, careless manner had come back. The Consul looked at her with satisfaction when he came on Sundays with Tom and Christian. On those days they ate at the table-d’hôte, sat under the awnings at the pastry-cook’s, drinking coffee and listening to the band, and peeped into the roulette-room at the gay folk there, like Justus Kröger and Peter Döhlmann. The Consul himself never played. Tony sunned herself, took baths, ate sausages with ginger-nut sauce, and took long walks with Morten. They went out on the high-road to the next village, or along the beach to the “ocean temple” on its height, whence a wide view was to be had over land and sea; or to the woods behind the Kurhouse, where was a great bell used to call the guests to the table-d’hôte. Sometimes they rowed across the Trave to the Prival, to look for amber.

Morten made an entertaining companion, though his opinions were often dogmatic, not to say heated. He had a severe and righteous judgment for everything, and he expressed it with finality, blushing all the time. It saddened Tony to hear him call the nobility idiots and wretches and to see the contemptuous if awkward gesture that accompanied the words. She scolded him, but she was proud to have him express so freely in her presence the views and opinions which she knew he concealed from his parents. Once he confided in her: “I’ll tell you something: I’ve a skeleton in my room at Göttingen—a whole set of bones, you know, held together by wire. I’ve put an old policeman’s uniform on it. Ha, ha! Isn’t that great? But don’t say anything to my Father about it.”

Tony was naturally often in the society of her town friends, or drawn into some assembly or boating party. Then Morten “sat on the rocks.” And after their first day this phrase became a convenient one. To “sit on the rocks” meant to feel bored and lonely. When a rainy day came and a grey mist covered the sea far and wide till it was one with the deep sky; when the beach was drenched and the roads streaming with wet, Tony would say: “To-day we shall both have to sit on the rocks—that is, in the verandah or sitting-room. There is nothing left to do but for you to play me some of your student songs, Morten—even if they do bore me horribly.”

“Yes,” Morten said, “come and sit down. But you know that when you are here, there are no rocks!” He never said such things when his father was present. His mother he did not mind.

“Well, what now?” asked the pilot-captain, as Tony and Morten both rose from table and were about to take their leave. “Where are the young folk off to?”

“I was going to take a little walk with Fräulein Antonie, as far as the temple.”

“Oh, is that it? Well, my son Filius, what do you say to going up to your room and conning over your nerves? You’ll lose everything out of your head before you get back to Göttingen.”

But Frau Schwarzkopf would intervene: “Now, Diederich, aren’t these his holidays? Why shouldn’t he take a walk? Is he to have nothing of our visitor?” So Morten went.

They paced along the beach close to the water, on the smooth, hard sand that made walking easy. It was strewn with common tiny white mussel-shells, and others too, pale opalescent and longish in shape; yellow-green wet seaweed with hollow round fruit that snapped when you squeezed it; and pale, translucent, reddish-yellow jelly-fish, which were poisonous and burned your leg when you touched one bathing.

“I used to be frightfully stupid, you know,” Tony said. “I wanted the bright star out of the jelly-fish, so I brought a lot home in my pocket-handkerchief and put them on the balcony, to dry in the sunshine. When I looked at them again, of course there was just a big wet spot that smelled of sea-weed.”

The waves whispered rhythmically beside them as they walked, and the salt wind blew full in their faces, streaming over and about them, closing their ears to other sounds and causing a pleasant slight giddiness. They walked in this hushed, whispering peacefulness by the sea, whose every faint murmur, near or far, seemed to have a deep significance.

To their left was a precipitous cliff of lime and boulders, with jutting corners that came into view as they rounded the bay. When the beach was too stony to go on, they began to climb, and continued upward through the wood until they reached the temple. It was a round pavilion, built of rough timbers and boards, the inside of which was covered with scribbled inscriptions and poetry, carved hearts and initials. Tony and Morten seated themselves in one of the little rooms facing the sea; it smelled of wood, like the cabins at the bathhouse. It was very quiet, even solemn, up here at this hour of the afternoon. A pair of birds chattered, and the faint rustling of the leaves mingled with the sound of the sea spread out below them. In the distance they could see the rigging of a ship. Sheltered now from the wind that had been thrumming at their ears, they suddenly experienced a quiet, almost pensive mood.

Tony said, “Is it coming or going?”

“What?” asked Morten, his subdued voice sounding as if he were coming back from a far distance. “Oh—going— That is the Burgermeister Steenbock, for Russia.” He added after a pause: “I shouldn’t like to be going with it. It must be worse there than here.”

“Now,” Tony said, “you are going to begin again on the nobility. I see it in your face. And it’s not at all nice of you. Tell me, did you ever know a single one of them?”

“No!” Morten shouted, quite insulted. “Thank God, no.”

“Well, there, then, I have—Armgard von Schilling over there, that I told you about. She was much better-natured than either of us; she hardly knew she was a von —she ate sausage-meat and talked about her cows.”

“Oh, of course. There are naturally exceptions. Listen, Fräulein Tony. You are a woman, you see, so you take everything personally. You happen to know a single member of the nobility, and you say she is a good creature—certainly! But one does not need to know any of them to be able to judge them all. It is a question of the principle, you understand—of—the organization of the state. You can’t answer that, can you? They need only to be born to be the pick of everything, and look down on all the rest of us. While we, however hard we strive, cannot climb to their level.” Morten spoke with a naïve, honest irritation. He tried to fit his speech with gestures, then perceived that they were awkward, and gave it up. But he was in the vein to talk, and he went on, sitting bent forward, with his thumb between the buttons of his jacket, a defiant expression in his usually good-natured eyes. “We, the bourgeoisie—the Third Estate, as we have been called—we recognize only that nobility which consists of merit; we refuse to admit any longer the rights of the indolent aristocracy, we repudiate the class distinctions of the present day, we desire that all men should he free and equal, that no person shall be subject to another, but all subject to the law. There shall be no more privilege and arbitrary rule. All shall be sovereign children of the state; and as no middlemen exist any longer between the people and almighty God, so shall the citizen stand in direct relation to the State. We will have freedom of the press, of trade and industry, so that all men, without distinction, shall be able to strive together and receive their reward according to their merit. We are enslaved, muzzled!—What was it I wanted to say? Oh, yes! Four years ago they renewed the laws of the Confederation touching the universities and the press. Fine laws they are! No truth may be written or taught which might not agree with the established order of things. Do you understand? The truth is suppressed—forbidden to be spoken. Why? For the sake of an obsolete, idiotic, decadent class which everybody knows will be destroyed some day, anyhow. I do not think you can comprehend such meanness. It is the stupid, brutal application of force, the immediate physical strength of the police, without the slightest understanding of new, spiritual forces. And apart from all that, there is the final fact of the great wrong the King of Prussia has done us. In 1813, when the French were in the country, he called us together and promised us a Constitution. We came to the rescue, we freed Germany from the invader—”

Tony, chin in hand, stole a look at him and wondered for a moment if he could have actually helped to drive out Napoleon.

“—but do you think he kept his promise? Oh, no! The present king is a fine orator, a dreamer; a romantic, like you, Fräulein Tony. But I’ll tell you something: take any general principle or conception of life. It always happens that, directly it has been found wanting and discarded by the poets and philosophers, there comes along a King to whom it is a perfectly new idea, and who makes it a guiding principle. That is what kings are like. It is not only that kings are men—they are even very distinctly average men; they are always a good way in the rear. Oh, yes, Germany is just like a students’ society; it had its brave and spirited youth at the time of the great revolution, but now it is just a lot of fretful Philistines.”

“Ye—es,” Tony said. “But let me ask you this: Why are you so interested in Prussia? You aren’t a Prussian.”

“Oh, it is all the same thing, Fräulein Buddenbrook. Yes, I said Fräulein Buddenbrook on purpose, I ought even to have said Demoiselle Buddenbrook, and given you your entire title. Are the men here freer, more brotherly, more equal than in Prussia? Conventions, classes, aristocracy, here as there. You have sympathy for the nobility. Shall I tell you why? Because you belong to it yourself. Yes, yes, didn’t you know it? Your father is a great gentleman, and you are a princess. There is a gulf between you and us, because we do not belong to your circle of ruling families. You can walk on the beach with one of us for the sake of your health, but when you get back into your own class, then the rest of us can go and sit on the rocks.” His voice had grown quite strangely excited.

“Morten,” said Tony, sadly. “You have been angry all the time, then, when you were sitting on the rocks! And I always begged you to come and be introduced.”

“Now you are taking the affair personally again, like a young lady, Fraulein Tony, I’m only speaking of the principle. I say that there is no more fellowship of humanity with us than in Prussia.—And even if I were speaking personally,” he went on, after a little pause, with a softer tone, out of which, however, the strange excitement had not disappeared, “I shouldn’t be speaking of the present, but rather, perhaps, of the future. When you as Madame So-and-So finally vanish into your proper sphere, one is left to sit on the rocks all the rest of one’s life.”

He was silent, and Tony too. She did not look at him, but in the other direction, at the wooden partition. There was an uneasy stillness for some time.

“Do you remember,” Morten began again, “I once said to you that these was a question I wanted to ask you? Yes, I have wanted to know, since the first afternoon you came. Don’t guess. You couldn’t guess what I mean. I am going to ask you another time; there is no hurry; it has really nothing to do with me; it is only curiosity. No, to-day I will only show you one thing. Look.” He drew out of the pocket of his jacket the end of a narrow gaily-striped ribbon, and looked with a mixture of expectation and triumph into Tony’s eyes.

“How pretty,” she said uncomprehendingly. “What is it?”

Morten spoke solemnly: “That means that I belong to a students’ fraternity in Göttingen.—Now you know. I have a cap in the same colours, but my skeleton in the policeman’s uniform is wearing it for the holidays. I couldn’t be seen with it here, you understand. I can count on your saying nothing, can’t I? Because it would be very unfortunate if my father were to hear of it.”

“Not a word, Morten. You can rely on me. But I don’t understand—have you all taken a vow against the nobility? What is it you want?”

“We want freedom,” Morten said.

“Freedom?” she asked.

“Yes, freedom, you know— Freedom!” he repeated; and he made a vague, awkward, fervent gesture outward and downward, not toward the side where the coast of Mecklenburg narrowed the bay, but in the direction of the open sea, whose rippling blue, green, yellow, and grey stripes rolled as far as eye could see out to the misty horizon.

Tony followed his gesture with her eye; they sat, their hands lying close together on the bench, and looked into the distance. Thus they remained in silence a long time, while the sea sent up to them its soft enchanting whispers. . . . Tony suddenly felt herself one with Morten in a great, vague yearning comprehension of this portentous something which he called “Freedom.”

CHAPTER IX

“It is wonderful how one doesn’t get bored, here at the seashore, Morten. Imagine lying anywhere else for hours at a time, flat on your back, doing nothing, not even thinking—”

“Yes. But I must confess that I used to be bored sometimes—only not in the last few weeks.”

Autumn was at hand. The first strong wind had risen. Thin, tattered grey clouds raced across the sky. The dreary, tossing sea was covered far and wide with foam. Great, powerful waves rolled silently in, relentless, awesome; towered majestically, in a metallic dark-green curve, then crashed thundering on the sand.

The season was quite at an end. On that part of the beach usually occupied by the throng of bathers, the pavilions were already partly dismantled, and it lay as quiet as the grave, with only a very few basket-chairs. But Tony and Morten spent the afternoon in a distant spot, at the edge of the yellow loam, where the waves hurled their spray as far up as Sea-gull Rock. Morten had made her a solid sand fortress, and she leaned against it with her back, her feet in their strap shoes and white stockings crossed in front of her. Morten lay turned toward her, his chin in his hands. Now and then a sea-gull flew past them, shrieking. They looked at the green wall of wave, streaked with sea-weed, that came threateningly on and on and then broke against the opposing boulders, with the eternal, confused tumult that deafens and silences and destroys all sense of time.

Finally Morten made a movement as though rousing himself from deep thought, and said, “Well, you will soon be leaving us, Fräulein Tony.”

“No; why?” Tony said absently.

“Well, it is the tenth of September. My holidays are nearly at an end, anyhow. How much longer can it last? Shall you be glad to get back to the society of your own kind? Tell me—I suppose the gentlemen you dance with are very agreeable?—No, no, that was not what I wanted to say. Now you must answer me,” he said, with a sudden resolution, shifting his chin in his hands and looking at her. “Here is the question I have been waiting so long to ask. Now: who is Herr Grünlich?”

Tony sat up, looking at him quickly, her eyes shifting back and forth like those of a person recollecting himself on coming out of a dream. She was feeling again the sense of increased personal importance first experienced when Herr Grünlich proposed for her hand.

“Oh, is that what you want to know, Morten?” she said weightily. “Well, I will tell you. It was really very painful for me to have Thomas mention his name like that, the first afternoon; but since you have already heard of him—well, Herr Grünlich, Bendix Grünlich, is a business friend of my father, a well-to-do Hamburg merchant, who has asked for my hand. No, no,” she replied quickly to a movement of Morten’s, “I have refused him; I have never been able to make up my mind to yield him my consent for life.”

“And why not?—if I may ask,” said Morten awkwardly.

“Why? Oh, good heavens, because I couldn’t endure him,” she cried out in a passion. “You ought to have seen him, how he looked and how he acted. Among other things, he had yellow whiskers—dreadfully unnatural. I’m sure he curled them and put on gold powder, like the stuff we use for the Christmas nuts. And he was underhanded. He fawned on my Father and Mother and chimed in with them in the most shameful way—”

Morten interrupted her. “But what does this mean: ‘That trims it up uncommonly.’ ”

Tony broke into a nervous giggle.

“Well, he talked like that, Morten. He wouldn’t say ‘That looks very well’ or ‘It goes very well with the room.’ He was frightfully silly, I tell you. And very persistent; he simply wouldn’t be put off, although I never gave him anything but sarcasm. Once he made such a scene—he nearly wept—imagine a man weeping!”

“He must have worshipped you,” Morten said softly.

“Well, what affair was that of mine?” she cried out, astonished, turning around on her sand-heap.

“You are cruel, Fräulein Tony. Are you always cruel? Tell me: You didn’t like this Herr Grünlich. But is there any one to whom you have been more gracious? Sometimes I think: Has she a cold heart? Let me tell you something: a man is not idiotic simply because he weeps when you won’t look at him. I swear it. I am not sure, not at all, that I wouldn’t do the same thing. You see, you are such a dainty, spoilt thing. Do you always make fun of people that lie at your feet? Have you really a cold heart?”

After the first giggle, Tony’s lip began to quiver. She turned on him a pair of great distressed eyes, which slowly filled with tears as she said softly: “No, Morten, you should not think that of me—you must not think that of me.”

“I don’t; indeed I don’t,” he cried, with a laugh of mingled emotion and hardly suppressed exultation. He turned fully about, so that he lay supporting himself on his elbows, took her hands in both his, and looked straight into hers with his kind steel-blue eyes, which were excited and dreamy and exalted all at once.

“Then you—you won’t mock at me if I tell you—?”

“I know, Morten,” she answered gently, looking away from him at the fine white sand sifting through the fingers of her free hand.

“You know—and you—oh, Fräulein Tony!”

“Yes, Morten. I care a great deal for you. More than for any one else I know.”

He started up, making awkward gestures with his arms, like a man bewildered. Then he got to his feet, only to throw himself down again by her side and cry in a voice that stammered, wavered, died away and rose again, out of sheer joy: “Oh, thank you, thank you! I am so happy! more than I ever was in all my life!” And he fell to kissing her hands. After a moment he said more quietly; “You will be going back to town soon, Tony, and my holidays will be over in two weeks; then I must return to Göttingen. But will you promise me that you will never forget this afternoon here on the beach—till I come back again with my degree, and can ask your Father—however hard that’s going to be? And you won’t listen to any Herr Grünlich meantime? Oh, it won’t be so long—I will work like a—like anything! it will be so easy!”

“Yes, Morten,” she said dreamily, looking at his eyes, his mouth, his hands holding hers.

He drew her hand close to his breast and asked very softly and imploringly: “And won’t you—may I—seal the promise?”

She did not answer, she did not look at him, but moved nearer to him on the sand-heap, and Morten kissed her slowly and solemnly on the mouth. Then they stared in different directions across the sand, and both felt furiously embarrassed.

CHAPTER X

Dearest Mademoiselle Buddenbrook,

For how long must the undersigned exist without a glimpse of his enchantress? These few lines will tell you that the vision has never ceased to hover before his spiritual eye; that never has he during these interminably anxious months ceased to think of the precious afternoon in your parental salon, when you let fall a blushing promise which filled me with bliss unspeakable! Since then long weeks have flown, during which you have retired from the world for the sake of calm and self-examination. May I now hope that the period of probation is past? The undersigned permits himself, dearest Mademoiselle, to send the enclosed ring as an earnest of his undying tenderness. With the most tender compliments, and devotedly kissing your hand, I remain,

Your obedient servant,

Grünlich.

Dear Papa,

How angry I’ve been! I had the enclosed letter and ring just now from Grünlich, and my head aches fearfully from excitement. I don’t know what else to do but send them both to you. He simply will not understand me, and what he so poetically writes about the promise isn’t in the least true, and I beg you emphatically to make it immediately perfectly clear to him that I am a thousand times less able to say yes to him than I was before, and that he must leave me in peace. He makes himself ridiculous. To you, my dearest Father, I can say that I have bound myself elsewhere, to one who adores me and whom I love more than I can say. Oh, Papa! I could write pages to you! I mean Herr Morten Schwarzkopf, who is studying to be a physician, and who as soon as that happens will ask for my hand. I know that it is the rule of the family to marry a business man, but Morten belongs to the other section of respectable men, the scholars. He is not rich, which I know is important to you and Mamma: but I must tell you that, young as I am, I have learned that riches do not make every one happy. With a thousand kisses,

Your obedient daughter,

Antonie.

P.S. I find the ring very poor gold, and too narrow.

My dear Tony,

Your letter duly received. As regards its contents, I must tell you that I did not fail to communicate them to Herr Grünlich: the result was of such a nature as to shock me very much. You are a grown girl, and at a serious time of life, so I need not scruple to tell you the consequences that a frivolous step of yours may draw after it. Herr Grünlich, then, burst into despair at my announcement, declaring that he loved you so dearly, and could so little console himself for your loss, that he would be in a state to take his own life if you remain firm in your resolve. As I cannot take seriously what you write me of another attachment, I must beg you to master your excitement over the ring, and consider everything again very carefully. It is my Christian conviction, my dear daughter, that one must have regard for the feelings of others. We do not know that you may not be made responsible by the most high Judge if a man whose feelings you have coldly and obstinately scorned should trespass against his own life. But the thing I have so often told you by word of mouth, I must recall again to your remembrance, and I am glad to have the occasion to repeat it in writing; for though speech is more vivid and has the more immediate effect, the written word has the advantage that it can be chosen with pains and fixed in a form well-weighed and calculated by the writer, to be read over and over again, with proportionate effect.—My child, we are not born for that which, with our short-sighted vision, we reckon to be our own small personal happiness. We are not free, separate, and independent entities, but like links in a chain, and we could not by any means be what we are without those who went before us and showed us the way, by following the straight and narrow path, not looking to right or left. Your path, it seems to me, has lain all these weeks sharply marked out for you, and you would not be my daughter, nor the granddaughter of your Grandfather who rests in God, nor a worthy member of our own family, if you really have it in your heart, alone, wilfully, and light-headedly to choose your own unregulated path. Your Mother, Thomas, Christian, and I beg you, my dear Antonie, to weigh all this in your heart. Mlle. Jungmann and Clara greet you affectionately, likewise Clothilde, who has been the last several weeks with her father at Thankless. We all rejoice at the thought of embracing you once more.

With unfailing affection,

Your loving Father.

CHAPTER XI

It rained in streams. Heaven, earth, and sea were in flood, while the driving wind took the rain and flung it against the panes as though not drops but brooks were flowing down and making them impossible to see through. Complaining and despairing voices sounded in the chimney.

When Morten Schwarzkopf went out into the verandah with his pipe shortly after dinner to look at the sky, he found there a gentleman with a long, narrow yellow-checked ulster and a grey hat. A closed carriage, its top glistening with wet, its wheels clogged with mud, was before the door. Morten stared irresolutely into the rosy face of the gentleman. He had mutton-chop whiskers that looked as though they had been dressed with gold paint.

The gentleman in the ulster looked at Morten as one looks at a servant, blinking gently without seeing him, and said in a soft voice: “Is Herr Pilot-Captain Schwarzkopf at home?”

“Yes,” stammered Morten, “I think my Father—”

Hereupon the gentleman fixed his eyes upon him; they were as blue as a goose’s.

“Are you Herr Morten Schwarzkopf?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” answered Morten, trying to keep his face straight.

“Ah—indeed!” remarked the gentleman in the ulster, and went on, “Have the goodness to announce me to your Father, young man. My name is Grünlich.”

Morten led the gentleman through the verandah, opened for him the right-hand door that led into the office, and went back into the sitting-room to tell his Father. Then the youth sat down at the round table, resting his elbow on it, and seemed, without noticing his Mother, who was sitting at the dark window mending stockings, to busy himself with the “wretched news-sheet” which had nothing in it except the announcements of the silver wedding of Consul So-and-So. Tony was resting in her room.

The pilot-captain entered his office with the air of a man satisfied with his meal. His uniform-coat stood open over the usual white waistcoat. His face was red, and his ice-grey beard coldly set off against it; his tongue travelled about agreeably among his teeth, making his good mouth take the most extraordinary shapes. He bowed shortly, jerkily, with the air of one conforming to the conventions as he understood them.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “At your service.”

Herr Grünlich, on his side, bowed with deliberation, although one corner of his mouth seemed to go down. He said softly: “Ahem!”

The office was rather a small room, the walls of which had wainscoting for a few feet and then simple plaster. Curtains, yellow with smoke, hung before the window, on whose panes the rain beat unceasingly. On the right of the door was a rough table covered with papers, above it a large map of Europe, and a smaller one of the Baltic Sea fastened to the wall. From the middle of the ceiling hung the well-cut model of a ship under full sail.