BUDDENBROOKS
in case you should expect—hope—I might intervene, to prevent the failure and cover your husband’s debts, the best I could, and float his business—”
He watched her keenly, and her bearing filled him with satisfaction. It expressed disappointment.
“How much is it?” she asked.
“What is that to the point, my child? A very large sum.” And Consul Buddenbrook nodded several times, as though the weight of the very thought of such a sum swung his head back and forth. “I should not conceal from you,” he went on, “that the firm has suffered losses already quite apart from this affair, and that the surrender of a sum like this would be a blow from which it would recover with difficulty. I do not in any way say this to—”
He did not finish. Tony had sprung up, had even taken a few steps backward, and with the wet handkerchief still in her hand she cried: “Good! Enough! Never!” She looked almost heroic. The words “the firm” had struck home. It is highly probably that they had more effect than even her dislike of Herr Grünlich. “You shall not do that, Papa,” she went on, quite beside herself. “Do you want to be bankrupt too? Never, never!”
At this moment the hall door opened a little uncertainly and Herr Grünlich entered.
Johann Buddenbrook rose, with a movement that meant: “That’s settled.”
220
