BUDDENBROOKS
from the head of the house, and confined himself to the free and private intercourse with its mistress.
Should he wait? Sit down somewhere, perhaps in the smoking-room, until the lieutenant went, and then go to Gerda and speak out, and call her to account? Ah, one did not speak out with Gerda, one did not call her to account. Why should one? Their alliance was based on mutual consideration, tact, and silence. To become a laughing-stock before her, too—no, surely he was not called upon to do that. To play the jealous husband would be to grant that outsiders were right, to proclaim a scandal, to cry it aloud. Was he jealous? Of whom? Of what? Alas, no! Jealousy—the word meant action: mistaken, crazy, wrong action, perhaps, but at least action, energetic, fearless, and conclusive. No, he only felt a slight anxiety, a harassing worry, over the whole thing.
He went into his dressing-room and bathed his face with eau-de-cologne. Then he descended to the music-room, determined to break the silence there, cost what it would. He laid his hand on the door-knob—but now the music struck up again with a stormy outburst of sound, and he shrank back.
One day in such an hour, he was leaning over the balcony of the second floor, looking down the well of the staircase. Everything was quite still. Little Johann came out of his room, down the gallery steps, and across the corridor, on his way to Ida Jungmann’s room. He slipped along the wall with his book, and would have passed his father with lowered eyes, and a murmured greeting; but the Senator spoke to him.
“Well, Hanno, and what are you doing?”
“Studying my lessons, Papa. I am going to Ida, to have her hear my translation—”
“Well, and what do you have to-morrow?”
Hanno, still looking down, made an obvious effort to give a prompt, alert, and correct answer to the question. He
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