BUDDENBROOKS
the table to emphasize her words. All three wore mourning for Clara, who was now no longer of this earth; and all three were pale and excited.
What was going on? Something amazing, something dreadful, something at which the very actors in the scene themselves stood aghast and incredulous. A quarrel, an embittered disagreement between mother and son!
It was a sultry August afternoon. Only ten days after the Senator had gently prepared his mother and given her the letters from Clara and Tiburtius, the blow fell, and he had the harder task of breaking to the old lady the news of death itself. He travelled to Riga for the funeral, and returned with his brother-in-law, who spent a few days with the family of his deceased wife, and also visited Christian in the hospital at Hamburg. And now, two days after the Pastor had departed for home, the Frau Consul, with obvious hesitation, made a certain revelation to her son.
“One hundred and twenty-seven thousand, five hundred marks current,” cried he, and shook his clasped hands in front of him. “If it were the dowry, even! If he wanted to keep the eighty thousand marks! Though, considering there’s no heir, even that—! But to promise him Clara’s whole inheritance, right over my head! Without saying aye, yes, or no!”
“Thomas, for our blessed Lord’s sake, do me some sort of justice, at least. Could I act otherwise? Tell me, could I? She who has been taken from us, and is now with God, she wrote me from her death-bed, with faltering hand, a pencilled letter. ‘Mother,’ she wrote, ‘we shall see each other no more on this earth, and these are, I know, my dying words to you. With my last conscious thoughts, I appeal to you for my husband. God gave us no children; but when you follow me, let what would have been mine if I had lived go to him to enjoy during his lifetime. Mother, it is my last request—my dying prayer. You will not refuse it.’—No, Thomas, I did not refuse it—I could not. I sent a dispatch to her, and she died in peace.” The Frau Consul wept violently.
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