CHAPTER IV
“It is not right, it is not right, Gerda,” said old Fraulein Weichbrodt, perhaps for the hundredth time. Her voice was full of reproach and distress. She had a sofa place to-day in the circle that sat round the centre-table in the drawing-room of her former pupil. Gerda Buddenbrook, Frau Permaneder, her daughter Erica, poor Clothilde, and the three Misses Buddenbrook made up the group. The green cap-strings still fell down upon the old lady’s childish shoulders; but she had grown so tiny, with her seventy-five years of life, that she could scarcely raise her elbow high enough to gesticulate above the surface of the table.
“No, it is not right, and so I tell you, Gerda,” she repeated. She spoke with such warmth that her voice trembled. “I have one foot in the grave, my time is short—and you can think of leaving me—of leaving us all—for ever! If it were just a visit to Amsterdam that you were thinking of—but to leave us for ever—!” She shook her bird-like old head vigorously, and her brown eyes were clouded with her distress. “Tt is true, you have lost a great deal—”
“No, she has not lost a great deal, she has lost everything,” said Frau Permaneder. “We must not be selfish, Therese. Gerda wishes to go, and she is going—that is all. She came with Thomas, one-and-twenty years ago; and we all loved her, though she very likely didn’t like any of us—No, you didn’t, Gerda; don’t deny it!—But Thomas is no more—and nothing is any more. What are we to her? Nothing. We feel it very much, we cannot help feeling it; but yet I say, go, with God’s blessing, Gerda, and thanks for not going before, when Thomas died.”
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