Herr Grünlich’s face was all mottled with red; but he had dressed carefully in a respectable-looking black coat and pea-green trousers like those in which he had made his first visits in Meng Street. He stood still, with his head down, looking very limp, and said in a weak exhausted sort of voice: “Father?”
The Consul bowed, not too cordially, and straightened his neck-cloth with an energetic movement.
“Thank you for coming,” said Herr Grünlich.
“It was my duty, my friend,” replied the Consul. “But I am afraid it will be about all I can do for you.”
Herr Grünlich threw him a quick look and seemed to grow still more limp.
“I hear,” the Consul went on, “that your banker, Herr Kesselmeyer, is awaiting us—where shall the conference be held? I am at your service.”
“If you will be so good as to follow me,” Herr Grünlich murmured. Consul Buddenbrook kissed his daughter on the forehead and said, “Go up to your child, Antonie.”
Then he went, with Herr Grünlich fluttering in front of and behind him to open the portières, through the dining-room into the living-room.
Herr Kesselmeyer stood at the window, the black and white down softly rising and falling upon his cranium.
“Herr Kesselmeyer, Herr Consul Buddenbrook, my father-in-law,” said Herr Grünlich, meekly. The Consul’s face was impassive. Herr Kesselmeyer bowed with his arms hanging down, both yellow teeth against his upper lip, and said: “Pleasure to meet you, Herr Consul.”
“Please excuse us for keeping you waiting, Kesselmeyer,” said Herr Grünlich. He was not more polite to one than to the other. “Pray sit down.”
As they went into the smoking-room, Herr Kesselmeyer said vivaciously: “Have you had a pleasant journey? Ah, rain? Yes, it is a bad time of year, a dirty time. If we had a little frost, or snow, now—but rain, filth—very, very unpleasant.”
“What a queer creature!” thought the Consul.
In the centre of the little room with its dark-flowered wall-paper stood a sizable square table covered with green baize. It rained harder and harder; it was so dark that the first thing Herr Grünlich did was to light the three candles on the table. Business letters on blue paper, stamped with the names of various firms, torn and soiled papers with dates and signatures, lay on the green cloth. There were a thick ledger and a metal inkstand and sand-holder, full of well-sharpened pencils and goose-quills.
Herr Grünlich did the honours with the subdued and tactful mien of a man greeting guests at a funeral. “Dear Father, do take the easy chair,” he said. “Herr Kesselmeyer, will you be so kind as to sit here?”
At last they were settled. The banker sat opposite the host, the Consul presided on the long side of the table. The back of his chair was against the hall door.
Herr Kesselmeyer bent over, released his upper lip, disentangled a glass from his waistcoat and stuck it on his nose, which he wrinkled for the purpose, and opened his mouth wide. Then he scratched his stubbly beard with an ugly rasping noise, put his hands on his knees, and remarked in a sprightly tone, jerking his head toward the piles of papers: “Well, there we have the whole boiling.”
“May I look into matters a little more closely?” asked the Consul, taking up the ledger. But Herr Grünlich suddenly stretched out his hands over the table—long, trembling hands marked with high blue veins—and cried out in a voice that trembled too: “A moment, Father. Just a moment. Let me make just a few explanations. Yes, you will get an insight into everything—nothing will escape your glance; but, believe me, you will get an insight into the situation of an unfortunate, not a guilty man. You see in me a man who fought unwearied against fate, but was finally struck down. I am innocent of all—”
“We shall see, my friend, we shall see,” said the Consul, with obvious impatience; and Herr Grünlich took his hands away and resigned himself to his fate.
Then there were long dreadful minutes of silence. The three gentlemen sat close together in the flickering candlelight, shut in by the four dark walls. There was not a sound but the rustling of the Consul’s papers and the falling rain outside.
Herr Kesselmeyer stuck his thumbs in the arm-holes of his waistcoat and played piano on his shoulders with his fingers, looking with indescribable jocosity from one to the other. Herr Grünlich sat upright in his chair, hands on the table, staring gloomily before him, and now and then stealing an anxious glance at his father-in-law out of the tail of his eye. The Consul examined the ledger, followed columns of figures with his finger, compared dates, and did indecipherable little sums in lead-pencil on a scrap of paper. His worn features expressed astonishment and dismay at the conditions into which he now “gained an insight.” Finally he laid his left arm on Herr Grünlich’s and said with evident emotion: “You poor man!”
“Father,” Herr Grünlich broke out. Two great tears rolled down his cheeks and ran into the golden whiskers. Herr Kesselmeyer followed their course with the greatest interest. He even raised himself a little, bent over, and looked his vis-à-vis in the face, with his mouth open. Consul Buddenbrook was moved. Softened by his own recent misfortunes, he, felt himself carried away by sympathy; but he controlled his feelings.
“How is it possible?” he said, with a sad head-shake. “In so few years—”
“Oh, that’s simple,” answered Herr Kesselmeyer, good-temperedly. “One can easily ruin oneself in four years. When we remember that it took an even shorter time for Westfal Brothers in Bremen to go smash—” The Consul stared at him, but without either seeing or hearing him. He himself had not expressed his own actual thoughts, his real misgivings. Why, he asked himself with puzzled suspicion, why was this happening now? It was as clear as daylight that, just where he stood to-day, B. Grünlich had stood two years, three years before. But his credit had been inexhaustible, he had had capital from the banks, and for his undertakings continual endorsement from sound houses like Senator Bock and Consul Goudstikker. His paper had passed as current as banknotes. Why now, precisely now—and the head of the firm of Johann Buddenbrook knew well what he meant by this “now”—had there come this crash on all sides, this complete withdrawal of credit as if by common consent, this unanimous descent upon B. Grünlich, this disregard of all consideration, all ordinary business courtesy? The Consul would have been naïve indeed had he not realized that the good standing of his own firm was to the advantage of his son-in-law. But had the son-in-law’s credit so entirely, so strikingly, so exclusively depended upon his own? Had Grünlich himself been nothing at all? And the information the Consul had had, the books he had examined—? Well, however the thing stood, his resolution was firmer than ever not to lift a finger. They had reckoned without their host.
Apparently B. Grünlich had known how to make it appear that he was connected with the firm of Buddenbrook—well, this widely-circulated error should be set right once for all. And this Kesselmeyer—he was going to get a shock too. The clown! Had he no conscience whatever? It was very plain how shamelessly he had speculated on the probability that he, Johann Buddenbrook, would not let his daughter’s husband be ruined; how he had continued to finance Grünlich long after he was unsound, and exacted from him an ever crueller rate of interest.
“Now,” he said shortly, “let us get to the point. If I am asked as a merchant to say frankly what I think, I am obliged to say that if the situation is that of an unfortunate man, it is also in a great degree that of a guilty one.”
“Father!” stammered Herr Grünlich.
“The name does not come well to my ears,” said the Consul, quickly and harshly. “Your demands on Herr Grünlich amount, sir”—turning for a moment to the banker—“to sixty thousand marks, I believe?”
“With the back interest they come to sixty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty-five marks and fifteen shillings,” answered Herr Kesselmeyer pleasantly.
“Very good. And you would not be inclined under any circumstances to be patient for a longer time?”
Herr Kesselmeyer simply began to laugh. He laughed with his mouth open, in spasms, without a trace of scorn, even good-naturedly, looking at the Consul as though he were inviting him to join in the fun.
Johann Buddenbrook’s little deep eyes clouded over and began to show red rims around them that ran down to the cheek-bones. He had only asked for form’s sake, being aware that a postponement on the part of one creditor would not materially alter the situation. But the manner of this man’s refusal was mortifying indeed. With a motion of the hand he pushed away everything from in front of him, laid the pencil down with a jerk on the table, and said, “Then I must express myself as unwilling to concern myself any further with this affair.”
“Ah, ha!” cried Herr Kesselmeyer, shaking his hands in the air. “That’s the way to talk. The Herr Consul will settle everything out of hand—we shan’t have any long speeches. Without more ado.” Johann Buddenbrook did not even look at him.
“I cannot help you, my friend.” He turned calmly to Herr Grünlich. “Things must go on as they have begun. Pull yourself together, and God will give you strength and consolation. I must consider our interview at an end.”
Herr Kesselmeyer’s face took on a serious expression which was vastly becoming to it. But then he nodded encouragingly to Herr Grünlich. The latter sat motionless at the table, only wringing his hands so hard that the fingers cracked.
“Father—Herr Consul,” he said, with a trembling voice. “You will not—you cannot desire my ruin. Listen. It is a matter of a hundred and twenty thousand marks in all—you can save me! You are a rich man. Regard it as you like—as a final arrangement, as your daughter’s inheritance, as a loan subject to interest. I will work—you know I am keen and resourceful—”
“I have spoken my last word,” said the Consul.
“Permit me—may I ask whether you could if you would?” asked Herr Kesselmeyer, looking at him through his glasses, with his nose wrinkled up. “I suggest to the Consul that this would be a most advantageous time to display the strength of the firm of Buddenbrook.”
“You would do well, sir, to leave the good name of my house to me. I do not need to throw my money in the nearest ditch in order to show how good my credit is.”
“Dear me, no, of course not—ditch, ah, ha!—Ditch is very funny. But doesn’t the gentleman think the failure of his son-in-law places his own credit in a bad light—er—ah—?”
“I can only recommend you again to remember that my credit in the business world is entirely my own affair,” said the Consul.
Herr Grünlich looked at his banker helplessly and began afresh: “Father! I implore you again: think what you are doing. Is it a question of me alone? I—oh, I myself might be allowed to perish. But your daughter, my wife, whom I love, whom I won after such a struggle—and our child—both innocent children—are they to be brought low as well? No, Father, I will not bear it; I will kill myself. Yes, I would kill myself with this hand. Believe me—and may heaven pardon you if it will.”
Johann Buddenbrook leaned back in his arm-chair quite white, with a fast-beating heart. For the second time the emotions of this man played upon him, and their expression had the stamp of truth; again he heard, as when he told Herr Grünlich the contents of his daughter’s letter from Travemünde, the same terrible threat, and again there shuddered through him all the fanatical reverence of his generation for human feelings, which yet had always been in conflict with his own hard practical sense. But the attack lasted no longer than a moment. “A hundred thousand marks,” he repeated to himself; and then he said quietly and decisively: “Antonie is my daughter. I shall know how to protect her from unmerited suffering.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Herr Grünlich, slowly stiffening.
“That you will see,” answered the Consul. “For the present I have nothing to add.” And he got up, pushed back his chair, and turned toward the door.
Herr Grünlich sat silent, stiff, irresolute; his mouth opened and closed without a word coming out. But the sprightliness of Herr Kesselmeyer returned at this conclusive action of the Consul. Yes, it got the upper hand entirely, it passed all bounds, it became frightful. The glasses fell from his nose, which went skyward, while his little mouth, with the two triangular yellow teeth, looked as though it were splitting. He rowed with his little red hands in the air, the fuzz on his head waved up and down, his whole face, with its bristly white beard distorted and grotesque with uncontrolled hilarity, had grown the colour of cinnamon.
“Ah, ha, ha, ah, ha!” he yelled, his voice cracking. “I find that in the last—degree—funny! You ought to consider, Consul Buddenbrook, before you consign to the grave such a valuable—such a supreme specimen of a son-in-law. Anything so shrewd, so resourceful as he is, won’t be born upon God’s wide earth a second time. Aha! Four years ago—when the knife was at our throat, the rope around our neck—suddenly we made a match with Fräulein Buddenbrook, and spread the news on ’Change, even before it had actually come off! Congratulations, my dear friend; my best respects!”
“Kesselmeyer,” groaned Herr Grünlich, making spasmodic motions with his hands, as though waving off an evil spirit. He rushed into one corner of the room, where he sat down and buried his face in his hands. The ends of his whiskers lay on his shanks, and he rocked his knees up and down in his emotion.
“How did we do that?” went on Herr Kesselmeyer. “How did we actually manage to catch the little daughter and the eighty thousand marks? O-ho, ah, ha! That is easy. Even if one has no more shrewdness and resourcefulness than a tallow candle, it is easy! You show the saviour Papa nice, pretty, clean books, in which everything is put in the right way—only that they don’t quite correspond with the plain fact—for the plain fact is that three-quarters of the dowry is already debts.”
The Consul stood at the door deathly pale, the handle in his hand. Shivers ran up and down his back. He seemed to be standing in this little room lighted by the flickering candles, between a swindler and an ape gone mad with spite.
“I despise your words, sir,” he brought out with uncertain emphasis. “I despise your wild utterances the more that they concern me as well. I did not hand my daughter over light-headedly to misfortune; I informed myself as to my son-in-law’s prospects. The rest was God’s will.”
He turned—he would not hear any more—he opened the door. But Herr Kesselmeyer shrieked after him: “Aha, inquiries? Where? Of Bock? Of Goudstikker? Of Petersen? Of Massmann and Timm? They were all in it. They were all in it up to their necks. They were all uncommonly pleased to be secured by the wedding—” The Consul slammed the door behind him.