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 candle-light, 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 Westfall 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.”