Hugo Weinschenk would answer that things were going very well, very well indeed, they could not go otherwise; and then he would blithely change the subject. He was much more sprightly than he used to be; there was a certain lack of restraint in his roving eye, and he would ask ever so many times about Gerda Buddenbrook’s fiddle without getting any reply. He talked freely and gaily—only it was a pity his flow of spirits prevented him from guarding his tongue; for he now and then told anecdotes which were not at all suited to the company. One, in particular, was about a wet-nurse who prejudiced the health of her charge by the fact that she suffered from flatulence. Too late, or not at all, he remarked that his wife was flushing rosy red, that Thomas, the Frau Consul and Gerda were sitting like statues, and the Misses Buddenbrook exchanging glances that were fairly boring holes in each other. Even Riekchen Severin was looking insulted at the bottom of the table, and old Consul Kröger was the single one of the company who gave even a subdued snort.
What was the trouble with Director Weinschenk? This industrious, solid citizen with the rough exterior and no social graces, who devoted himself with an obstinate sense of duty to his work alone—this man was supposed to have been guilty, not once but repeatedly, of a serious fault: he was accused of, he had been indicted for, performing a business manœuvre which was not only questionable, but directly dishonest and criminal. There would be a trial, the outcome of which was not easy to guess. What was he accused of? It was this: certain fires of considerable extent had taken place in different localities, which would have cost his company large sums of money. Director Weinschenk was accused of having received private information of such accidents through his agents, and then, in wrongful possession of this information, of having transferred the back insurance to another firm, thus saving his own the loss. The matter was now in the hands of the State Attorney, Dr. Moritz Hagenström.
“Thomas,” said the Frau Consul in private to her son, “please explain it to me. I do not understand. What do you make of the affair?”
“Why, my dear Mother,” he answered, “what is there to say? It does not look as though things were quite as they should be—unfortunately. It seems unlikely to me that Weinschenk is as guilty as people think. In the modern style of doing business, there is a thing they call usance. And usance—well, imagine a sort of manœuvre, not exactly open and above-board, something that looks dishonest to the man in the street, yet perhaps quite customary and taken for granted in the business world: that is usance. The boundary line between usance and actual dishonesty is extremely hard to draw. Well—if Weinschenk has done anything he shouldn’t, he has probably done no more than a good many of his colleagues who will not get caught. But—I don’t see much chance of his being cleared. Perhaps in a larger city he might be, but here everything depends on cliques and personal motives. He should have borne that in mind in selecting his lawyer. It is true that we have no really eminent lawyer in the whole town, nobody with superior oratorical talent, who knows all the ropes and is versed in dubious transactions. All our jurists hang together; they have family connections, in many cases; they eat together; they work together, and they are accustomed to considering each other. In my opinion, it would have been clever to take a town lawyer. But what did Weinschenk do? He thought it necessary—and this in itself makes his innocence look doubtful—to get a lawyer from Berlin, a Dr. Breslauer, who is a regular rake, an accomplished orator and up to all the tricks of the trade. He has the reputation of having got so-and-so many dishonest bankrupts off scot-free. He will conduct this affair with the same cleverness—for a consideration. But will it do any good? I can see already that our town lawyers will band together to fight him tooth and nail, and that Dr. Hagenström’s hearers will already be prepossessed in his favour. As for the witnesses: well, Weinschenk’s own staff won’t be any too friendly to him, I’m afraid. What we indulgently call his rough exterior—he would call it that, himself, too—has not made him many friends. In short, Mother, I am looking forward to trouble. It will be a pity for Erica, if it turns out badly; but I feel most for Tony. You see, she is quite right in saying that Hagenström is glad of the chance. The thing concerns all of us, and the disgrace will fall on us too; for Weinschenk belongs to the family and eats at our table. As far as I am concerned, I can manage. I know what I have to do: in public, I shall act as if I had nothing whatever to do with the affair. I will not go to the trial—although I am sorry not to, for Breslauer is sure to be interesting. And in general I must behave with complete indifference, to protect myself from the imputation of wanting to use my influence. But Tony? I don’t like to think what a sad business a conviction will be for her. She protests vehemently against envious intrigues and calumniators and all that; but what really moves her is her anxiety lest, after all her other troubles, she may see her daughter’s honourable position lost as well. It is the last blow. She will protest her belief in Weinschenk’s innocence the more loudly the more she is forced to doubt it. Well, he may be innocent, after all. We can only wait and see, Mother, and be very tactful with him and Tony and Erica. But I’m afraid—”
It was under these circumstances that the Christmas feast drew near, to which little Hanno was counting the days, with a beating heart and the help of a calendar manufactured by Ida Jungmann, with a Christmas tree on the last leaf.
The signs of festivity increased. Ever since the first Sunday in Advent a great gaily coloured picture of a certain Ruprecht had been hanging on the wall in grandmama’s dining-room. And one morning Hanno found his covers and the rug beside his bed sprinkled with gold tinsel. A few days later, as Papa was lying with his newspaper on the living-room sofa, and Hanno was reading “The Witch of Endor” out of Gerock’s “Palm Leaves,” an “old man” was announced. This had happened every year since Hanno was a baby—and yet was always a surprise. They asked him in, this “old man,” and he came shuffling along in a big coat with the fur side out, sprinkled with bits of cotton-wool and tinsel. He wore a fur cap, and his face had black smudges on it, and his beard was long and white. The beard and the big, bushy eyebrows were also sprinkled with tinsel. He explained—as he did every year—in a harsh voice, that this sack (on his left shoulder) was for good children, who said their prayers (it contained apples and gilded nuts); but that this sack (on his right shoulder) was for naughty children. The “old man” was, of course, Ruprecht; perhaps not actually the real Ruprecht—it might even be Wenzel the barber, dressed up in Papa’s coat turned fur side out—but it was as much Ruprecht as possible. Hanno, greatly impressed, said Our Father for him, as he had last year—both times interrupting himself now and again with a little nervous sob—and was permitted to put his hand into the sack for good children, which the “old man” forgot to take away.
The holidays came, and there was not much trouble over the report, which had to be presented for Papa to read, even at Christmas-time. The great dining-room was closed and mysterious, and there were marzipan and gingerbread to eat—and in the streets, Christmas had already come. Snow fell, the weather was frosty, and on the sharp clear air were borne the notes of the barrel-organ, for the Italians, with their velvet jackets and their black moustaches, had arrived for the Christmas feast. The shop-windows were gay with toys and goodies; the booths for the Christmas fair had been erected in the market-place; and wherever you went you breathed in the fresh, spicy odour of the Christmas trees set out for sale.
The evening of the twenty-third came at last, and with it the present-giving in the house in Fishers’ Lane. This was attended by the family only—it was a sort of dress rehearsal for the Christmas Eve party given by the Frau Consul in Meng Street. She clung to the old customs, and reserved the twenty-fourth for a celebration to which the whole family group was bidden; which, accordingly, in the late afternoon, assembled in the landscape-room.
The old lady, flushed of cheek, and with feverish eyes, arrayed in a heavy black-and-grey striped silk that gave out a faint scent of patchouli, received her guests as they entered, and embraced them silently, her gold bracelets tinkling. She was strangely excited this evening— “Why, Mother, you’re fairly trembling,” the Senator said when he came in with Gerda and Hanno. “Everything will go off very easily.” But she only whispered, kissing all three of them, “For Jesus Christ’s sake—and my blessed Jean’s.”
Indeed, the whole consecrated programme instituted by the deceased Consul had to be carried out to the smallest detail; and the poor lady fluttered about, driven by her sense of responsibility for the fitting accomplishment of the evening’s performance, which must be pervaded with a deep and fervent joy. She went restlessly back and forth, from the pillared hall where the choir-boys from St. Mary’s were already assembled, to the dining-room, where Riekchen Severin was putting the finishing touches to the tree and the table-full of presents, to the corridor full of shrinking old people—the “poor” who were to share in the presents—and back into the landscape-room, where she rebuked every unnecessary word or sound with one of her mild sidelong glances. It was so still that the sound of a distant hand-organ, faint and clear like a toy music-box, came across to them through the snowy streets. Some twenty persons or more were sitting or standing about in the room; yet it was stiller than a church—so still that, as the Senator cautiously whispered to Uncle Justus, it reminded one more of a funeral!