Chapter 36
A bitter smile played on Ottomar's lips.
"You have soon frittered your life away, poor b.u.t.terfly! Everything must have an end, one way or another!"
CHAPTER II.
Reinhold had vainly attempted the day before to persuade his uncle to agree, for this once at least, to the increase of pay demanded by the work-people; he would so evidently be the greater sufferer if he were prevented, by the threatened strike of the work-people, from completing his contracts within the stipulated time. Uncle Ernst was not to be moved. The work-people, on the other hand, who were quite alive to their favourable position and perhaps over-rated it, had adhered no less obstinately to their demands, so that after hours of discussion backwards and forwards, during which everybody got more and more excited, matters had come to extremities, and Reinhold, who had expected this result and had silently prepared for it, had been obliged, pistol in hand, to drive the furious and drunken mob back from his uncle's threshold. At the same moment the police had appeared, had with some difficulty seized the ring-leaders and put down the riot. But the agitation had spread like lightning through the other marble-works; everywhere there had been more or less disturbance; the men in the brick and stone yards joined the rising; since this morning all these works were at a standstill, and the yards were empty. The masters had speedily arranged a meeting, which was to take place in an hour. Uncle Ernst was just ready to start, Reinhold was with him in his room, attempting once more to persuade the obstinate man to greater mildness, or at least to take a calmer view of the state of affairs.
"It seems to me, uncle," he said, "that this is just like a mutiny at sea. If a man is not strong enough to overpower the scoundrels and does not care to lose his s.h.i.+p and its cargo, to say nothing of his own life, he must try to come to terms with them. It is not easy for a proud man, as I know from experience, but in the end it is the wisest course. The men know that the masters have undertaken large contracts, that you will lose thousands upon thousands if you stop the works and are thereby prevented from fulfilling your engagements; they know all that, and they know also that you must give in at last. I should have done so yesterday in your place, before matters had gone so far that you were forced to uphold your authority by force on your own ground.
To-day matters have changed; to-day the question is not of one solitary case, but of a general calamity, which must be decided upon general principles. And if you do not agree with this view of affairs, well, give way for once; let yourself be ruled if it must be so; do not throw the weight of your name and credit into the balance of the disputants."
Uncle Ernst laughed bitterly.
"The weight of my name, of my credit! My dear Reinhold, you forget who you are talking to! Am I Bismarck? Am I the Chancellor and President of the Council? Do all sit in breathless silence when I rise to speak? Do all tremble when I frown? Do all shrink when I raise my voice? Do all give way when I threaten to desert them? Is there an army at my back if I stamp my foot? Bah! my name is Schmidt, and there is an end of it."
"No, no, uncle!" exclaimed Reinhold, "there is not an end of it; you have only shown that we must do in small matters what he does in great ones. Even the great Bismarck knows how to trim his sails and tack when it is necessary, and does it very skilfully so far as I can understand.
We must take example even from our enemies. It sounds hard, I know, and is a bitter pill; but when you come home, as you probably will do, angry and wrathful, we will sit down to dinner, and I will help you manfully to wash down your anger and wrath in an extra bottle or two."
Uncle Ernst did not answer at once; he walked up and down the room with his head down, sunk in deep thought, his hands behind his back, occasionally stroking his grey beard, or pa.s.sing a hand through his bushy hair. At length he shook his head several times, stood still and said:
"I cannot do it; I cannot give in without giving myself up, without ceasing to be what I am. But why not? I no longer suit this world any more
"I?" exclaimed Reinhold, astonished,
"You! You are a true Schmidt, and have been so shaken and tossed about by the waves, that it must be a hard blow that you cannot stand up against. You learnt something in your youth, and since then have been out in the world, and you probably see things from a clearer point of view than we who have always remained at home and have by degrees lost our clearsightedness. You are tied to no past, to no scheme of life by which you must stand or fall, but may, on the contrary, start on an entirely fresh one, according to your own judgment and the light in which matters appear to you; and then the reason why I would choose you before all others for my successor is----"
Uncle Ernst broke off, like a man who has still got the most difficult thing to say, and can only gather strength for it by a deep breath.
"Is that you are dear to me, Reinhold, and--and--I believe that you have a little love for me, and that is more than I can say of any one else in the world."
He had walked to the window and stood there. Reinhold followed him and laid his hand on his shoulder.
"Dear uncle----"
Uncle Ernst did not move.
"Dear uncle! I thank you from my heart for your love, which you give me so freely, for how could I have deserved it? What I did yesterday I would have done for any captain under whom I had served for four and twenty hours. If indeed love deserves love, then I deserve yours, for I love and honour you as I would love and honour a father. But that I am the only one who loves you, you only say because you are out of spirits, and I hope you do not think it; and if you do think it, I know better than you."
"Indeed!" said Uncle Ernst. "You know better? You know nothing about the matter. Have you ever waited in helpless anguish and despair, tearing your hair because nature seemed to do her work too slowly? Have you ever sunk on your knees in grat.i.tude when your child's first cry smote on your ear? Have you ever nursed children on your knees, and secretly found all your happiness in their laughing eyes, and then seen how those eyes ceased to laugh at you, how they looked shyly past you and turned away, eyes and hearts both? To know such things a man must have experienced them."
"At the worst you can only be speaking of Philip," said Reinhold, "and even there you take too gloomy a view; but Ferdinanda! And even if all is not as it should be, is it not partly your own fault, my dear uncle?
A girl's heart needs suns.h.i.+ne, constant suns.h.i.+ne! During these last few days I have never once heard you speak so kindly to her as you have just done to me."
"Because you understand me," exclaimed Uncle Ernst. "Ferdinanda does not understand me. I do not expect that she or any other woman should.
They are not sent into the world for that; they are here to cook and to knit, like Rike, or if they cannot all cook and knit, to spend their time in playing the piano, playing at sculpture, and so on. I consider it one of the princ.i.p.al causes of the feebleness and worthlessness of the present day that women are allowed so much liberty, and can interfere in so many things that are quite beyond their province.
Besides, if you think so much of the girl--and I allow she is worth rather more than most of the chatterboxes--marry her! You would then at once have a right to take the business off my hands."
Was this one of his uncle's grim jokes, or was it earnest? Reinhold could not tell. Happily he was spared the necessity of answering by a knock at the door.
It was Cilli's father, old Kreisel, who at Herr Schmidt's "Come in!"
stepped into the room.
"What is it, Kreisel?" asked Uncle Ernst "But, my good man, what an extraordinary get up! Are you going to a funeral?"
The old man's attire seemed to justify Uncle Ernst's question. His little bald head only just appeared above the stiff collar of his old-fas.h.i.+oned, long-tailed coat, while his boots, on the contrary, at the end of the short shabby black trousers, had full liberty. He carried in his hands a tall chimney-pot hat, with a very narrow brim, of the most antiquated fas.h.i.+on, and a pair of gloves whose past l.u.s.tre had faded with time as the colour had faded out of his shrunken face, the careworn, wasted look of which was only too well suited to his attire.
"In truth I am going to a funeral," he answered with his low, tremulous voice.
"Well then, be off!" said Uncle Ernst.
"Whose is it?"
"My own."
Uncle Ernst stared. "Are you mad, old friend?"
"I think not," answered Kreisel; "but I will speak to you at a more convenient time."
"To your own funeral?" repeated Uncle Ernst. "I am not in the humour for jokes. Wait a bit, Reinhold! And now out with it, Kreisel! What is the matter? What do you want?"
"My discharge!" said the old man, taking a white handkerchief from his coat pocket, and wiping his bald head, on which great drops of perspiration were standing. "And I may well call that my funeral."
"Well, go and be buried then!" thundered Uncle Ernst.
The old man shrank together, as if he had really received his death-blow. Reinhold stood embarra.s.sed and troubled. Uncle Ernst paced the room with hasty steps, then stopped and turned sharply towards the little man and growled down upon him from his superior height:
"And this is the way you treat me! Fourteen years have we worked together in joy and in sorrow; you have never heard a hasty word from my lips that I have not afterwards asked your pardon for, because you with your weak nerves cannot stand anything of the kind, and I would as soon do anything to hurt you as to your poor Cilli. And if I have not done enough for you, it is not my fault--I have of my own accord doubled your salary, and would have tripled it if you had asked me: but you never said a word, and I have always had to press it on you; and now, when--the devil may understand it! I cannot!"
"And you are not likely to understand, Herr Schmidt, if you will not allow me to tell you my reasons," answered the clerk, turning his hat round and round despairingly.
"Well then, tell me in--in my nephew's presence; I have no secrets from him."
"It is not exactly a business secret," said the clerk; "it is my secret, which has long been burning into my soul, and it will be comparatively easy to tell it in the presence of the Captain, who has always been so kind to me and my daughter. I must leave you, Herr Schmidt, before you send me away, as you sent away those thirty men on Thursday; I also----"
He held his hat steady now, and his voice no longer trembled; and he fixed his small, twinkling eyes firmly on Uncle Ernst.
"I also am a Socialist!"
The determination was doubtless an heroic one for the old man, and the situation in which he found himself was tragical; and yet Reinhold almost laughed out loud, when Uncle Ernst, instead of storming and thundering, as was his wont, only opened his eyes wide and said in an unusually quiet, almost gentle voice: "Are you not also a Communist?"
"I consider Communism to be, under certain circ.u.mstances, allowable,"
answered the old gentleman, dropping his eyes again, and in a scarcely audible voice.
"Then go home," said Uncle Ernst, "and take an hour's sleep to calm your excitement, and when you awake again, think that it is all a dream; and now not a word more, or I shall be really angry."