Chapter 37
The old man did not venture to answer; he bowed himself out of the door, with a glance at Reinhold that seemed to say: "You are witness: I have done my duty."
Reinhold seized his uncle's hand. "Thank you!"
"What for? for not taking the poor old fool at his word? Pooh! he understands as much about such matters as a new-born baby, and has picked it all up out of his books, over which he spends half the night because he cannot sleep, and his Cilli, good little thing, keeps him company. That sort of Socialism will not do much harm.--Well!"
Grollmann, the old servant, had entered with an embarra.s.sed look and a visiting card, which he pa.s.sed from one hand to the other as if it were a bit of red-hot iron. And Uncle Ernst, as soon as he had glanced at the card, threw it on to the table as if it had burnt him. "Are you mad?"
"The young gentleman was so urgent," said Grollmann.
"I am not at home to him--once for all."
"It would only be for a few minutes; the Captain had spoken about him already."
"What does this mean, Reinhold?"
Reinhold had read the name on the card: "Philip did beg me," he answered, "the first time I met him, and yesterday again when I called upon him----"
"You called upon him?"
"I thought it my duty--and he begged me to ask your consent to an interview; I----"
He did not like to continue before the servant, well as the old factotum must know all the family affairs; Uncle Ernst also seemed embarra.s.sed:
"I must go to the meeting," he said.
"You have still a quarter of an hour, uncle," said Reinhold.
"It will only be for a few minutes," repeated Grollmann.
Uncle Ernst turned an angry glance from one to the other, as if he wished to make them responsible beforehand for the consequences. "He may come in!"
"Do you wish me to stay, uncle?"
"You had better leave us alone."
Reinhold was not of the same opinion; he knew too well Uncle Ernst's expression not to feel sure that a storm was brewing. But his wish must be obeyed.
He met Philip in the doorway. Philip was quite distressed to disturb Reinhold; doubtless he and his father had important business together; he could come another time.
"I do not know that I shall be at home to you another time," growled Uncle Ernst.
Reinhold pretended not to hear these unkind words, and excusing himself, hurried away.
The door
"What do you want of me here!" asked Uncle Ernst, as if he were speaking to a third person crouching on the floor a few paces to the right of Philip.
"I come on business," answered Philip, as if the person he addressed were floating in the air a few feet to the right of his father.
"I decline to transact any business with you."
"But perhaps not with the directors of the Berlin and Sundin Railway Company?"
"I decline all business with the Berlin and Sundin Railway Company."
"You are standing in your own light. The business would be highly advantageous to you. We have got in our pockets a concession for the island railroad which is the continuation of our own railroad. Our station must be added to. When I had the pleasure of working with you, we bought together the land on which the station stands----"
"Upon your share," allow me to remark.
"Upon my share because you would not part with yours----"
"I had advanced you the money for the purchase of yours; so far as I know you had none then."
"I am the more indebted to you; you laid thereby the foundation of my present prosperity; for, recognising and profiting by the opportunity, I sold a portion to the company----"
"Which you had no right to sell."
"I had already repaid you your money, to the last farthing, with the proper interest."
"And had only forgotten the small circ.u.mstance that I gave you the money for the sole purpose of erecting--in partners.h.i.+p with me--cheap dwellings for workmen on that ground. It is true there was no written agreement."
"Fortunately for me, and I should say for you too! After what happened yesterday, you have probably lost all desire to improve the condition of these heroes of strikes and riots, as you have hitherto done to your own cost. But you can now repay yourself what you have spent. Your colony of work-people has, one way or another, never thriven, and is now at its last gasp. Put an end to it once for all. Quarter-day is at hand; we do not want the land before the new year; some of the houses will be empty now, particularly if you put some pressure on the people, and we will pay as if your cottages were so many four-storied houses."
"Where will you get the money from, if I may venture to ask?"
"Where from? Where we have always got it."
"Where you have always got it?" returned Uncle Ernst. He turned for the first time a stern, fixed look upon his son. "That is to say, out of the pockets of the public, whose credulity you have, in the most shameless manner, deceived and betrayed with false and lying prospectuses; whose anxious hopes you feed with sham dividends, which they must pay themselves; whose loud complaints you boldly stifle in your so-called general meetings, till at length it occurs to the legal authorities that might is not always right. I do not care to have anything to do with the legal authorities--and my carriage is at the door."
"So is mine," said Philip, turning on his heel and leaving the room.
Uncle Ernst went to a side-table and poured out a large gla.s.s of wine--the bottle knocked against the gla.s.s; he had some difficulty in pouring out the wine--and drank it down at one gulp.
He stood there with an angry cloud on his brow, one hand leaning on the table, in a kind of stupor.
"I did not wish it," he murmured; "I wished to keep calm. When he came in he reminded me of his mother--a vacant face too; she never understood me; but he is only a caricature of her--the vacancy supplemented by vice! And then his voice--her voice also--her thin voice when she inflicted upon me her commonplace wisdom--only it is enlivened by insolence--wretched, insolent boy!"
He drank down a second gla.s.s. The cloud on his brow had only grown darker.
END OF VOL. I.