Buddenbrooks (18 page)

CHAPTER VI

HERR KESSELMEYER entered unannounced, as a friend of the house, without hat or coat. He paused, however, near the door. His looks corresponded exactly to the description Tony had given to her Mother. He was slightly thick-set as to figure, but neither fat nor lean. He wore a black, already some-what shiny coat, short tight trousers of the same material, and a white waistcoat, over which went a long thin watch-chain and two or three eye-glass cords. His clipped white beard was in sharp contrast with his red face. It covered his cheeks and left his chin and lips free. His mogith was small and mobile, with two yellowish pointed teeth in the otherwise vacant gum of his lower jaw, and he was pressing these into his upper lip, aa-he stood absently by the door with his hands in his trousers pockets and the black and white down on his head waving slightly, although there was not the least perceptible draught. Finally he drew his hands out of his pockets, bowed, re-leased his lip, and with difficulty freed one of the eye-glass cords from the confusion on his waistcoat. He lifted his pince-nez and put it with a single gesture astride his nose. Then he made the most astonishing grimaces, looked at the husband and wife, and remarked: "Ah, ha!" Housed this expression with extraordinary frequency and a surprising variety of inflections. He might say it with his head thrown back, his nose wrinkled up, mouth wide open, hands swishing about in the air, with a long-drawn-out, nasal, metallic sound, like a Chinese gong; or he might, with still funnier effect, toss it out, gently, en passant; or with any one of a thousand different shades of tone and meaning. His a was very clouded and nasal. To-day it was a hurried, lively "Ah ha!" accompanied with a jerk of the head, that seemed to arise from an unusually pleasant mood, and yet might not be trusted to be so; for the fact was, Banker Kesselmeyer never behaved more gaily than when he was dangerous. When he jumped about emitting a thousand "Ah ha's," lifting his glasses to his nose and letting them fall again, waving his arms, chattering, plainly quite beside himself with light-headedness, then you might be sure that evil was gnawing at his inwards. Herr Gr� looked at him blinking, with unconcealed mistrust. "Already--so early?" he asked. "Ah, ha!" answered Herr Kesselmeyer, and waved one of his small, red, wrinkled hands in the air, as if to say: "Pa-tience, there is a surprise coming." "I must speak with you, without any delay; I must speak with you." The words sounded irresistibly comic as he rolled each one about before giving it out, with exaggerated movements of his little toothless, mobile mouth. He rolled his r's as if his palate were greased. Herr Gr� blinked more and more suspiciously. "Come and sit down, Herr Kesselmeyer," said Tony. "I'm glad you've come. Listen. You can decide between us. Gr� and I have been disagreeing. Now tell me: ought a three-year-old child to have a governess or not?" But Herr Kesselmeyer seemed not to be attending. He had seated himself and was rubbing his stubbly beard with his forefinger, making a rasping sound, his mouth as wide open as possible, nose as wrinkled, while he stared over, his glasses with an indescribably sprightly air at the elegantly appointed breakfast-table, the silver bread-basket, the label on the wine-bottle. "Gr� says I am ruining him," Tony continued. Herr Kesselmeyer looked at her; then he looked at Herr Gr�; then he burst out into an astonishing fit of laughter. "You are ruining him?--you? You are ruining him--that's 205 BUDDENBR DDKS it, is it? Oh good gracious, heavens and earth, you don't say! That is a joke. That is a tre-men-dous, tre-men-dous joke." He let out a stream of ha ha's all run in together. Herr Gr� was plainly nervous. He squirmed on his seat. He ran his long finger down between his collar and his neck and let his golden whiskers glide through his hand. "Kesselmeyer," he said. "Control yourself, man. Are you out of your head? Stop laughing! Will you have some wine? Or a cigar? What are you laughing at?" "What am I laughing at? Yes, yes, give me a glass of wine, give me a cigar. Why am I laughing? So you think your wife is ruining you?" "She is very luxuriously inclined," Herr Gr� said ir-ritably. Tony did not contradict him. She leaned calmly back, her hands in her lap on the velvet ribbons of her frock and her pert upper lip in evidence: "Yes, I am, I know. I have it from Mamma. All the Krogers are fond of luxury." She would have admitted in the same calm way that she was frivolous, revengeful, or quick-tempered. Her strongly developed family sense was instinctively hostile to conceptions of free will and self-development; it inclined her rather to recognize and accept her own characteristics wholesale, with fatalistic indifference and toleration. She had, uncon-sciously, the feeling that any trait of hers, nn matter of what kind, was a family tradition and therefore worthy of respect. Herr Griinlirh had finished breakfast, and the fragrance of the two cigars mingled with the warm air from the stove. "Will you take another, Kesselmeyer?" said the host. "I'll pour you out another glass of wine.--You want to see me? Anything pressing? Is it important?--Too warm here, is it? We'll drive into town together afterward. It is cooler in the smoking-room." To all this Herr Kesselmeyer simply shook his hand in the air, as if to say: "This won't get us anywhere, my dear friend." At length they got up; and, while Tony remained in the dining-room to see that the servant-maid cleared away, Herr Gr� led his colleague through the "pensee-room," with his head bent, drawing his long beard reflectively through his fingers. Herr Kesselmeyer rowed into the room with his arms and disappeared behind him. Ten minutes passed. Tony had gone into the salon to give the polished nut-wood secretary and the curved table-legs her personal attention with the aid of a gay little feather duster. Then she moved slowly through the dining-room into the Irving-room with dignity and marked self-respect. The Dem-oiselle Buddenbrook had plainly not grown less important in her own eyes since becoming Madame Gr�. She held herself very erect, chin in, and looked down at the world from above. She carried in one hand her little lacquered key-basket; the other was in the pocket of her gown, whose soft folds played about her. The naive expression of her mouth betrayed that the whole of her dignity and importance were a part of a beautiful, childlike, innocent game which she was constantly playing with herself. In the "pensee-room" she busied herself with a little brass sprinkler, watering the black earth around her plants. She loved her palms, they gave so much elegance to the room. She touched carefully a young shoot on one of the thick round stems, examined the majestically unfolded fans, and cut away a yellow tip here and there with the scissors. Sud-denly she stopped. The conversation in the next room, which had for several minutes been assuming a livelier tone, became so loud that she could hear every word, though the door and the portieres were both heavy. "Don't shriek like that--control yourself, for God's sake!" she heard Herr Gr� say. His weak voice could not stand the strain, and went off in a squeak. "Take another cigar," he went on, with desperate mildness. "Yes, thanks, with the greatest pleasure," answered the 207 BUDDENBRDOKS banker, and there was a pause while he presumably helped himself. Then he said: "In short, will you or won't you: one or the other?" "Kesselmeyer,' give me an extension." "Ah, ha! No, no, my friend. There is no question of an extension. That's not the point now." "Why not? What is stirring you up to this? Be reason-able, for heaven's sake. You've waited this long." "Not a day longer, my friend. Yes, we'll say eight days, but not an hour longer. But can't we rely any longer on--?" "No names, Kesselmeyer." "No names. Good. But doesn't some one rely any longer on his estimable Herr Pa--" "No hints, either. My God, don't be a fool." "Very good; no hints, either. But have we no claim any longer on the well-known firm with whom our credit stands and falls, my friend? How much did it lose by the Bremen failure? Fifty thousand? Seventy thousand? A hundred thousand? More? The sparrows on the housetops know that it was involved, heavily involved. Yesterday--well, no names. Yesterday the well-known firm was good, and it was unconsciously protecting you against pressure. To-day its stock is flat--and B. Gr�'s stock is the flattest of the flat. Is that clear? Do you grasp it? You are the first man to notice a thing like that. How are people treating you? How do they look at you? Beck and Coudstikker are perfectly agreeable, give you the same terms as usual? And the bank?" "They will extend." "You aren't lying, are you? Oh, no! I know they gave you a jolt yesterday--a very, very stimulating jolt eh? You see? Dh, don't be embarrassed. It is to your interest, of course, to pull the wool over my eyes, so that the others will be quiex. Hey, my dear friend? Well, you'd better write to the Consul. I'll wait a week." "A part payment, Kesselmeyrr1"

BUDDENBROOK5

"Part payment, rubbish! One accepts part payment to convince oneself for the time of a debtor's ability to pay. Do I need to make experiments of that kind on you? I am perfectly well-informed about your ability to pay. Ah, ha, ah, ha! Part payment! That's a very good joke." "Moderate your voice, Kesselmeyer. Don't laugh all the time in that cursed way. My position is so serious--yes, I admit, it is serious. But I have such-and-such business in hand--everything may still come out all right. Listen, wait a minute: Give me an extension and I'll sign it for twenty per cent." "Nothing in it, nothing in it, my friend. Very funny, very amusing. Oh, yes, I'm in favour of selling at the right time. You promised me eight per cent, and I extended. You promised me twelve and sixteen per cent, and I extended, every time. Now, you might offer me forty per cent, and I shouldn't consider it--not for a moment. Since Brother West-fall in Bremen fell on his nose, everybody is for the moment freeing himself from the well-known firm and getting on a sound basis. As I say, I'm for selling at the right time. I've held your signatures as long as Johann Buddenbrook was good--in the meantime I could write up the interest on the capital and increase the per cent. But one only keeps a thing so long as it is rising or at least keeping steady. When it begins to fall, one sells--which is the same as saying I want my capital." "Kesselmeyer, you are shameless." "Ah, ha, a-ha! Shameless, am I? That's very charming, very funny. What do you want? You must apply to your father-in-law. The Credit Bank is raging--and you know you are not exactly spotless." "No, Kesselmeyer. I adjure you to hear me quietly. I'll be perfectly frank. I confess that my situation is serious. You and the Credit Bank are not the only ones--there are notes of hand--everything seems to have gone to pieces at once!" 209 "Of course--naturally. It is certainly a clean-up--a liquidation." "No, Kesselmeyer; hear me out. Do take another cigar." "This one is not half finished. Leave me alone with your cigars. Pay up." "Kesselmeyer, don't let me smash!--You are a friend of mine--you have eaten at my table." "And maybe you haven't eaten at mine?" "Yes, yes--but don't refuse me credit now, Kesselmeyer!" "Credit? It's credit, now, is it? Are you in your senses? A new loan?" "Yes, Kesselmeyer, I swear to you--A little--a trifle. I only need to make a few payments and advances here and there to get on my feet again and restore confidence. Help me and you will be doing a big business. As I said, I have a number of affairs on hand. They may still all come out right. You know how shrewd and resourceful I am." "I know what a numbskull you are! A dolt, a nincompoop, my dear friend! Will you have the goodness to tell me what your resourcefulness can accomplish at this stage? Perhaps there is a bank somewhere in the wide world that will lend you a shilling? Or another father-in-law? Ah, no; you have already played your best card. You can't play it twice.--With all due respect, my dear fellow, and my highest re-gards." "Speak lower, devil take you!" "You are a fool. Shrewd and resourceful, are you? Yes, to the other chap's advantage. You're not scrupulous, I'll say that for you, but much good it's done you! You have played tricks, and wormed capital out of people by hook or crook, just to pay me my twelve or sixteen per cent. You threw your honour overboard without getting any return. You have a conscience like a butcher's dog, and yet you are nothing but a ninny, a scapegoat. There are always such peo-ple--they are too funny for words. Why is it you are so afraid to apply to the person we mean with the whole story? Isn't it because there was crooked work four years ago? Perhaps it wasn't all quite straight--what? Are you afraid that certain things--?" "Very well, Kesselmeyer; I will write. But suppose he refuses? Suppose he lets me dawn?" "Oh--ah, ha! Then we will just have a bankruptcy, a highly amusing little bankruptcy. That doesn't bother me at all. So far as I am concerned, I have about covered my expenses with the interest you have scratched together, and I have the priority with the assets. Dh, you wait; I shan't come short. I know everything pretty well, my good friend; I have an inventory already in my pocket. Ah, ha! We shall see that no dressing-gown and no silver bread-basket gets away." "Kesselmeyer, you have sat at my table--" "Oh, be quiet with your table! In eight days I'll be back for the answer. I shall walk in to town--the fresh air will do me good. Good morning, my friend, good morning!" And Herr Kesselmeyer seemed to depart--yes, he went. She heard his odd, shuffling walk in the corridor, and imagined him rowing along with his arms.... Herr Gr� entered the "pensee-room" and saw Tony standing there with the little watering-can in her hand. She looked him in the face. "What are you looking at? Why are you staring like that?" he said to her. He showed his teeth, and made vague movements in the air with his hands, and wiggled his body from side to side. His rosy face could not become actually pale; but it was spotted red and white like a scarlet-fever patient's.

CHAPTER VII

CONSUL JDHANN BUDDENBRDDK arrived at the villa at two o'clock in the afternoon. He entered the Gr� salon in a grey travelling-cloak and embraced his daughter with pain-ful intensity. He was pale and seemed older. His small eyes were deep in their sockets, his large pointed nose stuck out between the fallen cheeks, his lips seemed to have grown thinner, and the beard under his chin and jaws half covered by his stiff choker and high neck-band,--he had lately ceased to wear the two locks running from the temples half-way down the cheeks--was as grey as the hair on his head. The Consul had hard, nerve-racking days behind him. Thomas had had a haemorrhage; the Father had learned of the misfortune in a letter from Herr van der Kellen. He had left his business in the careful hands of his clerk and hurried off to Amsterdam. He found nothing immediately dangerous about his son's illness, but an open-air cure was necessary, in the South, in Southern France; and as it for-tunately happened that a journey of convalescence had been prescribed for the young son of the head of the firm, the two young men had left for Pau as soon as Thomas was able to travel. The Consul had scarcely reached home again when he was attacked by a fresh misfortune, which had for the moment shaken his firm to its foundations and by which it had lost eighty thousand marks at one blow. How? Discounted cheques drawn on West full Brothers had come back to the firm, liquidation having begun. He had not failed to cover them. The firm had at once showed what it could do, with-out hesitation or embarrassment. But that could not prevent BUDDENBROOK5 the Consul from experiencing all the sudden coldness, the reserve, the mistrust at the banks, with "friends," and among firms abroad, which such an event, such a weakening of working capital, was sure to bring in its train. Well, he had pulled himself together, and had revirwed the whole situation; had reassured, reinforced, made head. And then, in the midst of the struggle, among telegrams, letters, and calculations, this last blow broke upon him as well: B. Gr�, his daughter's husband, was insolvent. In a long, whining, confused letter he had implored, begged, and prayed for an assistance of a hundred to a hundred and twenty thousand marks. The Consul replied curtly and non-com-mitally that he would come to Hamburg to meet Herr Griin-lich and Kesselmeyer the banker, made a brief, soothing ex-planation to his wife, and started off. Tony received him in the salon. She was fond of receiving visits in her brown silk salon, and she made no exception now; particularly as she had a very profound impression of the importance of the present occasion, without comprehending in the least what it was about. She looked blooming and yet becomingly serious, in her pale grey frock with its laces at breast and wrists, its bell-shaped sleeves and long train, and little diamond clasp at the throat. "How are you, Papa? At last you have come to see us again. How is Mamma? It there good news from Tom? Take off your things, Father dear. Will you dress? The guest-room is ready for you. Gr� is dressing." "Don't call him, my child. I will wait for him here. You know I have come for a talk with your husband--a very, very serious talk, my dear Tony. Is Herr Kesselmeyer here?" "Yes, he is in the pensee-room looking at the album." "Where is Erica?" < "Up in the nursery with Tinka. She is very well. She is bathing her doll--of course, not in real water; I mean-� she is a wax-doll, she only--" "Of course." The Consul drew a deep breath and went 213 BUDDENBR DDKS on: "Evidently you have not been informed as to--to the state of affairs with your husband." He had sat down in an arm-chair near the large table, and Tony placed herself at his feet on a little seat made of three cushions on top of one another. The finger of her right hand toyed gently with the diamond at her throat. "No, Papa," answered Tony. "I must confess I know nothing. Heavens, I am a goose!--I have no understanding at all. I heard Kesselmeyer talking lately to Criinlich--at the end it seemed to me he was just joking again--he always talks so drolly. I heard your name once or twice--" "You heard my name? In what connection?" "Oh, I know nothing of the connection, Papa. Gr� has been insufferably sulky ever since that day, I must say. Until yesterday--yesterday he was in a good mood, and asked me a dozen times if I loved him, and if I would put in a good word for him with you if he had something to ask you." "Dh!" "Yes, he told me he had written you and that you were coming here. It is good you have. Everything is so queer. Gr� had the card-table put in here. There are a lot of paper and pencils on it--for you to sit at, and hold a council together." "Listen, my dear child," said the Consul, stroking her hair. "I want to ask you something very serious. Tell me: you love your husband with your whole heart, don't you?" "Df course, Papa," said Tony with a face of child-like hypocrisy--precisely the face of the child Tony when she was asked: "You won't tease the old doll-woman again, Tony?" The Consul was silent a minute. "You love him so much," he asked again, "that you could not live without him, under any circumstances, even if by God's will your situation should alter so that he could no longer surround you with all these things?" And his hand described a quick movement over the furniture and portieres, over the gilt clock on the etagere, and finally over her own frock. "Certainly, Papa," repeated Tony, in the soothing tone she nearly always used when any one spoke seriously to her. She looked past her father out of the window, where a heavy veil of rain was silently descending. Her face had the expression children wear when some one tells them a fairy story and then tactlessly introduces a generalization about conduct and duty--a mixture of embarrassment and impatience, piety and boredom. The Consul looked at her without speaking for a minute Was he satisfied with her response? He had weighed every-thing thoroughly, at home and during the journey. It is comprehensible that Johann Buddenbr oak's first im-pulse was to refuse his son-in-law any considerable payment. But when he remembered how pressing--to use a mild word--he had been about this marriage; when he looked back into the past, and recalled the words: "Are you satisfied with me?" with which his child had taken leave of him after the wedding, he gave way to a burdensome sense of guilt against her and said to himself that the thing must be decided ac-cording to her feelings. He knew perfectly that she had not made the marriage out of love, but he was obliged to reckon with the possibility that these four years of life to-gether and the birth of the child had changed matters; that Tony now felt bound body and soul to her husband and would be driven by considerations both spiritual and worldly to shrink from a separation. In such a case, the Consul argued, he must accommodate himself to the surrender of whatever sum was necessary. Christian duty and wifely feeling did indeed demand that Tony should follow her husband into misfortune; and if she actually took this resolve, he did not feel justified in letting her be deprived of all the ease and comfort to which she had been accustomed since child-hood. He would feel himself obliged to avert the catastro-phe, and to support B. Griinliuh at any price. Yet the final 215 result of his considerations was the desire to take his daugh-ter and her child home with him and let Driinlich go his own way. God forbid that the worst should happen! In any case, the Consul invoked the pronouncement of the law that a continued inability to provide for wife and chil-dren justified a separation. But, before everything, he must find out his daughter's real feelings. "I see," he said, "my dear child, that you are actuated by good and praiseworthy motives. But--I cannot believe that you are seeing the thing as, unhappily, it really is--namely, as actual fact. I have not asked what you would do in this or that case, but what you to-day, now, will do. I do not know how much of the situation you know or suspect. It is my painful duty to tell you that your husband is obliged to call his creditors together; that he cannot carry on his business any longer. I hope you understand me." "Gr� is bankrupt?" Tony asked under her breath, half rising from the cushions and seizing the Consul's hand quickly. "Yes, my child," he said seriously. "You did not know it?" "My suspicions were not definite," she stammered. "Then Kesselmeyer was not joking?" she went on, staring before her at the brown carpet. "Oh, my God!" she suddenly ut-tered, and sank back on her seat. In that minute all that was involved in the word "bank-rupt" rose clearly before her: all the vague and fearful hints which she had heard as a child. "Bankrupt"--that was more dreadful than death, that was catastrophe, ruin, shame, disgrace, misery, despair. "He is bankrupt," she repeated. She was so cast down and shaken by the fatal word that the idea of escape, of assistance from her father, never occurred to her. He looked at her with raised eyebrows, out of his small deep-set eyes, which were tired ami sad and full of an unusual suspense. "I am asking you," he said gently, "my dear Tony, if you are ready to follow your husband into misery?" He realized at once that he had used the hard word BUDDENBR0OKS instinctively to frighten her, and he added: "He can work himself up again, of course." "Certainly, Papa," answered she. But it did not prevent her from bursting into tears. She sobbed into her batiste handkerchief, trimmed with lace and with the monogram A. G. She still wept just like a child; quite unaffectedly and with-out embarrassment. Her upper lip had the most touching expression. Her father continued to probe her with his eyes. "That is your serious feeling, my child?" he asked. He was as simple as she. "I must, mustn't I?" she sobbed. "Don't I have to--?" "Certainly not," he said. But with a guilty feeling he added: "I would not force you to it, my dear Tony. If it should be the case that your feelings did not bind you indis-solubly to your husband--" She looked at him with uncomprehending, tear-streaming eyes. "How, Papa?" The Consul twisted and turned, and found a compromise. "My dear child, you can understand how painful it would be for me to have to tell you all the hardships and suffering that would come about through the misfortune of your hus-band, the breaking-up of the business and of your house-hold. I desire to spare you these first unpleasantnesses by taking you and little Erica home with me. You would be glad of that, I think?" Tony was silent a moment, drying her tears. She carefully breathed on her handkerchief and pressed it against her eyes to heal their inflammation. Then she asked hi a firm tone, without lifting her voice: "Papa, is Gr� to blame? Is, it his folly and lack of uprightness that has brought him to this?" "Very probably," said the Consul. "That is--no, I don't know, my child. The explanation with him and the banker has not taken place yet." She seemed not to be listening. She sat crouched on her 217 three silk cushions, her elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand, and with her head bowed looked dreamily into the room. "Ah, Papa," she said softly, almost without moving her lips, "wouldn't it have been better--?" The Consul could not see her face--but it had the expres-sion it often wore those summer evenings at Travemiinde, as dhe leaned at the window of her little room. Dne arm rested nn her Father's knee, the hand hanging down limply. This very hand was expressive of a sad and tender abandonment, a sweet, pensive longing, travelling back into the past. "Better?" asked Consul Buddenbrook. "If what, my child?" He was thoroughly prepared for the confession that it would have been better had this marriage not taken place; but Tony only answered with a sigh: "Oh, nothing." She seemed rapt by her thoughts, which had borne her so far away that she had almost forgotten the "bankrupt." The Consul felt himself obliged ID utter what he would rather only have confirmed. "I think I guess your thoughts, Tony," he said, "and I don't on my side hesitate to confess that in this hour I re-gret the step that seemed to me four years ago so wise and advisable. I believe, before God, I am not responsible. I think I did my duty in trying to give you an existence suit-able to your station. Heaven has willed otherwise. You will not believe that your Father played lightly and unre-flectingly with your happiness in those days! Gr� came to us with the best recommendations, a minister's son, a Christian and a cosmopolitan man. Later I made business inquiries, and it all sounded as favourable as possible. I examined the connections. All that is still very dark; and the explanation is yet to come. But you don't blame me--?" "No, Papa--how can you say such a thing? Come, don't take it to heart, poor Papa! You look pale. Shall I give you a little cordial?" She put her arm around his neck and kissed his cheek. "Thank you, no," he said. "There, there! It is all right. Yes, I have bad days behind me. I have had much to try me. These are all trials sent from God. But that does not help my feeling a little guilty toward you, my child. Every-thing depends on the question I have already asked you. Speak openly, Tony, Have you learned to love your hus-band in these years of marriage?" Tony wept afresh; and covering her eyes with both hands, in which she held the batiste handkerchief, she sobbed out: "Oh, what are you asking me, Papa? / I have never loved him--he has always been repulsive to me./ You know that." It would be hard to say what went on in Johann Budden-brook. His eyes looked shocked and sad; but he bit his lips hard together, and great wrinkles came in his cheeks, as they did when he had brought a piece of business to a successful conclusion. He said softly: "Four years--" Tony's tears ceased suddenly. With her damp handker-chief in her hand, she sat up straight on her seat and said angrily: "Four years! Yes! Sometimes, in those four years, he sat with me in the evening and read the paper." "God gave you a child," said the Father, moved. "Yes, Papa. And I love Erica very much, although Griin-lich says I am not fond of children. I would not be parted from her, that is certain. But Gr�--no! Gr�, no. And now he is bankrupt. Ah, Papa, if you will take Erica and me home--oh, gladly." The Consul compressed his lips again. He was extremely well satisfied. But the main point had yet to be touched upon; though, by the decision Tony showed, he did not risk much by asking. "You seem not to have thought it might be possible to do something, to get help. I have already said to you that I do not feel myself altogether innocent of the situation, and--219 BUDDENBRODKS in case you should expect--hope--I might intervene, to pre-vent the
failure and cover your husband's debts, the best I could, and float his business--" He watched her keenly, and her bearing filled him, irith satisfaction. It expressed disappointment. "How much is it?" she asked. "What is that to the point, my child? A very large sum." And Consul Buddenbrook nodded several times, as though the weight of the very thought of such a sum swung his head back and forth. "I should not conceal from you," he went on, "that the firm has suffered losses already quite apart from this affair, and that the surrender of a sum like this would be a blow from which it would recover with difficulty. I do not in any way say this to--" He did not finish. Tony had sprung up, had even taken a few steps backward, and with the wet handkerchief still in her hand she cried: "Good! Enough! Never!" She looked almost heroic. The words "the firm" had struck home. It is highly probably that they had more effect than even her dislike of Herr Criinlich. "You shall not do that, Papa," she went on, quite beside herself. "Do you want to be bank-rupt too? Never, never!" At this moment the hall door opened a little uncertainly and Herr Gr� entered. Johann Buddenbrook rose, with a movement that meant: 'That's settled."