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-fashioned, 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 fashion, and a pair of gloves whose past lustre 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 deathblow. Reinhold stood embarrassed 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 circumstances, 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.”
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 newborn 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 embarrassed look and a visiting card, which he passed 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 embarrassed:
“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
