Kitabı oku: «That Boy Of Norcott's», sayfa 8

CHAPTER XV. A TERRIBLE SHOCK

Herb Heinfetter was a bachelor, and lived in a very modest fashion over his banking-house; and as he was employed from morning to night, I saw next to nothing of him. Eccles, he said, had been called away, and though I eagerly asked where, by whom, and for how long, I got no other answer than “He is called away,” in very German English, and with a stolidity of look fully as Teutonic.

The banker was not talkative: he smoked all the evening, and drank beer, and except an occasional monosyllabic comment on its excellence, said little.

“Ach, ja!” he would say, looking at me fixedly, as though assenting to some not exactly satisfactory conclusion his mind had come to about me, – “ach, ja!” And I would have given a good deal at the time to know to what peculiar feature of my fortune or my fate this half-compassionate exclamation extended.

“Is Eccles never coming back?” cried I, one day, as the post came in, and no tidings of him appeared; “is he never coming at all?”

“Never, no more.”

“Not coming back?” cried I.

“No; not come back no more.”

“Then what am I staying here for? Why do I wait for him?”

“Because you have no money to go elsewhere,” said he; and for once he gave way to something he thought was a laugh.

“I don’t understand you, Herr Heinfetter,” said I; “our letter of credit, Mr. Eccles told me, was on your house here. Is it exhausted, and must I wait for a remittance?”

“It is exhaust; Mr. Eccles exhaust it.”

“So that I must write for money; is that so?”

“You may write and write, mien lieber, but it won’t come.”

Herr Heinfetter drained his tall glass, and, leaning his arms on the table, said: “I will tell you in German, you know it well enough.” And forthwith he began a story, which lost nothing of the pain and misery it caused me by the unsympathizing tone and stolid look of the narrator. For my reader’s sake, as for my own, I will condense it into the fewest words I can, and omit all that Herr Heinfetter inserted either as comment or censure. My father had eloped with Madame Cleremont! They had fled to Inn-spruck, from which my father returned to the neighborhood of Belgium, to offer Cleremont a meeting. Cleremont, however, possessed in his hands a reparation he liked better, – my father’s check-book, with a number of signed but unfilled checks. These he at once filled up to the last shilling of his credit, and drew out the money, so that my father’s first draft on London was returned dishonored. The villa and all its splendid contents were sequestrated, and an action for divorce, with ten thousand pounds laid as damages, already commenced. Of three thousand francs, which our letter assured us at Zurich, Eccles had drawn two thousand: he would have taken all, but Heinfetter, who prudently foresaw I must be got rid of some day, retained one thousand to pay my way. Eccles had gone, promising to return when he had saved his own effects, or what he called his own, from the wreck; but a few lines had come from him to say the smash was complete, the “huissiers” in possession, seals on everything, and “not even the horses watered without a gendarme present in full uniform.”

“Tell Digby, if we travel together again, he ‘ll not have to complain of my puffing him off for a man of fortune; and, above all, advise him to avoid Brussels in his journey-ings. He ‘ll find his father’s creditors, I ‘m afraid, far more attached to him than Mademoiselle Pauline.”

His letter wound up with a complaint over his own blighted prospects, for, of course, his chance of the presentation was now next to hopeless, and he did not know what line of life he might be driven to.

And now, shall I own that, ruined and deserted as I was, overwhelmed with sorrow and shame, there was no part of all the misery I felt more bitterly than the fate of her who had been so kindly affectionate to me, – who had nursed me so tenderly in sickness, and been the charming companion of my happiest hours? At first it seemed incredible. My father’s manner to her had ever been coldness itself, and I could only lead myself to believe the story by imagining how the continued cruelty of Cleremont had actually driven the unhappy woman to entreat protection against his barbarity. It was as well I should think so, and it served to soften the grief and assuage the intensity of the sorrow the event caused me. I cried over it two entire days and part of a third; and so engrossed was I with this affliction that not a thought of myself, or of my own destitution, ever crossed me.

“Do you know where my father is?” asked I of the banker.

“Yes,” said he, dryly.

“May I have his address? I wish to write to him.”

“This is what he send for message,” said he, producing a telegram, the address of which he had carefully torn off. “It is of you he speak: ‘Do what you like with him except bother me. Let him have whatever money is in your hands to my credit, and let him understand he has no more to expect from Roger Norcott.’”

“May I keep this paper, sir?” asked I, in a humble tone.

“I see no reason against it. Yes,” muttered he. “As to the moneys, Eccles have drawn eighty pound; there is forty remain to you.”

I sat down and covered my face with my hands. It was a habit with me when I wanted to apply myself fully to thought; but Herr Heinfetter suspected that I had given way to grief, and began to cheer me up. I at once undeceived him, and said, “No, I was not crying, sir; I was only thinking what I had best do. If you allow me, I will go up to my room, and think it over by myself. I shall be calmer, even if I hit on nothing profitable.”

I passed twelve hours alone, occasionally dropping off to sleep out of sheer weariness, for my brain worked hard, travelling over a wide space, and taking in every contingency and every accident I could think of. I might go back and seek out my mother; but to what end, if I should only become a dependant on her? No; far better that I should try and obtain some means of earning a livelihood, ever so humble, abroad, than spread the disgrace of my family at home. Perhaps Herr Heinfetter might accept my services in some shape; I could be anything but a servant.

When I told him I wished to earn my bread, he looked doubtingly at me in silence, shaking his head, and muttering, “Nein, niemals, nein,” in every cadence of despair.

“Could you not try me, sir?” pleaded I, earnestly; but his head moved sadly in refusal.

“I will think of it,” he said at last, and he left me.

He was as good as his word; he thought of it for two whole days, and then said that he had a correspondent on the shore of the Adriatic, in a little-visited town, where no news of my father’s history was like to reach, and that he would write to him to take me into his counting-house in some capacity: a clerk, or possibly a messenger, till I should prove myself worthy of being advanced to the desk. It would be hard work, however, he said; Herr Oppovich was a Slavic, and they were people who gave themselves few indulgences, and their dependants still fewer.

He went on to tell me that the house of Hodnig and Oppovich had been a wealthy firm formerly, but that Hodnig had over-speculated, and died of a broken heart; that now, after years of patient toil and thrift, Oppovich had restored the credit of the house, and was in good repute in the world of trade. Some time back he had written to Heinfetter to send him a young fellow who knew languages and was willing to work.

“That’s all,” he said; “shall I venture to tell him that I recommend you for these?”

“Let me have a trial,” said I, gravely.

“I will write your letter to-night, then, and you shall set out to-morrow for Vienna; thence you’ll take the rail to Trieste, and by sea you ‘ll reach Fiume, where Herr Oppovich lives.”

I thanked him heartily, and went to my room.

On the morning that followed began my new life. I was no longer to be the pampered and spoiled child of fortune, surrounded with every appliance of luxury, and waited on by obsequious servants. I was now to travel modestly, to fare humbly, and to ponder over the smallest outlay, lest it should limit me in some other quarter of greater need. But of all the changes in my condition, none struck me so painfully at first as the loss of consideration from strangers that immediately followed my fallen state. People who had no concern with my well-to-do condition, who could take no possible interest in my prosperity, had been courteous to me hitherto, simply because I was prosperous, and were now become something almost the reverse for no other reason, that I could see, than that I was poor.

Where before I had met willingness to make my acquaintance, and an almost cordial acceptance, I was now to find distance and reserve. Above all, I discovered that there was a general distrust of the poor man, as though he were one more especially exposed to rash influences, and more likely to yield to them.

I got some sharp lessons in these things the first few days of my journey, but I dropped down at last into the third-class train, and found myself at ease. My fellow-travellers were not very polished or very cultivated, but in one respect their good breeding had the superiority over that of finer folk. They never questioned my right to be saving, nor seemed to think the worse of me for being poor.

Herr Heinfetter had counselled me to stay a few days at Vienna, and provide myself with clothes more suitable to my new condition than those I was wearing.

“If old Ignaz Oppovich saw a silk-lined coat, he ‘d soon send you about your business,” said he; “and as to that fine watch-chain and its gay trinkets, you have only to appear with it once to get your dismissal.”

It was not easy, with my little experience of life, to see how these things should enter into an estimate of me, or why Herr Ignaz should concern him with other attributes of mine than such as touched my clerkship; but as I was entering on a world where all was new, where not only the people, but their prejudices and their likings, were all strange to me, I resolved to approach them in an honest spirit, and with a desire to conform to them as well as I was able.

Lest the name Norcott appearing in the newspapers in my father’s case should connect me with his story, Hein-fetter advised me to call myself after my mother’s family, which sounded, besides, less highly born; and I had my passport made out in the name of Digby Owen.

“Mind, lad,” said the banker, as he parted with me, “give yourself no airs with Ignaz Oppovich; do not turn up your nose at his homely fare, or handle his coarse napkin as if it hurt your skin, as I have seen you do here. From his door to destitution there is only a step, and bethink yourself twice before you take it. I have done all I mean to do by you, more than I shall ever be paid for. And now, goodbye.”

This sort of language grated very harshly on my ears at first; but I had resolved to bear my lot courageously, and conform, where I could, to the tone of those I had come down to.

I thanked him, then, respectfully and calmly, for his hospitality to me, and went my way.

CHAPTER XVI. FIUME

“I saw a young fellow, so like that boy of Norcott’s in a third-class carriage,” I overheard a traveller say to his companion, as we stopped to sup at Gratz.

“He ‘ll have scarcely come to that, I fancy,” said the other, “though Norcott must have run through nearly everything by this time.”

It was about the last time I was to hear myself called in this fashion. They who were to know me thenceforward were to know me by another name, and in a rank that had no traditions; and I own I accepted this humble fortune with a more contented spirit and with less chagrin than it cost me to hear myself spoken of in this half-contemptuous fashion.

I was now very plainly, simply dressed. I made no display of studs or watch-chain; I even gave up the ring I used to wear, and took care that my gloves – in which I once was almost puppyish – should be the commonest and the cheapest.

If there was something that at moments fell very heavily on my heart in the utter destitution of my lot, there was, on the other hand, what nerved my heart and stimulated me in the thought that there was some heroism in what I was doing. I was, so to say, about to seek my fortune; and what to a young mind could be more full of interest and anticipation than such a thought? To be entirely self-dependent; to be thrown into situations of difficulty, with nothing but one’s own resources to rely on; to be obliged to trust to one’s head for counsel, and one’s heart for courage; to see oneself, as it were, alone against the world, – is intensely exciting.

In the days of romance there were personal perils to confront, and appalling dangers to be surmounted; but now it was a game of life, to be played, not merely with a stout heart and a ready hand, but with a cool head and a steady eye. Young as I was, I had seen a great deal. In that strange comedy of which my father’s guests were the performers, there was great insight into character to be gained, and a marvellous knowledge of that skill by which they who live by their wits cultivate these same wits to live.

If I was not totally corrupted by the habits and ways of that life, I owe it wholly to those teachings of my dear mother which, through all the turmoil and confusion of this ill-regulated existence, still held a place in my heart, and led me again and again to ask myself how she would think of this, or what judgment she would pass on that; and even in this remnant of a conscience there was some safety. I tried to persuade myself that it was well for me that all this was now over, and that an honest existence was now about to open to me, – an existence in which my good mother’s lessons would avail me more, stimulate me to the right and save me from the wrong, and give to the humblest cares of daily labor a halo that had never shone on my life of splendor.

It was late at night when I reached Trieste, and I left it at daybreak. The small steamer in which I had taken my passage followed the coast line, calling at even the most insignificant little towns and villages, and winding its track through that myriad of islands which lie scattered along this strange shore. The quiet, old-world look of these quaint towns, the simple articles they dealt in, the strange dress, and the stranger sounds of the language of these people, all told me into what a new life I had just set foot, and how essential it was to leave all my former habits behind me as I entered here.

The sun had just gone below the sea, as we rounded the great promontory of the north and entered the bay of Fiume. Scarcely had we passed in than the channel seemed to close behind us, and we were moving along over what looked like a magnificent lake bounded on every side by lofty mountains, – for the islands of the bay are so placed that they conceal the openings to the Adriatic. If the base of the great mountains was steeped in a blue, deep and mellow as the sea itself, their summits glowed in the carbuncle tints of the setting sun, and over these again long lines of cloud, golden and azure streaks marked the sky, almost on fire, as it were, with the last parting salute of the glorious orb that was setting. It was not merely that I had never seen, but I could not have imagined such beauty of landscape, and as we swept quietly along nearer the shore, and I could mark the villas shrouded in the deep woods of chestnut and oak, and saw the olive and the cactus, with the orange and the oleander, bending their leafy branches over the blue water, I thought to myself, would not a life there be nearer Paradise than anything wealth and fortune could buy elsewhere?

“There, yonder,” said the captain, pointing to the ornamented chimneys of a house surrounded by a deep oak-wood, and the terrace of which overhung the sea, “that’s the villa of old Ignaz Oppovich. They say the Emperor tempted him with half a million of florins to sell it, but, miser as he was and is, the old fellow refused it.”

“Is that Oppovich of the firm of Hodnig and Oppovich?” asked I.

“Yes; the house is all Oppovich’s now, and half Fiume too, I believe.”

“There are worse fellows than old Ignaz,” said another, gravely. “I wonder what would become of the hospital, or the poor-house, or the asylum for the orphans here, but for him.”

“He ‘s a Jew,” said another, spitting out with contempt.

“A Jew that could teach many a Christian the virtues of his own faith,” cried the former. “A Jew that never refused an alms to the poor, no matter of what belief, and that never spoke ill of his neighbor.”

“I never heard as much good of him before, and I have been a member of the town council with him these thirty years.”

The other touched his hat respectfully in recognition of the speaker’s rank, and said no more.

I took my little portmanteau in my hand as we landed, and made for a small hotel which faced the sea. I had determined not to present myself to the Herr Oppovich till morning, and to take that evening to see the town and its-neighborhood.

As I strolled about, gazing with a stranger’s curiosity at all that was new and odd to me in this quiet spot, I felt coming over me that deep depression which almost invariably falls upon him who, alone and friendless, makes first acquaintance with the scene wherein he is to live. How hard it is for him to believe that the objects he sees can ever become of interest to him; how impossible it seems that he will live to look on this as home; that he will walk that narrow street as a familiar spot; giving back the kindly greetings that he gets, and feeling that strange, mysterious sense of brotherhood that grows out of daily intercourse with the same people!

I was curious to see where the Herr Oppovich lived, and found the place after some search. The public garden of the town, a prettily planted spot, lies between two mountain streams, flanked by tall mountains, and is rather shunned by the inhabitants from its suspicion of damp. Through this deserted spot – for I saw not one being as I went – I passed on to a dark copse at the extreme end, and beyond which a small wooden bridge led over to a garden wildly overgrown with evergreens and shrubs, and so neglected that it was not easy at first to select the right path amongst the many that led through the tangled brushwood. Following one of these, I came out on a little lawn in front of a long low house of two stories. The roof was high-pitched, and the windows narrow and defended by strong iron shutters, which lay open on the outside wall, displaying many a bolt and bar, indicative of strength and resistance. No smoke issued from a chimney, not a sound broke the stillness, nor was there a trace of any living thing around, – desolation like it I had never seen. At last, a mean, half-starved dog crept coweringly across the lawn, and, drawing nigh the door, stood and whined plaintively. After a brief pause the door opened, the animal stole in; the door then closed with a bang, and all was still as before. I turned back towards the town with a heavy heart; a gloomy dread of those I was to be associated with on the morrow was over me, and I went to the inn and locked myself into my room, and fell upon my bed with a sense of desolation that found vent at last in a torrent of tears.

As I look back on the night that followed, it seems to me one of the saddest passages of my life. If I fell asleep, it was to dream of the past, with all its exciting pleasures and delights, and then, awaking suddenly, I found myself in this wretched, poverty-stricken room, where every object spoke of misery, and recalled me to the thought of a condition as ignoble and as lowly.

I remember well how I longed for day-dawn, that I might get up and wander along the shore, and taste the fresh breeze, and hear the plash of the sea, and seek in that greater, wider, and more beautiful world of nature a peace that my own despairing thoughts would not suffer me to enjoy. And, at the first gleam of light, I did steal down, and issue forth, to walk for hours along the bay in a sort of enchantment from the beauty of the scene, that filled me at last with a sense of almost happiness. I thought of Pauline, too, and wondered would she partake of the delight this lovely spot imparted to me? Would she see these leafy woods, that bold mountain, that crystal sea, with its glittering sands many a fathom deep, as I saw them? And if so, what a stimulus to labor and grow rich was in the thought.

In pleasant reveries, that dashed the future with much that had delighted me in the past, the hours rolled on till it was time to present myself at Herr Oppovich’s. Armed with my letter of introduction, I soon found myself at the door of a large warehouse, over which his name stood in big letters. A narrow wooden stair ascended steeply from the entrance to a long low room, in which fully twenty clerks were busily engaged at their desks. At the end of this, in a smaller room, I was told Herr Ignaz – for he was always so called – held his private office.

Before I was well conscious of it, I was standing in this room before a short, thick-set old man, with heavy eyebrows and beard, and whose long coat of coarse cloth reached to his feet.

He sat and examined me as he read the note, pausing at times in the reading as if to compare me with the indications before him.

“Digby Owen, – is that the name?” asked he.

“Yes, sir.”

“Native of Ireland, and never before employed in commercial pursuits?”

I nodded to this interrogatory.

“Ikam not in love with Ireland, nor do I feel a great liking for ignorance, Herr Owen,” said he, slowly; and there was a deep impressiveness in his tone, though the words came with the thick accentuation of the Jew. “My old friend and correspondent should have remembered these prejudices of mine. Herr Jacob Heinfetter should not have sent you here.”

I knew not what reply to make to this, and was silent

“He should not have sent you here;” and he repeated the words with increased solemnity. “What do you want me to do with you?” said he, sharply, after a brief pause.

“Anything that will serve to let me earn my bread,” said I, calmly.

“But I can get scores like you, young man, for the wages we give servants here; and would you be content with that?”

“I must take what you are pleased to give me.”

He rang a little bell beside him, and cried out, “Send Harasch here.” And, at the word, a short, beetle-browed, ill-favored young fellow appeared at the door, pen in hand.

“Bring me your ledger,” said the old man. “Look here now,” said he to me, as he turned over the beautifully clean and neatly kept volume: “this is the work of one who earns six hundred florins a year. You began with four, Harasch?”

“Three hundred, Herr Ignaz,” said the lad, bowing.

“Can you live and wear such clothes as these,” said the old man, touching my tweed coat, “for three hundred florins a year, – paper florins, mind, which in your money would make about twenty-five pounds?”

“I will do my best with it,” said I, determined he should not deter me by mere words.

“Take him with you, Harasch; let him copy into the waste-book. We shall see in a few days what he’s fit for.”

At a sign from the youth I followed him out, and soon found myself in the outer room, where a considerable number of the younger clerks were waiting to acknowledge me.

Nothing could well be less like the manners and habits I was used to than the coarse familiarity and easy impertinence of these young fellows. They questioned me about my birth, my education, my means, what circumstance had driven me to my present step, and why none of my friends had done anything to save me from it Not content with a number of very searching inquiries, they began to assure me that Herr Ignaz would not put up with my incapacity for a week. “He ‘ll send you into the yard,” cried one; and the sentence was chorused at once. “Ja! ja! he’ll be sent into the yard.” And though I was dying to know what that might mean, my pride restrained my curiosity, and I would not condescend to ask.

“Won’t he be fine in the yard!” I heard one whisper to another, and they both began laughing at the conceit; and I now sat down on a bench and lost myself in thought.

“Come; we are going to dinner, Englander,” said Harasch to me at last; and I arose and followed him.