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If I was madly jealous of her, I felt the most overwhelming delight in the praises bestowed upon her beauty and her gracefulness. Perhaps the consciousness that I was a mere boy, and that thus a freedom might be used towards me that would have been reprehensible with one older, led her to treat me with a degree of intimacy that was positively captivating; and before our third waltz was over, I was calling her Pauline, and she calling me Digby, like old friends.
“Isn't that boy of Norcott's going it to-night?” I heard a man say as I swung past in a polka, and I turned fiercely to catch the speaker's eye, and show him I meant to call him to book.
“Eccles, your pupil is a credit to you!” cried another.
“I'm a Dutchman if that fellow does n't rival his father.”
“He 'll be far and away beyond him,” muttered another; “for he has none of Norcott's crotchets,—he's a scamp 'ur et simple.'”
“Where are you breaking away from me, Digby?” said Pauline, as I tried to shake myself free of her.
“I want to follow those men. I have a word to say to them.”
“You shall do no such thing, dearest,” muttered she. “You have just told me I am to be your little wife, and I 'm not going to see my husband rushing into a stupid quarrel.”
“And you are mine, then,” cried I, “and you will wear this ring as a betrothal? Come, let me take off your glove.”
“That will do, Digby; that's quite enough for courtesy and a little too much for deference,” whispered Eccles in my ear; for I was kissing her hand about a hundred times over, and she laughing at my raptures as an excellent joke. “I think you 'd better lead the way to supper.”
Secretly resolving that I would soon make very short work of Mr. Eccles and his admonitions, I gave him a haughty glance and moved on. I remember very little more than that I walked to the head of the table and placed Pauline on my right I know I made some absurd speech in return for their drinking my health, and spoke of us and whatwe—Pauline and myself—felt, and with what pleasure we should see our friends often around us, and a deal of that tawdry trash that conies into a brain addled with noise and heated with wine. I was frequently interrupted; uproarious cheers at one moment would break forth, but still louder laughter would ring out and convulse the whole assembly. Even addled and confused as I was, I could see that some were my partisans and friends, who approved of all I said, and wished me to give a free course to my feelings; and there were others—two or three—who tried to stop me; and one actually said aloud, “If that boy of Nor-cott's is not suppressed, we shall have no supper.”
Recalled to my dignity as a host by this impertinence, I believe I put some restraint on my eloquence, and I now addressed myself to do the honors of the table. Alas, my attentions seldom strayed beyond my lovely neighbor, and I firmly believed that none could remark the rapture with which I gazed on her, or as much as suspected that I had never quitted the grasp of her hand from the moment we sat down.
“I suspect you 'd better let Mademoiselle dance the cotillon with the Count Vauglas,” whispered Eccles in my ear.
“And why, sir?” rejoined I, half fiercely.
“I think you might guess,” said he, with a smile; “at least, you could if you were to get up.”
“And would she—would Pauline—I mean, would Mademoiselle Delorme—approve of this arrangement?”
“No, Monsieur Digby, not if it did not come from you. We shall sit in the shade yonder for half an hour or so, and then, when you are rested, we 'll join the cotillon.”
“Get that boy off to bed, Eccles,” said Cleremont, who did not scruple to utter the words aloud.
I started up to make an indignant rejoinder; some fierce insult was on my lips; but passion and excitement and wine mastered me, and I sank back on my seat overcome and senseless.
I could not awake on the day after thefête, I was conscious that Nixon was making a considerable noise,—that he shut and opened doors and windows, splashed the water into my bath, and threw down my boots with an unwonted energy; but through all this consciousness of disturbance I slept on, and was determined to sleep, let him make what uproar he pleased.
“It 's nigh two o'clock, sir!” whispered he in my ear, and I replied by a snort.
“I 'm very sorry to be troublesome, sir; but the master is very impatient: he was getting angry when I went in last time.”
These words served to dispel my drowsiness at once, and the mere thought of my father's displeasure acted on me like a strong stimulant.
“Does papa want me?” cried I, sitting up in bed; “did you say papa wanted me?”
“Yes, sir,” said a deep voice; and my father entered the room, dressed for the street, and with his hat on.
“You may leave us,” said he to Nixon; and as the man withdrew, my father took a chair and sat down close to my bedside.
“I have sent three messages to you this morning,” said he, gravely, “and am forced at last to come myself.”
I was beginning my apologies, when he stopped me, and said, “That will do; I have no wish to be told why you overslept yourself; indeed, I have already heard more on that score than I care for.”
He paused, and though perhaps he expected me to say something, I was too much terrified to speak.
“I perceive.” said he, “you understand me; you apprehend that I know of your doings of last night, and that any attempt at excuse is hopeless. I have not come here to reproach you for your misconduct; I reproach myself for a mistaken estimate of you; I ought to have known—and if you had been a horse I would have known—that your crossbreeding would tell on you. The bad drop was sure to betray itself. I will not dwell on this, nor have I time. Your conduct last night makes my continued residence here impossible. I cannot continue in a city where my tradespeople have become my guests, and where the honors of my house have been extended to my tailor and my butcher. I shall leave this, therefore, as soon as I can conclude my arrangements to sell this place: you must quit it at once. Eccles will be ready to start with you this evening for the Rhine, and then for the interior of Germany,—I suspect Weimar will do. He will be paymaster, and you will conform to his wishes strictly as regards expense. Whether you study or not, whether you employ your time profitably and creditably, or whether you pass it in indolence, is a matter that completely regards yourself. As for me, my conscience is acquitted when I provide you with the means of acquirement, and I no more engage you to benefit by these advantages than I do to see you eat the food that is placed before you. The compact that unites us enjoins distinct duties from each. You need not write to me till I desire you to do so; and when I think it proper we should meet, I will tell you.”
If, while he spoke these harsh words to me, the slightest touch of feeling—had one trace of even sorrow crossed his face, my whole heart would have melted at once, and I would have thrown myself at his feet for forgiveness. There was, however, a something so pitiless in his tone, and a look so full of scorn in his steadfast eye, that every sentiment of pride within me—that same pride I inherited from himself—stimulated me to answer him, and I said boldly: “If the people I saw here last night were not as well born as your habitual guests, sir, I 'll venture to say there was nothing in their manner or deportment to be ashamed of.”
“I am told that Mademoiselle Pauline Delorme was charming,” said he; and the sarcasm of his glance covered me with shame and confusion. He had no need to say more: I could not utter a word.
“This is a topic I will not discuss with you, sir,” said he, after a pause. “I intended you to be a gentleman, and to live with gentlemen.Yourtastes incline differently, and I make no opposition to them. As I have told you already, I was willing to launch you into life; I 'll not engage to be your pilot. Any interest I take or could take in you must be the result of your own qualities. These have not impressed me strongly up to this; and were I to judge by what I have seen, I should send you back to those you came from.”
“Do so, then, if it will only give me back the nature I brought away with me!” cried I, passionately; and my throat swelled till I felt almost choked with emotion.
“That nature,” said he, with a sneer on the word, “was costumed, if I remember right, in a linen blouse and a pair of patched shoes; and I believe they have been preserved along with some other family relics.”
I bethought me at once of the tower and its humble furniture, and a sense of terror overcame me, that I was in presence of one who could cherish hate with such persistence.
“The fumes of your last night's debauch are some excuse for your bad manners, sir,” said he, rising. “I leave you to sleep them off; only remember that the train starts at eight this evening, and it is my desire you do not miss it.”
With this he left me. I arose at once and began to dress. It was a slow proceeding, for I would often stop, and sit down to think what course would best befit me to take at this moment. At one instant it seemed to me I ought to follow him, and declare that the splendid slavery in which I lived had no charm for me,—that the faintest glimmering of self-respect and independence was more my ambition than all the luxuries that surrounded me; and when I had resolved I would do this, a sudden dread of his presence,—his eye that I could never face without shrinking,—the tones of his voice that smote me like a lash,—so abashed me that I gave up the effort with despair.
Might he not consent to give me some pittance—enough to save her from the burden of my support—and send me back to my mother? Oh, if I could summon courage to ask this! This assistance need be continued only for a few years, for I hoped and believed I should not always have to live as a dependant What if I were to write him a few lines to this purport? I could do this even better than speak it.
I sat down at once and began:—
“Dear papa,”—he would never permit me to use a more endearing word. “Dear papa, I hope you will forgive me troubling you about myself and my future. I would like to fit myself for some career or calling by which I might become independent. I could work very hard and study very closely if I were back with my mother.”
As I reached this far, the door opened, and Eccles appeared.
“All right!” cried he; “I was afraid I should catch you in bed still, and I 'm glad you 're up and preparing for the road. Are you nearly ready?”
“Not quite; I wanted to write a letter before I go. I was just at it.”
“Write from Verviers or Bonn; you'll have lots of time on the road.”
“Ay, but my letter might save me from the journey if I sent it off now.”
He looked amazed at this, and I at once told him my plan and showed him what I had written.
“You don't mean to say you 'd have courage to send this to your father?”
“And why not?”
“Well, all I have to say is, don't do it till I 'm off the premises; for I 'd not be here when he reads it for a trifle. My dear Digby,” said he, with a changed tone, “you don't know Sir Roger; you don't know the violence of his temper if he imagines himself what he calls outraged, which sometimes means questioned. Take your hat and stick, and go seek your fortune, in Heaven's name, if you must; but don't set out on your life's journey with a curse or a kick, or possibly both. If I preach patience, my dear boy, I have had to practise it too. Put up your traps in your portmanteau; come down and take some dinner: we 'll start with the night-train; and take my word for it, we 'll have a jolly ramble and enjoy ourselves heartily. If I know anything of life, it is that there's no such mistake in the world as hunting up annoyances. Let them find us if they can, but let us never run after them.”
“My heart is too heavy for such enjoyment as you talk of.”
“It won't be so to-morrow, or, at all events, the day after. Come, stir yourself now with your packing; a thought has just struck me that you 'll be very grateful to me for, when I tell it you.”
“What is it?” asked I, half carelessly.
“You must ask with another guess-look in your eye if you expect me to tell you.”
“You could tell me nothing that would gladden me.”
“Nor propose anything that you'd like?” asked he.
“Nor that, either,” said I, despondingly.
“Oh, if that be the case, I give up my project; not that it was much of a project, after all. What I was going to suggest was that instead of dining here we should put our traps into a cab, and drive down to Delorme's and have a pleasant little dinner there, in the garden; it's quite close to the railroad, so that we could start at the last whistle.”
“That does sound pleasantly,” said I; “there's nothing more irksome in its way than hanging about a station waiting for departure.”
“So, then, you agree?” cried he, with a malicious twinkle in his eye that I affected not to understand.
“Yes,” said I, indolently; “I see little against it; and if nothing else, it saves me a leave-taking with Captain Hotham and Cleremont.”
“By the way, you are not to ask to see Madame; your father reminded me to tell you this. The doctors say she is not to be disturbed on any account. What a chance that I did not forget this!”
Whether it was that I was too much concerned for my own misfortunes to have a thought that was not selfish, or that another leave-taking that loomed in the distance was uppermost in my thoughts, certain it is, I felt this privation far less acutely than I might.
“She's a nice little woman, and deserves a better lot than she has met with.”
“What sort of dinner will Delorme give us?” said I, affecting the air of a man about town, but in reality throwing out the bait to lead the talk in that direction.
“First-rate, if we let him; that is, if we only say, 'Order dinner for us, Monsieur Pierre.' There's no man understands such a mandate more thoroughly.”
“Then that's what I shall say,” cried I, “as I cross his threshold.”
“He'll serve you Madeira with your soup, and Stein-berger with your fish, thirty francs a bottle, each of them.”
“Be it so. We shall drink to our pleasant journey,” said I; and I actually thought my voice had caught the tone and cadence of my father's as I spoke.
While I strolled into the garden to select a table for our dinner, Eccles went in search of Mr. Delorme; and though he had affected to say that the important duty of devising the feast should be confided to the host, I could plainly see that my respected tutor accepted his share in that high responsibility.
I will only say of the feast in question, that, though I was daily accustomed to the admirable dinners of my father's table, I had no conception of what exquisite devices in cookery could be produced by the skill of an accomplished restaurateur, left free to his own fancy, and without limitation as to the bill.
One thing alone detracted from the perfect enjoyment of the banquet It was the appearance of Mr. Delorme himself, white-cravated and gloved, carrying in the soup. It was an attention that he usually reserved for great personages, royalties, or high dignitaries of the court; and I was shocked that he should have selected me for the honor, not the less as it was only a few hours before he and I had been drinking champagne with much clinking of glasses together, and interchanging the most affectionate vows of eternal friendship.
I arose from my chair to salute him; but, as he deposited the tureen upon the table, he stepped back and bowed low, and retreated in this fashion, with the same humble reverence at every step, till he was lost in the distance.
“Sit down,” said Eccles, with a peculiar look, as though to warn me that I was forgetting my dignity; and then, to divert my attention, he added, “That green seal is an attention Delorme offers you,—a very rare favor, too,—a bottle of his own peculiar Johannisberg. Let us drink his health. Now, Digby, I call this something very nigh perfection.”
It was a theme my tutor understood thoroughly, and there was not a dish nor a wine that he did not criticise.
“I was always begging your father to take this cook, Digby,” said he, with half sigh. “Even with a first-rate artist you need change, otherwise your dinners become manneristic, as ours have become of late.”
He then went on to show me that the domestic cook, always appealing to the small public of the family, gets narrowed in his views and bounded in his resources. He compared them, I remember, to the writers in certain religious newspapers, who must always go on spicing higher and higher as the palates of their clients grow more jaded. How he worked out his theme afterwards I cannot tell, for I was watching the windows of the house, and stealing glances down the alleys in the garden, longing for one look, ever so fleeting, of my lovely partner of the night before.
“I see, young gentleman,” said he, evidently nettled at my inattention, “your thoughts are not with me.”
“How long have we to stay, sir?” said I, reverting to the respect I tendered him at my lessons.
“You have thirty-eight minutes,” said he, examining his watch: “which I purpose to apportion in this wise,—eight for the douceur, five for the cheese, fifteen for the dessert, five for coffee and a glass of curaçoa. The bill and our parting compliments will take the rest, giving us three minutes to walk across to the station.”
These sort of pedantries were a passion with him, and I did not interpose a word as he spoke.
“What a pineapple!” cried a young fellow from an adjoining table, as a waiter deposited a magnificent pine in the midst of the bouquet that adorned our table.
“Monsieur Delorme begs to say, sir, this has just arrived from Laeken.”
“Don't you know who that is?” said a companion, in a low voice; but my hearing, ever acute, caught the words, “He's that boy of Norcott's.” I started as if I had received a blow. It was time to resent these insolences, and make an end of them forever.
“You heard what that man yonder has called me?” said I to Eccles.
“No; I was not minding him.”
“The old impertinence,—'That boy of Norcott's.'”
I arose, and took the cane I had laid against a chair. What I was about to do I knew not. I felt I should launch some insolent provocation. As for what should follow, the event might decidethat.
“I'd not mind him, Digby,” said Eccles, carelessly, as he lit his cigarette, and stretched his legs on a vacant chair. I took no notice of his words, but walked on. Before, however, I had made three steps my eyes caught the flutter of a dress at the end of the alley. It was merely the last folds of some floating muslin, but it was enough to rout all other thoughts from my head, and I flew down the walk with lightning speed. I was right; it was Pauline. In an instant I was beside her.
“Dearest, darling Pauline,” I cried, seizing her round the waist and kissing her cheek, before she well knew, “how happy it makes me to see you even for a few seconds.”
“Ah, milord, I did not expect to see you here,” said she, half distantly.
“I am not milord; I am your own Digby—Digby Nor-cott, who loves you, and will make you his wife.”
“Ma foi! children don't marry,—at least demoiselles don't marry them,” said she, with a saucy laugh.
“I am no more an 'enfant,'” said I, with a passionate stress on the word, “than I was last night, when you never left my arm except to sit at my side at supper.”
“But you are going away,” said she, pouting; “else why that travelling-dress, and that sack strapped at your side?”
“Only for a few weeks. A short tour up the Rhine, Pauline, to see the world, and complete my education; and then I will come back and marry you, and you shall be mistress of a beautiful house, and have everything you can think of.”
“Vrai?” asked she, with a little laugh.
“I swear it by this kiss.”
“Pardie, Monsieur? you are very adventurous,” said she, repulsing me; “you will make me not regret that you are going so soon.”
“Oh, Pauline! when you know that I adore you, that I only value wealth to share it with you; that all I ask of life is to devote it to you.”
“And that you have n't got full thirty seconds left for that admirable object,” broke in Eccles. “We must run for it like fury, boy, or we shall be late.”
“I'll not go.”
“Then I 'll be shot if I stay here and meet your father,” said he, turning away.
“Oh, Pauline, dearest, dearest of my heart!” I sobbed out, as I fell upon her neck; and the vile bell of the railway rang out with its infernal discord as I clasped her to my heart.
“Come along, and confound you,” cried Eccles; and with a porter on one side and Eccles on the other, I was hurried along down the garden, across a road, and along a platform, where the station-master, wild with passion, stamped and swore in a very different mood from that in which he smiled at me across the supper-table the night before.
“We're waiting for that boy of Norcott's, I vow,” said an old fellow with a gray moustache; and I marked him out for future recognition.
Unlike my first journey, where all seemed confusion, trouble, and annoyance, I now saw only pleasant faces, and people bent on enjoyment. We were on the great tourist road of Europe, and it seemed as though every one was bound on some errand of amusement. Eccles, too, was a pleasant contrast to the courier who took charge of me on my first journey. Nothing could be more genial than his manner. He treated me with a perfect equality, and by that greatest of all flatteries to one of my age, induced me to believe that I was actually companionable to himself.
I will not pretend that he was an instructive companion.
He had neither knowledge of history nor feeling for art, and rather amused himself with sneering at both, and quizzing such of our fellow-travellers as the practice was safe with. But he was always gay, always in excellent spirits, ready to make light of the passing annoyances of the road, and, as he said himself, he always carried a quart-bottle of condensed sunshine with him against a rainy day; and, of my own knowledge, I can say his supply seemed inexhaustible.
His cheery manner, his bright good looks, and his invariable good-humor won upon every one, and the sourest and least genial people thawed into some show of warmth under his contagious pleasantry.
He did not care in what direction we went, and would have left it entirely to me to decide, had I been able to determine. All he stipulated for was: “No barbarism, no Oberland or glacier humbug. No Saxon Switzerland abominations. So long as we travel in a crowd, and meet good cookery every day, you 'll find me charming.”
Into this philosophy he inducted me. “Make life pleasant, Digby; never go in search of annoyances. Duns and disagreeables will come of themselves, and it's no bad fun dodging them. It's only a fool ever keeps their company.”
A more shameless immorality might have revolted me, but this peddling sort of wickedness, this half-jesting with right and wrong,—giving to morals the aspect of a game in which a certain kind of address was practicable,—was very seductive to one of my age and temper. I fancied, too, that I was becoming a consummate man of the world, and his praises of my proficiency were unsparingly bestowed.
Attaching ourselves to this or that party of travellers, we would go off here or there, in any direction, for four or five days; and though I usually found myself growing fond of those I became more intimate with, and sorry to part from them, Eccles invariably wearied of the pleasant-est people after a day or two. Incessant change seemed essential to him, and his nature and his spirits flagged when denied it.
What I least liked about him, however, was a habit he had of “trotting” me out—his own name for it—before strangers. My knowledge of languages, my skill at games, my little musical talents, he would parade in a way that I found positively offensive. Nor was this all, for I found he represented me as the son of a man of immense wealth and of a rank commensurate with his fortune.
One must have gone through the ordeal of such a representation to understand its vexations, to know all the impertinences it can evoke from some, all the slavish attentions from others. I feel a hot flush of shame on my cheek now, after long years, as I think of the mortifications I went through, as Eccles would suggest that I should buy some princely chateau that we saw in passing, or some lordly park alongside of which our road was lying.
As to remonstrating with him on this score, or, indeed, on any other, it was utterly hopeless; not to say that it was just as likely he would amuse the first group of travellers we met by a ludicrous version of my attempt to coerce him into good behavior.
One day he pushed my patience beyond all limit, and I grew downright angry with him. I had been indulging in that harmless sort of half-flirtation with a young lady, a fellow-traveller; which, not transgressing the bounds of small attentions, does not even excite remark or rebuke.
“Don't listen to that young gentleman's blandishments,” said he, laughing; “for, young as he looks, he is already engaged. Come, come, don't look as though you'd strike me, Digby, but deny it if you can.”
We were, fortunately for me, coming into a station as he spoke. I sprang out, and travelled third-class the rest of the day to avoid him, and when we met at night, I declared that with one such liberty more I 'd part company with him forever.
The hearty good-humor with which he assured me I should not be offended again almost made me ashamed of my complaint. We shook hands over our reconciliation, and vowed we were better friends than ever.
What it cost him to abandon this habit of exalting me before strangers, how nearly it touched one of the chief pleasures of his life, I was, as I thought, soon to see in the altered tone of his manner. In fact, it totally destroyed the easy flippancy he used to wield, and a facility with strangers that once seemed like a special gift with him. I tried in vain to rally him out of this half depression; but it was clear he was not a man of many resources, and that I had already sapped a principal one.
While we thus journeyed, he said to me one day, “I find, Digby, our money is running short; we must make for Zurich: it is the nearest of the places on our letter of credit.”
I assented, of course, and we bade adieu to a pleasant family with whom we had been travelling, and who were bound for Dresden, assuring them we should meet them on the Elbe.
Eccles had grown of late more and more serious: not alone had his gayety deserted him, but he grew absent and forgetful to an absurd extent; and it was evident some great preoccupation had hold of him. During the entire of the last day before we reached Zurich he scarcely spoke a word, and as I saw that he had received some letters at Schaffhausen, I attributed his gloom to their tidings. As he had not spoken to me of bad news, I felt ashamed to obtrude myself on his confidence and kept silent, and not a word passed between us as we went. He had telegraphed to the banker, a certain Mr. Heinfetter, to order rooms for us at the hotel; and as we alighted at the door, the gentleman himself was there to meet us.
“Herr Eccles?” said he, eagerly, lifting his hat as we descended; and Eccles moved towards him, and, taking his arm, walked away to some distance, leaving me alone and unnoticed. For several minutes they appeared in closest confab, their heads bent close together, and at last I saw Eccles shake himself free from the other's arm, and throw up both his hands in the air with a gesture of wild despair. I began to suspect some disaster had befallen our remittances, that they were lost or suppressed, and that Eccles was overwhelmed by the misfortune. I own I could not participate in the full measure of the misery it seemed to cause him, and I lighted a cigar and sat down on a stone bench to wait patiently his return.
“I believe you are right; it is the best way, after all,” said Ecoles, hurriedly. “You say you'll look after the boy, and I 'll start by the ten o'clock train.”
“Yes, I'll take the boy,” said the other; “but you'll have to look sharp and lose no time. They will be sequestering the moment they hear of it, and I half suspect old Engler will be before you.”
“But my personal effects? I have things of value.”
“Hush, hush! he 'll overhear you. Come, young gentleman,” said he to me,—“come home and sup with me. The hotel is so full, they 've no quarters for you. I 'll try if I can't put you up.”
Eccles stood with his head bent down as we moved away, then lifted his eyes, waved his hand a couple of times, and said, “By-bye.”
“Isn't he coming with us?” asked I.
“Not just yet: he has some business to detain him,” said the banker; and we moved on.
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.
“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 howshewould 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 wouldshepartake of the delight this lovely spot imparted tome?Wouldshesee 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.