That Boy Of Norcott's
“And do all English boys of your rank in life speak and read four languages?” asked Herr Ignaz, after listening some time to my answers.
“You are assuming to know his rank, papa,” whispered Sara, who watched me closely during the whole interrogatory.
“Let him answer my question,” rejoined the old man, roughly.
“Perhaps not all,” said I, half amused at the puzzle I was becoming to them.
“Then how came it your fortune to know them, – that is, if you do know them?”
Slipping out of his question, I replied, “Nothing can be easier than to test that point. There are gentlemen here whose acquirements go far beyond mine.”
“Your German is very good,” said Sara. “Let me hear you speak French.”
“It is too much honor for me,” said I, bowing, “to address you at all.”
“Is your Italian as neat in accent as that?” asked a lady near.
“I believe I am best in Italian, – of course, after English, – for I always talked it with my music-master, as well as with my teacher.”
“Music-master!” cried Herr Ignaz; “what phoenix have we here?”
“I don’t think we are quite fair to this boy,” said a stern-featured, middle-aged man. “He has shown us that there is no imposition in his pretensions, and we have no right to question him further. If Herr Ignaz thinks you too highly gifted for his service, young man, come over to Carl Bettmeyer’s counting-house to-morrow at noon.”
“I thank you, sir,” said I, “and am very grateful; but if Herr Oppovich will bear with me, I will not leave him.”
Sara’s eyes met mine as I spoke, and I cannot tell what a flood of rapture her look sent into my heart.
“The boy will do well enough,” muttered Herr Ignaz. “Let us have a ramble through the grounds, and see how the skittle-players go on.”
And thus passed off the little incident of my appearance: an incident of no moment to any but myself, as I was soon to feel; for the company, descending the steps, strayed away in broken twos or threes through the grounds, as caprice or will inclined them.
If I were going to chronicle the fête itself, I might, perhaps, say there was a striking contrast between the picturesque beauty of the spot, and the pastime of those who occupied it The scene recalled nothing so much as a village fair. All the simple out-of-door amusements of popular taste were there. There were conjurors and saltimbanques and fortune-tellers, lottery-booths and ninepin alleys and restaurants, only differing from their prototypes in that there was nothing to pay. If a considerable number of the guests were well pleased with the pleasures provided for them, there were others no less amused as spectators of these enjoyments, and the result was an amount of mirth and good humor almost unbounded. There were representatives of almost every class and condition, from the prosperous merchant or rich banker down to the humblest clerk, or even the porter of the warehouse; and yet a certain tone of equality pervaded all, and I observed that they mixed with each other on terms of friendliness and familiarity that never recalled any difference of condition; and this feature alone was an ample counterpoise to any vulgarity observable in their manners. If there was any “snobbery,” it was of a species quite unlike what we have at home, and I could not detect it.
While I strolled about, amusing myself with the strange sights and scenes around me, I suddenly came upon a sort of merry-go-round, where the performers, seated on small hobby-horses, tilted with a lance at a ring as they spun round, their successes or failures being hailed with cheers or with laughter from the spectators. To my intense astonishment, I might almost say shame, Hanserl was there! Mounted on a fiery little gray, with bloodshot eyes and a flowing tail, the old fellow seemed to have caught the spirit of his steed, for he stood up in his stirrups, and leaned forward with an eagerness that showed how he enjoyed the sport. Why was it that the spectacle so shocked me? Why was it that I shrunk back into the crowd, fearful that he might recognize me? Was it not well if the poor fellow could throw off, even for a passing moment, the weary drudgery of his daily life, and play the fool just for distraction’ sake? All this I could have believed and accepted a short time before, and yet now a strange revulsion of feeling had come over me and I went away, well pleased that Hans had not seen nor claimed me. “These vulgar games don’t amuse you,” said a voice at my side; and I turned and saw the merchant who, at the breakfast-table, invited me to his counting-house.
“Not that,” said I; “but they seem strange and odd at a private entertainment I was scarce prepared to see them here.”
“I suspect that is not exactly the reason,” said he, laughing. “I know something of your English tone of exclusiveness, and how each class of your people has its appropriate pleasures. You scorn to be amused in low company.”
“You seem to forget my own condition, sir.”
“Come, come,” said he, with a knowing look, “I am not so easily imposed upon, as I told you awhile back. I know England. Your ways and notions are all known to me. It is not in the place you occupy here young lads are found who speak three or four languages, and have hands that show as few signs of labor as yours. Mind,” said he, quickly, “I don’t want to know your secret.”
“If I had a secret, it is scarcely likely I ‘d tell it to a stranger,” said I, haughtily.
“Just so; you ‘d know your man before you trusted him. Well, I ‘m more generous, and I ‘m going to trust you, whom I never saw till half an hour ago.”
“Trust me!”
“Trust you,” repeated he, slowly. “And first of all, what age would you give that young lady whose birthday we are celebrating?”
“Seventeen – eighteen – perhaps nineteen.”
“I thought you’d say so; she looks nineteen. Well, I can tell you her age to an hour. She is fifteen to-day.”
“Fifteen!”
“Not a day older, and yet she is the most finished coquette in Europe. Having given Fiume to understand that there is not a man here whose pretensions she would listen to, her whole aim and object is to surround herself with admirers, – I might say worshippers. Young fellows are fools enough to believe they have a chance of winning her favor, while each sees how contemptuously she treats the other. They do not perceive it is the number of adorers she cares for.”
“But what is all this to me?”
“Simply that you ‘ll be enlisted in that corps to-morrow,” said he, with a malicious laugh; “and I thought I ‘d do you a good turn to warn you as to what is in store for you.”
“Me? I enlisted! Why, just bethink you, sir, who and what I am: the very lowest creature in her father’s employment.”
“What does that signify? There’s a mystery about you. You are not – at least you were not – what you seem now. You have as good looks and better manners than the people usually about her. She can amuse herself with you, and so far harmlessly that she can dismiss you when she’s tired of you, and if she can only persuade you to believe yourself in love with her, and can store up a reasonable share of misery for you in consequence, you ‘ll make her nearer being happy than she has felt this many a day.”
“I don’t understand all this,” said I, doubtingly.
“Well, you will one of these days; that is, unless you have the good sense to take my warning in good part, and avoid her altogether.”
“It will be quite enough for me to bear in mind who she is, and what I am!” said I, calmly.
“You think so? Well, I don’t agree with you. At all events, keep what I have said to yourself, even if you don’t mean to profit by it” And with this he left me.
That strange education of mine, in which M. de Balzac figured as a chief instructor, made me reflect on what I had heard in a spirit little like that of an ordinary lad of sixteen years of age. Those wonderful stories, in which passion and emotion represent action, and where the great game of life is played out at a fireside or in a window recess, and where feeling and sentiment war and fight and win or lose, – these same tales supplied me with wherewithal to understand this man’s warnings, and at the same time to suspect his motives; and from that moment my life became invested with new interests and new anxieties, and to my own heart I felt myself a hero of romance.
As I sauntered on, revolving very pleasant thoughts to myself, I came upon a party who were picnicking under a tree. Some of them graciously made a place for me, and I sat down and ate my dinner with them. They were very humble people, all of them, but courteous and civil to my quality of stranger in a remarkable degree. Nor was I less struck by the delicate forbearance they showed towards the host; for, while the servant pressed them to drink Bordeaux and champagne, they merely took the little wines of the country, perfectly content with simple fare and the courtesy that offered them better.
When one of them asked me if I had ever seen a fête of such magnificence in my own country, my mind went back to that costly entertainment of our villa, and Pauline came up before me, with her long dark eyelashes, and those lustrous eyes beaming with expression, and flashing with a light that dazzled while it charmed. Coquetry has no such votaries as the young. Its artifices, its studied graces, its thousand rogueries, to them seem all that is most natural and most “naïve;” and thus every toss of her dark curls, every little mock resentment of her beautiful mouth, every bend and motion of her supple figure, rose to my mind, till I pictured her image before me, and thought I saw her.
“What a hunt I have had after you, Herr Englander!” said a servant, who came up to me all flushed and heated. “I have been over the whole park in search of you.”
“In search of me? Surely you mistake.”
“No; it is no mistake. I see no one here in a velvet jacket but yourself; and Herr Ignaz told me to find you and tell you that there is a place kept for you at his table, and they are at dinner now in the large tent before the terrace.”
I took leave of my friends, who rose respectfully to make their adieux to the honored guest of the host, and I followed the servant to the house. I was not without my misgivings that the scene of the morning, with its unpleasant cross-examination of me, might be repeated, and I even canvassed myself how far I ought to submit to such liberties; but the event was not to put my dignity to the test I was received on terms of perfect equality with those about me; and though the dinner had made some progress before I arrived, it was with much difficulty I could avoid being served with soup and all the earlier delicacies of the entertainment.
I will not dwell on the day that to recall seems more to me like a page out of a fairy tale than a little incident of daily life. I was, indeed, to all intents, the enchanted prince of a story, who went about with the lovely princess on his arm, for I danced the mazurka with the Fraulein Sara, and was her partner several times during the evening, and finished the fête with her in the cotillon; she declaring, in that calm quiet voice that did not seek to be unheard around, that I alone could dance the waltz à deux temps, and that I slid gently, and did not spring like a Fiumano, or bound like a French bagman, – a praise that brought on me some very menacing looks from certain commis-voyageurs near me, and which I, confident in my “skill of fence,” as insolently returned.
“You are not to return to the Hof, Herr von Owen, tomorrow,” said she, as we parted. “You are to wait on papa at his office at eleven o’clock.” And there was a staid dignity in her words that spoke command; but in styling me “von” there was a whole world of recognition, and I kissed her hand as I said good-night with all the deference of her slave, and all the devotion of one who already felt her power and delighted in it.
CHAPTER XX. OUR INNER LIFE
Let me open this chapter with an apology, and I mean it not only to extend to errors of the past, but to whatever similar blunders I may commit hereafter. What I desire to ask pardon for is this: I find in this attempt of mine to jot down a portion of my life, that I have laid a most disproportionate stress on some passages the most insignificant and unimportant. Thus, in my last chapter I have dwelt unreasonably on the narrative of one day’s pleasure, while it may be that a month, or several months, shall pass over with scarcely mention. For this fault – and I do not attempt to deny it is a fault – I have but one excuse. It is this: my desire has been to place before my reader the events, small as they might be, that influenced my life and decided my destiny. Had I not gone to this fêtey for instance, – had I taken my holiday in some quiet ramble into the hills alone, or had I passed it, as I have passed scores of happy hours, in the solitude of my own room, – how different might have been my fate!
We all of us know how small and apparently insignificant are the events by which the course of our lives is shapen. A look we catch at parting, a word spoken that might have passed unheard, a pressure of the hand that might or might not have been felt, and straightway all our sailing orders are revoked, and instead of north we go south. Bearing this in mind, my reader will perhaps forgive me, and at least bethink him that these things are not done by me through inadvertence, but of intention and with forethought.
“So we are about to part,” said Hanserl to me, as I awoke and found my old companion at my bedside. “You ‘re the twenty-fifth that has left me,” said he, mournfully. “But look to it, Knabe, change is not always betterment.”
“It was none of my doing, Hanserl; none of my seeking.”
“If you had worn the gray jacket you wear on Sundays, there would have been none of this, lad! I have seen double as many years in the yard as you have been in the world, and none have ever seen me at the master’s table or waltzing with the master’s daughter.”
I could not help smiling, in spite of myself, at the thought of such a spectacle.
“Nor is there need to laugh because I speak of dancing,” said he, quickly. “They could tell you up in Kleptowitz there are worse performers than Hans Spouer; and if he is not an Englishman, he is an honest Austrian!”
This he said with a sort of defiance, and as if he expected a reply.
“I have told you already, Hans,” said I, soothingly, “that it was none of my seeking if I am to be transferred from the yard. I was very happy there, – very happy to be with you. We were good comrades in the past, as I hope we may be good friends in the future.”
“That can scarcely be,” said he, sorrowfully. “I can have no friend in the man I must say ‘sir’ to. It’s Herr Ignaz’s order,” went he on, “he sent for me this morning, and said, ‘Hanserl, when you address Herr von Owen,’ – aye, he said Herr von Owen, – ‘never forget he is your superior; and though he once worked with you here in the yard, that was his caprice, and he will do so no more.”
“But, Hans, my dear old friend.”
“Ja, ja,” said he, waving his hand. “Jetzt ist aus! It is all over now. Here’s your reckoning,” and he laid a slip of paper on the bed: “Twelve gulden for the dinners, three-fifty for wine and beer, two gulden for the wash. There were four kreutzers for the girl with the guitar; you bade me give her ten, but four was plenty, – that makes seventeen-six-and-sixty: and you’ve twenty-three gulden and thirty-four kreutzers in that packet, and so Lebwohl.”
And, with a short wave of his hand, he turned away; and as he left the room, I saw that the other hand had been drawn over his eyes, for Hanserl was crying; but I buried my face in the clothes, and sobbed bitterly.
My orders were to present myself at Herr Ignaz’s private office by noon. Careful not to presume on what seemed at least a happy turn in my destiny, I dressed in my everyday clothes, studious only that they should be clean and well-brushed.
“I had forgotten you altogether, boy,” said Herr Ignaz, as I entered the office, and he went on closing his desk and his iron safe before leaving for dinner. “What was it I had to say to you? Can you help me to it, lad?”
“I’m afraid not, sir; I only know that you told me to be here at this hour.”
“Let me see,” said he, thoughtfully. “There was no complaint against you?”
“None, sir, that I know of.”
“Nor have you any to make against old Hanserl?”
“Far from it, sir. I have met only kindness from him.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” said he. “I believe I am coming to it. It was Sara’s doing. Yes, I have it now. Sara said you should not be in the yard; that you had been well brought up and cared for. A young girl’s fancy, perhaps. Your hands were white. But there is more bad than good in this. Men should be in the station they ‘re fit for; neither above nor below it. And you did well in the yard; ay, and you liked it?”
“I certainly was very happy there, sir.”
“And that’s all one strives for,” said he, with a faint sigh; “to be at rest, – to be at rest: and why would you change, boy?”
“I am not seeking a change, sir. I am here because you bade me.”
“That’s true. Come in and eat your soup with us, and we ‘ll see what the girl says, for I have forgotten all about it.”
He opened a small door which led by a narrow stair into a back street, and, shuffling along, with his hat drawn over his eyes, made for the little garden over the wooden bridge, and to his door. This he unlocked, and then bidding me follow, he ascended the stairs.
The room into which we entered was furnished in the most plain and simple fashion. A small table, with a coarse cloth and some common ware, stood ready for dinner, and a large loaf on a wooden platter, occupied the middle. There were but two places prepared; but the old man speedily arranged a third place, muttering to himself the while, but what I could not catch.
As he was thus engaged, the Fraulein entered. She was dressed in a sort of brown serge, which, though of the humblest tissue, showed her figure to great advantage, for it fitted to perfection, and designed the graceful lines’ of her shoulders, and her taper waist to great advantage. She saluted me with the faintest possible smile, and said: “You are come to dine with us?”
“If there be enough to give him to eat,” said the old man, gruffly. “I have brought him here, however, with other thoughts. There was something said last night, – what was it, girl? – something about this lad, – do you remember it?”
“Here is the soup, father,” said she, calmly. “We’ll bethink us of these things by and by.” There was a strange air of half-command in what she said, the tone of one who asserted a certain supremacy, as I was soon to see she did in the household. “Sit here, Herr von Owen,” said she, pointing to my place, and her words were uttered like an order.
In perfect silence the meal went on; a woman-servant entering to replace the soup by a dish of boiled meat, but not otherwise waiting on us, for Sara rose and removed our plates and served us with fresh ones, – an office I would gladly have taken from her, and indeed essayed to do, but at a gesture, and a look that there was no mistaking, I sat down again, and, unmindful of my presence, they soon began to talk of business matters, in which, to my astonishment, the young girl seemed thoroughly versed. Cargoes of grain for Athens consigned to one house, were now to be transferred to some other. There were large orders from France for staves, to meet which some one should be promptly despatched into Hungary. Hemp, too, was wanted for England. There was a troublesome litigation with an Insurance Company at Marseilles, which was evidently going against the House of Oppovich. So unlike was all this the tone of dinner conversation I was used to that I listened in wonderment how they could devote the hour of social enjoyment and relaxation to details so perplexing and so vulgar.
“There is that affair of the leakage, too,” cried Herr Ignaz, setting down his glass before drinking; “I had nigh forgotten it.”
“I answered the letter this morning,” said the girl, gravely. “It is better it should be settled at once, while the exchanges are in our favor.”
“And pay – pay the whole amount,” cried he, angrily.
“Pay it all,” replied she, calmly. “We must not let them call us litigious, father. You have friends here,” and she laid emphasis on the word, “that would not be grieved to see you get the name.”
“Twenty-seven thousand gulden!” exclaimed he, with a quivering lip. “And how am I to save money for your dowry, girl, with losses like these?”
“You forget, sir, we are not alone,” said she, proudly. “This young Englishman can scarcely feel interested in these details.” She arose as she spoke, and placed a few dishes of fruit on the table, and then served us with coffee; the whole done so unobtrusively and in such quiet fashion as to make her services appear a routine that could not call for remark.
“The ‘Dalmat’ will not take our freight,” said he, suddenly. “There is some combination against us there.”
“I will look to it,” said she, coldly. “Will you try these figs, Herr von Owen? Fiume, they say, rivals Smyrna in purple figs.”
“I will have no more to do with figs or olives either,” cried out Herr Ignaz. “The English beat you down to the lowest price, and then refuse your cargo for one damaged crate. I have had no luck with England.”
Unconsciously, I know it was, his eyes turned fully on me as he spoke, and there was a defiance in his look that seemed like a personal challenge.
“He does not mean it for you,” said the Fräulein, gently in my ear, and her voice gained a softness I did not know it possessed.
Perhaps the old man’s thoughts had taken a very gloomy turn, for he leaned his head on his hand, and seemed sunk in revery. The Fräulein rose quietly, and, beckoning me to follow her, moved noiselessly into an adjoining room. This chamber, furnished a little more tastefully, had a piano, and some books and prints lay about on the tables.
“My father likes to be left alone at times,” said she, gravely; “and when you know us better, you will learn to see what these times are.” She took up some needlework she had been engaged on, and sat down on a sofa. I did not well know whether to take my leave or keep her company; and while I hesitated she appeared to read my difficulty, and said, “You are free, Herr von Owen, if you have any engagement.”
“I have none,” said I; then remembering that the speech might mean to dismiss me, I added hastily, “but it is time to go.”
“Good-bye, then,” said she, making me a slight bow; and I went.
CHAPTER XXI. THE OFFICE
On the following day the cashier sent for me to say it was Herr Oppovich’s wish that I should be attached to some department in the office, till I had fully mastered its details, and then be transferred to another, and so on, till I had gradually acquainted myself with the whole business of the house. “It’s an old caprice of Herr Ignaz’s,” said he, “which repeated failures have not yet discouraged him with. You ‘re the fifth he has tried to make a supervisor of, and you’ll follow the rest.”
“Is it so very difficult to learn?” asked I, modestly.
“Perhaps to one of your acquirements it might not,” said he, with quiet irony, “but, for a slight example: here, in this office, we correspond with five countries in their own languages; yonder, in that room, they talk modern Greek and Albanian and Servian; there’s the Hungarian group, next that bow window, and that takes in the Lower Danube; and in what we call the Expeditions department there are; fellows who speak seventeen dialects, and can write ten or twelve. So much for languages. Then what do you say to mastering – since that’s the word they have for it – the grain trade from Russia, rags from Transylvania, staves from Hungary, fruit from the Levant, cotton from Egypt, minerals from Lower Austria, and woollen fabrics from Bohemia? We do something in all of these, besides a fair share in oak bark and hemp.”
“Stop, for mercy’s sake!” I cried out “It would take a lifetime to gain a mere current knowledge of these.”
“Then, there’s the finance department,” said he; “watching the rise and fall of the exchanges, buying and selling gold. Herr Ulrich, in that office with the blue door, could tell you it’s not to be picked up of an afternoon. Perhaps you might as well begin with him; his is not a bad school to take the fine edge off you.”
