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.