I was soon to learn what being “sent into the yard” meant. Within a week
that destiny was mine. Being so sent was the phrase for being charged
to count the staves as they arrived in wagon-loads from Hungary,--oaken
staves being the chief “industry” of Fiume, and the principal source of
Herr Oppovich's fortune.
My companion, and, indeed, my instructor in this intellectual
employment, was a strange-looking, dwarfish creature, who, whatever the
season, wore a suit of dark yellow leather, the jerkin being fastened
round the waist by a broad belt with a heavy brass buckle. He had been
in the yard three-and-forty years, and though his assistants had been
uniformly promoted to the office, he had met no advancement in life, but
was still in the same walk and the same grade in which he had started.
Hans Sponer was, however, a philosopher, and went on his road
uncomplainingly. He said that the open air and the freedom were better
than the closeness and confinement within-doors, and if his pay was
smaller, his healthier appetite made him able to relish plainer food;
and this mode of reconciling things--striking the balance between good
and ill--went through all he said or did, and his favorite phrase, “Es
ist fast einerley,” or “It comes to about the same,” comprised his whole
system of worldly knowledge.
If at first I felt the occupation assigned to me as an insult and a
degradation, Hanserl's companionship soon reconciled me to submit to
it with patience. It was not merely that he displayed an invariable
good-humor and pleasantry, but there was a forbearance about him, and a
delicacy in his dealing with me, actually gentlemanlike. Thus, he never
questioned me as to my former condition, nor asked by what accident I
had fallen to my present lot; and, while showing in many ways that he
saw I was unused to hardship, he rather treated my inexperience as a
mere fortuitous circumstance than as a thing to comment or dwell on.
Han-serl, besides this, taught me how to live on my humble pay of a
florin and ten kreutzers--about two shillings--daily. I had a small
room that led out into the yard, and could consequently devote my modest
salary to my maintenance. The straitened economy of Hans himself had
enabled him to lay by about eight hundred florins, and he strongly
advised me to arrange my mode of life on a plan that would admit of such
a prudent saving.
Less for this purpose than to give my friend a strong proof of the full
confidence I reposed in his judgment and his honor, I confided to his
care all my earnings, and only begged he would provide for me as for
himself; and thus Hans and I became inseparable. We took our coffee
together at daybreak, our little soup and boiled beef at noon, and our
potato-salad, with perhaps a sardine or such like, at night for supper;
the “Viertelwein”--the fourth of a bottle--being equitably divided
between us to cheer our hearts and cement good-fellowship on certainly
as acrid a liquor as ever served two such excellent ends.
None of the clerks would condescend to know us. Herr Fripper, the
cashier, would nod to us in the street, but the younger men never
recognized us at all, save in some expansive moment of freedom by a wink
or a jerk of the head. We were in a most subordinate condition, and they
made us feel it.
From Hans I learned that Herr Oppovich was a widower with two children,
a son and a daughter. The former was an irreclaimable scamp and
vagabond, whose debts had been paid over and over again, and who had
been turned out of the army with disgrace, and was now wandering about
Europe, living on his father's friends, and trading for small loans
on his family name. This was Adolph Oppovich. The girl--Sara she was
called--was, in Hanserl's judgment, not much more to be liked than her
brother. She was proud and insolent to a degree that would have been
remarkable in a princess of a reigning house. From the clerks she
exacted a homage that was positively absurd. It was not alone that
they should always stand uncovered as she passed, but that if any had
occasion to address her he should prelude what he had to say by kissing
her hand, an act of vassalage that in Austria is limited to persons of
the humblest kind.
“She regards me as a wild beast, and I am therefore spared this piece of
servitude,” said Hans; and he laughed his noiseless uncouth laugh as he
thought of his immunity.
“Is she handsome?” asked I.
“How can she be handsome when she is so overbearing?” said he. “Is not
beauty gentleness, mildness, softness? How can it agree with eyes that
flash disdain, and a mouth that seems to curl with insolence? The old
proverb says, 'Schönheit ist Sanftheit;' and that's why Our Lady is
always so lovely.”
Hanserl was a devout Catholic; and not impossibly this sentiment made
his judgment of the young Jewess all the more severe. Of Herr Oppovich
himself he would say little. Perhaps he deemed it was not loyal to
discuss him whose bread he ate; perhaps he had not sufficient experience
of me to trust me with his opinion; at all events, he went no further
than an admission that he was wise and keen in business,--one who made
few mistakes himself, nor forgave them easily in another.
“Never do more than he tells you to do, younker,” said Hans to me one
day; “and he 'll trust you, if you do that well.” And this was not the
least valuable hint he gave me.
Hans had a great deal of small worldly wisdom, the fruit rather of a
long experience than of any remarkable gift of observation. As he said
himself, it took him four years to learn the business of the yard; and
as I acquired the knowledge in about a week, he regarded me as a perfect
genius.
We soon became fast and firm friends. The way in which I had surrendered
myself to his guidance--giving him up the management of my money, and
actually submitting to his authority as though I were his son--had
won upon the old man immensely; while I, on my side,--friendless and
companionless, save with himself,--drew close to the only one who seemed
to take an interest in me. At first,--I must own it,--as we wended our
way at noon towards the little eating-house where we dined, and I saw
the friends with whom Hans exchanged greetings, and felt the class and
condition he belonged to reflected in the coarse looks and coarser ways
of his associates, I was ashamed to think to what I had fallen. I
had, indeed, no respect nor any liking for the young fellows of the
counting-house. They were intensely, offensively vulgar; but they had
the outward semblance, the dress, and the gait of their betters, and
they were privileged by appearance to stroll into a _café_ and sit
down, from which I and my companion would speedily have been ejected. I
confess I envied them that mere right of admission into the well-dressed
world, and sorrowed over my own exclusion as though it had been
inflicted on me as a punishment.
This jealous feeling met no encouragement from Hans. The old man had no
rancour of any kind in his nature. He had no sense of discontent with
his condition, nor any desire to change it. Counting staves seemed
to him a very fitting way to occupy existence; and he knew of many
occupations that were less pleasant and less wholesome. Rags, for
instance, for the paper-mill, or hides, in both of which Herr Ignaz
dealt, Hans would have seriously disliked; but staves were cleanly, and
smelt fresh and sweetly of the oak-wood they came from; and there was
something noble in their destiny--to form casks and hogsheads for the
rich wines of France and Spain--which he was fond of recalling; and so
would he say, “Without you and me, boy, or those like us, they 'd have
no vats nor barrels for the red grape-juice.”
While he thus talked to me, trying to invest our humble calling with
what might elevate it in my eyes, I struggled often with myself whether
I should not tell him the story of my life,--in what rank I had lived,
to what hopes of fortune I had been reared. Would this knowledge have
raised me in the old man's esteem, or would it have estranged him from
me? that was the question. How should I come through the ordeal of his
judgment,--higher or lower? A mere chance decided for me what all my
pondering could not resolve. Hans came home one night with a little book
in his hand, a present for me. It was a French grammar, and, as he told
me, the key to all knowledge.
“The French are the great people of the world,” said he, “and till you
know their tongue, you can have no real insight into learning.” There
was a “younker,” once under him in the yard, who, just because he could
read and write French, was now a cashier, with six hundred florins'
salary. “When you have worked hard for three months, we 'll look out for
a master, Owen.”
“But I know it already, Hanserl,” said I, proudly. “I speak it even
better than I speak German, and Italian too! Ay, stare at me, but it's
true. I had masters for these, and for Greek and Latin; and I was taught
to draw, and to sing, and to play the piano, and I learned how to ride
and to dance.”
“Just like a born gentleman,” broke in Hans.
“I was, and I am, a born gentleman; don't shake your head, or wring your
hands, Hanserl. I 'm not going mad! These are not ravings! I 'll soon
convince you what I say is true.” And I hurried to my room, and, opening
my trunk, took out my watch and some trinkets, some studs of value, and
a costly chain my father gave me. “These are all mine! I used to wear
them once, as commonly as I now wear these bone buttons. There were more
servants in my father's house than there are clerks in Herr Oppovich's
counting-house. Let me tell you who I was, and how I came to be what I
am.”
I told him my whole story, the old man listening with an eagerness
quite intense, but never more deeply interested than when I told of
the splendors and magnificence of my father's house. He never wearied
hearing of costly entertainments and great banqueta, where troops of
servants waited, and every wish of the guests was at once ministered to.
“And all this,” cried he, at last, “all this, day after day, night after
night, and not once a year only, as we see it here, on the Fraulein
Sara's birthday!” And now the poor old man, as if to compensate himself
for listening so long, broke out into a description of the festivities
by which Herr Oppovich celebrated his daughter's birthday; an occasion
on which he invited all in his employment to pass the day at his villa,
on the side of the bay, and when, by Hanserl's account, a most unbounded
hospitality held sway. “There are no portions, no measured quantities,
but each is free to eat and drink as he likes,” cried Hans, who, with
this praise, described a banquet of millennial magnificence. “But you
will see for yourself,” added he; “for even the 'yard' is invited.”
I cautioned him strictly not to divulge what I had told him of myself;
nor was it necessary, after all, for he well knew how Herr Ignaz
resented the thought of any one in his service having other pretensions
than such as grew out of his own favor towards them.
“You'd be sent away to-morrow, younker,” said he, “if he but knew what
you were. There's an old proverb shows how they think of people of
quality:--
'Die Joden nicht dulden
Ben Herrechaft mit Schulden.'
The Jews cannot abide the great folk, with their indebtedness; and to
deem these inseparable is a creed.
“On the 31st of August falls the Fraulein's birthday, lad, and you shall
tell me the next morning if your father gave a grander _fête_ than that!”