with all these things, allied to such large sorrows--a sad one and
disappointing enough, you will say, for a little child. Yet I did not
find it so. I was, as I have told you, indignant as to the cake, and
disappointed, no doubt, that there was no happy and devoted family
now gathered to hear me sing my gay little song. But to offset these
there was a kind of reassurance in the day which I find it difficult
to describe very exactly. It was as if, at one and the same time, this
were and were not my birthday. It was my day by the calendar, but in
no other way. For a birthday is one whose dawn and sunset are one's
very own, a day when one's importance is admitted very gladly by a
certain intimate circle. But on no day of my life, I am sure, was I
of so little importance as then--a very inconsiderable little person,
playing alone in the sunshine and with my song unsung. Yet something
in that day shines now across the years, as distant as a star, as
silver, as satisfying. That something is not to be ascribed to any
one mere incident: it was compounded, no doubt, of the best of every
relationship which I felt that day for the first time. The extreme
gentleness of the grown-up of whom I have told you was one element;
for the rest, the companionship with my father in that strange still
moment in the shuttered room; the wordless love given me by my mother,
of a different sort from any she had given me before; the quietness,
giving me an impression as of remote spaces never dreamed of before;
and, over all, the sense of something strange and of a great dignity,
as of presences that moved, dread, but not unkindly.
And the little song which I had practised so faithfully, and which
I was to have sung! Little as I was, and without ever being told, I
believe, as the day wore on, I must have had a dim realization of how
inconsiderable it was in that house where Death had taken up Life's
lute, and, brows bent above it, remembered the songs that Life had sung.
II
The birthdays that followed on this one were curiously unsatisfying,
though they were celebrated appropriately enough, and with the fullest
respect for my importance. The anticipation and approach of them,
as nearly as I can remember, were clear joy. But the days, when
they arrived, overwhelmed me unaccountably. There was something
disproportionate in them, so that I was glad to escape from their too
personal glory to the more comfortable commonplace of the impersonal.
It was as if I guessed dimly, without being in the least aware, that
this display in my honor had in it something almost a little cheap--an
egotism (though I had not then so much as heard the word) which
contrasted unfavorably with the large and gracious and forgetful ways
of Life itself.
I believe my embarrassment, my wholly unanalyzed sense of
disappointment and disproportion, may have been, on a very diminutive
scale, something akin to that which I am sure Joshua must have
experienced,--not, mind you, at the moment of his extraordinary
and flattering command,--no, but afterwards, afterwards, in the
disappointed watches of the night, when he must have reflected, with
disappointed amazement, that, if his senses deceived him not, he,
Joshua, had made the great luminary to stand still over Gibeon, and
the moon in the valley of Ajalon. Something, too, of what Joseph must
have experienced,--not in the enjoyable dream of his brothers' sheaves
bowing down to his sheaf, and the sun and the moon and the eleven
stars making their obeisance to him; nor in those long anticipatory
years, when his greatness was approaching, and the scroll of the future
hung loose in his hands for his remembering eye to read,--no, but in
the actual moment of overwhelming fulfillment, when, from Judah to
Benjamin, his brothers actually did bow down to him as ruler over all
those great granaries of Egypt, and, as we are told, his mature spirit
could not consent to endure so much, but "he sought where to weep, and
entered into his chamber and wept there."
These are, I believe, no mere extraneous or personal experiences, but
are rather of the fine weave and fabric of humanity; and the uneasiness
I felt in my complacent little soul, I now believe to have been a
stirring of old things, of ancient memories under the moon, which
linked my little inconsiderable life, as they link all lives, to Egypt,
Nilus, Babylon, and the ages that are not.
But lest this seem but vague argument and debatable territory, I would
like to speak of other childhood birthdays of my own which, it seems
to me, bring to the case clear evidence and important testimony.
I have said that I was one of a large family. Happily we could not
make too important a matter of birthdays in our home; it would have
kept us celebrating most of the time, and would have tended to make
the whole year frivolous. For obvious reasons, then, birthday parties
were not many. But I remember one of a most lasting glory, which had
as its excuse that one of my sisters was fifteen upon the fifteenth.
My mother, who by mere warmth and gayety of sympathetic temperament
was forever on the watch for a reason to celebrate something, could
never have missed so valid an occasion. Furniture was therefore moved
out, ferns were moved in, smilax was twined about the chandeliers and
strung along the portraits, a linen dancing-cloth was stretched the
length of the three rooms. I can still feel the smooth glide of my
strapped slippers over it. Musicians were concealed in a bosky corner.
At the top of the stairs was a room known as the conservatory, whose
plants had been all winter in my keeping, their condition testifying
rather sadly to that fact. But now, by a lovely bounty, my sins of
negligence were all wiped out. Florists came bearing pots of flowers in
full blossom, and more of them and more of them. There were primroses
such as my own care could never have hoped for, and fuchsias and
candytuft and daffodils in full abundant bloom, even while the March
winds outside yet blew so chill. In the day or two just before the
fifteenth, how often I ran up into that little room and stood wordless
and satisfied among them, or stooped and touched my cheek to them! Oh,
the sweet heliotrope! oh, the mignonette!
On that wonderful evening there bloomed among the flowers little lights
with dark red shades, and here and there comfortable seats were placed,
where you could hear the music at a muted distance. We children all
wore new gowns, my sister--she of the birthday--having of course, by
generous consent, the filmiest and the loveliest.
That was a happy gathering if ever I saw one; and were I brought to
believe that a birthday celebration is ever an affair of unmixed
loveliness, I should perhaps be brought to say it concerning one for
fifteen on the fifteenth. Fourteen on the fourteenth lacks flavor,
is a little unripe, like fruit imported before the real season is
at hand. Sixteen on the sixteenth is a little over-mellow, a little
late; already childhood is gone, and youth, however lovely it may be
in the receiving of homage and favors, should already have its hands
outstretched rather to bestow them. But fifteen on the fifteenth! There
is a golden mean and a time for all things, as the Scriptures and the
fairy tales tell us. This was the time to dance, that King Solomon
talks about. Like the "Tuney Bear's" soup in the old tale, this party
to celebrate fifteen on the fifteenth seems to me as nearly right as
things can be contrived in a world of chance like our own.
Through a maze of years and smilax I am still aware of the delicious
mystery of concealed music wailing forth the Sirens waltzes (no dances
were given then without the Sirens waltzes). I can see the children
moving about, gay and a little fluttery; and the grown-ups, quieter,
but still gay, who came to add the dignity and charm of their greeting
to the celebration; and I can see my sister,--fifteen that day by a
delectable distinction,--lithe and poised and gracious, and flushed
and very pretty, standing beside my mother, her eyes looking out like
stars under her dark hair, and her flying eyebrows that had just the
slight lift of a bird's wing; and my next younger sister and I, of a
less vivid coloring, no more than attendant sisters, and rich enough in
that, with our new sashes and our new delight in graciousness; and my
oldest sister of all, moving about with a lovely homage to us younger
ones, a gracious bending down of her life to ours for a little while.
And every one, old and young, even some with gray hairs, came and bowed
over the hand of fifteen. That impressed me most. And some who were a
little more than guests--intimates--brought my sister gifts--one that
lies here now on the table as I write: a beautifully bound small copy
of Shakespeare's Sonnets, with the Dowden introduction. I did not know
it then for what it was. I only loved it for its red and gold binding;
but later, I grew up to it in my girlhood, as a young vine climbs at
last to a trellis that is placed above it and awaits its growing. On
its first leaf, in an exact hand, is written the date, my sister's
name, and that of the donor. Then follows this wish, suitable to the
day:--
"May each succeeding birthday find you as light-hearted as you are
to-day."
Oh, time! time! that brings us our blunders and our tears! Was he so
inexperienced himself, he who brought her that? Or did he set that
down in a mere spirit of carnival and bravado, just because she _was_
fifteen on the fifteenth, and nothing else was for the moment to be
admitted of any importance?
I do not know how beautiful a birthday it was for her, but oh, for
me! How I loved it! How good it was to bring her my homage! How
glad and willing and eager I was that she should stand first! Play,
play, concealed musicians! I can still catch the plucking of the
harp-strings, and the sweet gay wailing of the violins, across the
years.
III
One other birthday of my childhood stands out vividly in my memory:
that one on which I was twelve years old. My mother had taken us all
abroad, to widen our horizons and promote our education. After a
preliminary few months in England, we were established in Paris, in
a comfortable apartment in a little hotel which they tell me is still
there, and which went then, and still goes, by the name "Louis le
Grand"--nothing less.
From the moment of our arrival, in January, I began to think even more
of my birthday than was my wont. This was, no doubt, largely due to the
fact that, at the distance of a few blocks one way or another, anything
in the world, so it seemed, could be bought. Shops! Shops! The rue des
Petits Champs, the avenue de l'Opéra, the boulevard des Italiens, were
full of them. The rue des Petits Champs had innumerable _boutiques_
of all kinds--one given over to nothing, mind you, but honey and
gingerbread, like a shop in a fairy tale. If you went across the Place
Vendôme and followed the rue Castiglione, you came to the most romantic
shops of all, there under the arcades of the rue de Rivoli, beginning
with the most delectable pastry shop in the world on the very corner.
You could walk there on a sunny day, disdainful of the weather, with
the Gardens of the Tuileries opposite you, and feast your soul on the
varied displays.
But when all was said, there was nothing that could be compared with
the shops of the rue de la Paix. Here you came at once into a richer
atmosphere. Here, mainly, were jewel-shops, displaying tiaras and
necklaces--"rings and things and fine array." Dolls and gingerbread
and honey were delightful--let me not seem to undervalue them; but to
stand looking on while a master of his profession leaned over a velvet
counter to show my mother brooches of jewels, and diamonds set in
rings, was to know from the standpoint of childhood some of the true
elevations of life.
While my mother considered jewels set thus or so, my eyes roved,
speculative, among the rich wares. I had been brought up in too
old-fashioned a way to make any mistake as to my limitations. Well-bred
children, it was understood, wore neither rings nor ornaments, unless
one or two of a most positive simplicity. But watches there were, a
bewildering variety--for we were in the shop of one Victor Fleury, who,
among other distinctions that I doubt not he had, was "Horloger de la
Marine." You can imagine whether he had watches! I called my mother's
attention to the beauty of them, some very small ones in particular.
She looked at them, but made no comment. I deduced that it was not
well-bred for a little girl of twelve to wear a watch.
My birthday dawned at last. I was kissed and wished many happy returns,
and was told that there was to be a dinner that night especially for
me, and that I would then receive my gifts. The hotel was a small
one. Dinner would be served for the hotel guests a trifle earlier, so
that they might the sooner leave the way clear for me. This had been
proposed by Madame Blet herself, the proprietress, and was intended no
doubt for a fine piece of hospitality. For me the strict hotel rules
were to be slackened; the fine democracy of hotel life, where one guest
is as good as another, if he but pay his account, was to be overruled
in my favor; for me the sun was to be advanced, and the moon set at a
new pace in the heavens!
It was very grand in anticipation, I can assure you. To be twelve
was of itself no inconsiderable glory, but to be twelve under such
flattering conditions! I resolved to write an account of all this to my
two chums in America. Little girls they were, of my own age, but of a
less colored experience. They should have news of these matters. They
should be enlightened as to the importance of her with whom they had
commonly played visiting-lady and jackstones.
Yet, as the evening drew near, old stirrings of uneasiness made
themselves felt dimly, dimly--something, I cannot tell you what,
moving on the face of undiscovered waters; a distrust, a shyness
and embarrassment that had nothing to do with timidity; a dim sense
of disproportion, I take it to have been, and of ancient human
questionings.
We waited a little past the usual hour, and then there came a knock.
Joseph, our waiter, appeared and bowed gravely. "Mademoiselle, le dîner
est servi."
My heart rose and fluttered. Presently we all went down the hall and
down the red carpeted stairs, I with my hand in my mother's. I can
still feel it resting there. Down the steps we went, my mother and
I--I with a little delighted pause and poise at each step, the rest
following like a court train. Twelve, and the youngest! Twelve, and the
well-beloved and proud! Blow, bugles, fine and high! and let those who
follow wear scarlet! What more could a little girl ask?
I do not know; I cannot tell you. I only know that, though I would not
have admitted it for worlds at the time, when I found myself in the
midst of the happiness it was no longer happiness exactly. Not, you
understand, that I would have relinquished any of the splendor then. It
fascinated me, of course.
Joseph held the door open; a fine heraldic gesture--the flat of his
palm against it, the fingers spread, his head flung back, his eyes
tributary ahead of him; his whole pose saying, "Stand back! She comes!"
Several of the other servants were there, grouped to see and to
attend. Madame Blet, in her black dress and perpetual shoulder-cape--a
sad-faced, very dignified woman, with the sadness set aside in my
honor for that evening and positive brightness shining from her kind
eyes,--stood there too, with welcoming glances. She had decorated the
table herself: there it was, a delight of soft lights and snowy linen,
wonderful possibilities and flowers.
The dining-room was empty yet bright, as are the heavens for the
coming of the moon. Joseph stood, not back of my mother's chair, as
usual, but back of mine, to see me seated. Those faces, very beloved in
the soft light, were turned toward me, a little gay, and happy wholly
in my happiness. It was fulfillment of all the dreams of importance I
might ever have had.
Then came the unfolding of the gifts. Any one who knew my mother must
know that, in the smallest of a nest of lovely little boxes,--just
enough of them to produce a certain curiosity and delay, to enhance
the final delight,--lay the most lovely little watch, silver-cased (to
render it more conformable to my age), and marked with the initials of
my name; while on its inner casing it bore proudly, as it still bears,
while it ticks here on my table, this inscription: _Victor Fleury,
Horloger de la Marine, 23, Rue de la Paix, 23, Paris_.
After the other gifts were opened dinner was served, Joseph bringing
everything first to me, whose place it was usually to be served last of
all. There were special dishes, and the lamb chops had on particularly
fine cravats, and the _petits pois_ were so very _petits_ that it
seemed nearly a shame to eat them--like "good little Tootle-tum Teh" in
the ballad; and there were side dishes, very special, for the occasion.
Then, as a crowning glory, a dessert not baked in a hotel oven at
all; no cabinet pudding of frequent occurrence, nothing that hinted
of rice or raisins; no, but something fetched particularly from the
_pâtisserie_. By the look of it, it might have been, and probably
was, concocted by a pastry cook in full regalia, in that superlative
_pâtisserie_ on the rue de Rivoli, opposite the Louvre.
It was a tower made of a hard brown candy flecked with chopped nuts.
It had a door in it, and windows with embrasures at the tops to make
you think of King Arthur and his knights. It was decorated on its
platter by saccharine approaches. The tower was open at the top and
filled with a flavored whipped cream. Madame Blet, who had, I doubt
not, been directing forces from the kitchen, stood now in the doorway
beaming like another candle. This, which had the added flavor of being
a surprise even to my mother, was Madame Blet's gift to the little
American mademoiselle. Once more, on a most diminutive scale, France
and America were exchanging courtesies.
But meanwhile,--oh, inevitable!--Joseph, that devoted ambassador,
beaming unfeigned pride in the behavior of his country, held the tower
at my left hand. I was to serve myself first. But how--I ask the
heavens to answer me this!--how is one to serve one's self to a feudal
tower? One desperate glance at my mother,--the quick dart of an alarmed
swallow,--then I took up the large spoon and laid it hesitatingly
against the tower's side. But the tower was nearly as hard as the rock
it represented. The approaches, also, were of one piece. With a mere
dessert spoon, what can be done as to a portcullis! Shall you, do you
think, carry off a drawbridge with a slight silver instrument to be
held in one hand? I was not meeting the emergency. I was not equal to
the occasion. This I knew, with quick intolerable shame. What was to
be done? At last, after what seemed to me ages, I accepted the only
possibility. I scooped from the top of the tower some of the fluffy
whipped cream, put this on my plate and the spoon back among the
approaches; and the tower, proud, unspoiled, unwon, was carried on to
the others, who served themselves, as I had done; or, when the cream
was at last too low for them to reach, suffered Joseph to scoop it out
for them and put it on their plates.
I sat tasting the whipped cream on the end of my spoon, and oh, it was
insipid, that faint froth; not of itself, but by contrast with what I
would have wished--a portcullis at the very least. When we left the
dining-room, it still stood solid and invulnerable, that so desirable
tower, a delusion to the palate, a snare to the understanding, a subtle
but strong disappointment to the heart! Now that I look back on it, it
seems like an unintended symbol, an uninterpreted writing on the wall
of my childhood.
These things called birthdays seemed for me to have been weighed that
night in subtle scales, and found wanting. Froth on the tip of your
spoon! The real anticipated glory, a chimera; the dreamed-of and
so-much-desired happiness, a thing which could not be won, a thing left
untouched while one slipped away unsatisfied, disappointed, into the
later years.
No doubt I passed on to later years that very evening as I went out of
the lighted dining-room; for more and more this centralizing of power
and importance, even though it were for one day of the year only,
became to me incongruous and out of the real order of life. As I began
to gauge values and proportions better, it came to seem almost a gentle
buffoonery. The mild distrust I had felt for birthdays in my little
girlhood was beginning to take on the form of positive distaste.
Doubtless I was beginning to have a larger vision of life. For one
thing, I had meanwhile seen dawns rise over the Alps, and day depart
from the fruitful purple valleys to ascend the heights, beautiful, like
the feet of those upon the mountains, who bring tidings of peace; and
had watched them pause in their glory for a last look upon the work of
their hands before going forth forever beyond the world's edge. And I
had stood since then by the incredible sounding sea; I had known that
sense of the waters in the hollow of His hand, and watched the night
bend like the face of infinity over it.
IV
Out of the birthdays I have known, I have recorded but three--the three
made memorable, not so much by material as by spiritual gifts, and by
some vision of life itself vouchsafed me. It was as if, with a touch
upon my hand, Life summoned me to note, even though in some unrealized
way, when I was but a child of five, how inconsiderable may be these
our little personal joys and expectations and vanities of song, even
as were mine, in the face of the large solemnities and griefs and
remembered joys with which, that day, our home was visited. And on that
second birthday, it was as if Life bade me note how satisfying to the
heart is the gift of lovely and willing service. Not mine the day at
all; but I can remember, all woven in with the ravishing music of harps
and violins, a sense of my almost thrilled delight in the service that
others brought my sister, in whose honor we were glad, and a high joy
in my own eager and devoted homage. Dimly seen in all this, though I
could not have named it to you then, was a larger vision, no doubt, of
this same truth translated into lovelier and more solemn meaning; as
if in those lighted rooms, gay with their smilax and their laughter,
Life had suddenly laid a touch on my shoulder, and with her finger on
her lips had bade me note how sweet is the odor of spikenard, and how
thrillingly beautiful are the broken pieces of alabaster.
And the third birthday? Perhaps it was then that Life put into my hand
a better gift than any--that larger knowledge, which all the coming
years were to corroborate, that to have special gifts and benefits for
one's self which are not for others, let the glamour be what it may, is
after all but froth and disappointment; and that only the blending of
one's life with other lives can ever really satisfy the heart.
Since then I have seen birthdays of my own and others not a few, and
have looked on at those of many a child. Witnessing these, I have
sometimes been troubled to note how--materialists ourselves--we insist
upon making materialists of our children also. For who has not beheld
a little lad, triumphant as Jack Horner, in the midst of his birthday
packages, or a little Midas, among his heaped-up Christmas toys,
appropriating to himself, with our delighted consent, the Other Child's
birthday also. With what shameful abundance of material gifts do we
heap the little eager hands; but how few, how few, for the young and
growing spirit!
Yet it is to be noted hopefully that our too personal celebrations are
apt to fall away, as it were of themselves, in our later years; and
doubtless with them many of our central egotisms, life correcting with
a patient hand our dull and ofttimes willful behavior. I cannot be
persuaded that it is solely a sensitiveness to the loss of youth that
prompts us to waive or disregard those birthdays which fall upon the
nether side of twenty. Our neglect of them is more often, I like to
believe, in the order of a gentle disavowal of old egotisms, as life
ripens and takes on in our regard an aspect larger and less personal;
even as to a nation or a religion which progresses, egotism and special
privilege become increasingly distasteful, and the idea of a chosen
people more and more intolerable to the pure in heart, as the world
matures.