MY BIRTHDAY.
Three years of foreign travel, and five of retirement at home, brought
my twenty-ninth birthday. I was still young, it is true; but how changed
from that prime of early manhood when I used to play Romeo at midnight
to Hortense upon her balcony! I looked at myself in the glass that
morning, and contemplated the wearied, bronzed, and bearded face which
"...seared by toil and something touched by time,"
now gave me back glance for glance. I looked older than my age by many
years. My eyes had grown grave with a steadfast melancholy, and streaks
of premature silver gleamed here and there in the still abundant hair
which had been the solitary vanity of my youth.
"Is she also thus changed and faded?" I asked myself, as I turned away.
And then I sighed to think that if we met she might not know me.
For I loved her still; worshipped her; raised altars to her in the dusky
chambers of my memory. My whole life was dedicated to her. My best
thoughts were hers. My poems, my ambition, my hours of labor, all were
hers only! I knew now that no time could change the love which had so
changed me, or dim the sweet remembrance of that face which I carried
for ever at my heart like an amulet. Other women might be fair, but my
eyes never sought them; other voices might be sweet, but my ear never
listened to them; other hands might be soft, but my lips never pressed
them. She was the only woman in all my world--the only star in all my
night--the one Eve of my ruined Paradise. In a word, I loved her--loved
her, I think, more dearly than before I lost her.
"Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken."
I had that morning received by post a parcel of London papers and
magazines, which, for a foolish reason of my own, I almost dreaded to
open; so, putting off the evil hour, I thrust the ominous parcel into my
pocket and went out to read it in some green solitude, far away among
the lonely hills and tracts of furzy common that extend for miles and
miles around my native place. It was a delicious autumn morning, bright
and fresh and joyous as spring. The purple heather was all abloom along
the slopes of the hill-sides. The golden sandcliffs glittered in the
sun. The great firwoods reached away over heights and through
valleys--"grand and spiritual trees," pointing ever upward with warning
finger, like the Apostles in the old Italian pictures. Now I passed a
solitary farm-yard where busy laborers were piling the latest stacks;
now met a group of happy children gathering wild nuts and blackberries.
By-and-by, I came upon a great common, with a picturesque mill standing
high against the sky. All around and about stretched a vast prospect of
woodland and tufted heath, bounded far off by a range of chalk-hills
speckled with farm-houses and villages, and melting towards the west
into a distance faint and far, and mystic as the horizon of a Turner.
Here I threw myself on the green turf and rested. Truly, Nature is a
great "physician of souls." The peace of the place descended into my
heart, and hushed for a while the voice of its repinings. The delicious
air, the living silence of the woods, the dreamy influences of the
autumnal sunshine, all alike served to lull me into a pleasant mood,
neither gay nor sad, but very calm--calm enough for the purpose for
which I had come. So I brought out my packet of papers, summoned all my
philosophy to my aid, and met my own name upon the second page. For here
was, as I had anticipated, a critique on my first volume of poems.
Indifference to criticism, if based upon a simple consciousness of moral
right, is a noble thing. But indifference to criticism, taken in its
ordinary, and especially its literary sense, is generally a very small
thing, and resolves itself, for the most part, into a halting and
one-sided kind of stoicism, meaning indifference to blame and ridicule,
and never indifference to praise. It is very convenient to the
disappointed authorling; very effective, in the established writer; but
it is mere vanity at the root, and equally contemptible in both. For my
part, I confess that I came to my trial as tremblingly as any poor
caitiff to the fiery ordeal, and finding myself miraculously clear of
the burning ploughshares, was quite as full of wonder and thankfulness
at my good fortune. For I found my purposes appreciated, and my best
thoughts understood; not, it is true, without some censure, but it was
censure tempered so largely with encouragement that I drew hope from
it, and not despondency. And then I thought of Hortense, and, picturing
to myself all the joy it would have been to lay these things at her
feet, I turned my face to the grass, and wept like a child.
Then, one by one, the ghosts of my dead hopes rose out of the grave of
the past and vanished "into thin air" before me; and in their place came
earnest aspirations, born of the man's strong will. I resolved to use
wisely the gifts that were mine--to sing well the song that had risen to
my lips--to "seize the spirit of my time," and turn to noble uses the
God-given weapons of the poet. So should I be worthier of her
remembrance, if she yet remembered me--worthier, at all events, to
remember her.
Thus the hours ebbed, and when I at length rose and turned my face
homeward, the golden day was already bending westward. Lower and lower
sank the sun as the miles shortened; stiller and sweeter grew the
evening air; and ever my lengthening shadow travelled before me along
the dusty road--wherein I was more fortunate than the man in the German
story who sold his to the devil.
It was quite dusk by the time I gained the outskirts of the town, and I
reflected with much contentment upon the prospect of a cosy bachelor
dinner, and, after dinner, lamplight and a book.
"If you please, sir," said Collins, "a lady has been here."
Collins--the same Collins who had been my father's servant when I was a
boy at home--was now a grave married man, with hair fast whitening.
"A lady?" I echoed. "One of my cousins, I suppose, from Effingham."
"No, sir," said Collins. "A strange lady--a foreigner."
A stranger! a foreigner! I felt myself change color.
"She left her name?" I asked.
"Her card, sir," said Collins, and handed it to me.
I took it up with fingers that shook in spite of me and read:--
MADLLE DE SAINTE AULAIRE.
I dropped the card, with a sigh of profound disappointment.
"At what time did this lady call, Collins?"
"Not very long after you left the house, sir. She said she would call
again. She is at the White Horse."
"She shall not have the trouble of coming here," I said, drawing my
chair to the table. "Send James up to the White Horse with my
compliments, and say that I will wait upon the lady in about an
hour's time."
Collins darted away to despatch the message, and returning presently
with the pale ale, uncorked it dexterously, and stood at the side-board,
serenely indifferent.
"And what kind of person was this--this Mademoiselle de Sainte Aulaire,
Collins?" I asked, leisurely bisecting a partridge.
"Can't say, sir, indeed. Lady kept her veil down."
"Humph! Tall or short, Collins?"
"Rather tall, sir."
"Young?"
"Haven't an idea, sir. Voice very pleasant, though."
A pleasant voice has always a certain attraction for me. Hortense's
voice was exquisite--rich and low, and somewhat deeper than the voices
of most women.
I took up the card again. Mademoiselle de Sainte Aulaire! Where had I
heard that name?
"She said nothing of the nature of her business, I suppose, Collins?"
"Nothing at all, sir. Dear me, sir, I beg pardon for not mentioning it
before; but there's been a messenger over from the White Horse, since
the lady left, to know if you were yet home."
"Then she is in haste?"
"Very uncommon haste, I should say, sir," replied Collins, deliberately.
I pushed back the untasted dish, and rose directly.
"You should have told me this before," I said, hastily.
"But--but surely, sir, you will dine--"
"I will wait for nothing," I interrupted. "I'll go at once. Had I known
the lady's business was urgent, I would not have delayed a moment."
Collins cast a mournful glance at the table, and sighed respect fully.
Before he had recovered from his amazement, I was half way to the inn.
The White Horse was now the leading hostelry of Saxonholme. The old Red
Lion was no more. Its former host and hostess were dead; a brewery
occupied its site; and the White Horse was kept by a portly Boniface,
who had been head-waiter under the extinct dynasty. But there had been
many changes in Saxonholme since my boyish days, and this was one of the
least among them.
I was shown into the best sitting-room, preceded by a smart waiter in a
white neckcloth. At a glance I took in all the bearings of the
scene--the table with its untasted dessert; the shaded lamp; the closed
curtains of red damask; the thoughtful figure in the easy chair.
Although the weather was yet warm, a fire blazed in the grate; but the
windows were open behind the crimson curtains, and the evening air stole
gently in. It was like stepping into a picture by Gerard Dow, so closed,
so glowing, so rich in color.
"Mr. Arbuthnot," said the smart waiter, flinging the door very wide
open, and lingering to see what might follow.
The lady rose slowly, bowed, waved her hand towards a chair at some
distance from her own, and resumed her seat. The waiter reluctantly
left the room.
"I had not intended, sir, to give you the trouble of coming here," said
Mademoiselle de Sainte Aulaire, using her fan as a handscreen, and
speaking in a low, and, as it seemed to me, a somewhat constrained
voice. I could not see her face, but something in the accent made my
heart leap.
"Pray do not name it, madam," I said. "It is nothing."
She bent her head, as if thanking me, and went on:--
"I have come to this place," she said, "in order to prosecute certain
inquiries which are of great importance to myself. May I ask if you are
a native of Saxonholme?"
"I am."
"Were you here in the year 18--?"
"I was."
"Will you give me leave to test your memory respecting some events that
took place about that time?"
"By all means."
Mademoiselle de Sainte Aulaire thanked me with a gesture, withdrew her
chair still farther from the radius of the lamp and the tire,
and said:--
"I must entreat your patience if I first weary you with one or two
particulars of my family history,"
"Madam, I listen."
During the brief pause that ensued, I tried vainly to distinguish
something more of her features. I could only trace the outline of a
slight and graceful figure, the contour of a very slender hand, and the
ample folds of a dark silk dress.
At length, in a low, sweet voice, she began:--
"Not to impose upon you any dull genealogical details," she said, "I
will begin by telling you that the Sainte Aulaires are an ancient French
family of Bearnais extraction, and that my grandfather was the last
Marquis who bore the title. Holding large possessions in the _comtat_ of
Venaissin (a district which now forms part of the department of
Vaucluse) and other demesnes at Montlhéry, in the province of the Ile de
France---"
"At Montlhéry!" I exclaimed, suddenly recovering the lost link in my
memory.
"The Sainte Aulaires," continued the lady, without pausing to notice my
interruption, "were sufficiently wealthy to keep up their social
position, and to contract alliances with many of the best families in
the south of France. Towards the early part of the reign of Louis XIII.
they began to be conspicuous at court, and continued to reside in and
near Paris up to the period of the Revolution. Marshals of France,
Envoys, and Ministers of State during a period of nearly a century and a
half, the Sainte Aulaires had enjoyed too many honors not to be among
the first of those who fell in the Reign of Terror. My grandfather, who,
as I have already said, was the last Marquis bearing the title, was
seized with his wife and daughter at his Château near Montlhéry in the
spring-time of 1793, and carried to La Force. Thence, after a mock
trial, they were all three conveyed to execution, and publicly
guillotined on the sixth of June in the same year. Do you follow me?"
"Perfectly."
"One survivor, however, remained in the person of Charles Armand, Prévôt
de Sainte Aulaire, only son of the Marquis, then a youth of seventeen
years of age, and pursuing his studies in the seclusion of an old family
seat in Vaucluse. He fled into Italy. In the meantime, his inheritance
was confiscated; and the last representative of the race, reduced to
exile and beggary, assumed another name. It were idle to attempt to map
out his life through the years that followed. He wandered from land to
land; lived none knew how; became a tutor, a miniature-painter, a
volunteer at Naples under General Pepe, a teacher of languages in
London, corrector of the press to a publishing house in
Brussels--everything or anything, in short, by which he could honorably
earn his bread. During these years of toil and poverty, he married. The
lady was an orphan, of Scotch extraction, poor and proud as himself, and
governess in a school near Brussels. She died in the third year of their
union, and left him with one little daughter. This child became
henceforth his only care and happiness. While she was yet a mere infant,
he placed her in the school where her mother had been teacher. There she
remained, first as pupil, by-and-by as governess, for more than sixteen
years. The child was called by an old family name that had been her
grandmother's and her great-grandmother's in the high and palmy days of
the Sainte Aulaires--Hortense."
"Hortense!" I cried, rising from my chair.
"It is not an uncommon name," said the lady. "Does it surprise you?"
"I--I beg your pardon, madam," I stammered, resuming my seat. "I once
had a dear friend of that name. Pray, go on."
"For ten years the refugee contrived to keep his little Hortense in the
safe and pleasant shelter of her Flemish home. He led a wandering life,
no one knew where; and earned his money, no one knew how. Travel-worn
and careworn, he was prematurely aged, and at fifty might well have been
mistaken for a man of sixty-five or seventy. Poor and broken as he was,
however, Monsieur de Sainte Aulaire was every inch a gentleman of the
old school; and his little girl was proud of him, when he came to the
school to see her. This, however, was very seldom--never oftener than
twice or three times in the year. When she saw him for the last time,
Hortense was about thirteen years of age. He looked paler, and thinner,
and poorer than ever; and when he bade her farewell, it was as if under
the presentiment that they might meet no more. He then told her, for the
first time, something of his story, and left with her at parting a small
coffer containing his decorations, a few trinkets that had been his
mother's, and his sword--the badge of his nobility."
The lady's voice faltered. I neither spoke nor stirred, but sat like a
man of stone.
Then she went on again:--
"The father never came again. The child, finding herself after a certain
length of time thrown upon the charity of her former instructors, was
glad to become under-teacher in their school. The rest of her history
may be told in a few words. From under-teacher she became head-teacher,
and at eighteen passed as governess into a private family. At twenty she
removed to Paris, and set foot for the first time in the land of her
fathers. All was now changed in France. The Bourbons reigned again, and
her father, had he reappeared, might have reclaimed his lost estates.
She sought him far and near. She employed agents to discover him. She
could not believe that he was dead. To be once again clasped in his
arms--to bring him back to his native country---to see him resume his
name and station--this was the bright dream of her life. To accomplish
these things she labored in many ways, teaching and writing; for
Hortense also was proud--too proud to put forward an unsupported claim.
For with her father were lost the title-deeds and papers that might have
made the daughter wealthy, and she had no means of proving her identity.
Still she labored heartily, lived poorly, and earned enough to push her
inquiries far and wide--even to journey hither and thither, whenever she
fancied, alas! that a clue had been found. Twice she travelled into
Switzerland, and once into Italy, but always in vain. The exile had too
well concealed, even from her, his _sobriquet_ and his calling, and
Hortense at last grew weary of failure. One fact, however, she succeeded
in discovering, and only one--namely, that her father had, many years
before, made some attempt to establish his claims to the estates, but
that he had failed for want either of sufficient proof, or of means to
carry on the _procés_. Of even this circumstance only a meagre
law-record remained, and she could succeed in learning no more. Since
then, a claim has been advanced by a remote branch of the Sainte Aulaire
family, and the cause is, even now, in course of litigation."
She paused, as if fatigued by so long talking; but, seeing me about to
speak, prevented me with a gesture of the hand, and resumed:--
"Hortense de Ste. Aulaire continued to live in Paris for nearly five
years, at the end of which time she left it to seek out the members of
her mother's family. Finding them kindly disposed towards her, she took
up her abode amongst them in the calm seclusion of a remote Scotch town.
There, even there, she still hoped, still employed agents; still yearned
to discover, if not her father, at least her father's grave. Several
years passed thus. She continued to earn a modest subsistence by her
pen, till at length the death of one of those Scotch relatives left her
mistress of a small inheritance. Money was welcome, since it enabled
her to pursue her task with renewed vigor. She searched farther and
deeper. A trivial circumstance eagerly followed up brought a train of
other circumstances to light. She discovered that her father had assumed
a certain name; she found that the bearer of this name was a wandering
man, a conjuror by trade; she pursued the vague traces of his progress
from town to town, from county to county, sometimes losing, sometimes
regaining the scattered links. Sir, he was my father--I am that
Hortense. I have spent my life seeking him--I have lived for this one
hope. I have traced his footsteps here to Saxonholme, and here the last
clue fails. If you know anything--if you can remember anything---"
Calm and collected as she had been at first, she was trembling now, and
her voice died away in sobs. The firelight fell upon her face--upon the
face of my lost love!
I also was profoundly agitated.
"Hortense," I said, "do you not know, that he who stood beside your
father in his last hour, and he who so loved you years ago, are one and
the same? Alas! why did you not tell me these things long since?"
"Did _you_ stand beside my father's deathbed?" she asked brokenly.
"I did."
She clasped her hands over her eyes and shuddered, as if beneath the
pressure of a great physical pain.
"O God!" she murmured, "so many years of denial and suffering! so many
years of darkness that might have been dispelled by a word!"
We were both silent for a long time. Then I told her all that I
remembered of her father; how he came to Saxonholme--how he fell
ill--how he died, and was buried. It was a melancholy recital; painful
for me to relate--painful for her to hear--and interrupted over and over
again by questions and tears, and bursts of unavailing sorrow.
"We will visit his grave to-morrow," I said, when all was told.
She bent her head.
"To-morrow, then," said she, "I end the pilgrimage of years."
"And--and afterwards?" I faltered.
"Afterwards? Alas! friend, when the hopes of years fall suddenly to dust
and ashes, one feels as if there were no future to follow?"
"It is true," I said gloomily. "I know it too well."
"You know it?" she exclaimed, looking up.
"I know it, Hortense. There was a moment in which all the hope, and the
fulness, and the glory of my life went down at a blow. Have you not
heard of ships that have gone to the bottom in fair weather, suddenly,
with all sail set, and every hand on board?"
She looked at me with a strange earnestness in her eyes, and sighed
heavily.
"What have you been doing all this time, fellow-student?" she asked,
after a pause.
The old name sounded very sweet upon her lips!
"I? Alas!--nothing."
"But you are a surgeon, are you not?"
"No. I never even went up for examination. I gave up all idea of
medicine as a profession when my father died."
"What are you, then?"
"An idler upon the great highway--a book-dreamer--a library fixture."
Hortense looked at me thoughtfully, with her cheek resting on her hand.
"Have you done nothing but read and dream?"
"Not quite. I have travelled."
"With what object?"
"A purely personal one. I was alone and unhappy, and--"
"And fancied that purposeless wandering was better for you than healthy
labor. Well, you have travelled, and you have read books. What more?"
"Nothing more, except--"
"Except what?"
I chanced to have one of the papers in my pocket, and so drew it out,
and placed it before her.
"I have been a rhymer as well as a dreamer," I said, shyly. "Perhaps the
rhymes grew out of the dreams, as the dreams themselves grew out of
something else which has been underlying my life this many a year. At
all events I have hewn a few of them into shape, and trusted them to
paper and type--and here is a critique which came to me this morning
with some three or four others."
She took the paper with a smile half of wonder, half of kindness, and,
glancing quickly through it, said:--
"This is well. This is very well. I must read the book. Will you lend it
to me?"
"I will give it to you," I replied; "if I can give you that which is
already yours."
"Already mine?"
"Yes, as the poet in me, however worthless, is all and only yours! Do
you suppose, Hortense, that I have ever ceased to love you? As my songs
are born of my sorrow, so my sorrow was born of my love; and love, and
sorrow, and song, such as they are, are of your making."
"Hush!" she said, with something of her old gay indifference. "Your
literary sins must not be charged upon me, fellow-student! I have enough
of my own to answer for. Besides, I am not going to acquit you so
easily. Granted that you have written a little book of poetry--what
then? Have you done nothing else? Nothing active? Nothing manly?
Nothing useful?"
"If by usefulness and activity you mean manual labor, I certainly have
neither felled a tree, nor ploughed a field, nor hammered a horse-shoe.
I have lived by thought alone."
"Then I fear you have lived a very idle life," said Hortense, smiling.
"Are you married?"
"Married!" I echoed, indignantly. "How can you ask the question?"
"You are not a magistrate?"
"Certainly not."
"In short, then, you are perfectly useless. You play no part, domestic
or public. You serve neither the state nor the community. You are a mere
cypher--a make-weight in the social scale--an article of no value to any
one except the owner."
"Not even the latter, mademoiselle," I replied, bitterly. "It is long
since I have ceased to value my own life."
She smiled again, but her eyes this time were full of tears.
"Nay," said she, softly, "am I not the owner?"
* * * * *
Great joys at first affect us like great griefs. We are stunned by them,
and know not how deep they are till the night comes with its solemn
stillness, and we are alone with our own hearts. Then comes the season
of thankfulness, and wonder and joy. Then our souls rise up within us,
and chant a hymn of praise; and the great vault of Heaven is as the roof
of a mighty cathedral studded with mosaics of golden stars, and the
night winds join in with the bass of their mighty organ-pipes; and the
poplars rustle, like the leaves of the hymn-books in the hands of the
congregation.
So it was with me that evening when I went forth into the quiet fields
where the summer moon was shining, and knew that Hortense was mine at
last--mine now and for ever. Overjoyed and restless, I wandered about
for hours. I could not go home. I felt I must breathe the open air of
the hills, and tread the dewy grass, and sing my hymn of praise and
thanksgiving after my own fashion. At length, as the dawning light came
widening up the east, I turned my steps homewards, and before the sun
had risen above the farthest pine-ridge, I was sleeping the sweetest
sleep that had been mine for years.
The conjuror's grave was green with grass and purple with wild thyme
when Hortense knelt beside it, and there consummated the weary
pilgrimage of half a life. The sapling willow had spread its arms above
him in a pleasant canopy, leaning farther and reaching higher, year
by year,
"And lo! the twig to which they laid his head had now become a tree!"
Hortense found nothing of her father but this grave. Papers and
title-deeds there were none.
I well remembered the anxious search made thirteen years ago, when not
even a card was found to indicate the whereabouts of his friends or
family. Not to lose the vestige of a chance, we pushed inquiry farther;
but in vain. Our rector, now a very old man, remembered nothing of the
wandering lecturer. Mine host and hostess of the Red Lion were both
dead. The Red Lion itself had disappeared, and become a thing of
tradition. All was lost and forgotten; and of all her hereditary wealth,
station, and honors, Hortense de Sainte Aulaire retained nothing but her
father's sword and her ancestral name.
--Not even the latter for many weeks, O discerning reader! for before
the golden harvest was gathered in, we two were wedded.