CHAPTER LV.
MY BIRTHDAY.
Three years of foreign travel, and five of retirement at home, broughtmy twenty-ninth birthday. I was still young, it is true; but how changedfrom that prime of early manhood when I used to play Romeo at midnightto Hortense upon her balcony! I looked at myself in the glass thatmorning, 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 manyyears. My eyes had grown grave with a steadfast melancholy, and streaksof premature silver gleamed here and there in the still abundant hairwhich 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 duskychambers of my memory. My whole life was dedicated to her. My bestthoughts were hers. My poems, my ambition, my hours of labor, all werehers only! I knew now that no time could change the love which had sochanged me, or dim the sweet remembrance of that face which I carriedfor ever at my heart like an amulet. Other women might be fair, but myeyes never sought them; other voices might be sweet, but my ear neverlistened to them; other hands might be soft, but my lips never pressedthem. She was the only woman in all my world--the only star in all mynight--the one Eve of my ruined Paradise. In a word, I loved her--lovedher, 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 andmagazines, which, for a foolish reason of my own, I almost dreaded toopen; so, putting off the evil hour, I thrust the ominous parcel into mypocket and went out to read it in some green solitude, far away amongthe lonely hills and tracts of furzy common that extend for miles andmiles around my native place. It was a delicious autumn morning, brightand fresh and joyous as spring. The purple heather was all abloom alongthe slopes of the hill-sides. The golden sandcliffs glittered in thesun. The great firwoods reached away over heights and throughvalleys--"grand and spiritual trees," pointing ever upward with warningfinger, like the Apostles in the old Italian pictures. Now I passed asolitary 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 standinghigh against the sky. All around and about stretched a vast prospect ofwoodland and tufted heath, bounded far off by a range of chalk-hillsspeckled with farm-houses and villages, and melting towards the westinto 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 agreat "physician of souls." The peace of the place descended into myheart, and hushed for a while the voice of its repinings. The deliciousair, the living silence of the woods, the dreamy influences of theautumnal sunshine, all alike served to lull me into a pleasant mood,neither gay nor sad, but very calm--calm enough for the purpose forwhich I had come. So I brought out my packet of papers, summoned all myphilosophy to my aid, and met my own name upon the second page. For herewas, as I had anticipated, a critique on my first volume of poems.
Indifference to criticism, if based upon a simple consciousness of moralright, is a noble thing. But indifference to criticism, taken in itsordinary, and especially its literary sense, is generally a very smallthing, and resolves itself, for the most part, into a halting andone-sided kind of stoicism, meaning indifference to blame and ridicule,and never indifference to praise. It is very convenient to thedisappointed authorling; very effective, in the established writer; butit is mere vanity at the root, and equally contemptible in both. For mypart, I confess that I came to my trial as tremblingly as any poorcaitiff to the fiery ordeal, and finding myself miraculously clear ofthe burning ploughshares, was quite as full of wonder and thankfulnessat my good fortune. For I found my purposes appreciated, and my bestthoughts understood; not, it is true, without some censure, but it wascensure tempered so largely with encouragement that I drew hope fromit, and not despondency. And then I thought of Hortense, and, picturingto myself all the joy it would have been to lay these things at herfeet, 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 ofthe past and vanished "into thin air" before me; and in their place cameearnest aspirations, born of the man's strong will. I resolved to usewisely the gifts that were mine--to sing well the song that had risen tomy lips--to "seize the spirit of my time," and turn to noble uses theGod-given weapons of the poet. So should I be worthier of herremembrance, if she yet remembered me--worthier, at all events, toremember her.
Thus the hours ebbed, and when I at length rose and turned my facehomeward, the golden day was already bending westward. Lower and lowersank the sun as the miles shortened; stiller and sweeter grew theevening air; and ever my lengthening shadow travelled before me alongthe dusty road--wherein I was more fortunate than the man in the Germanstory who sold his to the devil.
It was quite dusk by the time I gained the outskirts of the town, and Ireflected with much contentment upon the prospect of a cosy bachelordinner, 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 aboy 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 callagain. She is at the White Horse."
"She shall not have the trouble of coming here," I said, drawing mychair to the table. "Send James up to the White Horse with mycompliments, and say that I will wait upon the lady in about anhour's time."
Collins darted away to despatch the message, and returning presentlywith 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'svoice was exquisite--rich and low, and somewhat deeper than the voicesof most women.
I took up the card again. Mademoiselle de Sainte Aulaire! Where had Iheard 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 itbefore; but there's been a messenger over from the White Horse, sincethe 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 knownthe 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 RedLion was no more. Its former host and hostess were dead; a breweryoccupied its site; and the White Horse was kept by a portly Boniface,who had been head-waiter under the extinct dynasty. But there had beenmany changes in Saxonholme since my boyish days, and this was one of theleast among them.
I was shown into the best sitting-room, preceded by a smart waiter in awhite neckcloth. At a glance I took in all the bearings of thescene--the table with its untasted dessert; the shaded lamp; the closedcurtains of red damask; the thoughtful figure in the easy chair.Although the weather was yet warm, a fire blazed in the grate; but thewindows were open behind the crimson curtains, and the evening air stolegently 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 wideopen, and lingering to see what might follow.
The lady rose slowly, bowed, waved her hand towards a chair at somedistance from her own, and resumed her seat. The waiter reluctantlyleft the room.
"I had not intended, sir, to give you the trouble of coming here," saidMademoiselle de Sainte Aulaire, using her fan as a handscreen, andspeaking in a low, and, as it seemed to me, a somewhat constrainedvoice. I could not see her face, but something in the accent made myheart 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 certaininquiries which are of great importance to myself. May I ask if you area 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 thattook place about that time?"
"By all means."
Mademoiselle de Sainte Aulaire thanked me with a gesture, withdrew herchair 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 twoparticulars of my family history,"
"Madam, I listen."
During the brief pause that ensued, I tried vainly to distinguishsomething more of her features. I could only trace the outline of aslight and graceful figure, the contour of a very slender hand, and theample 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, "Iwill begin by telling you that the Sainte Aulaires are an ancient Frenchfamily of Bearnais extraction, and that my grandfather was the lastMarquis who bore the title. Holding large possessions in the _comtat_ ofVenaissin (a district which now forms part of the department ofVaucluse) and other demesnes at Montlhery, in the province of the Ile deFrance---"
"At Montlhery!" I exclaimed, suddenly recovering the lost link in mymemory.
"The Sainte Aulaires," continued the lady, without pausing to notice myinterruption, "were sufficiently wealthy to keep up their socialposition, and to contract alliances with many of the best families inthe 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 andnear Paris up to the period of the Revolution. Marshals of France,Envoys, and Ministers of State during a period of nearly a century and ahalf, the Sainte Aulaires had enjoyed too many honors not to be amongthe 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, wasseized with his wife and daughter at his Chateau near Montlhery in thespring-time of 1793, and carried to La Force. Thence, after a mocktrial, they were all three conveyed to execution, and publiclyguillotined on the sixth of June in the same year. Do you follow me?"
"Perfectly."
"One survivor, however, remained in the person of Charles Armand, Prevotde Sainte Aulaire, only son of the Marquis, then a youth of seventeenyears of age, and pursuing his studies in the seclusion of an old familyseat in Vaucluse. He fled into Italy. In the meantime, his inheritancewas confiscated; and the last representative of the race, reduced toexile and beggary, assumed another name. It were idle to attempt to mapout his life through the years that followed. He wandered from land toland; lived none knew how; became a tutor, a miniature-painter, avolunteer at Naples under General Pepe, a teacher of languages inLondon, corrector of the press to a publishing house inBrussels--everything or anything, in short, by which he could honorablyearn his bread. During these years of toil and poverty, he married. Thelady was an orphan, of Scotch extraction, poor and proud as himself, andgoverness in a school near Brussels. She died in the third year of theirunion, and left him with one little daughter. This child becamehenceforth 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 sheremained, first as pupil, by-and-by as governess, for more than sixteenyears. The child was called by an old family name that had been hergrandmother's and her great-grandmother's in the high and palmy days ofthe 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 oncehad a dear friend of that name. Pray, go on."
"For ten years the refugee contrived to keep his little Hortense in thesafe 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-wornand careworn, he was prematurely aged, and at fifty might well have beenmistaken 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 theold school; and his little girl was proud of him, when he came to theschool to see her. This, however, was very seldom--never oftener thantwice 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 underthe presentiment that they might meet no more. He then told her, for thefirst time, something of his story, and left with her at parting a smallcoffer containing his decorations, a few trinkets that had been hismother's, and his sword--the badge of his nobility."
The lady's voice faltered. I neither spoke nor stirred, but sat like aman of stone.
Then she went on again:--
"The father never came again. The child, finding herself after a certainlength of time thrown upon the charity of her former instructors, wasglad to become under-teacher in their school. The rest of her historymay 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 sheremoved to Paris, and set foot for the first time in the land of herfathers. All was now changed in France. The Bourbons reigned again, andher father, had he reappeared, might have reclaimed his lost estates.She sought him far and near. She employed agents to discover him. Shecould not believe that he was dead. To be once again clasped in hisarms--to bring him back to his native country---to see him resume hisname and station--this was the bright dream of her life. To accomplishthese things she labored in many ways, teaching and writing; forHortense also was proud--too proud to put forward an unsupported claim.For with her father were lost the title-deeds and papers that might havemade the daughter wealthy, and she had no means of proving her identity.Still she labored heartily, lived poorly, and earned enough to push herinquiries far and wide--even to journey hither and thither, whenever shefancied, alas! that a clue had been found. Twice she travelled intoSwitzerland, and once into Italy, but always in vain. The exile had toowell concealed, even from her, his _sobriquet_ and his calling, andHortense at last grew weary of failure. One fact, however, she succeededin discovering, and only one--namely, that her father had, many yearsbefore, made some attempt to establish his
claims to the estates, butthat he had failed for want either of sufficient proof, or of means tocarry on the _proces_. Of even this circumstance only a meagrelaw-record remained, and she could succeed in learning no more. Sincethen, a claim has been advanced by a remote branch of the Sainte Aulairefamily, and the cause is, even now, in course of litigation."
She paused, as if fatigued by so long talking; but, seeing me about tospeak, prevented me with a gesture of the hand, and resumed:--
"Hortense de Ste. Aulaire continued to live in Paris for nearly fiveyears, at the end of which time she left it to seek out the members ofher mother's family. Finding them kindly disposed towards her, she tookup her abode amongst them in the calm seclusion of a remote Scotch town.There, even there, she still hoped, still employed agents; still yearnedto discover, if not her father, at least her father's grave. Severalyears passed thus. She continued to earn a modest subsistence by herpen, till at length the death of one of those Scotch relatives left hermistress of a small inheritance. Money was welcome, since it enabledher to pursue her task with renewed vigor. She searched farther anddeeper. A trivial circumstance eagerly followed up brought a train ofother circumstances to light. She discovered that her father had assumeda certain name; she found that the bearer of this name was a wanderingman, a conjuror by trade; she pursued the vague traces of his progressfrom town to town, from county to county, sometimes losing, sometimesregaining the scattered links. Sir, he was my father--I am thatHortense. I have spent my life seeking him--I have lived for this onehope. I have traced his footsteps here to Saxonholme, and here the lastclue fails. If you know anything--if you can remember anything---"
Calm and collected as she had been at first, she was trembling now, andher voice died away in sobs. The firelight fell upon her face--upon theface of my lost love!
I also was profoundly agitated.
"Hortense," I said, "do you not know, that he who stood beside yourfather in his last hour, and he who so loved you years ago, are one andthe 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 thepressure of a great physical pain.
"O God!" she murmured, "so many years of denial and suffering! so manyyears of darkness that might have been dispelled by a word!"
We were both silent for a long time. Then I told her all that Iremembered of her father; how he came to Saxonholme--how he fellill--how he died, and was buried. It was a melancholy recital; painfulfor me to relate--painful for her to hear--and interrupted over and overagain 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 dustand 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 thefulness, and the glory of my life went down at a blow. Have you notheard 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 sighedheavily.
"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 ofmedicine 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 healthylabor. 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 therhymes grew out of the dreams, as the dreams themselves grew out ofsomething else which has been underlying my life this many a year. Atall events I have hewn a few of them into shape, and trusted them topaper and type--and here is a critique which came to me this morningwith 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 itto me?"
"I will give it to you," I replied; "if I can give you that which isalready yours."
"Already mine?"
"Yes, as the poet in me, however worthless, is all and only yours! Doyou suppose, Hortense, that I have ever ceased to love you? As my songsare born of my sorrow, so my sorrow was born of my love; and love, andsorrow, and song, such as they are, are of your making."
"Hush!" she said, with something of her old gay indifference. "Yourliterary sins must not be charged upon me, fellow-student! I have enoughof my own to answer for. Besides, I am not going to acquit you soeasily. Granted that you have written a little book of poetry--whatthen? Have you done nothing else? Nothing active? Nothing manly?Nothing useful?"
"If by usefulness and activity you mean manual labor, I certainly haveneither 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, domesticor public. You serve neither the state nor the community. You are a merecypher--a make-weight in the social scale--an article of no value to anyone except the owner."
"Not even the latter, mademoiselle," I replied, bitterly. "It is longsince 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 solemnstillness, and we are alone with our own hearts. Then comes the seasonof 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 roofof a mighty cathedral studded with mosaics of golden stars, and thenight winds join in with the bass of their mighty organ-pipes; and thepoplars rustle, like the leaves of the hymn-books in the hands of thecongregation.
So it was with me that evening when I went forth into the quiet fieldswhere the summer moon was shining, and knew that Hortense was mine atlast--mine now and for ever. Overjoyed and restless, I wandered aboutfor hours. I could not go home. I felt I must breathe the open air ofthe hills, and tread the dewy grass, and sing my hymn of praise andthanksgiving after my own fashion. At length, as the dawning light camewidening up the east, I turned my steps homewards, and before the sunhad risen above the farthest pine-ridge, I was sleeping the sweetestsleep that had been mine for years.
The conjuror's grave was green with grass and purple with wild thymewhen Hortense knelt beside it, and there consummated the wearypilgrimage of half a life. The sap
ling willow had spread its arms abovehim in a pleasant canopy, leaning farther and reaching higher, yearby 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 andtitle-deeds there were none.
I well remembered the anxious search made thirteen years ago, when noteven a card was found to indicate the whereabouts of his friends orfamily. 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 thewandering lecturer. Mine host and hostess of the Red Lion were bothdead. The Red Lion itself had disappeared, and become a thing oftradition. All was lost and forgotten; and of all her hereditary wealth,station, and honors, Hortense de Sainte Aulaire retained nothing but herfather's sword and her ancestral name.
--Not even the latter for many weeks, O discerning reader! for beforethe golden harvest was gathered in, we two were wedded.
In the Days of My Youth: A Novel Page 48
