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.