Adventures in indigence, and other essays

by Laura Spencer Portor

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.