In the Days of My Youth Part 90

"I know what it is," she faltered. "You need not tell me. My heart tells me!"

I led her to a chair, and explained how and where it had been found. I even told her of the little empty nest from which the young birds had long since flown away. In this tiny incident there was something pathetic that soothed her; so, presently, when she left off weeping, we examined the table together.

It was a quaint, fragile, ricketty thing, with slender twisted legs of black wood, and a cloth-covered top that had once been green, but now retained no vestige of its original color. This cloth top was covered with slender slits of various shapes and sizes, round, square, s.e.xagonal, and so forth, which, being pressed with the finger, fell inwards and disclosed little hiding-places sunk in the well of the table; but which, as soon as the pressure was removed, flew up again by means of concealed springs, and closed as neatly as before.

"This is strange," said Hortense, peering into one of the recesses. "I have found something in the table! Look--it is a watch!"

I s.n.a.t.c.hed it from her, and carried it to the window. Blackened and discolored as it was, I recognised it instantly.

It was my own watch--my own watch of which I was so boyishly vain years and years ago, and which I had lost so unaccountably on the night of the Chevalier's performance! There were my initials engraved on the back, amid a forest of flourishes, and there on the dial was that identical little Cupid with the cornucopia of flowers, which I once thought such a miracle of workmans.h.i.+p! Alas! what a mighty march old Time had stolen upon me, while that little watch was standing still!

"Oh, Heaven!--oh, husband!"

Startled from my reverie more by the tone than the words, I turned and saw Hortense with a packet of papers in her hand--old, yellow, dusty papers, tied together with a piece of black ribbon.

"I found them there--there--there!" she faltered, pointing to a drawer in the table which I now saw for the first time. "I chanced to press that little k.n.o.b, and the drawer flew out. Oh, my dear father!--see, Basil, here are his patents of n.o.bility--here is the certificate of my birth--here are the t.i.tle-deeds of the manor of Sainte Aulaire! This alone was wanted to complete our happiness!"

"We will keep the table, Hortense, all our lives!" I explained, when the first agitation was past.

"As sacredly," replied she, "as it kept this precious secret!"

My task is done. Here on my desk lies the piled-up ma.n.u.script which has been my companion through so many pleasant hours. Those hours are over now. I may lay down my pen, and put aside the whispering vine-leaves from my cas.e.m.e.nt, and lean out into the sweet Italian afternoon, as idly as though I wore to the climate and the manner born.

The world to-day is only half awake. The little white town, crouched down by the "beached margent" of the bay, winks with its glittering windows and dozes in the suns.h.i.+ne. The very cicalas are silent. The fishermen's barques, with their wing-like sails all folded to rest, rock lazily at anchor, like sea-birds asleep. The cork-trees nod languidly to each other; and not even yonder far-away marble peaks are more motionless than that cloud which hangs like a white banner in the sky.

Hus.h.!.+ I can almost believe that I hear the drowsy was.h.i.+ng of the tide against the ruined tower on the beach.

And this is the bay of Spezzia--the lovely, treacherous bay of Spezzia, where our English Sh.e.l.ley lost his gentle life! How blue those cruel waters are to-day! Bluer, by Heaven! than the sky, with scarce a ripple setting to the sh.o.r.e.

We are very happy in our remote Italian home. It stands high upon a hill-side, and looks down over a slope of silvery olives to the sea.

Vineyard and orange grove, white town, blue bay, and amber sands lie mapped out beneath our feet. Not a felucca "to Spezzia bound from Cape Circella" can sail past without our observation.

"Not a sun can die, nor yet be born, unseen By dwellers at my villa."

Nay, from this very window, one might almost pitch an orange into the empty vettura standing in the courtyard of the Croce di Malta!

Then we have a garden--a wild, uncultured place, where figs and lemons, olives "blackening sullen ripe," and p.r.i.c.kly aloes flourish in rank profusion, side by side; and a loggia, where we sit at twilight drinking our Chianti wine and listening to the nightingales; and a study looking out on the bay through a trellis of vine-leaves, where we read and write together, surrounded by our books. Here, also, just opposite my desk, hangs Muller's copy of that portrait of the Marquise de Sainte Aulaire, which I once gave to Hortense, and which is now my own again. How often I pause upon the unturned page, how often lay my pen aside, to look from the painting to the dear, living face beneath it! For there she sits, day after day, my wife! my poet! with the side-light falling on her hair, and the warm sea-breezes stirring the soft folds of her dress.

Sometimes she lifts her eyes, those wondrous eyes, luminous from within "with the light of the rising soul"--and then we talk awhile of our work, or of our love, believing ever that

"Our work shall still be better for our love, And still our love be sweeter for our work."

Perhaps the original of that same painting in the study may yet be ours some day, with the old chateau in which it hangs, and all the broad lands belonging thereunto. Our claim has been put forward some time now, and our lawyers are confident of success. Shall we be happier, if that success is ours? Can rank add one grace, or wealth one pleasure, to a life which is already so perfect? I think not, and there are moments when I almost wish that we may never have it in our power to test the question.

But stay! the hours fly past. The sun is low, and the tender Italian twilight will soon close in. Then, when the moon rises, we shall sail out upon the bay in our own tiny felucca; or perhaps go down through the town to that white villa gleaming out above the dark tops of yonder cypresses, and spend some pleasant hours with Dalrymple and his wife.

They, too, are very happy; but their happiness is of an older date than ours, and tends to other ends. They have bought lands in the neighborhood, which they cultivate; and they have children whom they adore. To educate these little ones for the wide world lying beyond that blue bay and the far-off mountains, is the one joy, the one care of their lives. Truly has it been said that

"A happy family Is but an earlier heaven."

THE END.