Harper's Magazine/Volume 101/Issue 601/The Singing of a Bird

by Julian Hawthorne

 

THE SINGING OF A BIRD

By Julian Hawthorne

FIRST as lessees, then (as their means increased) as owners, Prevost and his wife have administered the eating-house down in the old-fashioned southwest quarter of the city for more than twenty years.

Prevost rented the place just after his marriage to his pretty Marie; his means were small, but his courage was great. Few shared his own confidence that he would succeed; and in the beginning he certainly had hard work. But he was honest, energetic, and resolute. Above all, he was cheerful, and devoted to his business and his customers. He gave good food, most of which he cooked admirably himself; he furnished excellent Bordeaux wine, imported by himself from Bordeaux, where he was born. His voice was pleasant and hearty; his broad, ruddy cheeks dimpled when he smiled, and the smile itself disclosed white, even teeth. During business hours he always wore an immaculate white apron or pinafore. You saw at the first glance that he was a guileless, kindly creature, and when he exchanged a glance or a word with his wife, you understood that his cheerfulness was no professional pretence, but was the result of true happiness—the happiness of a loving husband who believes himself loved. He adored Marie from the first; he has never ceased to adore her. He married her when she was but a year out of the convent, and she has been the sole queen of his heart and the end of his activities ever since. There she sits, at the pay-desk in the centre of the big low-ceiled room, where she has sat for twenty years, rosy and plump now like her husband, and a right handsome woman always. Beyond doubt she is a happy woman—happy in her husband, happy in her three healthy children, who are always sweet and clean as fresh milk; and happy, too, in her position, sitting there at her pay-desk day after day, in the midst of the broad, cheerful room, with some fourscore good-humored, effervescent guests eating good dinners all around her, chattering light-heartedly as they sip their good claret, laying down their good money on the desk, and getting back their change from her plump, pretty fingers, and pausing to exchange a few compliments and witticisms with her; for they are all her friends, and she is theirs. They look into her smiling brown eyes, and see nothing there but contentment, kindness, and modesty. How, indeed, could it be otherwise?

“I have taken my dinners here almost from the first,” says an elderly Frenchman, a patriot of '48, to his companion, a young artist, whom he has just introduced there. “It has always been the same. The best eating-house in town—that you can see for yourself; but also the happiest ménage. They were born for each other, she and Prevost; I give it you in a word.”

“I should have said, though,” remarks the artist, who has kept his eyes upon the pretty hostess with some intentness, “that she was a touch above him—eh? Might have done better with herself, socially speaking? He is a good honest fellow, but there must have been a refinement about her when she was a girl—a delicacy—eh? Consider that nose, now.”

“Ah-bah! I tell you of twenty years of wedded felicity, and you would have me consider a nose! What it is to be an artist!”

The artist laughs. And with that comes along Prevost on his rounds. For it has always been his custom from the first to go from table to table, to satisfy himself that his guests are being well served. He has a word for each. “Is the dish cooked to suit you, sir?” or (to a waiter), “Take back that potato and bring a mealier one”; or, “Madame, your shopping has a little tired you—a glass of my Bordeaux wine will make you your good self again”; or, “Permit me to present your little boy with this red apple—red apples make little boys into great men.” To the artist he says, “I hope we content you, sir; that you will often come to us again.”

“Assuredly, Monsieur Prevost. But may I ask why a man so prosperous as you does not move up town, to some more fashionable neighborhood? You would make ten times the money.”

Prevost smiles broadly, and wisely shakes his head.

“Ah, no, no! We have been happy here, my good wife and I, and we are happy; and with what face should we leave our good friends who have made us our prosperity? This is our place in the world, and here we will live and enjoy with our friends till the good God says 'Come.' And even then— Well, you will laugh, monsieur, but I will tell you what I say to my good wife. I say, 'Marie, let us pray that the good God, when we die, will give us in heaven just such an eating-house as this, where we may serve our old friends just as we do here.' Yes, we are truly very happy.”

“May your happiness continue!” responds the artist, emptying his last glass of Bordeaux wine. And then he and his friend rise from the table and go to the pay-desk, where the comely hostess greets them with a smile.

“You see, Madame Marie,” says the ex-revolutionist, “I have brought you a new recruit. He is a portrait-painter; but what then?—he can eat a dinner as well as the others.”

“I welcome monsieur,” says Marie, in her voice which seems to smile like her face. Then, for a moment, the glance of her clear brown eyes is veiled as it were with a transparent shadow, as when sunshine is withdrawn by a summer cloud from the surface of a lake. But the shadow gives a glimpse of depths which the sunshine had concealed.

“I was once acquainted with a portrait-painter, but it was long ago,” she says, in a voice sounding as if it came from a distance. She looks down, and makes change for the dollar bill which the artist had laid on the counter.

The ex-revolutionist was lighting his cigar at the match-stand. The artist says, in a low. tone, which causes her to raise her eyes, “I should like to see his portrait of you as you were when he knew you, madame.”

She makes a quick gesture with her hand. “Ah, God forbid!'" and laughs rather loudly.

The transparent shadow vanishes. The artist gathers up his change. “Without doubt you are much handsomer now, madame,” he says, gallantly, “and much—happier. My compliments, madame!”

“Adieu, monsieur,” she responds, but without looking at him, for she is making change for another customer.

“Yes, the happiest ménage in New York,” says the ex-revolutionist, as he and the artist stand together outside the door before going their different ways. “Is it not as I told you?—they were made for each other.”

“You are older than I,” remarks the artist. “You have had experience with women. Tell me, in how many years may a husband expect to know his wife? In twenty years?”

“'Yes, The Happiest Ménage in New York,' Says The Ex-Revolutionist.” The other twists his gray mustache and laughs. “In twenty years? Ah, you are droll! I have never met the woman that I could not read through and through in twenty minutes!”

“Well, you go one way, I go another,” says the artist. “Farewell!"'

 

It is still early in the afternoon, and most of the little square tables in the low-ceiled eating-room are occupied with customers, eating their soups and stews, sipping their Bordeaux wine, nibbling their cheese, and light-heartedly chattering together. Prevost, plump and cheerful, continues to make his rounds—bending, with his hand on the back of the chair, to listen to what this one has to say; giving brisk instructions to the waiter at yonder table; smiling cordially at the friend who has just entered; kissing his finger-tips at that other who is departing; playfully pulling the yellow curls of the little girl who has spilled her porridge in her lap, and ordering a fresh napkin to be brought to her; and ever and anon sending a glance over the heads of the company to his wife Marie, sitting at her raised pay-desk, where she has sat for twenty years. Each time she responds, as has been her custom for twenty years, with a little nod and a smile. But is there any difference at all during the last hour in her manner of meeting these conjugal signals of his? None whatever that honest Prevost can see. For him, because he is happy, each day contains all the past and all the future; there is no time in happiness. His eating-room, his guests, his wife—they are all here, just as they have always been and always will be, until the good God gathers them all together once more in the next world. He has never known or cared for anything better than this, anything higher; it is his life, to which he was born, which he contentedly lives. His Marie—wifely, motherly, cheerful, faithful—sits there at her pay-desk making change, tossing back and forth friendly little speeches with the customers who come and go, and ever and anon meeting his conjugal signals across the room. Between them is perfect sympathy and understanding; he knows her as he knows himself. Her soul is wholly transparent to him; or, at all events, he has never found any cloud between her and himself in their long intercourse of twenty years. As for her soul, or his, it must be admitted that the good and simple Prevost has never given much thought to such things. His own soul has never obtruded itself upon his notice, and he has never seen the soul of any one else, even of Marie. He would be puzzled to tell you what a soul is, in fact. He knows what good cookery is, and hungry and satisfied guests, and business, and his wife, and his children; and he believes in a good God, who will make things comfortable for them hereafter; but the soul—that is a sort of figure of speech; not anything with which one concerns himself in this world. It is a very simple, solid, and sufficient thing, this world of Prevost's. He sees it quite distinctly; but as to seeing through it, what is there to be seen?

Nevertheless, is there any difference at all in Marie since those few words that she exchanged with the artist?

One fancies there is some slight preoccupation; some trace of uneasiness or annoyance, perhaps. Occasionally, in the brief intervals of her making change, or other customary little activities, you may notice a shade of seriousness pass over her face, a momentary abstractedness in the expression of her eyes. At such moments the normal regularity of her breathing is interrupted; and when she recovers herself her motherly bosom rises with a deeper inspiration than ordinary. Can anything trouble the thoughts of a faithful wife, an affectionate mother, of twenty years' standing? Nothing in the shape of remorse, we may be sure; but there may be times in the life of a woman when something done or felt or dreamed of long ago may advance from its most remote retreat in the memory, as the mirage advances over the material landscape; and so strangely vivid does it appear that, while she contemplates it, the present reality seems dreamlike, and the vision the reality. Where are the years that seemed so long and undeniable? Where is the life that seemed so full and substantial? The phantom of that hour of long ago declares itself still the sole reality, and shames the long substantial years into a phantom.

Such moods soon pass, however. The weight of actual things presses them down into the depths whence they arose. They remain, at most, but hints doubtfully prophetic of changes and developments to come, or that might have been. The wide room, with the afternoon sunshine sending its latest glance across the white tables and busy eaters; the murmur of talk, the clatter and tinkle of plates and glasses, the comfortable scent of good food well cooked; the familiar figure of stout Prevost, passing slowly here and there, with his friendly bow and dimpling smile; the rustle and clink of the greenbacks and silver on the desk as she receives payment and makes change—this Prevost's world, in short—oh, how real it is! And is it not better so? If another sun shone once, twenty years ago; if there was a scent of wild flowers then instead of well-cooked dishes; if there was a blue sky overhead instead of a white plaster ceiling; if there were eyes, a voice, a touch which filled the soul with hallowed mystery and wonder, and sent happy tremors stealing through the heart—well, if there ever were such a season, such a day, such an hour, it is gone, and cannot come back; and were it to come back, it would no longer seem the same; for the senses and the soul and the heart which they wrought upon then would be insensible to their influence now. Twenty years is—twenty years; and it is better so. Husband, children, customers, the old routine, they are pleasant, are they not? and you would not change them even if you could, Marie. You have been content; and contentment is a jewel seldom found, and not lightly to be given away again. You are a contented woman in your fortieth year, with a double chin and a substantial waist; and you have taken in a good round sum of money to-day. Wonder and mystery and happy tremors, visions of a maid of nineteen fresh from the shadowed innocence of a convent—what have they to do with a Prevost world? Gan you lay your plump hand upon your maternal bosom and aver that they ever had any true reality at all?

 

The Blind Man Through the swinging doors of the eating-house, which, as they opened, let in a momentary din from the stony street of clattering carts and hurrying pedestrians, entered a poorly clad figure, with a thick cane in his right hand, and in his left a small wooden cage containing a bird. The man had a grizzled and tangled beard, and pale features somewhat pinched with illness or want; his eyes had the faded blankness of the blind. But it was a face sensitively moulded, as of one who might have known refinement and elevated pleasures, but dulled and seamed and dreary now by the wearing of a world which had dimmed ideals and defeated ambition and The Blind Man corrupted integrity, perhaps, and then had brought calamity and helplessness. The man wore a soft felt hat, much stained and faded; his dingy clothes hung shapelessly upon him; his shoulders drooped; his hands with their long tapering fingers were bony, and disfigured by rheumatism. One occasionally meets such human ruins tapping their blind way along the streets of the city. They commonly have pencils or matches for sale; but this fellow had nothing but a brown bird in a wooden cage, which was hardly large enough for it to turn round in. It could not be considered a prudent business investment. Who would want to buy a brown bird? The man, however, was evidently an unpractical creature, whose ill success in life had been due to his failure to grasp life's solid realities. A worshipper of the beautiful he might have been, who had aimed to recreate in forms of enduring art the essential secret of its charm, who had lived in the delight of the eyes, forever darkened now. A creature exquisitely endowed for æsthetic perceptions and sensuous enjoyments, who had thought to be happy and prosperous through the revelation to others of the visions which made him happy, but who had stumbled against the rough side of the world, which bruised and crippled him. An element of frailty there must have been in him; a self-indulgent weakness, perhaps, not meaning to do evil, but beguiled by the caress of the serpent into profaning some holy thing. And mercy, veiled as justice, had taken from him the power to use the gift which he had misused; blighting the flower of time, lest its strong perfume corrupt beyond remedy the sacred fragrance of the flower of eternity.

Midway between the door and Marie's pay-desk there was an iron pillar, painted white, supporting the roof of the eating-room. To this the man with the bird came, and took his stand against it. The regulations of Prevost's establishment denied entrance to mendicants and peddlers; but the blind have privileges; and Prevost, after exchanging a glance with his wife, gave a sign to the waiter who had started towards the intruder, not to interfere.

The Song of the Bird

“He is a new one; I have not seen him before,” he remarked in an undertone to Marie, leaning his stout arm upon the corner of the desk, and incidentally laying his hand over that of his wife and patting it affectionately. “Poor devil, he looks famished. When the others have gone, he shall have a meal—shall he not? But what does he purpose with the bird? If it had been a gay parrot, now, like the one we lost last year, which could say smart things and make amusement, we might have bought it; but a little brown bird....”

“Why should the good God make a man blind?” murmured Marie, letting her eyes rest upon the stranger with a transient compassion. “If a man is wicked—yes; but this poor fellow, one can see that he would never harm anybody.”

“But the eyes are not everything,” answered Prevost. “You will observe presently, when I give him a bowl of soup, he will thank God for his palate and forget the eyesight. A full belly makes a happy man; one can do without the rest.”

Marie, who had probably heard this apothegm several times before, smiled slightly, but made no reply.

Meanwhile, what is the man with the bird doing? At first he merely leans against the iron pillar, his sightless countenance turned, as it happened, towards Marie, and informing himself through ear and nose, doubtless, as to what manner of place he had invaded. Then he slowly raises the wooden cage to his face, and whistles low to the brown bird, which had hitherto sat silent on its perch.

The bird extends its slender body, lifts its head, and emits two or three penetrating chirps, which make themselves audible amidst the murmur and stir of the room. Then it fills its little lungs, its soft chest expands, and it bursts into song.

Ah, what a song was that! But who can describe the singing of a bird? The voice of nature's heart, thrillingly pure and passionate as in the dawn of time, before man sinned; shrill and sweet, piercingly sweet, and hastening to blossom into flowers of sound; ascending, soaring, high and higher, in slenderest filaments of gossamer melody; now diving, swallow-wise, down into tender warblings, flutings of love—love joyful, rich, and unending; burdening the voluble air with the splendor of color invisible, scintillating, palpitating, falling in exquisite cadences, dying and sighing; anon reviving, rippling like fairy waves through luminous spaces, dropping like melting jewels in bell-like intervals; then springing in eager ecstasies, wildly, airily beautiful, gathering glory, towering, storming through eddying splendors, quivering, expiring in musical pantings, in liquid gurglings and sweet complainings; yet returning once again with sounds like the silver bubblings of lutes swept by elfin fingers, or ringing like golden harp-strings heard far off, at dawn, when lovers' lips touch in the lingering kiss that means farewell. Then a sudden arpeggio, and silence.

Just as the song began, the door bad opened, and the artist, who bad forgotten to take his cane with him, had appeared to claim it. But as the tameless beauty of the first searching notes reaches his ear, he turns towards the figure of the blind peddler, and slowly removes his hat, at the same time, with an instinctive gesture, lifting his left hand to impose silence upon the heterogeneous assemblage. But the hint is hardly needed; for beauty, if it be genuine, makes good its sway over every human heart and commands its homage. The busy waiters tiptoe to their places and remain motionless; the guests lean back in their chairs, or turn in their seats to gaze and listen; and the worthy Prevost, still standing beside his wife at one corner of the desk, while the artist takes his station at the other, allows a foolish smile of surprise and pleasure to widen his rosy countenance. The my

The Vision Passes Before Her But in Marie's soul there is a strange tumult. Already that afternoon she has been moved beyond her wont, and her mind has been straying vaguely backward towards the horizons of the past, glancing half reluctantly at things long hidden. But now the spell of the song parts asunder the veil, and all that had seemed dead lives its passionate life once more. The blood slowly gathering to her heart leaves her cheeks pale; her eyes are dim, her lips part, and her spirit is borne by the imperious music back to that distant day of spring and love which youth may know once, but even youth once only. How deep had she buried that day in her heart! How resolutely she had turned from its grave, vowed (as she prized her peace, her daily happiness, her motherly contentment, even her wifely honor) never, never again to return to it, or to admit that it had ever been! And yet now, after twenty years, drawn by the wild, penetrating sweetness of the singing of a bird, by its divine appeal, by the ravishing tenderness of its joy, by the delicious wailing of its pain, the vow is broken, and she stands beside the grave—nay, not a grave, but the place of life; life, sown with immortal flowers, whispering with breezes of Paradise, shadowed with the greenwood shade of Eden, echoing with the holy whispers, and fragrant with the kisses of love—first love, last love, love of a maiden and a youth!

The vision passes before her, vivid in each unforgettable feature. She sees the woodland glade on the slope of the hills beyond the little town; there is the great gray rock, crimsoned with dancing columbines, nodding to one another on their delicate black stems; mighty trees, rugged ancestors of the forest, standing giant-like amidst the slighter growths, which yet might see their decease and thrive on their rich decay; the odor of moss, damp from the morning dews, and of last summer's leaves, becoming slowly incorporate with the soil of spring; the early sunshine streaming through the leafy chasms of the branches; the buzz of a level-darting dragon-fly, zigzagging down the glade, where the brown brook gurgled unseen, and out through yonder opening, which, like a window of nature, revealed the remote plain, and the mountain yet more remote, shimmering in spiritual light, with shadows of amethyst and ethereal sapphire melting into the sky. She saw it all; and beneath the shade of the great rock he sat at his easel, which planted its three slender legs amidst the ferns and moss, and upheld the picture, in which the vista of the glade and plain and mountain reappeared by a sort of magic, he being the magician. The magician turned suddenly, and saw her standing there. And she saw his face, delicately moulded, youthful, masterful, with the dark down of a mustache on his upper lip, and great, dark, imperious eyes; his forehead white and spacious—the sun had tanned the rest. Ah, those eyes, the eyes of a magician, whose spell was upon her! He knew all things, could do all things, was all things, and yet he was so young, so immortally young; little less young, it seemed, than herself. “You shall be my picture,” she beard him say, “and live forever, just as beautiful as you are this moment!” “I am not beautifu1!” she answered; for she was fresh from the convent, where to the Lord alone is beauty ascribed. “You are beautiful,” he repeated, “and you are just what I have been looking for all my life, all over the world. Stand by the tree down there, and turn your head to the left, so that I can paint your profile—the loveliest profile ever painted!” She trembled with delicious pleasure; never had she heard such words; she could not help gazing in his eyes, while in her own, from the depths of her heart, upwelled the adoration of a virgin soul. “But first,” said he, after a moment, “come here to me—come! for that mouth of yours needs but one thing to make it perfect, and that I will give it. Come!” She came; she laid her warm hand in his outstretched hand, with its slender but powerful fingers. He drew her closer, smiling a little into her eyes with his. What was this? Her eyelids quivered and fell; she felt upon her lips the touch of transfiguration; and at that moment, from the boughs of the tree over their heads, burst forth the wondrous singing of a bird. Oh, that song!

The song of love, which the lovers of earth have heard, and to which they have yielded themselves willing captives; which they hear but once; for the bird, having sung it, takes flight, and does not return. But to the maiden Marie, also, this famous song was sung, though to maidens of her degree it is seldom fully audible, but passes in the air over their heads, and only a fleeting strain, an echo of it, reaches them in their lowly places. But to Marie it was given to hear it all, to the last exquisite note; and she looked down the vista and saw plain and mountain shimmering in spiritual light and melting into heaven; and innocence, wrought upon by the enchanter, put on the mystic robe of knowledge; she was bathed in the glory of romance, and virgin homage dilated into woman's passion, and time became eternity. But before the roses of June had replaced the woodland columbines of May, the glory had departed, the song was sung, the bird had taken flight, the enchanter had cast his spell and vanished; for though love be eternal, lovers are mortal; and how shall the infinite abide in the finite, and become one with if?

Marie died; though to herself only was the secret of her death known. To others she seemed still to live, for she kept her secret. It was a sacred secret, carrying no bitterness; its only burden was death. She had lived a princess, crowned and throned, rich as the richest, noble as the noblest, happy as the happiest; and then she had ceased to live, as all that are mortal must. Being dead, her body descended to another world; a kindly, prosperous, dull world of husband and children and daily duties—the world of Prevost. There had she dwelt contentedly these many years, until at length she had grown to believe, as Prevost and the others did, that this was life, and that other a dream. But now, inopportunely and unawares, into this dull, easy, deaf, and blind world of the dead had come the immortal bird, and with his deathless song had dissolved the cerements from her soul, leaving it naked and quivering before her eyes, closed so long. But the music of his singing broke the bonds which she had laid upon her heart, and it arose and beat once more with the throb of youth and life; she was again the girl who had aspired and loved and been loved; the divine splendor glowed around her; the princess was reseated on her throne! But where was the enchanter?

She Had Lived A Princess

The song ends with an arpeggio, and there is silence; and Marie Prevost is sitting at her pay-desk in the eating-room. The slender brown bird is mute in his cage; the blind peddler—is a blind peddler, offering to sell him, cage and all, for a dollar.

Honest Prevost shakes his head. “No; the bird sings prettily, but one soon tires of a singing-bird; if it had been a gray parrot, now, perhaps!.... But if you will go in the kitchen, the cook shall give you a bowl of good soup; for we have been entertained by the bird—is it not so, Marie, mon ange?”

What is the matter with Marie, who is always cheerful, who has smiled constantly these twenty years? Her face is buried in her hands; she is sobbing violently, and makes no response to her husband; when, much distressed, the good man lays his hand anxiously upon her arm, she shrinks away from him, as if his touch were hateful. Such a thing has never occurred before.

“But, mon ange, you are ill.... But, Marie, consider the guests.... Nom de ciel!”

“Madame,” says the artist, bending towards her and speaking in her ear, “if you wish to have the bird, permit me to buy it for you.”

She uncovers her face, and gives him a strange look of terror and appeal. “Who are you? Where am I? Ah, my God! No, no! take it away! It is too late.”

“And so it is,” mutters the artist, half to himself, drawing back. “But God best knows how to deal with His own souls. Come, my friend,” he continues, turning to the peddler, and taking him by the arm, “I will buy your bird, if you wish to sell him; meanwhile, come with me to my studio.”

“Your studio?” says the peddler, turning his blind face upon him. “Are you a painter?”

“Yes; and what then?”

“Nothing. I was a painter myself once, that's all.”

“And sold your pictures?”

“Long ago—all but one.”

“What became of that one?”

“I kept it; I wouldn't part with it.”

“What is the use of a picture to a blind man?”

“It was painted many years ago; it has associations with— I wouldn't part with it.”

“As you please. But it seems odd that you should refuse to part from a picture which you cannot see, and which might perhaps be sold for a lot of money, and should be willing to take a dollar for a bird that sings divinely, and which you can hear as well as I.”

“So it seems to you, sir, very naturally. But to me it is different. There are thousands of birds like this one, who can sing the same song; but there is a bird in my picture which sings a song that no one can hear but me, which I would not exchange for all the singing-birds in the world,—not if I starve for it—and so I shall some day.”

“Well, you sha'n't starve yet awhile. I have been looking for a model, and yours is the face I want. There is something in it that I want to study. Maybe it will tell me the secret of that picture of yours.”

The peddler shook his head, with a smile. “It will need sharper eyes even than an artist's to see through the face of a blind man,” said he. “I thank God I'm blind!”