Read Ebook: The Story of a Child by Loti Pierre Smith Caroline F Translator

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I will now endeavor to explain the impression that the sea made upon me at our first brief and melancholy encounter, which took place at twilight upon the evening of my arrival at the Island.

Notwithstanding the fact that I could scarcely see it, it had so remarkable an effect on me that in a single moment it was engraven upon my memory forever. I feel a retrospective shudder run through me when my spirit broods upon the recollection.

We had but newly arrived at this village near St. Ongeoise where my parents had rented a fisherman's house for the bathing season. I knew that we had come here for something called the sea, but I had had no glimpse of it , and I was extremely impatient to become acquainted with it; therefore after dinner, as night was falling, I went alone to seek this mysterious thing.

The air was sharp and biting, and unlike any I had experienced, and from behind the hillocks of sand, along which the path led, there came a faint but majestic noise. Everything affrighted me, the unfamiliar way, the twilight falling from the overcast sky, and the loneliness of this part of the village. But inspired by one of those great and sudden resolutions, that come sometimes to the most timid, I went forward with a firm step.

Suddenly I stopped overcome and almost paralyzed by fear, for something took shape before me, something dark and surging sprang up from all sides at the same time and it seemed to stretch out endlessly. It was something so vast and full of motion that I was seized with a deadly vertigo--it was the sea of my imagining! Without a moment's hesitation, without asking how this knowledge had been wrought, without astonishment even, I recognized it and I trembled with a great emotion. It was so dark a green as to be almost black; to me it seemed unstable, perfidious, all ingulfing, always turbulent, and of a sinister, menacing aspect. Above it, in harmony with it, stretched the gray and lowering sky.

And far away, very far away, upon the immeasurable distant horizon I perceived a break between the sky and the waters, and a pale yellow light showed through this cleft.

Had I been to the sea before to recognize it thus quickly? Perhaps I had, but without being conscious of it, for when I was about five or six months old I had been brought to the Island by my great aunt, my grandmother's sister; or perhaps because it had played so great a part in my sea-faring ancestors' lives I was born with a nascent conception of it and its immensity.

We communed together a moment, one with the other--I was deeply fascinated. At our first encounter I am sure I had a nebulous presentiment that I would one day go to it in spite of my hesitation, in spite of all the efforts put forth to hold me back,--and the emotion that overwhelmed me in the presence of the sea was not only one of fear, but I felt also an inexpressible sadness, and I seemed to feel the anguish of desolation, bereavement and exile. With downcast mien, and with hair blown about by the wind, I turned and ran home. I was in the extreme haste to be with my mother; I wished to embrace her and to cling close to her; I desired to be with her so that she might console me for the thousand indefinite, anticipated sorrows that surged through my heart at the sight of those green waters, so vast and so deep.

My mother!--I have already mentioned her two or three times in the course of this recital, but without stopping to speak of her at length. It seems that at first she was no more to me than a natural and instinctive refuge where I ran for shelter from all terrifying and unfamiliar things, from all the dark forebodings that had no real cause.

But I believe she took on reality and life for the first time in the burst of ineffable tenderness which I felt when one May morning she entered my room with a bouquet of pink hyacinths in her hand; she brought in with her as she came a ray of sunlight.

The door opened and she entered, smiling. Ah, I remember it so well! I recall so distinctly how she looked as she stood upon the threshold of the door. And I remember that she brought in with her some of the sunlight and balminess of the spring day.

I see again the expression of her face as she looked at me; and I hear the sound of her voice, and recall the details of her beloved dress that would look funny and old-fashioned to me now. She had returned from her morning shopping, and she wore a straw hat trimmed with yellow roses and a shawl of lilac barege sprinkled with tiny bouquets of violets. Her dark curls were at this time without a gray hair. There was about her the fragrance of the May day, and her face as it looked that morning with its broad brimmed hat is still distinctly present with me. Besides the bouquet of pink hyacinths, she had brought me a tiny watering-pot, an exact imitation in miniature of the crockery ones so much used by the country people.

As she leaned over my bed to embrace me I felt as if every wish was gratified. I no longer had a desire to weep, nor to rise from my bed, nor to go out. She was with me and that sufficed--I was consoled, tranquillized, and re-created by her gracious presence.

I was, I think, a little more than three years old at this time, and my mother must have been about forty-two years of age; but I had not the least notion of age in regard to her, and it had never occurred to me to wonder whether she was young or old; nor did I realize until a later time that she was beautiful. No, at this period that she was her own dear self was enough; to me she was in face and form a person so apart and so unique that I would not have dreamed of comparing her with any one else. From her whole being there emanated such a joyousness, security and tenderness, and so much goodness that from thence was born my understanding of faith and prayer.

I would that I could speak hallowed words to the first blessed form that I find in the book of memory. I would it were possible that I could greet my mother with words filled with the meaning I wish to convey. They are words which cause bountiful tears to flow, but tears fraught with I know not how much of the sweetness of consolation and joy, words that are ever, and in spite of everything, filled with the hope of an immortal reunion.

And since I have touched upon this mystery that has had such an influence upon my soul, I will here set down that my mother alone is the only person in the world of whom I have the feeling that death cannot separate me. With other human beings, those whom I have loved with all my heart and soul, I have tried to imagine a hereafter, a to-morrow in which there shall be no to-morrow; but no, I cannot! Rather I have always had a horrible consciousness of our nothingness--dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Because of my mother alone have I been able to keep intact the faith of my early days. It still seems to me that when I have finished playing my poor part in life, when I no longer run in the overgrown paths that lead to the unattainable, when I am through amusing humanity with my conceits and my sorrows, I will go there where my mother, who has gone before me, is, and she will receive me; and the smile of serenity that she now wears in my memory will have become one of triumphant realization.

True, I see that distant region only dimly, and it has no more substance than a pale gray vision; my words, however intangible and elusive, give too definite a form to my dreamy conceptions. But still , but still I always think of my mother as having, in that far off place, preserved her earthly aspect. I think of her with her dear white curls and the straight lines of her beautiful profile that the years may have impaired a little, but which I still find perfect. The thought that the face of my mother shall one day disappear from my eyes forever, that it is no more than combined elements subject to disintegration, and that she will be lost in the universal abyss of nothingness, not only makes my heart bleed, but it causes me to revolt as at something unthinkable and monstrous; it cannot be! I have the feeling that there is about her something which death cannot touch.

My love for my mother is so free from all material feeling that that alone gives me an inexplicable hope, almost gives me a confidence in the immortality of the soul.

I cannot very well understand why the vision of my mother near my bed of sickness should that morning have impressed me so vividly, for she was nearly always with me. It all seems very mysterious; it is as if at that particular moment she was for the first time revealed to me.

And why among the treasured playthings of my childhood has the tiny watering-pot taken on the value and sacred dignity of a relic? So much so indeed, that when I am far distant on the ocean, in hours of danger, I think of it with tenderness, and see it in the place where it has lain for years, in the little bureau, never opened, mixed in with broken toys; and should it disappear I would feel as if I had lost an amulet that could not be replaced.

And the simple shawl of lilac barege, found recently among some old clothing laid aside to be given to the poor, why have I put it away as carefully as if it were a priceless object? Because in its color , in its quaint Indian pattern and tiny bouquets of violets, I still find an emanation from my mother; I believe that I borrow therefrom a holy calm and sweet confidence that is almost a faith. And mingled in with the other feelings there is perhaps a melancholy regret for those May mornings of long ago that seemed so much brighter than are those of to-day.

Truly I fear this book, the most personal I have ever written, will weary many.

In transcribing these memories in the calm of middle life, so favorable to reverie, I had constantly present in my thought the lovely queen to whom I would dedicate this book; it is as if I were writing her a long letter with the full assurance of being understood in all those sacred matters to which words give but an inadequate expression.

Perhaps you will understand also, my dear unknown readers, who with kindly sympathy have followed me thus far; and all those who cherish, or who have been cherished by their mothers will not smile at the childish things written down here.

But this chapter will certainly seem ridiculous to those who are strangers to an all absorbing love, they will not be able to imagine that I have a deep pity to exchange for their cynical smiles.

Before I finish writing of the confused memories I have of the commencement of my life I wish to speak of another ray of sunshine--a sad ray this time,--that has left an ineffaceable impression upon me, and the meaning of which will never be clear to me.

Upon a Sunday, after we had returned from church, the ray appeared to me. It came through a half-open window and fell into the stairway, and as it lengthened itself upon the whiteness of the wall it took on a peculiar, weird shape.

I had returned from church with my mother and as I mounted the stairs I took her hand. The house was filled with a humming silence peculiar to the noontime of very hot summer days . Following the habit of our country the shutters were half closed making indoors, during the heated period of the day, a sort of twilight.

As I entered the house there came to me an appreciation of the stillness of Sunday that in the country and in peaceful byways of little towns is like the peace of death. But when I saw the ray of sunlight fall obliquely through the staircase window, I had a feeling more poignant than ordinary sorrow; I had a feeling altogether incomprehensible and absolutely new in which there seemed infused a conception of the brevity of life's summers, their rapid flight and the incomputable ages of the sun. But other elements still more mysterious, that it would be impossible for me to explain even vaguely, entered therein.

I wish to add to the history of this ray of sunshine the sequel that is intimately connected with it. Years passed; I became a man, and after having been among many people and experienced many adventures I lived for an autumn and winter in an isolated house in an unfrequented part of Stamboul. It was there that every evening at approximately the same hour, a ray of sunlight came in through the window and fell obliquely on the wall and lit up the niche in which I had placed an Athenian vase. And I never saw that ray of sunlight without thinking of the one I had seen upon that Sunday of long ago; nor without having the same, precisely the same sad emotion, scarcely diminished by time, and always full of the same mystery. And when I had to leave Turkey, when I was obliged to quit my dangerous but adored lodgings in Stamboul, with all my busy and hurried preparations for departure there was mingled this strange regret: never more should I see the oblique ray of sunshine come into the stairway window and fall upon the niche in the wall where the Greek vase stood.

Perhaps under all of this there may have been, if not recollections of a previous personal experience, at least the reflected inchoate thoughts of ancestors which I am unable in any clearer way to bring out of darkness. But enough! I must say no more, for I again find myself in the land of vague fancy, gliding phantoms and illusive nothings.

For this almost unintelligible chapter there is no excuse that I can offer, save that I have written it with the greatest frankness and sincerity.

And I now recall the impressions of springtime, all the fresh splendor of May; and I remember vividly the lonely road called the Fountain road.

I was old enough at any rate to take walks with my father and my sister, and I went out with them this dewy morning. I was in ecstasy to see that everything had become so green, to see the budding foliage and the tasselled shrubs and hedges. Along the sides of the road the grass was all the same length, and the flowers in the grass with their exquisite mingling of the red of the geranium and the blue of the speedwell, made the whole earth seem a great bouquet. As I plucked the flowers I scarcely knew which way to run; in my eagerness I trod upon them and my legs became wet from the dew--I marvelled at all the richness at my disposal, and I longed to take great armfuls of the flowers and carry them away with me.

My sister, who had gathered a sprig of hawthorn, one of iris and some long sheath-like grasses leaned towards me, and took my hand, and said: "You have enough for the present; you see, dear, that we could never gather all of them."

But I did not heed, so absolutely intoxicated was I with the magnificence about me, the like of which I did not recall ever to have seen before.

That was the beginning of those almost daily excursions that I took with my father and sister, and that I kept up for so long a time . It is through them that I became so well acquainted with the surrounding country and with the varieties of flowers found there. Poor fields and meadows of my native country! So monotonous, so flat, one so like another; fields of hay and daisies where in childhood I would disappear from sight and hide under the green vegetation. Fields of corn and paths bordered with hawthorn, I love you all in spite of your monotony!

Toward the west, in the far distance, my eyes sought for a glimpse of the sea. Sometimes when we had gone a long way there would appear upon the horizon, among the other lines there, a straight bluish one; it was the sea; and it lured me to it finally as a great and patient lover lures, who sure of his power is willing to wait.

My sister and my brother, of whom I have not spoken before, were considerably older than I; it seemed almost as if we belonged to different generations. For that reason they petted me even more than did my father and mother, my grandmother and aunts; and as I was the only child among them I was cherished like a little hot-house plant, I was too tenderly guarded and remained all too unacquainted with thorns and brambles.

Someone has advanced the theory that those persons endowed with a gift for painting probably belong to a half-blind species; accustomed to living in a partial light, in a sort of misty grayness, they turn their gaze inward; and when by chance they do look out their impressions are ten times more vivid than are those of ordinary people.

To me that seems a little paradoxical.

But it is true that sometimes an enveloping darkness aids one to clearer vision; as in a panorama building, for example, where the obscurity about the entrance prepares one better for the climax, and gives the scene depicted a more real and vivid appearance.

In the course of my life I would without doubt have been less impressed by the ever shifting phantasmagoria of existence had I not begun my journey in a place almost without distinctive color, in a tranquil corner of the most commonplace little town, receiving an education austerely pious; and where my longest journey was bounded by the forests of Limoise and by the shores of the island of Oleron, that seemed very immense when I went to it to visit my aged aunts.

But after all is said, it was in the yard about our house that I passed the happiest of my summers--it seemed to me that that was my particular kingdom, and I adored it.

It was in truth a beautiful yard, much more sunny and airy than the majority of city gardens. Its long avenue of green and flowery branches, that overtopped the heads of the neighboring fruit trees, was bordered on the south by a low and ancient wall over which grew roses and honeysuckles. The long leafy avenue gave the impression of great depth, and its perspective melted into a bower of vines and jasmine bushes that in turn became a great verdant place, which came to an end at a storehouse of ancient construction, whose gray stones were hidden under ivy vines.

Ah! How I loved that garden, and how much I still love it!

I believe the keenest, earliest memories are of the beautiful long summer evenings. Oh! the return from a walk during those long, clear twilights that certainly were more delicious than are those of to-day. What joy to re-enter that yard which the thorn-apples and the honeysuckles filled with the sweetest odor, to enter and see from the gate all the long avenue of tangled greenness. Through an opening in a bower of Virginia Creeper I could see the rosy splendor of the setting sun; and somewhat removed in the gathering shadows of the foliage, there were distinguishable three or four persons. The persons, it is true, were very quiet and they were dressed in black, but they were nevertheless very reassuring to me, very familiar and very much beloved: they were the forms of mother, grandmother and aunts. Then I would run to them hastily and throw myself upon their laps, and that was always one of the happiest moments of my day.

In the month of March, as the shadows of twilight gathered, two little children were seated very close together upon a low footstool--two little ones, between the ages of five and six, dressed in short trousers with white pinafores over them, as was the fashion of the time. After having played wildly they were now quietly amusing themselves with paper and pencils. The dim light seemed to fill them with a vague fear, and it troubled their spirits.

The room in which we were seated must have been furnished about the year 1805, at the time of the marriage of my now-very-old grandmother, who still occupied it, and who this evening was seated in the chair of the Directory period; she was singing to herself and she took no notice of us.

My memories of my grandmother are indistinct for her death occurred shortly after this time; but as I will never again, in the course of this recital, have a more vivid impression of her, I will here insert what I know of her history.

It seems that in the stress of all sorts of troubles she had been a brave and noble mother. After reverses that were so general in those days, after losing her husband at the Battle of Trafalgar, and her elder son at the shipwreck of the Medusa, she went resolutely to work to educate her younger son, my father, until such time as he should be able to support himself. At about her eightieth year the senility of second childhood had set in; at that time I knew nothing about the tragedy of the loss of memory and I could not realize the vacancy of her mind and soul.

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