It was upon the morning of
her fortieth birthday, that, with considerable shrinking, she set out
upon a voyage of discovery upon the unknown sea of her own countenance.
It was unknown, for she had not cared to look upon herself for some
years, but she bolted her chamber door and set herself about it with grim
determination this birthday morning. It was a weakness, it may be, but we
all have hours of weakness within our bolted chamber doors.
She had a hard early morning all by herself; but the battle with herself
did not commence until she shoved that bolt, pushed back the white
curtains, and stationed herself in the full glare of the sun light with
her hand-glass held before her resolute face. It was something to go
through; it was something to go through to read the record of a score of
birthdays past: but she had done that before the breakfast bell rang,
locked the old leathern bound volume in her trunk and arranged herself
for breakfast, and then had run down with her usual tripping step and
kept them all amused with her stories during breakfast time. But that was
before the door was bolted. She gazed long at the reflection of the face
that Time had been at work upon for forty years; there were the tiniest
creases in her forehead, they were something like the cracks in the plate
two hundred years old that Marjorie had sent to her last night, there
were unmistakable lines under her eyes, the pale tint of her cheek did
not erase them nor the soft plumpness render them invisible, they stared
at her with the story of relentless years; at the corners of her lips the
artistic fingers of Time had chiselled lines, delicate, it is true, but
clearly defined--a line that did not dent the cheeks of early maidenhood,
a line that had found no place near her own lips ten years ago; and above
her eyes--she had not discerned that, at first--there was a lack of
fullness, you could not name it hollowness; that was new, at least new to
her, others with keener eyes may have noticed it months ago, and there
was a yellowness--she might as well give it boldly its right name--at the
temple, decrease of fairness, she might call it, but that it was a
positive shade of that yellowness she had noticed in others no older than
herself; and, then, to return to her cheeks, or rather her chin, there
was a laxity about the muscles at the sides of her mouth that gave her
chin an elderly outline! No, it was not only the absence of youth, it was
the presence of age--her full forty years.
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