She was a beautiful woman and her costumes were magnificent, but there
seemed to be a lack of soul in her acting. There was applause from the
house every time she came on the stage, and seldom she escaped after
singing a song in her entrancing voice without returning and singing to
an encore. There was the sweetness of despair in her voice, but made a
trifle harsh by a spirit of defiance. A trained ear could distinguish the
lack of harmony in her soul. The man at my side turned to me as she left
the stage and said:
“That poor girl has a history, and a sad one. It is one thing to have a
sorrow or an adventure that is absolutely located in the past, but still
another thing to have a sorrow and a regret that follows one through life
like a shadow.”
I looked at him in wonderment and he continued: “I have met her and she
told me of her mistaken life. She was so full of her sorrow and regret
that she simply had to talk of it to some one, and I am always a willing
listener when a troubled soul opens the secret door and invites me to
walk in and sit in the shadow.
“She told me that from the time she first took a leading part in a school
entertainment she had a desire for a stage career. She grew up with this
desire burning in her soul, at which fire she toasted her mental shins
every night before going to sleep. She never missed an opportunity to
take part in any entertainment given by the local talent of her village.
At seventeen she fell deeply in love with a young carpenter and they
became engaged to marry. Of course, the wedding was not to take place for
several years, since her young man was poor and must first set aside a
few hundred dollars to start with.
“After this engagement she went to attend school in the city, where
she met the son of a very wealthy business man. He fell desperately in
love with her, though many years older. One evening while out riding he
proposed to her, and she told him of her ambition. ‘Promise me a stage
career, and I will marry you,’ she told him. He readily agreed to this,
and the engagement and contract was entered into at that hour. He sent
her to a training school immediately, from where she wrote to her village
lover that their engagement must be declared a thing of the past, since
she had resolved to go on the stage, and give up the old life and the old
friends.
“The year following her debut on the professional stage she married the
man who made a stage career possible, but the face of the young carpenter
looked out of the shadows and reproached her as the train that took her
on her wedding tour went flying through the night. Only then it dawned on
her that she did not love the man who was to give her a stage career—did
not love him enough to become his bride, because her heart was still back
in the village with the broken-hearted carpenter to whom she gave her
most sincere and innocent love.
“And ever since this ambitious marriage there is the ghost of a wrong
follows her and looks with reproachful eyes from the dark corners of
every opera house. Her husband is kind to her, and follows her wherever
she goes, and is proud of her success; but always this truth is before
her—she sold her body to secure a stage career, but her heart was never a
partner in the deal. How much happier she could be in the humble home of
the poor carpenter, had not ambition so blinded her unsophisticated soul.
“What is life and success and the applause of the world when love’s
first and only idol lies broken at one’s feet? Happiness must be shared
with those we love best, and when we are obliged to share everything the
heart holds sacred with some one we can never love, the pleasures of life
crumble in our hands like an image that has been reduced to ashes. And
the ashes are always being blown into our eyes, and into our mouth, and
the taste is bitter, bitter; and the unloved lips that touch ours are
tainted with the bitterness of all life’s regrets and mistakes, though
we are tied to them with pledges and promises that must never, never be
broken.”