"Glory itself can be, for a woman, only a loud and bitter cry for
happiness."--_Madame de Stael_.
Judith Moore made a triumphant success of her first American season.
She was lauded to the skies. An ocean of praise was poured in
libations before her; its ripples spread across the Atlantic, to break
in an ominous wave at Patti's feet, and Patti seeing it, perhaps
feeling the chill of its encroachment, determined immediately upon
another American tour.
There is a picture of Judith Moore painted at this time by one of the
deftest masters of facial portraiture. Sittings were given for this
whilst past applause was echoing in her ears, with newer shouts
awaiting her in an hour or two; but the woman pictured upon this canvas
is neither hearkening to past applause, nor anticipating new honour.
She is absorbed in the dream of some sweet past, silent in the face of
some unachieved joy, the whole face illumined, by an after-glow from
some light of other days--a first radiance of a morn that never breaks.
It shows a woman with wide, wistful, grey eyes--eyes which had wept,
and lips that denied and defied the tears, a brow whereon triumph and
grief had warred for mastery and merged at length into patient
endurance; but the head is proudly poised, as a head should be that
bears a crown. Even a thorny one confers and demands honour. If this
woman bore a cross, she did not flaunt it in the face of men; she bore
it hidden in her heart, and drew it out in secret places to wash her
heart's blood from it with her tears. Tears are the salt of love that
savour it to time everlasting.
It was the fashion to say that Miss Moore dwelt upon the heights to
which her genius of song raised her, that from the peaks of success she
looked down contemptuously upon all beneath. Alas! They could not
tell how icy these pinnacles were! The roseate glow cast upon the
"eternal snows" may look very beautiful, but the humblest hearth where
love lights the fire is warmer.
She felt, indeed, the exaltation of genius, but upon every side she
looked forth into the void. She was possessed again by that agony of
vertigo that had seized her among the apple blooms; now, as then, she
stood among blossoms; now, as then, her heart sickened within her. But
there was one deadly difference; there was no strong arm to take her
down. Indeed, it seemed to her even the ladder was gone. Could any
man forgive the perfidy of which she had been guilty? Many a hand was
outstretched to her, some that would have soiled her own had she
clasped them, others she might have met honestly, palm to palm. She
brushed gently past them all; if some of them tugged at her skirts, it
only gave her some discomfort and pity for their pleading, but no pain.
Her manager was most enthusiastic over her. He remembered guiltily a
letter he had opened and read, a letter he sent back to the post-office
with apologies--"he was sorry, the letter was not for him"--a letter
which even now was slowly threading its way back through the Dead
Letter office pigeon-holes to an undreamed destination.
He was working her too hard, though--so musical people whispered among
themselves. She had always needed the curb and not the spur. Of
course, it was a great thing to get such a hold upon the public in
one's first season, with the sure knowledge that she would have to bid
against Patti in her next one; still, all these encores, and Sunday
concerts and extra musicales were felt to be too much. And one or two
men, whose souls were sensitive, ceased going to hear Miss Moore.
There was something of agony, personal agony, mingling with the passion
of her voice. One of these men shuddered, when some one, using a
hackneyed simile, spoke of her as a human nightingale. There came to
his fanciful imagination the old myth of the nightingale that sings
with her breast against a thorn. It seemed somehow to him that this
woman had grown delirate with the pain, and pressed sorer and sorer
upon her thorn. He thought, too, of the birds whose eyes they blind
that they may sing better; of the dove that bears
... "thro' heaven a tale of woe,
Some dolorous message knit below
The wild pulsation of her wings."
He thought of the swan's song of death, and of the reed that the "Great
God Pan" wrenched from its river home to fashion forth a Pipe. The
American papers laughed a good deal at this man, caricaturing him as
the poet of soulful lilies and yearning souls, hinting that he would
like to inaugurate a pre-Raphaelesque era in America _à la_ Burne
Jones. He read these things sometimes. They flushed his thin cheeks,
but did not trouble his eyes--those eyes that mirrored forth the soul
of the mystic. He was right about Judith Moore.
She bowed her head to accept the last accolade of Genius--grief. She
had partaken of pain--that chrism which, laid upon poetic lips,
sanctifies their words to immortality, but which savours the breath
they breathe with the bitterness of death. Byron, Shelley, Keats,
Rossetti (how many we might name!) have partaken of that sacrament.
But what matter for the Pipe, so that the world, when it has time to
listen, may hear sweet singing? The world, in its way, was very good
to Judith Moore. It gave her the sweet smile of its approval right
royally; it gave her all its luxuries, all its praise, and this Judith
did not pretend not to enjoy. But she enjoyed it as one does who
drinks what he knows will kill him, yet continues the draught, that in
its intoxication he may forget the doom it brings.
Judith was seen everywhere, for she availed herself of all the
privileges which her genius, her beauty, her untarnished fame won for
her. She was pointed out wherever she went; sometimes when a crush of
carriages held her own imprisoned, she would hear a whisper from lip to
lip, "Look! look! There is Judith Moore." Nothing further was needed;
every one knew Judith Moore. And Judith treated the world as it
deserved of her. She dressed herself beautifully for it, and smiled
and sang to it, and exhibited herself to it everywhere. Everywhere,
for she was striving to so tire her spirit that when she was alone it
might at least be numb, if not at rest. In vain! That ardent, tender
spirit was yet indomitable. The body, the slender, beautiful body it
animated, might be sore aweary, but so soon as Judith was alone her
spirit fled far away, back to the place of its rejoicing; back to the
village in the valley, where it was always spring or summertide; back
to the old rail fences with the tangled weeds about them; back to the
apple blooms; back to the brown furrows where the grey birds nested;
back to the lindens and the chestnuts, and there, hour after hour, her
spirit held voiceless commune with that other. Her spirit well might
be comforted, but Judith strained listening ears to hear one tender
word, wearied her eyes searching for the semblance of a face, stretched
forth trembling hands for comfort, and, overcome at last, let them
fall, empty.
The opera season closed, and an incident that made some talk put the
period to Judith's first American season. Judith had sung as she never
sang before. Her voice seemed to transcend the limits of human
capability, and become something independent of her lips, something
sentient, springing ever higher and higher.
The man in whose heart she was likened to the pierced nightingale, the
blinded lark, the mourning dove, the dying swan, had come to listen to
her. At her last appearance there was a roar of applause, a wave of
laudation that seemed as if it might carry her off her feet. There is
something thrilling, inspiring, almost weird in the union of human
voices, something that stirs the imagination, something that never
grows old to us, for it never becomes familiar. Usually they jar and
jangle across each other as children babble, each fretting for his own
toy, so that we almost forget what the power of union is. In praise or
blame it makes the world tremble.
She made no pretence of retiring for the encore. She made no sign to
the musicians. She did not assume the pose, familiar to them, for any
of her songs. They sat silent, spellbound with the audience. She
stepped slowly forward, stretched forth her arms, and sang
unaccompanied, what seemed an invocation to the better Ego of every
soul present, a song she had been wont to sing to Andrew:
"Out from yourself!
Out from the past with its wrecks and contrition,
Out from the dull discontentment of now,
Out from the future's false-speaking ambition,
Out from yourself!
For your broken heart's rest;
For the peace which you crave;
For the end of your quest;
For the love which can save;
Come! Come to me!"
Those who heard that song never forgot it. And one man, at least,
never forgot the expression upon the woman's face as she sang. Rapt as
of a sibyl who conjures away an evil spirit; winning as a woman who
promises all things; informed with the intensity of one who bids her
will go forth to accomplish her desire--she held her last pose a
moment. The house "rose at her." Even as they cheered a change
overspread her face. It grew glorified, exultant, tremulously eager,
as of one who feels the pinions of his soul stirring for flight--for
flight to longed-for shores. With that look upon her face she fell.
* * * * * *
Far away from New York, in the silent spaces of a virgin forest, a man
was lying on the snow, his gun beneath his arm ready for use. But he
was keeping no lookout for game. His eyes were fixed upon an open
space amid the tree tops, where a solitary star twinkled desolately.
His face was thin; his eyes burned; the snows, the silence, nor the
solitude could calm that throbbing at his heart, could cool the fever
in his veins. He thought of Judith, and, thinking of her, loved her.
It was true she had left him, left him with his kisses warm upon her
lips, but--he loved her. It was hard for him to imagine a force strong
enough to constrain her to go. It was difficult, having no clue, to
conceive of circumstances that would justify her silent desertion, but
somehow Andrew, out of the depths of his steadfast heart, found excuses
for her. Sometimes the fantastic thought that she was bound in
loveless marriage came to him, but he put it by. He remembered her
eyes, the misgivings that had assailed her, the tender abandon of her
trust in him. No, she was not married. Where was she? It was not her
wish that he should know. He hoped her little feet trod pleasant
paths. Oh, Judith, Judith! Then, explain it as we may, or leave it
still a mystery, there came to him, faint, aëry, bodilessly, the words
of a song--a song that ended in a plea, "Come! Come to me," and when
it died away, Andrew Cutler sprang to his feet with a cry that echoed
far between the icy tree trunks of the forest, "I come, I come." And
that same night, at the same hour, at the same pulse of the hour,
Judith Moore, with a look of ineffable joy upon her face, fell fainting
upon the stage.
"So may love, although 'tis understood
The mere commingling of passionate breath,
Produce more than our searching witnesseth."
Next day Andrew started back to Ovid, arriving in a state of feverish
expectancy. No tidings of Judith there; and he knew not where to seek.
That pleading voice still rang in his ears; by night, by day, it urged
the message it had brought to him in the depths of far-off Muskoka, and
by day and night he promised it peace, if he could only, only know
where to go.
Time passed.
* * * * * *
The voice was dumb now. Only an acme of surpassing love can wing the
will through space, and then only perhaps once in a lifetime does such
a supreme moment come, and the will behind this love was shattered, for
Judith Moore lay sick unto death, was tossing in the delirium of fever,
or lying for days sunk in an apathy which words could not pierce. The
papers were filled with accounts of her strange illness, daily
bulletins of her condition appeared, her manager was showered with
opprobrium for overworking her. She was dying. The best doctors said
that the miracle was that she had lasted so long. Her little
dark-faced manager went about feeling like a murderer, a Shylock, and a
Judas, in one. The more so, as he felt he had given her the death-blow
in one stroke--when he disregarded that letter. If he had only
overworked her, he told himself he would have had no regrets. He would
have made any reparation he could, but how on earth was he to find the
yokel she was in love with? And what a battle she was having; and yet
it was not such a very long one--from latest winter to spring.
Andrew was half crazed with love, which, since that winter night, had
become almost unendurable through anxiety.
Now it was spring, and as he walked through his woods to the Morris
house, he passed the crab-apple-trees in full bloom. He often went up
to talk to garrulous Mrs. Morris. The little details she let fall
about Judith were pearls of great price to him.
This day he was hardly within the door before Mrs. Morris said:
"Land sakes! but you're just the very person I was wanting to see.
There's a gov'iment letter come to Miss Moore yesterday, and I thought
you'd maybe know where to send it."
"Yes," said Andrew, feeling that the sign had come at last. "Give it
me, and I'll see she gets it."
He took it, and with scarce a word went away, leaving Mrs. Morris
considerably upset by his abruptness.
He only waited to get within the shadow of his woods before he tore it
open. One reading of her pleading letter to her manager sufficed.
Judith was his again. He knew where to find her. New York!--that was
not so very far off. He knew when the trains started, and rapidly made
his plans. She was such a child! and she liked his old velveteen coat
and the big, battered felt hat; he would wear them; she would be
pleased; and as he came within sight of the crab-apple-trees a happy
thought came to him. He took his knife and cut a huge bundle of
flowers, taking off the branches where the flowers were only in bud.
Then he went home.
His aunt heard his hurried explanation, and bound a great roll of wet
moss about the ends of the branches.
"They'll look queer, Andrew," she said.
"Never mind how they'll look," said Andrew, happily; "she'll like 'em."
He was soon on the train, a picturesque figure in tweed, with an old
velveteen coat, a wide shabby felt hat, and an enormous bunch of pink
flowers. Andrew was entirely oblivious of, and indifferent to,
comment. He got hold of a train-man, gave him a dollar and got a
pailful of water from him, arranged his flowers in it, put it in the
baggage-car and sat by it all night. "A queer duck," the trainmen said.
As the Canadian trains reach New York, the morning papers come aboard.
Andrew bought one of each, and sat down turning them over with
tremulous hands to search for a sign. He had not far to seek--"JUDITH
MOORE DYING, THE END APPROACHING." That was what he read in big "scare
head" type; that, and its narrations in the other papers, with the
usual platitudes telling of the "short but bright career," and so on.
With the calm of despair he searched for definite information as to
where she was. It seemed every one knew so well that definite detail
was superfluous. But at last, in a different part of the paper, he
found: "In the corridors of the Brittany Hotel last night, Miss Moore's
manager, who had just left her bedside, said all hope was gone." The
train was in New York, slowing up in the Grand Central station by the
time he found this. He wrapped a couple of handkerchiefs round the
stems of his flowers, got into the first carriage he came to, saying
only "the Brittany Hotel." He thought the cabman might know where to
go. The cabman, of course, did, and ere many minutes he was in the
office of the magnificent hotel.
He knew nothing of conventional procedure, and if he had, it would not
have mattered to him then. He went straight to the desk.
"Is Miss Moore alive?" he asked.
"Yes, I think so, but--"
"I want to go to her at once."
The clerk comprehended, and a bell-boy raced before Andrew to a door
whose handle was muffled. He knocked very softly. "Go," said Andrew,
and he stood alone waiting for the door to open. It would be impious
to speak of the agony which knit his soul and heart to endurance,
whilst he waited the word from within.
The door opened. A miserable little man stood there. When he saw
Andrew, he said without astonishment:
"You're in time to speak to her. Go in."
Andrew advanced to an open door. The little man followed through the
outer room. He beckoned to two others within the sick-room, a
white-capped woman and a doctor. They saw, understood, and Andrew went
up to the bed alone with the door closed behind him.
"Judith," he said, "my own little girl."
A long tremour shook the slight form under the coverlets, and
then--then he was on his knees with the flowers flung all across the
bed and his arms about her. And Judith? Poor Judith's eyes were wide
and frightened, for she thought the change had come that she had waited
for, expected, even longed for; she thought this was Death, and even
although the crab blooms were there, and Andrew, still it was awesome.
Yet Death should have brought white flowers, not apple blooms such as
grew in Andrew's woods. And were Death's arms ever so sustaining, so
tender, so warm as these? And surely Death did not come garbed in
shabby, smoky velveteen, nor bend above his victims a brown passionate
face wet with tears?
"Andrew, it's you, and you're crying," and then followed a faint
whisper of delight--from her--for Andrew's courage and calm were gone
at last. He could not speak. And once more she smiled at him the old
womanly smile, from the old honest eyes, and stretched forth feeble
fingers striving to reach about his neck.