VIII

MILDRED went to bed that night proud of her strength of character. Were

there many women--was there any other woman she knew or knew about--who

in her desperate circumstances would have done what she had done? She

could have married a man who would have given her wealth and the very

best social position. She had refused him. She could have continued

to "borrow" from him the wherewithal to keep her in luxurious comfort

while she looked about at her ease for a position that meant

independence. She had thrust the temptation from her. All this from

purely high-minded motives; for other motive there could be none. She

went to sleep, confident that on the morrow she would continue to tread

the path of self-respect with unfaltering feet. But when morning came

her throat was once more slightly off--enough to make it wise to

postpone the excursion in search of a trial for musical comedy. The

excitement or the reaction from excitement--it must be the one or the

other--had resulted in weakness showing itself, naturally, at her

weakest point--that delicate throat. When life was calm and orderly,

and her mind was at peace, the trouble would pass, and she could get a

position of some kind. Not the career she had dreamed; that was

impossible. But she had voice enough for a little part, where a living

could be made; and perhaps she would presently fathom the secret of the

cause of her delicate throat and would be able to go far--possibly as

far as she had dreamed.

The delay of a few days was irritating. She would have preferred to

push straight on, while her courage was taut. Still, the delay had one

advantage--she could prepare the details of her plan. So, instead of

going to the office of the theatrical manager--Crossley, the most

successful producer of light, musical pieces of all kinds--she went to

call on several of the girls she knew who were more or less in touch

with matters theatrical. And she found out just how to proceed toward

accomplishing a purpose which ought not to be difficult for one with

such a voice as hers and with physical charms peculiarly fitted for

stage exhibition.

Not until Saturday was her voice at its best again. She, naturally,

decided not to go to the theatrical office on Monday, but to wait until

she had seen and talked with Keith. One more day did not matter, and

Keith might be stimulating, might even have some useful suggestions to

offer. She received him with a manner that was a version, and a most

charming version, of his own tranquil indifference. But his first

remark threw her into a panic. Said he:

"I've only a few minutes. No, thanks, I'll not sit."

"You needn't have bothered to come," said she coldly.

"I always keep my engagements. Baird tells me you have given up the

arrangement you had with him. You'll probably be moving from here, as

you'll not have the money to stay on. Send me your new address,

please." He took a paper from his pocket and gave it to her. "You

will find this useful--if you are in earnest," said he. "Good-by, and

good luck. I'll hope to see you in a few weeks."

Before she had recovered herself in the least, she was standing there

alone, the paper in her hand, her stupefied gaze upon the door through

which he had disappeared. All his movements and his speech had been of

his customary, his invariable, deliberateness; but she had the

impression of whirling and rushing haste. With a long gasping sigh she

fell to trembling all over. She sped to her room, got its door safely

closed just in time. Down she sank upon the bed, to give way to an

attack of hysterics.

We are constantly finding ourselves putting forth the lovely flowers

and fruit of the virtues whereof the heroes and heroines of romance are

so prolific. Usually nothing occurs to disillusion us about ourselves.

But now and then fate, in unusually brutal ironic mood, forces us to

see the real reason why we did this or that virtuous, self-sacrificing

action, or blossomed forth in this or that nobility of character.

Mildred was destined now to suffer one of these savage blows of

disillusionment about self that thrust us down from the exalted moral

heights where we have been preening into humble kinship with the weak

and frail human race. She saw why she had refused Stanley, why she had

stopped "borrowing," why she had put off going to the theatrical

managers, why she had delayed moving into quarters within her

diminished and rapidly diminishing means. She had been counting on

Donald Keith. She had convinced herself that he loved her even as she

loved him. He would fling away his cold reserve, would burst into

raptures over her virtue and her courage, would ask her to marry him.

Or, if he should put off that, he would at least undertake the

responsibility of getting her started in her career. Well! He had

come; he had shown that Stanley had told him all or practically all;

and he had gone, without asking a sympathetic question or making an

encouraging remark. As indifferent as he seemed. Burnt out, cold,

heartless. She had leaned upon him; he had slipped away, leaving her to

fall painfully, and ludicrously, to the ground. She had been boasting

to herself that she was strong, that she would of her own strength

establish herself in independence. She had not dreamed that she would

be called upon to "make good." She raved against Keith, against

herself, against fate. And above the chaos and the wreck within her,

round and round, hither and yon, flapped and shied the black thought,

"What SHALL I do?"

When she sat up and dried her eyes, she chanced to see the paper Keith

had left; with wonder at her having forgotten it and with a throb of

hope she opened and began to read his small, difficult writing:

A career means self-denial. Not occasional, intermittent, but steady,

constant, daily, hourly--a purpose that never relaxes.

A career as a singer means not only the routine, the patient tedious

work, the cutting out of time-wasting people and time-wasting pleasures

that are necessary to any and all careers. It means in addition--for

such a person--sacrifices far beyond a character so undisciplined and

so corrupted by conventional life as is yours. The basis of a singing

career is health and strength. You must have great physical strength

to be able to sing operas. You must have perfect health.

Diet and exercise. A routine life, its routine rigidly adhered to, day

in and day out, month after month, year after year. Small and

uninteresting and monotonous food, nothing to drink, and, of course, no

cigarettes. Such is the secret of a reliable voice for you who have a

"delicate throat"--which is the silly, shallow, and misleading way of

saying a delicate digestion, for sore throat always means indigestion,

never means anything else. To sing, the instrument, the absolutely

material machine, must be in perfect order. The rest is easy.

Some singers can commit indiscretions of diet and of lack of exercise.

But not you, because you lack this natural strength. Do not be

deceived and misled by their example.

Exercise. You must make your body strong, powerful. You have not the

muscles by nature. You must acquire them.

The following routine of diet and exercise made one of the great

singers, and kept her great for a quarter of a century. If you adopt

it, without variation, you can make a career. If you do not, you need

not hope for anything but failure and humiliation. Within my knowledge

sixty-eight young men and young women have started in on this system.

Not one had the character to persist to success. This may suggest why,

except two who are at the very top, all of the great singers are men

and women whom nature has made powerful of body and of digestion--so

powerful that their indiscretions only occasionally make them

unreliable.

There Mildred stopped and flung the paper aside. She did not care even

to glance at the exercises prescribed or at the diet and the routine of

daily work. How dull and uninspired! How grossly material! Stomach!

Chewing! Exercising machines! Plodding dreary miles daily, rain or

shine! What could such things have to do with the free and glorious

career of an inspired singer? Keith was laughing at her as he hastened

away, abandoning her to her fate.

She examined herself in the glass to make sure that the ravages of her

attack of rage and grief and despair could be effaced within a few

hours, then she wrote a note--formal yet friendly--to Stanley Baird,

informing him that she would receive him that evening. He came while

Cyrilla and Mildred were having their after, dinner coffee and

cigarettes. He was a man who took great pains with his clothes, and

got them where pains was not in vain. That evening he had arrayed

himself with unusual care, and the result was a fine, manly figure of

the well-bred New-Yorker type. Certainly Stanley had ground for his

feeling that he deserved and got liking for himself. The three sat in

the library for perhaps half an hour, then Mrs. Brindley rose to leave

the other two alone. Mildred urged her to stay--Mildred who had been

impatient of her presence when Stanley was announced. Urged her to

stay in such a tone that Cyrilla could not persist, but had to sit down

again. As the three talked on and on, Mildred continued to picture life

with Stanley--continued the vivid picturing she had begun within ten

minutes of Stanley's entering, the picturing that had caused her to

insist on Cyrilla's remaining as chaperon. A young girl can do no such

picturing as Mildred could not avoid doing. To the young girl married

life, its tete-a-tetes, its intimacies, its routine, are all a blank.

Any attempt she makes to fill in details goes far astray. But Mildred,

with Stanley there before her, could see her life as it would be.

Toward half-past ten, Stanley said, shame-faced and pleading, "Mildred,

I should like to see you alone for just a minute before I go."

Mildred said to Cyrilla: "No, don't move. We'll go into the

drawing-room."

He followed her there, and when the sound of Mrs. Brindley's step in

the hall had died away, he began: "I think I understand you a little

now. I shan't insult you by returning or destroying that note or the

check. I accept your decision--unless you wish to change it." He

looked at her with eager appeal. His heart was trembling, was sick

with apprehension, with the sense of weakness, of danger and gloom

ahead. "Why shouldn't I help you, at least, Mildred?" he urged.

Whence the courage came she knew not, but through her choking throat

she forced a positive, "No."

"And," he went on, "I meant what I said. I love you. I'm wretched

without you. I want you to marry me, career or no career."

Her fears were clamorous, but she forced herself to say, "I can't

change."

"I hoped--a little--that you sent me the note to-day because you-- You

didn't?"

"No," said Mildred. "I want us to be friends. But you must keep away."

He bent his head. "Then I'll go 'way off somewhere. I can't bear being

here in New York and not seeing you. And when I've been away a year or

so, perhaps I'll get control of myself again."

Going away!--to try to forget!--no doubt, to succeed in forgetting!

Then this was her last chance.

"Must I go, Mildred? Won't you relent?"

"I don't love you--and I never can." She was deathly white and

trembling. She lifted her eyes to begin a retreat, for her courage had

quite oozed away. He was looking at her, his face distorted with a

mingling of the passion of desire and the passion of jealousy. She

shrank, caught at the back of a chair for support, felt suddenly strong

and defiant. To be this man's plaything, to submit to his moods, to

his jealousies, to his caprices--to be his to fumble and caress, his to

have the fury of his passion wreak itself upon her with no response

from her but only repulsion and loathing--and the long dreary hours and

days and years alone with him, listening to his commonplaces, often so

tedious, forced to try to amuse him and to keep him in a good humor

because he held the purse-strings--

"Please go," she said.

She was still very young, still had years and years of youth unspent.

Surely she could find something better than this. Surely life must

mean something more than this. At least it was worth a trial.

He held out his hand. She gave him her reluctant and cold fingers. He

said something, what she did not hear, for the blood was roaring in her

ears as the room swam round. He was gone, and the next thing she

definitely knew she was at the threshold of Cyrilla's room. Cyrilla

gave her a tenderly sympathetic glance. She saw herself in a mirror and

knew why; her face was gray and drawn, and her eyes lay dully deep

within dark circles.

"I couldn't do it," she said. "I sent for him to marry him. But I

couldn't."

"I'm glad," said Cyrilla. "Marriage without love is a last resort. And

you're a long way from last resorts."

"You don't think I'm crazy?"

"I think you've won a great victory."

"Victory!" And Mildred laughed dolefully. "If this is victory, I hope

I'll never know defeat."

Why did Mildred refuse Stanley Baird and cut herself off from him, even

after her hopes of Donald Keith died through lack of food, real or

imaginary? It would be gratifying to offer this as a case of pure

courage and high principle, untainted of the motives which govern

ordinary human actions. But unluckily this is a biography, not a

romance, a history and not a eulogy. And Mildred Gower is a human

being, even as you and I, not a galvanized embodiment of superhuman

virtues such as you and I are pretending to be, perhaps even to

ourselves. The explanation of her strange aberration, which will be

doubted or secretly condemned by every woman of the sheltered classes

who loves her dependence and seeks to disguise it as something sweet

and fine and "womanly"--the explanation of her almost insane act of

renunciation of all that a lady holds most dear is simple enough,

puzzling though she found it. Ignorance, which accounts for so much of

the squalid failure in human life, accounts also for much if not all

the most splendid audacious achievement. Very often--very, very

often--the impossibilities are achieved by those who in their ignorance

advance not boldly but unconcernedly where a wiser man or woman would

shrink and retreat. Fortunate indeed is he or she who in a crisis is

by chance equipped with neither too little nor too much knowledge--who

knows enough to enable him to advance, but does not know enough to

appreciate how perilous, how foolhardy, how harsh and cruel, advance

will be. Mildred was in this instance thus fortunate--unfortunate, she

was presently to think it. She knew enough about loveless marriage to

shrink from it. She did not know enough about what poverty,

moneylessness, and friendlessness mean in the actuality to a woman bred

as she had been. She imagined she knew--and sick at heart her notion

of poverty made her. But imagination was only faintest foreshadowing

of actuality. If she had known, she would have yielded to the

temptation that was almost too strong for her. And if she had

yielded--what then? Not such a repulsive lot, as our comfortable

classes look at it. Plenty to eat and drink and to wear, servants and

equipages and fine houses and fine society, the envy of her gaping

kind--a comfortable life for the body, a comfortable death for mind and

heart, slowly and softly suffocated in luxury. Partly through

knowledge that strongly affected her character, which was on the whole

aspiring and sensitive beyond the average to the true and the

beautiful, partly through ignorance that veiled the future from her

none too valorous and hardy heart, she did not yield to the temptation.

And thus, instead of dying, she began to live, for what is life but

growth in experience, in strength and knowledge and capability?

A baby enters the world screaming with pain. The first sensations of

living are agonizing. It is the same with the birth of souls, for a

soul is not really born until that day when it is offered choice

between life and death and chooses life. In Mildred Gower's case this

birth was an agony. She awoke the following morning with a dull

headache, a fainting heart, and a throat so sore that she felt a

painful catch whenever she tried to swallow. She used the spray; she

massaged her throat and neck vigorously. In vain; it was folly to

think of going where she might have to risk a trial of her voice that

day. The sun was brilliant and the air sharp without being humid or

too cold. She dressed, breakfasted, went out for a walk. The throat

grew worse, then better. She returned for luncheon, and afterward

began to think of packing, not that she had chosen a new place, but

because she wished to have some sort of a sense of action. But her

unhappiness drove her out again--to the park where the air was fine and

she could walk in comparative solitude.

"What a silly fool I am!" thought she. "Why did I do this in the

worst, the hardest possible way? I should have held on to Stanley

until I had a position. No, I'm such a poor creature that I could never

have done it in that way. I'd simply have kept on bluffing, fooling

myself, putting off and putting of. I had to jump into the water with

nobody near to help me, or I'd never have begun to learn to swim. I

haven't begun yet. I may never learn to swim. I may drown. Yes, I

probably shall drown."

She wandered aimlessly on--around the upper reservoir where the strong

breeze freshened her through and through and made her feel less forlorn

in spite of her chicken heart. She crossed the bridge at the lower end

and came down toward the East Drive. A taxicab rushed by, not so fast,

however, that she failed to recognize Donald Keith and Cyrilla

Brindley. They were talking so earnestly--Keith was talking, for a

wonder, and Mrs. Brindley listening--that they did not see her. She

went straight home. But as she was afoot, the journey took about half

an hour. Cyrilla was already there, in a negligee, looking as if she

had not been out of the little library for hours. She was writing a

letter. Mildred strolled in and seated herself. Cyrilla went on

writing. Mildred watched her impatiently. She wished to talk, to be

talked to, to be consoled and cheered, to hear about Donald Keith.

Would that letter never be finished? At last it was, and Cyrilla took

a book and settled herself to reading. There was a vague something in

her manner--a change, an attitude toward Mildred--that disturbed

Mildred. Or, was that notion of a change merely the offspring of her

own somber mood? Seeing that Mrs. Brindley would not begin, she broke

the silence herself. Said she awkwardly:

"I've decided to move. In fact, I've got to move."

Cyrilla laid down the book and regarded her tranquilly. "Of course,"

said she. "I've already begun to arrange for someone else."

Mildred choked, and the tears welled into her eyes. She had not been

mistaken; Cyrilla had changed toward her. Now that she had no

prospects for a brilliant career, now that her money was gone, Cyrilla

had begun to--to be human. No doubt, in the course of that drive,

Cyrilla had discovered that Keith had no interest in her either.

Mildred beat down her emotion and was soon able to say in a voice as

unconcerned as Cyrilla's:

"I'll find a place to-morrow or next day, and go at once."

"I'll be sorry to lose you," said Mrs. Brindley, "but I agree with you

that you can't get settled any too soon."

"You don't happen to know of any cheap, good place?" said Mildred.

"If it's cheap, I don't think it's likely to be good--in New York,"

replied Cyrilla. "You'll have to put up with inconveniences--and

worse. I'd offer to help you find a place, but I think everything

self-reliant one does helps one to learn. Don't you?"

"Yes, indeed," assented Mildred. The thing was self-evidently true;

still she began to hate Cyrilla. This cold-hearted New York! How she

would grind down her heel when she got it on the neck of New York!

Friendship, love, helpfulness--what did New York and New-Yorkers know

of these things? "Or Hanging Rock, either," reflected she. What a

cold and lonely world!

"Have you been to see about a position?" inquired Cyrilla.

Mildred was thrown into confusion. "I can't go--for a--day or so," she

stammered. "The changeable weather has rather upset my throat. Nothing

serious, but I want to be at my best."

"Certainly," said Mrs. Brindley. Her direct gaze made Mildred

uncomfortable. She went on: "You're sure it's the weather?"

"What else could it be?" demanded Mildred with a latent resentment

whose interesting origin she did not pause to inquire into.

"Well, salad, or sauces, or desserts, or cafe au lait in the morning,

or candy, or tea," said Cyrilla. "Or it might be cigarettes, or all

those things--and thin stockings and low shoes--mightn't it?"

Never before had she known Cyrilla to say anything meddlesome or

cattish. Said Mildred with a faint sneer, "That sounds like Mr.

Keith's crankiness."

"It is," replied Cyrilla. "I used to think he was a crank on the

subject of singing and stomachs, and singing and ankles. But I've been

convinced, partly by him, mostly by what I've observed."

Mildred maintained an icy silence.

"I see you are resenting what I said," observed Cyrilla.

"Not at all," said Mildred. "No doubt you meant well."

"You will please remember that you asked me a question."

So she had. But the discovery that she was clearly in the wrong, that

she had invited the disguised lecture, only aggravated her sense of

resentment against Mrs. Brindley. She spent the rest of the afternoon

in sorting and packing her belongings--and in crying. She came upon

the paper Donald Keith had left. She read it through carefully,

thoughtfully, read it to the last direction as to exercise with the

machine, the last arrangement for a daily routine of life, the last

suggestion as to diet.

"Fortunately all that isn't necessary," said she to herself, when she

had finished. "If it were, I could never make a career. I'm not

stupid enough to be able to lead that kind of life. Why, I'd not care

to make a career, at that price. Slavery--plain slavery."

When she went in to dinner, she saw instantly that Cyrilla too had been

crying. Cyrilla did not look old, anything but that, indeed was not

old and would not begin to be for many a year. Still, after

thirty-five or forty a woman cannot indulge a good cry without its

leaving serious traces that will show hours afterward. At sight of the

evidences of Cyrilla's grief Mildred straightway forgot her resentment.

There must have been some other cause for Cyrilla's peculiar conduct.

No matter what, since it was not hardness of heart.

It was a sad, even a gloomy dinner. But the two women were once more

in perfect sympathy. And afterward Mildred brought the Keith paper and

asked Cyrilla's opinion. Cyrilla read slowly and without comment. At

last she said:

"He got this from his mother, Lucia Rivi. Have you read her life?"

"No. I've heard almost nothing about her, except that she was famous."

"She was more than that," said Mrs. Brindley. "She was great, a great

personality. She was an almost sickly child and girl. Her first

attempts on the stage were humiliating failures. She had no health, no

endurance, nothing but a small voice of rare quality." Cyrilla held up

the paper. "This tells how she became one of the surest and most

powerful dramatic sopranos that ever lived."

"She must have been a dull person to have been able to lead the kind of

life that's described there," said Mildred.

"Only two kinds of persons could do it," replied Cyrilla--"a dull

person--a plodder--and a genius. Middling people--they're the kind that

fill the world, they're you and I, my dear--middling people have to

fuss with the trifles that must be sacrificed if one is to do anything

big. You call those trifles your freedom, but they're your slavery.

And by sacrificing them the Lucia Rivis buy their freedom." Cyrilla

looked at the paper with a heavy sigh. "Ah, I wish I had seen this

when I was your age. Now, it's too late."