Judith Moore; or, Fashioning a Pipe

by Joanna E. Wood

CHAPTER X.

"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.