“But you don’t really feel it? I thought artists dared not feel too much. I have seen would-be emotional actresses carried away to such an extent that they were quite ridiculous.”
“You give no stage artist the credit of a brain, I suppose? Can you imagine a born actress—born, mind you—living her part, yet never quite shaking loose from that strong grip above? That is what is meant by ‘living a part.’ You abandon yourself deliberately—with the whole day’s preparation—into that other personality, almost to a soul in possession, and are not your own self for one instant; although the purely mental part of that self never relaxes its vigilance over the usurper. It is a curious dual experience that none but an artist can understand. Of course that perfect duality is only possible after years of study, work, practical experience, mastery of technique. No beginner, no matter what her genius, should dare to abandon herself to her rôles.”
“You must have had great masters. You have harrowed me horribly.”
“I have had none, except Wagner. Five years of stage experience in the United States were of a certain value, for although I never had an important part—I was too tall, I was not interested, my talent barely stirred—still I observed, I studied in an abstract mental fashion, I gained poise. It is an achievement alone to feel at home on the stage.”
He was burning with impatience. “How in heaven’s name could they have failed over there to discover that you were a great actress, whether or not you chose to cultivate your genius—and why not? why not? I hope you do not think me merely curious. I am trying to speak as one of the public that adores you—quite impersonally. There are so few great actresses. I feel that you had no right, for any private reasons whatever, to build a bushel over your talent. No genius belongs to himself alone.”
The colour left her face, but she replied composedly: “Perhaps not, but that is not the way that women, at least, reason when they are young. I went on the stage, not because I was stage-struck, nor in poverty, but for a reason that I cannot give you. When I found that the big heavy voice that even singing teachers had laughed at could be minted into pure gold for the new music,—which only one of the many instructors I sought knew anything about, or at least believed in,—then I felt resigned even to the causes which had driven me to the stage. I have become inordinately ambitious; I often wonder what life can mean to those that have no excuse for ambition—it is one of the reasons which enabled me to begin life all over again. I was indeed another being after my first triumph at Bayreuth, and not only because half the crowned heads in Europe rushed to hear me the second time I sang; when I stood on the greatest stage in the world with all my being set to the music soaring from my throat, not a nerve out of tune, I knew that I no longer was of common clay, that nothing that had ever happened to me before mattered in the least. Ah, what matter the charnel rooms in the soul when such memories blaze forever above? Poor women! Poor women!—that have no such blinding moments—that must sit and think—and think—”
Her eyes, dilated, horror-struck, gazed beyond Ordham, who felt intolerably excited. He drew a short breath of relief when she recovered herself abruptly, and said with a laugh: “But the world is very ungrateful to its stage artists. Think of Mallinger, Josephine Schefzky, Malwina Schnoor von Caroldsfeld. Less than twenty years ago all Germany rang with their fame. Have you ever heard their names?”
“I have heard of Schefzky! It was she that overturned the swan boat in the winter garden of the Residenz when sailing with the King—dressed up as Lohengrin!—and he ran off, dripping, and calling to a lackey to pull her out. I love that story.”
“It is all that keeps poor Josephine’s name alive. However—what matter so long as we have our little day? Only the chosen few have that. What have you made up your mind to do with your own life?”
She put the question so abruptly that he almost dropped his fork. “If I have interested you sufficiently to inspire that question, then the last six or eight years have not atrophied everything but the artist. Unless you asked it for the sake of saying something,” he added anxiously.