Yes, that was life.
And as she lived her triumphs over again, she felt the supreme exaltation of a genius in a great gift, the God-like thrill of mastery, the glorious certainty of capacity, the birth-pang of creation. There is no gift so marvellous, so maddening, so divine as the gift of song—none so evanescent, none so sad.
This woman inhaled the common ether of a prosaic world, mingled it with her breath and sent it forth glorified as sound—sound such as nothing made with men's hands in all the world can produce. She created something divine, which died even as it was born, and passed into the silence—silence that has absorbed so many sweet and terrible things. She sang; she sent forth her heart, her being, her soul from her lips, like a beautiful unseen dove seeking a sign; and there returned to her—silence. From all the glorious "choir invisible" that had gone before there came back no word. And the wonder, and triumph, and pity of it grew upon her, so that she began to eat her heart out with loneliness.
Her voice lifted her up to the gods; when she returned to earth, there was no loving breast for her to rest upon, no strong hands to sustain her, no lips to kiss the pain of music from her own, none to seal the bliss of singing into abiding joy.
Two years of this, and Judith Moore left it all, and came, in the summer preceding her American début, to this little Canadian village. She had told her manager, the only person she knew well enough to write to, that he was not to write. He knew where she was: she would let him know if she needed him. Let her rest, for just a little, she pleaded. And he agreed.
She owed everything she was to this man, who had been a friend of her father's. Passing through the little town where they were, he had come to visit them. He found his old friend's funeral leaving the house. He came back to see the desolate girl. Then followed the discovery of her voice, and his investment in her as a good speculation. It was going to prove one, too, though the anxiety of it had given him a grey hair or two in his black head. Yes, it had been a good speculation already, for the two years' singing abroad had recouped him for all his outlay of money. The American season would repay his patience, and the South American tour, and the winter in Russia—the impresario's plans stretched far into the future through golden vistas of profit. That Judith might have other dreams he never considered.
She herself had no well-defined thought but to excel in her art. She did not in the least understand what was amiss with her. Not but what in many dreams by night, and visions by day, she had thought of a passion that was to transfigure her life; but so used was she to passing from the reality of life to the dream on the stage, that the visions and the verities became sadly confused, and so she grew day by day more eager to attain, more anxious to achieve the highest in her art, more unsparing of her own efforts, always trembling just on the threshold of the unknown, always feeling one more upward effort of her wings would take her to the very pinnacle of song. There surely grew the balm of sweet content, of satisfaction, of peace. Poor Judith! For her the real content lay in a green valley, far, far below these perilous peaks upon which she tottered; whereon no woman may safely stand, it seems, without a stronger soul beside her to sustain in time of need. Her happiness lay in a valley where love springs and happiness flows in streams about the feet, and as she aspired higher and higher, and rose farther and farther into the rarefied air which solitary success breathes, she left the Happy Valley farther and farther behind.
Had she been less evenly balanced, had her soul been less true, her heart less tender, she might in time have frozen the woman completely, and crystallized into the artiste only—or—but to think of Judith Moore sullying her wings is sacrilege.
She was full of womanly tenderness and womanly vanities. She had a thousand little tricks of coquetry and as many balms to ease their smart. She took a good deal of satisfaction out of her pretty gowns and her finger nails, and the contemplation of her little feet becomingly shod had been known to dry her tears. She was essentially the woman of the past, the woman who created a "type" distinct from man: the womanly woman, not the hybrid creature of modern cultivation; the woman of romance. To balance this (for nowadays this doubtless needs excuse) she had a fund of sympathy great enough to endow every living thing that suffered with pity. She had certainly that charity without which all other virtues are as "sounding brass." She sent away those who came in contact with her the better for their meeting, and from her eyes there shone a purity of soul that had abashed some men whose eyes had long forgotten shame.
Such was Judith Moore.