Even before he met Sarah, Damala was a victim to the vice of morphine, and in that curious strata of society which is composed of drug-takers, he met Jeanne Bernhardt, Sarah’s sister, who had no right to the name, but who had assumed it at the behest of their mother.
Jeanne had succumbed to morphine before she was twenty-five. She had followed Sarah’s footsteps into the theatre, but she had none of the talent of her great half-sister, nor had she the beauty, despite her early promise.
She was a peculiar-looking woman, with dark hair, a thin face, deep green pools for eyes, a weak chin and uncertain mouth. She could fill a small part in a play, with the aid of Sarah’s careful coaching, but she could not be depended upon; and at times, under the influence of her special drug, would commit the worst blunders. On more than one occasion she had almost ruined a play.
Poor Jeanne! She had much that was good in her. She loved Sarah with a passion which was extraordinary, to say the least, considering the earlier lack of devotion to one another that characterised the household of Julie Bernard.
That poor lady was now dead, at the age of fifty-one. She had lived long enough, however, to see her unwanted child rise to heights of fame that were almost dizzy, when regarded from her own comparatively small eminence of beauty and coquette.
The baby she had left to the tender mercies of a concierge’s wife, and all but abandoned; the thin, delicate child who had wanted to be a nun, and whom she had never really understood; that being whom she had created, fruit of perhaps the only genuine passion of her empty life, had become the favourite toast of the world, the darling of two hemispheres, with kings paying homage to her beauty and her art.
It is to be doubted whether Julie ever really understood the miracle that had happened. It is to be doubted also whether she ever credited Sarah with the genuine greatness that was hers. Almost to the day of her death, in fact, she was steadily lamenting her daughter’s extravagances and eccentricities—she, of all women, whose foibles had once shocked the gayest city in the world!
It takes a strong will and a cool head to survive the fast life of the theatre, especially when that life is lived as Sarah Bernhardt lived it. Though Sarah might appear strong; though her constitution, which had once been delicate, might now seem to be made of spun steel, in reality she was still delicate—extremely so. It was her will that triumphed, the will to accomplish, to create, to live—the will which is another name for genius.
But little Jeanne, the centre of her mother’s fond hopes, had neither strength of body nor power of will. She had not genius, only a facility for mimicry. The life that sustained and exhilarated Sarah, ruined and finally killed her.
Sarah’s feeling for Jeanne was the pity which is akin to love, and not the sisterly devotion she might have felt had her earlier history been less unfortunate. She helped the girl all she could, saw that she had work, and that she was able to earn sufficient money. She took her to America, in the hope that travel and the change into a newer, freer atmosphere would work the miracle she so ardently desired.