The Other Side (Warner)

by Anne Warner

 

The Other Side

A RENUNCIATION FOR THE SAKE OF A SOUL

By Anne Warner

IT was a pitifully plain room, the kind of room in which a man and a woman whose whole life and every penny have been pressed out to one end may spend their evenings, still working, still pressing out a little more life, a few more pennies.

It was evening now, and there they sat, he copying music, she sewing. Both were silent, their lips closed in resolute lines. Neither stopped for anything other than a fresh dip in the ink-well or a fresh threading of the needle that flew back and forth with machine-like swiftness and precision. His temples were bare, his hair prematurely thin and gray; her face was deeply lined, every line telling of struggle and hardship.

Suddenly the bell rang.

“It's the evening post!” the woman exclaimed, starting up.

He lifted his head and looked vacantly after her as she hurried from the room. Then his senses seemed to gather in the meaning of her words, and his eyes brightened as he drew a deep sigh and pushed his hair from his temples with tired, cramped fingers.

She came back, the hand that held the letter trembling. “It's from her. It's come at last. The date for the début must be set. We'll know now! We'll know now!”

His hands shook, too. “Open it,” he said hoarsely. “It's our reward, it's what we've lived for all these years. Open it quick!”

She opened it and drew out the closely written sheets. Then together they read.

•••

Elzika sat in her glorious, sunny morning-room with its rugs and cushions and its walls and curtains of royal red and tawny yellow, all streaked and shaded with ruby and gold. There were pictures, there were autographed sketches, there were portraits of the great singer herself, made in days before she was absolutely porcine in appearance—made by men who wanted to send something on to future generations that should give truth to the dying echoes of that marvelous voice. There were marbles, there were carvings, there were books bound in bronzed leather and coroneted with the coronet which she had married—and outlived. There were a piano, presented by its makers, and a harp, acquired on the same terms, and a spinnet that Mozart had played upon. And there were other treasures, hung up, put away behind glass, or heaped together in the shadowy hinterland of that great and gorgeous room.

Elzika herself sat well to the fore, in the brightest sunbeam of all. She loved brightness now as well as she had ever loved it when it came in its fulness of comfort only in the summer once a year and left her to feel its absence keenly the long winter through as the Gipsy band moved along the frozen road and she either rode cold in a jolting cart or trudged wearily with the rest. The experiences of that time had never been forgotten. They heaped the softest of cushions around the cantatrice and fed every beggar that crossed her path. She never saw cold bare feet in the street without feeling her own feet stinging and swelling upon the stony, biting road. She never saw pride behind an outstretched hand without seeing herself begging, knowing that a man with a stick waited behind the tree or around the corner. How she had longed for freedom—and for gold, for food, for warmth, for love! All the primitive savage had fought in her nature. The day had come that it had burst out of her throat. She had never known that that outlet was for her. She had found it—Eureka! How it had poured out of her then! Pride, hunger, thirst, rebellion, power, love—she could sing them all. An ugly Gipsy bantling singing so loudly that passers-by paused, puzzled. Such a quaint little gnome-like face and such a voice! One passer-by investigated gnome and voice. He promised freedom, gold, food, drink, and love. What more could she ask? She stole away from her tribal band and ran off with the man of promises. He kept none of the promises, but he left Elzika a woman—a woman, aged fifteen, hungry some more, and with a baby, also hungry, in her arms. But her voice had now grown to where it would carry even her ugly, pathetic face to greatness—could it once gain a hearing.

And she had never been faint hearted. She fought for that hearing with double courage now that there were two to starve without it. And she won it, and became great and famous. She reared her daughter with the greatest care and luxury. Everything that she had longed for she lavished on that child. The things that she could not give, such as beauty and grace, Heaven gave, so that the world seemed very fair to Elzika's daughter. But none of the mother's courage and battle was bred in that younger life, and the daughter came to a terrible end. That was the great singer's great grief. She gave up the stage after that and turned her gift to teaching. She became the foremost teacher of them all. But she became something else, too. She became an altogether different woman. First there developed in her a sort of tough, resistant asceticism which rang in oddly with her past as a woman and her present as a trainer of prima donnas. She began to live a different life and to think different thoughts. The costly rings and bracelets fell one by one from her fat fingers, the fingers became slenderer, and then, after a while, into her small, pig-like eyes there crept a new expression, an expression of pleading and sympathy—the old desire for love played now in the minor key of humanity's need. Her dress dropped in plain, simple folds, the glossy black ringlets became braids, the smile upon her ugly mouth turned gently tender, and that unknown grave of the only child she ever bore stretched its length before every young girl who came—full of the glamour of hope—to be taught by her. They were voices no longer. They were women now, and she—more woman than any one among them, for she had suffered longest—never forgot that.

Thus much for Elzika—so far, so good. So far, not too good—for Gipsy blood is hot, and hot blood and a voice of divine magic do go charm's way often—and yet, in the end, good. And often very good. Tender, sympathetic, understanding. Ringing frequently to the old tunes of pride and power, gold, hunger, and thirst, but ringing oftener to the hymn of God that whispers in every heart until it also, perchance, swells as the voice of Elzika had swelled, and hushes all else before it.

So the great teacher sat in the sunshine this morning waiting for her favorite pupil, a very little girl from over the seas—one upon whom she had spent much time and thought, for the girl was poor, and her voice was resplendent, and she was beautiful of face and form. When they were beautiful the ugly old woman with the curious spiritual kindness alight on her shapeless features used to look at them wistfully, yearningly, not because she was so ugly herself, but because her child—the only child she had ever borne—had been so fair. Thoughts stirred in her then that were too deep for speech. She often tried to help—she often helped; but that strange incense that drifts across the footlights intoxicated her as well as them. She knew both sides. She knew both sides well. She had never been fair, but she had been tempted. And her child—her only child—ah, she had been fair.

The pupil came in. She was very young, barely eighteen, and one saw at a glance that she had worked terribly hard for many, many moons. She was very beautiful, and her figure had the ideally sylph-like lines that send a voice heavenward with the eyes of all who listen. And her eyes were full and blue, and her chin was a chin that quivered easily. A woman who has a battle to fight should have a broad, straight line from her ear down, or the battle will make for defeat. Elzika knew that and sighed.

The pupil came and stooped beside her mistress, taking her hand and carrying it to her lips with the easy grace of one whose training has been well pushed along all lines.

“Well, little one,” said the Gipsy, smiling, “so we each have news to tell. I had your letter when you had mine. Will you wager that my news is not the better?”

The girl hastened to bring a low chair to her teacher's side and sat down there with the familiarity of one privileged. “I dare not wager,” she said, smiling only slightly herself. “I do not know what you will say to mine.” And then the easily quivering chin quivered visibly.

“Nothing bad from the father or mother, I hope?”

“Oh, no.”

“Ah, then it can't be so very bad.”

“It isn't bad,” said the girl, and hesitated.

“Come, I'll tell you mine first, then,” said the teacher. “I've arranged for you to have Marguerite the fourth night of the first week of the opera. That means that your name is made. Now what do you say to that?”

The girl turned quite white. “Oh, madame,” she stammered; “oh, madame!” Her bosom heaved quickly, she pressed her hands hard against it. “Oh, my parents—my parents!” she whispered, gasping like pain.

“Why, my dear, is it like that?” said Elzika. “Are you of no better stuff than that? See—see—this will never do. Go and pour yourself some wine.”

“It isn't that,” said the girl. “It's only—it's only——”

“It's only what?”

“It's only that I'm going—I'm getting frightened. ”

“Of what?” Then the old woman's face and tone altered suddenly. “You have some new trouble?” she asked quickly.

“No, no trouble.”

“Etienne hasn't been to you again, has he?”

The girl shook her head. “No, but he is always there when I go to sing. And of course—if I sing Marguerite he will be Faust—he will take me in his arms”—suddenly she began to sob—“he will kiss me many times—you know that, madame—he will kiss me many times.”

There was a pause.

“That is only acting,” said the teacher finally; “you must learn that that is only acting.”

“But he looks at me so,” cried the girl, suddenly starting to her feet, “he looks at me so. He is always measuring me with his eyes. And there is Rudolph, too. When he speaks to me it is kindly enough meant, but he touches me, he lays his hand on my shoulder, he calls me 'my dear' and 'little one,' and then he looks at Etienne, and the way they look frightens me.”

“It is all acting,” said Elzika again. Then her eyes grew somber. “Of course it is through Rudolph that you get your chance the first week; you must not offend him.”

“And that frightens me, too,” said the girl. “I know that I must not offend them—not one of them. If Etienne chooses to hold me and kiss me passionately in the opera the audience will like him all the better, and I must not rebel or he can throw me from my key any moment and ruin me—and ruin me.”

“Yes, that is true,” said the older woman, nodding slowly. “That is very true.”

“And afterward, when I am changing my dress, if they wish to come and compliment me I must let them in—I must receive their good wishes even if I am half dressed, as Lili had to last year.”

“Yes, that is true. That is also true.”

“And as the time goes on they will bring others, and I shall become used to it, as Laure did—you remember Laure? Oh, I've been thinking so much about it lately! So much about it!”

“It is all quite true.”

“And it will not end there. It never ends there.”

“No,” said Elzika, the shadow of a grave before her eyes, “it never ends there. I must not deny that. It never ends there.”

There was another pause.

“I do not seem very grateful for your news,” the girl said then, trying to smile.

“No, but you are right in all you say. If you feel it in that way one has to admit that it is all true.”

“It is all true, isn't it?”

“Yes, it is all true.”

“I never knew this side until I came into it.”

“No,” said the old woman with a sigh, “no one can ever know it until they live it.” She was under the spell of her own past now. All its brilliance and brightness were forgotten. Her child wailed in her arms again. And then that unknown grave lay before her haunted eyes.

“You must consider well,” she said, herself considering the loveliness before her as she spoke and also marking afresh that sweet, irresolute chin. “What was your news?” she asked after a while.

“My news?” The girl came back to herself with a start.

“Yes, what you had to tell me.”

“It is that I love.”

“Ah!” The exclamation came sharply. “You love! That is partially why.”

“Yes; that has made me learn myself.”

“One of us? Is he one of us?”

“No; I came to know him through a friend. He is a student. He will be a doctor.”

“Ah!” Elzika nodded again. “I'm glad,” she said briefly.

“It seems as if I could not bear to have Etienne sing Faust to me now. How could I bear it?”

Elzika laid her hand upon her heart at that. “You could not bear it,” she said hoarsely; “it must not be. You must not have to bear it.” So easily did the hymn of God rise up in the heart of this woman who had worked hard for years training prima donnas. They had not all stayed prima donnas. And some had stayed prima donnas. Oh, hymn of God! “I would never counsel anyone to go on who felt strong enough to draw back,” said Elzika.

The girl quitted her chair and knelt at Elzika's knees. “I am not the stuff of which greatness is made,” she said, looking with tears into the eyes which were wet as her own. “I am finding it out.”

“Yes,” said Elzika, “I am finding it out, too. I was not of that stuff either—I found that out, too. That is curious stuff—that stuff of which greatness is made. I think it is better to be little.”

“Then you counsel that I should give it all up? You do not think that I—that I ought—” she stammered hopelessly. “My parents have made so many sacrifices for me,” she managed to say at last, “but you know it is for my soul that I fight. They do not know, but you know.”

“Yes, I know. I gave it all up.”

“But my parents will be so disappointed.”

“But not as I was disappointed in my child,” said the old woman, and then she put her hands over her face and was quiet a little. “Parents may be disappointed and yet be happy afterward,” she said finally. “With me there was no afterward. I lost her before I guessed her danger. And then she died—afar—alone.”

The girl laid her hand upon Elzika's arm. “Dear madame,” she said in a tone of utmost entreaty, “it seems to me that life is all problem.”

“All problem,” said Elzika, wiping her eyes, “and the woman's is the hardest. God guard you.” 'Then she opened her arms and took the girl to her heart. “You will write to your parents that you have given up the opera to be married,” she said, “and I will make the marriage possible. I will be the fairy godmother.”

The girl seemed not to hear. “They will be so disappointed,” she murmured, “they will be so disappointed. Oh, they have worked so hard!”

“They know not what they do,” quoted Elzika tensely; “you did not know for a long time yourself.”

“But you know,” said the girl.

“And if I know,” said the old Gipsy, “do you think that I do not live up to my knowledge? Who else will understand your change as I have? Ah, my child, 'tis not often that you will be understood—you who might have sung Marguerite to Etienne's Faust before you were nineteen! And I, what will the world say of me, who have trained such a voice to croon over a cradle! But I care not what the world says. I have sung, I have suffered, I have sorrowed, I have been betrayed, I have learned the right. The world matters not to me.” And she meant it.

•••

Across the seas, in that dim, dingy room, they had finished reading the letter and now lifted eyes of dumb despair to each other's pained, strained regard. It was long before either spoke.

Finally, “She has given it all up,” the mother whispered.

“To be married,” the father murmured.

“And Madame Elzika will give them money enough for him to finish learning how to be a doctor,” said the mother.

“Oh, God! Oh, God!” the father said, opening and shutting his tired, cramped fingers; and then again: “Oh, God! Oh, God!”

“I guess we may as well go to bed,” the mother said, rising; “it's no use burning oil to talk about it.”