replied Mildred.``The soft, vacillating, sweet and weak thing I used to have wasn't character.''
``But, dear, you can't think it superior character to center one's whole life about a sordid ambition.''
``Sordid?''
``Merely to make a living.''
Mildred laughed merrily and mockingly.``You call that sordid? Then for heaven's sake what is high?
You had left you money enough to live on, if you have to.No one left me an income.So, I'm fighting for independence--and that means for self-respect.Is self-respect sordid, Cyrilla!''
And then Cyrilla understood--in part, not altogether.
She lived in the ordinary environment of flap-doodle and sweet hypocrisy and sentimentality; and none such can more than vaguely glimpse the realities.
Toward the end of the summer Moldini said:
``It's over.You have won.''
Mildred looked at him in puzzled surprise.
``You have learned it all.You will succeed.The rest is detail.''
``But I've learned nothing as yet,'' protested she.
``You have learned to teach yourself,'' replied the Italian.``You at last can hear yourself sing, and you know when you sing right and when you sing wrong, and you know how to sing right.The rest is easy.
Ah, my dear Miss Gower, you will work NOW!''
Mildred did not understand.She was even daunted by that ``You will work NOW!'' She had been thinking that to work harder was impossible.What did he expect of her? Something she feared she could not realize.
But soon she understood--when he gave her songs, then began to teach her a role, the part of Madame Butterfly herself.``I can help you only a little there,''
he said.``You will have to go to my friend Ferreri for roles.But we can make a beginning.''
She had indeed won.She had passed from the stage where a career is all drudgery--the stage through which only the strong can pass without giving up and accepting failure or small success.She had passed to the stage where there is added pleasure to the drudgery, for, the drudgery never ceases.And what was the pleasure? Why, more work--always work--bringing into use not merely the routine parts of the mind, but also the imaginative and creative faculties.She had learned her trade--not well enough, for no superior man or woman ever feels that he or she knows the trade well enough--but well enough to begin to use it.
Said Moldini: ``When the great one, who has achieved and arrived, is asked for advice by the sweet, enthusiastic young beginner, what is the answer?
Always the same: `My dear child, don't! Go back home, and marry and have babies.' You know why now?''
And Mildred, looking back over the dreary drudgery that had been, and looking forward to the drudgery yet to come, dreary enough for all the prospects of a few flowers and a little sun--Mildred said: ``Indeed I do, maestro.''
``They think it means what you Americans call morals--as if that were all of morality! But it doesn't mean morals; not at all.Sex and the game of sex is all through life everywhere--in the home no less than in the theater.In town and country, indoors and out, sunlight, moonlight, and rain--always it goes on.
And the temptations and the struggles are no more and no less on the stage than off.No, there is too much talk about `morals.' The reason the great one says `don't' is the work.'' He shook his head sadly.
``They do not realize, those eager young beginners.
They read the story-books and the lives of the great successes and they hear the foolish chatter of common-place people--those imbecile `cultured' people who know nothing! And they think a career is a triumphal march.What think you, Miss Gower--eh?''
``If I had known I'd not have had the courage, or the vanity, to begin,'' said she.``And if I could realize what's before me, I probably shouldn't have the courage to go on.''
``But why not? Haven't you also learned that it's just the day's work, doing every day the best you can?''
``Oh, I shall go on,'' rejoined she.
``Yes,'' said he, looking at her with awed admiration.
``It is in your face.I saw it there, the day you came--after you sang the `Batti Batti' the first time and failed.''
``There was nothing to me then.''
``The seed,'' replied he.``And I saw it was an acorn, not the seed of one of those weak plants that spring up overnight and wither at noon.Yes, you will win.''
He laughed gayly, rolled his eyes and kissed his fingers.
