The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863

"'You will be turned out of church for this,' I said.

"She stood by the window, her finger tracing the rain-drops on the pane, for it was a rainy night. She said,—

"'They won't understand. God knows.'

"So I wrote on a bit, and then I said,—for I felt sorry for the girl, though she was doing it for Grey,—I said,—

'"Lizzy, I'll be plain with you. There never was but one human being loved you, perhaps. When he was dying, he said, "Tell my wife to be true and pure." There is a bare possibility that you can be both as an opera-singer, but he never would believe it. If you met him in heaven, he would turn his back on you, if you should do this thing.'

"I could not see her face,—her back was towards me,—but the hand on the window-pane lay there for a long while motionless, the blood settling blue about the nails. I did not speak to her. There are some women with whom a physician, if he knows his business, will never meddle when they grow nervous; they come terribly close to God and the Devil then, I think. I tell you, Mrs. Sheppard, now and then one of your sex has the vitality and pain and affection of a thousand souls in one. I hate such women," vehemently.

"Men like you always do," quietly. "But I am not one of them."

"No, nor Grey, thank God! Whoever contrived that allegory of Eve and the apple, though, did it well. If the Devil came to Lizzy Gurney, he would offer no meaner temptation than 'Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.'"

"'Allegory'—eh? You forget your story, I think, Doctor Blecker,"—with a frown.

The Doctor stopped to help her to jelly, with a serious face, and then went on. "She turned round at last. I did not look up at her, only said,—

"'I will not write the letter.'

"'Go on,' she said.

"I wrote it, then; but when I went to give it to her, my heart failed me.

"'Lizzy,' I said, 'you shall not do this thing.'

"She looked so childish and pitiful, standing there!

"'You think you are cutting yourself off from your chance of love through all time by it,—just for Grey and the others.'

"Her eyes filled at that; she could not bear the kind word, you see.

"'Yes, I do, Doctor Blecker,' she said. 'Nobody ever loved me but Uncle Dan. Since he went away, I have gone every day to his house, coming nearer to him that way, growing purer, more like other women. There's a picture of his mother there, and his sister. They are dead now, but I think their souls looked at me out of those pictures and loved me.'

"She came up, her head hardly reaching to the top of the chair I sat on, half smiling, those strange gray eyes of hers.

"'I thought they said,—"This is Lizzy: this is the little girl Daniel loves." Every day I'd kneel down by that dead lady's chair, and pray to God to make me fit to be her son's wife. But he's dead now,' drawing suddenly back, 'and I am going to be—an opera-singer.'

"'Not unless by your own free will,' I said.

"She did not hear me, I think, pulling at the fastening about her throat.

"'Daniel would say it was the Devil's calling. Daniel was all I had. But he don't know. I know. God means it. I might have lived on here, keeping myself true to his notions of right: then, when I went yonder, he would have been kind to me, he would have loved me,'—looking out through the rain, in a dazed way.

"'The truth is, Lizzy,' I said, 'you have a power within you, and you want to give it vent; it's like a hungry devil tearing you. So you give up your love-dream, and are going to be an opera-singer. That's the common-sense of the matter.'

"I sealed the letter, and gave it to her.

"'You think that?'

"That was all she answered. But I'm sorry I said it; I don't know whether it was true or not. There,—that is the whole story. I never told it to Grey before. You can judge for yourselves."

"My dear," said Mrs. Sheppard, "let me go with you to see your sister in New York. Some more coffee, please. My cup is cold."

A clear, healthy April night: one of those bright, mountain-winded nights of early spring, when the air is full of electric vigor,—starlight, when the whole earth seems wakening slowly and grandly into a new life.

Grey, going with her husband and Mrs. Sheppard down Broadway, from their hotel, had a fancy that the world was so cheerfully, heartily at work, that the night was no longer needed. Overhead, the wind from the yet frozen hills swept in such strong currents, the great city throbbed with such infinite kinds of motion, and down in the harbor yonder the rush of couriers came and went incessantly from the busy world without. Grey was a country-girl: in this throbbing centre of human life she felt suddenly lost, atom-like,—drew her breath quickly, as she clung to Paul's arm. The world was so vast, was hurrying on so fast. She must get to work in earnest: why, one must justify her right to live, here.

Mrs. Sheppard, as she plodded solidly along, took in the whole blue air and outgoing ocean, and the city, with its white palaces and gleaming lights.

"People look happy here," she said. "Even Grey laughs more, going down the streets. Nothing talks of the war here."

Paul looked down into the brown depths of the eyes that were turned towards him.

"It is a good, cheery world, ours, after all. More laughing than crying in it,—when people find out their right place, and get into it."

Mrs. Sheppard said, "Umph?" Kentuckians don't like abstract propositions.

They stopped before a wide-open door, in a by-street. Not an opera-house; one of the haunts of the "legitimate drama," Yet the posters assured the public in every color, that La petite Élise, the beautiful débutante, etc., etc., would sing, etc., etc. Grey's hand tightened on her husband's arm.

"This is the place,"—her face burning scarlet.

A pretty little theatre: softly lighted, well and quietly filled. Quietly toned, too, the dresses of the women in the boxes,—of that neutral, subdued caste that showed they belonged to the grade above fashion. People of rank tastes did not often go there. The little Kentuckian, with her emphatic, sham-hating face, and Grey, whose simple, calm outlook on the world made her last year's bonnet and cloak dwindle into such irrelevant trifles, did not misbecome the place. Others might go there to fever out ennui, or with fouler fancies. Grey did not know. The play was a simple little thing; its meaning was pure as a child's song; there was a good deal of fun in it. Grey laughed with everybody else; she would ask God to bless her to-night none the worse for that. It had some touches of pathos in it, and she cried, and saw some men about her with the smug New-York-city face doing the very same,—not just as she did, but glowering at the footlights, and softly blowing their noses. Then the music came, and La petite Élise. Grey drew back where she could not see her. Blecker peered through his glass at every line and motion, as she came out from the eternal castle in the back scene. Any gnawing power or gift she had had found vent, certainly, now. Every poise and inflection said, "Here I am what I am,—fully what God made me, at last: no more, no less." God had made her an actress. Why, He knows. The Great Spirit of Love says to the toad in your gutter,—"Thou, too, art my servant, in whom, fulfilling the work I give, I am well pleased."

La petite Élise had only a narrow and peculiar scope of power, suited to vaudevilles: she could not represent her own character,—an actress's talent and heart being as widely separated, in general, as yours are. She could bring upon the stage in her body the presentment of a naïve, innocent, pathetic nature, and use the influence such nature might have on the people outside the orchestra-chairs there. It was not her own nature, we know. She dressed and looked it. A timid little thing, in her fluttering white slip, her light hair cut close to her head, in short curls. So much for the actress and her power.

She sang at last. She sang ballads generally, (her voice wanting cultivation,) such as agreed with her rôle. But it was Lizzy Gurney who sang, not la petite Élise.

"Of course," a society-mother said to me, one day, "I do not wish my Rosa should have a great sorrow, but—how it would develop her voice!" The bonnet-worshipper stumbled on a great truth.

So with Lizzy: life had taught her; and the one bitter truth of self-renunciation she had wrung out of it must tell itself somehow. No man's history is dumb. It came out vaguely, an inarticulate cry to God and man, in the songs she sang, I think. That very night, as she stood there with her gray eyes very sparkling and happy, (they were dramatic eyes, and belonged to her brain,) and her baby-hands crossed archly before her, her voice made those who listened quite forget her: la petite Élise took them up to the places where men's souls struggle with the Evil One and conquer. A few, perhaps, understood that full meaning of her song: if there was one, it was well she was an actress and sang it.

"I'm damned," growled a fellow in the pit, "if she a'n't a good little thing!" when the song was ended. There was not a soul in the house that did not think the same. Yet the girl turned fiercely towards the side-scenes, hearing it, and pitied herself at that,—that she, a woman, should stand before the public for them to examine and chatter over her soul and her history, and her very dress and shoes. But that was gone in a moment, and Lizzy laughed,—naturally now. Why, they were real friends, heart-warm to her there: when they laughed and cried with her, she knew it. Many of their faces she knew well: that pale lady's in the third box, who brought her boys so often, and gave them a bouquet to throw to Lizzy,—always white flowers; and the old grandfather yonder, with the pretty, chubby-faced girls. The girl's thought now was earnest and healthful, as everybody's grows, who succeeds in discovering his real work. They encored her song: when she began, she looked up and balked suddenly, her very neck turning crimson. She had seen Doctor Blecker. "A tawdry actress!" She could have torn her stage-dress in rags from her. Then her tone grew low and clear.

There was a young couple just facing her with a little child, a dainty baby-thing in cap and plume. Neither of them listened to Lizzy: the mother was tying the little fellow's shoe as he hoisted it on the seat, and the father was looking at her. "I missed my chance," said Lizzy Gurney, in her heart. "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight!" A tawdry actress. She might have stayed at home yonder, quiet and useless: that might have been. Then she thought of Grey, well beloved,—of the other house, full of hungry mouths she was feeding. Looking more sharply at Doctor Blecker while she sang, she saw Grey beside him, drawn back behind a pillar. Presently she saw her take the glass from her husband and lean forward. There was a red heat under her eyes: she had been crying. They applauded Lizzy just then, and Grey looked around frightened, and then laughed nervously.

"How beautiful she is! Do you see? Oh, Paul! Mrs. Sheppard, do you see?"—tearing her fan, and drawing heavy breaths, moving on her seat constantly.

"She never loved me heartily before," thought Lizzy, as she sang. "I never deserved it. I was a heartless dog. I"—

People applauded again, the old grandfather this time nodding to the girls. There was something so cheery and healthy and triumphant in the low tones. Even the young mother looked up suddenly from her boy, listening, and glanced at her husband. It was like a Christmas-song.

"She never loved me before. I deserve it."

That was what she said in it. But they did not know.

Doctor Blecker looked at her, unsmiling, critical. She could see, too, a strange face beside him,—a motherly, but a keen, harsh-judging face.