第73章
A career as a singer means not only the routine, the patient tedious work, the cutting out of time-wasting people and time-wasting pleasures that are necessary to any and all careers.It means in addition--for such a person--sacrifices far beyond a character so undisciplined and so corrupted by conventional life as is yours.The basis of a singing career is health and strength.You must have great physical strength to be able to sing operas.You must have perfect health.
Diet and exercise.A routine life, its routine rigidly adhered to, day in and day out, month after month, year after year.Small and uninteresting and monotonous food, nothing to drink, and, of course, no cigarettes.Such is the secret of a reliable voice for you who have a ``delicate throat''--which is the silly, shallow, and misleading way of saying a delicate digestion, for sore throat always means indigestion, never means anything else.To sing, the instrument, the absolutely material machine, must be in perfect order.The rest is easy.
Some singers can commit indiscretions of diet and of lack of exercise.But not you, because you lack this natural strength.Do not be deceived and misled by their example.
Exercise.You must make your body strong, powerful.
You have not the muscles by nature.You must acquire them.
The following routine of diet and exercise made one of the great singers, and kept her great for a quarter of a century.
If you adopt it, without variation, you can make a career.
If you do not, you need not hope for anything but failure and humiliation.Within my knowledge sixty-eight young men and young women have started in on this system.Not one had the character to persist to success.This may suggest why, except two who are at the very top, all of the great singers are men and women whom nature has made powerful of body and of digestion--so powerful that their indiscretions only occasionally make them unreliable.
There Mildred stopped and flung the paper aside.
She did not care even to glance at the exercises pre-scribed or at the diet and the routine of daily work.
How dull and uninspired! How grossly material!
Stomach! Chewing! Exercising machines! Plodding dreary miles daily, rain or shine! What could such things have to do with the free and glorious career of an inspired singer? Keith was laughing at her as he hastened away, abandoning her to her fate.
She examined herself in the glass to make sure that the ravages of her attack of rage and grief and despair could be effaced within a few hours, then she wrote a note--formal yet friendly--to Stanley Baird, informing him that she would receive him that evening.He came while Cyrilla and Mildred were having their after, dinner coffee and cigarettes.He was a man who took great pains with his clothes, and got them where pains was not in vain.That evening he had arrayed himself with unusual care, and the result was a fine, manly figure of the well-bred New-Yorker type.Certainly Stanley had ground for his feeling that he deserved and got liking for himself.The three sat in the library for perhaps half an hour, then Mrs.Brindley rose to leave the other two alone.Mildred urged her to stay--Mildred who had been impatient of her presence when Stanley was announced.Urged her to stay in such a tone that Cyrilla could not persist, but had to sit down again.
As the three talked on and on, Mildred continued to picture life with Stanley--continued the vivid picturing she had begun within ten minutes of Stanley's entering, the picturing that had caused her to insist on Cyrilla's remaining as chaperon.A young girl can do no such picturing as Mildred could not avoid doing.To the young girl married life, its tete-a-tetes, its intimacies, its routine, are all a blank.Any attempt she makes to fill in details goes far astray.But Mildred, with Stanley there before her, could see her life as it would be.
Toward half-past ten, Stanley said, shame-faced and pleading, ``Mildred, I should like to see you alone for just a minute before I go.''
Mildred said to Cyrilla: ``No, don't move.We'll go into the drawing-room.''
He followed her there, and when the sound of Mrs.
Brindley's step in the hall had died away, he began:
``I think I understand you a little now.I shan't insult you by returning or destroying that note or the check.I accept your decision--unless you wish to change it.'' He looked at her with eager appeal.His heart was trembling, was sick with apprehension, with the sense of weakness, of danger and gloom ahead.
``Why shouldn't I help you, at least, Mildred?'' he urged.
Whence the courage came she knew not, but through her choking throat she forced a positive, ``No.''
``And,'' he went on, ``I meant what I said.I love you.I'm wretched without you.I want you to marry me, career or no career.''
Her fears were clamorous, but she forced herself to say, ``I can't change.''
``I hoped--a little--that you sent me the note to-day because you-- You didn't?''
``No,'' said Mildred.``I want us to be friends.
But you must keep away.''
He bent his head.``Then I'll go 'way off somewhere.
I can't bear being here in New York and not seeing you.And when I've been away a year or so, perhaps I'll get control of myself again.''
Going away!--to try to forget!--no doubt, to succeed in forgetting! Then this was her last chance.
``Must I go, Mildred? Won't you relent?''
``I don't love you--and I never can.'' She was deathly white and trembling.She lifted her eyes to begin a retreat, for her courage had quite oozed away.
He was looking at her, his face distorted with a mingling of the passion of desire and the passion of jealousy.