TO-DAY my friend Annabel Lee and I went to the theater and we saw a wonderful and fascinating woman with long dark-red hair upon the stage.
She is attractive, that red-haired woman—adorably attractive. And she reminds one of many things.
Annabel Lee was greatly interested in her acting, and was charmed with herself—and so was I.
"Do you suppose she finds life very delightful?" I said to my friend.
"I don't suppose," my friend replied, "she is of the sort that considers whether or not life is delightful. Probably her work is hard enough to keep her out of mischief of any kind."
Whereupon we both fell to thinking how fortunate are they whose work is hard enough to keep them out of mischief of any kind.
"But there must be," I said, "some months, perhaps in the summer, when she doesn't work. I have heard that some actors take houses among the mountains and do their own housework for recreation."
"I," said Annabel Lee, "can not quite imagine this woman with the red hair making bread and scouring pans and kettles for pleasure. But very likely she sometimes goes into the country for vacations, and I can fancy her doing the various small enjoyable things that celebrities can afford to do—like wading barefooted in a narrow brooklet, or swinging high and recklessly in a barrel-stave hammock."
"And since she is so adorable on the stage," I exclaimed, "how altogether enchanting she would be wading in the brooklet or swinging in the barrel-stave hammock—she with the long, red hair! Perhaps it would even be braided down her back in two long tails."
It is a picture that haunts me—Mrs. Fiske in the midst of her vacation doing the small enjoyable things.
"Of course," said my friend Annabel Lee, "we don't know that she doesn't spend her vacations in a fine, conventional, stupid yacht, or at some magnificent, insipid American or English country house. We can only give her the benefit of the doubt."
"Yes, the benefit of the doubt," I replied.
How fascinating she was, to be sure, with her personality merged in that of Mary Magdalene!
The Magdalene is no longer a shadowy ideal with a somewhat buxom body, scantily draped, with indefinite hair and with the lifeless beauty that the old masters paint. Nor is she quite the woman of the scriptures who is presented to one's mind without that quality which is called local coloring, and with too much of the quality that is ever present with the women in the scriptures—a something between uncleanness and final complete redemption.
No, Mary Magdalene is Mrs. Fiske, a slight woman still in the last throes of youth, with two shoulders which move impatiently, expressing indescribable emotions of aliveness and two lips which perform their office—that of coloring, bewitching, torturing, perfuming, anointing the words that come out of them. Apart from these lips, Mary Magdalene's face has a wonderfully round and childish look, and her two round eyes at first sight give one an idea of positive innocence. In the Magdalene's face—and in that of an actor of Mrs. Fiske's range—these are a beautifully delicate incongruity.
And my friend Annabel Lee has told me that the strongest things are the delicate incongruities—the strongest in all this wide world. Because they make you consider—and considering, you wait.
With such a pair of round, innocent eyes of some grayish color—who can blame Mary Magdalene?
In the latter acts of the play these eyes go one step farther than innocence: they do hunger and thirst after righteousness. And, ah, dear heaven (you thought to yourself), how well they did it! To hunger and thirst after righteousness—not herself, but her eyes. That was this Mary Magdalene's art.
This Mary Magdalene, though she is indeed in the last throes of youth—without reference to the years she may know—has yet beneath her chin a very charming roundness of flesh which one day obviously will become a double chin. Just now it is enchanting. There are feminine children of seven and eight with round faces, who have just that fullness beneath the chin, and beneath the chin of Mary Magdalene—and added to her eyes—it carries on the idea of innocence and inexperience to a rare good degree. Any other woman actor would have long since massaged this fullness away. Forsooth, perhaps this is the one woman actor who could wear such a thing with beauty.
Mary Magdalene's hair in its deep redness is scornful and aggressive in the first acts of the play. In the latter acts it assumes a marvelous patheticness. And, if you like, there is a world of patheticness in red hair.
If Mary Magdalene's hair were of a different color—if the bronze shadows were yellow, or gray, or black, or brown shadows—her lips and her shoulders were in vain.
On the stage Mary Magdalene stands with her back to her audience—she stands, calm and placid, for three or four minutes before the rising and falling curtain, graciously permitting all to admire and feast their eyes upon the red of her hair.
"She knows," said my friend Annabel Lee, "that she can make her face bewitching—and she knows also that her hair is bewitching without being so made. And she chooses that the world at large shall know it, too."
She has will-power, has Mary Magdalene. It is her will, her strength, her concentration of all her power to herself that makes her thus bewitching—and that seduces the brains of those who sit watching her as she moves upon the stage.
She controls all her mental and physical features with metallic precision—except her hair, and that she leaves uncontrolled to do its own work. It does its work well.
She has cultivated that mobileness of her lips, probably with hard work and infinite patience—and she makes them damp and brilliant with rouge. She rubs the soft, thick skin of her face with layers of grease. She loads her two white arms with limitless powder. And the two childish eyes are exceeding heavy-laden as to lid and lash with black crayon. One experiences a revulsion as one contemplates them through a glass. Her voice in the days of her youth had drilled into it the power to thrill and vibrate, and to become exquisitely tender upon occasion, and now it does the bidding of its owner with docility and skill. Since its owner has forcefulness and a power of selfish concentration, the voice is mostly magnetic and cold and strong. It is magnetic and cold and strong and contemptuous when its owner says, "My curse upon you!" When its owner's eyes do hunger and thirst after righteousness the voice brings a miserable, anguished feeling to the throats of those who sit listening. Every emotion that the voice betrays is transmitted to the seduced brains of those who sit listening. The red-haired woman works her audience up to some torturing pitches—the while herself blandly and cold-bloodedly earning an honest livelihood by the sweat of her brow.
Forsooth, it's always so.
If all the red-haired woman's scorn and anguish were real, the audience would sit unmoved. If the red-haired woman's scorn and anguish were real it would strike inward—instead of outward toward the audience—and the audience would not know. If the red-haired woman's scorn and anguish were real, it would not seem real and would be very uninteresting. And that very likely is the reason why the scorn and anguish of other red-haired women—and of black-haired, and brown-haired, and yellow-haired, and gray-haired, and pale-haired women, who are not working on the stage—is so uninteresting and ineffectual. It is real, and they can not act it out, and so it doesn't seem real—and you don't have to pay money to see it done.
To make it seem real they must need go at it cold-bloodedly, and work it up, and charge you a round price for it.
Mary Magdalene isn't here to do this, but Mrs. Fiske takes her place and does it for her.
She does it exquisitely well.
Could Mary Magdalene herself—she of the Bible—be among those who sit watching, she would surely marvel and admire.
Meanwhile, for myself, I have two visions of this Mary Magdalene.
One—in one of the acts wherein her eyes do hunger and thirst after righteousness—when she sits before a small table and lifts her pathetic, sweet voice with the words, "When the dawn breaks, and the darkness shall flee away"; and then she stands and the red hair is equally pathetic and twofold bewitching, and she says again, "When the dawn breaks, and the darkness shall flee away." And the other vision is of her in the country in the midst of a summer day, under a summer sky, swinging high and recklessly in a barrel-stave hammock.