(Hermione's reporter, and not Hermione
herself, is speaking now.) -- --
For my acquaintance with Voke Easeley and his
new art, I am indebted to Fothergil Finch.
Fothergil is a kind of genius hound. He scurries
sleuthing around the town ever on the scent of
something queer and caviar. He is well trained and
never kills what he catches himself; he takes it to
Hermione; and after Hermione has tired of it I
am at liberty to do what I please with it.
The most remarkable thing about Voke Easeley
at a casual glance is his Adam's apple. It is not
only the largest Adam's apple I have ever seen, and
the hardest looking one, and the most active one,
but it is also the most intelligent looking one. Voke
Easeley's face expresses very little. His eyes are
small and full and green. His mouth, while large,
misses significance. His nose, indeed, is big; but
it is mild; it is a tame nose; one feels no more
character in it than in a false nose. His chin
and forehead retreat ingloriously from the battle
of life.
But all the personality which his eyes should
show, all the force which should dwell in his
nose, all the temperamental qualities that should
reveal themselves in his mouth and chin, all the
genius which should illumine his brow -- these dwell
within his Adam's apple. The man has run entirely
to that feature; his moods, his emotions, his
thoughts, his passions, his appetites, his beliefs, his
doubts, his hopes, his fears, his resolves, his
despairs, his defeats, his exaltations -- all, all make
themselves known subtly in the eccentric motions
of that unusual Adam's apple.
When I saw him first in action I did not at once
get it. He stood stiffly erect in the center of
Hermione's drawing-room, surrounded by the serious
thinkers, with his head thrown back and his Adam's
apple thrust forward, and gave vent to a series of
strange noises. Beside him stood a very slender
lady, all dressed in apple green, with a long green
wand in her hand, and on the end of the wand
was an artificial apple blossom. This she waved
jerkily in front of Voke Easeley's eyes, and his
Adam's apple moved as the wand moved, and from
his mouth came the wild sounds in response to it.
Soon I realized that she was conducting him as
if he were an orchestra.
But still I did not get it. For it was not words,
it was nothing so articulate as speech, that Voke
Easeley uttered. Nor was it, to my ear, song. And
yet, as I listened, I began to see that a wild rhythm
pervaded the utterance; the Adam;'s apple leapt,
danced, swung round, twinkled, bounded, slid and
leapt again in time with a certain rough barbaric
measure; the sounds themselves were all discords,
but discords with a purpose; discords that took each
other by the hand and kicked and stamped their
brutal way together toward some objective point.