"What is it?" I whispered. It is always well, at
one of Hermione's soul fights, to get your cue
before the conversation officially starts. If you don't
know what is going to be talked about before the
talk starts the chances are that you never will know
from the talk itself.
"A New Art!" said Fothergil. And then he led
me into the hall and explained.
What Gertrude Stein has done for prose, what
the wilder vers libre bards are doing for poetry,
what cubists and futurists are doing for painting
and sculpture, that Voke Easeley is doing for
vocal music.
"He is painting sound portraits with his larynx
now," said Fothergil. "And the beautiful part of
it is that he is absolutely tone deaf! He doesn't
know a thing about music. He tried for years to
learn and couldn't. The only way he knows when
you strike a chord on the piano is because he doesn't
like chords near as well as he does discords. He
has gone right back to the dog, the wolf, the cave
man, the tiger, the bear, the wind, the rock slide,
the thunder and the earthquake for his language.
He interprets life in the terms of natural sounds,
which are discords nearly always; but he has added
brains to them and made them all the moods of
the human soul!"
"And the lady in green?"
"That is his wife -- he can do nothing without
her. There is the most complete psychic accord
between them. It is beautiful! Beautiful!"
When we returned the lady in green was
announcing:
"The next selection is a Voke Easeley impression
of the Soul of Wagner gazing at the sunrise from
the peak of the Jungfrau."
The wand waved; the Adam's Apple leapt, and
they were off. What followed cannot be indicated
typographically. But if a cat were a sawmill, and
a dog were a gigantic cart full of tin cans bouncing
through a stone-paved street, and that dog and
that cat hated each other and were telling each
other so, it would sound much like it.
It was well received. Except by Ravenswood Wimble.
He always has to have his little critical fling.
"The peak of the Jungfrau!" he grumbled.
"Jungfrau indeed! It was Mont Blanc! It was very
wonderfully and subtly Mont Blanc! But the
Jungfrau -- never!"
"Hermione," I said, "what do you think of the
New Art?"
"It's wonderful!" she breathed, "just simply
wonderful! So esoteric, and yet so simple! But
there is one thing I am going to speak to Mrs. Voke
Easely about -- one improvement I am going to
suggest. His ears, you know -- don't you think they
are too large? Or too red, at least, for their size?
They catch the eye too much -- they take away from
the effect. Before he sings here again I will have
Mrs. Easeley bob them off a little."