The Business of Life

For such a small party it was certainly a gay one – at least people were beginning to think so half way through dinner – which merely meant that everybody was being properly appreciated by everybody's neighbours, and that made everybody feel unusually witty, and irrepressible, and a little inclined to be silly toward the end.

But then the after-dinner guests began to arrive – calm, perfectly poised and substantial Westchester propositions who had been bidden to assist at an unusual programme, and to dance afterward.

The stodgy old house rang with chatter and laughter; hall, stairs, library, and billiard-room resounded delightfully; you could scare up a pretty girl from almost any cover – if you were gunning for that variety of girl.

Reggie Ledyard had managed to corner Jacqueline on the stairs, but couldn't monopolise her nor protect himself against the shameless intrusion of Cairns, who spoiled the game until Herrendene raided the trio and carried her off to the billiard-room on a most flimsy pretext.

Here, very properly, a Westchester youth of sterling worth got her away and was making toward the library with her when Desboro unhooked a hunting horn from the wall and filled the house with deafening blasts as signal that the show was about to begin in the armoury.

The armoury had been strung with incandescent lights, which played over the huge mounted figures in mail, and glanced in a million reflections from the weapons on the wall. A curtained and raised stage faced seats for a hundred people, which filled the long, wide aisle between the equestrian shapes; and into these the audience was pouring, excited and mystified by the odd-looking and elaborate electrical attachments flanking the stage in front of the curtained dressing-rooms.

Jacqueline, passing Desboro, whispered:

"I'm so thrilled and excited. I know people will find Mr. Sissly's lecture interesting, but do you think they'll like mine?"

"How do I know, you little villain? You've told Herrendene what you are going to do, but you haven't given me even a hint!"

"I know it; I wanted to – to please you – " Her light hand fell for a moment on his sleeve, and he saw the blue eyes a little wistful.

"You darling," he whispered.

"Thank you. It isn't the proper thing to say to me – but I've quite recovered my courage."

"Have you quite recovered all the scattered fragments of your heart? I am afraid some of these men may carry portions of it away with them."

"I don't think so, monsieur. Really, I must hurry and dress – "

"Dress?"

"Certainly; also make up!"

"But I thought you were to give us a little talk on Chinese jades."

"But I must do it in my own way, Mr. Des – "

"Wait!" They were in the rear of the dressing-room and he took her hand.

"I call you Jacqueline, unreproved. Is my name more difficult for you?"

"Do you wish me to? In cold blood?"

"Not in cold blood."

He took her into his arms; she bent her head gravely, but he felt her restless fingers worrying his sleeve.

"Jacqueline?"

"Yes – Jim."

The swift fire in his face answered the flush in hers; he drew her nearer, but she averted her dainty head in silence and stood so, her hand always restless on his arm.

"You haven't changed toward me in these few weeks, have you, Jacqueline?"

"Do you think I have?"

He was silent. After a moment she glanced up at him with adorable shyness. He kissed her, but her lips were cold and unresponsive, and she bent her head, still picking nervously at the cloth of his sleeve.

"I must go," she said.

"I know it." He released her waist.

She drew a quick, short breath and looked up smiling; then sighed again, and once more her blue eyes became aloof and thoughtful.

He stood leaning against the side of the dressing-room, watching her.

Finally she said with composure: "I must go. Please like what I shall do. It will be done to please you – Jim."

He opened the dressing-room door for her; she entered, turned to look back at him for an instant, then closed the door.

He went back to his place among the audience.

A moment later a temple gong struck three times; the green curtains parted, revealing a white screen, and Mr. Lionel Sissly advancing with a skip to the footlights. The audience looked again at its programme cards and again read:

"No. 1: A Soundless Symphony … Lionel Sissly."

"Colour," lisped Mr. Sissly, "is not only precious for its own sake, but also because it is the blessed transmogrification of sound. And sound is sacred because all vibrations, audible or inaudible, are in miraculous harmony with that holiest of all phenomena, silence!"

"Help!" whispered Ledyard to Cairns, with resignation.

"Any audible rate of regular air vibrations is a musical note," continued Mr. Sissly. "If you double that vibratory speed, you have the first note of the octave above it. Now, the spectrum band is the colour counterpart of the musical octave; the ether vibrates with double the speed at the violet end of the spectrum band that it does at the opposite extremity, or red end. Let me show you the chromatic scales in colour and music – the latter the equivalent of the former, revealing how the intervals correspond when C represents red." And he flashed upon the screen a series of brilliant colours.

"Remember," he said, "that it is with colour as it is with sound – there is a long range of vibrations below and above the first and last visible colour and the first and last audible note – a long, long range beyond compass of the human eye and ear. Probably the music of the spheres is composed of such harmonies," he simpered.

"Modern occidental music is evolved in conformity with an arbitrary scale," he resumed earnestly. "An octave consists of seven whole tones and five half-tones. Combinations and sequences of notes or tints affect us emotionally – pleasurably when harmonious, painfully when discordant. But," and his voice shook with soulful emotion, "the holiest and the most precious alliance ever dreamed of beyond the Gates of Heaven lies in the sacred intermingling of harmonious colour and harmonious silence. Let me play for you, upon my colour organ, my soundless symphony which I call 'Weather.' Always in the world there will be weather. We have it constantly; there is so much of it that nobody knows how much there is; and I do not see very clearly how there ever could be any less than there is. Weather, then, being the only earthly condition which is eternal, becomes precious beyond human comprehension; and I have tried to interpret it as a symphony of silence and of colour divinely intermingled."

Ledyard whispered to Betty Barkley: "I'll go mad and bite if he says another word!"

She cautioned him with a light touch of her gloved hand, and strove very hard to remain serious as Mr. Sissly minced over to his "organ," seated himself, and gazed upward.

All at once every light in the house went out.

For a while the great screen remained invisible, then a faint sheen possessed its surface, blotted out at eccentric intervals by a deep and thunderous tint which finally absorbed it and slowly became a coldly profound and depthless blue.

The blue was not permanent; almost imperceptible pulsations were stirring and modifying it toward a warmer and less decisive hue, and through it throbbed and ebbed elusive sensations of palest turquoise, primrose and shell-pink. This waned and deepened into a yellow which threatened to become orange.

Suddenly all was washed out in unaccented grey; the grey gradually became instinct with rose and gold; the gold was split by a violet streak; then virile scarlet tumbled through crashing scales of green, amethyst, crimson, into a chaos of chromatic dissonance, and vanished engulfed in shimmering darkness.

The lights flashed up, disclosing Mr. Sissly, very pale and damp of features, facing the footlights again.