She answered him with sarcastic emphasis: "You fat fool, you and your clerical friend there, what do you both want spying upon Illowski like police?" Her voice became shrill as she rapidly uttered these questions, her green eyes seemed shot with blood. "If you think I'll tell either of you anything concerning the new music—"
"That's all we are here to learn."
"All? Imbeciles! As if you or your American could understand Illowski and his message!"
"What message?" Lenyard's grave face was not in the least discomposed by the Cossack passion of the woman. "What message has Illowski? I've heard queer stories, and cannot credit them. You are in his confidence. Tell us, we ask in humility, what message can any man's music have but the revelation of beauty?"
Lenyard's diplomatic question did not fail of its mark. Neshevna pushed back her flamboyant gray hair and walked about the room.
"Mummies!" she suddenly cried. "As if beauty will content a new generation fed on something besides the sweetmeats and pap of your pretty, meaningless music! Why, man, can't you see that all the arts are dead—save music? Don't you know that painting, literature, creeds—aye, and the kingdoms are dying for want of new blood, new ideas? Music alone is a vital force, an instrument for rescuing the world from its moral and spiritual decay. Nietzsche was a potent force in the nineteenth century, but not understood. They condemned him to a living death. Lingwood Evans, poet, prophet, is now too old to enforce his message—it is Illowski, Illowski alone who shall be the destructive Messiah of the new millennial. 'He cometh not to save; not peace, but blood!'"
The fire of fanaticism was in her eyes, in her speech. She grasped Lenyard by the elbow: "You, you should serve the master. Scheff is too fond of pleasure to do anything great. He is to give the signal—that's glory enough for him. But you, discontented American, have the stuff in you to make a martyr. We need martyrs. You hate me? Good! But you must worship Illowski. Art gives place to life, and in Illowski's music is the new life. He will sweep the globe from pole to pole, for all men understand his tones. Other gods have but prepared the way for him. No more misery, no more promises unfulfilled by the rulers of body and soul—only music, music like the air, the tides, the mountains, the moon, sun, and stars! Your old-fashioned melody and learning, your school-boy rules of counterpoint—all these Illowski ignores."
Lenyard eagerly interrupted her: "You say that he does away with melody, themes, harmony—how does he replace them, and how does he treat the human voice?" Neshevna let his arm fall and went slowly to the tall desk. She leaned against it, her hand upon her square chin. Scheff still gazed out upon the lawn where splashed a small, movable fountain. To Lenyard the air seemed as if charged with electric questionings. His head throbbed.
"You ask me something I dare not tell. Even Scheff, who knows some things, dares not tell. If Illowski's discovery—which is based on the great natural laws of heat, light, gravitation, electricity—if this discovery were placed in the hands of fools, the world would perish. Music has been so long the plaything of sensuality, the theatre for idle men and women, that its real greatness is forgotten. In Illowski's hands it is a moral force. He comes to destroy that he may rebuild. He accomplishes it with the raw elements themselves. Remember—'I hear the grinding of the swords, and He shall come—!'" Neshevna made a nervous gesture and disappeared through a door near the tall desk covered with music-paper—the desk whereon Illowski plotted the ruin of civilization.
"Now since you have seen the dread laboratory, don't hang around that desk; there's nothing there you can understand. The music-paper is covered with electrical and chemical formulæ, not notes. I've seen them. Lenyard, let's go back to Paris and dine, like sensible men,—which we are not." Scheff dragged his friend out of the house, for the other was in a stupor. Neshevna's words cleaved his very soul. The American, the puritan in him, swiftly rose to her eloquent exhortation. All life was corrupt, he had been taught; art was corrupt, a snare, a delusion. Yet—was all its appalling power, its sensuous grandeur to be wasted in the service of the world, the flesh, the devil? Lenyard paused. "Oh, come on, Len. Why do you bother your excitable, sick heart with that lunatic's prophecies? Illowski is a big man, a very big man; but he is mad, mad! His theories of the decomposition of tone—he only imitates the old painter-impressionist of long ago—and his affected simplicity—why, he is after the big public, that's all. As to your question about what part the human voice plays in his scheme, I may tell you now that he doesn't care a farthing for it except as color. He uses the voice as he would use any instrumental combination, and he mixes his colors so wonderfully that he sometimes polarizes them—they no longer have any hue or scent. He should have been a painter not a composer. He makes panoramas, psychological panoramas, not music."