There was also the great Prof. Reminitsky, the teacher who had made Lloyd, and had come to New York with him; and there was the Herr Prof, von Arne, of the University of Berlin, a world-renowned psychiatrist, author of "The Neurosis of Inspiration". The Herr Professor had come to America to make some studies for his forthcoming masterpiece on the religious mania; and he was glad to see his old friend Reminitsky, whose seventeen-year-old musical prodigy was most interesting material for study.
Prof. Reminitsky was the world's greatest authority in the art of tearing the human soul to pieces by means of horse-hair rubbed with resin and scraped over the intestines of a pig. There were no tricks of finger-gymnastics and of tone-production that he had not mastered. As for the emotions produced thereby, he felt them, but in a purely professional way; that is, the convictions he had concerning them related to their effects upon audiences, and more especially upon the score or two of critical experts whose psychology had been his life-study. But having studied also the psychology of youth, he knew that his protege must needs have other convictions concerning his performances. This fras his .,upreme greatness—that he understood
the paranoia of enthusiasm, and used this understanding to tempt his pupils to new heights of achievement.
In all of which, of course, his friend von Arne was a great help to him. Von Arne had dug through a score of great libraries, and had travelled all the world over, frequenting cafes and salons, monasteries and prayer-cells, prisons and hospitals and asylums—wherever one might get new glimpses of the extraordinarily intricate phenomena of the aberration called "Genius". He had several thousand cases of it at his finger-tips -he had measured its reaction-times and calculated its cephalic index, and analyzed its secretions and tested it for indecan. He knew trance and clairvoyance, autosuggestion and telepathic hallucination, epilepsy and hysteria and ecstasy; and over the head of any disputatious person he would swing the steam-shovel of his erudition, and bury the unfortunate beneath a wagon-load of Latin and Greek derivatives.
Also, there was Moses Rosen, the business-manager. Moses was short, and wore a large diamond ring, and he also was a specialist in the phenomena of "Genius". He studied them from the point of view of the box-office, and his tests were quite as definite as those of the psychological laboratory. There came to Moses an endless stream of prodigies, all of them having long hair and picturesque aspects, and talking rapidly and rolling their eyes; the problem was to determine which of them had the faculty of true Genius, which not only talked rapidly and rolled its eyes, but also had the power of causing money to flow in through a box-office window.
In this case Moses felt that the prospects were good; the only trouble being that the prodigy intended to render a concerto by a strange composer —a stormy
and unconventional thing which would annoy the critics. Moses suggested something that was "classic"; and agreed with Mrs. Hartman that there ought to be something corresponding to "good form" in music.
§ 3. So all these strange creatures were poking and peering and smelling about the "Genius" ; and meanwhile, there came at intervals faint strains of music from a distant room. At last Lloyd Hartman entered; beautiful, pale and sensitive—a haunted boy, and the most haunting figure that had yet come to Thyrsis' imagination. Also, it was the hardest piece of work he had ever undertaken; for the character had come to him, not as a formula or a collection of phrases, but as an intuition, a part of his own soul; and he would work out a scene a score of times, finding words to phrase it, and then rejecting them. By what speeches could he give his sense of the gulf that lay between Lloyd and the people about him? For this boy could not cope with them in argument, he would have no mastery of the world of facts. He must be without any touch of sophistication, of cynicism; and yet, when he spoke to them, it must be clear that he knew them for different beings from himself. He would go with them meekly; but one would feel that it was because his path lay in their direction. When the point came that their ways parted, he would go his own way; and just there lay the seed of the tragi-comedy.
The family gathers about him, and he answers their questions. He will wear the kind of tie that his sister prefers, and they may set any date they please for the musicales at home. He hears the "copy" which Moses has prepared for his advertisements; and then he sits, absent-minded, while they talk about him. Music is in
his thoughts, and gradually it steals into his aspect and the gestures of his hand. They watch him, and a pall comes over them: until at last the mother exclaims that he makes her nervous, and leads the family off.
Then Miss Arnold is announced—Helena Arnold, who has been recommended as accompanist at the great concert. She is young and beautiful; and the two go into the next room to play, while the professors remain to talk over this new complication.
Prof, von Arne, of course, lays especial emphasis upon the sex-element in psychopathology; he and Remi-nitsky have talked the subject out many years ago, and adopted a definite course of action. The abnormalities incidental to sex-repression were innumerable, and for the most part destructive; but there could be no question that all the more striking phenomena of the neurosis called "Genius" were greatly increased in their intensity by this means. So, in dealing with his pupils, and especially with a prodigy like young Hartman, Prof. Reminitsky would call into service all the paraphernalia of religious mysticism; teaching his pupil to regard woman as the object of exalted adoration, a being too holy to be attained to even in thought. And now, of course, when the proposed accompanist turns out to be a decidedly alluring young female, it is necessary to take careful heed.
Meanwhile from the distance come bursts of wild music; and at last Helena returns—pale, and deeply agitated. "It is that concerto!" she says, and then asks to be excused from talking. Lloyd comes, and stands by the door watching her. When his teacher begins to open business negotiations, he asks him abruptly to leave them alone.
Helena asks, "Who wrote that music?" He tells
her a ghastly story of a titan soul who starved in a garret and shot himself, crushed by the mockery of the world.
"I might have saved him!" the boy exclaims. "I was so busy with the music I forgot the man!"
They talk about this epoch-making concerto, and how Lloyd means to force it upon the public. "And you shall play it with me!" he exclaims. "You are the first that has ever understood it!"
"I cannot play it!" she protests ; to which he answers, "It was like his voice come back from the grave!" And so we see these two souls cast into the crucible together.
§ 4. THE second act showed the aftermath of the great concert, and took place in the drawing-room of the Hartman family's apartment, at four o'clock in the morning. We see Moses and the two professors, who have not been able to tear themselves away; dishevelled, distrait, wild with vexation, they pace about and lament. Failure, utter ruin confronts them—the structure of their hopes lies in the dust! They blame it all on "that woman"—and members of the family concur in this. It was she who kept Lloyd to his resolve to play that mad concerto; and then, to cast aside all the master had taught them, all the results of weeks of drilling—and to play it in that frantic, demonic fashion. Now the men await the morning papers, which will bring them the verdict of "the world"; and they shudder with the foreknowledge of what that verdict will be.
Lloyd and Helena enter. They have been walking for hours, and have not been thinking of "the world". They listen, half-heeding, to the protests and laments;
they could not help it, they explain—the music took hold of them.
The two professors go off to get the papers, and Moses goes into the next room to rest; after which it becomes clear to the audience that Lloyd and Helena are fight; ing the sex-duel.