Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/156

 minded of an opera night at Covent Garden, and this, she recalled, had been the Duke's idea, to give New York an unseasonable opera. Ronald had a faculty for arranging things, and Campaspe loved efficiency. Whatever he put his mind to, she began to believe, happened. It was seldom enough, however, that one could be altogether certain what he was putting his mind to. Even now. ..

In the little balcony reserved for it, the orchestra was tuning up, discordantly. Presently, the leader lifted his bâton, and the men began to perform Bunny's overture. It was a new kind of music, she told herself at once, contrapuntal jazz, in which saxophones whistled and shrieked and groaned like hysterical school-girls telling lewd experiences, while the violins and double-basses vamped rhythm, ically. Flutes cried out in the tones of insane criminals. There was an indescribable clatter of tambourines, bones, triangles, castanets, gongs, drums, tomtoms, cow-bells, cymbals, wood-blocks, and rooster-crows. Listening behind the folds of the silver curtain, Campaspe realized that at last she was hearing the music of the future. Ornstein, Prokofieff, Schönberg would sound, in comparison, like a minuet by Luigi Boccherini. There was a rush, a push, an extravagant primitive quality in this music. If I listen to this music, I shall forget my rôle, she confessed to herself, and it occurred to her to wonder if Bunny was, after all, a genius. Anybody must be a genius who could stir her as