human
Otto, how does it feel to be a celebrity?
gpt
How should I know?
human
From experience, of course. Your artistic probation appears to be over. Your winning the prize for the suite has settled it for all time, and now I am doing my best to readjust myself to the idea that my boy friend Otto is the new composer Arlt about whom the critics are waging inky war.
gpt
What is the use?
human
Because I really must begin to face the fact that you are destined to be one of the immortals, and treat you with proper respect. Her tone was full of lazy amusement and content.
gpt
Hereafter, I shall never dare tell you when your necktie is askew, and as for training you in the management of your cuffs!
human
It was a blow to me to find that reputation depends upon such things,
gpt
Not reputation; success. The two things don't necessarily touch each other. One is a matter of brains, the other of fashion. Her accent was almost bitter.
human
You have deserved one; you are beginning to have the other thrust upon you. How does it make you feel?
gpt
As if I owed a great deal to you.
human
Thank you, dear boy. But really I have done nothing.
gpt
Miss Gannion, here in America, I have had three good friends, Mr. Thayer, you, and Miss Van Osdel. Everybody knows what Mr. Thayer has done to help me; I am the only one who knows about you and Miss Van Osdel, and I know it better and better, the more I learn to understand your American ways. It was not always easy for a woman in society to accept as her friend a stranger musician without reputation and without social backing, to acknowledge him in public and to insist that her friends should acknowledge him. At first I took it as a matter of course. I know better now, and I know that you and Miss Van Osdel must have given up some things for the sake of helping me along.
human
Otto, she said at length;
gpt
I am a lonely woman, and my life has been broader for knowing you. I mean that _you_ in the plural, for there have been a good many of you. Some have been successful, some have not; a few have become famous, just as you are doing. Some of them have been sent to me; some have come of their own accord. We have been close friends for a while, and then they have gone on their ways. Every going has left its scar. I was a woman, sitting still in my place by the fire; they were marching with the procession, stopping only for a little while and then going on out of my sight. It has made me feel so futile. But, of them all, you are the only one who has suggested that the _vivandière_ may be a useful element on the march. It was all I could do, and I did it. I am glad if it counted for anything.
human
Everything in this world counts but cipher, naught, or zero, Bobby observed suddenly, as he came strolling into the room at Sally's side.
gpt
You aren't a cipher, Miss Gannion. They're either evanescent or tubby, according to whether you look at their moral or their physical proportions. You don't fit either measurement. Therefore you aren't a cipher. Therefore you count. How do, Arlt? No; don't get up from the piano. You owe me a sonata, at least, to pay for the stunning headlines I gave you, yesterday.
human
Was that your work, Bobby? Sally asked, while she shook hands with Arlt.
gpt
I thought it must have come from the bake-shop where they do all the other pi. Did you see it, Miss Gannion? It reminded me of _A was an Apple Pie: Arlt's Art Analyzed_. Properly, the second line should have been: _By Bobby Bunkum_; but I suppose his ideas ran low, when he reached that point.
human
I say, Arlt, Bobby suggested;
gpt
They would only take one line: Know Miss Gannion and Miss Van Osdel,
human
No go, Arlt. I've known them for years, known them intimately; and look at me! I haven't budged an inch in the upward march. The fact is, I have just budged downward. My new underling is a boy of seventy and afraid of a draught, so in common humanity I have had to make over to him my warm corner at the editorial board, and remove myself to the chilly places below the salt. To be sure, it gives me extra good purchase on the devil, as my present desk is just in his pathway to the Chief, and I can smite him as he goes by.
gpt
Does he turn the other cheek? Sally queried.
human
One lump, Miss Gannion. I am still keeping up my Lenten penance, for I acquired the taste for it, and I can't bring myself back to the old extravagant ways. Next Lent, probably I shall mortify the flesh by taking two lumps.
gpt
The other cheek, he answered.
human
Which do you mean? He's all cheek, all over himself, and it offers itself, whichever way he turns. Have you seen Thayer lately, Arlt?
gpt
Yesterday afternoon. He came down to my room to rehearse the songs he is to sing, next Saturday.
human
What is Saturday? You fellows are going ahead at such a rate that I can't keep track of you, unless I have an engagement book for your especial benefit.
gpt
Bobby! Sally expostulated.
human
Mr. Arlt's suite is to be played, Saturday, and Mr. Thayer is to be the soloist for the concert. You oughtn't to have forgotten that, especially when you asked me to go with you.
gpt
Oh, yes; I do remember now, Bobby replied serenely.
human
I knew I had some duty on hand for Saturday, just when I wanted to run up to Englewood for a little golf. What makes you do music in pleasant weather, Arlt? It's mean to keep a fellow in-doors at this season.
gpt
It is our last appearance,
human
Nothing mortal, I hope.
gpt
No. We are going abroad, early in June.
human
Just the other fellow's luck! I wish I were a genius, to go frisking about Europe instead of inking my fingers at home.
gpt
No frisking for us. We are going to study.
human
That's always the way with you musicians! You work till you are tired of it; then you go off and shirk, and call it studying. I used to think you were the elect of the earth. Now I doubt it.
gpt
Have some more tea, Bobby,
human
Am I a child, to be diverted with soothing drinks? Never! I must have my cry out, Miss Gannion. You and Sally can be talking about the last fashion in peignoirs, if you wish. I don't know what they are; but I did a scarehead about them for the Sunday fashion page, last week. The woman who generally sees to it had mumps, and I substituted. I thought I did it superbly: _Death to Décolleté: Peignoirs Popular for Suburban Suppers_. That was the way I did it, and I was sure she would be pleased; but she cut me dead on the stairs, the first day she convalesced enough to be out. Arlt, musicians are second-rate beings, at best.
gpt
I am sorry. Perhaps you can suggest a remedy,
human
Cast off your leading strings, and work out your own theories to suit yourselves, Bobby answered unhesitatingly.
gpt
Now look here, I used to think that it was greater to create music than to evolve literature; now I know more, I know it isn't. When a man writes a book, he goes ahead and does it according to the light of nature and the sense that is in him. Sometimes it is good; mostly it isn't, but at least he has done it out of himself and by himself. When you write a symphony, you do it out of yourself, but not by yourself. You do it by the exact rules that somebody else before you has laid down. You can have just so many themes and so many episodes, though it would puzzle the _Concertmeister_ of the heavenly choir to tell where the themes leave off and the episodes begin. You know you have got those rules to hang on to, and they are a great support in seasons of mental famine. Two themes and a subsidiary, and a lot of episodes for padding: that's all you need, and they are bound to come on in just a given order. Can you imagine a novelist sitting down and fitting his work neatly into a box measured off into compartments: one hero, one heroine, one extra, plus episodic sunsets and moonbeams galore? Not much! He makes his rules as he goes along. Sally, which is greater, to create a gown, or to cut it out by a paper pattern?
human
To cut it out, of course, Sally answered unexpectedly.
gpt
The patterns never fit, and it is more work to bring them into the shape of any human being than it is to start out with a free hand, in the first place.
human
Sally, did you ever make a gown?
gpt
Never; but that doesn't prevent my having theories,
human
And I have had practice. I attempted once, when my years were less and my zeal more, to clothe an orphan with the work of my own hands. I thought I would operate free hand, as you call it, and I wish you could have beheld the result. The orphan's own mother would never have recognized her babe in the midst of the strange, polyangular bundle of cloth. I suspect that the same might be said of a good many novelists, and that a judicious trimming of the seams according to some established pattern might improve their work.
gpt
As usual, Miss Gannion has spoken wisely,
human
Miss Gannion has only echoed my words,
gpt
Not at all. You said it was harder to work from a pattern; I merely suggested that the results were more satisfactory.
human
Well, never mind, Sally returned promptly.
gpt
I don't care about that, so long as the vote goes against Bobby.
human
And then, this matter of studying, Bobby went on, disdaining her interruption.
gpt
Now, when you get hard up for ideas, Arlt, when you actually can't get enough out of your gray matter to fill up your pattern, you go off somewhere and study something. Now, if I--
human
What have you to do with it, Bobby?
gpt
I represent literature, of course, just as Arlt represents music. If I were to go off and study something, what would you all think?
human
That it was the best possible thing you could possibly do,
gpt
You are so feminine and subjective, Sally. I suppose you can't help it, though. But really--Arlt, for instance, has produced a prize composition, while he is still studying. That's exactly what we used to do in prep. school. Fancy a school for novelists, with night classes for indigent poets! It would be a parallel case; but what would be the effect upon literature?
human
All in all, he answered quietly;