Alice sat up. She was thinking another thought.
"If Mr. Greatorex is dead, Dr. Rowcliffe won't stay long at Upthorne.
He will come back soon. And he will have to call and leave word. He
will come in and I shall see him."
But if Mr. Greatorex wasn't dead? If Mr. Greatorex were a long time
over his dying? Then he might be kept at Upthorne, perhaps till
midnight, perhaps till morning. Then, even if he called to leave
word, she would not see him. When she looked deep she found herself
wondering how long Mr. Greatorex would be over his dying. If she had
looked a little deeper she would have found herself hoping that Mr.
Greatorex was already dead.
If Mr. Greatorex was dead before he got to Upthorne he would come very
soon, perhaps before prayer-time.
And he would be shown into the drawing-room.
Would he? Would Essy have the sense? No. Not unless the lamp was lit
there. Essy wouldn't show him into a dark room. And Essy was stupid.
She might have _no_ sense. She might take him straight into the study
and Papa would keep him there. Trust Papa.
Alice got up from her sofa and left the room; moving with her weary
grace and a little air of boredom and of unconcern. She was always
most unconcerned when she was most intent.
Outside in the passage she stood a moment, listening. All the ways
of the house gave upon the passage in a space so narrow that by
stretching out one arm she could have touched both walls.
With a door open anywhere the passage became a gully for the north
wind. Now, with all doors shut, it was as if the breath of the house
was being squeezed out there, between closing walls. The passage,
instead of dividing the house, drew it together tight. And this
tightness was intolerable to Alice.
She hated it. She hated the whole house. It was so built that there
wasn't a corner in it where you could get away from Papa. His study
had one door opening into the passage and one into the dining-room.
The window where he sat raked the garden on the far side. The window
of his bedroom raked the front; its door commanded the stairhead. He
was aware of everything you did, of everything you didn't do. He could
hear you in the dining-room; he could hear you overhead; he could hear
you going up and downstairs. He could positively hear you breathe, and
he always knew whether you were in bed or not. She drew in her breath
lest he should hear it now.
At the far end of the passage, on the wall-space between the staircase
and the kitchen door, raised on a small bracket, a small tin lamp
showed a thrifty flame. Under it, on a mahogany table-flap, was a row
of bedroom candlesticks with their match-boxes.
Her progress to the table-flap was stealthy. She exalted this business
of lighting the drawing-room lamp to a desperate, perilous adventure.
The stone floor deadened her footsteps as she went.
Her pale eyes, half sullen, half afraid, slewed round to the door of
the study on her right. With a noiseless hand she secured her matches
and her candle. With noiseless feet she slid into the darkness of the
drawing-room. She dared not light her candle out there in the passage.
For the Vicar was full of gloom and of suspicion in the half hour
before prayer-time, and at the spurt of the match he might come out
blustering and insist on knowing what she was doing and where she was
going, whereas presently he would know, and he might be quiet as long
as he was satisfied that she wasn't shirking Prayers.
Stealthily, with her air of desperate adventure, she lit the
drawing-room lamp. She shook out the puffs and frills of its yellow
paper shade. Under its gaudy skirts the light was cruel to the cramped
and shabby room, to the huddled furniture, to the tarnished gilt, the
perishing tones of gray and amber.
Alice set the lamp on the top of the cottage piano that stood
slantwise in a side window beyond the fireplace. She had pulled back
the muslin curtains and opened both windows wide so that the room was
now bared to the south and west. Then, with the abrupt and passionate
gesture of desire deferred, she sat down at the little worn-out Erard
and began to play.
Sitting there, with the open window behind her, she could be seen, and
she knew that she could be seen from over the wall by anybody driving
past in a high dog-cart.
And she played. She played the Chopin Grande Polonaise, or as much of
it as her fingers, tempestuous and inexpert, could clutch and reach.
She played, neither with her hands nor with her brain, but with her
temperament, febrile and frustrate, seeking its outlet in exultant
and violent sound. She fell upon the Erard like some fierce and hungry
thing, tearing from the forlorn, humble instrument a strange and
savage food. She played--with incredible omissions, discords and
distortions, but she played. She flung out her music through the
windows into the night as a signal and an appeal. She played (on the
little worn-out Erard) in ecstasy and expectation, as if something
momentous hung upon her playing. There was joy and triumph and
splendor in the Grande Polonaise; she felt them in her heart and
nerves as a delicate, dangerous tremor, the almost intolerable on
coming of splendor, of triumph and of joy.
And as she played the excitement gathered; it swung in more and more
vehement vibrations; it went warm and flooding through her brain
like wine. All the life of her bloodless body swam there, poised and
thinned, but urgent, aspiring to some great climax of the soul.