The Vicar of Garth considered himself unhappy (to say the least of it)
in his three children, but he had never asked himself what, after all,
would he have done without them? After all (as they had frequently
reminded themselves), without them he could never have lived
comfortably on his income. They did the work and saved him the
expenses of a second servant, a housekeeper, an under-gardener, an
organist and two curates.
The three divided the work of the Vicarage and parish, according to
the tastes and abilities of each. At home Mary kept the house and
did the sewing. Gwenda looked after the gray and barren garden, she
trimmed the narrow paths and the one flower-bed and mowed the small
square of grass between. Alice trailed through the lower rooms,
dusting furniture feebly; she gathered and arranged the flowers when
there were any in the bed. Outside, Mary, being sweet and good, taught
in the boys' Sunday-school; Alice, because she was fond of children,
had the infants. For the rest, Mary, who was lazy, had taken over
that small portion of the village that was not Baptist or Wesleyan or
Congregational. Gwenda, for her own amusement, and regardless of sect
and creed, the hopelessly distant hamlets and the farms scattered
on the long, raking hillsides and the moors. Alice declared herself
satisfied with her dominion over the organ and the village choir.
Alice was behaving like an angel in her Paradise. No longer listless
and sullen, she swept through the house with an angel's energy. A
benign, untiring angel sat at the organ and controlled the violent
voices of the choir.
The choir looked upon Ally's innocent art with pride and admiration
and amusement. It tickled them to see those little milk-white hands
grappling with organ pieces that had beaten the old schoolmaster.
Ally enjoyed the pride and admiration of the choir and was unaware of
its amusement. She enjoyed the importance of her office. She enjoyed
the massive, voluptuous vibrations that made her body a vehicle for
the organ's surging and tremendous soul. Ally's body had become a
more and more tremulous, a more sensitive and perfect medium for
vibrations. She would not have missed one choir practice or one
service.
And she said to herself, "I may be a fool, but Papa or the parish
would have to pay an organist at least forty pounds a year. It costs
less to keep me. So he needn't talk."
* * * * *
Then in November came the preparations for the village concert.
They were stupendous.
All morning the little Erad piano shook with the Grande Valse and the
Grande Polonaise of Chopin. The diabolic thing raged through the shut
house, knowing that it went unchallenged, that its utmost violence was
licensed until the day after the concert.
Rowcliffe heard it whenever he drove past the Vicarage on his way over
the moors.