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.
XXII
Rowcliffe was now beginning to form that other habit (which was to
make him even more remarkable than he was already), the hunting down
of Gwendolen Cartaret in the open.
He was annoyed with Gwendolen Cartaret. When she had all the rest of
the week to walk in she would set out on Wednesdays before teatime and
continue until long after dark.
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