The presence and the song of the young lady from Morfe would have been
torture to Alice, but that her eyelids and her face were red as if
perpetually smitten by the east wind and scarified with weeping. To
Alice, at the piano, it was terrible to be associated with the song of
the young lady from Morfe. She felt that Rowcliffe was looking at her
(he wasn't) and she strove by look and manner to detach herself.
As the young lady flung herself into it and became more and more
intolerably arch, Alice became more and more severe. She purified the
accompaniment from all taint of the young lady's intentions. It grew
graver and graver. It was a hymn, a solemn chant, a dirge. The dirge
of the last hope of the young lady from Morfe.
When it ceased there rose from the piano that was its grave the
Grande Polonaise of Chopin. It rose in splendor and defiance; Alice's
defiance of the young lady from Morfe. It brought down the schoolhouse
in a storm of clapping and thumping, of "Bravos" and "Encores." Even
Rowcliffe said, "Bravo!"
But Alice, still seated at the piano, smiled and signaled.
And Jim Greatorex stood up to sing.
* * * * *
He stood facing the room, but beside her, so that she could sign to
him if anything went wrong.
"'Oh, that we two-oo were May-ing
Down the stream of the so-oft spring breeze,
Like children with vi-olets pla-aying.'"
Greatorex's voice was a voice of awful volume and it ranged somewhere
from fairly deep barytone almost to tenor.
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