The Three Sisters | Page 4

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.

VII
The whole house was full of the Chopin Grande Polonaise.
It raged there like a demon. Tortured out of all knowledge, the Grande
Polonaise screamed and writhed in its