* * * * *

Alice went gaily down the hill to Garth.  It was the hill of Paradise.  And if she thought of Greatorex and of how she had cajoled him into singing, and of how through singing she would reclaim him, it was because Greatorex and his song and his redemption were a small, hardly significant part of the immense thought of Rowcliffe.

“How pleased he’ll be when he knows what I’ve done!”

And her pure joy had a strain in it that was not so pure.  It pleased her to please Rowcliffe, but it pleased her also that he should realise her as a woman who could cajole men into doing for her what they didn’t want to do.

* * * * *

“I’ve got him!  I’ve got him!” she cried as she came, triumphant, into the dining-room where her father and her sisters still sat round the table.  “No, thanks.  I’ve had tea.”

“Where did you get it?” the Vicar asked with his customary suspicion.

“At Upthorne.  Jim Greatorex gave it me.”

The Vicar was appeased.  He thought nothing of it that Greatorex should have given his daughter tea.  Greatorex was part of the parish.

XXV

Rowcliffe was coming to the concert.  Neither floods nor tempests, he declared, would keep him away from it.

For hours, night after night, of the week before the concert, Jim Greatorex had been down at Garth, in the schoolhouse, practicing with Alice Cartaret until she assured him he was perfect.

Night after night the schoolhouse, gray in its still yard, had a door kept open for them and a light in the solemn lancet windows.  The tall gray ash tree that stood back in the angle of the porch knew of their coming and their going.  The ash tree was friendly.  When the north wind tossed its branches it beckoned to the two, it summoned them from up and down the hill.

And now the tables and blackboards had been cleared out of the big schoolroom.  The matchboarding of white pine that lined the lower half of its walls had been hung with red twill, with garlands of ivy and bunches of holly.  Oil lamps swung from the pine rafters of the ceiling and were set on brackets at intervals along the walls.  A few boards raised on joists made an admirable platform.  One broad strip of red felt was laid along the platform, another hid the wooden steps that led to it.  On the right a cottage piano was set slantwise.  In the front were chairs for the principal performers.  On the left, already in their places, were the glee-singers chosen from the village choir.  Behind, on benches, the rest of the choir.

Over the whole scene, on the chalk white of the dado, the blond yellow of varnished pinewood, the blazing scarlet of the hangings, the dark glitter of the ivy and the holly; on the faces, ruddy and sallow, polished with cleanliness, on the sleek hair, on the pale frocks of the girls, the bright neckties of the men, the lamplight rioted and exulted; it rippled and flowed; it darted; it lay suave and smooth as still water; it flaunted; it veiled itself.  Stately and tall and in a measured order, the lancet windows shot up out of the gray walls, the leaded framework of their lozenges gray on the black and solemn night behind them.