It all came up before her as she talked, that horrid encounter with
commercial ruthlessness: she saw again poor 'Gene's outraged face of
helpless anger, felt again the heat of sympathetic indignation she and
Neale had felt, recognized again the poison which triumphant
unrighteousness leaves behind. She shook her head impatiently, to shake
off the memory, and said aloud, "Oh, it makes me sick to remember it! We
couldn't believe, any of us, that such bare-faced iniquity could
succeed."
"There's a good deal of bare-faced iniquity riding around prosperously
in high-powered cars," said Mr. Welles, with a lively accent of
bitterness. "You have to get used to it in business life. It's very
likely that your wicked Mr. Lowder in private life in New Hampshire is a
good husband and father, and contributes to all the charitable
organizations."
"I won't change my conception of him as a pasty-faced demon," insisted
Marise.
It appeared that Mr. Marsh's appetite for local history was so slight as
to be cloyed even by the very much abbreviated account she had given
them, for he now said, hiding a small yawn, with no effort to conceal
the fact that he had been bored, "Mrs. Crittenden, I've heard from Mr.
Welles' house the most tantalizing snatches from your piano. Won't you,
now we're close to it, put the final touch to our delightful lunch-party
by letting us hear it?"
Marise was annoyed by his grand seigneur air of certainty of his own
importance, and piqued that she had failed to hold his interest. Both
impressions were of a quicker vivacity than was at all the habit of her
maturity. She told herself, surprised, that she had not felt this little
sharp sting of wounded personal vanity since she was a girl. What did
she care whether she had bored him or not? But it was with all her
faculties awakened and keen that she sat down before the piano and
called out to them, "What would you like?"
They returned the usual protestations that they would like anything she
would play, and after a moment's hesitation . . . it was always a leap in
the dark to play to people about whose musical capacities you hadn't the
faintest idea . . . she took out the Beethoven Sonata album and turned to
the Sonata Pathétique. Beethoven of the early middle period was the
safest guess with such entirely unknown listeners. For all that she
really knew, they might want her to play Chaminade and Moskowsky. Mr.
Welles, the nice old man, might find even them above his comprehension.
And as for Marsh, she thought with a resentful toss of her head that he
was capable of saying off-hand, that he was really bored by all
music--and conveying by his manner that it was entirely the fault of the
music. Well, she would show him how she could play, at least.