14
Julia was the last player. She sidled swiftly out of the room; even her habitual easy halting lounge seemed to have deserted her; and almost at once, slow and tragic and resignedly weeping came the opening notes of Chopin’s Funeral March. Sitting in the front row of the little batch of children from the lower school who faced the room from the window bay, Miriam saw, in fancy, Julia’s face as she sat at the drawing-room piano—the face she had when she talked of the woods and the sea. The whole of the long march, including the major passage, was the voice of Julia’s strange desolation. She played painfully, very slowly and carefully, with tender respectful attention, almost without emphasis. She was not in the least panic-stricken; anyone could feel that; but she had none of the musical assurance that would have filled the girls with uneasy admiration and disgust. They were pleased and amused. And far away, Julia was alone with life and death. She made two worlds plain, the scornful world of the girls and her own shadow-filled life.
Miriam longed for the performance to be at an end so that the girls might reassert themselves.