Lucille closed her mouth firmly. As clearly as if she had spoken, David read in her face: “Well, if that's who is to play the pipe organ, I shan't try to get one!” He did not wait for her to speak.
“I feel,” he said, “that if Miss Hurley is to be thrown out after so many years of patient and faithful struggling with the miserable instruments she has had to do with, it would be better to let the whole idea of having a pipe organ drop. At any rate, the chance of getting one seems small.”
“Oh, we're going to have one!” exclaimed Lucille, caught in the trap he had prepared for her spirit of opposition. “I get what I go after, Mr. Dean.”
X. LUCILLE DISCOVERS DAVID
IT was no new thing for David to feel the opposition of his choir; indeed, is not the attitude of minister and choir in many churches usually that of armed neutrality? How many ministers would drop dead if all the bitterness that is put into some anthems could kill! To the minister the choir is often a body of unruly artistic temperaments bent on mere secular display of its musical talents; to the choir the minister is a crass utilitarian, ignorant in all that relates to good music, and stubbornly insisting that the musical program for each day shall be twisted to illustrate some point in his sermon. To some ministers it has seemed that eternal vigilance alone prevented the choir from singing the latest “Gem from Comic Opera”; some choirs have felt that unless they battled strenuously they would be tied down to “Old Hundred” and “Blest Be the Tie that Binds,” by a minister who did not know one note from another. How many ministers have, early in November, begun to dread the inevitable quarrel over the choice of Christmas music!
Lucille Hardcome was a large woman and much given to violent colors, but, to do her justice, she managed them with a chic that put them above any question of mere good taste. She clashed a green and purple together, and evolved something that was “style” and that had to be recognized as “style.” In a day when women were wearing gray and black striped silks, as they were then, Lucille would concoct with her dressmaker something in orange and black, throw in a bow or two of cerulean blue, and appear well dressed. She could wear a dozen jangling bracelets on her plump arm and leave the impression that she was not overornamented, but ultrafashionable. You would have said, to see her among the less violently garbed women of the church, that she was one who would win only by bold thrusts. On the contrary, she could be a wily diplomatist.
Just as old Sam Wiggett received from unexpected quarters questions regarding the pipe organ, so David began to hear questions regarding the organist. Some asked him eagerly if it were true an organist was to be brought from Chicago; some asked if it were true that Miss Hurley had refused to play the big new organ. Presently he heard the name of the young man who was to be brought from Chicago to supplant Miss Hurley; then that the young man was to have a position in Sam Wiggett's office if he couldn't get into Schultz' music store.
It was soon after the arrangements for the purchase of the pipe organ had been made (Sam Wiggett giving in at last) that Miss Jane herself came to David. She had been ill two days, confined to her bed, although she did not tell David so. Partly, no doubt, her little breakdown had come because of the overhard work she was doing with Mademoiselle, but mainly it had been the shock of the word that she was to be pushed aside. Her disappointment had been overwhelming, for little Miss Jane had coveted with all her heart the joy of playing the great, new organ. The news that another was to be organist came like the blow of a brutal fist between her eyes, and she went down. For two days she fought against what she felt must be her great selfishness and then, still weak but ready to do what she felt was her duty, she went to David. 'Thusia, herself weak, led her to David's study door and left her there. David let her enter and closed the door after her. He placed a chair for her. The light fell on her face, and as he saw the marks her struggle had left there he threw up his head and drew a deep breath. All the fight there was in him surged up, and he cast his eyes at the spatter-work motto above his desk before he dared speak. His gray eyes glowed cold fire.