“No ... but that’s an Easter hymn!”
“But we have sung it before on other occasions ... it’s so moving.”
“What do you think, Mrs. Downes?”
Naomi stopped in the midst of her playing. “I think it would be fine. It’s so full of joy.”
One by one the others arrived. Each had his favorite, some song which he or she found moving. Naomi, troubled and unhappy, yielded to their choice. She was not, it was plain to be seen, to be a leader save in name alone. The eleven singers took their seats. There was a rustling of music and Naomi plunged noisily into:
“O the Golden, Glowing Morning!
Stars above and Stars adorning!”
The voices rang out loud and clear, filling the infants’ classroom with a wild joy that seemed almost improper in so bare and chaste a place. They went on through a whole program of anthems and hymns, singing more and more loudly. At last, as the clock banged out eleven, the orgy of music came to an end, leaving them tired but happy, and filled with a strange excitement. At the piano, Naomi turned away to collect the sheets of music. There was a bustle of farewells and small talk and, one by one, or in pairs, the singers drifted out. It had been a happy evening: the happiness of these evenings in the infants’ classroom held the choir together. In all the dreary Town of slate-colored houses, the weekly orgy of singing provided a half-mystical joy that elsewhere did not exist. It was, for all the pious words that were chanted, a sort of pagan festival in which men and women found a wild, emotional abandon. It was from choir practice that Mrs. Swithers had run off with the county auditor, leaving behind a husband, an aged mother and three small children.
The music was kept in a cabinet in the Reverend Castor’s study, and before the others had all gone, Naomi hurried off to place it there. The depression had begun to settle over her once more, leaving her a prey to uneasiness. The drawer of the cabinet was jammed, and while she pulled and tugged at it, she heard the singers in little groups passing the door. She heard the dry Mrs. Wilbert Phipps say in a curious, excited voice, “No, Hanna, you mustn’t say that here. Wait until we get out,” and then the banging of the door. She pulled and tugged desperately at the drawer. The door banged again, and again. Without thinking, she counted the number of times it had closed ... ten times! They must all have gone, and she was left alone. She knew suddenly that she must escape before the Reverend Castor appeared. She could not stay alone with him there in the study. She could not. She could not.... Suddenly, in a wave of terror, she let the music slip to the floor, and turned to escape, but at the same moment the Reverend Castor came in. He stood for a second, looking at her with a queer, fixed expression in his kindly gray eyes, and then he said, gently, “What is it, Naomi? Did I frighten you?”
In her struggle with the drawer, her hat had slipped to the back of her head and her hair had fallen into disarray. Her pale face was flushed once more.
“No,” she said. “I just couldn’t get that awful drawer open.”