At night they had had cold
suppers, and afterwards some had gone back to church; while others, as in
Roger's house in the days when Judith was alive, had gathered around the
piano for hymns. Young men callers, friends of their daughters, had joined
in the family singing. Yes, some of these people had been like that. To
them, a few short years ago, a concert on the Sabbath would have seemed a
sacrilege. He could almost hear from somewhere the echo of "Abide With Me."
But over this memory of a song rose now the surging music of Tschaikovsky's
"Pathetique." And the yearnings and fierce hungers in this tumultuous music
swept all the hymns from Roger's mind. Once more he watched the gallery,
and this time he became aware that more than half were foreigners. Out of
the mass from every side individual faces emerged, swarthy, weird, and
staring hungrily into space. And to Roger the whole shadowy place, the very
air, grew pregnant, charged with all these inner lives bound together in
this mood, this mystery that had swept over them all, immense and
formless, baffling, this furious demanding and this blind wistful groping
which he himself had known so well, ever since his wife had died and he had
lost his faith in God. What was the meaning of it all if life were nothing
but a start, and there were nothing but the grave?
"You will live on in our children's lives."
He glanced around at Deborah.
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