Three Cousins Performed at the Pianoforte for the Duke — He Asked for the Girl Turning the Pages
Chapter 15
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And he asked what she would play if she were given an evening and no instructions, and she thought about it seriously for long enough to be rude and then said Haydn, because Haydn was never sorry for himself.At some point, Honoria attempted to insert Arabella into the conversation, and it did not take.At the door, leaving, the Duke said one more thing to Mr. Sowerby, and he said it in the hearing of the three or four people still in the hall, which was deliberate. He said:"You have a musician in this house, sir. I hope you know it. I did not when I had one."Nobody at Wraysbury understood that last clause. It was five years before Cecily learned what it meant, which was a sister, dead at twenty-two, who had played, and a father who had thought it a waste of an afternoon.What happened at Wraysbury after that evening was not dramatic, and was, in its way, worse.The house sat up until two, and then it went to bed, and in the morning, nobody referred to any of it. That is the detail Cecily has never been able to explain to anybody who did not grow up in such a house. Thirty-one people had watched a duke ask her a question in that drawing room, and by eleven the next morning, the acceptance book was open and Honoria was discussing whether the Ansteys ought to be asked back before the harvest.At breakfast, Arabella said, "You play very well, Cecily," and it cost her something to say it. And Cecily said, "Thank you," and that was the entire family reckoning with the evening of the twenty-second of April.Georgiana said nothing at breakfast at all. She came to the small parlor at four in the afternoon instead and shut the door, which nobody ever did, and said, "Did you write the note about playing it slower?""Yes.""Why did you never say?"And Cecily, who had had eleven days and one evening and a night to prepare an answer to that and had not managed one, said, "Because it was not mine to say. It was your performance."