Chapter 50

Coming to the hedge of “Marions” he heard a piano being played. The Venerable did not know the name of the piece—it was Cyril Scott’s “Pierrot,” but the richness and the depth of the rolling chords were irresistible. Old Pybus went a little way along the hedge and past Mary Merris’s white gate, and happening to find a stump where a young oak had been felled, he sat down there. The music went on. It had what the Venerable called “a human cry.” It yearned, and was baffled. It was full of life’s—“Whence, and Why Whith…