"Only a school party!" That seemed to Ingred the absolute limit. Quenrede last term had, in her turn, shivered and trembled when she had been obliged to mount the platform! Could a few short months have indeed effected so magnificent a change of front?
"All the same, it's I who've got to play, not she! It's easy enough to tell somebody else not to mind," thought Ingred, as, in answer to Miss Clough's beckoning finger, she made her way towards the piano to undergo her ordeal.
One point in favor of the recital was that the audience moved about the room and went on buying toys or cups of tea and cakes, and even talking, instead of sitting on rows of seats doing nothing but watching and listening. It was rather comforting to think that the concert was really only like the performance of a band, a soothing accompaniment to conversation. Ingred opened her music with an almost "don't care" feeling. For one delirious moment she felt at her ease, then, alack! her mood suddenly changed. In a last lightning glance towards the audience she noticed among the crowd near the tea-stall the tall thin figure, cadaverous face, and long lank hair of Dr. Linton. The sight instantly wrecked her world of composure. If it had not been for the fact that Miss Clough was standing near, and nodding to her to begin, she would have run away from the platform.
"Oh, the ill luck of it!" she thought. "If I had only played last time, instead of Gertie, I'd have had it over before he came into the room! I know he'll be just listening to every note, and criticizing!"
With a horrid feeling, as if her breath would not come properly, and her head was slightly spinning, and her hands dithering, Ingred began her "Nocturne," trying with a sort of "drowning" effort to keep her mind on the music in front of her, instead of on the music-master at the other end of the room. For sixteen bars she succeeded, then came the hitch. She had rejected the offered services of Doris Grainger, and had elected to turn over her own pages. She now made a hasty dash at the leaf, her trembling hand was not sufficiently agile, the sheet slipped, she grabbed in vain, and the music fluttered on to the floor. The performance came to a dead halt. Doris and Miss Clough rushed to the rescue, but they were put politely aside by a tall figure who stepped on to the platform, and Dr. Linton himself picked up the scattered sheets of the unfortunate "Nocturne." He arranged them together in order, placed them upon the stand, and, addressing his dismayed pupil, said:
"Now, then, begin again, and I shall turn over for you. Bring out that forte passage properly! Remember there's a pedal on the piano!"
It was like having a lesson in public. Ingred felt too scared to begin, and yet she was too much afraid of her master to refuse, so the bigger fright prevailed, and—as a cat will swim to escape an enemy—she dashed at the "Nocturne." Once restarted, it went magnificently: afterwards, she always declared that Dr. Linton must have hypnotized her, she was sure her unaided efforts could never have rendered it in such style. He behaved as if he were conducting an orchestra, soothing the piano passages and spurring her on to fortissimo efforts, even humming the melody in his eccentric fashion, quite unmindful of the audience. The enthusiastic applause at the end was so evidently for both master and pupil that he bowed instinctively in response.
Ingred, remembering, now the ordeal was over, that she was nervous, melted from the platform, and left him to receive the laurels. He did a characteristic but very kind act, looked round for his pupil, and then, perceiving that she had beaten a retreat, sat down to the piano himself, and, unasked, gave an encore for her. A solo from Dr. Linton was an unexpected treat, especially as he was in the mood for music, and played with a sort of rapture that carried his listeners into an ethereal world of delicate sounds. Ingred, hidden behind a protecting barrier of schoolfellows, could see all the sylphs dancing and the fairy pipers piping as the crisp notes came tripping from his practised fingers. At the end she came back as from a dream, to realize that she was not in elf-land, but in the College Lecture Hall, and that she was sitting on a form next to Miss Strong, who held on her knee a little red-coated, brown-haired boy with Dr. Linton's unmistakable dark eyes.
In that instant, as the music ceased, Ingred received quite a sudden and new impression of Miss Strong; there was a tender look on the mistress's face, as she held her arm around the child, and she whispered something to him that made the dark eyes dance. He slipped from her lap, and hand in hand they went together towards the toy-stall. It was quite a pretty little scene, one of those tiny glimpses into other people's lives that we catch occasionally when the veil of their reserve is for a moment held aside. Ingred looked after them meditatively.
"Shouldn't have thought the Snark capable of it," she ruminated. "Perhaps she likes boys better than girls. Some people do."