"We will now begin the evening," said Ingpen, as he glanced at the music.
All five were conscious of the pleasant feeling of freedom, intimacy, and mutual comprehension which animates a small company that by self-selection has survived out of a larger one. The lateness of the hour aided their zest. Even the more staid among them perceived as by a revelation that it did not in fact matter, once in a way, if they were tired and inefficient on the morrow, and that too much regularity of habit was bad for the soul. Edwin had brought in a tray from the dining-room, and rearranged the chairs according to Hilda's caprice, and was providing cushions to raise the bodies of the duet-players to the proper height. Janet began to excuse herself, asserting that if there was one member of her family who could not play duets, she was that member, that she had never seen this Dvorak music before, and that if they had got her brother Tom, or her elder sister Marion, or even Alicia,--etc., etc.
"We are quite accustomed to these formal preliminaries from duet-players, Miss Orgreave," said Ingpen. "I never do them myself,--not because I can play well, but because I am hardened. Now shall we start? Will you take the treble or the bass?"
Janet answered with eager modesty that she would take the bass.
"It's all one to me," said Ingpen, putting on spectacles; "I play either equally badly. You'll soon regret leaving the most important part to me. However...! Clayhanger, will you turn over?"
"Er--yes," said Edwin boldly. "But you'd better give me the tip."
He knew a little about printed music, from his experiences as a boy when his sisters used to sing two-part songs. That is to say, he had a vague idea "where a player was" on a page. But the enterprise of turning over Dvorak's "Legends" seemed to him critically adventurous. Dvorak was nothing but a name to him; beyond the correct English method of pronouncing that name, he had no knowledge whatever of the subject in hand.
Then the performance of the "Legends" began. Despite halts, hesitations, occasional loud insistent chanting of the time, explanations between the players, many wrong notes by Ingpen, and a few wrong notes by Janet, and one or two enormous misapprehensions by Edwin, the performance was a success, in that it put a spell on its public, and permitted the loose and tender genius of Dvorak to dominate the room.
"Play that again, will you?" said Hilda, in a low dramatic voice, at the third "Legend."
"We will," Ingpen answered. "And we'll play it better."