[CHAPTER EIGHT]
ITS BLENDED ROMANCE
The rehearsal for the Twelfth Night entertainment went off so well that the double quartette most interested in it were greatly elated.
Eleanor Dinsmore, Edith Hooper, Helen Lacey three pretty girls—as well as Fayre girls—had been asked to complete the number for the gavotte, and their brothers and cousins and friends, four in all, had gladly added themselves to the Rutherfords and Lester Baldwin to make up eight men. Rob had had an inspiration, and had written words to be sung by the dancers to a beautiful old French gavotte air, as they moved through the stately figures of the charming dance. Even in ordinary modern dress the effect was so exquisite that the few privileged people who looked on were enthusiastic. The young people began to plume themselves on accomplishing something really artistic, while the fear that the ticket purchasers would feel that their purchase was equivalent to an outright donation, with no return to themselves, vanished like mists in the sunshine of the dancers' perception of unhoped-for success.
The songs were not going to fail either. The Greys and Battalion B, with Frances, had sung together since their first meeting. Now Bartlemy's uncertain bass had deepened into the real thing, Basil's tenor had grown sweeter, and Bruce's barytone richer. Oswyth had a sympathetic, true little home voice, exactly like herself; Rob sang alto very well, and Prue's high soprano had grown stronger than when they first sang together rowing and working through that summer of the beginning of Greys' acquaintance with the Rutherfords. Frances had always sung well, and now Hester's rich, splendid alto was a real acquisition, while Lester Baldwin's tenor was stronger and higher than Basil's. It really was an unusual combination of voices, and long practise together, of most of the singers, made them know exactly how to bring out one another's best points, and made the voices blend quite beautifully.
It had not taken much persuasion to get Lester Baldwin to give up his intention of going back after the rehearsal, but to accept the Rutherfords' hospitality that night and take Hester back Sunday evening.
Bruce glowered at Lester for an hour after he met him, then yielded to his personal charm, but still more to the charm of his marked preference for talking to Frances, and became cordial with a heartiness that surprised Lester. He did not know that it was not for what he had done, nor for what he was, but for what he had not done and for what he was not that Bruce Rutherford suddenly became his friend.
Sunday morning the three Greys and Battalion B carried off Hester and her cousin to the quiet church where the Grey girls had been carried in white draperies to be made little Christians in baptism—Very little and very reluctant ones.