The Doctor was quite a young man, not more than two- or three-and-twenty. His degree was German, and his appearance, with long light hair and spectacles, was studiously German. If he could have Germanised his name as well as his appearance he would certainly have done so. As a pianist, a teacher of music, and a composer, the young Doctor is already beginning to be known. When Armorel confessed her ignorance, he gently spread his hands and smiled pity. 'If you will really play, Armorel, Dr. Bovey-Tracy will kindly accompany you.'
Armorel took her violin out of the case and began to tune it.
'What will you play?' asked the musician: 'Something serious? So?'
Armorel turned over a pile of music and selected a piece. It was the Sonata by Schumann in D minor for violin and pianoforte. 'Shall we play this?'
Philippa looked a little surprised. The choice was daring. The Herr Doctor smiled graciously: 'This is, indeed, serious,' he said.
I suppose that to begin your musical training with the performance of heys and hornpipes and country dances is not the modern scientific method. But he who learns to fiddle for sailors to dance may acquire a mastery over the instrument which the modern scientific method teaches much more slowly. Armorel began her musical training with a fiddle as obedient to her as the Slave of the Lamp to his master. And for five years she had been under masters playing every day, until——
The pianist sat down, held his outstretched fingers professionally over the keys, and struck a chord. Armorel raised her bow, and the sonata began.
I am told that there is now quite a fair percentage of educated people who really do understand music, can tell good playing from bad, and fine playing from its counterfeit. In the same way, there is a percentage—but not nearly so large—of people who know a good picture when they see it, and can appreciate correct drawing if they cannot understand fine colour. Out of the sixty or seventy people who filled this room, there were certainly twenty—but then it was an exceptionally good collection—who understood that a violinist born and trained was playing to them, in a style not often found outside St. James's Hall. And they marvelled while the music delivered its message—which is different for every soul. They sat or stood in silence, spellbound. Of the remaining fifty, thirty understood that a piece of classical music was going on: it had no voice or message for them: they did not comprehend one single phrase—the sonata might have been a sermon in the Bulgarian tongue: but they knew how to behave in the presence of Music, and they governed themselves accordingly. The Remnant—twenty in number—containing all the young men and most of the girls, understood that here was a really beautiful girl playing the fiddle for them. The young men murmured their admiration, and the girls whispered envious things—not necessarily spiteful, but certainly envious. What girl could resist envy at sight of that dress, with its lace, and that command of the violin, and—which every girl concedes last of all, and grudgingly—that face and figure?
Philippa stood beside the piano, rather pale. She knew, now, why her old schoolfellow had been so anxious that Armorel should play. Kind and thoughtful Zoe!
The playing of the first movement surprised her. Here was one who had, indeed, mastered her instrument. At the playing of the second, which is a scherzo, bright and lively, she acknowledged her mistress—not her rival. At the playing of the third, which contains a lovely, simple, innocent, and happy tune, her heart melted—never, never, could she so pour into her playing the soul of that melody: never could she so rise to the spirit of the musician and put into the music what even he himself had not imagined. But Zoe was wrong. Her soul was not filled with envy. Philippa had a larger soul.