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."
Edwin had the exquisite sensation of partially comprehending music whose total beauty was beyond the limitations of his power to enjoy--power, nevertheless, which seemed to grow each moment. Passages entirely intelligible and lovely would break at intervals through the veils of general sound and ravish him. All his attention was intensely concentrated on the page. He could hear Ingpen breathing hard. Out of the corner of his eye he was aware of Johnnie Orgreave on the sofa making signs to Hilda about drinks, and pouring out something for her, and something for himself, without the faintest noise. And he was aware of Ada coming to the open door and being waved away to bed by her mistress.
"Well," he said, when the last "Legend" was played. "That’s a bit of the right sort--no mistake." He was obliged to be banal and colloquial.
Hilda said nothing at all. Johnnie, who had waited for the end in order to strike a match, showed by two words that he was an expert listener to duets. Tertius Ingpen was very excited and pleased. "More tricky than difficult, isn’t it--to read?" he said privately to his fellow-performer, who concurred. Janet also was excited in her fashion. But even amid the general excitement Ingpen had to be judicious.