"I thought when I come out o' the 'orspital as it were all up wi'
playin' the cornet. But I made up my mind as I'd try. So I kep' up
practice all the way home from the Cape, and when we got to Southampton
I could just manage to blow into the mouthpiece. It hurt a bit, too, I
can tell you. You see, I can only play on one side o' my mouth--like
this. But I got used to it after a time; and now I can play a'most as
well wi' half a mouth as I used to do wi' a whole un."
Again I was silent, for there was a tangle of thoughts in my mind, and
behind it all a vague, uncomfortable sense that I was come to judgment.
From this sprang a sudden resolve to change the subject, which was
unpleasant to me in more senses than one. So I said, after the pause,
"What about your pension?"
"Pension, did you say? Well, you see, sir, I've been in a bit o' trouble
since I come home. There was a kind old gent as give me three months in
the choke-hole for not behavin' quite as handsome as I ought to. 'It'll
spile all my good looks, your Worship,' I says when he sentenced me.
'Remove the prisoner, officer!' he says; and I thinks to myself, 'I'd
like to remove _you_, old gentleman, and see what you'd look like on a
hammynition waggon, wi' two dead pals under your nose, and a pom-pom
shell a-burstin' in your ear-'ole.' But I've had one good friend,
anyhow; and I don't want a better--and that's him there" (indicating
Macbeth). "He's a _man_, he is! I can tell you one thing!--if it hadn't
been for him there, I'd ha' sent the other half o' my head to look for
the first long ago--and that's the truth!"
While this conversation was proceeding Macbeth, _more suo_, continued to
mutter like a man in a troubled dream, now humming a bar of the tune,
now drawling out a phrase from the words, "O'er moor and fen, o'er crag
and torrent, till the night is gone"--this, I believe, he repeated
several times, lighting his pipe in the intervals and spitting out of
the door. Then he went on more articulately: "Rum go, ain't it--me
singing that hymn in a place like this? Sung it in church 'undreds o'
times. We give it sometimes in the streets. It's part of our
_repertoire_" (he pronounced this word quite correctly). "But I can't
help makin' a babby o' mysen whenever I think o' what it means. I don't
think of it, as a rewle. I should break down if I did; like as I nearly
did just naow. Oh Lor'! I can get on all right till I comes to th' end.
It's them 'angel faces' wot knocks the stuffing out o' _me_!"
"Same 'ere," I replied; and I put my head out of the aperture for a
breath of fresh air.
* * * * *
"When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?"