I can't disguise that there was something like an awkward pause. But I exerted myself to bridge the chasm, and, thanks to them rather than to me, it was bridged.
"Where are you going to-night?" I asked as soon as the modus vivendi was assured.
"Ain't going nowhere in particular," said Banquo. "We just go anywhere."
"What!" I said, "don't you know where you'll pass the night?"
"Well, it's just this way," returned the other. "Me and my mate here are musicians, and we just go this way and that according to where the publics are. It's in the publics we makes what living we gets—singing in the bars and cadging for drink and coppers."
"And a bloomin' shame we should have to do it!" chimed in Macbeth. "But what can yer do? My trade's a mason; Leeds is where I come from; but when they're short of work, if you've got two grey hairs and another chap's got only one, you gets the sack, and has to live as best yer can.
"God knows I don't want this beastly life. But it's a good thing I've got it to turn to. Most on 'em has nowt but their trades, and them's the ones as has to starve. But me and my mate here happens to be moosical. Used to sing in St. —— Church in Leeds. Leading bass, I was—a bit irregular, I'll own, and that's why they wouldn't keep me on. My mate plays the cornet. He used to be in the band of the —— Fusiliers. Served in South Africa, he did, and got a sock in the face from a shell; yer can see the 'ole under his eye. Good thing it didn't 'it him in the ma-outh, or he wouldn't ha' been able to play the cornet any more. Know Yorkshire, mister?"
I replied that I did.
"Well, if yer knows Yorkshire, yer knows there's plenty of music up there. They can tell music, when they hear it, in Yorkshire, that they can! But these caownties down here, why, the people knows no more about music nor pigs. They can't tell the difference between a man what really can sing and one of these 'ere 'owlin' 'umbugs that goes draggin' little children up and daown t' streets. That sort makes more money than we does. And I tell you, him 'ere"—indicating Banquo—"is a good cornet player. 'Ere, Banquo, fetch it out o' your pocket, lad, and play the gentleman a toon."
As far as I could judge, Banquo's pocket was situated somewhere in the middle of his back, for it was from a region in that quarter, where I had already felt a hard excrescence, due as I might have thought to an unextracted cannon-ball received in South Africa, that the cornet was produced.