“The music! I shall never forget it; never. That march rings in my head all day. The whole world seems tramping to it.”
The young man for the first time looked up at him, the light of brotherhood in his eyes.
“I feel it, too,” he said, “that there is nothing around us but good music. It smooths away the ruder sounds of earth, or uses them as undertones—as—as a background. I sometimes fancy that the gates of heaven are left ajar, and we—a few of us—are allowed to listen, to compensate us for any trouble we have, or to show us the triviality of everything else.”
The young man’s thin face flushed in confused shame at finding himself talking thus to another man, although what he said was merely the substance of many a former soliloquy. With a hasty apologetic glance at the girl, who regarded him like one in a trance, with wide unwinking eyes, Langly continued hurriedly:
“The march is a difficult one and should not be attempted except after many lessons. I shall be pleased to teach your daughter, if you will let me. She has a correct ear.”
Braunt shook his head.
“We have no money for music lessons,” he said.
“I have very little myself. I am poor, and therefore need none,” said the organist, as if that were a logical reason. “The poor should help the poor. If they don’t, who else will? The poor have always been kind to me.” He thought of his many landladies, and how they had robbed themselves to sustain him, as they had often admitted, little thinking he would desert them one by one. “Aye, and the rich too,” he added, remembering the hydraulic motor in the church, and of the continued endurance of the authorities with their organist.
“Well, lad,” said Braunt, with a sigh, “come in when you can, and if nowt else, you’ll be sure of a hearty northern welcome.”