“Are you unwell, Mr. Drewe? Is there anything I can get for you?”
He had a choke in his voice, and I saw as he turned that his cheeks were wet with tears.
“Excuse me, young gentleman,” said he. “Don’t mind me. I cannot help it. Indeed, indeed, I cannot refrain. When I hear music, good, beautiful music, it makes me cry like a woman—like a woman. You’ll excuse me. Go on with your book and don’t mind me.”
I had many a talk with the plumber after this, and I found that it was so with him. When he heard good music he passed into a transport, an ecstasy. But then, how seldom it was that he did hear and could hear good music! He lived in a little village some ten miles from a town, and that a sleepy, stagnant country town, and no railway within thirty miles.
Nowadays we have in our little centres all over England good choral societies, and concerts are given not only by amateurs, that may sing well, but often only think that they do so, but also by touring professionals.
It was not so when I was a boy. Then there were no such things as choral unions and concerts, out of the capital of the county, that was accessible only by coach.
Then locomotion was not easy; and the utmost length of a villager’s journey was to the market town and that only on a market day.
At that time the parish church indeed had its orchestra and its choir, but oh! what appalling, agonising productions were the concerted pieces there produced.
Poor Doble Drewe suffered acutely when an instrument was out of tune, and a piece played out of time; and when were all the instruments in the west gallery either in tune or in time the one with the other?