“Please, gentlemen, do not—”
“Music of the cornet,” declared the bemused baker, “is like gen’le dew of ’eaven. You blow up, my boy.”
To the terror of the young publican, Bobbie produced his cornet and played a verse of “Tom Bowling,” causing the baker to become maudlin, and to declare tearfully that he wished he had been a sailor instead of an adjective baker, trampled on by most and scorned by all. On Bobbie playing the prelude to the first set of some quadrilles, the private bar, standing up tipsily, set to partners and went through the evolutions with intense gravity, excepting the baker, who, acting as M.C., stumbled in and out crying loudly, “La’ies’ chain!” The agitated young publican, fearful of consequences, felt constrained at last to send for a policeman, and when one came and touched the boy cornet player on the shoulder, saying, “Outside with that instrument of torture, if you please,” then Bobbie stepped out of the swing doors and through a small crowd with the proud consciousness that, having been ejected from a public-house, real manhood was now his, and could never be taken from him. He stumbled along Hackney Road with his cornet, a slip of a crowd following. To escape them he jumped clumsily on a tram.
“’O’ tight,” said the conductor.
The boy rode in a confused state of mind to the end of the journey at Lea Bridge Road, and then, partly sobered by the night air, returned by the tram. He felt quite happy; other passengers found themselves afire with curiosity to know what he was laughing about. Watching the lighted shops and the cheerful folk on the pavement below, Bobbie decided hilariously that this was better than the Cottage Homes. This was good. This was enjoyment. This was independence. This was freedom. This was life.
At Cambridge Heath Station he descended, because be saw outside a large public-house a line of brakes decorated with branches of trees and with Chinese lanterns; joyous men and women danced on the square space to no music. This seemed the kind of movement in which he desired to be. The men and women had been out into the country for the day; they appeared to have brought a good deal of the country back with them, for their hats and bonnets and clothes were decorated with bunches of flowers and oak leaves. The appearance of the boy with his cornet was welcomed with enthusiasm. Hoisted up on a huge empty cask, he, by command, played gustily a waltz that made the couples lay heads on their partners’ shoulders and move slowly, dreamily around. Of all the moments of pure delight that Bobbie, as a boy, was to experience, this ever stood in his memory high and high above all the rest. Presently the whirling crowd stopped exhaustedly.
“Ask the little boy,” suggested one of the panting women, “to play a what’s-a-name tune.”
“A comic?”
“No, no, no! Not a comic. You know what I mean, only you’re so stupid.”
“A love tune?”