Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3814/The Restorative Power of Music
My house, though in the eyes of the rate-collector fully occupied, has now for several weeks stood with an unmistakably vacant stare. My cook alone, with a young lady friend for company, dwells there. What our great ballad-writers call the patter of tiny feet is stilled. The seaside has demanded its toll, and I have for a time accompanied the evacuating host.
The other day, for a brief space, I returned home—a home which at the first glance seemed to be as I had left it. But as I approached I was confronted with a change. The gate, which in normal times used to swing shakily on its hinges and keep on chattering against its post (in the vain effort to shut) whenever the wind was in its teeth, now leaned against an adjacent bush in listless inaction. One of its hinges had been broken. I learned the details of the tragedy from the gardener.
It was one of them I-talians, I gathered. Seeing, with the nice instinct of their race, that my house must be the above of music-lovers—detecting this from various subtle signs invisible to me—they had drored their horgan through the gateway and up the grand carriage sweep which, leading to the handsome portico entrance, is one of the outstanding features of all that well-situated and desirable double-fronted brick and carved stone residential property which recently I was wise enough to acquire for a mere song. Well, these I-talians had drored their instrument up the drive and played to the front door for ten minutes. The cook and her friend, I learned afterwards, heard them and, satisfied to enjoy the entertaining without payment, had remained out of sight. For ten minutes they played, the man turning the handle, his wife smiling and bowing to the windows. Then, in the fine frenzy known to all great artists who are unrecognised, they drored it down again to the gate. The fine frenzy was proved by the fury with which the woman flung wide the portal that the horgan might be drored out. She flung it back too far, and the the hinge, a soulless thing of cast-iron, snapped.
The gardener—no musician—who had happened to see them arrive, and, anticipating trouble, had been watching unperceived, hurried to the scene of the catastrophe.
"I knowed they was a-goin' to do it," he said, "the 'inge bein' in a bad way already. It's lucky there was a policeman 'andy. I said you'd 'ave the law of 'em."
"But I don't want the law of them," I protested.
"Well, they're going to pay for a new 'inge any 'ow."
"Rather hard luck on them, isn't it? I can't make them do that."
"Don't you worry your 'ead, Sir," said the gardener. "It don't come out of their pocket. All these I-talians is run by one man. Millionaire, so they tells me. Any'ow, it's settled now."
"Well, perhaps it'll teach them to be more careful."
"I 'ope not, Sir," said the gardener. "'Ave another one or two of 'em in 'ere, and we'll get the gate so as it won't bang."