The concerts became the central incident in a kind of ritual. At seven o’clock the two, or sometimes three, would meet in the grill room behind the bar at Joey’s and consume a gross but splendid repast of tripe and onions together with a pint or more of bitter Burton. All the best music, they had decided, was German, and beer was the only drink on which it could be fully appreciated, de Quincey’s preference for laudanum notwithstanding. Pleasantly elated, they would cross the road to the town-hall and take their familiar seats, pleased to recognise the people who, like themselves, were regular attendants or subscribers to this unfashionable function; and Boyce, who, by virtue of his distinguished parentage, knew every one in North Bromwich who was interested in music, would point out to them all the distinguished people who were present: Oldham, the critic of the _Mail_, whom Arthur Boyce declared to be the soundest living writer on musical subjects, and Marsden, who did the musical criticism for the _Courier_. Matthew knew them both. Oldham, he said, was a wonderful fellow, who wrote with a pen of vitriol that made such short work of baser metals that the gold of beauty appeared brighter for his writing. Oldham became Edwin’s prophet; but, on the whole, he preferred the looks of Marsden. “What is Marsden like?” he asked. “Marsden? Oh, well, as a matter of fact, Marsden’s a bit of a gas bag. The governor says that he always reminds him of an old hen. Didn’t you notice him in Joey’s talking nineteen to the dozen to that queer fellow with a face like a full moon who sits in front of us?” The fellow with the face like a full-moon was only one of twenty or thirty people with whom the friends experienced a sort of comradeship on these nights. Perhaps the most wonderful time was the end of the concert when they would walk out together into the spring night, parting at the corner of the town-hall; and the memory of great musical moments would accompany Edwin home through miles of darkling country, and even fill his little room at Halesby with their remembered glory or wander through his dreams. His life at home was the least satisfactory part of these enchanted years. There were moments, indeed, when it seemed as if the ideal relationship with his father, that had been his early ambition, were being realised. Sometimes, on a Sunday morning, they would walk round the garden together in the sun, and Edwin would experience a return of the passionate good-will and anxiety to please that had overwhelmed him in the moment of their bereavement; but their two natures were radically so different that such moments were rare, and, when they came, were really more of an embarrassment than a pleasure.