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_ He lived in a low, blackish-crimson heavy-browed house at the
corner of a street along which electric cars were continually
thundering. There was a thin cream of mud on the pavements and
about two inches of mud in the roadway, rich, nourishing mud like
Indian ink half-mixed. The prospect of carrying a pound or so of
that unique mud into a civilized house affrighted me, but Mr
Brindley opened his door with his latchkey and entered the abode
as unconcernedly as if some fair repentent had cleansed his feet
with her tresses.
'Don't worry too much about the dirt,' he said. 'You're in
Bursley.'
The house seemed much larger inside than out. A gas-jet burnt in
the hall, and sombre portieres gave large mysterious hints of
rooms. I could hear, in the distance, the noise of frizzling over
a fire, and of a child crying. Then a tall, straight, wellmade,
energetic woman appeared like a conjuring trick from behind a
portiere.
'How do you do, Mr Loring?' she greeted me, smiling. 'So glad to
meet you.'
'My wife,' Mr Brindley explained gravely.
'Now, I may as well tell you now, Bob,' said she, still smiling at
me. 'Bobbie's got a sore throat and it may be mumps; the chimney's
been on fire and we're going to be summoned; and you owe me
sixpence.'
'Why do I owe you sixpence?'
'Because Annie's had her baby and it's a girl.'
'That's all right. Supper ready?'
'Supper is waiting for you.'
She laughed. 'Whenever I have anything to tell my husband, I
always tell him at ONCE!' she said. 'No matter who's there.' She
pronounced 'once' with a wholehearted enthusiasm for its vowel
sound that I have never heard equalled elsewhere, and also with a
very magnified 'w' at the beginning of it. Often when I hear the
word 'once' pronounced in less downright parts of the world, I
remember how they pronounce it in the Five Towns, and there rises
up before me a complete picture of the district, its atmosphere,
its spirit.
Mr Brindley led me to a large bathroom that had a faint odour of
warm linen. In addition to a lot of assorted white babyclothes
there were millions of towels in that bathroom. He turned on a tap
and the place was instantly full of steam from a jet of boiling
water.
'Now, then,' he said, 'you can start.'
As he showed no intention of leaving me, I did start. 'Mind you
don't scald yourself,' he warned me, 'that water's HOT.' While I
was washing, he prepared to wash. I suddenly felt as if I had been
intimate with him and his wife for about ten years.
'So this is Bursley!' I murmured, taking my mouth out of a towel.
'Bosley, we call it,' he said. 'Do you know the limerick--"There
was a young woman of Bosley"?'
'No.'
He intoned the local limerick. It was excellently good; not meet
for a mixed company, but a genuine delight to the true amateur.
One good limerick deserves another. It happened that I knew a
number of the unprinted Rossetti limericks, precious things, not
at all easy to get at. I detailed them to Mr Brindley, and I do
not exaggerate when I say that I impressed him. I recovered all
the ground I had lost upon cigarettes and newspapers. He
appreciated those limericks with a juster taste than I should have
expected. So, afterwards, did his friends. My belief is that I am
to this day known and revered in Bursley, not as Loring the
porcelain expert from the British Museum, but as the man who
first, as it were, brought the good news of the Rossetti limericks
from Ghent to Aix.
'Now, Bob,' an amicable voice shrieked femininely up from the
ground-floor, 'am I to send the soup to the bathroom or are you
coming down?'
A limerick will make a man forget even his dinner.
Mr Brindley performed once more with his eyes that something that
was, not a wink, but a wink unutterably refined and spiritualized.
This time I comprehended its import. Its import was to the effect
that women are women.
We descended, Mr Brindley still in his knickerbockers.
'This way,' he said, drawing aside a portiere. Mrs Brindley, as we
entered the room, was trotting a male infant round and round a
table charged with everything digestible and indigestible. She
handed the child, who was in its nightdress, to a maid.
'Say good night to father.'
'Good ni', faver,' the interesting creature piped.
'By-bye, sonny,' said the father, stooping to tickle. 'I suppose,'
he added, when maid and infant had gone, 'if one's going to have
mumps, they may as well all have it together.'
'Oh, of course,' the mother agreed cheerfully. 'I shall stick them
all into a room.'
'How many children have you?' I inquired with polite curiosity.
'Three,' she said; 'that's the eldest that you've seen.'
What chiefly struck me about Mrs Brindley was her serene air of
capableness, of having a self-confidence which experience had
richly justified. I could see that she must be an extremely
sensible mother. And yet she had quite another aspect too--how
shall I explain it?--as though she had only had children in her
spare time.
We sat down. The room was lighted by four candles, on the table. I
am rather short-sighted, and so I did not immediately notice that
there were low book-cases all round the walls. Why the presence of
these book-cases should have caused me a certain astonishment I do
not know, but it did. I thought of Knype station, and the scenery,
and then the other little station, and the desert of pots and
cinders, and the mud in the road and on the pavement and in the
hall, and the baby-linen in the bathroom, and three children all
down with mumps, and Mr Brindley's cap and knickerbockers and
cigarettes; and somehow the books--I soon saw there were at least
a thousand of them, and not circulating-library books, either, but
BOOKS--well, they administered a little shock to me.
To Mr Brindley's right hand was a bottle of Bass and a corkscrew.
'Beer!' he exclaimed, with solemn ecstasy, with an ecstasy gross
and luscious. And, drawing the cork, he poured out a glass, with
fine skill in the management of froth, and pushed it towards me.
'No, thanks,' I said.
'No beer!' he murmured, with benevolent, puzzled disdain.
'Whisky?'
'No, thanks,' I said. 'Water.'
'_I_ know what Mr Loring would like,' said Mrs Brindley, jumping
up. 'I KNOW what Mr Loring would like.' She opened a cupboard and
came back to the table with a bottle, which she planted in front
of me. 'Wouldn't you, Mr Loring?'
It was a bottle of mercurey, a wine which has given me many
dreadful dawns, but which I have never known how to refuse.
'I should,' I admitted; 'but it's very bad for me.'
'Nonsense!' said she. She looked at her husband in triumph.
'Beer!' repeated Mr Brindley with undiminished ecstasy, and drank
about two-thirds of a glass at one try. Then he wiped the froth
from his moustache. 'Ah!' he breathed low and soft. 'Beer!'
They called the meal supper. The term is inadequate. No term that
I can think of would be adequate. Of its kind the thing was
perfect. Mrs Brindley knew that it was perfect. Mr Brindley also
knew that it was perfect. There were prawns in aspic. I don't know
why I should single out that dish, except that it seemed strange
to me to have crossed the desert of pots and cinders in order to
encounter prawns in aspic. Mr Brindley ate more cold roast beef
than I had ever seen any man eat before, and more pickled walnuts.
It is true that the cold roast beef transcended all the cold roast
beef of my experience. Mrs Brindley regaled herself largely on
trifle, which Mr Brindley would not approach, preferring a most
glorious Stilton cheese. I lost touch, temporarily, with the
intellectual life. It was Mr Brindley who recalled me to it.
'Jane,' he said. (This was at the beef and pickles stage.)
No answer.
'Jane!'
Mrs Brindley turned to me. 'My name is not Jane,' she said,
laughing, and making a moue simultaneously. 'He only calls me that
to annoy me. I told him I wouldn't answer to it, and I won't. He
thinks I shall give in because we've got "company"! But I won't
treat you as "company", Mr Loring, and I shall expect you to take
my side. What dreadful weather we're having, aren't we?'
'Dreadful!' I joined in the game.
'Jane!'
'Did you have a comfortable journey down?'
'Yes, thank you.'
'Well, then, Mary!' Mr Brindley yielded.
'Thank you very much, Mr Loring, for your kind assistance,' said
his wife. 'Yes, dearest?'
Mr Brindley glanced at me over his second glass of beer.
'If those confounded kids are going to have mumps,' he addressed
his words apparendy into the interior of the glass, 'it probably
means the doctor, and the doctor means money, and I shan't be able
to afford the Hortulus Animoe.'
I opened my ears.
'My husband goes stark staring mad sometimes,' said Mrs Brindley
to me. 'It lasts for a week or so, and pretty nearly lands us in
the workhouse. This time it's the Hortulus Animoe. Do you know
what it is? I don't.'
'No,' I said, and the prestige of the British Museum trembled.
Then I had a vague recollection. 'There's an illuminated
manuscript of that name in the Imperial Library of Vienna, isn't
there?'
'You've got it in one,' said Mr Brindley. 'Wife, pass those
walnuts.'
'You aren't by any chance buying it?' I laughed.
'No,' he said. 'A Johnny at Utrecht is issuing a facsimile of it,
with all the hundred odd miniatures in colour. It will be the
finest thing in reproduction ever done. Only seventy-five copies
for England.'
'How much?' I asked.
'Well,' said he, with a preliminary look at his wife,'thirty-three
pounds.'
'Thirty-three POUNDS!' she screamed. 'You never told me.'
'My wife never will understand,' said Mr Brindley, 'that complete
confidence between two human beings is impossible.'
'I shall go out as a milliner, that's all,' Mrs Brindley returned.
'Remember, the Dictionary of National Biography isn't paid for
yet.'
'I'm glad I forgot that, otherwise I shouldn't have ordered the
Hortulus.'
'You've not ORDERED it?'
'Yes, I have. It'll be here tomorrow--at least the first part
will.'
Mrs Brindley affected to fall back dying in her chair.
'Quite mad!' she complained to me. 'Quite mad. It's a hopeless
case.'
But obviously she was very proud of the incurable lunatic.
'But you're a book-collector!' I exclaimed, so struck by these
feats of extravagance in a modest house that I did not conceal my
amazement.
'Did you think I collected postage-stamps?' the husband retorted.
'No, _I_'m not a book-collector, but our doctor is. He has a few
books, if you like. Still, I wouldn't swop him; he's much too fond
of fashionable novels.'
'You know you're always up his place,' said the wife; 'and I
wonder what _I_ should do if it wasn't for the doctor's novels!'
The doctor was evidently a favourite of hers.
'I'm not always up at his place,' the husband contradicted. 'You
know perfectly well I never go there before midnight. And HE knows
perfectly well that I only go because he has the best whisky in
the town. By the way, I wonder whether he knows that Simon Fuge is
dead. He's got one of his etchings. I'll go up.'
'Who's Simon Fuge?' asked Mrs Brindley.
'Don't you remember old Fuge that kept the Blue Bell at Cauldon?'
'What? Simple Simon?'
'Yes. Well, his son.'
'Oh! I remember. He ran away from home once, didn't he, and his
mother had a port-wine stain on her left cheek? Oh, of course. I
remember him perfectly. He came down to the Five Towns some years
ago for his aunt's funeral. So he's dead. Who told you?'
'Mr Loring.'
'Did you know him?' she glanced at me.
'I scarcely knew him,' said I. 'I saw it in the paper.'
'What, the Signal?'
'The Signal's the local rag,' Mr Brindley interpolated. 'No. It's
in the Gazette.'
'The Birmingham Gazette?'
'No, bright creature--the Gazette,' said Mr Brindley.
'Oh!' She seemed puzzled.
'Didn't you know he was a painter?' the husband condescendingly
catechized.
'I knew he used to teach at the Hanbridge School of Art,' said Mrs
Brindley stoutly. 'Mother wouldn't let me go there because of
that. Then he got the sack.'
'Poor defenceless thing! How old were you?'
'Seventeen, I expect.'
'I'm much obliged to your mother.'
'Where did he die?' Mrs Brindley demanded.
'At San Remo,' I answered. 'Seems queer him dying at San Remo in
September, doesn't it?'
'Why?'
'San Remo is a winter place. No one ever goes there before
December.'
'Oh, is it?' the lady murmured negligently. 'Then that would be
just like Simon Fuge. _I_ was never afraid of him,' she added, in
a defiant tone, and with a delicious inconsequence that choked her
husband in the midst of a draught of beer.
'You can laugh,' she said sturdily.
At that moment there was heard a series of loud explosive sounds
in the street. They continued for a few seconds apparently just
outside the dining-room window. Then they stopped, and the noise
of the bumping electric cars resumed its sway over the ear.
'That's Oliver!' said Mr Brindley, looking at his watch. 'He must
have come from Manchester in an hour and a half. He's a terror.'
'Glass! Quick!' Mrs Brindley exclaimed. She sprang to the
sideboard, and seized a tumbler, which Mr Brindley filled from a
second bottle of Bass. When the door of the room opened she was
standing close to it, laughing, with the full, frothing glass in
her hand.
A tall, thin man, rather younger than Mr Brindley and his wife,
entered. He wore a long dust-coat and leggings, and he carried a
motorist's cap in a great hand. No one spoke; but little puffs of
laughter escaped all Mrs Brindley's efforts to imprison her mirth.
Then the visitor took the glass with a magnificent broad smile,
and said, in a rich and heavy Midland voice--
'Here's to moy wife's husband!'
And drained the nectar.
'Feel better now, don't you?' Mrs Brindley inquired.
'Aye, Mrs Bob, I do!' was the reply. 'How do, Bob?'
'How do?' responded my host laconically. And then with gravity:
'Mr Loring--Mr Oliver Colclough--thinks he knows something about
music.'
'Glad to meet you, sir,' said Mr Colclough, shaking hands with me.
He had a most attractively candid smile, but he was so long and
lanky that he seemed to pervade the room like an omnipresence.
'Sit down and have a bit of cheese, Oliver,' said Mrs Brindley, as
she herself sat down.
'No, thanks, Mrs Bob. I must be getting towards home.'
He leaned on her chair.
'Trifle, then?'
'No, thanks.'
'Machine going all right?'
'Like oil. Never stopped th' engine once.'
'Did you get the Sinfonia Domestica, Ol?' Mr Brindley inquired.
'Didn't I say as I should get it, Bob?'
'You SAID you would.'
'Well, I've got it.'
'In Manchester?'
'Of course.'
Mr Brindley's face shone with desire and Mr Oliver Colclough's
face shone with triumph.
'Where is it?'
'In the hall.'
'My hall?'
'Aye!'
'We'll play it, Ol.'
'No, really, Bob! I can't stop now. I promised the wife--'
'We'll PLAY it, Ol! You'd no business to make promises. Besides,
suppose you'd had a puncture!'
'I expect you've heard Strauss's Sinfonia Domestica, Mr Loring, up
in the village?' Mr Colclough addressed me. He had surrendered to
the stronger will.
'In London?' I said. 'No. But I've heard of it.'
'Bob and I heard it in Manchester last week, and we thought it 'ud
be a bit of a lark to buy the arrangement for pianoforte duet.'
'Come and listen to it,' said Mr Brindley. 'That is, if nobody
wants any more beer.' _
Read next: PART XII - THE DEATH OF SIMON FUGE: CHAPTER IV
Read previous: PART XII - THE DEATH OF SIMON FUGE: CHAPTER II
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