The Complete Five Towns Collections. Bennett Arnold
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 apparently 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