'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 conjuring5 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 mumps6; 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 vowel7 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 linen8. In addition to a lot of assorted9 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 detailed10 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 revered11 in Bursley, not as Loring the porcelain12 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 amicable13 voice shrieked14 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 wink15, but a wink unutterably refined and spiritualized. This time I comprehended its import. Its import was to the effect that women are women.
'This way,' he said, drawing aside a portiere. Mrs Brindley, as we entered the room, was trotting17 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 tickle18. '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.
What chiefly struck me about Mrs Brindley was her serene20 air of capableness, of having a self-confidence which experience had richly justified21. 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 astonishment22 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 cinders23, 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.
'Beer!' he exclaimed, with solemn ecstasy26, with an ecstasy gross and luscious27. And, drawing the cork25, he poured out a glass, with fine skill in the management of froth, and pushed it towards me.
'No, thanks,' I said.
'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 inadequate30. 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 prawns31 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 walnuts32. It is true that the cold roast beef transcended33 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.
No answer.
'Jane!'
Mrs Brindley turned to me. 'My name is not Jane,' she said, laughing, and making a moue simultaneously35. '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 apparently36 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 stark37 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 illuminated38 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.'
'Quite mad!' she complained to me. 'Quite mad. It's a hopeless case.'
'But you're a book-collector!' I exclaimed, so struck by these feats41 of extravagance in a modest house that I did not conceal42 my amazement43.
'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 perfectly44 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 stoutly45. '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 negligently46. 'Then that would be just like Simon Fuge. I was never afraid of him,' she added, in a defiant47 tone, and with a delicious inconsequence that choked her husband in the midst of a draught48 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 standing49 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 spoke50; but little puffs51 of laughter escaped all Mrs Brindley's efforts to imprison52 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 laconically53. 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 candid54 smile, but he was so long and lanky55 that he seemed to pervade56 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—'
'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 lark58 to buy the arrangement for pianoforte duet.'
'Come and listen to it,' said Mr Brindley. 'That is, if nobody wants any more beer.'
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1
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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cleansed
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| 弄干净，清洗( cleanse的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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conjuring
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| n.魔术 | |
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mumps
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| n.腮腺炎 | |
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vowel
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| n.元音；元音字母 | |
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8
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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9
assorted
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| adj.各种各样的，各色俱备的 | |
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detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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revered
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| v.崇敬，尊崇，敬畏( revere的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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porcelain
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| n.瓷；adj.瓷的，瓷制的 | |
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13
amicable
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| adj.和平的，友好的；友善的 | |
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shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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15
wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 | |
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16
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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17
trotting
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| 小跑，急走( trot的现在分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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18
tickle
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| v.搔痒，胳肢；使高兴；发痒；n.搔痒，发痒 | |
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19
eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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cinders
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| n.煤渣( cinder的名词复数 )；炭渣；煤渣路；煤渣跑道 | |
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bass
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| n.男低音(歌手)；低音乐器；低音大提琴 | |
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cork
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| n.软木，软木塞 | |
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ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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luscious
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| adj.美味的；芬芳的；肉感的，引与性欲的 | |
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benevolent
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| adj.仁慈的，乐善好施的 | |
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disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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inadequate
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| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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prawns
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| n.对虾，明虾( prawn的名词复数 ) | |
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walnuts
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| 胡桃（树）( walnut的名词复数 )； 胡桃木 | |
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transcended
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| 超出或超越（经验、信念、描写能力等）的范围( transcend的过去式和过去分词 )； 优于或胜过… | |
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34
pickles
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| n.腌菜( pickle的名词复数 )；处于困境；遇到麻烦；菜酱 | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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illuminated
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| adj.被照明的；受启迪的 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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incurable
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| adj.不能医治的，不能矫正的，无救的；n.不治的病人，无救的人 | |
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41
feats
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| 功绩，伟业，技艺( feat的名词复数 ) | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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stoutly
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| adv.牢固地，粗壮的 | |
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negligently
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defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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48
draught
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| n.拉，牵引，拖；一网（饮，吸，阵)；顿服药量，通风；v.起草，设计 | |
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49
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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50
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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51
puffs
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| n.吸( puff的名词复数 )；（烟斗或香烟的）一吸；一缕（烟、蒸汽等）；（呼吸或风的）呼v.使喷出( puff的第三人称单数 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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52
imprison
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| vt.监禁，关押，限制，束缚 | |
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53
laconically
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| adv.简短地，简洁地 | |
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54
candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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lanky
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| adj.瘦长的 | |
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56
pervade
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| v.弥漫，遍及，充满，渗透，漫延 | |
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57
puncture
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| n.刺孔，穿孔；v.刺穿，刺破 | |
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lark
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| n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏 | |
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