'My dear sir,' he said, with a return to his kindly exasperation, 'no
cigarette that is not fresh made can be called a cigarette.' I stood
corrected. 'You may pay as much as you like, but you can never buy
cigarettes as good as I can make out of an ounce of fresh B.D.V.
tobacco. Can you roll one?' I had to admit that I could not, I who in
Bloomsbury was accepted as an authority on cigarettes as well as on
porcelain. 'I'll roll you one, and you shall try it.'
He did so.
I gathered from his solemnity that cigarettes counted in the life of Mr
Brindley. He could not take cigarettes other than seriously. The worst
of it was that he was quite right. The cigarette which he constructed
for me out of his wretched B.D.V. tobacco was adorable, and I have made
my own cigarettes ever since. You will find B.D.V. tobacco all over the
haunts frequented by us of the Museum now-a-days, solely owing to the
expertise of Mr Brindley. A terribly capable and positive man! He KNEW,
and he knew that he knew.
He said nothing further as to Simon Fuge. Apparently he had forgotten
the decease.
'Do you often see the Gazette?' I asked, perhaps in the hope of
attracting him back to Fuge.
'No,' he said; 'the musical criticism is too rotten.'
Involuntarily I bridled. It was startling, and it was not agreeable, to
have one's favourite organ so abruptly condemned by a provincial
architect in knickerbockers and a cap, in the midst of all that
industrial ugliness. What could the Five Towns know about art? Yet here
was this fellow condemning the Gazette on artistic grounds. I offered
no defence, because he was right--again. But I did not like it.
'Do you ever see the Manchester Guardian?' he questioned, carrying the
war into my camp.
'No,' I said.
'Pity!' he ejaculated.
'I've often heard that it's a very good paper,' I said politely.
'It isn't a very good paper,' he laid me low. 'It's the best paper in
the world. Try it for a month--it gets to Euston at half-past
eight--and then tell me what you think.'
I saw that I must pull myself together. I had glided into the Five
Towns in a mood of gentle, wise condescension. I saw that it would be
as well, for my own honour and safety, to put on another mood as
quickly as possible, otherwise I might be left for dead on the field.
Certainly the fellow was provincial, curt, even brutal in his despisal
of diplomacy. Certainly he exaggerated the importance of cigarettes in
the great secular scheme of evolution. But he was a man; he was a very
tonic dose. I thought it would be safer to assume that he knew
everything, and that the British Museum knew very little. Yet at the
British Museum he had been quite different, quite deferential and
rather timid. Still, I liked him. I liked his eyes.
The train stopped at an incredible station situated in the centre of a
rolling desert whose surface consisted of broken pots and cinders. I
expect no one to believe this.
'Here we are,' said he blithely. 'No, give me the bag. Porter!'
His summons to the solitary porter was like a clap of thunder.