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 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.'