'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.'