‘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 bookcases all round the walls. Why the presence of these bookcases 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.’
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.