The Grim Smile of the Five Towns

‘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.’

IV

The drawing-room was about twice as large as the dining-room, and it contained about four times as much furniture. Once again there were books all round the walls. A grand piano, covered with music, stood in a corner, and behind was a cabinet full of bound music.

Mr Brindley, seated on one corner of the bench in front of the piano, cut the leaves of the Sinfonia Domestica.

‘It’s the devil!’ he observed.