Mrs. Bindle: Some Incidents from the Domestic Life of the Bindles, Jenkins [popular romance novels TXT] 📗

left the kitchen.

"Come in here," she cried, opening the parlour door, and hardly giving Bindle time to greet Charley.

"'Ere," cried Bindle, "why——?"

"Never mind, Uncle Joe, Charley's going to mend the musical-box."

"But wot about it—'im," Bindle corrected himself, indicating the kitchen with a jerk of his thumb.

"Charley's-going-to-mend-the-musical-box," she repeated with great distinctness. And again Bindle marvelled at the grown-upness of her.

He looked across at his nephew, a puzzled expression creasing his forehead.

"Better do as she says, Uncle Joe," laughed Charley. "It saves time."

"But——" began Bindle.

"There it is, Charley," cried Millie, indicating a[Pg 104] mahogany object, with glass top and sides that gave an indelicate view of its internal organism. Being a dutiful husband, Charley lifted down the box and placed it on to the table.

"For Gawd's sake be careful of Ole Dumb Abraham," cried Bindle. "If——"

"Of who?" cried Millie, her pretty brows puckered.

Bindle explained, watching with anxious eyes as Charley lifted the treasure from the small table on which it habitually rested, and placed it upon the centre table, where Millie had cleared a space.

Charley's apparent unconcern gave Bindle an unpleasant feeling at the base of his spine. He had been disciplined to regard the parlour as holy ground, and the musical-box as the holiest thing it contained.

For the next three-quarters of an hour Bindle and Millie watched Charley, as, with deft fingers, he took the affair to pieces and put it together again.

Finally, with much coaxing and a little oil, he got it to give forth an an�mic interpretation of "The Keel Row." Then it gurgled, slowed down and gave up the struggle, in consequence of which Charley made further incursions into its interior.

Becoming accustomed to the thought of Aunt Anne's legacy being subjected to the profanation of screw-driver and oil-bottle, Bindle sat down by the window, and proceeded to exchange confidences with Millie, who had made it clear to him that her aunt and son were to be left to their t�te-�-t�te undisturbed.

The conversation between uncle and niece was punctuated by snatches from "The Keel Row," as[Pg 105] Charley was successful in getting the sluggish mechanism of Dumb Abraham into temporary motion.

Occasionally he would give expression to a hiss or murmur of impatience, and Millie would smile across at him an intimate little smile of sympathy.

Suddenly, gaunt tragedy stalked into the room.

Crash!

"My Gawd!"

"Oh, Charley!"

"Damn!"

And Poor Aunt Anne's musical-box lay on the floor, a ruin of splintered glass.

Charley Dixon sucked a damaged thumb, Millie clung to his arm, solicitous and enquiring, whilst Bindle gazed down at the broken mass, fear in his eyes, and a sense of irretrievable disaster clutching at his heart.

Charley began to explain, Millie demanded to see the damaged thumb—but Bindle continued to gaze at the sacred relic.

Five minutes later, the trio left the parlour. As noiselessly as conspirators they tip-toed along the passage to the kitchen door, which stood ajar.

Through the aperture Mrs. Bindle could be seen seated at the table, Joseph the Second reposing in the crook of her left arm, whilst she, with her right hand, was endeavouring to work the monkey-on-a-stick.

In her eyes was a strange softness, a smile broke the hard lines of her mouth, whilst from her lips came an incessant flow of baby language.

For several minutes they watched. They saw Mrs.[Pg 106] Bindle lay aside the monkey-on-a-stick, and bend over the babe, murmuring the sounds that come by instinct to every woman's lips.

At a sign from Millie, they entered. Mrs. Bindle glanced over her shoulder in their direction; but other and weightier matters claimed her attention.

"Lizzie," began Bindle, who had stipulated that he should break the awful news, urging as his reason that it had to be done with "tack." He paused. Mrs. Bindle took no notice; but continued to bend over Little Joe, making strange sounds.

"Lizzie——" he began, paused, then in a rush the words came. "We broken the musical-box."

He stopped, that the heavens might have an opportunity of falling.

"Did-he-love-his-Auntie-Lizzie-blossom-um-um-um-um."

Charley and Millie exchanged glances; but Bindle was too intent upon his disastrous mission to be conscious of anything but the storm he knew was about to break.

"Did you 'ear, Lizzie," he continued. "We broken the musical-box. Smashed it all to smithereens. Done for it," he added, as if to leave no loophole for misconception as to the appalling nature of the tragedy.

He held his breath, as one who has just tugged at the cord of a shower-bath.

"Oh! go away do!" she cried. "Um-um-um-um-prettyums."

"Pore Aunt Anne's musical-box," he repeated dully. "It's smashed."[Pg 107]

"Oh, bother the musical-box! Um-um-um-per-weshus-um-um-um."

Mrs. Bindle had not even looked up.

It was Millie who shepherded the others back into the parlour, where Bindle mopped his brow, with the air of a man who, having met death face to face, has survived.

"Well, I'm blowed!" was all he said.

And Millie smiled across at Charley, a smile of superior understanding.[Pg 108]

CHAPTER V MRS. BINDLE BURNS INCENSE

"I wonder you allow that girl to wear such disgusting clothes."

For the last five minutes Mrs. Bindle had been watching Alice, Mrs. Hearty's maid, as she moved about the room, tidying-up. The girl had just returned from her evening out, and her first act had been to bring Mrs. Hearty her nightly glass of Guinness and "snack of bread-and-cheese," an enormous crust torn from a new cottage loaf and plentifully spread with butter, flanked by about a quarter-of-a-pound of cheese. Now that the girl had left the room, Mrs. Bindle could contain herself no longer.

Mrs. Hearty was a woman upon whom fat had descended as a disguise. Her manifold chins rippled downwards until they became absorbed in the gigantic wave of her bust. She had a generous appetite, and was damned with a liking for fat-forming foods.

With her sister she had nothing in common; but in Bindle she had found a kindred spirit. The very sight of him would invariably set her heaving and pulsating with laughter and protestations of "Oh, Joe, don't!"

For response to her sister's comment, Mrs. Hearty[Pg 109] took a deep draught of Guinness and then, with a film of froth still upon her upper lip, she retorted, "It's 'er night out," and relapsed into wheezes and endeavours to regain her breath.

Mrs. Bindle was not in a good humour. She had called hoping to find Mr. Hearty returned from choir-practice, after which was to be announced the deacons' decision as to who was to succeed Mr. Smithers in training the choir.

Her brother-in-law's success was with her something between an inspiration and a hobby. It became the absorbing interest in life, outside the chapel and her home. No wife, or mother, ever watched the progress of a husband, or son, with keener interest, or greater admiration, than Mrs. Bindle that of Mr. Hearty.

As a girl, she had been pleasure-loving. There were those who even went to the extent of regarding her as flighty. She attended theatres and music-halls, which she had not then regarded as "places of sin," and her contemporaries classified her as something of a flirt; but disillusionment had come with marriage. She soon realised that she had made the great and unforgivable mistake of marrying the wrong man. It turned her from the "carnal," and was the cause of her joining the Alton Road Chapel, at which Mr. Hearty worshipped.

From that date she began a careful and elaborate preparation for the next world.

Although she nightly sought the Almighty to forgive her her trespasses, volunteering the information[Pg 110] that she in turn would forgive those who trespassed against her, she never forgave Bindle for his glib and ready tongue, which had obscured her judgment to the extent of allowing to escape from the matrimonial noose, a potential master-greengrocer with three shops.

There was nothing in her attitude towards Mr. Hearty suggestive of sentiment. She was a woman, and she bowed the knee at an altar where women love to worship.

"I call it——" Mrs. Bindle stopped short as Alice re-entered the room with a small dish of pickled onions, without which Mrs. Hearty would have found it impossible to sleep.

With a woman's instinct, Alice realised that Mrs. Bindle disapproved of her low-cut, pale blue blouse, and the short skirt that exposed to the world's gaze so much of the nether Alice.

"You ain't been lonely, mum?" she queried solicitously, as she took a final look round before going to bed, to see that everything was in order.

Mrs. Hearty shook her head and undulated violently.

"It's my breath," she panted, and proceeded to hit her chest with the flat of her doubled-up fist. "'Ad a nice time?" she managed to gasp in the tone of a mistress who knows and understands, and is known and understood by, her maid.

"Oh! it was lovely," cried Alice ecstatically. "I went to the pictures with"—she hesitated and blushed—"a friend," then, pride getting the better of self-consciousness, she added, "a gentleman friend, mum.[Pg 111] There was a filum about a young girl running away with 'er boy on a horse who turned out to be a millionaire and she looked lovely in her veil and orange-blossom and 'im that 'andsome."

"And when's it to be, Alice?" enquired Mrs. Hearty, between the assaults upon her chest.

"Oh, mum!" giggled Alice, and a moment later she had disappeared round the door, with a "Good night, mum, mind you sleeps well."

"I'm surprised the way you let that girl talk to you, Martha," snapped Mrs. Bindle, almost before the door had closed behind the retreating Alice. "You allow her to be too familiar. If you give them an inch, they'll take an ell," she added.

"She's a good gal," gasped Mrs. Hearty, as she lifted the glass of Guinness to her lips. "It's gone orf," she added a moment later. "It ain't wot it used to be," and she shook a despondent head as she replaced the almost empty glass upon the table.

"You'd be better without it," was the unsympathetic rejoinder, then, not to be diverted from the topic of Alice and her scanty attire, Mrs. Bindle added, "Her blouse was disgusting, and as for her skirt, I should be ashamed for her to be seen entering my house."

Mrs. Bindle believed in appearances as she believed in "the Lord," and it is open to question, if the two had at any time clashed, whether appearances would have been sacrificed.

"She's all right," wheezed Mrs. Hearty comfortably, through a mouthful of bread-and-cheese.[Pg 112]

"The way girls dress now makes me hot all over," snapped Mrs. Bindle. "The police ought to stop it."

"They,"—with a gigantic swallow Mrs. Hearty reduced the bread-and-cheese to conversational proportions,—"they like it," she gasped at length, and broke into ripples and wheezes.

"Don't be disgusting, Martha. You make me ashamed. You ought to speak to Alice. It's not respectable, her going about like that."

Mrs. Hearty made an effort to speak; but the words failed to penetrate the barrage of bread-and-cheese—Mrs. Hearty did everything with gusto.

"Supposing I was to go out in a short skirt like that. What would you say then?"

"You—you ain't got the legs, Lizzie," and Mrs. Hearty was off into a paroxysm of gasps and undulations.

"Oh don't, don't," she gasped, as if Mrs. Bindle were responsible for her agony. "You'll be the death of me," she cried, as she wiped her eyes with a soiled pocket-handkerchief.

To Mrs. Hearty, laughter came as an impulse and an agony. She would implore the world at large not to make her laugh, heaving and shaking as she protested. She was good-natured, easy-going, and popular with her friends, who marvelled at what it was she had seen in the sedate and decorous Mr. Hearty to prompt her to marry him.

During her sister's paroxysm, Mrs. Bindle preserved[Pg 113] a dignified silence. She always deplored Mrs. Hearty's lack of self-control.

"There are the neighbours to consider," she continued at length. Mrs. Bindle's thoughts were always with her brother-in-law. "Look how low her blouse was."

"It's 'ealthy," puffed Mrs. Hearty, who could always be depended upon to find excuses for a black sheep's blackness.

"I call it disgusting." Mrs. Bindle's mouth shut with a snap.

"You——" Mrs. Hearty's reply was stifled in a sudden fit of coughing. She heaved and struggled for breath, while her face took on a deep purple hue.

Mrs. Bindle rose and proceeded to bestow a series of resounding smacks with the flat of her hand upon Mrs. Hearty's ample back. There was a heartiness in the blows that savoured of the Old rather than the New Testament.

Nearly five minutes elapsed before Mrs. Hearty was sufficiently recovered to explain that a crumb had gone the wrong way.

"Serves you right for encouraging that girl in her wickedness," was Mrs. Bindle's unsympathetic comment as she returned to her chair. Vaguely she saw in her sister's paroxysm, the rebuke of a frowning Providence.

"You wasn't always like wot you are now," complained Mrs. Hearty at length.

"I never dressed anything like that girl." There was a note of fierceness in Mrs. Bindle's voice,[Pg 114] "and I defy you to say I did, Martha Hearty, so there."

"Didn't I 'ave to speak to you once about your stockings?" Mrs. Hearty's recent attack seemed to have rendered speech easier.

"No wonder you choke," snapped Mrs. Bindle angrily, "saying