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

The boy tossed it on to the small flower-bed in the centre of the garden, where Mrs. Bindle was endeavouring to cultivate geraniums from slips supplied by a fellow-worshipper at the Alton Road Chapel. These geranium slips were the stars in the grey firmament of her life. She tended them assiduously, and always kept a jug of water just inside the parlour-window with which to discourage investigating cats. It was she too that had planted the lobelia-border.

The queue seemed hypnotised by the overwhelming personality of the big man. With the fatalism of despair they decided that the gods were against them, and that he really had achieved the success he claimed. They still lingered, as if instinct told them that dramatic moments were pending.

"I don't doubt but wot I'll be very comfortable," remarked the big man contentedly. "'Ere, catch 'old, Charley," he cried, tossing the lad a colander, possessed of more holes than the manufacturer had ever dreamed of.

Charley turned too late, and the colander caught a geranium which, alone among its fellows, had shown a half-hearted tendency to bloom. That particular flower was Mrs. Bindle's ewe-lamb.[Pg 135]

"Ain't 'e a knock-out?" cried the big man, pausing for a moment to gaze at his offspring. "Don't take after 'is pa, and that's a fact," and he exposed three or four dark-brown stumps of teeth.

"P'raps you ain't 'is father," giggled a feminine voice at the end of the queue.

The big man turned in the direction from which the voice had come, stared stolidly at an inoffensive little man, who had "not guilty" written all over him, then, deliberately swinging round, he lifted a small wicker clothes-basket from the cart.

"'Ere, catch it, Charley," he cried, and without waiting to assure himself of Charley's willingness or ability to do so, he pitched it over the railings.

Charley turned just in time to see the basket coming. He endeavoured to avoid it, tripped over the colander, and sat down in the centre of the geranium-bed, carrying riot and desolation with him.

"Ain't you a——" but Charley was never to know how he appeared to his father at that moment.

Observing that several heads were turned towards the front door, the eyes of the big man had instinctively followed their direction. It was what he saw there that had caused him to pause in describing his offspring.

Standing very still, her face deathly pale, with no sign of her lips beyond a thin, grey line, stood Mrs. Bindle, her eyes fixed upon the geranium-bed and the desolation reigning there. Her breath came in short jerks.

With an activity of which his previous movements[Pg 136] had given no indication, Charley climbed the railings to the comparative safety of the street.

Mrs. Bindle turned her gaze upon the big man.

"'Ere, come along, let me get in," he cried, pushing his way through the crowd, which showed no inclination for resistance. The little man who had first arrived was already well outside, talking to the woman with the tweed cap and hat-pin, while she of the foulard blouse was edging down the path towards the gate. None showed the least desire to protest against the big man's claim to the house by right of conquest—and he passed on to his Waterloo.

"I taken this 'ouse," he cried, as he approached the grim figure on the doorstep. "Fifteen an' a kick a week, an' cheap at 'alf the price," he added jovially.

"'Ere, get on wiv it, Charley," he called out over his shoulder.

Charley, however, stood gazing at his parent with a greater show of interest than he had hitherto manifested. He seemed instinctively to grasp the dramatic possibilities of the situation.

"Thought I'd bring the sticks wiv me, missis," said the man genially. "Nothink like makin' sure in these days." He stopped suddenly. Without a word, Mrs. Bindle had turned and disappeared into the house.

"May as well pay a deposit," he remarked, thrusting a dirty hand into his trouser pocket. He glanced over his shoulder and winked jocosely at the woman with the foulard blouse.

The next thing he knew was that Drama with a capital "D" had taken a hand in the game. The[Pg 137] crowd drew its breath with almost a sob of surprised expectancy.

Into Charley's vacant eyes there came a look of interest, and into the big man's mouth, just as he turned his head, there came a something that was wet and tasted odiously of carbolic.

He staggered back, his eyes bulging, as Mrs. Bindle, armed with a large mop, which she had taken the precaution to wet, stood regarding him like an avenging fury. Her eyes blazed, and her nostrils were distended like those of a frightened thoroughbred.

Before the big man had time to splutter his protests, she had swung round the mop and brought the handle down with a crack upon his bare, bald head. Then, once more swinging round to the business end of the mop, she drew back a step and charged.

The mop got the big man just beneath the chin. For a moment he stood on one leg, his arms extended, like the figure of Mercury on the Piccadilly Circus fountain.

Mrs. Bindle gave another thrust to the mop, and down he went with a thud, his head coming with a sharp crack against the tiles of the path.

The crowd murmured its delight. Charley danced from one foot to the other, the expression on his face proving conclusively that the vacuous look with which he had arrived was merely a mask assumed for defensive purposes.

"Get up!"

Into these two words Mrs. Bindle precipitated an amount of feeling that thrilled the crowd. The big[Pg 138] man, however, lay prone, his eyes fixed in fear upon the end of the mop.

"Get up!" repeated Mrs. Bindle. "I'll teach you to come disturbing a respectable home. Look at my garden."

As he still made no attempt to move, she turned suddenly and doubled along the passage, reappearing a moment later with a pail of water with which she had been washing out the scullery. Without a moment's hesitation she emptied the contents over the recumbent figure of the big man. The house-cloth fell across his eyes, like a bandage, and the hearthstone took him full on the nose.

"Oo-er!"

That one act of Mrs. Bindle's had saved from entire annihilation the faith of a child. For the first time in his existence, Charley realised that there was a God of retribution.

Murmurs of approval came from the crowd.

"Give it to 'im, missis, 'e done it," shouted one. "It warn't the kid's fault, blinkin' 'Un."

"Dirty profiteer," cried the thin woman. "Look at 'is stummick," she added as if in support of her words.

"Get up!" Again Mrs. Bindle's hard, uninflected words sounded like the accents of destiny.

She accompanied her exhortation by a jab from the mop-end of her weapon directed at the centre of that portion of the big man's anatomy which had been advanced as proof of his profiteering propensities.

He raised himself a few inches; but Mrs. Bindle,[Pg 139] with all the inconsistency of a woman, dashed the mop once more in his face, and down went his head again with a crack.

"Charley!" he roared; but there was nothing of the Paladin about Charley. Between him and his father at that moment were eleven years of heavy-handed tyranny, and Charley remained on the safety-side of the railings.

"Get up! You great, hulkin' brute," cried Mrs. Bindle, reversing the mop and getting in a stroke at his solar-plexus which would have made her fame in pig-sticking.

"Grrrrumph!" The fat man's exclamation was involuntary.

"Get up, I tell you," she reiterated. "You fat, ugly son of Satan, you Beelzebub, you leper, you Judas, you——" she paused a moment in her search for the undesirables from Holy Writ. Then, with inspiration, she added—"Barabbas."

The man made another effort to rise; but Mrs. Bindle brought the end of the mop down upon his head with a crack that sounded like a pistol-shot.

The expression on Charley's face changed. The lower jaw lifted. The loose, vacuous mouth spread. Charley was grinning.

For a moment the man lay still. Mrs. Bindle was standing over him with the mop, a tense and righteously indignant St. George over a particularly evil dragon.

Suddenly he gave tongue.

"'Elp!" he yelled. "I'm bein' murdered. 'Elp! Charley, where are you?" But Charley's grin had[Pg 140] expanded and he was actually rubbing his hands with enjoyment.

Mrs. Bindle brought the mop down on the man's mouth. "Stop it, you blaspheming son o' Belial," she cried.

The big man roared the louder; but he made no effort to rise.

"'Ere comes a flatty," cried a voice.

"Slop's a-comin'," echoed another, and a minute later, a clean-shaven embodiment of youthful dignity and self-possession, in a helmet and blue uniform, approached and began to make his way through the crowd towards the Bindles' gate.

From the position in which he lay the big man, unable to see that assistance was at hand, continued to roar for help.

At the approach of this symbol of the law, Mrs. Bindle stepped back and brought her mop to the stand-at-ease position.

The policeman looked from one to the other, and then proceeded to ferret somewhere in the tails of his tunic, whence he produced a notebook. This was obviously a case requiring literary expression.

The big man, seeing Mrs. Bindle fall back, turned his head and caught a glimpse of the policeman. Very cautiously he raised himself to a sitting posture.

"She's been murderin' me," he said, with one eye fixed warily upon the mop. "'Ere, Charley!" he cried, looking over his left shoulder.

Charley reluctantly approached, regretful that law and order had triumphed over red revolution.[Pg 141]

"Ain't she been tryin' to kill me?" demanded the big man of his offspring.

"Biffed 'im on the 'ead wiv the 'andle," corroborated the boy in a toneless voice.

"Poured water over me and 'it me in the stummick too, didn't she, Charley?" Once more the big man turned to his son for corroboration.

"Got 'im a rare 'un too!" agreed Charley, with a feeling in his voice that caused his father to look at him sharply. "Sloshed 'im on the jaw too," he added, as if finding pleasure in dwelling upon the sufferings of his parent.

"Do you wish to charge her?" asked the policeman in an official voice.

"'Charge me!'" broke in Mrs. Bindle. "'Charge me!' I should like to see 'im do it. See what 'e's done to my geraniums, bringing his filthy sticks into my front garden. 'Charge me!'" she repeated. "Just let him try it!" and she brought the mop to a position from which it could be launched at the big man's head.

Instinctively he sank down again on to the path, and the policeman interposed his body between the weapon and the vanquished.

"There's plenty of witnesses here to prove what he done," cried Mrs. Bindle shrilly.

Once more the big man raised himself to a sitting posture; but Mrs. Bindle had no intention of allowing him to control the situation. To her a policeman meant justice, and to this self-possessed lad in the uniform of unlimited authority she opened her heart and, at the same time, the vials of her wrath.[Pg 142]

"'Ere was I ironin' in my kitchen when this rabble," she indicated the crowd with the handle of the mop, "descended upon me like the plague of locusts." To Mrs. Bindle, scriptural allusion was a necessity.

"They said they wanted to take my 'ouse. Said I'd told them it was to let, the perjured scum of Judas. Then he came along"—she pointed to her victim who was gingerly feeling the bump that Mrs. Bindle's mop had raised—"and threw all that dirty lumber into my garden, and—and——" Here her voice broke, for to Mrs. Bindle those geranium slips were very dear.

"You'd better get up."

At the policeman's words the big man rose heavily to his feet. For a moment he stood still, as if to make quite sure that no bones were broken. Then his hand went to his neck-cloth and he produced a piece of hearthstone which had, apparently, become detached from the parent slab.

"Threw bricks at me," he complained, holding out the piece of hearthstone to the policeman.

"Ananias!" came Mrs. Bindle's uncompromising retort.

"Do you want to charge her?" asked the policeman brusquely.

"Serves 'im jolly well right," cried the woman with the tweed cap and hat-pin, pushing her way in front of a big man who obstructed her view.

"Oughter be run-in 'isself," agreed a pallid woman with a shawl over her head.[Pg 143]

"Look wot 'e done to 'er garding," mumbled the rag-and-bone man, pointing at the flower-bed with the air of one who has just made an important discovery.

"It's the likes of 'im wot makes strikes," commented the woman in the dolman. "Blinkin' profiteer."

"She's got pluck, any'ow," said a telephone mechanic, who had joined the crowd just before Charley's father had bent before the wind of Mrs. Bindle's displeasure. "Knocked 'im out in the first round. Regular George Carpenter," he added.

"You get them things out of my garden. If you don't I'll give you in charge."

The big man blinked, a puzzled expression creeping into his eyes. He looked at the policeman uncomprehendingly. This was an aspect of the case that had not,