Bindle: Some Chapters in the Life of Joseph Bindle, Herbert George Jenkins [love letters to the dead TXT] 📗

to stop him. With a bound he reached the door and tore down the stairs.

"After him, you chaps," cried Guggers, and with yells and cries ranging from "Tally-ho!" to the "Bushmen's war-cry" the whole company streamed out of Bungem's and tore down "the High" in hot pursuit.

That night those who were late out beheld the strange sight of a white-faced man in evening-dress running apparently for his life, pursued by a pack of some two hundred other men similarly garbed and uttering the most horrible shouts and threats. Windows were thrown up and heads thrust out, and all wondered what could be the meaning of what the oldest, and consequently longest-suffering, townsman subsequently described as defying even his recollection.

Late that night the porter at St. Joseph's was aroused by a furious ringing of the bell, accompanied by a tremendous pounding at the door. On the doorstep he found, to his astonishment, the dishevelled figure of Graves, sobbing for breath and sanctuary, and with terror in his eyes. In the distance he heard a terrible outcry, which next morning he was told was the Australian Bushmen's war-cry.

IV

Bindle was awakened next morning by a continuous hammering at his bedroom door.

"Who the 'oppin' robin are yer?" he shouted; "shut up and go 'ome."

The door burst open, and Tom Little, Guggers, and Travers entered.

"Up you gug-gug-get," cried Guggers. "You must catch the 11.6."

"Look 'ere, ole Spit and Speak, if you're wantin' to get 'urt you're on the right road." Bindle grinned up at Guggers impudently. "I'm as tired as yer mother must be o' you."

"Up you get, you merry wight," cried Tom Little, laughing; "there's the devil to pay."

"There always is, exceptin' sometimes it's a woman," remarked Bindle, yawning. "Devils are cheaper, on the 'ole. What's the trouble?"

"The Master has invited you to lunch," broke in Travers, "and that ass Gravy never told us."

"You must be recalled to town," said Tom Little, "or we shall all be sent down. Now up you get."

Bindle climbed out of bed resplendent in pyjamas with alternate broad stripes of pale blue and white.

"'Oo's the Master? I'll lunch with anybody wot's not temperance." Bindle was sleepy.

"It's the Master of St. Joseph's, and you've got to clear out."

"We've sent him a letter in your name regretting that you have to return to town at once."

"Oh, you 'ave, 'ave yer?" remarked Bindle drily. "I 'ope you told 'im that I got ter call at Buckingham Palace."

Bindle dressed, shaved, and kept his visitors amused by turn. He caught the 11.6, accompanied by Dick Little. The two men spent their time in reading the long accounts in the Oxford papers of the previous evening's "banquet." They were both full and flattering. Bindle chuckled to find that his speech had been reported verbatim, and wondered how Reggie was enjoying the biographical particulars.

Dick Little and Bindle were unaware that in his rooms at St. Joseph's Reginald Graves also was reading these selfsame accounts with an anguish too great for expression. The accounts of his early life in particular caused him something akin to horror.

"It didn't last long," murmured Bindle regretfully, "but it was top-'ole (your words, sir) while it did. I wonder 'oo's 'oldin' Reggie's 'ead this mornin'?" and he chuckled gleefully.

CHAPTER XIV MR. HEARTY GIVES A PARTY
I

"I'm surprised at 'Earty," remarked Bindle to Millie one Friday evening as they walked across Putney Bridge on the way to meet Charlie Dixon. "Fancy 'im givin' a party! It'll be all 'ymns an' misery, wi' some oranges thrown in to give it the right smell. There won't be no Kiss-in-the-ring an' Postman's-knock for the likes o' you an' me, Millikins."

Millie blushed. She had no illusions as to the nature of the festivity: she knew who were to be invited.

"I'm glad you're coming, Uncle Joe," she cried, dancing along beside him. "It would be hateful without you."

"Well, o' course I am a bit of an attraction," replied Bindle. "Lord! how the ladies fight for me in the kissin' games!"

It was rarely that Mr. Hearty unbent to the extent of entertaining. He was usually content with the mild pleasures that the chapel provided, in the shape of teas, the annual bazaar, and occasional lantern-lectures bearing such titles as "Jerusalem Revisited," "The Bible in the East," "A Christian Abroad," delivered by enthusiastic but prosy amateurs and illustrated by hired lantern-slides.

One day, however, Mr. Hearty came to the determination that it was quite compatible with his beliefs to give a party. Not one of the stupid gatherings where the gramophone vied with round-games, and round-games with music-hall songs; but one where the spirit of revelry would be chastened by Christian sobriety. Mr. Hearty did not object to music as music, and there were certain songs, such as "The Village Blacksmith" and "The Chorister" that in his opinion were calculated to exercise a beneficial effect upon those who heard them.

When Mr. Hearty had at length come to his momentous decision, he was faced with the problem of the Bindles. He felt that as a fellow-chapel-goer he could not very well omit Mrs. Bindle from the list of the invited; but Bindle would be impossible where Mr. Sopley, the pastor of the chapel, was to be an honoured guest.

One evening at supper he had, as he thought with consummate tact, broached the matter to his family.

"Not have Joe?" wheezed Mrs. Hearty.

"Not ask Uncle Joe?" Millie had exclaimed in a tone that her father thought scarcely filial.

"He is not interested in parties," Mr. Hearty had explained feebly.

"We can't leave Joe out," panted Mrs. Hearty with a decisiveness unusual to her. "Why, he'll be the life and soul of the evening."

This was exactly what Mr. Hearty feared; but seeing that his women-folk were united against him, and after a further feeble protest, he conceded the point, and the Bindles received their invitation. Mr. Hearty had, however, taken the precaution of "dropping a hint" to Mrs. Bindle, the "hint" in actual words being: "I hope that if Joseph comes he—he won't——"

"I'll see that he doesn't," was Mrs. Bindle's reply, uttered with a snap of the jaws that had seemed to reassure her brother-in-law.

II

Mrs. Bindle was engaged in removing curl-papers from her front hair. On the bed lay her best dress of black alpaca with a bright green satin yoke covered with black lace. Beside it lay her best bonnet, also of black, an affair of a very narrow gauge and built high up at the back, having the appearance of being several sizes too small for its wearer.

Mrs. Bindle was dressing with great care and deliberation for Mr. Hearty's party. Her conception of dress embodied the middle-class ideals of mid-Victorian neatness, blended with a standard of modesty and correctness peculiarly her own.

It had cost Mrs. Bindle many anxious days of thought before she had been able to justify to herself the green satin yoke in her best dress. With her, to be fashionable was to be fast. A short skirt and a pneumonia-blouse were in her eyes the contrivances of the devil to show what no modest woman would think of exhibiting to the public gaze.

As she proceeded with her toilette Mrs. Bindle was thinking of the shamelessness of women who bared their arms and shoulders to every man's gaze. On principle she disapproved of parties and festivities of any description that were not more or less concerned with the chapel; but to her Mr. Hearty could do no wrong, and the fact that their pastor was to be present removed from her mind any scruples that she might otherwise have felt.

She was slowly brushing her thin sandy hair when Bindle entered the bedroom in full evening-dress, the large imitation diamond stud in the centre of his shirt, patent boots, a red silk handkerchief stuck in the opening of his waistcoat, the light coat over his arm, and an opera hat stuck at a rakish angle on his head. Between his lips was a cigar, one of the last remaining from the Oxford adventure.

Mrs. Bindle knew nothing of that, and consequently was unaware that Bindle's wardrobe had been considerably enlarged.

Mrs. Bindle caught sight of him in the looking-glass. For a moment she stared at the reflection in helpless amazement, then turning round with startling suddenness, she continued to regard him with such fixity as he stood complacently smoking his cigar, that Bindle could not resist replying with the broadest of grins.

"Where'd you get that dress-suit?" she asked at length, in the tone a policeman might adopt to a navvy found wearing a diamond tiara.

"It's me own, o' course," replied Bindle cheerily.

"Your own!" gasped Mrs. Bindle.

"O' course it is. Your ole man's a bit of a blood, Mrs. B., and you're a lucky woman. Won't ole 'Earty open them merry eyes of 'is when 'e sees me to-night. What-oh!" and Bindle executed a few impromptu steps, holding his overcoat at arm's-length.

Mrs. Bindle continued to regard him with wonder. She glanced at her own rather shabby black dress lying on the bed, and then her eyes returned to Bindle. She examined with grim intentness his well-cut clothes.

"Where'd you get them from?" she rapped.

"Don't you worry where your peacock got 'is tail; you just feel proud," replied Bindle, seating himself on the only chair the bedroom boasted. "Your ole man is goin' to be the belle of the ball to-night."

"You been buyin' them things, an' me doin' my own housework an' keepin' you when you're out of work!" Mrs. Bindle's voice rose as the full sense of the injustice of it all began to dawn upon her. "You spendin' money on dress-suits and beer, an' me inchin' an' pinchin' to keep you in food. It's a shame. I won't stand it, I won't." Mrs. Bindle looked about her helplessly. "I'll leave you, I will, you—you——"

"Oh no, yer won't," remarked Bindle complacently; "women like you don't leave men like me. That's wot matrimony's for, to keep two people together wot ought to be kept apart by Act o' Parliament."

"Where'd you get that dress-suit?" broke in Mrs. Bindle tenaciously.

"As I was sayin'," continued Bindle imperturbably, "matrimony's a funny thing."

"Where'd you get that dress-suit?" Mrs. Bindle broke in again.

Bindle sighed, and cast up his eyes in mock appeal. "I 'ad it give to me so that I might be worthy o' wot the Lord 'as sent me an' won't 'ave back at no price—that is to say, yerself, Mrs. B. If marriages is really made in 'eaven, then there ought to be a 'Returned with thanks' department. That's my view." The happy smile with which Bindle accompanied the remark robbed it of its sting.

For some time Mrs. Bindle continued her toilette in silence, and Bindle puffed contentedly at his cigar. Mrs. Bindle was the first to speak.

"I hope you'll be careful what you say to-night." She had just put on her bonnet and with many strange grimaces had at last adjusted it and the veil to her satisfaction.

As she spoke she began to draw on a pair of tight brown kid gloves, which so contracted her palms as to render her hands practically useless.

"Our minister is to be there," she continued, "and I don't want to feel ashamed."

"You ain't a-goin' to feel ashamed o' this, are yer?" enquired Bindle, as he rose and looked down at himself with obvious appreciation. "There ain't a-goin' to be nothin' tastier at 'Earty's to-night than yours truly."

As Mrs. Bindle turned towards the door Bindle lifted his hat with elaborate courtesy and offered her his left arm. With a sniff of disdain Mrs. Bindle passed out of the room.

"I'll find out where you got it, see if I don't," she called out over her shoulder.

"Well, well!" muttered Bindle as he leisurely followed her. "I never was able to lose anythink I wanted to, nor keep anythink I didn't want ter lose. 'Ow a cove can commit bigamy does me. Fancy two Mrs. B.'s! 'Old me, 'Orace!"

The Bindles' progress from Fenton Street to the Heartys' private door was something of a triumph for Mrs. Bindle. The neighbours turned out in force, and Bindle exchanged pleasantries with them, whilst Mrs. Bindle smiled in what was to her an entirely prodigal manner.

"Funny thing me wearin' a top 'at," Bindle had remarked, as he lifted it for about the twentieth time, this time to a policeman, who stared hard at him. Bindle was in a mood to be extremely pleasant with everybody, and he raised his hat impartially to those he knew and those he did not