MRS. BINDLE DEFENDS HER HOME
I
"Gospel bells, gospel bells, hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm-hm."
Mrs. Bindle accompanied her favourite hymn with bangs from the flat-iron
as she strove to coax one of Bindle's shirts to smoothness.
She invariably worked to the tune of "Gospel Bells." Of the hymn itself
she possessed two words, "gospel" and "bells"; but the tune was hers to
the most insignificant semi-quaver, and an unlimited supply of "hms" did
the rest.
Turning the shirt at the word "gospel," she brought the iron down full
in the middle of what, judging from the power she put into the stroke,
might have been Bindle's back.
"Bells," she sang with emphasis, and proceeded to trail off into the
"hms."
With Mrs. Bindle, singing reflected her mood. When indignation or anger
gripped her soul, "Gospel Bells" was rendered with a vigour that
penetrated to Mrs. Grimps and Mrs. Sawney.
Then, as her mood mellowed, so would the tune soften, almost dying away
until, possibly, a stray thought of Bindle brought about a crescendo
passage, capable of being developed into full forte, brass-wind and
tympani.
After one of these full-throated passages, the thought of her
brother-in-law, Mr. Hearty, mellowed the stream of melody passing
through her thin, slightly parted lips.
It had reached an almost caressing softness, when a knock at the door
caused her to stop suddenly. A moment later, the iron was banged upon
the rest, and she glanced down at her apron. To use her own phrase, she
was the "pink of neatness."
Walking across the kitchen and along the short passage, she threw open
the door with the air of one who was prepared to defend the sacred
domestic hearth against all comers.
"I've come about the 'ouse, mum." A mild-looking little man with a dirty
collar and a deprecating manner stood before her, sucking nervously at a
hollow tooth, the squeak of which his friends had learned to live down.
"The house!" repeated Mrs. Bindle aggressively. "What house?"
"This 'ouse wot's to let, mum." The little man struggled to extract a
newspaper from his pocket. "I'd like to take it," he added.
"Oh! you would, would you?" Mrs. Bindle eyed him with disfavour. "Well,
it's not to let," and with that she banged the door in the little man's
face, just as his pocket gave up the struggle and released a soiled
copy of _The Fulham Signal_.
He started back, the paper falling upon the tiled-path that led from the
gate to the front-door.
For nearly a minute he stood staring at the door, as if not quite
realising what had happened. Then, picking up the paper, he gazed at it
with a puzzled expression, turned to a marked passage under the heading
"Houses to Let," and read:
HOUSE TO LET.--Four-roomed house to let in Fulham. Easy access to
bus, tram and train. Rent 15/6 a week. Immediate possession. Apply
to occupier, 7 Fenton Street, Fulham, S.W.
He looked at the number on the door, back again at the paper, then once
more at the number. Apparently satisfied that there was no mistake, he
knocked again, a feeble, half-hearted knock that testified to the
tremors within him.
He had been graded C3; but he possessed a wife who was, physically, A1.
It was the knowledge that she would demand an explanation if he failed
to secure the house, after which she had sent him hot-foot, that
inspired him with sufficient courage to make a second attempt to
interview Mrs. Bindle.
With inward tremblings, he waited for the door to open again. As he
stood, hoping against hope in his coward heart that the summons had not
been heard, a big, heavily-hipped woman, in a dirty black-and-white
foulard blouse, a draggled green skirt, and shapeless stays, slid
through the gate and waddled up the path.
"So you got 'ere fust," she gasped, her flushed face showing that she
had been hurrying. "Well, well, it can't be 'elped, I suppose, fust come
fust served. I always says it and always shall."
The little man had swung round, and now stood blinking up at the new
arrival, who entirely blocked his line of retreat.
"Knocked, 'ave you?" she enquired, fanning her flushed face with a
folded newspaper.
He nodded; but his gaze was directed over her heaving shoulder at a man
and woman, with a little girl between them, approaching from the
opposite side of the way.
As the new arrivals entered the garden, the stout woman explained that
"this gentleman" had already knocked.
"P'raps they ain't up yet," suggested the man with the little girl.
"Well, they ought to be," said the stout woman with conviction.
Another woman now joined the throng, her turned-up sleeves and the man's
tweed cap on her head, kept in place by a long, amber-headed hat-pin,
testifying to the limited time she had bestowed upon her toilette.
"Is it took?" she demanded of the woman with the little girl.
"Dunno!" was the reply. "She ain't opened the door yet."
"She opened it once," said the little man.
"Wot she say?"
"Said it wasn't to let, then banged it to in my face," was the injured
response.
"'Ere, let me 'ave a try," cried the woman in the foulard blouse, as she
grasped the knocker and proceeded to awaken the echoes of Fenton Street.
Corple Street at one end and Bransdon Road at the other, were included
in the sound-waves that emanated from the Bindles' knocker.
Several neighbours, including Mrs. Grimps and Mrs. Sawney, came to their
doors and gazed at the collection of people that now entirely blocked
the pathway of No. 7. Three other women had joined the throng, together
with a rag-and-bone man in dilapidated clothing, accompanied by a donkey
and cart.
"A shame I calls it, a-keepin' folks 'angin' about like this," said one
of the new arrivals.
"P'raps it's let," said the rag-and-bone man.
"Well, why don't they say so?" snapped she with the tweed cap and
hat-pin.
"'Ave another go, missis," suggested the man with the little girl. "I'm
losin' 'alf a day over this."
Inspired by this advice, the big woman reached forward to seize the
knocker. At that moment the door was wrenched open, and Mrs. Bindle
appeared. She had removed her apron and brushed her thin, sandy hair,
which was drawn back from her sharp, hatchet-like face so that not a
hair wantoned from the restraining influence of the knot behind.
Grim, with indrawn lips and the light of battle in her eyes she glared,
first at the little man with whom she had already held parley, then at
the woman in the foulard blouse.
At chapel, there was no more meek and docile "Daughter of the Lord" than
Mrs. Bindle. To her, religion was an ever-ready help and sustenance; but
there was something in her life that bulked even larger than her Faith,
although she would have been the first to deny it. That thing was her
Home.
In keeping the domestic temple of her hearth as she conceived it should
be kept, Mrs. Bindle toiled ceaselessly. It was her fetish. She
worshipped at chapel as a stepping-stone to post-mortem glory; but her
home was the real altar at which she sacrificed.
As she gazed at the "rabble," as she mentally characterised it,
littering the tiled-path of the front garden, which only that morning
she had cleaned, the rage of David entered her heart; but she was a
God-fearing woman who disliked violence--until it was absolutely
necessary.
"Was it you knocking?" she demanded of the big woman in the foulard
blouse. Her voice was sharp as the edge of a razor; but restrained.
"That's right, my dear," replied the woman comfortably, "I come about
the 'ouse."
"Oh! you have, have you?" cried Mrs. Bindle. "And are these your
friends?" Her eyes for a moment left those of her antagonist and took in
the queue which, by now, overflowed the path into the roadway.
"Look 'ere, I'll give you sixteen bob a week," broke in the woman with
the tweed cap and the hat-pin, instantly rendering herself an Ishmael.
"'Ere, none o' that!" cried an angry female voice. "Fair do's."
There was a murmur of approval from the others, which was interrupted by
Mrs. Bindle's clear-cut, incisive voice.
"Get out of my garden, and be off, the lot of you," she cried, taking a
half-step in the direction of the big woman, to whom she addressed
herself.
"Is it let?" enquired the rag-and-bone man from the rear.
"Is what let?" demanded Mrs. Bindle.
"The 'ouse, mum," said the rag-and-bone man, whose profession demanded
tact and politeness.
"This house is not to let," was the angry retort, "never was to let, and
never will be to let till I'm gone. Now you just be off with you,
or----" she paused.
"Or wot?" demanded she of the tweed cap and hat-pin, desirous of
rehabilitating herself with the others.
"I'll send for a policeman," was Mrs. Bindle's rejoinder. She still
restrained her natural instincts in a vice-like self-control. Her hands
shook slightly; but not with fear. It was the trembling of the tigress
preparing to spring.
"Then wot about this advert?" cried the man with the little girl,
extending the newspaper towards her.
"Yes, wot about it?" demanded the woman in the foulard blouse, extending
her paper in turn.
"There's no advertisement about this house," said Mrs. Bindle, ignoring
the papers, "and you'd better go away. Pity you haven't got something
better to do than to come disturbin' me in the midst of my ironin'," and
with that she banged the door and disappeared.
A murmur of anger passed along the queue, anger which portended trouble.
"Nice way to treat people," said a little woman with a dirty face, a
dingy black bonnet and a velvet dolman, to which portions of the
original jet-trimming still despairingly adhered. "Some folks don't seem
to know 'ow to be'ave."
There was another murmur of agreement.
"Kick the blinkin' door in," suggested a pacifist.
"I'd like to get at 'er with my nails," said a sharp-faced woman with a
baby in her arms. "I know '_er_ sort."
"Deserves to 'ave 'er stutterin' windows smashed, the stuck-up baggage!"
cried another.
"'Ullo, look at all them people."
A big, puffy man with a person that rendered his boots invisible, guided
the hand-cart he was pushing into the kerb in front of No. 7 Fenton
Street. A pale, dispirited lad was harnessed to the vehicle by a
dilapidated piece of much-knotted rope strung across his narrow chest.
As the barrow came to a standstill, he allowed the rope to drop to the
ground and, stepping out of the harness, he turned an apathetic and
unspeculative eye towards the crowd.
The big man, whose clothing consisted of a shirt, a pair of trousers
and some braces, stood looking at the applicants for the altar of Mrs.
Bindle's life. The crowd returned the stare with interest. The furniture
piled upon the barrow caused them some anxiety. Was that the explanation
of the unfriendly reception accorded them?
"Now then, Charley, when you've done a-drinkin' in this bloomin'
beauty-show, you can give me a 'and."
"'Oo are you calling a beauty-show?" demanded the woman in the dolman.
"You ain't got much to talk about, with a stummick like yours."
"My mistake, missis," said the big man imperturbably. "Sorry I made you
cry." Then, turning to Charley, he added: "If you 'adn't such a thick
'ead, Charley, you'd know it was a sugar queue. They're wearin' too much
for a beauty-show. Now, then, over the top, my lad." He indicated the
railings with a nod, the gateway was blocked.
With the leisurely movements of a fatalist, Charley moved his
inconspicuous person towards the railings of No. 7, while the big man
proceeded to untie the rope that bound a miscellaneous collection of
household goods to the hand-cart, an operation which entirely absorbed
the attention of the queue.
"You took it?" interrogated the rag-and-bone man.
"Don't you worry, cocky," said the big man as he lifted from the barrow
a cane-bottomed chair, through which somebody had evidently sat, and
placed it on the pavement. "Once inside the garding and the 'ouse is
mine. 'Ere, get on wiv it, Charley," he admonished the lad, who was
standing by the kerb as if reluctant to trespass.
With unexpressive face, the boy turned and climbed the railings.
"Catch 'old," cried the man, thrusting into Charley's unwilling hands a
dilapidated saucepan.
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.
"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 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 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 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, 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 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.
"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.
"'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.
"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, hitherto, struck him.
"Are they your things?" asked the policeman, intent upon disentangling
the situation before proceeding to use the pencil, the point of which he
was meditatively sucking.
Charley's father nodded. He was still thinking over Mrs. Bindle's
remark. It seemed to open up disconcerting possibilities.
"Now then, what are you going to do?" demanded the policeman sternly.
"Do you wish to make a charge?"
"I will," said Mrs. Bindle, "unless 'e takes 'is furniture away and pays
for the damage to my flowers. I'll charge 'im, the great, 'ulking brute,
attacking a defenceless woman because he knows 'er 'usband's out."
"That's right, missis, you 'ave 'im quodded," called out the
rag-and-bone man. "'E didn't ought to 'ave done that to your garding."
"Tryin' to swank us 'e'd taken the 'ouse," cried the woman with the
tweed cap and hat-pin. "I see through 'im from the first, I did. There
ain't many men wot can throw dust in my eyes," she added, looking
eagerly round for a dissenting look.
"'Ullo, 'ullo!" cried a voice from the outskirts of the crowd. "Somebody
givin' somethink away, or is it a fire? 'Ere, let me pass, I'm the cove
wot pays the rent," and Bindle pushed his genial way through the crowd.
They made way without protest. The advent of the newcomer suggested
further dramatic developments, possibly even a fight.
"'Ullo, Tichborne!" cried Bindle, catching sight of the big man. "Been
scrappin'?"
The three protagonists in the drama turned, as if with relief, to face
this new phase of the situation.
"'Oo's 'e?" enquired Bindle of the policeman, indicating the big man
with a jerk of his thumb.
"He's been tryin' to murder me, and if you were a man, Joe Bindle, you'd
kill 'im."
Bindle subjected the big man to an elaborate scrutiny. "Looks to me," he
remarked drily, "as if someone's got in before me. Wot's 'appened?" He
looked interrogatingly up at the policeman.
"'Oly 'Orace," he cried suddenly, as he caught sight of the
miscellaneous collection of furniture that lay about the geranium bed.
"What's that little pawnshop a-doin' on our front garden?"
With the aid of the rag-and-bone man and the woman with the tweed cap
and hat-pin, the whole situation was explained and expounded to both
Bindle and the policeman.
When he had heard everything, Bindle turned to the big man, who stood
sulkily awaiting events.
"Now, look 'ere, cully," he said. "You didn't oughter start doin' them
sort o' things with a figure like yours. When Mrs. B. gets 'old of a
broom, or a mop, the safest thing to do is to draw in your solar-plexus
an' run. It 'urts less. Now, speakin' as a Christian to a bloomin'
'eathen wot's done 'imself pretty well, judgin' from the size of 'is
pinafore, you'd better send for the coachman, 'arness up that there dray
o' yours, carry orf them bits o' sticks an' let bygones be bygones.
Ain't that good advice?" He turned to the policeman for corroboration.
There was a flicker of a smile at the corners of the policeman's mouth,
which seemed not so very many years before to have been lisping baby
language. He looked at the big man. It was not for him to advise.
"'Ere, Charley, blaaarst you," cried the big man, pushing his way to the
gate. He had decided that the dice had gone against him. "Get them
things on to the blinkin' barrer, you stutterin' young pup. Wot the
purple----"
"Here, that's enough of that," said a quiet, determined voice, and the
soft lines of the policeman's face hardened.
"Wot she want to say it was to let for?" he grumbled as he loped towards
the hand-cart.
"'Ere 'ave I come wiv all these things to take the blinkin' 'ouse, then
there's all this ruddy fuss. Are you goin' to get over into that
blinkin' garden and fetch out them stutterin' things, or must I chuck
you over?"
The last remark was addressed to Charley, who, with a wary eye on his
parent, had been watching events, hoping against hope that the policeman
would manifest signs of aggression, and carry on the good work that Mrs.
Bindle had begun.
Charley glanced interrogatingly at the policeman. Seeing in his eye no
encouragement to mutiny, he sidled towards the gate, a watchful eye
still on his father. A moment later he was engaged in handing the
furniture over the railings.
After the man had deposited the colander, a tin-bath, and two saucepans
in the barrow, he seemed suddenly smitten with an idea.
He tugged a soiled newspaper from his trouser pocket. Glancing at it, he
walked over to where the policeman was engaged in moving on the crowd.
"Read that," he said, thrusting the paper under the officer's nose and
pointing to a passage with a dirty forefinger. "Don't that say the
blinkin' 'ouse is to let? You oughter run 'er in for false----" He
paused. "For false----" he repeated.
With a motion of his hand, the policeman brushed aside the newspaper.
"Move along there, please. Don't block up the footpath," he said.
At length the barrow was laden.
The policeman stood by with the air of a man whose duty it is to see the
thing through.
The crowd still loitered. They had even yet hopes of a breach of the
peace.
The big man was reluctant to go without a final effort to rehabilitate
himself. Once more he drew the paper from his pocket and approached the
policeman.
"Wot she put that in for?" he demanded, indicating the advertisement.
Ignoring the remark, the policeman drew his notebook once more from his
pocket.
"I shall want your name and address," he said with an official air.
"Wotjer want it for?"
"Now, then, come along," said the policeman, and the big man gave his
name and address.
"Wot she do it for?" he repeated, "an' wot's going to 'appen to 'er for
'ittin' me in the stummick?"
"You'd better get along," said the policeman.
With a grumble in his throat, the big man placed himself between the
shafts of the barrow and, having blasted Charley into action, moved off.
"Made a rare mess of the garding, ain't 'e?" remarked the rag-and-bone
man to the woman with the tweed cap and the hat-pin.
"Blinkin' profiteer!" was her comment.
II
"It's all your fault. Look wot they done." Mrs. Bindle surveyed the
desolation which, that morning, had been a garden.
The bed was trodden down, the geraniums broken, and the lobelia border
showed big gaps in its blue and greenness.
"It's always the same with anything I 'ave," she continued. "You always
spoil it."
"But it wasn't me," protested Bindle. "It was that big cove with the
pinafore."
"Who put that advertisement in?" demanded Mrs. Bindle darkly. "That's
what _I_ should like to know."
"Somebody wot 'ad put the wrong number," suggested Bindle.
"I'd wrong number them if I caught them."
Suddenly she turned and made a bolt inside the house.
Bindle regarded the open door in surprise. A moment later his quick ears
caught the sound of Mrs. Bindle's hysterical sobbing.
"Now ain't that jest like a woman?" was his comment. "She put 'im to
sleep in the first round, an' still she ain't 'appy. Funny things,
women," he added.
That evening as Mrs. Bindle closed the front door behind her on her way
to the Wednesday temperance service, she turned her face to the garden;
it had been in her mind all day.
She blinked incredulously. The lobelia seemed bluer than ever, and
within the circular border was a veritable riot of flowering geraniums.
"It's that Bindle again," she muttered with indrawn lips as she turned
towards the gate. "Pity he hasn't got something better to do with his
money." Nevertheless she placed upon the supper-table an apple-tart that
had been made for to-morrow's dinner, to which she added a cup of
coffee, of which Bindle was particularly fond.