THE HEARTYS AT HOME
The atmosphere of the Hearty menage was one of religious gloom. To Mr.
Hearty laughter and a smiling face were the attributes of the ungodly.
He never laughed himself, and his smile was merely the baring of a
handful of irregular yellow teeth, an action that commenced and ended
with such suddenness as to cast some doubt upon its spontaneity.
He possessed only two interests in life--business and the chapel, and
one dread--his wife's brother-in-law, Joseph Bindle. As business was
not a thing he cared to discuss with his wife or eighteen-year-old
daughter, Millie, the one topic of conversation left was the chapel.
Mr. Hearty was a spare man of medium height, with a heavy moustache,
iron-grey mutton-chop whiskers, and a woolly voice.
"I never see a chap wi' whiskers like that wot wasn't as 'oly as oil,"
was Bindle's opinion.
Mr. Hearty was negative in everything save piety. His ideal in life
was to temporise and placate, and thus avoid anything in the nature of
a dispute or altercation.
"If 'Earty's goin' to be a favourite in 'eaven," Bindle had once said
to Mrs. Bindle, "I don't think much of 'eaven's taste in men. 'E can't
'it nothink, either with 'is fist or 'is tongue."
"If you was more like him," Mrs. Bindle had retorted, "you might wear a
top hat on Sundays, same as he does."
"Me in a top 'at!" Bindle had cried. "'Oly Moses! I can see it! Why,
my ears ain't big enough to 'old it up. Wot 'ud I do if there was an
'igh wind blowin'? I'd spend all Sunday a-chasin' it up and down the
street, like an ole woman after a black 'en."
Bindle himself was far from being pugnacious; but his conception of
manhood was that it should be ready to hit any head that wanted
hitting. He had been known to fight men much bigger than himself, not
because he personally had any dispute to settle with them, but rather
from an abstract sense of the fitness of things. Once when a man was
mercilessly beating a horse Bindle intervened, and a fight had ensued,
which had ended only when both parties were too exhausted to continue.
"Blimey, but you ain't 'arf a fool, Joe," remarked Ginger, to whom a
fight was the one joy in life, regarding with interest Bindle's bruised
and bleeding face as he stood sobbing for breath. "Wot jer do it for?
'E wasn't 'urtin' you; it was the 'orse."
"Somebody 'ad to 'ammer 'im, Ginger," gasped Bindle with a wry smile,
"an' the 'orse couldn't." Then after a pause he added, "It ain't good
for a cove to be let 'it things wot can't 'it back."
Meals at the Heartys' table were solemn affairs in which conversation
had little or no part, save when Bindle was present.
Mr. Hearty ate his food with noisy enjoyment. His moustache, which
seemed bent on peeping into his mouth and, coupled with his lugubrious
appearance, gave him the appearance of a tired walrus, required
constant attention, particularly as he was extremely fond of soups and
stewed foods. This rendered conversation extremely difficult. During
the greater part of a meal he would be engaged in taking first one end
and then the other of his moustache into his mouth for the purpose of
cleansing it. This he did to the accompaniment of a prolonged sucking
sound, suggestive of great enjoyment.
"I likes to watch 'Earty cleanin' 'is whiskers," Bindle had once
remarked, after gazing at his brother-in-law for some minutes with
great intentness. "'E never misses an 'air."
Mr. Hearty had got very red, and for the rest of the meal refused all
but solid foods.
Bindle was a perpetual source of anxiety to Mr. Hearty, who, although
always prepared for the worst, yet invariably found that the worst
transcended his expectations. Had he not been a Christian he might
have suggested cutting himself and family adrift from all association
with his brother-in-law. Even had he been able to overcome his
scruples, there was the very obvious bond of affection between Mrs.
Hearty, Millie, and "Uncle Joe": but, what was more alarming, there was
the question of how Bindle himself might view the severance.
Mrs. Hearty was a woman on whom fat had descended like a plague. It
rendered her helpless of anything in the nature of exertion. In her
Bindle found a kindred spirit. Her silent laugh, which rippled down
her chins until lost to sight in her ample bust, never failed to
inspire him to his best efforts. He would tell her of his "little
jokes" until Millie would have to intervene with a timid:
"Oh, uncle, don't! You're hurting mother!"
Great amusement rendered Mrs. Hearty entirely helpless, both of action
and of speech, and to her laughter was something between an anguish and
an ecstasy.
She was quite conscious of the stimulating effect upon Bindle of her
"Oh, Joe, don't!" yet never hesitated to utter what she knew would
eventually reduce her to a rippling and heaving mass of mirth.
She was Bindle's confidante, and seemed to find in the accounts of his
adventures compensation for the atmosphere of repression in which she
lived. In her heart she regretted that her husband had not been a
furniture-remover instead of a greengrocer; for it seemed to produce
endless diversions.
Little Millie would sit on a stool at her mother's feet drinking in
Uncle Joe's stories, uttering an occasional half-laughing,
half-reproachful, "Oh, Uncle Joe!"
If Mrs. Hearty had a weakness for Bindle's stories, Mrs. Bindle found
in Alfred Hearty her ideal of what a man should be. When a girl she
had been called upon to choose between Alfred Hearty, then a
greengrocer's assistant, and Joseph Bindle, and she never quite forgave
herself for having taken the wrong man.
In those days Bindle's winning tongue had left Alfred Hearty without
even a sporting chance. To Mrs. Bindle her mistaken choice was the
canker-worm in her heart, and it was not a little responsible for her
uncompromising attitude towards Bindle.
In a moment of pride at his conquest Bindle had said to Hearty:
"It's no good goin' after a woman wi' one eye on the golden gates of
'eaven, 'Earty, and that's why I won."
Since then Bindle had resented Hearty's apathetic courtship, which had
brought about his own victory. Many times Bindle had thought over the
folly of his wooing, and he always came to the same conclusion, a
muttered:
"If 'e 'ad 'ad a little more ginger 'e might 'ave won. They'd 'ave
made a tasty pair."
The result had been that Mrs. Bindle's sister, Martha, had caught Mr.
Hearty at the rebound, and had since regretted it as much as she ever
regretted anything.
"When you're my size," she would say, "you don' trouble much about
anything. It's the lean ones as worries. Look at Lizzie." Lizzie was
Mrs. Bindle.
Mrs. Bindle herself had been very different as a girl. Theatres and
music-halls were not then "places of sin"; and she was not altogether
above suspicion of being a flirt. When it dawned upon her that she had
made a mistake in marrying Bindle and letting her sister Martha secure
the matrimonial prize, a great bitterness had taken possession of her.
As Mr. Hearty slowly climbed the ladder towards success, Mrs. Bindle's
thoughts went with him. He became her great interest in life. No wife
or mother ever watched the progress of husband or son with keener
interest or greater admiration than Mrs. Bindle watched that of her
brother-in-law.
Gradually she began to make him her "pattern to live and to die." She
joined the Alton Road Chapel, gave up all "carnal" amusements, and
began a careful and elaborate preparation for the next world.
Bindle, as the unconscious cause of her humiliation--the supreme
humiliation of a woman's life, marrying the wrong man--became also the
victim of her dissatisfaction. He watched the change, marvelling at
its cause, and with philosophic acceptance explaining it by telling
himself that "women were funny things."
As a girl Mrs. Bindle had been pleasure-loving, some regarded her as
somewhat flighty; and the course of gradual starvation of pleasure to
which she subjected herself had embittered her whole nature. There
was, however, no suggestion of sentiment in her attitude towards her
brother-in-law. He was her standard by which she measured the failure
of other men, Bindle in particular.
Like all women, she bowed the knee to success, and Alfred Hearty was
the most successful man she had ever encountered. He had begun life on
the tail-board of a parcels delivery van, he was now the owner of two
flourishing greengrocer's shops, to say nothing of being regarded as
one of Fulham's most worthy citizens.
From van-boy to a small greengrocer, he had risen to the important
position of calling on customers to solicit orders, and here he had
shown his first flash of genius. He had cultivated every housewife and
maid-servant assiduously, never allowing them to buy anything he could
not recommend. When eventually he started in business on his own
account, he had carefully canvassed his late employer's customers, who,
to a woman, went over to him.
"It was that 'oly smile of 'is wot done it," was Bindle's opinion.
When in the natural course of events his previous employer retired a
bankrupt, it was taken as evidence of the supreme ability of the man
who had taken from him his livelihood.
In the administration of his own business Alfred Hearty had shown his
second flash of genius--he never allowed his own employes an
opportunity of doing as he had done, but, by occasional personal calls
upon his customers, managed to convey the idea that it was he who was
entirely responsible for the proper execution of their orders. As a
further precaution he constantly changed the rounds of his men, and
thus safeguarded himself from any employe playing Wellington to his
Napoleon.
Occasionally on Sunday evenings Bindle and Mrs. Bindle would be invited
to supper at the Heartys' in Fulham High Street, where they lived over
their principal shop. Mr. Hearty and Mrs. Bindle would return after
chapel with Millie; Bindle invariably arranged to arrive early in order
to have a talk with Mrs. Hearty, who did not go to chapel because her
"breath was that bad."
"Funny thing, you and Lizzie bein' sisters; you seem to have got all
the meat an' left 'er only the bones!" Bindle would say.
Bindle hated anything that was even remotely connected with lemons, a
fruit that to him symbolised aggressive temperance. Mr. Hearty was
very partial to lemon flavouring, and in consequence lemon puddings,
lemon cakes, and lemon tarts were invariably served as sweets at his
table.
"Lemonade, lemon cakes, and lemon faces, all as sour as an unkissed
gal, that's wot a Sunday night at Hearty's place is," Bindle had
confided to a mate.
Once the chapel party returned, the evening became monotonous.
After supper Millie was sent to the harmonium and hymns were sung.
Mrs. Bindle had a thin, piercing voice, Millie a small tremulous
soprano, and Mr. Hearty was what Bindle called "all wool and wind."
Mrs. Hearty appeared to have no voice at all, although her lips moved
in sympathy with the singers.
At first Bindle had been a silent and agonised spectator, refusing all
invitations to join in the singing. He would sit, his attention
divided between Mr. Hearty's curious vocal contortions, suggestive of a
hen drinking water, and the rippling motion of Mrs. Hearty's chins.
When singing Mr. Hearty elevated his head, screwed up his eyes and
raised his eyebrows; the higher the note the higher went his eyebrows,
and the more closely he screwed up his eyes.
"'E makes faces enough for a 'ole band," Bindle had once whispered to
Mrs. Hearty, who had brought the evening to a dramatic termination by
incontinently collapsing.
"A laugh and an 'ymn got mixed," was Bindle's diagnosis.
It was soon after this episode that Bindle hit upon a happy idea for
bringing to a conclusion these, to him, tedious evenings. Mrs.
Bindle's favourite hymn was "Gospel Bells," whereas Mr. Hearty seemed
to cherish an equally strong love for "Pull for the Shore, Sailors."
Never were these hymns sung less than three times each during the
course of the evening.
Bindle had thought of many ways of trying to end the performance. Once
he had dexterously inserted his penknife in the bellows of the
harmonium whilst looking for a pencil he was supposed to have dropped.
This, however, merely added to the horror of the situation.
"The bloomin' thing blew worse than 'Earty," he said.
One evening he determined to put his new idea into practice. The gross
volume of sound produced by the quartette with the harmonium was
extremely small, and Bindle conceived the idea of drowning it.
"I'll stew 'em in their own juice," he muttered.
He had no voice, and very little idea either of tune or of time. What
he did possess he was careful to forget. The first hymn in which he
joined was "Pull for the Shore, Sailors."
From the first Bindle's voice proved absolutely uncontrollable. It
wavered and darted all over the gamut, and as it was much louder than
the combined efforts of the other three, plus the harmonium, Bindle
appeared to be soloist, the others supplying a subdued accompaniment.
Unity of effort seemed impossible. Whilst they were in the process of
"pulling," he was invariably on "the shore"; and when they had arrived
at "the shore," he had just started "pulling." Time after time they
stopped to make a fresh start, but without improving the general effect.
Bindle showed great concern at his curious inability to keep with the
others, and suggested retiring from the contest; but this Mr. Hearty
would not hear of. To help matters he beat time with his hand, but as
his vocal attitude was one of contemplation of the ceiling, generally
with closed eyes, he very frequently hit Millie on the head, causing
her to lose her place and forget the pedals, with the result that the
harmonium died away in a moan of despair. Bindle, however, always went
on. All he required was the words, to which he did full justice.
The evening was terminated by the collapse of Mrs. Hearty.
On the following day Bindle could not talk above a whisper.
One result of Bindle's vocal efforts had been that invitations to spend
Sunday evenings with the Heartys had become less frequent, a
circumstance on which Mrs. Bindle did not fail to comment.
"You're always spoilin' things for me. I enjoyed those evenin's," she
complained.
"Shouldn't have arst me to sing," Bindle retorted. "Yer know I ain't a
bloomin' canary, like you and 'Earty."
To Mr. Hearty the visits of the Bindles took on a new and more alarming
aspect. Sunday was no day for secular things, and he dreaded his
brother-in-law's reminiscences and comments on "parsons," and his views
regarding religion. Sooner or later Bindle always managed to gather
the desultory threads into his own hands.
"Y' oughter been a parson, 'Earty," Bindle remarked pleasantly one
Sunday evening apropos nothing. "So ought Ginger, if 'is language
wasn't so 'ighly spiced. It's no good lookin' 'appy if you're a
parson. Looks as if yer makin' a meal o' the soup in case the fish
ain't fresh.
"I remember movin' a parson once," remarked Bindle, puffing away
contentedly at a cigar he had brought with him (Mr. Hearty did not
smoke), now thoroughly well-launched upon a conversational monologue.
"Leastways 'e was a missionary. 'E was due somewhere in Africa to
teach niggers 'ow uncomfortable it is to 'ave a soul.
"'E 'ad to go miles into the jungle, and all 'is stuff 'ad to be
carried on the 'eads of niggers. Forty pounds a man, and the nigger
a-standin' by to see it weighed, an' refusin' to budge if it was a
ounce overweight. I never knew niggers was so cute. This missionary
was allowed about ten bundles o' forty pounds each. Lord! yer should
'ave seen the collection of stuff 'e'd got. About four ton. The
manager worked it out that about two 'undred niggers 'ud be wanted.
"'E 'ad 'is double-bed; the top itself weighed seventy pounds. Wot a
missionary wants with a double-bed in the jungle does me. 'E gave up
the bedstead idea, an' 'e give it to me instead o' beer money. That's
'ow Mrs. B. comes to sleep in a missionary's bed. 'E stuck to a
grandfather clock, though. Nothink could persuade 'im to leave it
be'ind. The clock and weights was too much for one nigger, so I put
the weights in wi' the tea-things."
"Oh, Uncle Joe!" from Millie.
"Yes, 'e's got the time in the jungle, but if 'e wants 'is tea 'e'll
'ave to drink it out of 'is boot. Them weights must 'ave made an 'oly
mess of the crockery!"
At this juncture Mr. Hearty made a valiant effort to divert the
conversation to the forthcoming missionary tea; but Bindle was too
strong for him.
"There was one parson," he continued, "'oo was different from the
others. 'E was a big gun. I moved 'im when 'e was made a dean. 'E'd
come an' sit an' talk while we 'ad our dinner, which 'e used to give
us. Beer too, 'Earty. No lemon flavourin' about 'im.
"One day I sez to 'im, 'Funny thing you bein' a parson, sir, if you'll
forgive me sayin' so.'
"'Why?' he arst.
"'Well, you seem so 'appy, just like me and 'Uggles.' 'Uggles is
always grinnin' when 'e ain't drunk.
"'E laughed as if it was the best joke 'e'd ever 'eard.
"'If religion don't make yer 'appy, it's the wrong religion,' 'e says.
"Now look at 'Earty and Lizzie; do they look 'appy?"
Mrs. Hearty and Millie looked instinctively at the two joyless faces.
"They got the wrong religion, sure as eggs," pronounced Bindle, well
pleased at the embarrassment on the faces of Mrs. Bindle and Mr.
Hearty. "I went to 'ear that cove preach. I liked 'is Gawd better'n
yours, 'Earty. 'E didn't want to turn the next world into a sort of
mixed grill. He was all for 'appiness and pleasure. I could be
religious with a man like that parson. He was too good for 'is job.
"There's some people wot seem to spend their time a-inventin' 'orrible
punishments in the next world for the people they don't like in this."
"I wish you'd learn 'ow to be'ave before your betters," remarked Mrs.
Bindle, in the subdued voice she always adopted in the presence of Mr.
Hearty. "I'm ashamed of you, Bindle, that I am."
"Don't you worry, Mrs. B. 'Earty knows me bark's worse'n me bite,
don't yer, ole sport?"
Mr. Hearty shivered, but bared his teeth in token of Christian
forbearance.
"An' now, Mrs. Bindle, it's 'ome and 'appiness and the missionary's
bed."
As Bindle was in the hall, putting on his coat, Millie slipped out.
"Uncle," she whispered, "will you take me to the pictures one night?"
"O' course I will, little Millikins. Name the 'appy day."
"Friday," she whispered; "but ask before father; and uncle, will you
put on your hard hat and best overcoat?"
Bindle eyed his niece curiously.
"Wot's up, Millikins?" he enquired; whereat Millie hid her face against
his sleeve.
"I'll tell 'you Friday. You will come, won't you?" There was a tremor
in her voice, and a sudden fear in her eyes.
"At seven-thirty J.B.'ll be 'ere at yer ladyship's service, 'at an'
all. 'E'd put on 'is best face only 'e ain't got one.
"That pretty face of 'ers 'll cause 'Earty a nasty jar one of these
days," muttered Bindle, as he and Mrs. Bindle walked home in silence.