Mrs. Bindle shook her head, then opening her eyes, fixed them upon the strange viscid ma.s.s that Bindle extended to her.
"What is that smell?" she murmured wearily.
"Smell," said Bindle, sniffing the air like a cat when fish is boiling.
"I don"t smell nothink, Lizzie."
"You"ve burned something," she moaned feebly.
""Ere, eat this," he said with forced cheerfulness, "then you"ll feel better."
Once more Mrs. Bindle opened her eyes, gazed at the ma.s.s, then shaking her head, turned her face to the wall.
For five minutes, Bindle strove to persuade her. Finally, recognising defeat, he placed the plate on a chair by the bedside and, seating himself on a little green-painted box, worn at the edges so that the original white wood showed through, he proceeded to look the helplessness he felt.
"Feelin" better, Lizzie?" he enquired at length, holding his breath eagerly as he waited for the reply.
Mrs. Bindle shook her head drearily, and his heart sank.
Suddenly, he remembered Mrs. Hearty"s earnest exhortation to keep the steam-kettle in operation. Once more he descended to the kitchen and, whilst the kettle was boiling, he occupied himself with sc.r.a.ping the heat-flaked milk from the top of the stove.
Throughout that night he laboured at the steam-kettle, or sat gazing helplessly at Mrs. Bindle, despair clutching at his heart, impotence d.o.g.g.i.ng his footsteps. From time to time he would offer her the now cold slab of arrowroot, or else enquire if she were feeling better; but Mrs.
Bindle refused the one and denied the other.
With the dawn came inspiration.
"Would you like a kipper for breakfast, Lizzie?" he enquired, hope shining in his eyes.
This time Mrs. Bindle not only shook her head, but manifested by her expression such a repugnance that he felt repulsed. The very thought of kippers made his own mouth water and, recalling that Mrs. Bindle was particularly partial to them, he realised that her condition must be extremely grave.
Soon after nine, Mrs. Hearty arrived and insisted on preparing breakfast for Bindle. Having despatched him to his work she proceeded to tidy-up.
After the doctor had called, Mrs. Bindle once more sought news as to her condition. This time Mrs. Hearty, obviously keen on rea.s.suring the invalid, succeeded also in confirming her morbid convictions.
At the sight of the plate containing Bindle"s conception of arrowroot for an invalid, Mrs. Hearty had at first manifested curiosity, then, on discovering the const.i.tuent parts of the unsavoury-looking mess, she had collapsed upon the green-painted box, wheezing and heaving until her gasps for breath caused Mrs. Bindle to open her eyes.
For nearly a week, Bindle and Mrs. Hearty devoted themselves to the sick woman. Every morning Bindle was late for work, and when he could get home he spent more than half of his dinner-hour by Mrs. Bindle"s bedside, asking the inevitable question as to whether she were feeling better.
In the evening, he got home as fast as bus, train or tram could take him, and not once did he go to bed.
During the whole period, Mrs. Bindle was as docile and amenable to reason as a poor relation. Never had she been so subdued. From Mrs.
Hearty she took the food that was prepared for her, and acquiesced in the remedies administered. Amidst a perfect tornado of wheezes and gaspings, Mrs. Hearty had confided to Bindle that he had better refrain from invalid cookery.
Nothing that either the doctor or Mrs. Hearty could say would convince Mrs. Bindle that she was long for this world. The very cheerfulness of those around her seemed proof positive that they were striving to inspire her with a hope they were far from feeling.
In her contemplation of Eternity, Mrs. Bindle forgot her kitchen, and the probable desolation Bindle was wreaking. Smells of burning, no matter how pungent, left her unmoved, and Bindle, finding that for the first time in his life immunity surrounded him, proceeded from one gastronomic triumph to another. He burned sausages in the frying-pan, boiled dried haddock in a porcelain-lined milk-saucepan and, not daring to confuse the flavour of sausages and fish, had hit upon the novel plan of cooking a brace of bloaters upon the top of the stove itself.
Culinary enthusiasm seized him, and he invented several little dishes of his own. Some were undoubted successes, notably one made up of tomatoes, fried onions and little strips of bacon; but he met his Waterloo in a dish composed of fried onions and eggs. The eggs were much quicker off the mark than the onions, and won in a canter. He quickly realised that swift decision was essential. It was a case either of raw onions and cooked eggs, or cooked onions and cindered eggs.
Never had such scents risen from Mrs. Bindle"s stove to the receptive nostrils of the G.o.ds; yet through it all Mrs. Bindle made neither protest nor enquiry.
Even Mrs. Hearty was appalled by the state in which she found the kitchen each morning.
"My word, Joe!" she would wheeze. "You don"t "alf make a mess," and she would gaze from the stove to the table, and from the table to the sink, all of which bore manifest evidence of Bindle"s culinary activities.
Mrs. Bindle, however, seemed oblivious of the cares of this world in her anxiety not to make the journey to the next. As her breath became more constricted, so her alarm increased.
In her eyes there was a mute appeal that Bindle, for one, found it impossible to ignore. Instinctively he sensed what was troubling her, and he lost no opportunity of striving to rea.s.sure her by saying that she would be out and about again before she could say "Jack Robinson."
Still there lurked in her eyes a Great Fear. She had never before had bronchitis, and the difficulty she experienced in breathing seemed to her morbidly suggestive of approaching death. Although she had never seen anyone die, she had in her own mind a.s.sociated death with a terrible struggle for breath.
Once when Bindle suggested that she might like to see Mr. MacFie, the minister of the Alton Road Chapel, Mrs. Bindle turned upon him such an agonised look that he instinctively shrank back.
"Might-a-been Ole Nick "isself," he later confided to Mrs. Hearty, "and me a-thinkin" to please "er."
"She"s afraid o" dying, Joe," wheezed Mrs. Hearty "Alf was just the same when "e "ad the flu."
Bindle spent money with the recklessness of a desperate man. He bought strange and inappropriate foods in the hope that they would tempt Mrs.
Bindle"s appet.i.te. No matter where his work led him, he was always on the look out for some dainty, which he would purchase and carry home in triumph to Mrs. Hearty.
"You ain"t "alf a joke, Joe," she wheezed one evening, sinking down upon a chair and proceeding to heave and billow with suppressed laughter.
Bindle looked lugubriously at the yellow pie-dish into which he had just emptied about a quart of whelks, purchased in the Mile End Road.
"Ain"t they good for bronchitis?" he enquired with a crestfallen look.
"Last night it was pig"s feet," gasped Mrs. Hearty, "and the night before saveloys," and she proceeded to beat her chest with a grubby fist.
After that, Bindle had fallen back upon less debatable things. He had purchased ill.u.s.trated papers, flowers, a quarter of a pound of chocolate creams, which had become a little wilted, owing to the crowded state of the tramcar in which he had returned home that night.
During those anxious days, he collected a strange a.s.sortment of articles, perishable and otherwise. The thing he could not do was to go home without some token of his solicitude.
One evening he acquired a vividly coloured oleograph in a gilt frame, which depicted a yawning grave, whilst in the distance an angel was to be seen carrying a very material-looking spirit to heaven.
Mrs. Bindle"s reception of the gift was a wild look of terror, followed by a fit of coughing that frightened Bindle almost as much as it did her.
"Funny," he remarked later as he carried the picture out of the room. "I thought she"d "ave liked an angel."
It was Bindle who eventually solved the problem of how to convey comfort to Mrs. Bindle"s distraught spirit.
One evening he accompanied the doctor to her room. After the customary questions and answers between doctor and patient, Bindle suddenly burst out.
"I got a bet on with the doctor, Lizzie."
From an anxious contemplation of the doctor"s face, where she had been striving to read the worst, Mrs. Bindle turned her eyes to Bindle"s cheery countenance.
""E"s bet me a quid you"ll be cookin" my dinner this day week," he announced.
The effect of the announcement on Mrs. Bindle was startling. A new light sprang into her eyes, her cheeks became faintly pink as she turned to the doctor a look of interrogation.