"Stop it!" She stood over him, her lips compressed, her eyes hard and steely, as if meditating violence, then, turning suddenly, she walked swiftly across to the dresser and pulled out the left-hand drawer.
Taking from it her bonnet, she put it on her head and proceeded to tie the strings beneath her chin.
From behind the kitchen door she unhooked a brown mackintosh, into which she struggled.
"Goin" out?" he enquired.
"Yes," she replied, as she tore open the door, "and perhaps I"ll never come back again," and with a bang that shook the house she was gone.
She took a tram to Hammersmith on her way to see her niece, Millie Dixon. She was angry; the day had been one of continual annoyances and vexations. Entering the car she buried her elbows deep into the redundant figure of a woman who was also endeavouring to enter.
Once inside, the woman began to inform the car what she thought of "scraggy "Uns with faces like a drop of vinegar on the edge of a knife."
"That"s the way you gets cancer," she continued, as she stroked the left side of her ample bust. "People with elbows like that should "ave "em padded," and Mrs. Bindle was conscious that the car was with her antagonist.
Mrs. Bindle next proceeded to quarrel with the conductor about the fare, which had gone up a halfpenny, and she ended by threatening to report him for not setting her down between the scheduled stopping-places.
"She"s lost a Bradbury and found the water-rate," remarked the conductor, as he turned once more to the occupants of the car after watching Mrs. Bindle alight.
The fat woman responded to the pleasantry by expressing her views on "them wot don"t know "ow to be"ave theirselves like ladies."
With Mrs. Bindle, the lure of Joseph the Second was strong within her.
When her loneliness became too great for endurance, or the domestic atmosphere manifested signs of a greater voltage than the normal, her thoughts instinctively flew to the blue-eyed nephew, who s...o...b..red and cooed at her and raised his chubby fists in meaningless gestures. Then the hunger within her would be appeased, until some chance mention of Bindle"s name would awaken her self-pity.
She found Millie alone with Joseph the Second asleep in his cot beside her. As she feasted her gaze upon the eye-shut babe, Mrs. Bindle was conscious of a feeling of disappointment. She wanted to babble baby-talk, and gaze into those filmy blue eyes.
In spite of her aunt"s protests, Millie made a cup of tea, explaining as she did so that Charley was staying late at the office.
"It"s a good cake, Millie," said Mrs. Bindle a few minutes later, as she delicately cut another small square from the slice of home-made cake upon the plate before her. In her eyes there was a look which was a tribute from one good cook to another. "Who gave you the recipe?"
"It was all through Uncle Joe," said Millie. "He was always saying what a wonderful cook you are, Aunt Lizzie, and that if you didn"t feed p.u.s.s.y he wouldn"t purr," she laughed. "You know what funny things he says," she added parenthetically--"so I took lessons. You see," she added quaintly, "I wanted Charley to be very happy."
"Pretty lot of purring there is in our house," was Mrs. Bindle"s grim comment, as she raised her cup-and-saucer from the table upon the finger-tips of her left hand and, with little finger awkwardly crooked, lifted the cup with her disengaged hand and proceeded to sip the tea with Victorian refinement.
"How is Uncle Joe?" asked Millie. "I wish he had come."
"Oh! don"t talk to me about your uncle," cried Mrs. Bindle peevishly.
"He"s sitting at home smoking a filthy pipe and reading the horse-racing news. I might be dirt under his feet for all the notice he takes of me."
The grievances of the day had been c.u.mulative with Mrs. Bindle, and the burden was too heavy to be borne in silence. Beginning with a bad tomato among the pound she had bought that morning at Mr. Hearty"s Fulham shop, her troubles had piled up one upon another to the point when she found Joseph the Second asleep.
She had burned one of her best hem-st.i.tched handkerchiefs whilst ironing it, the milk had "turned" on account of the thunder in the air and, to crown the morning"s tragedies, she had burned a saucepan owing to the dustman coming at an inconvenient moment.
"He"s never been a proper husband to me," she sniffed ominously.
"Dear Aunt Lizzie," said Millie gently, as she leaned forward and placed her hand upon Mrs. Bindle"s arm.
"He humiliates me before other people and--and sometimes I wish I was dead, Millie, G.o.d forgive me." Her voice broke as she stifled a sob.
Millie"s large, grave eyes were full of sympathy, mixed with a little wonder. She could not understand how anyone could find "Uncle Joe" other than adorable.
"Ever since I married him he"s been the same," continued Mrs. Bindle, the flood-gates of self-pity opening wide under the influence of Millie"s gentleness and sympathy. "He tries to make me look small before other people and--and I"ve always been a good wife to him."
Again she sniffed, and Millie squeezed her arm affectionately.
"He"s just the same with Mr.--with your father," Mrs. Bindle corrected herself. "Why he stands it I don"t know. If I was a man I"d hit him, that I would, and hard too," she added as if to allow of no doubt in her niece"s mind as to the nature of the punishment she would administer.
"I"d show him; but Mr. Hearty"s so good and patient and gentle." Mrs.
Bindle produced a handkerchief, and proceeded to dab the corners of her eyes, although there was no indication of tears.
"But, Aunt Lizzie," protested Millie gently, "I"m sure he doesn"t mean to make you--to humiliate you." She felt that loyalty to her beloved Uncle Joe demanded that she should defend him. "You see, he--he loves a joke, and he"s very good to--to, oh, everybody! Charley just loves Uncle Joe," she added, as if that settled the matter as far as she were concerned.
"Look how he goes on about the chapel," continued Mrs. Bindle, fearful lest her niece"s sympathy should be s.n.a.t.c.hed from her. "I wonder G.o.d doesn"t strike him dead. I"m sure I----"
"Strike him dead!" cried Millie in horror. "Oh, Aunt Lizzie! you don"t mean that, you couldn"t." She paused, seeming to bring the whole twelve months of her matronhood to the examination of the problem. "I know he"s very naughty sometimes," she added sagely, "but he loves you, Aunt Lizzie. He thinks that----"
"Love!" cried Mrs. Bindle with all the scorn of a woman who has no intention of being comforted. "He loves nothing but his food and his low companions. He shames me before the neighbours, talking that familiar with common men. When I"m out with him he shouts out to bus-conductors, or whistles at policemen, or winks at--at hussies in the street." She paused in the catalogue of Bindle"s crimes, whilst Millie turned her head to hide the smile she could not quite repress.
She herself had been with Bindle when he had called out to his bus-conductor friends, and whistled under his breath when pa.s.sing a policeman, "If You Want to Know the Time Ask a Policeman"; but he had never winked at girls when he had been with her; of that she was sure.
"You see, Aunt Lizzie, he knows so many people, and they all like him and----"
"Only common people, like chauffeurs and workmen," was the retort. "When I"m out with him I sometimes want to sink through the ground with shame.
He lets them call him "Joe," and of course they don"t respect me." Again she sniffed ominously.
"I"ll speak to him," said Millie with a wise little air that she had a.s.sumed since her marriage.
"Speak to him!" cried Mrs. Bindle scornfully. "Might as well speak to a brick wall. I"ve spoken to him until I"m tired, and what does he do?
Laughs at me and says I"m as----" she paused, as if finding difficulty in bringing herself to give Bindle"s actual expression--"says I"m as holy as ointment, if you know what that means."
"But he doesn"t mean to be unkind, Aunt Lizzie, I"m sure he doesn"t,"
protested Millie loyally. "He calls Boy--I mean Charley," she corrected herself with a little blush, "all sorts of names," and she laughed at some recollection of her own. "Don"t you think, Aunt Lizzie----" she paused, conscious that she was approaching delicate ground. "Don"t you think that if you and Uncle Joe were both to try and--and----" she stopped, looking across at her aunt anxiously, her lower lip indrawn and her eyes gravely wide.
"Try and what?" demanded Mrs. Bindle, a hardness creeping into her voice at the thought that anyone could see any mitigating circ.u.mstance in Bindle"s treatment of her.
"I thought that if perhaps--I mean," hesitated Millie, "that if you both tried very hard to--to, not to hurt each other----" again she stopped.
"I"m sure I"ve never said anything to him that all the world might not hear," retorted Mrs. Bindle, with the unction of the righteous, "although he"s always saying things to me that make me hot with shame, married woman though I am."
"But, Aunt Lizzie," persisted Millie, clasping Mrs. Bindle"s arm with both hands, and looking appealingly up into her face, "won"t you try, just for my sake, pleeeeeease," she coaxed.
"I"ve tried until I"m tired of trying," was the ungracious retort. "I moil and toil, inch and pinch, work day and night to mend his clothes and get his food ready, and this is what I get for it. He makes me a laughing-stock, talks about me behind my back. Oh, I know!" she added hastily, as Millie made a sign of dissent. "He can"t deceive me. He wants to bring me down to his own level of wickedness, then he"ll be happy; but he shan"t," she cried, the Daughter of the Lord manifesting herself. "I"ll kill myself first. He shall never have that pleasure, no one shall ever be able to say that I let him drag me down.
"I"ve always done my duty by him," she continued, returning to the threadbare phrase that was ever present in her mind. "I"ve worked morning, noon and night to try and keep him respectable, and see how he treats me. I"m worse off than a servant, I tell him so and what does he do?" she demanded. "Laughs at me," she cried shrilly, answering her own question, "and humiliates me before the neighbours. Gets the children to call after me, makes----"
"Oh, Aunt Lizzie! You mustn"t say that," cried Millie in distress. "I"m sure Uncle Joe would never do such a thing. He couldn"t," she added with conviction.
"Well, they do it," retorted Mrs. Bindle, conscious of a feeling that possibly she had gone too far; "only yesterday they did it."
"What did they say?" enquired Millie curiously.