"You can go in and tell them that you won"t have it."
"But then Sawney an" Grimps would start on me."
"That"s what it is, you"re afraid," she cried, triumphantly. "If you was a man you"d hit back; but you"re not."
"But I ain"t a-goin" to start fightin" because some one says I don"t wear----"
"Stop it!"
And Bindle stopped it.
"Why don"t you do something like Mr. Hearty?" demanded Mrs. Bindle, as he pushed back his chair and rose. She was determined not to be deprived of her scapegoat, at least not without another offensive.
He paused before replying, making sure that his line of retreat was open. The greengrocering success of her brother-in-law was used by Mrs.
Bindle as a whip of scorpions.
""Earty don"t do things," he replied, sidling towards the door. ""E does people," and with footwork that would have made a champion fly-weight envious, he was out in the pa.s.sage before Mrs. Bindle could retort.
Long and late that night she pondered over the indignities to which she had been subjected during the day. There were wanton moments when she yearned to be able to display to the neighbours the whole of her laundry--and Bindle"s. Herself a connoisseur of garments that pa.s.sed through the wash-tub, she knew that those of her house could hold their own, as joyously white and playful in the breeze as any that her neighbours were able to produce.
She had suffered with a still tongue; yet it had not turned aside wrath, particularly her own wrath. Instinctively, her thoughts reverted to the time when an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth were regarded as legal tender.
All that night and the next day she pondered. When Bindle returned on the Wednesday evening, he found her almost light-hearted. "Gospel Bells", Mrs. Bindle"s favourite hymn, was going with a rare swing, and during the meal that followed, she was bordering on the conversational.
Several times he regarded her curiously.
"Somethink"s up," he muttered; but, too wise in his experience, he made no endeavour to probe the mystery.
For the rest of the week Mrs. Bindle spent every odd moment she could spare from her domestic duties in collecting what she mentally described as "rubbish". She went through each room with a toothcomb. By Sat.u.r.day night, she had acc.u.mulated in the wash-house, a pile of odds and ends which, as Bindle said, would have been enough to start a rag-and-bone shop.
Curiously enough, Mrs. Bindle did not resent his remark; instead she almost smiled, so marked was her expression of grim complacency.
On Sunday at chapel, she sang with a vigour and fervency that attracted to her the curious gaze of more than one pair of eyes.
"Mrs. B."s got somethink in "er stockin"," mumbled Bindle, as he rose from the supper-table that night. "Never seen "er so cheerio in all my puff. I "ope it ain"t drink."
Monday morning dawned, and Mrs. Bindle was up an hour earlier than usual, still almost blithe in her manner.
"Shouldn"t be surprised if she"s a-goin" to run away with ole "Earty,"
muttered Bindle, as he took from her almost gracious hands his third cup of tea at breakfast.
"You sings like a two-year-old, Lizzie," he ventured. "I like them little twiddley bits wot you been puttin" into that "ymn."
The "twiddley bits" to which Bindle referred was her rendering of "bells," as a word of three syllables, "be-e-ells."
"You get on with your breakfast," was her retort; but there was about it neither reproach nor rancour.
Again he looked at her curiously.
"Can"t make "er out these last few days," he muttered, as he rose and picked up his cap. "Somethink"s up!"
Mrs. Bindle proceeded to wash-up the breakfast things to the tune of "Hold the Fort." From time to time during the morning, she would glance out of the window to see if Mrs. Grimps, or Mrs. Sawney had yet begun to "hang-out".
They were usually late; but this morning they were later than usual. It was after ten before Mrs. Grimps appeared with the first basket of wet clothes. She was followed a few minutes later by Mrs. Sawney.
The two women exchanged greetings, the day was too busy a one for anything more.
As they pegged the various items of the week"s wash to their respective lines, Mrs. Bindle watched from the back-bedroom window, her eyes like points of steel, her lips a grim grey line. She was experiencing the sensations of the general who sees the enemy delivered into his hands.
As soon as Mrs. Grimps and Mrs. Sawney had returned to their wash-tubs, Mrs. Bindle descended to the scullery, where lay the heap of rubbish she had collected during the previous week. With great deliberation she proceeded to stuff it into a clothes-basket, by means of which she transported the ma.s.s to the bottom of the garden, a proceeding which required several journeys.
Mrs. Sawney and Mrs. Grimps were too busily occupied to concern themselves with the movements of their neighbour.
Her task completed, Mrs. Bindle returned to her domestic duties, and in due time ate a solitary dinner, Bindle being engaged too far away to admit of his sharing it with her. She then proceeded upstairs to perform her toilette, as on Monday afternoons she always arranged to go out "dressed". This in itself was a direct challenge to Fenton Street, which had to stay at home and attend to the cleansing of its linen.
Her toilette finished, Mrs. Bindle slipped into the back bedroom. Below, her two neighbours were engaged in hanging-out the second instalment of their wash, the first batch having been gathered-in ready for the mangle. After that, they would eat their mid-day meal. Although no gossip, Mrs. Bindle was not un.o.bservant, and she knew the movements of her neighbours as well as they knew hers.
A quarter of an hour later, the front door of No. 7 banged-to. Mrs.
Bindle, in brown alpaca, a brown bonnet with a dash of purple, and biscuit-coloured gloves, was going to see her niece, Millie Dixon, nee Hearty, with whom she had arranged to spend the afternoon.
IV
"Mrs. Sawney! Mrs. Sawney! Come and look at your clothes!"
Mrs. Grimps, her hands on the top of the fence, shouted her thrilling appeal across the intervening garden.
Mrs. Sawney appeared, as if propelled from her scullery door by some unseen force.
For a moment she stood blinking stupidly, as dense volumes of s.m.u.t-laden smoke ascended to the blueness of heaven from the garden of No. 7. It was only the smoke, however, that ascended. One glance at the piebald garments hanging from her linen-lines was sufficient to convince Mrs.
Sawney of that.
"It"s that woman," she almost screamed, as she began to pound at the fence dividing her garden from that of Mrs. Bindle. "I"ll show "er."
"Yes; but what about the----" Mrs. Grimps broke-off, stifled by a volume of dense black smoke that curled across to her. "Look at them s.m.u.ts."
Mrs. Bindle had taken the precaution of adding some paraffin and colza oil to her bonfire, which was now blazing merrily, sending forth an ever-increasing deluge of s.m.u.ts, as if conscious of what was expected of it.
Mrs. Sawney continued to bang on the fence, whilst Mrs. Grimps dashed through her house and proceeded to pound at Mrs. Bindle"s front door with a vigour born of hate and desperation.
"She"s gorn out."
The information was vouchsafed by a little boy in petticoats, who had toddled uncertainly from the other side of the street, and now stood clinging to the railings with grubby hands.
Mrs. Grimps scurried back again to the scene of disaster.
She was just in time to see Mrs. Sawney take what appeared to be the tail-end of a header into Mrs. Bindle"s back-garden, displaying in the process a pair of stockings that owed little to the wash-tub, and less to the darning-needle.
"Get some water," she gasped, as she picked herself up and once more consigned her hosiery to the seclusion of her skirts. Mrs. Grimps dashed into the scullery.