He stopped, that the heavens might have an opportunity of falling.
"Did-he-love-his-Auntie-Lizzie-blossom-um-um-um-um."
Charley and Millie exchanged glances; but Bindle was too intent upon his disastrous mission to be conscious of anything but the storm he knew was about to break.
"Did you "ear, Lizzie," he continued. "We broken the musical-box.
Smashed it all to smithereens. Done for it," he added, as if to leave no loophole for misconception as to the appalling nature of the tragedy.
He held his breath, as one who has just tugged at the cord of a shower-bath.
"Oh! go away do!" she cried. "Um-um-um-um-prettyums."
"Pore Aunt Anne"s musical-box," he repeated dully. "It"s smashed."
"Oh, bother the musical-box! Um-um-um-per-weshus-um-um-um."
Mrs. Bindle had not even looked up.
It was Millie who shepherded the others back into the parlour, where Bindle mopped his brow, with the air of a man who, having met death face to face, has survived.
"Well, I"m blowed!" was all he said.
And Millie smiled across at Charley, a smile of superior understanding.
CHAPTER V
MRS. BINDLE BURNS INCENSE
"I wonder you allow that girl to wear such disgusting clothes."
For the last five minutes Mrs. Bindle had been watching Alice, Mrs.
Hearty"s maid, as she moved about the room, tidying-up. The girl had just returned from her evening out, and her first act had been to bring Mrs. Hearty her nightly gla.s.s of Guinness and "snack of bread-and-cheese," an enormous crust torn from a new cottage loaf and plentifully spread with b.u.t.ter, flanked by about a quarter-of-a-pound of cheese. Now that the girl had left the room, Mrs. Bindle could contain herself no longer.
Mrs. Hearty was a woman upon whom fat had descended as a disguise. Her manifold chins rippled downwards until they became absorbed in the gigantic wave of her bust. She had a generous appet.i.te, and was d.a.m.ned with a liking for fat-forming foods.
With her sister she had nothing in common; but in Bindle she had found a kindred spirit. The very sight of him would invariably set her heaving and pulsating with laughter and protestations of "Oh, Joe, don"t!"
For response to her sister"s comment, Mrs. Hearty took a deep draught of Guinness and then, with a film of froth still upon her upper lip, she retorted, "It"s "er night out," and relapsed into wheezes and endeavours to regain her breath.
Mrs. Bindle was not in a good humour. She had called hoping to find Mr.
Hearty returned from choir-practice, after which was to be announced the deacons" decision as to who was to succeed Mr. Smithers in training the choir.
Her brother-in-law"s success was with her something between an inspiration and a hobby. It became the absorbing interest in life, outside the chapel and her home. No wife, or mother, ever watched the progress of a husband, or son, with keener interest, or greater admiration, than Mrs. Bindle that of Mr. Hearty.
As a girl, she had been pleasure-loving. There were those who even went to the extent of regarding her as flighty. She attended theatres and music-halls, which she had not then regarded as "places of sin," and her contemporaries cla.s.sified her as something of a flirt; but disillusionment had come with marriage. She soon realised that she had made the great and unforgivable mistake of marrying the wrong man. It turned her from the "carnal," and was the cause of her joining the Alton Road Chapel, at which Mr. Hearty worshipped.
From that date she began a careful and elaborate preparation for the next world.
Although she nightly sought the Almighty to forgive her her trespa.s.ses, volunteering the information that she in turn would forgive those who trespa.s.sed against her, she never forgave Bindle for his glib and ready tongue, which had obscured her judgment to the extent of allowing to escape from the matrimonial noose, a potential master-greengrocer with three shops.
There was nothing in her att.i.tude towards Mr. Hearty suggestive of sentiment. She was a woman, and she bowed the knee at an altar where women love to worship.
"I call it----" Mrs. Bindle stopped short as Alice re-entered the room with a small dish of pickled onions, without which Mrs. Hearty would have found it impossible to sleep.
With a woman"s instinct, Alice realised that Mrs. Bindle disapproved of her low-cut, pale blue blouse, and the short skirt that exposed to the world"s gaze so much of the nether Alice.
"You ain"t been lonely, mum?" she queried solicitously, as she took a final look round before going to bed, to see that everything was in order.
Mrs. Hearty shook her head and undulated violently.
"It"s my breath," she panted, and proceeded to hit her chest with the flat of her doubled-up fist. ""Ad a nice time?" she managed to gasp in the tone of a mistress who knows and understands, and is known and understood by, her maid.
"Oh! it was lovely," cried Alice ecstatically. "I went to the pictures with"--she hesitated and blushed--"a friend," then, pride getting the better of self-consciousness, she added, "a gentleman friend, mum.
There was a filum about a young girl running away with "er boy on a horse who turned out to be a millionaire and she looked lovely in her veil and orange-blossom and "im that "andsome."
"And when"s it to be, Alice?" enquired Mrs. Hearty, between the a.s.saults upon her chest.
"Oh, mum!" giggled Alice, and a moment later she had disappeared round the door, with a "Good night, mum, mind you sleeps well."
"I"m surprised the way you let that girl talk to you, Martha," snapped Mrs. Bindle, almost before the door had closed behind the retreating Alice. "You allow her to be too familiar. If you give them an inch, they"ll take an ell," she added.
"She"s a good gal," gasped Mrs. Hearty, as she lifted the gla.s.s of Guinness to her lips. "It"s gone orf," she added a moment later. "It ain"t wot it used to be," and she shook a despondent head as she replaced the almost empty gla.s.s upon the table.
"You"d be better without it," was the unsympathetic rejoinder, then, not to be diverted from the topic of Alice and her scanty attire, Mrs.
Bindle added, "Her blouse was disgusting, and as for her skirt, I should be ashamed for her to be seen entering my house."
Mrs. Bindle believed in appearances as she believed in "the Lord," and it is open to question, if the two had at any time clashed, whether appearances would have been sacrificed.
"She"s all right," wheezed Mrs. Hearty comfortably, through a mouthful of bread-and-cheese.
"The way girls dress now makes me hot all over," snapped Mrs. Bindle.
"The police ought to stop it."
"They,"--with a gigantic swallow Mrs. Hearty reduced the bread-and-cheese to conversational proportions,--"they like it," she gasped at length, and broke into ripples and wheezes.
"Don"t be disgusting, Martha. You make me ashamed. You ought to speak to Alice. It"s not respectable, her going about like that."
Mrs. Hearty made an effort to speak; but the words failed to penetrate the barrage of bread-and-cheese--Mrs. Hearty did everything with gusto.
"Supposing I was to go out in a short skirt like that. What would you say then?"
"You--you ain"t got the legs, Lizzie," and Mrs. Hearty was off into a paroxysm of gasps and undulations.
"Oh don"t, don"t," she gasped, as if Mrs. Bindle were responsible for her agony. "You"ll be the death of me," she cried, as she wiped her eyes with a soiled pocket-handkerchief.