Читать книгу The Bindles on the Rocks - Jenkins Herbert George - Страница 4

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I

Mrs. Bindle looked forward to Sunday. The afternoon and evening she dedicated to her soul; but the morning she spent in the kitchen, preparing dinner. She was an excellent cook and a good housewife, and her faith was never permitted to interfere with the proper performance of her domestic duties.

Once a fellow-member of the Alton Road Chapel had suggested that Providence would not look kindly on one who worked on the Sabbath, even in the preparation of meals.

"Then what about the Sea of Galilee?" Mrs. Bindle had retorted.

The critic was silenced, and henceforth held her peace. She prided herself upon her knowledge of the Scriptures; but the reference to the Sea of Galilee puzzled her. She hesitated to confess her ignorance of an incident which seemed to come so easily to Mrs. Bindle's tongue.

Long and patiently this woman had searched Holy Writ for something that seemed even remotely to condone labouring upon the seventh day; but without success. In consequence she disliked Mrs. Bindle even more than before; but her dislike was henceforth tinctured with respect.

To Bindle, Sunday dinner was an affair to be approached with what he called "tack." He enjoyed Mrs. Bindle's cooking, just as he disliked the homilies that invariably accompanied the Sabbath midday meal.

For six days Mrs. Bindle laboured with broom and duster, soap and water, hearth-stone and furniture-polish, in her fight for the material cleanliness of Bindle's home; on the seventh day she devoted herself to the spiritual conquest of his soul. To her a soul was what a scalp is to the American Indian. Bindle had once remarked to his friend Ginger: "Wot I likes about you, Ging, is that you ain't got a soul, an' no one wouldn't never know you'd ever 'eard of soap."

One Sunday, as Bindle was enjoying to the full Mrs. Bindle's conception of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding (made with eggs and cooked under the meat), he was startled out of his content by the sudden and peremptory question: "Bindle, are you prepared to meet your Maker?"

He was in the act of lifting to his mouth a particularly succulent morsel of Yorkshire pudding, which he had been keeping till the last. He made a point of reserving what he called "a tasty bit" for the final mouthful.

The suddenness of Mrs. Bindle's interrogation caused him to glance at her obliquely, just at the moment when the Yorkshire pudding had covered half the distance to his mouth.

That side-look was fatal. The knife tilted slightly, and the Yorkshire pudding slid off, and ricochetted from his left knee on to the kitchen floor.

While he was rescuing the morsel and, for safety's sake, conveying it to his mouth by the more reliable means of his fingers, Mrs. Bindle sat regarding him with indrawn lips. It was the Sabbath, and she was striving to conduct herself as it behoved "a daughter of the Lord."

"Well?" she demanded, when he had masticated the errant dainty and pushed the plate from him, a sign that, so far as he was concerned, it possessed no further use or interest for him, and that he was prepared to sit in judgment upon whatever else there was to follow.

He turned to her, innocence and interrogation in his eye.

"Did you hear what I said?"

Mrs. Bindle was not to be diverted from her purpose, especially when that purpose had to do with the work of salvation.

"I 'eard you say somethink, Lizzie," he confessed, "but--" He paused.

"Are you prepared to meet the Lord?" In Mrs. Bindle's tones there was a hell-fireand-brimstone Calvinism.

"When?" demanded Bindle, desirous of temporising until the pudding appeared.

"Now!" was the uncompromising rejoinder. "Before I've 'ad my puddin'?" with an injured air. "No, I ain't," he added with decision.

"You heathen!" Bindle was startled by the venom she precipitated into the words. "You're locked in the outer darkness, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth," she added with glib conviction.

"But not in my dinner-hour," he protested, his eye on a large saucepan, which instinct told him contained the next course.

"Blasphemer!" The word leapt from Mrs. Bindle's lips like a verbal Jack-in-the-box.

"No, I ain't, Lizzie." He recognised the portents, and realised that there would be a solemn course of theology before the sweets appeared.

"You are, and you know it," she cried. "Whistling on Sundays," she added inconsequently. "I've heard you."

Bindle always strove to suppress his natural inclination to whistle on the Sabbath; but there were times when a bar or two of some secular air would break bounds before he realised what day it was.

"Well, you didn't ought to want me to get up in the middle o' Sunday dinner," he grumbled.

"I wonder you aren't afraid of being struck dead where you sit, saying such things."

"Wot 'ave I said now?" He looked across at her, entirely at a loss.

"Oh, don't talk to me!" She rose from the table. "You're enough to try the patience of a saint." To Bindle's manifest relief, she proceeded to attack the saucepan, which proved to contain an apple pudding, in the making of which Mrs. Bindle had nothing to learn.

He raised his head and sniffed the air like a hound. He was uncommonly fond of apple pudding.

Mrs. Bindle dished-up the pudding to the accompaniment of a series of bangs, which eloquently expressed her feelings.

Bindle licked his lips and waited.

With a super-bang she placed the dish upon the table and resumed her chair. Seizing a spoon, she proceeded to hack out a piece of the pudding, dash it on to a plate as if it had been Bindle's soul, and dab apple beside it.

"Mind it doesn't choke you," she snapped as she handed him the plate.

"I'll try and see that it slips down comfortable like," he said cheerily, reaching for the sugar-basin.

"Better taste it first," she interposed; "there's plenty of sugar."

Bindle took a generous spoonful of the pudding, conveyed it to his mouth, but a moment later he returned it to the plate with a little yelp.

"You beast!"

"But it's 'ot," he protested, looking reproachfully at the steaming pudding. "Burnt my mouth, it did."

"You behave like a cannibal," she cried illogically. Mrs. Bindle's own table manners were almost too refined for the proper nourishment of her body.

"You wouldn't 'ave 'ad me swallow it?" He looked at her in surprise. "It 'ud 'ave burnt an ole in my--"

"Stop it!"

"Oh, all right!" he grumbled as he returned to his plate and proceeded to attack the pudding with subtle strategy, approaching it from the outer edge, and subjecting each spoonful to a vigorous blowing before putting it into his mouth.

"You never go to a place of worship," Mrs. Bindle remarked, returning to her original theme.

"A place of wot?" He looked across at her, still continuing his efforts to reduce the temperature of a piled-up spoonful before him.

"You never go to chapel. You know quite well what I mean. Perhaps if you went to chapel, you wouldn't be out of work." Mrs. Bindle drew in her lips and chin with the air of one who had pronounced a great truth.

"But 'ow's goin' to chapel goin' to 'elp me get a job?" asked Bindle, with corrugated brow. "They wouldn't listen to me apreachin'."

"You're being punished!" announced Mrs. Bindle, with relish. "Punished for all your wickedness."

"Jer mean to say that Gawd's lost me my job so as to make me go to chapel?" persisted Bindle, whose literalness Mrs. Bindle frequently found disconcerting.

"Oh, don't talk to me!" she cried impatiently.

It was a phrase that came readily to her lips when she found difficulty in answering one of Bindle's theological interrogations.

"Besides," she continued a moment later, "Mr. Tubbs might give you a job if you belonged to the chapel."

"'Oo's 'e?" demanded Bindle, his interest awakened at the thought of a job.

"Mr. Tubbs is a builder, and he is very fond of singing," she added inconsequently.

"Well, I ain't got much of a voice," said Bindle, with the air of one trying to be scrupulously fair, and undesirous of taking a mean advantage of an employer; "and as to buildin', well, I shouldn't care to live in anythink wot I built. Still, somebody might go an nose round an' see wot--"

"You jeer at everything I suggest," broke in Mrs. Bindle. "If you meant to get on, you would. You should go to the spider," she continued, recalling a phrase from one of Mr. MacFie's recent sermons on Bruce and the spider.

"The Yellow Ostrich is good enough for me," said Bindle. "Wot's the use of tellin' me to go to the spider when I 'aven't got twopence for a drink?"

"When you do get a job you don't keep it, because you don't behave yourself," said Mrs. Bindle, ignoring Bindle's irrelevancy.

"Look 'ere, Lizzie," he said quite recklessly, "I'll come to chapel next Sunday, blowed if I don't!" The pudding was uncommonly good, and Bindle felt on excellent terms with everybody; besides, next Sunday was a long way off. "You'd only make me ashamed of you if you was to come. You've always been against religion and going to chapel," she complained.

"I ain't got nothink to say agin religion as religion," he remarked. "It's the Singin' Susans an' the Prayin' Peters wot gets me on the point of the jaw."

"If you go to chapel you've got to behave yourself," said Mrs. Bindle grimly.

"I'll be as good as gold." He held up his plate for another helping.

"You'd better!" she counselled grimly, as she viciously dabbed a spoonful of apple on the plate. "I'll speak to Mr. MacFie about it." Mr. MacFie was the minister of the Alton Road Chapel and Bindle groaned in spirit at the prospect.

"I ain't got nothin' to say agin religion," he remarked a few minutes later, as he proceeded to scoop up the last fragment of pudding from the edge of the plate, "provided it don't go a-mixin' itself up with meal-times."

II

"Well, I'm blowed!" cried Bindle, coming to a standstill outside the Alton Road Chapel. "If I'd a known, I'm blessed if I'd 'ave come."

"Ssssh!" Mrs. Bindle jabbed her elbow into Bindle's ribs.

"But look," he persisted, indicating a notice-board on which appeared in large letters:

ALL ARE WELCOME.

HEARTY SINGING.

"That ain't the way to get 'em to go in, a-telling 'em that 'Earty's a-goin' to sing. 'E'd empty a pub before closin'-time with a voice like 'is."

"Stop it!" Again Mrs. Bindle's elbow found Bindle's seventh rib. "It means all are to sing."

Her eyes were fixed upon a little man with bandy legs, a frock-coat and a silk hat, who was approaching.

"Mind you raise your hat when Mr. Tubbs raises his," she whispered to Bindle.

"Raise my wot?" Bindle gazed about him vaguely.

"Sssh!"

"Ain't we goin' in?" he enquired with the air of one who, having made up his mind to go to the dentist, sees no object in waiting outside. Mrs. Bindle ignored the question. Mr. Tubbs was a deacon at the Alton Road Chapel, and, socially, she always had one eye upon those who breathed the air of a higher plane. She was conscious of looking her best in an alpaca dress of deep purple, cut to a decorous length, which quite obscured her elastic-sided boots.

She wore a bonnet of a shape that she had adopted for years. Flat at the sides, it was built up high in front, like the bows of a modern destroyer.

Her fawn kid gloves, tight across the palm, rendered the carrying of her best (silver-mounted) umbrella a matter of some difficulty. When he reached the chapel door, Mr. Tubbs did all that was expected of him; but he was not accustomed to putting on a top-hat except before the looking-glass, with the result that in restoring it to his small, bald head he managed to drop his hymn-book (large size with music, Mr. Tubbs being great on harmony--his own harmony).

Bindle sprang forward and rescued the book, and with a cheerful smile handed it to Mr. Tubbs.

"Funny sort o' things when you ain't used to 'em," he said pleasantly. "Them 'ats," he added, nodding to indicate Mr. Tubbs's headgear.

"Bindle!" hissed Mrs. Bindle in his ear.

Mr. Tubbs stared as if Bindle had made a remark in some strange tongue.

Before there was any chance of further conversation, Mrs. Bindle somehow managed to hurry Bindle into the chapel, Mr. Tubbs having made it obvious that the Bindles were to precede him. He prided himself upon his manners, which seemed to hang about him rather like a harness than a natural possession.

The Alton Road Chapel was a small brick building roofed with corrugated iron, and possessed of a single bell of depressing dolefulness. Once inside, Bindle raised his head and sniffed as he was wont to do on entering Mrs. Bindle's kitchen when there were evidences that stewed steak and onions were in preparation. "'Ums a bit, don't it?" he said in a hoarse whisper, which was clearly audible.

In her horror and shame, Mrs. Bindle gripped him by the arm with her forefinger and thumb. "Ow!" he cried. "Leggo my arm, you're 'urting."

Every head in the chapel was turned towards them, and for the moment Mrs. Bindle would have welcomed even the pit of Tophet to open and swallow her up.

Bindle seemed to realise that he had said and done the wrong thing, for, rubbing his arm gingerly, he permitted himself to be led to one of the highly varnished seats about halfway up the aisle.

Mrs. Bindle was conscious that heads were drawing together, and there was a subdued hiss of whispering. Never had she felt so ashamed, and she mentally registered a resolve that Bindle should have cause to regret his conduct. In the meantime, Bindle was endeavouring to dissect the odour into its various component parts. There was a smell of dampness, of varnish, with a leitmotiv of carbolic soap. These he was able to detach from the whole; but there was a predominant influence at work, which he decided must owe its origin to a dead rat, possibly a cat. The other scents entirely eluded him.

Suddenly he became conscious that Mrs. Bindle was on her knees, her head bowed between her hands. For some seconds he regarded her curiously; but soon his attention was distracted by the sight of Mr. Hearty walking up the aisle to his seat.

"'Ullo, 'Earty," he whispered as he leant towards his brother-in-law.

Mr. Hearty started as if Beelzebub himself had addressed him, looked round vaguely, then, his eyes resting on Bindle, he stared with dropped jaw.

Bindle grinned cheerfully. He quite realised the cause of his brother-in-law's surprise.

"Didn't expect to see me 'ere, did you, 'Earty?" he continued in a whisper that could clearly be heard all over the little chapel. Mr. Hearty hurried to his seat. At the sound of Bindle's whisper, Mrs. Bindle had risen to her feet. She dare not nudge him for fear of what he might say. Suddenly her eyes fell upon the hymn-book before her. Seizing and opening it, she thrust it into his hands. He looked at the book, then up at Mrs. Bindle.

"This the one?" he queried.

"Sssh!"

The admonition came from behind. Bindle turned his head quickly and caught the disapproving eye of Mr. Tubbs. He nodded cheerily and returned to the hymn-book, the leaves of which he proceeded to turn, with the air of a man who has nothing with which to occupy him.

Mrs. Bindle sat staring straight in front of her like an Assyrian goddess. She had already bitterly regretted this latest attempt to achieve Bindle's salvation. It was with a feeling of relief that she saw Mr. MacFie come out of the small vestry and move towards his reading-desk. The congregation straightened itself preparatory to throwing itself with vigour into the opening hymn.

With a strong Scots accent, Mr. MacFie announced the number.

"Don't you dare to sing," commanded Mrs. Bindle in a whisper; but Bindle was industriously engaged in tracking down hymn number 611. It was with something of a thrill that he discovered it to be "Onward, Christian Soldiers." If there was one thing about religion that Bindle liked, it was this particular hymn. There was about it a martial clash that appealed to him.

"It ain't like them other soppy tunes," he had once remarked to Mrs. Bindle. "There's ginger in it." But neither Mr. Baring Gould nor Sir Arthur Sullivan had ever conceived their hymn as Bindle was wont to render it.

"Mind now," repeated Mrs. Bindle, confident of not being overheard in the rustle of turning leaves, "don't you dare to sing, Bindle." From somewhere at the other end of the chapel, an American organ began to moan and the congregation rose. They liked that hymn. They had it frequently, sometimes twice a day. The American organ plodded on its way in spite of the ciphering of two notes. Presently the player gave the signal for the singing to start. The congregation gripped it as it never failed to grip a hymn it liked; but Bindle got off a full stroke ahead of the rest, and he proceeded to throw himself into the inspiring melody with heart and soul.

The weakness about Bindle's singing was his inability to control his voice. It wavered and darted about over the whole gamut of sound, while he himself seemed quite oblivious of the fact that the notes he was singing were not those that were being sung around him.

After the first few bars, several singers in his vicinity stopped and gazed at him in wonder. Mr. Tubbs glared at Bindle's back, no harmony could make way against such a volume of sound as Bindle was letting loose. Mrs. Bindle dug her elbow viciously into his ribs; but Bindle was now well in his stride, and enjoying himself hugely.

By the time the refrain was started, Bindle, the American organ and a little deaf man at the far end of the chapel, had matters their own way, with Bindle nearly a bar ahead. As the hymn progressed, other members of the congregation gradually recovered from their surprise and joined once more the flow of song; but Bindle's voice rose well above the combined efforts of the others, who had taken the precaution of linking-up with him rather than with the American organ. The instrument, as if weary of lagging behind, made a gallant effort to catch up the singers; but, led by Bindle, they kept a good half-bar ahead.

Mrs. Bindle's vicious digs at him with her elbow seemed to spur him on to further effort. It was essentially his hymn, and, as if to demonstrate this fact, he concluded the refrain of the last verse a good half-bar behind the rest. With a reluctant sigh of satisfaction, he closed the hymn-book and resumed his seat, regretful that hymns admitted of no encores.

That morning Mrs. Bindle suffered as she had never suffered before at chapel. During the prayers, which were of great length, Bindle grew restless and fidgeted to such an extent as to attract to himself the attention of those about him; but, to Mrs. Bindle, the prayers were as nothing to the hymns.

As she later confided to Mr. Hearty, "It mademe hot all over to hear Bindle blaspheming in the House of God. 'E did it a-purpose, Mr. Hearty," she said, forgetting her meticulous diction in the intensity of her emotion. "I'm sure that's why he offered to come."

Mr. Hearty murmured something suggestive of woolly sympathy.

"And Mr. Tubbs only two seats off," she had continued, "and Bindle shouting 'Man the Lifeboat,' as if--as if he were calling coals. Oh! I was so ashamed, and Mr. Tubbs so fond of that hymn, too."

"But it wasn't your fault, Elizabeth," Mr. Hearty sympathised, in a voice admirably suited to a funeral in November. "In the sight of Heaven--" He paused. Mr. Hearty had a habit of beginning sentences and leaving them unfinished.

It was not the sight of Heaven, however, that had troubled Mrs. Bindle at that moment so much as the sight of man, which was more penetrating and more critical.

"I shall never be able to hold up my head again," she had moaned. "The beast! I'll pay 'im," she added a moment later, dropping from Christianity into Judaism.

It was not until Mr. MacFie began his address that Mrs. Bindle regained to some degree her composure.

Mr. MacFie plunged into the parable of the lost sheep with gusto. His eloquence and dialect were equally marked as he narrated the joy of the Shepherd in discovering and bringing safe into the fold the lost Sheep.

Bindle listened drowsily to Mr. MacFie's somnolent voice, which many of his flock had difficulty in withstanding. It was not until Mr. MacFie announced, "Ahm geeven to onderstand that we have in our meedst the day a puir, wayward lamb that was in danger of becoming lost," that Bindle, scenting scandal, began to take an active interest in Mr. MacFie's droning periods. "It is to be our preevilege to snatch him from the seething cauldron of sin, from the gleettering highway of the riotous and sinful liver."

Bindle looked about him with interest, hoping that the culprit would betray himself; but everyone seemed to return his gaze with a curiosity equal to his own.

Mr. MacFie proceeded to trace the rake's progress from the cradle to a sort of post-mortem grill, which inevitably would have been his fate had he not "seen the Light" in time.

He seemed to find a grim satisfaction in piling up opprobrious epithet upon opprobrious epithet, until it seemed impossible for anyone so deeply merged in sin to turn from his evil ways.

During this tirade, Bindle's attention had been divided between Mr. MacFie and an inoffensive little man with bowed head sitting three seats in front of him, who seemed to be heavily charged with "Amens."

"'Oo's 'e?" Bindle demanded of Mrs. Bindle in an eager whisper. He was convinced that the little man was the culprit.

"Hussssssssh!" she hissed tensely.

Mr. MacFie continued with inspiration to describe the past life of the sinner, until Bindle decided that it was far too hectic for the little man with the bowed head in front. He was obviously too frail an object to have been "such a snorter," in spite of "'im 'avin' Amens like 'iccups," as he later remarked to Mr. Hearty. Mr. MacFie proceeded to draw a comparison between the wrong-doer's past life and his now assured future. He exhorted his hearers to go out that night and pluck brands from the burning. Again Bindle looked enquiringly at Mrs. Bindle; but her gaze was fixed and stony. It might almost have appeared that she was the sinner being pilloried by the minister. She had already regretted taking the minister into her confidence in the matter of Bindle's approaching regeneration.

Bindle made a further effort to identify the culprit; but nowhere could he see anyone whose general demeanour denoted that he was the black-hearted sinner who had come to the Alton Road Chapel to be cleansed.

Mr. MacFie seemed to find greater pleasure in dwelling upon the iniquities of the repentant sinner's past, than the rewards of the future. He referred to him as "drinking deep of the cup that Satan holds out to all," of being "addeected to trail his garments in the blood of the eennocent," of having stricken the fatherless and taken advantage of the trusting widow; "and yet, ma freends, he is the lamb that we welcome here the day."

"Pretty streaky sort o' lamb," muttered Bindle. "They didn't ought to 'ave let 'im orf the collar," he added, drawing from Mrs. Bindle another admonitory "Ssssssh!"

For some time Mr. MacFie continued droning damnation, and Bindle began to realise that the repentant sinner was not to be hauled forth and presented to the full view of the congregation. The dramatic always appealed to him.

At length, Mr. MacFie seemed to have exhausted his supply of blacks and crimsons in describing the hereafter of the sinner had he not escaped judgment. Amidst a chorus of what seemed to Bindle like groans, but were in reality "Amens," he concluded.

Two minutes later, Bindle was leading the congregation in a particularly lusty rendering of "Wonderful Words," in which he beat all comers and actually silenced the American organ, which gave up at the beginning of the second chorus.

Immediately the hymn had concluded, Mrs. Bindle manifested a strong desire to get home. She thrust Bindle's hat into his hand, and gave him a push that sent him sliding some eighteen inches along the seat.

"Go out!" she hissed with all the intensity of a villain in a melodrama, and Bindle regretfully obeyed. He would infinitely have preferred to stay in the hope of exchanging a few words with the ex-lost soul; but Mrs. Bindle was inexorable.

"I enjoyed them 'ymns," he remarked as they walked along the Alton Road.

Mrs. Bindle made no comment; but continued to stalk beside him with lips indrawn, and hymnbook clutched tightly in her right hand.

"'E must 'ave been 'ot stuff, that cove what they was prayin' for." Bindle made another effort at conversation as they turned into the New King's Road.

Mrs. Bindle still maintained a grim silence. She dared not trust herself to speak.

"I tried to spot 'im," continued Bindle, as he waved to an acquaintance engaged in collecting fares on the top of a motorbus.

"Fancy a cove bein' all them things, an' then 'avin' the bloomin' cheek to go to chapel expectin' to be washed white. Like a nigger goin' to a swimmin' bath and thinkin' 'e'll--"

"Stop it!" hissed Mrs. Bindle from between her tightly clenched teeth.

For the next hundred yards he was silent; but his interest in the identity of the lost one was greater than his discretion.

"Personally, meself," he remarked, with the air of one who after mature consideration has come to a decision, "I think it was that nosey, little cove in front wot kep' sayin' 'Amen. More like a goat bleatin' than a lamb."

"IT WAS YOU!"

The words came tensely from between Mrs. Bindle's hidden lips.

"Me?" Into that one word Bindle seemed to precipitate all the surprise of which he was capable.

"It was you that Mr. MacFie was praying for, you heathen!" She could restrain herself no longer.

"Me?" Bindle repeated, coming to a standstill in his astonishment. "Me?" he said for the third time, as with a few swift steps he caught up with her.

"Yes and you know it," she cried, struggling against the hysterical outburst that was long overdue. "You know it in that black heart of yours, and now you have disgraced me," she added as they turned into Fenton Street.

"Me all them things wot 'e told us about!" cried Bindle, still incredulous. "Me a brand from the burnin', a blasphemier, a-strikin' the fatherless and bilkin' the widow."

Mrs. Bindle covered the few yards that lay between her and No. 7 almost at the double. She had the key in her hand and with trembling, uncertain movements inserted it in the lock, opened the door and ran along the passage to the kitchen.

As Bindle closed the door, a peal of unnatural mirth rang along the narrow passage. Mrs. Bindle was having hysterics.

"Well I'm blowed!" he muttered as, with lagging steps, he covered the distance between himself and the kitchen door. "Fancy 'er a-takin' on like that, an' me a-singin' the 'ymns like giddy-o."

"Poor Mr. Bindle!" muttered Mrs. Sawney, who lived at No. 5, as she put on the kettle, "'E as somethink to put up with."