Mrs. Bindle: Some Incidents from the Domestic Life of the Bindles by Jenkins (best ebook reader for chromebook TXT) 📗

"What's all this about?" he enquired, recovering himself. He was a man accustomed to handling crowds, even unfriendly crowds; but never had he encountered anything like the cataract of wrathful contumely that now poured from Mrs. Hopton's lips.

"Just 'ad a good dinner, I suppose," she cried scornfully. "Been enjoyin' it, eh? Cut from the joint and two vegs, puddin' to follow, with a glass of stout to wash it down. That the meenyou, eh? What does it cost you when our men strike? Do you 'ave to keep 'alf a dozen bellies full on a pound a week?"

There was a murmur from the women behind her, a murmur that Mr. Cunham did not like.

"Nice little 'ouse you got 'ere," continued Mrs. Hopton critically, as she peered into the neat and well-furnished hall. "All got out o' strikes," she added over her shoulder to her companions. "All got on the do-nothin'-at-all-easy-purchase-system."

This time there was no mistaking the menace in the murmur from the women behind her.

"You're a beauty, you are," continued Mrs. Hopton. "Not much sweat about your lily brow, Mr. Funny Cunham."[Pg 27]

Mr. Cunham felt that the time had come for action.

"What's the meaning of this?" he demanded. "Why have you come here, and who are you?"

"Who are we?" cried Mrs. Hopton scornfully. "He asks who we are," she threw over her shoulder.

Again there was an angry murmur from the rank and file.

"We're the silly fools wot married the men you brought out on strike," said Mrs. Hopton, looking the organising secretary up and down as if he were on show. "Creases in 'is trousers, too," she cried. "You ain't 'alf a swell. Well, we just come to tell you that the strike's orf, because we've struck. Get me, Steve?"

"We've declared a lock-out," broke in Mrs. Bindle with inspiration.

Back went Mrs. Hopton's head, up went her hands to her hips, and deep-throated "Her-her-her's" poured from her parted lips.

"A lock-out!" she cried. "Her-her-her, a lock-out! That's the stuff to give 'em!" and the rank and file took up the cry and, out of the plenitude of his experience, Mr. Cunham recognised that the crowd was hopelessly out of hand.

"Are we down-hearted?" cried a voice, and the shrieks of "No!" that followed confirmed Mr. Cunham in his opinion that the situation was not without its serious aspect.

He was not a coward and he stood his ground, listening to Mrs. Hopton's inspiring oratory of denunciation.[Pg 28] It was three o'clock before he saw his garden again—a trampled waste; an offering to the Moloch of strikes.

"Damn the woman!" he cried, as, shutting the door, he returned to the room he used as an office, there to deliberate upon this new phase of the situation. "Curse her!"

III

It was nearly half-past ten that night when Bindle tip-toed up the tiled-path leading to the front door of No. 7 Fenton Street.

Softly he inserted his key in the lock and turned it; but the door refused to give. He stepped back to gaze up at the bedroom window; there was no sign of a light.

It suddenly struck him that the piece of paper on the door was not the same in shape as that he had seen at dinner-time. It was too dark to see if there was anything written on it. Taking a box of matches from his pocket, he struck a light, shielding it carefully so that it should shine only on the paper.

His astonishment at what he read caused him to forget the lighted match, which burnt his fingers.

"Well, I'm blowed!" he muttered. "If this ain't it," and once more he read the sinister notice:

"You have struck. We women have declared a lock-out.

"E. Bindle."

[Pg 29]

After a few minutes' cogitation, he tip-toed down the path and round to the back of the house; but the scullery door was inflexible in its inhospitality.

He next examined the windows. Each was securely fastened.

"Where'm I goin' to sleep?" he muttered, as once more he tip-toed up the path.

After a further long deliberation, he lifted the knocker, gave three gentle taps—and waited. As nothing happened, he tried four taps of greater strength. These, in turn, produced no response. Then he gave a knock suggestive of a telegraph boy, or a registered letter. At each fresh effort he stepped back to get a view of the bedroom window.

He fancied that the postman-cum-telegraph-boy's knock had produced a slight fluttering of the curtain. He followed it up with something that might have been the police, or a fire.

As he stepped back, the bedroom-window was thrown up, and Mrs. Bindle's head appeared.

"What's the matter?" she cried.

"I can't get in," said Bindle.

"I know you can't," was the uncompromising response, "and I don't mean you shall."

"But where'm I goin' to sleep?" he demanded, anxiety in his voice.

"That's for you to settle."

"'Ere, Lizzie, come down an' let me in," he cried, falling to cajolery.

For answer Mrs. Bindle banged-to the window. He waited expectantly for the door to be opened.[Pg 30]

At the end of five minutes he realised that Mrs. Bindle had probably gone back to bed.

"Well, I can't stay 'ere all the bloomin' night, me with various veins in my legs," he muttered, conscious that from several windows interested heads were thrust.

Fully convinced that Mrs. Bindle was not on her way down to admit him, he once more fell back upon the knocker, awakening the echoes of Fenton Street.

At the sound of the window-sash being raised, he stepped back and looked up eagerly.

"'Ere, wot the ——!"

Something seemed to flash through the night, and he received the contents of the ewer full in the face.

"That'll teach you to come waking me up at this time of night," came the voice of Mrs. Bindle, who, a moment later, retreated into the room. Bindle, rightly conjecturing that she had gone for more water, retired out of reach.

"You soaked me through to the skin," he cried, when she re-appeared.

"And serve you right, too, you and your strikes."

"But ain't you goin' to let me in?"

"When the strike's off the lock-out'll cease," was the oracular retort.

"But I didn't want to strike," protested Bindle.

"Then you should have been a man and said so, instead of letting that little rat make you do everything he wants, him sitting down to a good dinner every day, all paid for out of strikes."[Pg 31]

There were sympathetic murmurs from the surrounding darkness.

"But——" began Bindle.

"Don't let me 'ear anything more of you to-night, Joe Bindle," came Mrs. Bindle's uncompromising voice, "or next time I'll throw the jug an' all at you," and with that she banged-to the window in a way that convinced Bindle it was useless to parley further.

"Catch my death o' cold," he grumbled, as he turned on a reluctant heel in the direction of Fulham High Street, with the intention of claiming hospitality from his sister-in-law, Mrs. Hearty. "Wot am I goin' to do for duds," he added. "Funny ole bird I should look in one of 'Earty's frock-coats."

IV

The next morning at nine o'clock, the wives of the strikers met by arrangement outside the organising secretary's house; but the strikers themselves were before them, and Mr. Cunham found himself faced with the ugliest situation he had ever encountered.

At the sight of the groups of strikers, the women raised shrill cries. The men, too, lifted their voices, not in derision or criticism of their helpmates; but at the organising secretary.

The previous night the same drama that had been enacted between Bindle and Mrs. Bindle had taken place outside the houses of many of the other strikers,[Pg 32] with the result that they had become "fed up to the blinkin' neck with the whole ruddy business."

"Well!" cried Mrs. Hopton as, at the head of her legion of Amazons, she reached the first group of men. "How jer like it?"

The men turned aside, grumbling in their throats.

"Her-her-her!" she laughed. "Boot's on the other foot now, my pretty canaries, ain't it? Nobody mustn't do anythink to upset you; but you can do what you streamin' well like, you lot o' silly mugs!

"Wotjer let that little rat-faced sniveller turn you round 'is little finger for? You ain't men, you're just Unionists wot 'ave got to do wot 'e tells you. I see 'im yesterday," she continued after a slight pause, "'aving a rare ole guzzle wot you pays for by striking. 'Ow much does it cost 'im? That's wot I want to know, the rat-faced little stinker!"

At that moment "the rat-faced little stinker" himself appeared, hat on head and light overcoat thrown over his arm. He smiled wearily, he was not favourably impressed by the look of things.

His appearance was the signal for shrill shouts from the women, and a grumbling murmur from the men.

"'Ere's Kayser Cunham," shouted one woman, and then individual cries were drowned in the angry murmur of protest and recrimination.

Mr. Cunham found himself faced by the same men who, the day before, had greeted his words with cheers. Now they made it manifest that if he did not find a way out of the strike difficulty, there would be trouble.[Pg 33]

"Take that!" roared Mrs. Hopton hoarsely, as she snatched something from a paper-bag she was carrying, and hurled it with all her might at the leader. Her aim was bad, and a small man, standing at right angles to the Union secretary, received a large and painfully ripe tomato full on the chin.

Mrs. Hopton's cry was a signal to the other women. From beneath cloaks and capes they produced every conceivable missile, including a number of eggs far gone towards chickenhood. With more zeal than accuracy of aim, they hurled them at the unfortunate Mr. Cunham. For a full minute he stood his ground valiantly, then, an egg catching him between the eyes brought swift oblivion.

The strikers, however, did not manifest the courage of their leader. Although intended for the organising secretary, most of the missiles found a way into their ranks. They wavered and, a moment after, turned and fled.

Approaching nearer, the women concentrated upon him whom they regarded as responsible for the strike, and their aim improved. Some of their shots took effect on his person, but most of them on the front of the house. Three windows were broken, and it was not until Mrs. Cunham came and dragged her egg-bespattered lord into the passage, banging-to the street door behind her, that the storm began to die down.

By this time a considerable crowd of interested spectators had gathered.

"Just shows you what us women can do if we've a[Pg 34] mind to do it," was the oracular utterance of one woman, who prided herself upon having been the first arrival outside the actual combatants.

"She ain't 'alf a caution," remarked a "lady friend," who had joined her soon after the outbreak of hostilities. "That big un," she added, nodding in the direction of Mrs. Hopton, who, arms on hips and head thrown back, was giving vent to her mirth in a series of "her-her-her's."

A policeman pushed his way through the crowd towards the gate. Mrs. Hopton, catching sight of him, turned.

"You take my advice, my lad, and keep out of this."

The policeman looked about him a little uncertainly.

"What's the matter?" he enquired.

"It's a strike and a lock-out," she explained, "an' they got a bit mixed. We ain't got no quarrel with a good-looking young chap like you, an' we're on private premises, so you just jazz along as if you 'adn't seen us."

A smile fluttered about the lips of the policeman. The thought of passing Mrs. Hopton without seeing her amused him; still he took no active part in the proceedings, beyond an official exhortation to the crowd to "pass along, please."

"Well, ladies," said Mrs. Hopton, addressing her victorious legions; "it's all over now, bar shoutin'. If any o' your men start a-knockin' you about, tell 'em we're a-goin' to stand together, and just let me[Pg 35] know. We'll come round and make 'em wish they'd been born somethink wot can't feel."

That morning the manager at the yard received a deputation from the men, headed by Mr. Cunham, who, although he had changed his clothes and taken a hot bath, was still conscious of the disgusting reek of rotten eggs. Before dinner-time the whole matter had been settled, and the men were to resume work at two o'clock.

Bindle reached home a few minutes to one, hungry and expectant. The notice had been removed from the front door, and he found Mrs. Bindle in the kitchen ironing.

"Well," she demanded as he entered, "what do you want?"

"Strike's orf, Lizzie," he said genially, an anxious eye turned to the stove upon which, however, there were no saucepans. This decided him that his dinner was in the oven.

"I could have told you that!" was her sole comment, and she proceeded with her ironing.

For a few minutes Bindle looked about him, then once more fixed his gaze upon the oven.

"Wot time you goin' to 'ave dinner, Lizzie?" he asked, with all the geniality of a prodigal doubtful of his welcome.

"I've had it." Mrs. Bindle's lips met in a