Adventures of Bindle by Herbert George Jenkins (books to read in a lifetime .TXT) 📕

carried a large bowl of porridge. Marching across to the table, she dumped it down in front of Mr. Stiffson.

"Ain't that jest like a man, forgettin' 'alf o' wot 'e ought to remember!" she remarked and, without waiting for a reply, she stumped out of the room, banging the door behind her.

Bindle sniffed the air like a hound.

"That's Royal Richard wot you can smell, mum," he explained.

Cissie Boye laughed.

Ignoring the interruption, Mrs. Stiffson returned to the attack.[Pg 114]

"I demand an explanation!" Her voice shook with suppressed fury.

"Listen!" cried Cissie Boye, "if your boy will come and sleep in my flat——"

"Sleep in your flat!" cried Mrs. Stiffson in something between a roar and a scream. "Sleep in your flat!" She turned upon her husband. "Jabez, did you hear that? Oh! you villain, you liar, you monster!"

"But—but, my dear," protested Mr. Stiffson, becoming articulate, "Oscar was here all the time."

Cissie Boye giggled.

"So that is why you have put on your best clothes, you deceiver, you viper, you scum!"

"Steady on, mum!" broke out Bindle. "'E ain't big enough to be all them things; besides, if you starts a-megaphonin' like that, you'll 'ave all the other bunnies a-runnin' in to see wot's 'appened, an' if you was to 'ear Number Seven's language, an' see wot Queenie calls 'er face, Mr. S. might be a widower before 'e knew it."

"Where did you meet this person?" demanded Mrs. Stiffson of her husband, who, now that the coffee was cooling, began to feel chilly, and was busily engaged in trying to extract the moisture from his garments.

"Where did you meet her?" repeated his wife.

"In—in the bath-room," responded Mr. Stiffson weakly.

Mrs. Stiffson gasped and stood speechless with amazement.

"I heard a splashing," broke in Cissie Boye, "and I peeped in,—I only just peeped in, really and really."

"An' then we 'ad a little friendly chat in the 'all," explained Bindle, "an' after breakfast we was goin' to talk things over, an' see 'ow we could manage so that you didn't know."

"Your bath-room!" roared Mrs. Stiffson at length, the true horror of the situation at last seeming to dawn upon her. "My husband in your bath-room! Jabez!" she turned on Mr. Stiffson once more like a raging fury. "You heard! were you in this creature's bath-room?"

Mr. Stiffson paused in the process of endeavouring to extract coffee from his exterior.

"Er—er——" he began.

"Answer me!" shouted Mrs. Stiffson. "Were you or were you not in this person's bath-room?"

"Yes—er—but——" began Mr. Stiffson.

Mrs. Stiffson cast a frenzied glance round the room. Action[Pg 115] had become necessary, violence imperative. Her roving eye lighted on the bowl full of half-cold porridge that Mrs. Sedge had just brought in. She seized it and, with a swift inverting movement, crashed it down upon her husband's head.

With the scream of a wounded animal, Mr. Stiffson half rose, then sank back again in his chair, his hands clutching convulsively at the basin fixed firmly upon his head by the suction of its contents. From beneath the rim the porridge gathered in large pendulous drops, and slowly lowered themselves upon various portions of Mr. Stiffson's person, leaving a thin filmy thread behind, as if reluctant to cut off all communication with the basin.

Bindle and Cissie Boye went to the victim's assistance, and Bindle removed the basin. It parted from Mr. Stiffson's head with a juicy sob of reluctance. Whilst his rescuers were occupied in their samaritan efforts, Mrs. Stiffson was engaged in describing her husband's character.

Beginning with a request for someone to end his poisonous existence, she proceeded to explain his place, or rather lack of place, in the universe. She traced the coarseness of his associates to the vileness of his ancestors. She enquired why he had not been to the front (Mr. Stiffson was over fifty years of age), why he was not in the volunteers. Then slightly elevating her head she demanded of Heaven why he was permitted to live. She traced all degradation, including that of the lower animals, to the example of such men as her husband. He was the breaker-up of homes, in some way or other connected with the increased death-rate and infant mortality, the indirect cause of the Income Tax and directly responsible for the war; she even hinted that he was to some extent answerable for the defection of Russia from the Allied cause.

Whilst she was haranguing, Bindle and Cissie Boye, with the aid of desert spoons, were endeavouring to remove the porridge from Mr. Stiffson's head. It had collected behind his spectacles, forming a succulent pad before each eye.

Bindle listened to Mrs. Stiffson's tirade with frank admiration; language always appealed to him.

"Ain't she a corker!" he whispered to Cissie Boye.

"Cork's out now, any old how," was the whispered reply.

Then Mrs. Stiffson did a very feminine thing. She gave vent to three short, sharp snaps of staccatoed laughter, and suddenly collapsed upon the sofa in screaming hysterics.

Cissie Boye made a movement towards her. Bindle laid an arresting hand upon her arm.[Pg 116]

"You jest leave 'er be, miss," he said. "I know all about them little games. She'll come to all right."

"Where the hell is that damn porter?" the voice of Number Seven burst in upon them from the outer corridor.

"'Ere I am, sir," sang out Bindle.

"Then why the corruption aren't you in your room?" bawled Number Seven.

Bindle slipped quickly out into the corridor to find Number Seven bristling with rage.

"Because Ole Damn an' 'Op it, I can't be in two places at once," he said.

Whilst Bindle was engaged with Number Seven, Mrs. Stiffson had once more galvanised herself to action. Still screaming and laughing by turn, she wheeled out of the flat with incredible rapidity and made towards the lift.

"Hi! stop 'er, stop 'er!" shouted Bindle, bolting after Mrs. Stiffson, followed by Number Seven.

"Police, police, murder, murder!" screamed Mrs. Stiffson. She reached the lift and, with an agility that would have been creditable in a young goat, slipped in and shut the gates with a clang. Just as Bindle arrived the lift began slowly to descend. In a fury of impatience, Mrs. Stiffson began banging at the buttons, with the result that the lift stopped halfway between the two floors.

Bindle and Number Seven shouted down instructions; but without avail. The lift had stuck fast. Mrs. Stiffson shrieked for help, shrieked for the police, and shrieked for vengeance.

"Damned old tiger-cat!" cried Number Seven. "Leave her where she is."

Bindle turned upon him a face radiating smiles.

"Them's the best words I've 'eard from you yet, sir"; and he walked upstairs to reassure the occupants of Number Six that fate and the lift had joined the Entente against Mrs. Stiffson.

It was four hours before Mrs. Stiffson was free; but Mr. Stiffson, his luggage, his thermos flask and Oscar had fled. Cissie Boye was at rehearsal and Bindle had donned his uniform. It was a chastened Mrs. Stiffson who wheeled out of the lift and enquired for her husband, and it was a stern and official Bindle who told her that Mr. Stiffson had gone, and warned her that any further attempt at disturbing the cloistral peace of Fulham Square Mansions would end in a prosecution for disorderly conduct.

And Mrs. Stiffson departed in search of her husband.

[Pg 117]

CHAPTER XI THE CAMOUFLAGING OF MR. GUPPERDUCK I

"Ah!" cried Bindle as he pushed open one of the swing doors of the public bar of The Yellow Ostrich. "I thought I should find my little sunflower 'ere," and he grasped the hand that Ginger did not extend to him. Demonstration was not Ginger's strong point.

The members of the informal club that used to meet each Friday night at The Scarlet Horse had become very uncertain in their attendance, and the consequent diminution in the consumption of liquor had caused the landlord to withdraw the concession of a private-room.

Bindle had accepted the situation philosophically; but Ruddy Bill had shown temper. In the public bar he had told the landlord what he thought of him, finishing up a really inspired piece of decorated rhetoric with "Yus, it's The Scarlet 'Orse all right; but there's a ruddy donkey behind the bar," and with that he had marched out.

From that date Bindle's leisure moments had been mostly spent in the bar of The Yellow Ostrich. It was here that Ginger, when free from his military duties, would seek Bindle and the two or three congenial spirits that gathered round him. Wilkes would cough, Huggles grin, and Ginger spit vindictive disapproval of everyone and everything, whilst "Ole Joe told the tale."

"There are times," remarked Bindle, when he had taken a long pull at his tankard, "when I feel I could almost thank Gawd for not bein' religious." He paused to light his pipe.

Ginger murmured something that might have been taken either as an interrogation or a protest.

"I jest been 'avin' a stroll on Putney 'Eath," continued Bindle, settling himself down comfortably in the corner of a bench. "I likes to give the gals a treat now an' then, and who d'you think I saw there?" He paused impressively, Ginger shook his head, Huggles grinned and Wilkes coughed, Wilkes was always coughing.

"Clever lot o' coves you are," said Bindle as he regarded the three. "Grand talkers, ain't you. Well, well! to get on with the story.[Pg 118]

"There was a big crowd, makin' an 'ell of a row, they was, an' there in the middle was a cove talkin' an' wavin' 'is arms like flappers. So up I goes, thinkin' 'e was sellin' somethink to prove that you 'aven't got a liver, an' who should it turn out to be but my lodger, Ole Guppy."

"Wot was 'e doin'?" gasped Wilkes between two paroxysms.

"Well," continued Bindle, "at that particular moment I got up, 'e was talkin' about wot a fine lot o' chaps them 'Uns is, an' wot an awful lot of Aunt Maudies we was. Sort o' 'urt 'is feelin's, it did to know 'e was an Englishman when 'e might 'ave been an 'Un. 'E was jest a-sayin' somethink about Mr. Llewellyn John, when 'e' disappears sudden-like, and then there was a rare ole scrap.

"When the police got 'im out, Lord, 'e was a sight! Never thought ten minutes could change a cove so, and that, Ginger, all comes about through being a Christian and talkin' about peace to people wot don't want peace."

"We all want peace." Ginger stuck out his chin aggressively.

"Ginger!" there was reproach in Bindle's voice, "an' you a soldier too, I'm surprised at you!"

"I want this ruddy war to end," growled Ginger. "I don't 'old wiv war," he added as an after-thought.

"Now wot does it matter to you, Ging, whether you're a-carrin' a pack or a piano on your back?"

"Why don't they make peace?" burst out Ginger irrelevantly.

"Oh, Ginger, Ginger! when shall I teach you that the only way to stop a fight is to sit on the other cove's chest: an' we ain't sittin' on Germany's chest yet. Got it?"

"But they're willing to make peace," growled Ginger. "I don't 'old wiv 'angin' back."

"Now you jest listen to me. Why didn't you make peace last week with Pincher Nobbs instead o' fightin' 'im?"

"'E's a ruddy tyke, 'e is," snarled Ginger.

"Well," remarked Bindle, "you can call the Germans ruddy tykes. Pleasant way you got o' puttin' things, 'aven't you, Ging? No; ole son, this 'ere war ain't a-goin' to end till you got the V.C., that's wot we're 'oldin' out for."

"They could make peace if they liked," persisted Ginger.

"You won't get Llewellyn John to give in, Ging," said Bindle confidently. "'E's 'ot stuff, 'e is."

"Yus!" growled Ginger savagely. "All 'e's got to do is to stay at 'ome an' read about wot us chaps are doin' out there."[Pg 119]

"Now ain't you a regular ole yellow-'eaded 'Uggins," remarked Bindle with conviction, as he gazed fixedly at Ginger, whose eyes shifted about restlessly. "Why, 'e's always at work, 'e is. Don't even 'ave 'is dinner-hour, 'e don't."

"Wot!" Ginger's incredulity gave expression to his features. "No dinner-hour?"

"No; nor breakfast-time neither," continued Bindle. "There's always a lot o' coves 'angin' round a-wantin' to talk about the war an' wot to do next. When 'e's shavin' Haig'll ring 'im up, 'im a-standin' with the lather on, makin' 'is chin 'itch."

Ginger banged down his pewter on the counter and ordered another.

"Then sometimes, when 'e's gettin' up in the mornin', George Five'll nip round for a jaw, and o' course kings can go anywhere, an' you mustn't keep 'em waitin'. So up 'e goes, an' there's L.J. a-talkin' to 'imself as 'e tries to get into 'is collar, an' George Five a-'elpin' to find 'is collar-stud when 'e drops it an' it rolls under the chest o' drawers."

Ginger continued to gaze at Bindle with surprise stamped on his freckled face.

"You got a kid's job to 'is, Ging," continued Bindle, warming to his subject. "If Llewellyn John 'ops