Bindle: Some Chapters in the Life of Joseph Bindle

Nobody was interested – there was nothing in which to be interested – and there was less oxygen than usual in the court, the magistrate had a cold. It was a miserable business, this detection and punishing of crime.

"Twenty shillings costs, seven days," snuffled the presiding genius.

A piece of human flotsam faced about and disappeared.

Another name was called. The sergeant in charge of the new case cleared his throat. The magistrate lifted his handkerchief to his nose, the clerk removed his spectacles to wipe them, when something bounded into the dock, drawing up two other somethings behind it.

The magistrate paused, his handkerchief held to his nose, the clerk dropped his spectacles, the three reporters became eagerly alert – in short, the whole court awakened simultaneously from its apathy to the knowledge that this was a dramatic moment.

In the dock stood a medium-sized man with nondescript features, a thin black moustache, iron-grey hair, and dishevelled clothing. Each side of him stood a constable gripping an arm – they were the somethings that had followed him into the dock.

For a moment the prisoner, who seemed to radiate indignation, looked about him, his breath coming in short, passionate sobs.

The clerk stooped to pick up his glasses, the magistrate blew his nose violently to gain time, the reporters prepared to take notes. Then the storm burst.

"You shall pay for this, all of you!" shouted the man in the dock, jerking his head forward to emphasise his words, his arms being firmly held straight to his sides. "Me a burglar – me?" he sobbed.

"Silence in the court!" droned the clerk, who, having found his glasses, now began to read the charge-sheet, detailing how the prisoner had burglariously entered No. 13 Audrey Mansions, Queen's Club, in the early hours of that morning. He was accustomed and indifferent to passionate protests from the dock.

The prisoner breathed heavily. The clerk was detailing how the prisoner had awakened the occupant of the premises by lifting his gold watch from the table beside the bed. At this juncture the prisoner burst out again:

"It's a lie, it's a lie, an' you all know it! It's a plot! I'm – I'm – " He became inarticulate, sobs of impotent rage shaking his whole body, and the tears streaming down his face.

At that moment Professor Sylvanus Conti entered the court, smiling and alert. He looked quickly towards the dock to see if his case had come on, and was relieved to find that his last night's visitor was not there. He had feared being late.

The magistrate cleared his throat and addressed the prisoner:

"You are harming your case by this exhibition. If a mistake has been made you have nothing to fear; but if you continue these interruptions I shall have to send you back to the cells whilst your case is heard."

Turning to the officer in charge of the case, he enquired:

"Is the prosecutor present?"

The sergeant looked round, and, seeing Professor Conti, replied that he was.

"Let him be sworn," ordered the magistrate.

To his astonishment, Professor Conti heard his name called. Thoroughly bewildered, he walked in the direction in which people seemed to expect him to walk. He took the oath, with his eyes fixed, as if he were fascinated, upon the pathetic figure in the dock. Suddenly he became aware that the man was addressing him.

"Did I do it? – did I?" he asked brokenly.

"Silence in the court!" called the clerk.

Suddenly the full horror of the situation dawned upon the Professor. He broke out into a cold sweat as he stood petrified in the witness-box. Somehow or other his plan had miscarried. He looked round him. Instinctively he thought of flight. He felt that he was the culprit, the passionate, eager creature in the dock his accuser.

"Am I the man?" he heard the prisoner persisting. "Am I?"

"N-no," he faltered in a voice he could have sworn was not his own.

"You say that the prisoner is not the man who entered your flat during the early hours of this morning?" questioned the magistrate.

"No, sir, he's not," replied Conti wearily, miserably. What had happened? Was he a failure?

"Please explain what happened," ordered the magistrate.

Conti did so. He told how he had been awakened, and how he conceived the idea of hypnotising the burglar and making him give himself up to the police.

The prisoner was then sworn and related how he had been commanded in the name of the law to deliver the note at the police-station; how he had done so, and had been promptly arrested; how he had protested his innocence, but without result.

The Professor listened to the story in amazement, and to the subsequent remarks of the magistrate upon quack practices and police methods with dull resignation.

He did not, however, realise the full horror of the catastrophe that had befallen him until five minutes after leaving the court, when he encountered a newsvendor displaying a placard of The Evening Mail bearing the words:

PROFESSOR CONTI'S GREAT HYPNOTIC FEATCAPTURE OF AN ALLEGED BURGLAR

He then saw that he had lost his reputation, his belief in his own powers, his living, and about fifty pounds' worth of property.

When he reached his flat late in the afternoon, he was astonished to find awaiting him a small packet that had come by post, which contained the whole of the missing property, even down to the small change, also the two duplicate keys that Bindle had caused to be fashioned.

"I'm a bloomin' poor burglar," Bindle had assured himself cheerfully as he dropped the parcel containing the proceeds of his "burglary" into a pillar-box, "a-returnin' the swag by post. I got to be careful wot sort o' little jokes I goes in for in future."

IV

That evening Joseph Bindle sat at home in his favourite chair reading with great relish The Evening Post's account of THE GREAT HYPNOTIC FIASCO. Being at bitter enmity with The Evening Mail, the Post had given full rein to its sense of the ludicrous.

Puffing contentedly at a twopenny cigar, Bindle enjoyed to the full the story so ably presented; but nothing gave him so much pleasure as the magistrate's closing words. He read them for the fourth time:

"Professor Conti sought advertisement; he has got it. Unfortunately for him, he met a man cleverer than himself, one who is something of a humorist." Bindle smiled appreciatively. "The conduct of the police in this case is reprehensible to a degree, and they owe it to the public to bring the real culprit to justice."

With great deliberation Bindle removed his cigar from his mouth, placed the forefinger of his right hand to the side of his nose, and winked.

"Seem to be pleased with yourself," commented Mrs. Bindle acidly, as she banged a plate upon the table. To her, emphasis was the essence of existence.

"You've 'it it, Mrs. B., I am pleased wi' meself," Bindle replied. He felt impervious to any negative influence.

"What's happened, may I ask?"

"A lot o' things 'ave 'appened, an' a lot of things will go on 'appenin' as long as your ole man can take an 'int. You're a wonderful woman, Mrs. B., more wonderful than yer know; but yer must give 'em some nasty jars in 'eaven now and then."

Bindle rose, produced from his pocket the tin of salmon that inevitably accompanied any endeavour on his part to stand up to Mrs. Bindle, then picking up a jug from the dresser he went out to fetch the supper beer, striving at one and the same time to do justice to "Gospel Bells" and his cigar.

CHAPTER IV

THE HEARTYS AT HOME

The atmosphere of the Hearty ménage was one of religious gloom. To Mr. Hearty laughter and a smiling face were the attributes of the ungodly. He never laughed himself, and his smile was merely the baring of a handful of irregular yellow teeth, an action that commenced and ended with such suddenness as to cast some doubt upon its spontaneity.

He possessed only two interests in life – business and the chapel, and one dread – his wife's brother-in-law, Joseph Bindle. As business was not a thing he cared to discuss with his wife or eighteen-year-old daughter, Millie, the one topic of conversation left was the chapel.

Mr. Hearty was a spare man of medium height, with a heavy moustache, iron-grey mutton-chop whiskers, and a woolly voice.

"I never see a chap wi' whiskers like that wot wasn't as 'oly as oil," was Bindle's opinion.

Mr. Hearty was negative in everything save piety. His ideal in life was to temporise and placate, and thus avoid anything in the nature of a dispute or altercation.

"If 'Earty's goin' to be a favourite in 'eaven," Bindle had once said to Mrs. Bindle, "I don't think much of 'eaven's taste in men. 'E can't 'it nothink, either with 'is fist or 'is tongue."

"If you was more like him," Mrs. Bindle had retorted, "you might wear a top hat on Sundays, same as he does."

"Me in a top 'at!" Bindle had cried. "'Oly Moses! I can see it! Why, my ears ain't big enough to 'old it up. Wot 'ud I do if there was an 'igh wind blowin'? I'd spend all Sunday a-chasin' it up and down the street, like an ole woman after a black 'en."

Bindle himself was far from being pugnacious; but his conception of manhood was that it should be ready to hit any head that wanted hitting. He had been known to fight men much bigger than himself, not because he personally had any dispute to settle with them, but rather from an abstract sense of the fitness of things. Once when a man was mercilessly beating a horse Bindle intervened, and a fight had ensued, which had ended only when both parties were too exhausted to continue.

"Blimey, but you ain't 'arf a fool, Joe," remarked Ginger, to whom a fight was the one joy in life, regarding with interest Bindle's bruised and bleeding face as he stood sobbing for breath. "Wot jer do it for? 'E wasn't 'urtin' you; it was the 'orse."

"Somebody 'ad to 'ammer 'im, Ginger," gasped Bindle with a wry smile, "an' the 'orse couldn't." Then after a pause he added, "It ain't good for a cove to be let 'it things wot can't 'it back."

Meals at the Heartys' table were solemn affairs in which conversation had little or no part, save when Bindle was present.

Mr. Hearty ate his food with noisy enjoyment. His moustache, which seemed bent on peeping into his mouth and, coupled with his lugubrious appearance, gave him the appearance of a tired walrus, required constant attention, particularly as he was extremely fond of soups and stewed foods. This rendered conversation extremely difficult. During the greater part of a meal he would be engaged in taking first one end and then the other of his moustache into his mouth for the purpose of cleansing it. This he did to the accompaniment of a prolonged sucking sound, suggestive of great enjoyment.

"I likes to watch 'Earty cleanin' 'is whiskers," Bindle had once remarked, after gazing at his brother-in-law for some minutes with great intentness. "'E never misses an 'air."

Mr. Hearty had got very red, and for the rest of the meal refused all but solid foods.

Bindle was a perpetual source of anxiety to Mr. Hearty, who, although always prepared for the worst, yet invariably found that the worst transcended his expectations. Had he not been a Christian he might have suggested cutting himself and family adrift from all association with his brother-in-law. Even had he been able to overcome his scruples, there was the very obvious bond of affection between Mrs. Hearty, Millie, and "Uncle Joe": but, what was more alarming, there was the question of how Bindle himself might view the severance.

Mrs. Hearty was a woman on whom fat had descended like a plague. It rendered her helpless of anything in the nature of exertion. In her Bindle found a kindred spirit. Her silent laugh, which rippled down her chins until lost to sight in her ample bust, never failed to inspire him to his best efforts. He would tell her of his "little jokes" until Millie would have to intervene with a timid:

"Oh, uncle, don't! You're hurting mother!"

Great amusement rendered Mrs. Hearty entirely helpless, both of action and of speech, and to her laughter was something between an anguish and an ecstasy.

She was quite conscious of the stimulating effect upon Bindle of her "Oh, Joe, don't!" yet never hesitated to utter what she knew would eventually reduce her to a rippling and heaving mass of mirth.

She was Bindle's confidante, and seemed to find in the accounts of his adventures compensation for the atmosphere of repression in which she lived. In her heart she regretted that her husband had not been a furniture-remover instead of a greengrocer; for it seemed to produce endless diversions.

Little Millie would sit on a stool at her mother's feet drinking in Uncle Joe's stories, uttering an occasional half-laughing, half-reproachful, "Oh, Uncle Joe!"

If Mrs. Hearty had a weakness for Bindle's stories, Mrs. Bindle found in Alfred Hearty her ideal of what a man should be. When a girl she had been called upon to choose between Alfred Hearty, then a greengrocer's assistant, and Joseph Bindle, and she never quite forgave herself for having taken the wrong man.

In those days Bindle's winning tongue had left Alfred Hearty without even a sporting chance. To Mrs. Bindle her mistaken choice was the canker-worm in her heart, and it was not a little responsible for her uncompromising attitude towards Bindle.

In a moment of pride at his conquest Bindle had said to Hearty:

"It's no good goin' after a woman wi' one eye on the golden gates of 'eaven, 'Earty, and that's why I won."

Since then Bindle had resented Hearty's apathetic courtship, which had brought about his own victory. Many times Bindle had thought over the folly of his wooing, and he always came to the same conclusion, a muttered:

"If 'e 'ad 'ad a little more ginger 'e might 'ave won. They'd 'ave made a tasty pair."

The result had been that Mrs. Bindle's sister, Martha, had caught Mr. Hearty at the rebound, and had since regretted it as much as she ever regretted anything.

"When you're my size," she would say, "you don' trouble much about anything. It's the lean ones as worries. Look at Lizzie." Lizzie was Mrs. Bindle.

Mrs. Bindle herself had been very different as a girl. Theatres and music-halls were not then "places of sin"; and she was not altogether above suspicion of being a flirt. When it dawned upon her that she had made a mistake in marrying Bindle and letting her sister Martha secure the matrimonial prize, a great bitterness had taken possession of her.

As Mr. Hearty slowly climbed the ladder towards success, Mrs. Bindle's thoughts went with him. He became her great interest in life. No wife or mother ever watched the progress of husband or son with keener interest or greater admiration than Mrs. Bindle watched that of her brother-in-law.

Gradually she began to make him her "pattern to live and to die." She joined the Alton Road Chapel, gave up all "carnal" amusements, and began a careful and elaborate preparation for the next world.

Bindle, as the unconscious cause of her humiliation – the supreme humiliation of a woman's life, marrying the wrong man – became also the victim of her dissatisfaction. He watched the change, marvelling at its cause, and with philosophic acceptance explaining it by telling himself that "women were funny things."

As a girl Mrs. Bindle had been pleasure-loving, some regarded her as somewhat flighty; and the course of gradual starvation of pleasure to which she subjected herself had embittered her whole nature. There was, however, no suggestion of sentiment in her attitude towards her brother-in-law. He was her standard by which she measured the failure of other men, Bindle in particular.

Like all women, she bowed the knee to success, and Alfred Hearty was the most successful man she had ever encountered. He had begun life on the tail-board of a parcels delivery van, he was now the owner of two flourishing greengrocer's shops, to say nothing of being regarded as one of Fulham's most worthy citizens.

From van-boy to a small greengrocer, he had risen to the important position of calling on customers to solicit orders, and here he had shown his first flash of genius. He had cultivated every housewife and maid-servant assiduously, never allowing them to buy anything he could not recommend. When eventually he started in business on his own account, he had carefully canvassed his late employer's customers, who, to a woman, went over to him.

"It was that 'oly smile of 'is wot done it," was Bindle's opinion.

When in the natural course of events his previous employer retired a bankrupt, it was taken as evidence of the supreme ability of the man who had taken from him his livelihood.

In the administration of his own business Alfred Hearty had shown his second flash of genius – he never allowed his own employés an opportunity of doing as he had done, but, by occasional personal calls upon his customers, managed to convey the idea that it was he who was entirely responsible for the proper execution of their orders. As a further precaution he constantly changed the rounds of his men, and thus safeguarded himself from any employé playing Wellington to his Napoleon.

Occasionally on Sunday evenings Bindle and Mrs. Bindle would be invited to supper at the Heartys' in Fulham High Street, where they lived over their principal shop. Mr. Hearty and Mrs. Bindle would return after chapel with Millie; Bindle invariably arranged to arrive early in order to have a talk with Mrs. Hearty, who did not go to chapel because her "breath was that bad."

"Funny thing, you and Lizzie bein' sisters; you seem to have got all the meat an' left 'er only the bones!" Bindle would say.

Bindle hated anything that was even remotely connected with lemons, a fruit that to him symbolised aggressive temperance. Mr. Hearty was very partial to lemon flavouring, and in consequence lemon puddings, lemon cakes, and lemon tarts were invariably served as sweets at his table.

"Lemonade, lemon cakes, and lemon faces, all as sour as an unkissed gal, that's wot a Sunday night at Hearty's place is," Bindle had confided to a mate.

Once the chapel party returned, the evening became monotonous.

After supper Millie was sent to the harmonium and hymns were sung. Mrs. Bindle had a thin, piercing voice, Millie a small tremulous soprano, and Mr. Hearty was what Bindle called "all wool and wind." Mrs. Hearty appeared to have no voice at all, although her lips moved in sympathy with the singers.

At first Bindle had been a silent and agonised spectator, refusing all invitations to join in the singing. He would sit, his attention divided between Mr. Hearty's curious vocal contortions, suggestive of a hen drinking water, and the rippling motion of Mrs. Hearty's chins. When singing Mr. Hearty elevated his head, screwed up his eyes and raised his eyebrows; the higher the note the higher went his eyebrows, and the more closely he screwed up his eyes.

"'E makes faces enough for a 'ole band," Bindle had once whispered to Mrs. Hearty, who had brought the evening to a dramatic termination by incontinently collapsing.

"A laugh and an 'ymn got mixed," was Bindle's diagnosis.

It was soon after this episode that Bindle hit upon a happy idea for bringing to a conclusion these, to him, tedious evenings. Mrs. Bindle's favourite hymn was "Gospel Bells," whereas Mr. Hearty seemed to cherish an equally strong love for "Pull for the Shore, Sailors." Never were these hymns sung less than three times each during the course of the evening.

Bindle had thought of many ways of trying to end the performance. Once he had dexterously inserted his penknife in the bellows of the harmonium whilst looking for a pencil he was supposed to have dropped. This, however, merely added to the horror of the situation.

"The bloomin' thing blew worse than 'Earty," he said.

One evening he determined to put his new idea into practice. The gross volume of sound produced by the quartette with the harmonium was extremely small, and Bindle conceived the idea of drowning it.

"I'll stew 'em in their own juice," he muttered.

He had no voice, and very little idea either of tune or of time. What he did possess he was careful to forget. The first hymn in which he joined was "Pull for the Shore, Sailors."

From the first Bindle's voice proved absolutely uncontrollable. It wavered and darted all over the gamut, and as it was much louder than the combined efforts of the other three, plus the harmonium, Bindle appeared to be soloist, the others supplying a subdued accompaniment. Unity of effort seemed impossible. Whilst they were in the process of "pulling," he was invariably on "the shore"; and when they had arrived at "the shore," he had just started "pulling." Time after time they stopped to make a fresh start, but without improving the general effect.

Bindle showed great concern at his curious inability to keep with the others, and suggested retiring from the contest; but this Mr. Hearty would not hear of. To help matters he beat time with his hand, but as his vocal attitude was one of contemplation of the ceiling, generally with closed eyes, he very frequently hit Millie on the head, causing her to lose her place and forget the pedals, with the result that the harmonium died away in a moan of despair. Bindle, however, always went on. All he required was the words, to which he did full justice.

The evening was terminated by the collapse of Mrs. Hearty.

On the following day Bindle could not talk above a whisper.

One result of Bindle's vocal efforts had been that invitations to spend Sunday evenings with the Heartys had become less frequent, a circumstance on which Mrs. Bindle did not fail to comment.

"You're always spoilin' things for me. I enjoyed those evenin's," she complained.

"Shouldn't have arst me to sing," Bindle retorted. "Yer know I ain't a bloomin' canary, like you and 'Earty."

To Mr. Hearty the visits of the Bindles took on a new and more alarming aspect. Sunday was no day for secular things, and he dreaded his brother-in-law's reminiscences and comments on "parsons," and his views regarding religion. Sooner or later Bindle always managed to gather the desultory threads into his own hands.

"Y' oughter been a parson, 'Earty," Bindle remarked pleasantly one Sunday evening àpropos nothing. "So ought Ginger, if 'is language wasn't so 'ighly spiced. It's no good lookin' 'appy if you're a parson. Looks as if yer makin' a meal o' the soup in case the fish ain't fresh.

"I remember movin' a parson once," remarked Bindle, puffing away contentedly at a cigar he had brought with him (Mr. Hearty did not smoke), now thoroughly well-launched upon a conversational monologue. "Leastways 'e was a missionary. 'E was due somewhere in Africa to teach niggers 'ow uncomfortable it is to 'ave a soul.

"'E 'ad to go miles into the jungle, and all 'is stuff 'ad to be carried on the 'eads of niggers. Forty pounds a man, and the nigger a-standin' by to see it weighed, an' refusin' to budge if it was a ounce overweight. I never knew niggers was so cute. This missionary was allowed about ten bundles o' forty pounds each. Lord! yer should 'ave seen the collection of stuff 'e'd got. About four ton. The manager worked it out that about two 'undred niggers 'ud be wanted.

"'E 'ad 'is double-bed; the top itself weighed seventy pounds. Wot a missionary wants with a double-bed in the jungle does me. 'E gave up the bedstead idea, an' 'e give it to me instead o' beer money. That's 'ow Mrs. B. comes to sleep in a missionary's bed. 'E stuck to a grandfather clock, though. Nothink could persuade 'im to leave it be'ind. The clock and weights was too much for one nigger, so I put the weights in wi' the tea-things."

"Oh, Uncle Joe!" from Millie.

"Yes, 'e's got the time in the jungle, but if 'e wants 'is tea 'e'll 'ave to drink it out of 'is boot. Them weights must 'ave made an 'oly mess of the crockery!"

At this juncture Mr. Hearty made a valiant effort to divert the conversation to the forthcoming missionary tea; but Bindle was too strong for him.

"There was one parson," he continued, "'oo was different from the others. 'E was a big gun. I moved 'im when 'e was made a dean. 'E'd come an' sit an' talk while we 'ad our dinner, which 'e used to give us. Beer too, 'Earty. No lemon flavourin' about 'im.

"One day I sez to 'im, 'Funny thing you bein' a parson, sir, if you'll forgive me sayin' so.'