Bindle: Some Chapters in the Life of Joseph Bindle

At first Bindle had been puzzled to account for the throngs of applicants; but enquiry made things very clear. In every case the advertisements – and they had appeared in every daily and innumerable weekly papers – stated the wages, which were unusually high. A vanman was offered fifty shillings a week, a housekeeper thirty shillings a week all found; for an errand-boy fifteen shillings a week was suggested, and ten pounds as a bonus to the parents of the child that was to be adopted.

The officials at Putney Bridge station were puzzled to account for the extraordinary increase in the westward-bound traffic on that Saturday morning; but what particularly surprised them was the stream of dogs that each train seemed to pour forth.

The run upon dog-tickets at certain East-end stations broke all records, and three stationmasters had to telephone to headquarters for a further supply.

Dogs occupied the gangways of every train arriving at Putney Bridge station between 10 a.m. and 10.40 a.m. Dogs growled, fawned, and quarrelled.

The stream of dogs, however, was as nothing to the stream of men, women and boys, and small children for adoption. The station officials and the bus-men outside wearied of instructing people how to get to Fulham High Street.

The congestion of traffic in Fulham High Street was felt as far east as Piccadilly and the Strand, where the police on point duty were at a loss to account for it. The disorganisation in the tram service was in evidence equally at Wood Green and Wandsworth.

Certain elements in the crowd, notably the younger and more light-hearted sections, in particular those who lived in the neighbourhood and were not out of pocket for railway fares, were inclined to regard the whole affair as a huge joke, and badinage flowed freely. There was, however, another section that thirsted for somebody's blood, and was inclined to regard Mr. Hearty as the person most suitable to supply this.

In the immediate vicinity of the shop-door the excitement was intense, everyone pushing and striving to get nearer. There was no suggestion of personal feeling save in the case of those who were bent on the same errand. Thus a potential housekeeper felt nothing but friendliness for a would-be dog-seller, whilst a hopeful housemaid was capable of experiencing almost an affection for a mother who had a spare offspring she was wishful of having adopted.

When the first brewers' dray drew up it was greeted with cheers, and one man who drove up in a donkey-cart with a flashily-dressed young woman was greeted with the inevitable:

 
"Who's your lady friend? I am surprised at you,
It isn't the one I saw you with at 'Ampstead,"
 

sung by a score of robust voices.

Cries, cat-calls, and advice to those inside to "save a drop for uncle," and "'urry up," were continuous. Many crude jokes were levelled at Mr. Hearty's name.

When the helmets of the police were seen bobbing their way through the crowd there were prolonged cheers.

The first policeman to arrive, having foreseen the possibility of trouble, had promptly telephoned for assistance. At the time the reinforcements arrived, including an inspector and two mounted constables, the attitude of the crowd was beginning to assume an ugly look. One of the more aggressive spirits had endeavoured to single out Mr. Hearty as a target for one of his own potatoes; but he had, unfortunately for him, hit the policeman, whose action had been so swift and uncompromising that there was no further attempt at disorder.

The inspector quickly saw that very little that was coherent could be obtained from Mr. Hearty. It was Bindle who supplied the details of what had occurred.

"'Earty's me brother-in-law," he replied. "'E's either gone off 'is onion or someone's been pullin' 'is leg. All this 'ere little lot," and Bindle indicated the congested High Street, "'as brought 'im things they says 'e's ordered, and 'e says 'e ain't, an' them crowds of men, women, and dogs and kids 'as come sayin' he wants to give 'em jobs or 'omes."

The inspector asked a few questions, and gleaned sufficient information to convince him that this was a huge practical joke, and that prompt action was imperative. He telephoned for more men and set to work in an endeavour to organise the traffic and reduce it to manageable proportions.

Constables were placed at different points along the main thoroughfare leading to Fulham High Street, asking all drivers and chauffeurs if they were bound for Mr. Alfred Hearty's shop in Fulham High Street, and if so sending them back. Men were stationed at Hammersmith and Putney High Street to divert the streams of traffic that still poured towards Fulham.

Putney and Fulham had never seen anything like it. Families went dinnerless because housewives either could not get to the shops, or could not get away from them again. Telephones rang, and irate housekeepers enquired when the materials for lunch were coming. Taxicab drivers with fares sat stolidly at the wheel, conscious that their income was increasing automatically, whilst the fares themselves fumed and fussed as they saw their twopences vanish.

It was not until past one o'clock that the trams restarted, and it was 2.30 before Bindle got back to the yard with his three pantechnicons.

"Poor ole 'Earty's got it in the neck this time," he muttered as he turned back towards Fulham High Street to lend a hand in putting things straight. Mr. Hearty was distracted at the thought that none of his customers had received their fruit and vegetables, and Bindle was genuinely sorry for him. All that afternoon and late into the night he worked, helping to weigh up and deliver orders; and when he eventually left the shop at a few minutes before midnight, he was "as tired as a performin' flea."

"I like 'Earty when 'e goes mad," he muttered to himself as he left the shop. "It sort o' wakes up sleepy old Fulham. I wonder 'oo it was. Shouldn't be surprised if I could spot 'im. If it ain't Mr. Dick Little call me Jack Johnson. I wish 'e 'adn't done it, though."

Bindle was thinking of the pathetic figure Mr. Hearty had cut, and of the feverish manner in which he had worked to make up for the lost hours, Bindle had been genuinely touched when, as he was about to leave the shop, his brother-in-law had shaken him warmly by the hand and, in an unsteady voice, thanked him for his help. Then looking round as if searching for something, he had suddenly seized the largest pineapple from the brass rail in the window, thrust it upon the astonished Bindle, and fled into the back room.

For some seconds Bindle had stood looking from the fruit to the door through which his brother-in-law had disappeared, then, replacing it on the rack, he had quietly left the shop, muttering: "It takes a long time to get to know even yer own relations. Queer ole card, 'Earty."

CHAPTER XII
BINDLE AGREES TO BECOME A MILLIONAIRE

I

As the intervals between Mr. Hearty's invitations for Sunday evenings lengthened, Bindle became a more frequent visitor at Dick Little's flat, where he could always be sure of finding jovial kindred spirits.

Both Mrs. Hearty and Millie missed Bindle, and broadly hinted the fact to Mr. Hearty; but he enjoyed too well his Sunday evening hymns to sacrifice them on the altar of hospitality. Millie in particular resented the change. She disliked intensely the hymn-singing, and she was greatly attached to "Uncle Joe."

At Dick Little's flat Bindle found ample compensation for the loss of Mr. Hearty's very uncordial hospitality.

"Mrs. Bindle ain't at 'er best Sunday evenin's," he had confided to Dick Little. "'Er soul seems to sort of itch a bit an' 'er not able to scratch it."

He was always assured of a welcome at Chelsea, and the shout that invariably greeted his entrance flattered him.

"Different from ole 'Earty's 'Good-evenin', Joseph,'" he would remark. "I'd like 'Earty to meet this little lot."

One Sunday evening, about nine o'clock, Bindle made his way round to the flat, and found Dick Little alone with his brother Tom, who was spending the week-end in town. Bindle had not previously met Tom Little, who, however, greeted him warmly as an old friend.

"P'r'aps I'd better be goin'," suggested Bindle tentatively, "seein' as you're – "

"Not a bit of it," broke in Dick Little; "sit down, mix yourself a drink; there are the cigars."

Bindle did as he was bid.

"We were talking about Gravy when you came in," remarked Tom Little.

"An' very nice too, with a cut from the joint an' two vegs.," remarked Bindle pleasantly.

Dick Little explained that "Gravy" was the nickname by which Mr. Reginald Graves was known to his fellow-undergraduates. "We're about fed up with him at Joe's," Tom Little added.

"An' 'oo might Joe be, sir, when 'e's at 'ome, an' properly labelled?" enquired Bindle.

"It's St. Joseph's College, Oxford, where my brother is," explained Dick Little.

In the course of the next half-hour Bindle learned a great deal about Mr. Reginald Graves, who had reached Oxford by means of scholarship, and considered that he had suffered loss of caste in consequence. His one object in life was to undo the mischief wrought by circumstances. He could not boast of a long line of ancestry; in fact, on one occasion when in a reminiscent mood he had remarked:

"I had a grandfather – "

"Had you?" was the scathing comment of another man. The story had been retailed with great gusto among the men of St. Joseph's.

Reginald Graves was a snob, which prompted him to believe that all men were snobs. Burke's Peerage and Kelly's Landed Gentry were at once his inspiration and his cross. He used them constantly himself, looking up the ancestry of every man he met. He was convinced that his lack of "family" was responsible for his unpopularity.

In his opinion, failing "blood" the next best thing to possess was money, and he lost no opportunity of throwing out dark and covert hints as to the enormous wealth possessed by the Graves and Williams families, Williams being his mother's maiden name.

His favourite boast, however, was of an uncle in Australia. Josiah Williams had, according to Graves, emigrated many years before. Fortune dogged his footsteps with almost embarrassing persistence until, at the time that his nephew Reginald went up to Oxford, he was a man of almost incredible wealth. He owned mines that produced fabulous riches, and runs where the sheep were innumerable.

Graves was purposely vague as to the exact location of his uncle's sheep-stations, and on one occasion he spent an unhappy evening undergoing cross-examination by an Australian Rhodes scholar. However, he persisted in his story, and Australia was a long way off, and it was very unlikely that anyone would be sufficiently interested to unearth and identify all its millionaires in order to prove that Josiah Williams and his millions existed only in the imagination of his alleged nephew.

Graves was a thin, pale-faced young man with nondescript features and an incipient moustache. Furthermore, he had what is known as a narrow dental arch, which gave to his face a peevish expression. When he smiled he bared two large front teeth that made him resemble a rabbit. His hair was as colourless as his personality. He was entirely devoid of imagination, or, as Tom Little phrased it, "What he lacked in divine fire, he made up for in damned cheek."

He led a solitary life. When his fellow undergraduates deigned to call upon him it was invariably for the purpose of a "rag."

Trade was the iron that had entered his soul; he could never forget that his father was a grocer and provision merchant in a midland town. His one stroke of good luck, that is as he regarded it, was that no one at St. Joseph's was aware of the fact. Had he possessed the least idea that the story of his forebears was well known at St. Joseph's it would have been to him an intolerable humiliation.

Subservient, almost fawning with his betters, he was overbearing and insulting to his equals and inferiors: since his arrival at St. Joseph's his "scout" had developed a pronounced profanity. Rumour had it that Graves was not even above the anonymous letter; but there was no definite evidence that those received by certain men at St. Joseph's found their inspiration in the brain of Reginald Graves.

Nothing would have happened, beyond increased unpopularity for Graves, had it not been for an episode out of which Graves had come with anything but flying colours, and which had procured for him a thrashing as anonymous as the letters he was suspected of writing.

He was a favourite with Dr. Peter, the Master of St. Joseph's, and this, coupled with the fact that the Master was always extremely well-informed as to the things that the undergraduates would have preferred he should not know, aroused suspicion.

One day Travers asked Graves to dinner, and over a bottle of wine confided to him the entirely fictitious information that he was mixed up in a divorce case that would make the whole of Oxford "sit up." Next day he was sent for by Dr. Peter, who had heard "a most disturbing rumour," etc. Travers had taken the precaution of confiding in no one as to his intentions. Thus the source of Dr. Peter's information was obvious.

The men of St. Joseph's were normal men, broad of mind and brawny of muscle; they had, however, their code, and it was this code that Graves had violated. Tom Little had expressed the general view of the college when he said that Graves ought to be soundly kicked and sent down.

"Now, Bindle," remarked Dick Little, "you're a man of ideas: what's to be done with Gravy?"

"Well, sir, that depends on exes. It costs money to do most things in this world, and it'll cost money to make Mr. Gravy stew in his own juice."

"How much?"

"Might cost" – Bindle paused to think – "might cost a matter of twenty or thirty quid to do it in style."

"Right-oh! Out with it, my merry Bindle," cried Tom Little. "Travers and Guggers alone would pay up for a good rag, but it must be top-hole, mind."

"Yes," said Bindle, with a grin; "it 'ud be top-'ole right enough." And Bindle's grin expanded.

"Out with it, man," cried Dick Little. "Don't you see we're aching to hear?"

"Well," said Bindle, "if the exes was all right I might sort o' go down an' see 'ow my nephew, Mr. Gravy, was gettin' on at – "

With a whoop of delight Tom Little sprang up, seized Bindle round the waist, and waltzed him round the room, upsetting three chairs and a small table, and finally depositing him breathless in his chair.

"You're a genius, O Bindle! Dick, we're out of it with the incomparable Bindle."

Dick Little leaned back in his easy chair and gazed admiringly at Bindle, as he pulled with obvious enjoyment at his cigar.

"Course I never been a millionaire, but I dessay I'd get through without disgracin' meself. The only thing that 'ud worry me 'ud be 'avin' about 'alf a gross o' knives an' forks for every meal, an' a dozen glasses. But I'm open to consider anythink that's goin'."

"The only drawback," remarked Little, "would be the absence of the millions."

"That would sort o' be a obstacle," admitted Bindle.

After a pause Dick Little continued, "If you were to have your expenses paid, with a new rig-out and, say, five pounds for yourself, do you think that for three or four days you could manage to be a millionaire?"

"Don't you worry," was Bindle's response.

"What about the real Josiah Williams?" Dick Little had enquired.

"All fudge, at least the millions are," his brother replied. "The unspeakable Reggie could not repudiate the relationship without giving the whole show away. It's immense!" He mixed himself another whisky-and-soda. "I'll talk it over with Travers and Guggers and wire you on Wednesday. Good-bye, Bindle." And he was gone.

That night Bindle stayed late at Little's flat, and talked long and earnestly. As he came away he remarked:

"Of course you'll remember, sir, that millionaires is rather inclined to be a bit dressy, and I'd like to do the thing properly. Maybe, with some paper inside, I might even be able to wear a top 'at."

II

One Tuesday afternoon, when Reginald Graves entered his rooms, he found awaiting him a copy of The Oxford Mail, evidently sent from the office; on the outside was marked, "See page 3."

He picked up the packet, examined it carefully, and replaced it upon the table. He was in all things studied, having conceived the idea that to simulate a species of superior boredom was to evidence good-breeding. Although alone, he would not allow any unseemly haste to suggest curiosity. Having removed his hat and coat and donned a smoking-jacket and Turkish fez – he felt that this gave him the right touch of undergraduate bohemianism – he picked up the paper, once more read the address, and, with studied indifference, removed, it could not be said that he tore off, the wrapper. He smoothed out the paper and turned to the page indicated, where he saw a paragraph heavily marked in blue pencil that momentarily stripped him of his languorous self-control. He read and re-read it, looked round the room as if expecting to find some explanation, and then read it again. The paragraph ran:

"A DISTINGUISHED VISITOR

"Australia has been brought very closely into touch with this ancient city by the munificence of the late Mr. Cecil Rhodes and his scheme of Scholarships, which each year brings to our colleges gifted scholars, and to the playing-fields and boats magnificent athletes. It is interesting to note that we are shortly to have a visit from Mr. Josiah Williams, the Australian millionaire and philanthropist, whose wealth is said to be almost fabulous, and whose sheep-runs are famous throughout the Antipodes.

"It would appear that we have often eaten of his mutton – that is, of the sheep that he has reared to feed the Empire – and now we are to have the privilege of welcoming him to Oxford.

"We understand that Mr. Williams is to remain in our city for only a few days, and that his main purpose in coming is to visit his nephew Mr. Reginald Graves, of St. Joseph's College. Mr. Williams is, we gather, to be entertained by his nephew's fellow-undergraduates at Bungem's, so famous for its dinners and suppers, and it is mooted that the Corporation may extend its hospitality to so distinguished a citizen of the Empire. Thus are the bonds of Empire cemented.

"It would appear that Mr. Josiah Williams has engaged a suite of rooms at the Sceptre, where he will experience the traditional hospitality of that ancient English hostelry.

"Mr. Williams arrives to-morrow, Wednesday, and we wish him a pleasant stay."

Reginald Graves gasped. It was his rule never to show emotion, and in his more studied moments he would have characterised his present attitude as ill-bred.

"Damn!" It was not his wont to swear. His pose was one of perfect self-control. He was as self-contained as a modern flat, and about as small in his intellectual outlook. He was just on the point of reading the paragraph for the fifth time when the door of his room burst open, admitting Tom Little, Dick Travers, and Guggers.

"Congrats., Gravy. So the old boy's turned up," cried Little, waving a copy of The Oxford Mail in Graves's face.

"Joe's is going to do him proud," broke in Travers. "You've seen the Mail? We'll give him the time of his life."

"Gug-gug-good egg!" broke in Guggers, so named because of his inability to pronounce a "g" without a preliminary "gug-gug" accompanied by inconvenient splashings. It had become customary at St. Joseph's to give Guggers plenty of space in front, whenever he approached a "g." Tom Little called it "Groom."

"We're gug-gug-going to give him a gug-gug-gorgeous time."

"We'll have him drunk from morn till dewy eve," cried Tom Little, "and extra drunk at night. Oh, my prophetic soul!"

"Gravy, where's your sense of hospitality?" cried Travers. Reggie reluctantly produced whisky, a syphon, and some glasses.

"By gug-gug-gosh!" cried Guggers, semi-vapourising the remains of a mouthful of whisky and soda, "won't it be a rag! Bless you, Gug-Gug-Gravy for having an uncle."

Tom Little explained that they had been to the Sceptre and discovered that Mr. Josiah Williams would arrive by the 3.3 train, and that St. Joseph's was going down in a body to meet him. Graves, of course, would be there.

"I have heard nothing," said Graves. "I – I don't understand. If he writes of course I'll go."

"You'll jolly well gug-gug-go, any old how, or we'll carry you down," cried Guggers in a menacing voice, looking down at Graves from his six-foot-three of muscle and bone.

Graves looked round him helplessly. What was he to do? Could he disown this uncle? Should he explain that the whole thing was an invention, and that he had never possessed a rich uncle in Australia? Was it possible that by some curious trick there really was a Josiah Williams, Australian millionaire and philanthropist? If these men would only go and leave him alone to think!

Then suddenly there presented itself to his mind the other question: what would Josiah Williams be like? Would he be hopelessly unpresentable? Would he humiliate him, Reginald Graves, and render his subsequent years at St. Joseph's intolerable? How he wished these fellows would go!