CHAPTER I
MRS. BINDLE'S LOCK-OUT
I
"Well! What's the matter now? Lorst your job?"
With one hand resting upon the edge of the pail beside which she was kneeling, Mrs. Bindle looked up, challenge in her eyes. Bindle's unexpected appearance while she was washing the kitchen oilcloth filled her with foreboding.
"There's a strike on at the yard," he replied in a tone which, in spite of his endeavour to render it casual, sounded like a confession of guilt. He knew Mrs. Bindle; he knew also her views on strikes.
"A what?" she cried, rising to her feet and wiping her hands upon the coarse canvas apron that covered the skirt carefully festooned about her hips. "A what?"
"A strike," repeated Bindle. "They give Walter 'Odson the sack, so we all come out."
"Oh! you have, have you?" she cried, her thin lips disappearing ominously. "And when are you going back, I'd like to know?" She regarded him with an eye that he knew meant war.
"Can't say," he replied, as he proceeded to fill his pipe from a tin tobacco-box. "Depends on the Union," he added.
"The Union!" she cried with rising wrath. "I wish I had them here. I'd give them Union, throwing men out of work, with food the price it is. What's going to 'appen to us? Can you tell me that?" she demanded, her diction becoming a little frayed at the edges, owing to the intensity of her feelings.
Bindle remained silent. He realised that he was faced by a crisis.
"Nice thing you coming 'ome at eleven o'clock in the morning calmly saying you've struck," she continued angrily. "You're a lazy, good-for-nothing set of loafers, the whole lot of you, that's what you are. When you're tired of work and want a 'oliday you strike, and spend your time in public-'ouses, betting and drinking and swearing, and us women slaving morning, noon and night to keep you. Suppose I was to strike, what then?"
She undid her canvas apron, and with short, jerky movements proceeded to fold and place it in the dresser-drawer. She then let down the festoons into which her skirt had been gathered about her inconspicuous hips.
Mrs. Bindle was a sharp, hatchet-faced woman, with eyes too closely set together to satisfy an artist.
The narrowness of her head was emphasised by the way in which her thin, sandy hair was drawn behind each ear and screwed tightly into a knot at the back.
Her lips were thin and slightly marked, and when she was annoyed they had a tendency to disappear altogether.
"How are we going to live?" she demanded. "Answer me that! You and your strikes!"
Bindle struck a match and became absorbed in lighting his pipe.
"What are you going to do for food?" She was not to be denied.
"We're a-goin' to get strike pay," he countered, seizing the opening.
"Strike pay!" she cried scornfully. "A fat lot of good that'll do. A pound a week, I suppose, and you eating like a – like a – " she paused for a satisfactory simile. "Eating me out of 'ouse and 'ome," she amended. "'Strike pay!' I'd give 'em strike pay if I had my way."
"It'll 'elp," suggested Bindle.
"Help! Yes, it'll help you to find out how hungry you can get," she retorted grimly. "I'd like to have that man Smillie here, I'd give him a bit of my mind."
"But 'e ain't done it," protested Bindle, a sense of fair play prompting him to defend the absent leader. "'E's a miner. We don't belong to 'is Union."
"They're all tarred with the same brush," cried Mrs. Bindle, "a good-for-nothing, lazy lot. They turn you round their little fingers, and then laugh at you up their sleeves. I know them," she added darkly.
Bindle edged towards the door. He had not been in favour of the strike; now it was even less popular with him.
"I suppose you're going round to your low public-house, to drink and smoke and tell each other how clever you've been," she continued. "Then you'll come back expecting to find your dinner ready to put in your mouth."
Mrs. Bindle's words were prophetic. Bindle was going round to The Yellow Ostrich to meet his mates, and discuss the latest strike-news.
"You wouldn't 'ave me a blackleg, Lizzie, would you?" he asked.
"Don't talk to me about such things," she retorted. "I'm a hardworking woman, I am, inchin' and pinchin' to keep the home respectable, while you and your low companions refuse to work. I wish I had them all here, I'd give them strikes." Her voice shook with suppressed passion.
Realising that the fates were against him, Bindle beat a gloomy retreat, and turned his steps in the direction of The Yellow Ostrich.
At one o'clock he returned to Fenton Street, a little doubtful; but very hungry.
He closed the gate quietly, Mrs. Bindle hated the banging of gates. Suddenly he caught sight of a piece of white paper pinned to the front door. A moment later he was reading the dumbfounding announcement:
"I have struck too.
"E. Bindle."
The words, which were written on the back of a coal-merchant's advertisement, seemed to dance before his eyes.
He was conscious that at the front window on either side a face was watching him intently. In Fenton Street drama was the common property of all.
