Mr. Bingle Part 33

"Possess your soul in peace, Rouquin," said Mr. Bingle, drawing back to look more intently into the unfriendly eyes of the once amiable Rouquin. "Napoleon shall have the best I can give him, no more. He is as well with me as he could ever have been with his good-for-nothing father, and if I choose to get rid of him later on to the best advantage I won't be doing anything more despicable than his father and mother did before me. Please bear that in mind."

"I shall see to it that he is taken away from you before he is a week older," cried Rouquin angrily. "You cannot expect me to leave that helpless child--"

"What have you got to do with it, Rouquin?" demanded Mr. Bingle sharply.

"I am his mother's friend. I promised her that he should have a fine home. I swore to her that he should never know want or hards.h.i.+p or--"

"There is only one way for you to take Napoleon away from me," said Mr.

Bingle, as Rouquin floundered for words to express himself. "And that is to come up like a man and say that you are his father. Whenever you can do that and whenever you can show me that you and his mother are married to each other, I'll give him up to you, but not before, you sc.u.m of the earth!"

Rouquin went very red in the face and then very pale, and his thin lips set themselves in a ghastly smile.

"Good day, Rouquin," said Mr. Bingle, and went out of the bank.

Mr. Epps was annoyed because his customer kept him waiting for nearly half-an-hour. He was exceedingly crabbed and disagreeable as they set out to look at the flat which was to be the Bingle home, provided the rent was paid regularly and promptly.

CHAPTER XV

DECEMBER

The proverbial church-mouse was no worse off than Mr. Bingle at the end of the fifth month of his reduction. Indeed, it is more than probable that the church-mouse would be conceded a distinct advantage in many particulars. A very small nest will accommodate a very large family of growing mice; the tighter they are packed in the nest the better off they are in zero weather. Moreover, in a pinch, the parental church-mouse may stave off famine by resorting to a cannibalistic plan of economy, thereby saving its young the trouble of growing up to become proverbial church-mice. It may devour its young when it becomes painfully hungry, and not be held accountable to the law. With commendable frugality, the church-mouse first eats off the tail of its offspring. Then, if luck continues to be bad, the remainder may be despatched with due and honest respect for the laws of nature.

Now, with Mr. Bingle, it was quite out of the question for him to devour even so small a morsel as Napoleon without getting into serious trouble with the law, and it was equally impossible to obtain the same degree of comfort for his young by packing them into a four room flat.

And then the church-mouse doesn't have to think about shoes and stockings and mittens and ear-m.u.f.fs, to say nothing of frocks and knickerbockers. So he who speaks of another as being "as poor as a church-mouse" does a grave injustice to a really prosperous creature, despite the fact that it lives in a church and is employed in the rather dubious occupation of supporting a figure of speech. Look carefully into the present law of economics, if you please, and then grant the church-mouse the benefit of the doubt.

Mr. Bingle's flat could be found by traversing a very mean street in the lower east side not far removed from the Third Avenue Elevated tracks. Discovery required the mounting of four flights of stairs by foot, and two turns to the right in following the course of the narrow, dark hallway which led in a round-about sort of way to a fire escape that invited a quicker and less painful death than destruction by flames in case one had to choose between the two means of peris.h.i.+ng.

Four rooms and a kitchen was all that Mr. Bingle's flat amounted to.

The four rooms contained beds; in the kitchen there was a collapsible cot. In one of the rooms (ordinarily it would have been the parlour), there was a somewhat futile sheet-iron stove in which soft coal or wood could be used provided the wind was in the right direction. This was, in fact, the parlour. The bed, by day, a.s.sumed the dignity of a broad but saggy lounge, exceedingly comfortable if one was careful to sit far enough forward to avoid slipping into its cavernous depths from which there was no escape without a.s.sistance. Besides being the parlour, it was also the library, the study-room, the dining-room and reception hall. By night, it was the bed-chamber of Mr. Bingle.

At the beginning of the cold snap that arrived quite early in December, it also became the sleeping place of Rutherford, Rosemary and Harold, the tiniest of the children, who piled in with the uncomplaining occupant and kept him awake three-fourths of the night trying to determine whose legs were uncovered and whose were not. With six exceedingly active little legs wriggling in as many different directions in pitch darkness, it was no easy matter, you may be sure, to decide whether any two belonged to the same individual, and when it came to pa.s.s that three of them were exposed at the same time the puzzle was indeed a difficult one.

Napoleon's crib also made its way into the parlour when the cold weather came; and while Napoleon's legs stayed under cover pretty well his voice, like Chanticleer's, arose before the sun. Frederick, Wilberforce and Reginald slept in one room, Marie Louise, Henrietta and Guinevere in another. In pleasant weather, Rosemary joined her sisters, while Harold and Rutherford fell in with the other boys. There never was a time, however, when Mr. Bingle did not have a bed-fellow in the shape of one or the other of the two small boys.

The fourth room was occupied by the maid-of-all-work, and as it was primarily intended to be the servant's bedroom it is not necessary to state that there was s.p.a.ce for but one full grown person inside its four walls. The collapsible cot in the kitchen represented the foundation of an emergency guest chamber. Up to the present it had not been called into use, but it was always there in readiness for the expected and unexpected.

It will be observed that no account is taken of Mrs. Bingle. The explanation is quite simple. She went to live with her mother and sister at Peekskill on the advice of Dr. Fiddler almost immediately after the Supreme Court's opinion was handed down. Later on, she came down to the city with her mother, who now received a small but sufficient income through the death and will of a fairly well-to-do bachelor brother. The old lady took a house in the Bronx and once a week Mr. Bingle journeyed northward by subway and surface lines to visit his wife. A smart little doctor from Dr. Fiddler's staff made occasional visits to the Bronx and looked the part of a wiseacre when Mr. Bingle appealed to him for encouragement. He smiled knowingly and refused to commit himself beyond a more or less rea.s.suring squint, a pursing of the lips, and the usual statement that if nothing happened she would be as fit as ever in the course of time.

The cot in the kitchen was for Mr. Bingle in case Mrs. Bingle decided to come back to him in health as well as in person. He consoled himself with the daily hope that she would come das.h.i.+ng in upon him, as well as ever and in perfect sympathy with his decision to protect the helpless children they had gathered about them in their years of affluence.

He had stood out resolutely against all contention that the children should be cast upon the world once more. Harsh words were used at times by interested friends in their efforts to bring him to his senses. They urged him to let them find homes or asylums for the rapacious youngsters; they described them as so many Sindbads; they spoke of them as millstones about the neck of a man who could never get his head above water unless he cut loose from them; they argued long and insistently about his mistaken ideas of justice, responsibility, affection. He came back at them always with the patient declaration that he would stand by the bargain made by himself and his wife so long as G.o.d saw fit to give him the strength to earn a living for their charges.

"Why, confound you, Bingle," said Mr. Force to him one day at the bank, "one would think that you still regard yourself as a millionaire, the way you hang onto those kids. Cut them adrift, old fellow. Or if you won't do that, at least let some of us help you in a pecuniary way.

Don't be so infernally proud and self-satisfied. It wouldn't be charity. It would be justice. Now, see here, I've argued this thing with you for three months or more and I'm getting tired of your everlasting serenity. I know you are hard put to find enough money to clothe and feed these kids, besides buying what your wife may need. You are beginning to look shabby and you certainly are thinner and greyer.

What you ought to do, Bingle, is to turn those kids over to a Home of some sort and settle down to a normal way of living. Winter is coming on. You will have a devil of a time providing for ten small children and a sick wife on the salary you are getting here. Now, for heaven's sake, old fellow, take my advice. Get rid of 'em. You owe it to your wife, Bingle. She ought--"

"I owe it to my wife to take care of them alone, now that she is unable to do her part," said Mr. Bingle simply. "We took them as partners, so to speak. She is unable to manage her share of the liability. Well, I'll do her part for her, Mr. Force, so long as I'm able. The time may come when I shall have to appeal for help, or give up the struggle altogether, but it isn't here yet. I can manage for a while, thank you.

Besides," and his face brightened, "we may have a very mild winter, and the new tariff is just as likely as not to reduce the cost of living, no matter what you croakers say to the contrary. I've talked it over with Mrs. Bingle. She says she can't come home until she is very much better, and I'll admit that the children would be a dreadful strain upon her nerves at present. But she says I'm to do just as I think best in regard to them. She thinks I'm foolish--in fact, she says so--but I think I understand her better than any one else. Down in her heart she knows I'm doing the right thing. We'll wait, like old Micawber, for something to turn up. If it doesn't turn up in a reasonable length of time, then I'll consider what is best to do with the children."

"Are you considering your own health, Bingle?" demanded Force bluntly.

"No," said Mr. Bingle simply. "I've lived a decent, sensible life, so what's the use worrying over something that can't be helped?" His smile was cheerful, the twinkle in his eyes was as bright as though it had never known a dim moment.

"You should accept the standing offer of the Hooper heirs," said Force.

"They are disposed to be fair and square, Bingle. Three thousand a year isn't to be sneezed at."

"The Hooper heirs are sneezing at it, so why shouldn't I?" said Mr.

Bingle cheerily.

"I suppose you'll read that ridiculous Christmas Carol on Christmas Eve," said Force sarcastically.

"Certainly," said Mr. Bingle. "That reminds me; I wish you'd let Kathleen come down to see us on Christmas Eve. I think she'd enjoy the reading."

"I'll do it, Bingle," said Force after a moment. "Since she has been allowed to go down to see you and those kids of yours, her whole view of life has changed. You were right, old fellow. I believe she likes me better as time goes on. At any rate, she is quite gay and happy, and she doesn't look at me with scared eyes any longer. She kissed me as if she really meant it the other day when I told her she could have Freddy up to tea. I'd like to suggest, however, that you see to it that the flat is thoroughly aired and all the germs blown out before she comes down again to--"

"You needn't worry, Mr. Force," said Bingle without a sign of resentment in his manner. "We can't help airing the flat. Our greatest problem is to keep from airing it. There isn't a minute of the day that it isn't being aired."

Besides Mr. Force, who was a friend by circ.u.mstance and not from choice, Bingle possessed two loyal and devoted friends in Diggs and Watson, proprietors of the Covent Garden Consolidated Fruit Company of Columbus Avenue, Manhattan. They would have supplied him with vegetables and cured meats without charge if the thing could have been accomplished without his knowledge. They came often to see him, Watson bringing his wife, the former Miss Stokes, and many a night was made cheerful for the little man by these good sprites from another world.

Mr. Diggs resignedly awaited the day when Mr. Bingle's maid-of-all-work could see her way clear to become Mrs. Diggs, and the equal of Mrs.

Watson, if not her superior by virtue of the position of her husband's name on the firm's business cards. But if Diggs was devotedly loyal to Melissa, Melissa was equally loyal to Mr. Bingle. Fifteen years of kindness had not been wasted on this extraordinary servant. She was as true as she was unique in this age of abominations.

The older children went to a public school not far away, and Melissa looked after the young ones through the long, slow days, relieved only from her self-imposed duties when Mr. Bingle came home from the bank.

Neither Melissa nor Mr. Bingle had had a full day off in all these months, and neither complained. When Sunday came, he always urged her to spend it with friends, leaving him to attend to the midday meal and dinner, but she firmly, even arrogantly, refused to permit any one to meddle with her kitchen. She forced him to go to the Bronx every Sunday afternoon, whether he would or no, and demanded a staggering decrease in wages.

"Why, Mr. Bingle," she said, "you can't expect me to work for the same pay I was getting out at Seawood. Don't be silly, sir; wasn't I getting more out there than the butler got? And didn't I save nearly every cent of it for eight years and more? I was getting twenty-five dollars a week out there, wasn't I? And Mr. Diggs was getting only a hundred dollars a month, wasn't he? Well, how much could you afford to pay a butler now if you had one, sir? Two dollars a week at the outside, find himself. Well, I still feel I'm worth more to you than any butler you could get, so I'll have to insist on three dollars a week when convenient. I put away about eight thousand dollars while I was working for you at Seawood. It's in the savings banks now, every nickel of it, drawing three and a half and four per cent., or about twenty-five dollars a month, sir. Twelve and twenty-five makes thirty-seven a month, don't it? That's more than most girls are getting, and it's certainly more than any of 'em is worth, judging from what I've seen.

So if you'll just consider that I'm getting thirty-seven a month out of you, Mr. Bingle, we won't argue any longer."

"But, my dear Melissa, we must consider poor Diggs. It isn't fair to keep him waiting. I fear I shall have to discharge you. It seems to be the only way to make you and Diggs happy. I shall discharge you without a recommendation, too. We can't have Diggs dying of old age while we are discussing what is to become of him. It is your duty to marry Diggs at once. You must remember that I do not want you in my employ. You must not forget that I told you so six months ago and that I even tried to lock you out. Now, you certainly do not care to work for a man who despises you, who doesn't want you around, who is doing his level best to get rid of you, who--"

"Oh, shucks, Mr. Bingle!" cried Melissa, with her comely grin. "Sit down and have your breakfast now. Don't worry about Mr. Diggs. He is having the time of his life courting me. At least, he acts as if he is.

It won't hurt him to be engaged for a couple of years."

"But see how happy Watson is."

"I see all right," she said shrewdly; "and it won't hurt Mr. Diggs to see how happy he is, either."

"You are the most selfish girl I've ever known, Melissa," said he quaintly. "You won't let anybody else have a thing to say about it, will you?"

"No, sir," said Melissa. "I'm a perfect brute."

Mr. Epps was a regular visitor. He came once a month and never later than the first. The rent was twenty-two dollars a month. Mr. Epps was always expecting that it wouldn't be paid. He never failed to make a point of telling Mr. Bingle that he was what you might call a soft-hearted lummix and for that reason it always went hard with him to evict a tenant for not paying his rent on the minute. He talked a great deal about the people he had chucked out into the street and how unhappy the life of a renting agent could be at times. Once he gave Mr.

Bingle a cigar.

"Sure I'm not robbing you?" said Mr. Bingle.