Frivolities Part 35

Mrs. Harland moved a step nearer to the woman.

"Do you mean to tell me that all those boys are yours?"

"No, ma'am, only Neddy. His father had him called Edward J. Phillip, but he's always been Neddy to me. The rest are Mr. Bindon's."

"The rest are Mr. Bindon's! Jane! what do you mean?"

There was a ring, a good loud ring, at the front door bell. The woman clasped her hands.

"There's the rest of them," she cried. "Oh, don't let them come in here."

"The rest of them?"

"The other Mrs. Bindons."

Mrs. Harland clutched at the back of a chair.

"The other Mrs. Bindons?"

"They're always going on at me, and making fun of me, and pinching me.

Oh! don't let them come in here."

The little woman's distress appeared to be genuine. She wrung her hands. Her tears fell unheeded to the floor. Mrs. Harland gazed at her both open-mouthed and open-eyed. Before she had recovered her presence of mind sufficiently to enable her to understand the cause of her visitor's emotion the door opened, and there entered unannounced--a magnificent woman! She was very tall, and very stately, and very fat.

She weighed seventeen stone if she weighed an ounce. Her costume was very different to that of the dowdy Jane. She was attired from head to foot in red. She had on a red stuff dress with a train. A scarlet mantle accentuated with its splendours the upper portion of her person. She wore a red hat, adorned with a red feather. And her face--as far as hue was concerned, her face matched her attire. She surveyed Mrs. Harland through a pair of _pince-nez_. "Mrs. Harland! So it is! How delightful! I should have known you anywhere--you haven't altered hardly a bit."

The lady, her hand stretched out, advanced in the most condescending fas.h.i.+on. Mrs. Harland shrank away.

"Louisa Brown!" she cried.

"Louisa Brown--that was; Mrs. Bindon--that is! Let me give you my card. I had some printed just before I came away."

After some fumbling the lady produced from her pocket a gorgeous mother-of-pearl card-case. Out of it she took a piece of pasteboard, resplendent in all the colours of the rainbow, about four inches square. This she offered Mrs. Harland. That lady declined it with a gesture.

"Won't you have it? Well, I'll put it on the mantelpiece; it'll be just the same. Dear old-fas.h.i.+oned mantelpieces! We don't have them out our way--we're in advance, you know--but I remember them so well."

The lady suited the action to the word. She placed the piece of cardboard on the mantelpiece in the most conspicuous place, on top of the clock. Apparently unconscious that in Mrs. Harland's demeanour there was anything peculiar, she carefully selected the largest armchair the room contained. In it she placed her ample person. As she arranged her skirts she remarked:

"I've come all this way to see them boys of mine. The dear lads! How are they? I hope you haven't made them _too_ English. A little English I don't mind, being English as it were myself; but too much English I can't abide."

"You--impudent--creature!"

The lady put up her _pince-nez_.

"My stars! Here's goings on! May I ask if that remark was addressed to me?"

"I never heard of such impudence in my life."

"Nor me. But some people have manners of their own. Is that the way in which to treat a lady who comes to visit you--standing there and staring?"

"A lady!" Mrs. Harland gasped. "Do you think I don't remember you?"

Mrs. Harland's form absolutely swelled as she glared at the big woman seated in the easy-chair.

"You, Louisa Brown, whose name is to this day a byword in the village, to dare to come into my drawing-room--and in those clothes!"

The big woman was not taken at all aback.

"What is the matter with my clothes?" she asked.

"You, whom your own father turned into the streets, to dare to place yourself upon an equality with me!"

The big woman turned with an affable smile to the little one, who stood trembling and sniffing in the centre of the room.

"Queer old-fas.h.i.+oned folk they are this side. Now, to my thinking, one lady oughtn't to remind another lady of things she wishes to be forgotten."

The little woman bobbed her knotted handkerchief into her eyes.

"Oh, Louisa, how can you now!"

Mrs. Harland raised her arm, semaph.o.r.e fas.h.i.+on.

"Leave the room!" she said.

The big woman settled herself more comfortably in the easy-chair.

"Not me. Not unless I take my sons along with me. You have received their father's money, which is mine; if you receive my money you'll receive me too--we go together."

"_I_ have received your money--yours! Who are you?"

"There's my card." The big woman waved her hand in the direction of the mantelshelf. "I've another in my pocket, and I've told you who I am besides; but, to oblige you, I don't mind telling you who I am again. I'm Mrs. Bindon."

Mrs. Harland turned upon the little woman. There was frenzy in her air.

"Then who are you?"

Said the little woman, between her sniffs:

"I am Mrs. Bindon too."

"You are Mrs. Bindon too! Is the man a bigamist?"

The big woman smiled.

"There is no bigamy in Utah."

"Utah!" Mrs. Harland staggered back. "Utah!" She looked wildly round the room. "Isn't Utah where the Mormons are?"

The big woman, taking out a large white handkerchief, proceeded, at one and the same time, to fan herself, and to diffuse a strong odour of patchouli.