It was useless for Cursty to seek to obtain any more definite information from her in the excited state of her mind, for immediately he ventured to question her as to what had befallen his wife, it was but the signal for her to renew her vituperations. At last, putting on his hat, he hastened down stairs to the youth who had brought the intelligence, and proceeded to accompany him in search of his dearest Aggy.
Mrs. Sandboys, however, it should be made known, had been no more concerned in the occurrence above detailed than her lord and master had been the hero of the scene previously described; for the “lady” who had passed under that name was none other than the mate of the flower-seller, who had become possessed of the Sandboys’ marriage certificate. Proceeding on her way home, it had struck the woman that it would be as well to convert the twenty pound note into sovereigns as soon as she possibly could, for on a closer inspection of the valuable, she had perceived that the name of the gentleman mentioned in the marriage certificate was inscribed on the back of it. Accordingly she entered a public house where she was not known, and after having partaken of a glass of gin-and-rue, and the half of a pork pie, she tendered the bank note in payment for what she had devoured. The landlord, however, looked upon the possession of a note for so large a sum by one of so mean an appearance as a very suspicious circumstance, and believing that she had not come honestly by the money, began to question her as to how and where she had obtained it. Finding that her answers were not particularly lucid or consistent on the subject, he thought it best to send for a policeman, and leave the officer to decide upon what course to take. The official, on seeing the woman, was as confident as the landlord that the note had been got hold of by unfair means, nor did he hesitate to tell the woman that he was satisfied she had stolen it from some gentleman, insinuating at the same time that she was, as the phrase runs, “no better than she should be.” The words were no sooner uttered than the woman, incensed at being foiled in her prize, flew at the policeman, and with her clenched fist beat him in the face so vigorously that before the man had time to defend himself he was covered with blood.
In a few moments afterwards she was on her way, handcuffed, to the station-house, while the landlord, who had handed the note over to the officer, thought it best to send the messenger before mentioned to the address inscribed on the back of it.
On reaching the station house, the superintendent directed that the woman should be immediately taken before the sitting magistrate, so that the charge might be disposed of with the least possible delay.
His worship, on hearing the evidence of the policeman, demanded to know what proof the woman could adduce as to the note being her own lawful property, as she asserted; whereupon she drew forth the marriage certificate of the Sandboys, protesting most loudly that it was her own. The magistrate, having perused the document carefully throughout, and satisfied himself of its authenticity, said there could be no doubt that the woman was really the person whom she represented herself to be.
Finding the magistrate take this view of the case, the female flower-seller then laid a formal complaint against the policeman, declaring that he had insulted her in the grossest manner that a respectable married woman could possibly be insulted, insinuating that she was a person of immoral character, when his worship could see by the marriage lines as she had shown him, that she was as honest a woman as any in London. The man’s conduct, she added, had thrown her into such a passion that she really did not know what she had done to him after he had insulted her: and she put it to his lordship whether his good lady would not have done the same.
The magistrate, though hardly inclined to take that extreme view of the case, still acknowledged that every excuse was to be made for the woman, adding that the officer had no right whatever to make any such insinuation without having indisputable proof of the fact—and that, as it was, he should dismiss the case, warning the policeman to be more cautious in future, and ordering the note to be restored to the woman, upon whose character he was bound to say there was not the slightest stain.
But to return to our lost mutton—Mr. Christopher Sandboys.