At this critical state of affairs, a loud double knock at the street door made the passage echo with its clamour. This had the effect of inducing Mrs. Fokesell to relax her hold of the poor trembling Mrs. Sandboys, to whose great relief, on the door being opened, no less a person than her own dear Cursty made his appearance.
Immediately that gentleman was fairly in the passage, the exasperated landlady sought to empty the vials of her wrath on the heads of the innocent couple, but Mr. Sandboys, observing the agitated state of his wife, and judging from a glance the nature of the scene that had transpired, thought it prudent to withdraw to his own apartment; though as he and Aggy ascended the stairs, they could hear Mrs. Fokesell in the passage below vowing all kinds of vengeance against them both on the morrow, and heaping on their names epithets that were not of the most choice or flattering description.
Once by themselves, each began to console the other. Cursty of course believed that his beloved Aggy had suffered imprisonment for assaulting a policeman. Aggy too, in her turn, fancied that her dear Cursty had been only just released from the station-house, where he had been confined for being drunk and disorderly, and each sought to learn from the other what circumstances could possibly have induced them so far to forget themselves. Elcy, who looked upon them both as martyrs, was delighted to welcome them back again, for while each of her parents believed that the other had transgressed, she had been led to imagine that they both had been incarcerated for violating the law in some way or other.
Mrs. Sandboys was anxious that Cursty should retire to rest, for she was afraid that he must have taken cold from sleeping in the street, as she had been informed he had done; and Cursty begged that she would dismiss the whole affair from her mind until the morrow, when they would both be in a better condition to speak calmly on the subject. He was sure a glass of wine would do her good, after all the violent exertion she had gone through. But Mrs. Sandboys, alluding to her trip to the station-house after her husband, begged to assure him that it was solely on his account that she had done what she had, and all she could say was, she’d do it again to-morrow for his sake. Cursty, however, who believed that she referred to her late assault on the policeman, felt within himself in no way anxious that she should encourage a habit of resenting any attack upon her honour, in the Amazonian manner in which she had so recently distinguished herself, lest some day or other, she might resort to the same unpleasant means of vindicating herself, when aggrieved, even with him. Then he told how he had gone off to the station-house merely out of his regard to her. But Mrs. Sandboys was unable to perceive how his falling asleep in the gutter was calculated in any way to benefit her; and thus the worthy couple went on for some time, playing at cross purposes, until at last an explanation became necessary; and then they both saw clearly that their names had been assumed by some unprincipled persons, though with what motive they neither of them could comprehend. Cursty, however, was determined to sift the affair to the bottom, and hurrying back to the station-house whither the woman had been conveyed, he obtained a minuter account of the whole circumstances than he had previously been able to receive, and soon became convinced that the woman was an accomplice of the flower-seller, who had got possession of part of the notes, and the marriage certificate that had been deposited in the missing pocket-book.
When he returned home and cleared up the mystery to his wife, Aggy could plainly see through it all, and what was more, she felt satisfied that they’d many more troubles to come, for so long as that certificate was out of their possession they could not tell what might turn up against them.
The next morning a climax was put to their distress of mind, in the shape of a long “comic” police report in all the daily papers, detailing how Mrs. Christopher Sandboys, of Cumberland, who had come up to town to see the Great Exhibition, had made a furious attack upon one of the most active members of the metropolitan police force.
The Opera Boxes during the time of the Great Exhibition!
In consequence of the great pressure for Lodgings, the Proprietor of Her Majesty’s Theatre, with his usual readiness to meet the wishes and to give every possible accommodation to the Public, allows parties visiting the Opera, to rent their Boxes as Dormitories untill the following day