turned to her husband and murmured, ‘Michael, you have talked this nonsense in public places before. A joke is a joke, but you may make it once too often, mind!’
‘I know I’ve said it before; I meant it. All I want is a buyer.’
At the moment a swallow, one among the last of the season, which had by chance found its way through an opening into the upper part of the tent, flew to and fro in quick curves above their heads, causing all eyes to follow it absently. In watching the bird till it made its escape the assembled company neglected to respond to the workman’s offer, and the subject dropped.
But a quarter of an hour later the man, who had gone on lacing his furmity more and more heavily, though he was either so strong-minded or such an intrepid toper that he still appeared fairly sober, recurred to the old strain, as in a musical fantasy the instrument fetches up the original theme. ‘Here—I am waiting to know about this offer of mine. The woman is no good to me. Who’ll have her?’
The company had by this time decidedly degenerated, and the renewed inquiry was received with a laugh of appreciation. The woman whispered; she was imploring and anxious: ‘Come, come, it is getting dark, and this nonsense won’t do. If you don’t come along, I shall go without you. Come!’
She waited and waited; yet he did not move. In ten minutes the man broke in upon the desultory conversation of the furmity drinkers with, ‘I asked this question, and nobody answered to ‘t. Will any Jack Rag or Tom Straw among ye buy my goods?’
The woman’s manner changed, and her face assumed the grim shape and colour of which mention has been made.
‘Mike, Mike,’ said she; ‘this is getting serious. O!—too serious!’
‘Will anybody buy her?’ said the man.
‘I wish somebody would,’ said she firmly. ‘Her present owner is not at all to her liking!’
‘Nor you to mine,’ said he. ‘So we are agreed about that. Gentlemen, you hear? It’s an agreement to part. She shall take the girl if she wants to, and go her ways. I’ll take my tools, and go my ways. ’Tis simple as Scripture history. Now then, stand up, Susan, and show yourself.’
‘Don’t, my chiel,’ whispered a buxom staylace dealer in voluminous petticoats, who sat near the woman; ‘yer good man don’t know what he’s saying.’
The woman, however, did stand up. ‘Now, who’s auctioneer?’ cried the hay-trusser.
‘I be,’ promptly answered a short man, with a nose resembling a copper knob, a damp voice, and eyes like buttonholes. ‘Who’ll make an offer for this lady?’
The woman looked on the ground, as if she maintained her position by a supreme effort of will.
‘Five shillings,’ said some one, at which there was a laugh.
‘No insults,’ said the husband. ‘Who’ll say a guinea?’
Nobody answered; and the female dealer in staylaces interposed.
‘Behave yerself moral, good man, for Heaven’s love! Ah, what a cruelty is the poor soul married to! Bed and board is dear at some figures, ’pon my ’vation ’Tis!’
‘Set it higher, auctioneer,’ said the trusser.
‘Two guineas!’ said the auctioneer; and no one replied.
‘If they don’t take her for that, in ten seconds they’ll have to give more,’ said the husband. ‘Very well. Now auctioneer, add another.’
Three guineas—going for three guineas!’ said the rheumy man.
‘No bid?’ said the husband. ‘Good Lord, why she’s cost me fifty times the money, if a penny. Go on.’
‘Four guineas!’ cried the auctioneer.
‘I’ll tell ye what—I won’t sell her for less than five,’ said the husband, bringing down his fist so that the basins danced. ‘I’ll sell her for five guineas to any man that will pay me the money, and treat her well; and he shall have her for ever, and never hear aught o’ me. But she shan’t go for less. Now then—five guineas—and she’s yours. Susan, you agree?
She bowed her head with absolute indifference.
‘Five guineas,’ said the auctioneer, ‘or she’ll be withdrawn. Do anybody give it? The last time. Yes or no?’
‘Yes,’ said a loud voice from the doorway.
All eyes were turned. Standing in the triangular opening which formed the door of the tent was a sailor, who, unobserved by the rest, had arrived there within the last two or three minutes. A dead silence followed his affirmation.
‘You say you do?’ asked the husband, staring at him.
‘I say so,’ replied the sailor.
‘Saying is one thing, and paying is another. Where’s the money?’
The sailor hesitated a moment, looked anew at the woman, came in, unfolded five crisp pieces of paper, and threw them down upon the table-cloth. They were Bank-of-England notes for five pounds. Upon the face of this he chinked down the shillings severally—one, two, three, four, five.
The sight of real money in full amount, in answer to a challenge for the same till then deemed slightly hypothetical, had a great effect upon the spectators. Their eyes became riveted upon the faces of the chief actors, and then upon the notes as they lay, weighted by the shillings, on the table.
Up to this moment it could not positively have been asserted that the man, in spite of his tantalizing declaration, was really in earnest. The spectators had indeed taken the proceedings throughout as a piece of mirthful irony carried to extremes; and had assumed that, being out of work, he was, as a consequence, out of temper with the world, and society, and his nearest kin. But with the demand and response of real cash the jovial frivolity of the scene departed. A lurid colour seemed to fill the tent, and change the aspect of all therein. The mirth-wrinkles left the listeners’ faces, and they waited with parting lips.
‘Now,’ said the woman, breaking the silence, so that her low dry voice sounded quite loud, ‘before you go further, Michael, listen to me. If you touch that money, I and this girl go with the man. Mind, it is a joke no longer.’
‘A joke? Of course it is not a joke!’ shouted her husband, his resentment rising at her suggestion. ‘I take the money: the sailor takes you. That’s plain enough. It has been done elsewhere—and why not here?’
‘’Tis quite on the understanding that the young woman is willing,’ said the sailor blandly. ‘I wouldn’t hurt her feelings for the world.’
‘Faith, nor I,’ said her husband. ‘But she is willing, provided she can have the child. She said so only the other day when I talked o’t!’
‘That you swear?’ said the sailor to her.
‘I do,’ she said, after glancing at her husband’s face and seeing no repentance there.
‘Very well, she shall have the child, and the bargain’s complete,’ said the trusser. He took the sailor’s notes and deliberately folded them, and put them with the shillings in a high remote pocket, with an air of finality.
The sailor looked at the woman and smiled. ‘Come along!’ he said kindly. The little one too—the more the merrier!’ She paused for an instant, with a close glance at him. Then dropping her eyes again, and saying nothing, she took up the child and followed him as he made towards the door. On reaching it, she turned, and pulling off her wedding-ring, flung it across the booth in the hay-trusser’s face.
‘Mike,’ she said. ‘I’ve lived with thee a couple of years, and had nothing but temper! Now I’m no more to ’ee; I’ll try my luck elsewhere. ’Twill be better for me and Elizabeth-Jane, both. So good-bye!’
Seizing the sailor’s arm with