“If you means Laryer Quest, why in course I do, and Mrs. Quest too. Ah! she’s a pretty one, she is.”
Here the lady burst into a flood of incoherent abuse which tired her so much that she had a fourth brandy-and-soda; George mixed it for her and he mixed it strong.
“Is he rich?” she asked as she put down the glass.
“What! Laryer Quest? Well I should say that he is about the warmest man in our part of the county.”
“And here am I starving,” burst out the horrible woman with a flood of drunken tears. “Starving without a shilling to pay for a cab or a drink while my wedded husband lives in luxury with another woman. You tell him that I won’t stand it; you tell him that if he don’t find a ‘thou.’ pretty quick I’ll let him know the reason why.”
“I don’t quite understand, marm,” said George; “there’s a lady down in Boisingham as is the real Mrs. Quest.”
“It’s a lie!” she shrieked, “it’s a lie! He married me before he married her. I could have him in the dock to-morrow, and I would, too, if I wasn’t afraid of him, and that’s a fact.”
“Come, marm, come,” said George, “draw it mild from that tap.”
“You won’t believe me, won’t you?” said the woman, on whom the liquor was now beginning to take its full effect; “then I’ll show you,” and she staggered to a desk, unlocked it and took from it a folded paper, which she opened.
It was a properly certified copy of a marriage certificate, or purported so to be; but George, who was not too quick at his reading, had only time to note the name Quest, and the church, St. Bartholomew’s, Hackney, when she snatched it away from him and locked it up again.
“There,” she said, “it isn’t any business of yours. What right have you to come prying into the affairs of a poor lone woman?” And she sat down upon the sofa beside him, threw her long arm round him, rested her painted face upon his shoulder and began to weep the tears of intoxication.
“Well, blow me!” said George to himself, “if this ain’t a master one! I wonder what my old missus would say if she saw me in this fix. I say, marm——”
But at that moment the door opened, and in came Johnnie, who had evidently also been employing the interval in refreshing himself, for he rolled like a ship in a sea.
“Well,” he said, “and who the deuce are you? Come get out of this, you Methody parson-faced clodhopper, you. Fairest Edithia, what means this?”