“Well, now you have finished your tea, Ben, perhaps you will tell us how you liked it?”
“I liked it well enough,” replied Uncle Benjamin.
“But wasn’t it very nice, Ben—extra nice?”
“Get out with you,” said Uncle Ben, laughing? “you are fishing for what you won’t catch, my dear. You want me to praise you up before Polly. I don’t mean to do it.”
“But wasn’t it a lovely lobster, Ben?” asked my mother.
“I don’t mind confessing to you that it was a lovely lobster, Polly,” replied Uncle Ben; “but I mustn’t do as much with Liz. You don’t know how artful she is. If I was to say to her that I liked it very much, she would not only want me to give her back the money she gave for it, but something in addition for the trouble of getting it.” Then turning to his wife, he continued—“Thank’ee for your lobster, Mrs. Extravagance. I’m glad to see you can afford such luxuries; I can’t.”
So saying, he pulled out a handsome cigar-case, and lit a cigar with the air of a man on perfect good terms with himself. This was capital sport for my mother and Aunt Liza, and they laughed very heartily over it.
“It is good to see the clever ones taken in once in a while; isn’t it?” said my aunt.
“What do you mean, taken in?” asked Uncle Ben, pausing between the puffs of his cigar. “It was a lobster, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, and you paid for it, you goose,” laughed my mother.
He laughed too, but it was plain that he did not exactly see where the joke was.
“I see,” said he; “you mean to say that I shall pay for it in the long run. Not the least doubt of it.”
“No: we don’t mean anything of the sort,” replied my mother, still laughing; “we mean that it is already paid for with ready money—with your ready money, Ben.”
“My ready money!”
“Not half an hour ago,” said both women, clapping their hands in great glee, to see how foolish he looked.
“Rubbish!” said Uncle Ben; “I haven’t paid for a pen’orth of anything since I’ve been home, I’ll swear. What ready money are you talking about?”
“Some of that you’ve got in your waistcoat pocket, Benny, dear,” answered his wife. “Polly took it out and I spent it.”
If he did not see the joke now, he never would see it. Evidently something came home to him with appalling suddenness, but it wasn’t anything funny. His face went white, as though he were about to faint and fall, and unknown to him, the cigar dropped from between his lips and lay smouldering on the new hearth-rug.
“Out of my pocket—my waistcoat pocket—while I was asleep!” stammered he. “Out of which pocket? which? which?”
“The left-hand pocket—yes, that one, (he clapped his hand on it.) Not much, dear; only three-and-sixpence, Ben—a shilling and a half crown.
I shouldn’t have thought of it, only Polly”—
“Hang Polly and you too!” interrupted my uncle, fiercely, bustling about in a tremendous hurry, and putting on his coat and hat. “I want to hear none of your infernal excuses; tell me where you palm—where you passed the half-crown and the shilling?”
“The fishmonger in Castle Street had the half-crown, and the grocer next to the trunk shop had the shilling,” replied my Aunt Eliza, beginning to cry. “Don’t be angry, Ben; I’ll never do it again.”
“Then you are a great fool, Liz,” spoke my mother, who was much put out to see the savage way in which Uncle Ben was going on. “Never cry about nothing, girl. Why, what harm have you done?”
“What harm!” repeated Uncle Benjamin, furiously.
“Yes, what harm?” replied my mother, coolly. “I’d be ashamed if I were you, Ben; you, with a pocketful of money, making all this fuss about a trumpery three-and-sixpence. Anybody, to hear you, would think that your money was bad, and that you were afraid of its being brought back to you by the people who had taken it.”
Without doubt this was a random shot, but it hit the mark most cruelly. Uncle Benjamin was walking the room to and fro in a bewildered manner when she began to speak, but her words brought him suddenly to a dead standstill. He faced round at mother paler than ever, and with his eyes filled with tears, and laying one hand on her shoulder, he shook his fist in her face:—
“You cruel wretch,” cried he; “you wicked wretch! you knew it all along! you knew it, and you came here purposely to sell me.”
And as though really she had been guilty of so base a thing, and they who had bought him were in a hurry to complete the transaction, there came a single rap at the street door even while he was speaking. Hearing the knock, Uncle Benjamin made a few hurried steps towards the passage, but before he could reach it the street door was opened by the landlady; and in walked a fishmonger, and a grocer, and a policeman.
“Beg pardon, sir, and ladies both,” said the policeman, entering the room with the other two men, and putting his back against the door; “hope we don’t disturb you. We’ve merely called to see if you happen to have any more of this sort of article to dispose of. If so, I’ll take it off your hands without further trouble.”
As he spoke, he held out a bright new shilling and a half-crown in the palm of his hand.
Uncle Ben was evidently not unprepared for something of the sort. “Oh, yes,” said he, in a loud devil-may-care voice; “it’s all right; you ’re come to the right shop, my man, for that sort of coin. I can change you a twenty pun’ note if you don’t object to take gold as well as silver. Look here.”
And so saying, he took from his waistcoat pocket, and from a pocket inside the breast of his waistcoat, several little packets of money done up in soft white paper, and all as spick and span new as the shilling and half-crown the policeman held in his hand. As he recklessly flung down the little packets, the papers burst, and the coins went rolling and chinking amongst the cups and saucers in the tea-tray at a tremendous rate.
“That’s the lot, my friend,” said Uncle Benjamin, addressing the officer, and at the same time clasping his hands together. “And now, if you’ve got such a thing as a pair of bracelets about you, I’ll thank you to slip them on me quick. If you don’t you may have to book a worse charge than that of smashing against me.” Luckily, the policeman did not miss the significant glance with which Uncle Benjamin regarded my mother as he spoke, nor that his eyes, with a dangerous expression in them, shifted from her to a broad bread-knife lying handily. In a twinkling the handcuffs were produced from the officer’s pocket, and Uncle Ben’s wrists locked securely together.
It was a perfectly clear case against the passer of counterfeit coin, and Uncle Ben was sentenced to transportation beyond the seas for the term of his natural life. There was no help for it but that my mother should be a witness in the case, and the least she could make of what she had to say told strongly against him, and made him grin with hate and grate his teeth as he stood there in the dock listening to her. He had got it into his obstinate head that she had sold him, and nothing could shake his opinion.
“That is my own brother’s wife—that is,” spoke he, when my mother had given her evidence. “That’s my own brother’s wife,” said he, at the same time showing her to the people in court with his pointed finger. “She comes to my house, and she eats my bread, and sits, and laughs, and talks with us, and all this after she has set the trap. She wheedles me and my innocent wife, who, as true as there is a Lord above us, knew no more of my ways of getting money than her unborn baby. She comes to us, and eats, and drinks, and laughs, and talks, till presently, them as she had sold me to comes and takes me. Bad luck to you, Polly! Beware of her, Jim!” (my father was in court to hear the trial,) “she is a bad one.”