The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [123]
It was the Lismoyle market-day, and Christopher made his way slowly along the street, squeezing between carts and barrels, separating groups locked together in the extremity of bargaining, and doing what in him lay to avoid running over the old women, who, blinded by their overhanging hoods and deaf by nature, paraded the centre of the thoroughfare with a fine obliviousness of dog-carts and their drivers. Most of the better class of shops had their shutters up in recognition of the fact that Mrs. Lambert, a customer whom neither co-operative stores or eighteenpenny teas had been able to turn from her allegiance, had this morning passed their doors for the last time, in slow incongruous pomp, her silver-mounted coffin commanding all eyes as the glass-sided hearse moved along with its quivering bunches of black plumes. The funeral was still a succulent topic in the gabble of the market; Christopher heard here and there such snatches of it as:
“Rest her sowl, the crayture! ‘Tis she was the good wife, and more than all, she was the beautiful housekeeper!”
“Is it he lonesome afther her? No, nor if he berrid ten like her.”
“She was a spent little woman always, and ‘tis she that doted down on him.”
“And ne’er a child left afther her! Well, she must be exshcused.”
“Musha, I’d love her bones!” shouted Nance the Fool, well aware of the auditor in the dog-cart, “there wasn’t one like her in the nation, nor in the world, no, nor in the town o’ Galway!”
Towards the end of the street, at the corner of a lane leading to the quay, something like a fight was going on, and, as he approached, Christopher saw, over the heads of an admiring audience, the infuriated countenance of a Lismoyle beggar-woman, one of the many who occasionally legalised their existence by selling fish, between long bouts of mendicancy and drunkenness. Mary Norris was apparently giving what she would call the length and breadth of her tongue to some customer who had cast doubts upon the character of her fish, a customer who was for the moment quiescent, and hidden behind the tall figure of her adversary.
“Whoever says thim throuts isn’t leppin’ fresh out o’the lake he’s a dom liar, and it’s little I think of tellin’ it t’ye up to yer nose! There’s not one in the counthry but knows yer thricks and yer chat, and ye may go home out o’ that, with yer bag sthrapped round ye, and ye can take the tay-laves and the dhrippin’ from the servants, and huxther thim to feed yer cats, but thanks be to God ye’ll take nothing out o’my basket this day!”
There was a titter of horrified delight from the crowd.
“Ye never spoke a truer word than that, Mary Norris,” replied a voice that sent a chill down Christopher’s back; “when I come into Lismoyle, it’s not to buy rotten fish from a drunken fish-fag, that’ll be begging for crusts at my hall-door to-morrow. If I hear another word out of yer mouth I’ll give you and your fish to the police, and the streets’ll be rid of you and yer infernal tongue for a week, at all events, and the prison’ll have a treat that it’s pretty well used to!”
Another titter rewarded this sally, and Charlotte, well pleased, turned to walk away. As she did so, she caught sight of Christopher, looking at her with an expression from which he had not time to remove his emotions, and for a moment she wished that the earth would open and swallow her up. She reddened visibly, but recovered herself, and