Volume Three—Chapter Eight.Foiled!The winter passed by and fled. Ships from foreign parts came and went from Havre; and still, although the police with the able Chef at their head kept a strict look out and surveillance on all comers and goers, nothing was heard or seen of Markworth, and no circumstances arose to unravel the web of mystery in which his disappearance and the murder of the girl were enwrapped.Clara Kingscott still remained at Havre. She was loth to leave the scene where her enemy had made his lastcoup, and she was hoping on against hope that something might arise to mature her vengeance—but nothing came.So at last in disgust, having made the Chef promise her, as he did willingly in the interests of the law, to forward her the first intimation should anything be heard of Markworth, she quitted Havre and returned to England in order to prosecute her watch here.She went back to the lodgings she had previously occupied in Bloomsbury. It may be remembered that these were the same where Markworth used formerly to live; and besides their being comfortable and suited to her in every way as a point of attack, the governess hoped that perchance he of whom she was in search might perchance come there unexpectedly. He would probably have seen the news of Susan’s death in the paper, and thinking that nothing had been discovered of his crime, as she thought, return again some time to London: where would he be more likely to come than here? No one connected with the after circumstances of his life knew of his having lived here but herself, and it was on the cards that the first place that he would go to, should he return again, as was most probable, to the scenes of his old life, when he thought pursuit had died out, would be Mrs Martin’s old apartments.Here, therefore, Miss Kingscott sat herself down to bide her time. Patience was never a virtue that she possessed, and it can be no wonder that time hung heavy on her hands, and her heart was gnawed through with vexation and impatience at the delay in all her plans, the failure of her vengeance. Nemesis was at fault, and Nemesis showed the traces of her mental struggles in her face: this last year had aged her more than ten.She paid repeated visits to the offices of Messrs Trump, Sequence, and Co., in Bedford Row, all to no purpose.Mr Trump had first heard her placidly and promised assistance when she should have secured her prey; he had next, after being sufficiently bored, told her that it was no business of his, and washed his hands of it; he also said that if she took his advice she too would wash her hands of it, and leave it alone, to which Sequence, parrot-like, had re-echoed “leave it alone!” The lawyer finally, when he had been bored too much and had lost his admiration at the woman’s fixity of purpose, gave directions in his office that he was to be “never in” when she called. Clara Kingscott after this waited long hours, sitting determinedly in the outer room, amid the ill-concealed ridicule and chaff of “sucking sheepskins,” the clerks, and had finally to give up the lawyers in the chronic disgust which was now enveloping everything in her life.Solomonson and Isaacs, the Jew creditors of Markworth, she also haunted; but they, too, could not see what was to be done, and did not take that interest in Clara Kingscott’s plans which she had supposed they would have done. To tell the truth the name of Markworth and all that was connected with their former client stunk in their nostrils; it was not a pleasant subject for them to dwell upon; so while their debtor was out of their reach,—although they were ready to pounce upon himvi et armis, with warrants and detainers, should he venture within the precincts of the lion’s den,id est, be again within the realm—they preferred taking a dignified, albeit Hebrews, silence on the matter, and let it lieperdufor the present.Ousted on all sides, therefore, and disappointed of her prey, Clara Kingscott’s life during this interregnum of affairs was not a happy one, although she tried to make the best of it that she could. As she had plenty of money for her wants she was not obliged to seek employment, and she could afford to wait awhile and watch. But watching without occupation, and waiting with nothing to do, is poor work at the best for an impatient mind.In the meantime she cultivated relationship with the lodging-house keeper Mrs Martin, in the furtherance of her projects: “the parlours” and the basement were on the best of terms.The spring came and passed, the days spun out their weary length, summer was nigh, summer had come, and yet Clara Kingscott’s vengeance was not matured; the fly kept away from the web which the spider had so cunningly woven for him.But her gratification came at last in reward for her patience.One night—it was far now advanced in the summer—as she was perspiring in the dingy parlours which she would not relinquish even in the hot weather, notwithstanding that she had nothing to keep her in town, she heard a double knock at the street door.The knock was nothing unusual in itself. It was a knock which perhaps any gentleman or lady might have given—but there was this point about it, it was undecided. Miss Kingscott had been previously reviewing in her mind all the chain of events that had interwoven her life and her purpose with that of Markworth. She had been tracing down the panorama of the last year from its inception to the part where the canvas had been roughly torn across. There was nothing unusual in this, it was her constant practice to do this nearly every night—to evolve the various thoughts which had been passing through her mind during the day, as they did every day. But by one of those sudden mental clutches which strike across our brain sometimes, she seized upon the past and worked it into the present. Like as a sudden noise which we hear in our sleep—such as the report of a gun, or the sudden exclamation of someone who intrudes on our slumbers—is worked into our dreams and forms the subject of a complete mental phantasmagoria, so this stray knock at the street door of Mrs Martin’s lodgings was worked by Clara Kingscott into her present thoughts. “He’s here!” she exclaimed to herself in the tumultuous throbbing of her excited imagination. “He’s here! I feel it! I have waited long, but he is caught at last!” But she did not go to the door, she waited and watched still: in spite of all, however, she was right for once.It was Markworth.By and bye, later in the evening, Mrs Martin came up to tell her the important news. Her former lodger had returned—so poor—so ill-dressed—so changed from what she had formerly remembered him.What did he want? Had she sent him about his business?Not she! The worldly lodging-house keeper had still a heart left; and the poor wanderer who had returned had been one of her best tenants. He was worn out, poor fellow—she said—and she had put him in one of her best bedrooms, where she hoped he was sleeping comfortably after all the troubles he had gone through. “It made her heart bleed to hear ’im,” said the twenty-five-shillings-a-week-and-coals-extra vampire. There is charity in all of us, friend, if you can find it out; even in a London lodging-house keeper; and some of us, returning prodigals, can quote with the poet, that they found their warmest welcome at an inn. Strangers are sometimes even more compassionate than friends!“At last! At last!” murmured Miss Kingscott; and she had planned well before what she should do in such an emergency.Early the next morning, while the wanderer was yet enjoying the soundest sleep he had had since the night he fled like a hunted animal from Havre, the ex-governess was up and doing.Pressing business this time with Solomonson and Isaacs: they did not refuse now to hear her news, and act upon it too.Disruption of the prodigal’s dreams.Dire disgust in the Bloomsbury lodgings!Before twelve o’clock that day, Allynne Markworth was removed in a cab under the escort of two sheriffs officers (much to the disgust of Mrs Martin, who had lent her prodigal lodger five pounds “until he could go to the bank,” as he said) to Chancery Lane—or rather a small street running out of the same.He changed his lodgings a second time, from the worthy Mrs Martin’s first-floor to the apartments of a certain Abednego in Curseover Street, who keeps a court of reception—popularly know as a sponging-house, of the class immortalised by Hogarth—for gentlemen under a pecuniary cloud.Markworth was arrested at the suit of certainconfrèresof Mister Abednego, twixt “Solomonson and Isaacs, solicitors,” on a writ for a largish sum of money, which he certainly could not pay.Was the detainer heavy!3,000 pounds and costs!And he hadn’t a penny in his pocket but Mrs Martin’s five pounds!Pleasant!“But your friends will soon come and see you,” said the Cerberus of the sponging-house in words of comfort. If Markworth had been arrested for a trifling sum, he would have taken no notice of him whatever. There is a dignity even in debt, if it be large enough! Your paltry insolvents are but small fry: a colossal defaulter is a man to be looked up to and envied,videthe annals of the Bankruptcy Court. So Markworth was comfortably treated, and had a private room, as he owed a heavy sum, and, moreover, had money in his pocket.Oh! yes, there was not the least doubt Markworth’s friends would look after him. He had a visitor the very first day of his incarceration, and who it was may easily be guessed.
The winter passed by and fled. Ships from foreign parts came and went from Havre; and still, although the police with the able Chef at their head kept a strict look out and surveillance on all comers and goers, nothing was heard or seen of Markworth, and no circumstances arose to unravel the web of mystery in which his disappearance and the murder of the girl were enwrapped.
Clara Kingscott still remained at Havre. She was loth to leave the scene where her enemy had made his lastcoup, and she was hoping on against hope that something might arise to mature her vengeance—but nothing came.
So at last in disgust, having made the Chef promise her, as he did willingly in the interests of the law, to forward her the first intimation should anything be heard of Markworth, she quitted Havre and returned to England in order to prosecute her watch here.
She went back to the lodgings she had previously occupied in Bloomsbury. It may be remembered that these were the same where Markworth used formerly to live; and besides their being comfortable and suited to her in every way as a point of attack, the governess hoped that perchance he of whom she was in search might perchance come there unexpectedly. He would probably have seen the news of Susan’s death in the paper, and thinking that nothing had been discovered of his crime, as she thought, return again some time to London: where would he be more likely to come than here? No one connected with the after circumstances of his life knew of his having lived here but herself, and it was on the cards that the first place that he would go to, should he return again, as was most probable, to the scenes of his old life, when he thought pursuit had died out, would be Mrs Martin’s old apartments.
Here, therefore, Miss Kingscott sat herself down to bide her time. Patience was never a virtue that she possessed, and it can be no wonder that time hung heavy on her hands, and her heart was gnawed through with vexation and impatience at the delay in all her plans, the failure of her vengeance. Nemesis was at fault, and Nemesis showed the traces of her mental struggles in her face: this last year had aged her more than ten.
She paid repeated visits to the offices of Messrs Trump, Sequence, and Co., in Bedford Row, all to no purpose.
Mr Trump had first heard her placidly and promised assistance when she should have secured her prey; he had next, after being sufficiently bored, told her that it was no business of his, and washed his hands of it; he also said that if she took his advice she too would wash her hands of it, and leave it alone, to which Sequence, parrot-like, had re-echoed “leave it alone!” The lawyer finally, when he had been bored too much and had lost his admiration at the woman’s fixity of purpose, gave directions in his office that he was to be “never in” when she called. Clara Kingscott after this waited long hours, sitting determinedly in the outer room, amid the ill-concealed ridicule and chaff of “sucking sheepskins,” the clerks, and had finally to give up the lawyers in the chronic disgust which was now enveloping everything in her life.
Solomonson and Isaacs, the Jew creditors of Markworth, she also haunted; but they, too, could not see what was to be done, and did not take that interest in Clara Kingscott’s plans which she had supposed they would have done. To tell the truth the name of Markworth and all that was connected with their former client stunk in their nostrils; it was not a pleasant subject for them to dwell upon; so while their debtor was out of their reach,—although they were ready to pounce upon himvi et armis, with warrants and detainers, should he venture within the precincts of the lion’s den,id est, be again within the realm—they preferred taking a dignified, albeit Hebrews, silence on the matter, and let it lieperdufor the present.
Ousted on all sides, therefore, and disappointed of her prey, Clara Kingscott’s life during this interregnum of affairs was not a happy one, although she tried to make the best of it that she could. As she had plenty of money for her wants she was not obliged to seek employment, and she could afford to wait awhile and watch. But watching without occupation, and waiting with nothing to do, is poor work at the best for an impatient mind.
In the meantime she cultivated relationship with the lodging-house keeper Mrs Martin, in the furtherance of her projects: “the parlours” and the basement were on the best of terms.
The spring came and passed, the days spun out their weary length, summer was nigh, summer had come, and yet Clara Kingscott’s vengeance was not matured; the fly kept away from the web which the spider had so cunningly woven for him.
But her gratification came at last in reward for her patience.
One night—it was far now advanced in the summer—as she was perspiring in the dingy parlours which she would not relinquish even in the hot weather, notwithstanding that she had nothing to keep her in town, she heard a double knock at the street door.
The knock was nothing unusual in itself. It was a knock which perhaps any gentleman or lady might have given—but there was this point about it, it was undecided. Miss Kingscott had been previously reviewing in her mind all the chain of events that had interwoven her life and her purpose with that of Markworth. She had been tracing down the panorama of the last year from its inception to the part where the canvas had been roughly torn across. There was nothing unusual in this, it was her constant practice to do this nearly every night—to evolve the various thoughts which had been passing through her mind during the day, as they did every day. But by one of those sudden mental clutches which strike across our brain sometimes, she seized upon the past and worked it into the present. Like as a sudden noise which we hear in our sleep—such as the report of a gun, or the sudden exclamation of someone who intrudes on our slumbers—is worked into our dreams and forms the subject of a complete mental phantasmagoria, so this stray knock at the street door of Mrs Martin’s lodgings was worked by Clara Kingscott into her present thoughts. “He’s here!” she exclaimed to herself in the tumultuous throbbing of her excited imagination. “He’s here! I feel it! I have waited long, but he is caught at last!” But she did not go to the door, she waited and watched still: in spite of all, however, she was right for once.
It was Markworth.
By and bye, later in the evening, Mrs Martin came up to tell her the important news. Her former lodger had returned—so poor—so ill-dressed—so changed from what she had formerly remembered him.
What did he want? Had she sent him about his business?
Not she! The worldly lodging-house keeper had still a heart left; and the poor wanderer who had returned had been one of her best tenants. He was worn out, poor fellow—she said—and she had put him in one of her best bedrooms, where she hoped he was sleeping comfortably after all the troubles he had gone through. “It made her heart bleed to hear ’im,” said the twenty-five-shillings-a-week-and-coals-extra vampire. There is charity in all of us, friend, if you can find it out; even in a London lodging-house keeper; and some of us, returning prodigals, can quote with the poet, that they found their warmest welcome at an inn. Strangers are sometimes even more compassionate than friends!
“At last! At last!” murmured Miss Kingscott; and she had planned well before what she should do in such an emergency.
Early the next morning, while the wanderer was yet enjoying the soundest sleep he had had since the night he fled like a hunted animal from Havre, the ex-governess was up and doing.
Pressing business this time with Solomonson and Isaacs: they did not refuse now to hear her news, and act upon it too.
Disruption of the prodigal’s dreams.
Dire disgust in the Bloomsbury lodgings!
Before twelve o’clock that day, Allynne Markworth was removed in a cab under the escort of two sheriffs officers (much to the disgust of Mrs Martin, who had lent her prodigal lodger five pounds “until he could go to the bank,” as he said) to Chancery Lane—or rather a small street running out of the same.
He changed his lodgings a second time, from the worthy Mrs Martin’s first-floor to the apartments of a certain Abednego in Curseover Street, who keeps a court of reception—popularly know as a sponging-house, of the class immortalised by Hogarth—for gentlemen under a pecuniary cloud.
Markworth was arrested at the suit of certainconfrèresof Mister Abednego, twixt “Solomonson and Isaacs, solicitors,” on a writ for a largish sum of money, which he certainly could not pay.
Was the detainer heavy!
3,000 pounds and costs!
And he hadn’t a penny in his pocket but Mrs Martin’s five pounds!
Pleasant!
“But your friends will soon come and see you,” said the Cerberus of the sponging-house in words of comfort. If Markworth had been arrested for a trifling sum, he would have taken no notice of him whatever. There is a dignity even in debt, if it be large enough! Your paltry insolvents are but small fry: a colossal defaulter is a man to be looked up to and envied,videthe annals of the Bankruptcy Court. So Markworth was comfortably treated, and had a private room, as he owed a heavy sum, and, moreover, had money in his pocket.
Oh! yes, there was not the least doubt Markworth’s friends would look after him. He had a visitor the very first day of his incarceration, and who it was may easily be guessed.
Volume Three—Chapter Nine.Pringle “Pecked.”The nuptial couch is not always a bed of roses, and so the young incumbent of Hartwood found out after a time. Not that it was all the fault of his newly-married spouse. Laura loved him in her languid way, and would have endeavoured to make his home happy if she had been left to herself; but the old campaigner stood in the gap: she had became Herbert Pringle’sbête noir.Shortly after the happy pair came back from their honeymoon to the parsonage, Lady Inskip made a proposition, which by dint of judicious manoeuvring she managed to carry into operation. Now that her eldest daughter was married, and Carry, “the bold, ungrateful girl,” had left her in that scandalous manner, there was no need for her to keep up any longer a special establishment as she had formerly done. She only had her darling boy, Mortimer, now to care for, and Laburnum Cottage would be too big for herself and him only. She suggested to her dear, kind, clever son-in-law what she would do. She would give up the cottage—her time would be out on Lady-day, and it did not want such a very long time now to that date, and come and live at the parsonage with her affectionate children. Nothing could be better! Of course she would insist on paying her share of the housekeeping expenses; but then she did eat so very little; that would be of little count. Would not her dear Herbert and Laura—she put it to them—welcome her? She was such a good manager, and they were so ignorant of the world.“Of course, dear ma!” said Laura. “That will be so nice; and then I should not have any trouble with the house and that horrid cookery book. I hate it! I wish Soyer had never been born. I’m sure I cannot make head or tail of all his ‘economical dishes,’ as he calls them.”“Certainly, my love!” responded the campaigner with alacrity. It was wonderful how very sweet and affectionate she could be when she had any point to gain. “I should take charge of all that off your hands, my dear! Itwouldbe hard if I could not be of use to my own children, whom I only have left to care for.”“That’ll be all right, ma, then?” said Laura, considering the matter settled; but the campaigner was not so sure, for her son-in-law had not made any response yet to the offer.“What does Herbert say, my pet?” exclaimed the old general, playfully, and looked the Rev. Herbert full in the face. “Will he turn his old mother into the street, or—?”“Oh! certainly, Lady Inskip, certainly!” promptly answered up the young divine, confused at being appealed to. “That is, of course we’ll be glad to have you here for a time, and—”“Oh! I see,” interposed the campaigner, with a capital assumption of offended pride and wounded feeling, “I should be intruding when I only offered to come here and help my darling child. Oh! that I have lived to hear this.”“Oh! ma,” said Laura, “don’t go on so. Herbert didn’t mean anything of the kind.”“That I have lived to see this day!” repeated the campaigner, with solemn emphasis, and looking as if she were going to cry; however as she was seldom given to lachrymals, tears did not come so readily as would have now suited her purpose, but she twisted up her eyes, nevertheless, and sniffed ominously.“Pray don’t say so, ma! Don’t say so! Say something, Herbert, to her, and don’t be so unfeeling!” eagerly ejaculated Laura, turning to her husband, who did not know what to say. He certainly had hoped that he and his wife could have lived together without the services of his honoured mother-in-law, the lady in her own right; but what could he do? Here was she asking, and Laura urging it; and he was a single man against two energetic females. He was helpless, although he wished to do battle on his sister Lizzie’s behalf, being certain that she and the campaigner would not get on well together. He was driven to the wall, however, for Laura had called on him to say something, and he must speak!“Certainly, Lady Inskip, certainly!” he began. “That is, I mean to say, we will be most happy, Laura, and myself, to have you to live with us. Delighted, I’m sure; and Laura can make all the arrangements; but if there’s anything you want me to see to, you have only to ask. That’s all, and—and—”“You dear, impulsive creature,” interrupted the campaigner; “you are so good. I thought you did not mean to be unkind; but my feelings have been so lacerated of late that a very little affects me now.” The campaigner spoke of a very little affecting her as if she were alluding to the imbibition of gin, or some other stimulant. “And sothat’sall arranged, and I can give up the cottage at once. It will be delightful to live here altogether; just like the happy family, won’t it?”“Quite so, Lady Inskip, quite so!” responded the Reverend Herbert; but he did not speak cheerfully, and I fear he had other views in his own mind of what a “happy family” arrangement might be.“Charming, ma!” chorused Laura. “We’ll see about making the arrangements at once, in order to prevent you from changing your mind.”The incumbent’s wife need not, however, have been under any anxiety on that score: the campaigner knew very well when she had made a bargain, and she was not going to back out of it.“I must send the darling boy Mortimer to school, however. It will be so sad parting with him, but it must be done. It would never do to have him here, would it?”And she looked inquiringly at her son-in-law.Pringle had sundry experiences of the darling boy’s tractable disposition, and was rather disinclined in being so intimately associated with the young hopeful, so he combatted the point.“You’re quite right, Lady Inskip. He’d better be sent to school; not that I’d have any objections to his coming here, but then—”“Yes,” sighed the campaigner, “I suppose he must go; it would be too much to ask.”“Oh! have him here, ma. Don’t send him to school, poor little fellow! Herbert won’t mind, will you?” struck in Laura.The incumbent was again doomed to defeat. He could refuse his young wife nothing when she was so judiciously “backed up” by the campaigner.“Oh! certainly not, Lady Inskip. Have him here by all means.”He gave in. He thought as the campaigner was coming the mischief was done; and he would be equally willing now to receive all the rest of the family; even Carry and her military husband, if it was suggested that they should all be invited; and the green parrot, too, the Persian cats, and all the other pets of My Lady’s. He succumbed hopelessly, and was thenceforth a pecked man.I remember once coming across a little Oriental anecdote which lays particular stress on the relations of connubial folk. Pity that Pringle was not acquainted with it before he committed himself. The story runs as follows:—Once upon a time a gay young fellow married the widow of a great Khan—the scene is laid in Persia. On the wedding night the lady determined to assert her authority, and show who was the real lord and master. She accordingly treated her spouse with great contempt when he entered the ante-room, where she was seated on rose-leaf cushions caressing a large white cat, of which she pretended to be very fond indeed. She appeared very much annoyed at her husband’s entrance, and looked at him out of the corners of her eyes with cold disdain as he came in.“I hate cats,” observed the young husband, blandly, as if he were only making a casual observation; “they offend my sight.”If his wife had looked at him with glances of cold disdain before, her eyes now wore an expression of anger and contempt, such as no words can express. She did not even deign to answer him, but took the cat to her bosom and fondled it passionately: her whole heart seemed to be in the cat, and cold was the shoulder that she turned to her husband.“When any one offends me,” continued her gallant, gaily, “I cut off his head. It is a peculiarity of mine which I am sure will only make me dearer to you.”Then, drawing his sword, he took the cat gently but firmly from her arms, cut off its head, wiped the blade, sheathed it, and sitting down continued to talk affectionately to his wife as if nothing had happened. After which, says tradition, she became the best and most submissive wife in the world.A hen-pecked fellow, meeting him the next day as he rode with a gallant train through the market place, began to condole with him.“Ah!” said the hen-pecked one with deep feeling, “you, too, have taken a wife, and got a tyrant. You had better have remained the poor soldier that you were. I pity you from my very heart!”“Not so,” replied the other, jollily; “keep your sighs to cool yourself next summer.”He then related the events of his wedding night with their satisfactory results.The hen-pecked man listened attentively, and pondered long.“I also have a sword,” said he, “though it is rusty, and my wife is likewise fond of cats. I will cut off the head of my wife’s favourite cat at once.”He did so, and received a sound beating. His wife, moreover, made him go down upon his knees and tell her what djinn, or evil spirit, had prompted him to do the bloody deed.“Fool!” said the lady, when she had possessed herself of the hen-pecked’s secret, with a vixenish vinegar smile on her sallow lips, “you should have done it the first night!”The moral is obvious: the Persians say “Advice is useless to fools!”Pringle did not kill the cat at once; hence his position.The old campaigner sold out at Laburnum Cottage in another week or two, and came with the young imp Mortimer, her Persian cats, and green parrot, and all her multitudinous belongings, settling down like a swarm of locusts on the devoted parsonage. Gone thenceforth were all its tranquil joys.After a time the Lucca-oil-like-suavity which had formerly distinguished Lady Inskip in Pringle’s mind, disappeared. She appeared now as the concentrated essence of verjuice or tartaric acid, and ruled the whole house with a rod of iron, becoming in truth the master of all. Poor Lizzie’s life was made a burden to her; and she was treated as if she were a presumptuous intruder in her brother’s house. The old campaigner wrung her little heart with continual allusions to the “Young Squire,” and said how glad she “would have been to get him, miss!” making bitter comments on the way she said Lizzie had angled for Tom, and how he had gone off now and left her. “Served her right, too,” she ought not to be “pining and whining and breaking her heart after a man who never cared for her!” When, you may be sure, our little friend answered and stuck up for her rights, whereupon the campaigner would go and complain to the supposed head of the family, and declare that she could not stop in the house with “that virago of a girl,” and Pringle had to timidly urge that he would not keep Lady Inskip against her will for the world. Then the campaigner would commence with a stern philippic on ingratitude, and wind up by bursting into tears and wishing she had never been born to observe that particular day. Here Laura would interfere, Herbert Pringle beg the pardon of his mamma-in-law, and all would be soothed over for a time, and the campaigner would establish a fresh gap in the trenches she was engineering for universal sovereignty.Pringle suffered in more ways than one. He had to walk now through the parish in discharging his parochial duties, for he could no more “prance about,” as Mrs Hartshorne called it, on his dapple grey pony. The campaigner had impounded that valuable little animal, and no more was it bestridden by the well shaped, albeit diminutive legs of the incumbent. The Macchiaevelli in petticoats said that “her daughter” must have a carriage to go about in, considering she could no longer afford to keep one of her own, which otherwise she would have been happy for Laura to have made free use of. The campaigner had sold her equipage when she cleared out from Laburnum Cottage along with other sundry theatrical “effects” which she had kept up for the sales of entrapping suitors for her daughters’ hands, and now they were both off her hands she melted down her appurtenances into the handier form of a banker’s balance. “No one knew what might come,” as she said to herself, sagely reflective.She accordingly made Pringle buy a neat basket carriage, and build an enlargement to the parsonage stable for its accommodation. To this vehicle, dapple grey was thenceforth attached, and the campaigner used to drive out in it every afternoon, occasionally but seldom, accompanied by her daughter, and the small boy with the eruption of buttons on him, whom she had retained in her own service when she migrated to the house of her son-in-law. “It was so respectable to have a page,” as she said. Lizzie she never invited to drive with her, not that she would for a moment have consented to the penance of atête-à-têtewith the campaigner, whom she disliked as much almost as the other did her, although she tried to bear with her for her brother’s sake, whom she pitied. Lizzie in fact saw clearly that poor Herbert was sadly hen-pecked, not by his wife, for she was two apathetic, but by his mother-in-law.Instead of the paradise of bliss which he had hoped to enter, by allying himself with Lady Inskip’s eldest daughter, the young incumbent found himself in a very miserable position; and I am inclined to think that he somewhat regretted his hasty step. He loved Laura as much as it was in his nature to do so, and so did she him; but both were very young—he just a boy from College, one might say; and they had yet much to learn of that mutual forbearance principle, and earnest trust and love, without which too many find marriage the “lottery” they declare it. What chance of happiness they had depended upon their being to themselves, without the odious presence of the campaigner; but she had established herself as a fixture, and was not going to stir herself in a hurry; and as Laura as yet took her part, principally because Herbert Pringle had his sister on his side, the pecktive state continued, unhappily for all parties.No more did the ritualistic young divine devote much attention to his sermons; and the Ciceronian phraseology, which purely distinguished those works of composition, disappeared. He had no heart in his work—for the campaigner was always “nagging” at him at home, and no longer praised his eloquence as she had done at first.No more did he chant in melodious strains the Psalms to his elaborately embroidered and besmocked congregation of farmers, but read them over hurriedly, in order to get rid of them. Even his ritualistic tendencies began to be toned down: the lectern was seldom made use of, and the white surplices were dispensed with for the boys of the choir.Pringle was pecked with a vengeance, and its effect was shown, not only in his outward ways, but in his adornment—he became careless about his dress, and not half so particular as he had been for appearances before he became a Benedict. Bottom was very much translated, indeed. Pringle was pecked!Lizzie saw all that was going on, and sympathised with her brother. The old campaigner she detested, and only the desire not to increase her brother’s miseries by having home broils, made her keep her hostility subdued; she even tried to coax the artful Macchiaevelli for him, all to no effect, as also her endeavours to awaken the languid Laura to a sense of the responsibility owing to her husband.The campaigner ruled the roast in spite of all; and showed not the slightest desire to conceal her dislike for Lizzie. She tormented her constantly with spiteful allusions to the past, and Lizzie would not have minded so much what she said about herself, but she would abuse Tom, and that she could not stand. Besides, she encouraged the horrid imp Mortimer to spoil all poor Lizzie’s garden, and disarrange her pet conservatory, and even to break up a little artful contrivance for holding plants, which Tom had specially given her. It is true Pringle made up a row on that subject, and threatening to chastise the boy, somewhat checking his horticultural tendencies to the detriment of Lizzie in future. Still, the place was made very unhappy to her, and Lizzie would have been miserable and wished herself dead and out of the way if some consolation had not turned up suddenly for her in a most unexpected manner.Thenceforth she bore the campaigner’s taunts with stolid and aggravating silence, making that lady wish time and again that Lizzie were “her child,” and she “would soon teach her manners.” Notwithstanding that poor Pringle was so sadly pecked, and the parsonage lost its Eden-like character since the invasion of the serpent, there was balm yet in Gilead for Lizzie.What had happened? Whence came Lizzie’s consolation?You would never suspect.
The nuptial couch is not always a bed of roses, and so the young incumbent of Hartwood found out after a time. Not that it was all the fault of his newly-married spouse. Laura loved him in her languid way, and would have endeavoured to make his home happy if she had been left to herself; but the old campaigner stood in the gap: she had became Herbert Pringle’sbête noir.
Shortly after the happy pair came back from their honeymoon to the parsonage, Lady Inskip made a proposition, which by dint of judicious manoeuvring she managed to carry into operation. Now that her eldest daughter was married, and Carry, “the bold, ungrateful girl,” had left her in that scandalous manner, there was no need for her to keep up any longer a special establishment as she had formerly done. She only had her darling boy, Mortimer, now to care for, and Laburnum Cottage would be too big for herself and him only. She suggested to her dear, kind, clever son-in-law what she would do. She would give up the cottage—her time would be out on Lady-day, and it did not want such a very long time now to that date, and come and live at the parsonage with her affectionate children. Nothing could be better! Of course she would insist on paying her share of the housekeeping expenses; but then she did eat so very little; that would be of little count. Would not her dear Herbert and Laura—she put it to them—welcome her? She was such a good manager, and they were so ignorant of the world.
“Of course, dear ma!” said Laura. “That will be so nice; and then I should not have any trouble with the house and that horrid cookery book. I hate it! I wish Soyer had never been born. I’m sure I cannot make head or tail of all his ‘economical dishes,’ as he calls them.”
“Certainly, my love!” responded the campaigner with alacrity. It was wonderful how very sweet and affectionate she could be when she had any point to gain. “I should take charge of all that off your hands, my dear! Itwouldbe hard if I could not be of use to my own children, whom I only have left to care for.”
“That’ll be all right, ma, then?” said Laura, considering the matter settled; but the campaigner was not so sure, for her son-in-law had not made any response yet to the offer.
“What does Herbert say, my pet?” exclaimed the old general, playfully, and looked the Rev. Herbert full in the face. “Will he turn his old mother into the street, or—?”
“Oh! certainly, Lady Inskip, certainly!” promptly answered up the young divine, confused at being appealed to. “That is, of course we’ll be glad to have you here for a time, and—”
“Oh! I see,” interposed the campaigner, with a capital assumption of offended pride and wounded feeling, “I should be intruding when I only offered to come here and help my darling child. Oh! that I have lived to hear this.”
“Oh! ma,” said Laura, “don’t go on so. Herbert didn’t mean anything of the kind.”
“That I have lived to see this day!” repeated the campaigner, with solemn emphasis, and looking as if she were going to cry; however as she was seldom given to lachrymals, tears did not come so readily as would have now suited her purpose, but she twisted up her eyes, nevertheless, and sniffed ominously.
“Pray don’t say so, ma! Don’t say so! Say something, Herbert, to her, and don’t be so unfeeling!” eagerly ejaculated Laura, turning to her husband, who did not know what to say. He certainly had hoped that he and his wife could have lived together without the services of his honoured mother-in-law, the lady in her own right; but what could he do? Here was she asking, and Laura urging it; and he was a single man against two energetic females. He was helpless, although he wished to do battle on his sister Lizzie’s behalf, being certain that she and the campaigner would not get on well together. He was driven to the wall, however, for Laura had called on him to say something, and he must speak!
“Certainly, Lady Inskip, certainly!” he began. “That is, I mean to say, we will be most happy, Laura, and myself, to have you to live with us. Delighted, I’m sure; and Laura can make all the arrangements; but if there’s anything you want me to see to, you have only to ask. That’s all, and—and—”
“You dear, impulsive creature,” interrupted the campaigner; “you are so good. I thought you did not mean to be unkind; but my feelings have been so lacerated of late that a very little affects me now.” The campaigner spoke of a very little affecting her as if she were alluding to the imbibition of gin, or some other stimulant. “And sothat’sall arranged, and I can give up the cottage at once. It will be delightful to live here altogether; just like the happy family, won’t it?”
“Quite so, Lady Inskip, quite so!” responded the Reverend Herbert; but he did not speak cheerfully, and I fear he had other views in his own mind of what a “happy family” arrangement might be.
“Charming, ma!” chorused Laura. “We’ll see about making the arrangements at once, in order to prevent you from changing your mind.”
The incumbent’s wife need not, however, have been under any anxiety on that score: the campaigner knew very well when she had made a bargain, and she was not going to back out of it.
“I must send the darling boy Mortimer to school, however. It will be so sad parting with him, but it must be done. It would never do to have him here, would it?”
And she looked inquiringly at her son-in-law.
Pringle had sundry experiences of the darling boy’s tractable disposition, and was rather disinclined in being so intimately associated with the young hopeful, so he combatted the point.
“You’re quite right, Lady Inskip. He’d better be sent to school; not that I’d have any objections to his coming here, but then—”
“Yes,” sighed the campaigner, “I suppose he must go; it would be too much to ask.”
“Oh! have him here, ma. Don’t send him to school, poor little fellow! Herbert won’t mind, will you?” struck in Laura.
The incumbent was again doomed to defeat. He could refuse his young wife nothing when she was so judiciously “backed up” by the campaigner.
“Oh! certainly not, Lady Inskip. Have him here by all means.”
He gave in. He thought as the campaigner was coming the mischief was done; and he would be equally willing now to receive all the rest of the family; even Carry and her military husband, if it was suggested that they should all be invited; and the green parrot, too, the Persian cats, and all the other pets of My Lady’s. He succumbed hopelessly, and was thenceforth a pecked man.
I remember once coming across a little Oriental anecdote which lays particular stress on the relations of connubial folk. Pity that Pringle was not acquainted with it before he committed himself. The story runs as follows:—Once upon a time a gay young fellow married the widow of a great Khan—the scene is laid in Persia. On the wedding night the lady determined to assert her authority, and show who was the real lord and master. She accordingly treated her spouse with great contempt when he entered the ante-room, where she was seated on rose-leaf cushions caressing a large white cat, of which she pretended to be very fond indeed. She appeared very much annoyed at her husband’s entrance, and looked at him out of the corners of her eyes with cold disdain as he came in.
“I hate cats,” observed the young husband, blandly, as if he were only making a casual observation; “they offend my sight.”
If his wife had looked at him with glances of cold disdain before, her eyes now wore an expression of anger and contempt, such as no words can express. She did not even deign to answer him, but took the cat to her bosom and fondled it passionately: her whole heart seemed to be in the cat, and cold was the shoulder that she turned to her husband.
“When any one offends me,” continued her gallant, gaily, “I cut off his head. It is a peculiarity of mine which I am sure will only make me dearer to you.”
Then, drawing his sword, he took the cat gently but firmly from her arms, cut off its head, wiped the blade, sheathed it, and sitting down continued to talk affectionately to his wife as if nothing had happened. After which, says tradition, she became the best and most submissive wife in the world.
A hen-pecked fellow, meeting him the next day as he rode with a gallant train through the market place, began to condole with him.
“Ah!” said the hen-pecked one with deep feeling, “you, too, have taken a wife, and got a tyrant. You had better have remained the poor soldier that you were. I pity you from my very heart!”
“Not so,” replied the other, jollily; “keep your sighs to cool yourself next summer.”
He then related the events of his wedding night with their satisfactory results.
The hen-pecked man listened attentively, and pondered long.
“I also have a sword,” said he, “though it is rusty, and my wife is likewise fond of cats. I will cut off the head of my wife’s favourite cat at once.”
He did so, and received a sound beating. His wife, moreover, made him go down upon his knees and tell her what djinn, or evil spirit, had prompted him to do the bloody deed.
“Fool!” said the lady, when she had possessed herself of the hen-pecked’s secret, with a vixenish vinegar smile on her sallow lips, “you should have done it the first night!”
The moral is obvious: the Persians say “Advice is useless to fools!”
Pringle did not kill the cat at once; hence his position.
The old campaigner sold out at Laburnum Cottage in another week or two, and came with the young imp Mortimer, her Persian cats, and green parrot, and all her multitudinous belongings, settling down like a swarm of locusts on the devoted parsonage. Gone thenceforth were all its tranquil joys.
After a time the Lucca-oil-like-suavity which had formerly distinguished Lady Inskip in Pringle’s mind, disappeared. She appeared now as the concentrated essence of verjuice or tartaric acid, and ruled the whole house with a rod of iron, becoming in truth the master of all. Poor Lizzie’s life was made a burden to her; and she was treated as if she were a presumptuous intruder in her brother’s house. The old campaigner wrung her little heart with continual allusions to the “Young Squire,” and said how glad she “would have been to get him, miss!” making bitter comments on the way she said Lizzie had angled for Tom, and how he had gone off now and left her. “Served her right, too,” she ought not to be “pining and whining and breaking her heart after a man who never cared for her!” When, you may be sure, our little friend answered and stuck up for her rights, whereupon the campaigner would go and complain to the supposed head of the family, and declare that she could not stop in the house with “that virago of a girl,” and Pringle had to timidly urge that he would not keep Lady Inskip against her will for the world. Then the campaigner would commence with a stern philippic on ingratitude, and wind up by bursting into tears and wishing she had never been born to observe that particular day. Here Laura would interfere, Herbert Pringle beg the pardon of his mamma-in-law, and all would be soothed over for a time, and the campaigner would establish a fresh gap in the trenches she was engineering for universal sovereignty.
Pringle suffered in more ways than one. He had to walk now through the parish in discharging his parochial duties, for he could no more “prance about,” as Mrs Hartshorne called it, on his dapple grey pony. The campaigner had impounded that valuable little animal, and no more was it bestridden by the well shaped, albeit diminutive legs of the incumbent. The Macchiaevelli in petticoats said that “her daughter” must have a carriage to go about in, considering she could no longer afford to keep one of her own, which otherwise she would have been happy for Laura to have made free use of. The campaigner had sold her equipage when she cleared out from Laburnum Cottage along with other sundry theatrical “effects” which she had kept up for the sales of entrapping suitors for her daughters’ hands, and now they were both off her hands she melted down her appurtenances into the handier form of a banker’s balance. “No one knew what might come,” as she said to herself, sagely reflective.
She accordingly made Pringle buy a neat basket carriage, and build an enlargement to the parsonage stable for its accommodation. To this vehicle, dapple grey was thenceforth attached, and the campaigner used to drive out in it every afternoon, occasionally but seldom, accompanied by her daughter, and the small boy with the eruption of buttons on him, whom she had retained in her own service when she migrated to the house of her son-in-law. “It was so respectable to have a page,” as she said. Lizzie she never invited to drive with her, not that she would for a moment have consented to the penance of atête-à-têtewith the campaigner, whom she disliked as much almost as the other did her, although she tried to bear with her for her brother’s sake, whom she pitied. Lizzie in fact saw clearly that poor Herbert was sadly hen-pecked, not by his wife, for she was two apathetic, but by his mother-in-law.
Instead of the paradise of bliss which he had hoped to enter, by allying himself with Lady Inskip’s eldest daughter, the young incumbent found himself in a very miserable position; and I am inclined to think that he somewhat regretted his hasty step. He loved Laura as much as it was in his nature to do so, and so did she him; but both were very young—he just a boy from College, one might say; and they had yet much to learn of that mutual forbearance principle, and earnest trust and love, without which too many find marriage the “lottery” they declare it. What chance of happiness they had depended upon their being to themselves, without the odious presence of the campaigner; but she had established herself as a fixture, and was not going to stir herself in a hurry; and as Laura as yet took her part, principally because Herbert Pringle had his sister on his side, the pecktive state continued, unhappily for all parties.
No more did the ritualistic young divine devote much attention to his sermons; and the Ciceronian phraseology, which purely distinguished those works of composition, disappeared. He had no heart in his work—for the campaigner was always “nagging” at him at home, and no longer praised his eloquence as she had done at first.
No more did he chant in melodious strains the Psalms to his elaborately embroidered and besmocked congregation of farmers, but read them over hurriedly, in order to get rid of them. Even his ritualistic tendencies began to be toned down: the lectern was seldom made use of, and the white surplices were dispensed with for the boys of the choir.
Pringle was pecked with a vengeance, and its effect was shown, not only in his outward ways, but in his adornment—he became careless about his dress, and not half so particular as he had been for appearances before he became a Benedict. Bottom was very much translated, indeed. Pringle was pecked!
Lizzie saw all that was going on, and sympathised with her brother. The old campaigner she detested, and only the desire not to increase her brother’s miseries by having home broils, made her keep her hostility subdued; she even tried to coax the artful Macchiaevelli for him, all to no effect, as also her endeavours to awaken the languid Laura to a sense of the responsibility owing to her husband.
The campaigner ruled the roast in spite of all; and showed not the slightest desire to conceal her dislike for Lizzie. She tormented her constantly with spiteful allusions to the past, and Lizzie would not have minded so much what she said about herself, but she would abuse Tom, and that she could not stand. Besides, she encouraged the horrid imp Mortimer to spoil all poor Lizzie’s garden, and disarrange her pet conservatory, and even to break up a little artful contrivance for holding plants, which Tom had specially given her. It is true Pringle made up a row on that subject, and threatening to chastise the boy, somewhat checking his horticultural tendencies to the detriment of Lizzie in future. Still, the place was made very unhappy to her, and Lizzie would have been miserable and wished herself dead and out of the way if some consolation had not turned up suddenly for her in a most unexpected manner.
Thenceforth she bore the campaigner’s taunts with stolid and aggravating silence, making that lady wish time and again that Lizzie were “her child,” and she “would soon teach her manners.” Notwithstanding that poor Pringle was so sadly pecked, and the parsonage lost its Eden-like character since the invasion of the serpent, there was balm yet in Gilead for Lizzie.
What had happened? Whence came Lizzie’s consolation?
You would never suspect.
Volume Three—Chapter Ten.Caught at Last.“Even the worst laws are so necessary for our guidance, that without them, men would devour one another,” remarks Epicurus—in order to exemplify the frailty of human nature, according to Plutarch, the moralist. Putting the point of cannibalism aside, and thus obviating a trip to the Feejee Islands, or New Zealand, for example, it cannot be disputed that the dictum of the Epicurean philosopher is based on a fundamental truth, which is fairly exhibited in every-day life. Granting, however, that laws are necessary for human progress, the philosophical enquirer is still as much at fault as ever, for he becomes, as it were, like Hamlet, plunged into a sea of troubles, which no opposition will limit, the moment he begins his search into the mysteries of jurisprudence. The progress of the blind goddess with the sinister and dexter scale has been by no means commensurate with the advancement of civilisation, for the name of laws is legion; and between good laws and bad laws, and what may be termed legal laws and moral laws, there are as wide differences and as great discrepancies as exist among the several offenders and offences against the same.A law may be a good law, and a necessary law, and yet be a bad law, speaking according to law; while a bad and unjust law, merely regarded as a piece of law-making, becomes good when weighed in the same forensic balance. This seems paradoxical, but can be verified readily in overlooking the legal code. Law, itself, is wise, and good, and necessary; but, “too many cooks spoil the broth,” so our original Magna Charta of Liberty has become a hotch-potch pie of precedents, thanks to the many law-makers we have had, who lead the blind goddess into the gutter, and so transform Themis that no one would know her again in her original guise. There are so many cities of refuge provided for criminals within the statutes of the justice book, so many loopholes for chicanery and fraud to sneak through, that no criminal need trouble himself for fear of consequences at committing any offence in the decalogue or calendar, short of murder—even that often becomes justified under the appellative “homicide” in the minds, and under the verdict of “a free and enlightened jury!”—save the mark.The various turnings and windings of our great national bulwark—the Law—are many and wonderful.A man who commits a greater offence can only be, perhaps, indicted under a lesser plea, and the small criminal again is treated proportionately more severely than the man who deals in crime wholesale. Some reforms have, indeed, been made already, but more are still needed. Perhaps one of the greatest agitated of late has been the abolishment of imprisonment for debt, one of the most iniquitous statutes we have been cursed with. The debtor had been held on a par with the thief and the murderer, and has often been condemned to a greater term of imprisonment than the criminal who commits a burglary or takes human life. However, this will soon be numbered amongst the other mistakes of the past, like the old Fleet prison.Following out the analogy, it seems strange that Markworth, who had been deemed guilty of graver offences under the eye of the law should only be caught at last through aca ça,ex parteSolomonson, the Jew money lender.He had puzzled Mrs Hartshorne’s lawyers in proving the abduction; he would have gained a large fortune by his scheming, but through the little mistake of a date; he had evaded the French police, and escaped the arrest of a murderer; and here he was imprisoned at last, in a sponging-house, only on a question of debt—a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. Oh, the anachronisms of the law! But enough has been already said in these pages of its Penelopean web of trickery and evasion.To return to our hero, perhaps the best example of terror which could be mentioned, is that of seeing a drove of wild animals on the prairies of the far west, flying from a bush fire. The herds of buffalo, deer, and even bears and panthers, are then seized with a maddening influence of fright and flight combined, and rush pell mell in front of the blazing torrent of fire which spreads behind them. They do not care where they go, and will encroach even upon the haunts of men, of whom they are generally afraid, the panther running by the side of the bison, which does not now mind the proximity of its enemy, all flying in their wild scare for safety, with heaving flanks and panting breath.It was under the influence of such a fright that Markworth fled from the heights of Ingouville, when he escaped from Clara Kingscott’s clutches: he could fancy that he still heard Susan’s wild shriek ringing in his ears.The accusation of Clara Kingscott had paralysed him with a morbid terror. His first impulse was, when Susan disappeared over the precipice, to rush down and save her. Then he had been stopped so unexpectedly, and on the governess accusing him of murdering the girl, his mind had rapidly grasped the circumstances attending, and he saw how strong the proof of circumstantial evidence would be against him.The cries of Clara Kingscott would now have alarmed the neighbourhood. Morbid terror possessed him. How to escape! Was there time to fly?And he fled with all the fear of a hunted animal.He did not know in which direction he went, but he suddenly arrested his fleeing footsteps: he saw somebody in the distance, and turned back.It would never do to continue the path down which the body of Susan might be lying; if he were to be found near at hand he might be lost.He bent aside and rapidly made his way down the steep incline, and after wheeling around in various directions so as to discern any possible pursuit, he made up his mind to go first to the lodgings in the Rue Montmartre. He must get off out of the way, and as nobody would search for him yet awhile—it was so late, and quiet, and dark—he could find time to collect his things, and get on board some steamer in the harbour before anyone would dream of searching for him. Besides, there might be no pursuit at all, he thought to himself, his native courage rapidly returning as he got further and further from the scene of action. He would proceed cautiously; but he must go away: yes, it was best to go away. What was the use in remaining now? Susan was the only link that bound him to Havre, and now she was providentially put out of his way. Poor girl! He pitied her; but it was, perhaps, best as it was, and somebody else would see after her now. It would have been an unpleasant business if he had stopped by her at any rate. She even might not be dead after all: somebody else would see to her; that devil Clara was there at all events.These thoughts flitted through his brain, as he walked leisurely along the now deserted streets of the town. It would never do to appear in a hurry, for Havre was respectable, and went to bed at an early hour, with the exception of the fisher folk, who were still carousing in the low cabarets down by the quays.By this time he had reached his door, and opening it with his pass key, he let himself in.In the passage he met the little husband of the Mère Cliquelle, whom he told thatMadame sa femme, was unwell and stopping at a friends, and he was going out again for her. He then went into his rooms and began to pack a portmanteau leisurely, for he thought “if they are hunting for me this is the last place they would seek for me.” And so he arranged matters quite at his ease.He had nearly a hundred pounds left in money, and that he thought would see him through a good deal. He could not stop in England, he considered, and on the other hand Clara Kingscott would make the Continent too hot to hold him. Where should he go?America, he decided, in a moment. That blessed land for aliens and criminals would receive him and offer him a convenient shelter; besides, if all he heard was true, he was in no doubt that he could pick up a living by his wits amongst his transatlantic cousins. The moment he came to this determination he proceeded to act upon it.At all events, there was no use in stopping in the Rue Montmartre any longer, so he opened the door, after putting the things in order, and taking up the valise in his hand, he walked towards the passage.“Bon soir!” he shouted to the Mère Cliquelle and her husband above, who thought the evening’s proceedings rather strange on the whole but consoled themselves with the reflection that “Ces Anglais sont drôles!”“Bon soir, Monsieur! Au revoir!” they responded; and Markworth walked out of the Mère Cliquelle’s house for the last time. It was now nearly ten o’clock, and all was quiet about the street, which was quite dark. He was unnoticed, and free to go where he pleased, and so he turned his steps this time down towards the steamboat quay. There, although it was so late, he managed to come across a fisherman, who was just starting off in his little boat.For a small consideration, as it lay in his way, the man consented to land him over at Honfleur, on the opposite banks of the Seine, Markworth telling him that he had a sick wife, whom he must visit that night.“Pauvre fille!” said theIgnobile Pescatore, with a sympathetic shrug, “we must take you to madame;” and setting his brawny arms to work, in addition to the lugsail, for there was little wind, Markworth was, after the lapse of a short interval, set ashore at length at Honfleur, leaving the broad and muddy Seine between himself and his Nemesis. He could now breathe freely. His plans were made up, and he had only to wait until the early morning for carrying them into execution.At an auberge in the centre of the town he got a lodging for the night, and in the early morning was travelling north.From Paris to Brussels—train again—miles of railroad—on, on to Bremen, or rather Bremenhaven as the port is properly called. Time to catch one of the German American steamships of theNord Deutscheline, that ply between that port and New York, touching at Southampton on the way. Caught it! Be certain tho’ that Markworth landed not at the stopping-place on the route! He had too wholesome a dread of his creditor, Solomonson, and the possibilities of a “capias” or “ca ça” administered by one of the greasy hands of mine host of Curseover Street, Chancery Lane. No more treading on British soil for him!Bremen to Southampton—a two days’ trip. One day more lying there alongside the railroad dock, and afterwards far out in the harbour, where the hull of the steamer looked like a gigantic lizard, or the far-famed sea-serpent. Then, on a Wednesday morning, he finally sailed for the land of the setting sun—“the home of the brave and free;” where, according to the poetical license of transatlantic eulogists, “the Bird o’ Freedom claps her wings in exultation over the star-spangled banner in the ethereal expanse of perennial blue.”On landing in New York, Markworth found it very similar to any other city of the old world in which he had been. There was no Eldorado here: the streets were not profusely strewn with gold for the needy to pick up. New York was only another temple of Mammon, where he who had money was a brave gentleman, and he who had none might starve and be hanged to him!For labouring men and mechanics, there is a wide field for industry in the Empire City and the adjacent country round about; but for clerks, “gentlemen,” and Chevaliers d’Industrie, New York possesses few facilities, and it is harder work to pick up a living there than even in our own over-crowded London.Markworth’s available funds melted down into greenbacks, and the wretched paper currency that forms the circulating medium of our transatlantic brethren, did not stretch very far. The essays he made to increase his store by his wits shrunk his purse still less.Although “enterprise” is one of the proverbial characteristics of Jonathan, still there is no country in the world, in spite of all the fabulous anecdotes we hear of swindling and “bogus” schemes, where adventurers without capital have such small chances of success. Jonathan may take in other people with his wooden nutmegs, pewter dollars, and Connecticut clocks, warranted to go for eight days, but a person is required to “get up extremely early in the morning” to get over him. The land of humbug, which possesses its native Barnums in shoals, is one of the “cutest countries in creation, I guess,” and can “whip” any “coon” that comes from “tother side of Jordan.”Markworth thought himself shrewd; but here, in the race of wits, he found himself a sluggard.He had at last to take to gambling, but even there he was no match for the smart Yankees with whom he played. Talk of Homburg and Baden-Baden! They cannot hold a candle to the Faro banks and other gambling hells of New York and Saratoga. Gambling is supposed to be contrary to the laws of the United States, but when their senators and law-makers practise it, it cannot be wondered that the people hold it upen masse, while justice winks at their doings.Finding chance no ally, all his endeavours to get employment vain, and the country with its people and belongings hateful to him, Markworth became possessed with that intense home longing, which none but those who have experienced it can appreciate. It is strange, the effects of that samemaladie du pays, as the French call it. Numbers of conscripts die from it every year in Algiers, pining for theirbelle Franceto the last; only the Ethiopian, or modern negro, seems unaffected by its influence. Even he, too, may long to be back again in his beloved Congo, when sweltering in the shambles of Cuba, where, thank goodness, slavery only now exists; there, however, it is also doomed to be mercifully blotted out.While suffering from this home sickness, homeless, friendless, nearly penniless, Markworth had a sudden and luckycoupat Faro, which just gained him sufficient money wherewith to pay his passage back to England. Sick he was of the Yankees, but he blessed them now!He eagerly jumped at the chance, and without a thought of the consequences of debt and imprisonment, or of the harpies looking out for him, he paid his passage money—“third class” this time—and was on his way home in one of those steamships that land at London, some six months or so after he had gone out so valiantly, a man of money, to the New World. He did not care, however: his one dream was to get back home again—“home,” though it be ever so homely, and he—but in rags.He arrived at last; he landed, and he was cast upon the sea of London life without a penny in his pockets, and no luggage to overburden him.Markworth, however, did not mind this. He had been hard pushed before; and having always managed to wriggle himself out of pecuniary difficulties, he saw no reason why he should not raise himself again, even though his fortunes were at such a very low ebb. Indeed, he did not doubt his ability so to do for a moment.His first care was to get a little money to go on with, and he had no fear but that Joseph Begg, his formerconfidant, would readily assist him, as he could soon pay him back in his own time; for a habitation, of which he had also to be careful, he determined to go back to his old lodgings at Mrs Martin’s in Bloomsbury.Begg’s billiard rooms in Oxford Street accordingly formed his first destination. As it was getting late, and “pool” the natural thing at the time, he was certain of finding Joseph Begg in; but he was doomed to be disappointed.On inquiring for his old friend of an Irish marker, who alone was in the room, he heard to his astonishment that Joseph Begg was dead!“Yis, yer ’anner,” said this man, with a strong Dublin brogue; “he’s did an’ bur’d mor’n foor month. He wint to dhrink a pint of rhum agin some City swell or other for a bet of a fife-pun-nut, and be Jabers! it kilt poor Begg enthirely! Shure, yer ’anner, he jist dhropped down did on the flure, he did, yer ’anner. Good luck till him! Faith he wor one of the raal sort, too, and he desarved to win, but the rhum was too much for him—bad cess to it!”It seemed another link in the chain of ill-luck which had enwrapped him ever since his marriage with Susan Hartshorne; and Markworth turned away with a heavy heart to seek his quarters at Mrs Martin’s, while the Irish lad was crooning out some ditty about a “gintlemun” who—“Turned up his nose,And the tips of his toes,To the roots of the daisies, oh!”But he readily found an asylum in Bloomsbury, as he had thought; still even there his fate still pursued him, and he was arrested next day, as already told.The first visitor who came to see him in the sponging-house was she who had last held him on the heights of Ingouville, and called him murderer. He was proportionately glad to see her: a mutual pleasure, without doubt!But his troubles had much shaken him, and Markworth was not the Markworth of before—the cool collected man of the world with a strong spice of the devil-may-care element; he was cowed and beaten.“What do you want here with me, Clara Kingscott?” he growled out, as he cowered from her fixed gaze of hate. “What do you want now, for God’s sake! I paid you, at all events!”“What do I want, Allynne Markworth? I wanted to see you caged at last, villain! and now I’m satisfied!”“Well, you’ve seen me now, so you may go away and be happy! But I don’t know why you hate me so, I’m sure; I don’t owe you any money at all events!”“Money, money, money! that has always been the burden of your song—and now you see its worth!”“I know it would take me out of here; that’s what I know!” he replied, with a faint attempt at a jocular laugh—it was a very faint one.“Would it? Do you know who put you here?”“Solomonson, I suppose; my worthy friend to whom I am slightly indebted. I don’t think he’ll get his money, though; for I am hanged if I don’t go through ‘the Court.’” He laughed, still keeping up appearances.The governess went on, however, in her cold grating voice, without apparently noticing his interruption.“I placed you here!” she said, with bitter emphasis. “I got you arrested. I knew that you came to those lodgings last night! I have been watching for you for weeks; and I went down this morning to those attorneys, and told them where you were. I would have gone last night if it had not been so late! You have got to thank me for your arrest!”“You! you she devil! Why, what on earth have I done to you?” he exclaimed, in astonishment.“Done to me! If you have forgotten ten years ago, and the way you deceived me, Allynne Markworth, I have not!”“Good God, Clara! I thought that was all past and gone. No one could have regretted it more than I! and you, yourself, said we had better let bygones be bygones! Why, you accepted money from me, you—”“Yes, I did! It was only to work your own ruin!”“Good God, Clara! Don’t go on like that; I’m hunted down now, or I would do anything you wanted. Don’t hit a man when he’s down!”She still continued, working herself up into a frenzy of passion as she spoke, without noticing his words, although gazing steadily in his face with her basilisk eyes, which were widened with fury and hate.“Do you know that if that flaw had not been discovered in the date of the girl’s age—and I only wish that I had made it and discovered it!—and that if your case had gone to trial, I would have come forward as evidence against you, and would have sworn to having assisted you to abduct that poor idiot Susan Hartshorne? Do you know that I would have sworn to this, no matter how I implicated myself, only to get you ruined? Did you ever think of that?”“No, for God’s sake, Clara! I kept to my bargain.”“Did you keep your bargain ten years ago? If you forget, Allynne Markworth, I do not! Now, thank God, I have got you caught at last!”“Have you, you she devil, fiend!” he said, “You will be baulked again, my lady! Don’t make too sure! curse you, she cat! What do you come here to torment me for?”“What do I come for, eh? I told you before—to see you caged at last—you deceiver! swindler! murderer!” she hissed between her teeth. “Ha! does not that touch you up at last? You will get out, will you! Do you forget Havre? Do you forget Susan Hartshorne, the same as you forgot me once before? Have you forgotten the murder I saw, murderer? Ah!”“Woman! you are mad! Get out, and leave me in peace! I am no murderer, although you almost persuade me to be one now! Get out, or by God I’ll—”“No! You won’t murder me. You cannot get away from me like you ran from Havre! I am not afraid of you, although I am a woman.”“You are no woman, or you would not come here to torment me like this. YouknowI never hurt that girl. God knows I did not do it; whatever else I may have done, I am innocent of that crime, and if the poor girl is dead, no one would wish to get her back to life more than I do, as she could prove my innocence. For God’s sake, Clara, stop. You must be mad, or you would not talk like this. Think of the past between us, think of—”“Yes, I do think of the past, and that makes me act now. I am no more mad than you are; but I have sworn to ruin you, and I will keep my oath. Do you know where I am going to now?”“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” he said sullenly, “only for God’s sake, leave me in peace, and go away.”He was quite broken down now, and the expression of the woman’s strong hate, coupled with all he had gone through, made him nerveless and hopeless. She still went on in the same tone of fiendish glee: her feelings seemed to have overcome her reason.“I am going now to have you charged with murder. Murder, do you hear? The French police were on your track. We will see what the English police will do now. You will get out, will you? You think you will escape! Bah! Just wait and see.”“Hang you! Go away, will you. You are raving!” he said: he really thought her mad.“Hang me? Not quite; but you will be hanged though, and then I will die happy!” she exclaimed, with the passion still in her eyes, in her gestures, in her very form and figure.Markworth was seated in a corner of the private room in which they were speaking (Mr Abednego charged a guinea a day for the accommodation of the same), and his attitude betokened intense misery and hopelessness. It was not so much the words of his adversary, but the thought that she, too, was against him, like all the rest of the world. He was quite broken down, now.“Do your worst,” he replied, “only go away. I can’t bear this any longer.”“I will do my worst, never fear,” she said, as she moved towards the door. She was satisfied to see that her enemy was at length abased, and to think that she had brought down his pride.She was now at the door; her mission had been accomplished, and, as she glanced back, the bright summer sun, streaming through the open window with its iron bars, on his bent figure, discovered the streaks of silver in his dark hair, painted by time and trouble, not forgetting the thinness of the long, sinewy hands that hid his face from her view.A pang of compunction smote her, and stirred her heart for a moment with the thoughts of days gone by, and she seemed to hesitate before she left him, although no intention of relinquishing her purpose crossed her mind.“Go! go!” he murmured, in a broken voice, “leave me in peace.”And she went out, and left him alone with his misery.
“Even the worst laws are so necessary for our guidance, that without them, men would devour one another,” remarks Epicurus—in order to exemplify the frailty of human nature, according to Plutarch, the moralist. Putting the point of cannibalism aside, and thus obviating a trip to the Feejee Islands, or New Zealand, for example, it cannot be disputed that the dictum of the Epicurean philosopher is based on a fundamental truth, which is fairly exhibited in every-day life. Granting, however, that laws are necessary for human progress, the philosophical enquirer is still as much at fault as ever, for he becomes, as it were, like Hamlet, plunged into a sea of troubles, which no opposition will limit, the moment he begins his search into the mysteries of jurisprudence. The progress of the blind goddess with the sinister and dexter scale has been by no means commensurate with the advancement of civilisation, for the name of laws is legion; and between good laws and bad laws, and what may be termed legal laws and moral laws, there are as wide differences and as great discrepancies as exist among the several offenders and offences against the same.
A law may be a good law, and a necessary law, and yet be a bad law, speaking according to law; while a bad and unjust law, merely regarded as a piece of law-making, becomes good when weighed in the same forensic balance. This seems paradoxical, but can be verified readily in overlooking the legal code. Law, itself, is wise, and good, and necessary; but, “too many cooks spoil the broth,” so our original Magna Charta of Liberty has become a hotch-potch pie of precedents, thanks to the many law-makers we have had, who lead the blind goddess into the gutter, and so transform Themis that no one would know her again in her original guise. There are so many cities of refuge provided for criminals within the statutes of the justice book, so many loopholes for chicanery and fraud to sneak through, that no criminal need trouble himself for fear of consequences at committing any offence in the decalogue or calendar, short of murder—even that often becomes justified under the appellative “homicide” in the minds, and under the verdict of “a free and enlightened jury!”—save the mark.
The various turnings and windings of our great national bulwark—the Law—are many and wonderful.
A man who commits a greater offence can only be, perhaps, indicted under a lesser plea, and the small criminal again is treated proportionately more severely than the man who deals in crime wholesale. Some reforms have, indeed, been made already, but more are still needed. Perhaps one of the greatest agitated of late has been the abolishment of imprisonment for debt, one of the most iniquitous statutes we have been cursed with. The debtor had been held on a par with the thief and the murderer, and has often been condemned to a greater term of imprisonment than the criminal who commits a burglary or takes human life. However, this will soon be numbered amongst the other mistakes of the past, like the old Fleet prison.
Following out the analogy, it seems strange that Markworth, who had been deemed guilty of graver offences under the eye of the law should only be caught at last through aca ça,ex parteSolomonson, the Jew money lender.
He had puzzled Mrs Hartshorne’s lawyers in proving the abduction; he would have gained a large fortune by his scheming, but through the little mistake of a date; he had evaded the French police, and escaped the arrest of a murderer; and here he was imprisoned at last, in a sponging-house, only on a question of debt—a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. Oh, the anachronisms of the law! But enough has been already said in these pages of its Penelopean web of trickery and evasion.
To return to our hero, perhaps the best example of terror which could be mentioned, is that of seeing a drove of wild animals on the prairies of the far west, flying from a bush fire. The herds of buffalo, deer, and even bears and panthers, are then seized with a maddening influence of fright and flight combined, and rush pell mell in front of the blazing torrent of fire which spreads behind them. They do not care where they go, and will encroach even upon the haunts of men, of whom they are generally afraid, the panther running by the side of the bison, which does not now mind the proximity of its enemy, all flying in their wild scare for safety, with heaving flanks and panting breath.
It was under the influence of such a fright that Markworth fled from the heights of Ingouville, when he escaped from Clara Kingscott’s clutches: he could fancy that he still heard Susan’s wild shriek ringing in his ears.
The accusation of Clara Kingscott had paralysed him with a morbid terror. His first impulse was, when Susan disappeared over the precipice, to rush down and save her. Then he had been stopped so unexpectedly, and on the governess accusing him of murdering the girl, his mind had rapidly grasped the circumstances attending, and he saw how strong the proof of circumstantial evidence would be against him.
The cries of Clara Kingscott would now have alarmed the neighbourhood. Morbid terror possessed him. How to escape! Was there time to fly?
And he fled with all the fear of a hunted animal.
He did not know in which direction he went, but he suddenly arrested his fleeing footsteps: he saw somebody in the distance, and turned back.
It would never do to continue the path down which the body of Susan might be lying; if he were to be found near at hand he might be lost.
He bent aside and rapidly made his way down the steep incline, and after wheeling around in various directions so as to discern any possible pursuit, he made up his mind to go first to the lodgings in the Rue Montmartre. He must get off out of the way, and as nobody would search for him yet awhile—it was so late, and quiet, and dark—he could find time to collect his things, and get on board some steamer in the harbour before anyone would dream of searching for him. Besides, there might be no pursuit at all, he thought to himself, his native courage rapidly returning as he got further and further from the scene of action. He would proceed cautiously; but he must go away: yes, it was best to go away. What was the use in remaining now? Susan was the only link that bound him to Havre, and now she was providentially put out of his way. Poor girl! He pitied her; but it was, perhaps, best as it was, and somebody else would see after her now. It would have been an unpleasant business if he had stopped by her at any rate. She even might not be dead after all: somebody else would see to her; that devil Clara was there at all events.
These thoughts flitted through his brain, as he walked leisurely along the now deserted streets of the town. It would never do to appear in a hurry, for Havre was respectable, and went to bed at an early hour, with the exception of the fisher folk, who were still carousing in the low cabarets down by the quays.
By this time he had reached his door, and opening it with his pass key, he let himself in.
In the passage he met the little husband of the Mère Cliquelle, whom he told thatMadame sa femme, was unwell and stopping at a friends, and he was going out again for her. He then went into his rooms and began to pack a portmanteau leisurely, for he thought “if they are hunting for me this is the last place they would seek for me.” And so he arranged matters quite at his ease.
He had nearly a hundred pounds left in money, and that he thought would see him through a good deal. He could not stop in England, he considered, and on the other hand Clara Kingscott would make the Continent too hot to hold him. Where should he go?
America, he decided, in a moment. That blessed land for aliens and criminals would receive him and offer him a convenient shelter; besides, if all he heard was true, he was in no doubt that he could pick up a living by his wits amongst his transatlantic cousins. The moment he came to this determination he proceeded to act upon it.
At all events, there was no use in stopping in the Rue Montmartre any longer, so he opened the door, after putting the things in order, and taking up the valise in his hand, he walked towards the passage.
“Bon soir!” he shouted to the Mère Cliquelle and her husband above, who thought the evening’s proceedings rather strange on the whole but consoled themselves with the reflection that “Ces Anglais sont drôles!”
“Bon soir, Monsieur! Au revoir!” they responded; and Markworth walked out of the Mère Cliquelle’s house for the last time. It was now nearly ten o’clock, and all was quiet about the street, which was quite dark. He was unnoticed, and free to go where he pleased, and so he turned his steps this time down towards the steamboat quay. There, although it was so late, he managed to come across a fisherman, who was just starting off in his little boat.
For a small consideration, as it lay in his way, the man consented to land him over at Honfleur, on the opposite banks of the Seine, Markworth telling him that he had a sick wife, whom he must visit that night.
“Pauvre fille!” said theIgnobile Pescatore, with a sympathetic shrug, “we must take you to madame;” and setting his brawny arms to work, in addition to the lugsail, for there was little wind, Markworth was, after the lapse of a short interval, set ashore at length at Honfleur, leaving the broad and muddy Seine between himself and his Nemesis. He could now breathe freely. His plans were made up, and he had only to wait until the early morning for carrying them into execution.
At an auberge in the centre of the town he got a lodging for the night, and in the early morning was travelling north.
From Paris to Brussels—train again—miles of railroad—on, on to Bremen, or rather Bremenhaven as the port is properly called. Time to catch one of the German American steamships of theNord Deutscheline, that ply between that port and New York, touching at Southampton on the way. Caught it! Be certain tho’ that Markworth landed not at the stopping-place on the route! He had too wholesome a dread of his creditor, Solomonson, and the possibilities of a “capias” or “ca ça” administered by one of the greasy hands of mine host of Curseover Street, Chancery Lane. No more treading on British soil for him!
Bremen to Southampton—a two days’ trip. One day more lying there alongside the railroad dock, and afterwards far out in the harbour, where the hull of the steamer looked like a gigantic lizard, or the far-famed sea-serpent. Then, on a Wednesday morning, he finally sailed for the land of the setting sun—“the home of the brave and free;” where, according to the poetical license of transatlantic eulogists, “the Bird o’ Freedom claps her wings in exultation over the star-spangled banner in the ethereal expanse of perennial blue.”
On landing in New York, Markworth found it very similar to any other city of the old world in which he had been. There was no Eldorado here: the streets were not profusely strewn with gold for the needy to pick up. New York was only another temple of Mammon, where he who had money was a brave gentleman, and he who had none might starve and be hanged to him!
For labouring men and mechanics, there is a wide field for industry in the Empire City and the adjacent country round about; but for clerks, “gentlemen,” and Chevaliers d’Industrie, New York possesses few facilities, and it is harder work to pick up a living there than even in our own over-crowded London.
Markworth’s available funds melted down into greenbacks, and the wretched paper currency that forms the circulating medium of our transatlantic brethren, did not stretch very far. The essays he made to increase his store by his wits shrunk his purse still less.
Although “enterprise” is one of the proverbial characteristics of Jonathan, still there is no country in the world, in spite of all the fabulous anecdotes we hear of swindling and “bogus” schemes, where adventurers without capital have such small chances of success. Jonathan may take in other people with his wooden nutmegs, pewter dollars, and Connecticut clocks, warranted to go for eight days, but a person is required to “get up extremely early in the morning” to get over him. The land of humbug, which possesses its native Barnums in shoals, is one of the “cutest countries in creation, I guess,” and can “whip” any “coon” that comes from “tother side of Jordan.”
Markworth thought himself shrewd; but here, in the race of wits, he found himself a sluggard.
He had at last to take to gambling, but even there he was no match for the smart Yankees with whom he played. Talk of Homburg and Baden-Baden! They cannot hold a candle to the Faro banks and other gambling hells of New York and Saratoga. Gambling is supposed to be contrary to the laws of the United States, but when their senators and law-makers practise it, it cannot be wondered that the people hold it upen masse, while justice winks at their doings.
Finding chance no ally, all his endeavours to get employment vain, and the country with its people and belongings hateful to him, Markworth became possessed with that intense home longing, which none but those who have experienced it can appreciate. It is strange, the effects of that samemaladie du pays, as the French call it. Numbers of conscripts die from it every year in Algiers, pining for theirbelle Franceto the last; only the Ethiopian, or modern negro, seems unaffected by its influence. Even he, too, may long to be back again in his beloved Congo, when sweltering in the shambles of Cuba, where, thank goodness, slavery only now exists; there, however, it is also doomed to be mercifully blotted out.
While suffering from this home sickness, homeless, friendless, nearly penniless, Markworth had a sudden and luckycoupat Faro, which just gained him sufficient money wherewith to pay his passage back to England. Sick he was of the Yankees, but he blessed them now!
He eagerly jumped at the chance, and without a thought of the consequences of debt and imprisonment, or of the harpies looking out for him, he paid his passage money—“third class” this time—and was on his way home in one of those steamships that land at London, some six months or so after he had gone out so valiantly, a man of money, to the New World. He did not care, however: his one dream was to get back home again—“home,” though it be ever so homely, and he—but in rags.
He arrived at last; he landed, and he was cast upon the sea of London life without a penny in his pockets, and no luggage to overburden him.
Markworth, however, did not mind this. He had been hard pushed before; and having always managed to wriggle himself out of pecuniary difficulties, he saw no reason why he should not raise himself again, even though his fortunes were at such a very low ebb. Indeed, he did not doubt his ability so to do for a moment.
His first care was to get a little money to go on with, and he had no fear but that Joseph Begg, his formerconfidant, would readily assist him, as he could soon pay him back in his own time; for a habitation, of which he had also to be careful, he determined to go back to his old lodgings at Mrs Martin’s in Bloomsbury.
Begg’s billiard rooms in Oxford Street accordingly formed his first destination. As it was getting late, and “pool” the natural thing at the time, he was certain of finding Joseph Begg in; but he was doomed to be disappointed.
On inquiring for his old friend of an Irish marker, who alone was in the room, he heard to his astonishment that Joseph Begg was dead!
“Yis, yer ’anner,” said this man, with a strong Dublin brogue; “he’s did an’ bur’d mor’n foor month. He wint to dhrink a pint of rhum agin some City swell or other for a bet of a fife-pun-nut, and be Jabers! it kilt poor Begg enthirely! Shure, yer ’anner, he jist dhropped down did on the flure, he did, yer ’anner. Good luck till him! Faith he wor one of the raal sort, too, and he desarved to win, but the rhum was too much for him—bad cess to it!”
It seemed another link in the chain of ill-luck which had enwrapped him ever since his marriage with Susan Hartshorne; and Markworth turned away with a heavy heart to seek his quarters at Mrs Martin’s, while the Irish lad was crooning out some ditty about a “gintlemun” who—
“Turned up his nose,And the tips of his toes,To the roots of the daisies, oh!”
“Turned up his nose,And the tips of his toes,To the roots of the daisies, oh!”
But he readily found an asylum in Bloomsbury, as he had thought; still even there his fate still pursued him, and he was arrested next day, as already told.
The first visitor who came to see him in the sponging-house was she who had last held him on the heights of Ingouville, and called him murderer. He was proportionately glad to see her: a mutual pleasure, without doubt!
But his troubles had much shaken him, and Markworth was not the Markworth of before—the cool collected man of the world with a strong spice of the devil-may-care element; he was cowed and beaten.
“What do you want here with me, Clara Kingscott?” he growled out, as he cowered from her fixed gaze of hate. “What do you want now, for God’s sake! I paid you, at all events!”
“What do I want, Allynne Markworth? I wanted to see you caged at last, villain! and now I’m satisfied!”
“Well, you’ve seen me now, so you may go away and be happy! But I don’t know why you hate me so, I’m sure; I don’t owe you any money at all events!”
“Money, money, money! that has always been the burden of your song—and now you see its worth!”
“I know it would take me out of here; that’s what I know!” he replied, with a faint attempt at a jocular laugh—it was a very faint one.
“Would it? Do you know who put you here?”
“Solomonson, I suppose; my worthy friend to whom I am slightly indebted. I don’t think he’ll get his money, though; for I am hanged if I don’t go through ‘the Court.’” He laughed, still keeping up appearances.
The governess went on, however, in her cold grating voice, without apparently noticing his interruption.
“I placed you here!” she said, with bitter emphasis. “I got you arrested. I knew that you came to those lodgings last night! I have been watching for you for weeks; and I went down this morning to those attorneys, and told them where you were. I would have gone last night if it had not been so late! You have got to thank me for your arrest!”
“You! you she devil! Why, what on earth have I done to you?” he exclaimed, in astonishment.
“Done to me! If you have forgotten ten years ago, and the way you deceived me, Allynne Markworth, I have not!”
“Good God, Clara! I thought that was all past and gone. No one could have regretted it more than I! and you, yourself, said we had better let bygones be bygones! Why, you accepted money from me, you—”
“Yes, I did! It was only to work your own ruin!”
“Good God, Clara! Don’t go on like that; I’m hunted down now, or I would do anything you wanted. Don’t hit a man when he’s down!”
She still continued, working herself up into a frenzy of passion as she spoke, without noticing his words, although gazing steadily in his face with her basilisk eyes, which were widened with fury and hate.
“Do you know that if that flaw had not been discovered in the date of the girl’s age—and I only wish that I had made it and discovered it!—and that if your case had gone to trial, I would have come forward as evidence against you, and would have sworn to having assisted you to abduct that poor idiot Susan Hartshorne? Do you know that I would have sworn to this, no matter how I implicated myself, only to get you ruined? Did you ever think of that?”
“No, for God’s sake, Clara! I kept to my bargain.”
“Did you keep your bargain ten years ago? If you forget, Allynne Markworth, I do not! Now, thank God, I have got you caught at last!”
“Have you, you she devil, fiend!” he said, “You will be baulked again, my lady! Don’t make too sure! curse you, she cat! What do you come here to torment me for?”
“What do I come for, eh? I told you before—to see you caged at last—you deceiver! swindler! murderer!” she hissed between her teeth. “Ha! does not that touch you up at last? You will get out, will you! Do you forget Havre? Do you forget Susan Hartshorne, the same as you forgot me once before? Have you forgotten the murder I saw, murderer? Ah!”
“Woman! you are mad! Get out, and leave me in peace! I am no murderer, although you almost persuade me to be one now! Get out, or by God I’ll—”
“No! You won’t murder me. You cannot get away from me like you ran from Havre! I am not afraid of you, although I am a woman.”
“You are no woman, or you would not come here to torment me like this. YouknowI never hurt that girl. God knows I did not do it; whatever else I may have done, I am innocent of that crime, and if the poor girl is dead, no one would wish to get her back to life more than I do, as she could prove my innocence. For God’s sake, Clara, stop. You must be mad, or you would not talk like this. Think of the past between us, think of—”
“Yes, I do think of the past, and that makes me act now. I am no more mad than you are; but I have sworn to ruin you, and I will keep my oath. Do you know where I am going to now?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” he said sullenly, “only for God’s sake, leave me in peace, and go away.”
He was quite broken down now, and the expression of the woman’s strong hate, coupled with all he had gone through, made him nerveless and hopeless. She still went on in the same tone of fiendish glee: her feelings seemed to have overcome her reason.
“I am going now to have you charged with murder. Murder, do you hear? The French police were on your track. We will see what the English police will do now. You will get out, will you? You think you will escape! Bah! Just wait and see.”
“Hang you! Go away, will you. You are raving!” he said: he really thought her mad.
“Hang me? Not quite; but you will be hanged though, and then I will die happy!” she exclaimed, with the passion still in her eyes, in her gestures, in her very form and figure.
Markworth was seated in a corner of the private room in which they were speaking (Mr Abednego charged a guinea a day for the accommodation of the same), and his attitude betokened intense misery and hopelessness. It was not so much the words of his adversary, but the thought that she, too, was against him, like all the rest of the world. He was quite broken down, now.
“Do your worst,” he replied, “only go away. I can’t bear this any longer.”
“I will do my worst, never fear,” she said, as she moved towards the door. She was satisfied to see that her enemy was at length abased, and to think that she had brought down his pride.
She was now at the door; her mission had been accomplished, and, as she glanced back, the bright summer sun, streaming through the open window with its iron bars, on his bent figure, discovered the streaks of silver in his dark hair, painted by time and trouble, not forgetting the thinness of the long, sinewy hands that hid his face from her view.
A pang of compunction smote her, and stirred her heart for a moment with the thoughts of days gone by, and she seemed to hesitate before she left him, although no intention of relinquishing her purpose crossed her mind.
“Go! go!” he murmured, in a broken voice, “leave me in peace.”
And she went out, and left him alone with his misery.