Caught in a Trap Part 36

I told you so! I told you so!" over and over again, insisting all the time that she had _him_ still left to her!

The _fiasco_ of the pic-nic was comparatively nothing to the present scene; and the excitement culminated when a note was brought in at this juncture by the campaigner's abigail (who said she had just found it on the dressing-table in Miss Carry's room, although she had known of its existence some hours before, and Lady Inskip discharged her, "by the same token," as Paddy says, the next day for her complicity in the affair), telling how the young lady--somewhat "fast" on her part, it must be confessed--had gone off with Captain Miles to get married, spurred up to the point probably by the events of the day.

The note, which was handed round for general perusal, in consequence of Lady Inskip's temporary abstraction, ran as follows, in Carry's neat calligraphy, described in violet ink, on cream-laid note:--

"Dear Ma,--

"Algernon and I having determined to unite our lot--(we have been in correspondence for a long time without your knowledge)--have gone off to get married without any bother. We knew you would object and 'kick up a row,' as dear Algernon says, and have therefore thought it best to go off without letting you know anything about the state of our affections.

Any pursuit will be vain, as we are both determined. We will be married to-morrow morning. Hoping you will not be vexed very much with your 'darling girl,' and that Laura will be as happy as I intend to be, with the 'prig,' as I used to call the poor little parson,

"Believe me,

"Your affectionate daughter,

"Carry.

"P.S.--Algernon says to give you his love, and he tells you to 'keep your p.e.c.k.e.r up.' Tell Mortimer he can have my Persian kitten. Please excuse Abigail for helping me off. I bullied her into doing it.

Forgive me, dear ma! I know I shall be as happy as a b.u.t.terfly, and, at all events, I shall ever be your loving daughter, Carry."

The comments that were made on this missive may be imagined; and in the commotion that ensued the characters of the campaigner's guests soon developed themselves, as is usually the case in moments of excitement, particularly when an _esclandre_ arises.

Old Lady Sparrowhawk and the antiquated virgin, Miss Bigges, thought it highly immoral on Lady Inskip's part to invite them to a house where any such thing could possibly have happened. Of course they would not mention anything about it, they said, as they retired from the scene; but, strange to say, in a very little while after, the mutual friends of Lady Sparrowhawk and the campaigner were acquainted with every incident of the elopement. Indeed, from the statements of these people, you would be led to suppose that they knew a good deal more about it than had as yet transpired, with much noddings and sly gestures, and confidential "you knows."

To say that Captain Curry Cuc.u.mber was wrath, would convey but a feeble idea of his state of mind and volubility of expression, when he, too, got up to go. In the first place, he had had a slight penchant for the fair Carry, which Lady Inskip had fostered and encouraged; the remnant of his liver was consequently wrung with jealousy and baffled love--if love it may be called--which empurpled his saffron face; and he looked upon it is a special affront and injury to himself that the campaigner should have allowed her daughter thus to run away.

"By Gad! sir!" he said, to Lieutenant Harrowby, who, having been a confidant of Captain Miles, was dreading in much fear and trembling that the onus of the whole affair would be laid upon his weak shoulders. "By Gad! sir, I have never been so scandalously treated in my life; not even by the Begum of Ferozesha!"

He said this in sufficiently angry tones, ere he left the room; but when he got into the hall, his wrath rose to thunder, and was terrific to behold.

The magnificent gold-mounted bamboo cane which he had left there, which had been presented to him by Rumagee b.u.magee, the Rajah of Bugpoor, and which he valued at ever so many lakhs of rupees, was missing. The captain boiled over with indignation, called Laburnum Cottage a den of thieves, and heaped such reams of violent epithets on the heads of Lady Inskip, her daughter, and all her family, even unto the third and fourth generation, as made Miss Blandish's scanty locks stand on end with fright, and even restored the campaigner to her senses.

Captain Curry Cuc.u.mber then went out of Laburnum Cottage, for good and all, and he vowed he would never set foot within another house in Bigton for social purposes or otherwise. For the remainder of his term of residence in the sea-side retreat, he shut himself up in the red brick corner house of the terrace he inhabited, where he spent his time, it is believed, from morning until night, swearing at his Kitmaghar, a lascar servant, and eating chutney and prawn curries. The poor unhappy half caste servant's life must have been a sad burden to him, for the captain was continually calling him an "Ooloo ka bucka," or son of an owl, and a.s.sociating his name in Hindostanee with a big black monkey, who was being perpetually consigned to the lower regions.

Carry Inskip's elopement was a "nine days' wonder" in Bigton, and then was forgotten. It is supposed that the young lady made a better bargain of it than most runaway matches turn out, and she lives very happily on a somewhat limited income, with the gallant son of Mars, whom she espoused the day after their elopement, not at Gretna Green, but by licence at Chumpchopster, the adjacent cathedral town to Bigton.

The campaigner's star was certainly under an eclipse. She had done well for her eldest, but Carry turned out "a bold, ungrateful hussie," as she called her. Yet she quickly recovered from the blow. In bewitching Bigton she had been bewitched herself; but she was not one to be daunted, and now that her "darling Laura" was so comfortably established, the campaigner began to agitate a most notable scheme in her worldly-wise head.

Volume 3, Chapter VIII.

FOILED!

The winter pa.s.sed 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 circ.u.mstances 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 last _coup_, 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sistance 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 him _vi 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 lie _perdu_ for 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 bas.e.m.e.nt were on the best of terms.

The spring came and pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.sing 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 compa.s.sionate 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 cla.s.s immortalised by Hogarth--for gentlemen under a pecuniary cloud.

Markworth was arrested at the suit of certain _confreres_ of 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!