Caught in a Trap Part 39

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 "c.o.o.n" 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 h.e.l.ls 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 up _en ma.s.se_, 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 same _maladie du pays_, as the French call it. Numbers of conscripts die from it every year in Algiers, pining for their _belle France_ to 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 lucky _coup_ at Faro, which just gained him sufficient money wherewith to pay his pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage money--"third cla.s.s" 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 former _confidant_, would readily a.s.sist 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sisted 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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.

You _know_ I never hurt that girl. G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.sion still in her eyes, in her gestures, in her very form and figure.