Morley Ashton: A Story of the Sea. Volume 1 (of 3)

CHAPTER VI.

FOR THE LAST TIME.

Mr. Scriven Basset had made all his arrangements for departing to his legal charge in the distant Isle of France.

He had secured passages for himself, his two daughters, and an old and valued servant, Nance, or, as she was more frequently termed, Nurse Folgate, in the Hermione, a fine ship of 500 tons burden, which was advertised to sail from the London Docks in fourteen days from the time we now write of.

Meanwhile, poor Morley resolved to make the most of the present, and endeavoured to shut his eyes to the future; but while striving to be blindfolded, he knew that this future, with all its separation and sorrow, its fears, and, alas! its doubts, must ensue.

There were times when Morley thought of asking Ethel to bind herself to him in writing; but he soon thrust the idea aside as mistrusting and melodramatic. There were other occasions when he actually thought of imploring her to contract a stronger tie, by consenting to a secret marriage; but it seemed an abuse of her kind and easy father's hospitality, and a violation of the trust reposed in him, and this, too, he abandoned, resolving to trust to Ethel's faith, to patience, and to time.

Poor Morley! He knew how dark and lonely seemed the three years of their past separation, and he felt keenly how much more lonely and dark would be the vague years of that which was to follow.

Then the pictures he drew of this long severance from Ethel—the voyage by sea for so many weeks, so many months; a residence in another land, with strangers, rich and attractive, perhaps, about her—a severance during which she would be hourly exposed to the attentions and addresses of a rival so cunning, so artful, so enterprising, and, in some respects, not so unpleasing, as Cramply Hawkshaw, filled him with intense apprehension, anxiety, and disgust.

"Why should I not go with her?" thought he, suddenly. "The money which will enable me to do so I shall only squander here in England, it may be, without avail, while there, in the Mauritius, a new sphere will be open to me."

Like all impulsive people, on this new idea he acted at once. He wrote to the agents for the Hermione to secure a cabin passage for himself, a measure which Captain Hawkshaw, for some reason as yet unknown, had omitted to take, though Mr. Basset had always more than half indicated that he was to accompany him abroad.

Now, when it was announced and definitely settled at Laurel Lodge that Morley was to go, the spite and disappointment of the ex-digger and soi-disant captain of Texan Rangers was ill-concealed indeed; for, doubtless, he considered it no joke to lose all chance of a lovely bride, with a fair prospect of getting—excuse us for using his own phraseology—"into comfortable diggings," under the wing of a colonial official.

After Morley wrote to London, two days elapsed without an answer coming from the agents, and the anxious dread of Ethel and himself, lest there was no more accommodation in the Hermione, was so great that he vowed he would go before the mast rather than be left behind.

Already Laurel Lodge had a somewhat dismantled aspect. Bookshelves were emptied in the library; the walls were denuded of pictures in dining-room and drawing-rooms; choice plants in the conservatory and rare flowers in the garden had been given away to the Pages and other old friends.

Chests, bales, and boxes, corded, labelled, and all very "outward bound" in aspect, encumbered all the hall and vestibule, indicating but too surely that the Bassets were on the eve of departure; and now came their last Sunday in the old village church.

Morley Ashton and Captain Hawkshaw were in the same pew with Mr. Basset's family.

The curate who officiated was an old friend of theirs, and his voice faltered as he besought the prayers of the congregation for those who were about to leave them, and set forth on a long and perilous journey.

Then Ethel felt her timid heart tremble, and Rose sobbed under her veil, while many a moistened eye turned kindly to the Bassets' pew; but a smile curled the moustached lip of the Texan Ranger, as much as to say:

"Speak to me of danger—pah!"

The solemnity of the place, and the soft familiar music of the choir, and the old organ pealing from its shadowy loft, soothed the grief and agitation of Ethel's heart, though a keen pang shot through it, when she reflected, that when again the sacred melody rang through that ancient church, only seven days' hence, she might perhaps be separated from Morley, and most assuredly would be ploughing the sea, while he—ah! he might come here, where they had last sat side by side, and feel himself alone—so terribly alone!

Some such thoughts were swelling in the breast of Morley Ashton, for his eyes were turned on her with a deep and unfathomable expression of tenderness, while hers was bent upon her prayer-book—it might be on vacancy.

There was a wonderful charm in those snowy lids and downcast lashes, so dark, so silky, and in the pure, pale loveliness of the whole face of Ethel, especially when contrasted with the rounder and rosier beauty of her younger sister.

Over the high oak pews, quaint with old carvings, dates, and monograms; the marble tablets, where lay the men of yesterday; the time-worn tombs of those whose rusted helmets, spurs, and gloves of mail, erst worn in many a field against the Scot and Gaul, now hung over them amidst dust and cobwebs; over the painted windows, through which the sunshine poured its rays of many colours; over the bowed heads of the hushed congregation; over the altar, before the rail of which, during many a day-dream in Africa, he had knelt in fancy, the bride-groom of Ethel Basset;—over all these the eye of Morley wandered, but to fall, again and again, on her soft and downcast face, her sweet mouth and long lashes, and on her little tremulous hand, cased in its pale kid glove, that touched his from, time to time, as they read from the same prayer-book.

"No answer yet from London!" was ever in his mind, and keenly in anticipation he felt the nervous dread of being severed from her after all.

But now the morning service was ended; the organ was pealing its farewell notes from the dark recesses of the vaulted loft, and the Bassets rose up to depart.

In that old pew the people of the parish had seen their heads bowed in prayer when Ethel and Rose had nestled beside their mother, now at rest in the adjacent graveyard—nestled with their shining heads bent over the same volume, and now they were on the verge of womanhood. Ere evil fortune came upon them, so good had those girls been to the sick, the poor and ailing, that a crowd of village matrons, the mothers of the blooming Dollys and hobnailed Chawbacons, blessed them with hands outstretched; and so deeply moved were all present, that when they passed down the aisle and issued—from amid those flakes of many-coloured light that fell on oaken pew and carved pillar—through the deep old gothic porch, into the grassy churchyard, where the tombstones that stand so thickly were shining in the sun that streamed in his glory down the far extent of Acton Chase, poor Ethel burst into a passion of tears, and sobbed aloud.

"Oh, Morley!—oh, papa!" she exclaimed; "how sad it is to do anything, and know that we are doing it for the last time!"

Morley pressed the hand that laid upon his arm.

"I have had the same emotion in my heart all day, Ethel, dear," said he, "with a sadness for which I cannot account. I have no one now to cling to but you. I never had a brother or sister. My father died, as you know, before I went far away to Africa, and now he sleeps by my mother's side, in yonder old churchyard, among the Denbigh hills; and their graves, of all our English ground the dearest spot to me, I shall never look on more."

"My poor Morley!" said Ethel, her eyes sparkling through tears of affection.

"Oh, how plainly still I can draw their faces and forms, as my mind goes back quickly and feverishly at times over the past days of infancy, when their kind eyes smiled on me under our old roof. How different seems that early home and parental care, which to a child are as a fortress and tower of strength, when compared to——"

"Our diggings in manhood, eh?" interrupted Hawkshaw, who had joined them unperceived, and thus cut short Morley's intended peroration.

The latter repressed his rising wrath with difficulty. Jealousy of Hawkshaw, perhaps, he had not; but that Ethel should be annoyed by the society of such a man was repugnant to him. But how was he to act?

He could not quarrel with Hawkshaw while they both shared, for a brief period now, the hospitality of Mr. Basset; and to retire from Laurel Lodge would but serve to leave him in full possession of the field, and to embitter the last few days they would all spend together in good old England, and in the home of their early loves and best associations.

With Morley, Ethel and Rose had paid a visit for the last time to all their old haunts and rambles. At Acton Chase, now almost in the full foliage of an early summer; at Acton Chine, that frightful cliff which overhangs the sea; at the moss-grown Norman cross; on Cherrywood Hill, where in childhood they had often sought in vain, among the long grass and the pink bells of the foxglove, for the elves and fairies of whom they had read so much in nursery lore.

They paid a last visit to the ivy-clad cottages of all their old pensioners and favourites in the village, to each and all of whom they gave some little memento; to the churchyard stile; to every place connected with the memory of their past happiness; and, lastly, to their mother's grave the sisters paid a visit that was sad and solemn.

Some daisies which grew there Ethel gathered and placed in her breast, and with something of the same spirit which often inspires the poor expatriated Highland emigrant, she made up a little packet of English earth to take with her to her new home beyond the sea.

She sadly viewed their garden, where a blush of summer roses, of crimson daisies, gorgeous lilacs, and sweetbriar had now replaced the earlier flowers of spring, the yellow pansies, the purple auriculas, the golden crocuses, the pale white snowdrop, and she wondered if such things grew in the distant Isle of France.

It was on her return alone from a farewell visit in the village, that she was overtaken by Hawkshaw, when something like an unpleasant crisis took place in the relations which had subsequently existed between them. At that time Morley was absent, having walked to the Acton railway station, for the purpose of telegraphing along the London and North-Western line, to the agents of the Hermione, for intelligence regarding his berth and passage.

CHAPTER VII.

THE REJECTION.

Hawkshaw had been rambling in Acton Chase alone, when he met Ethel, or overtook her, near the great old shamble oak, which we have before mentioned.

He had been pondering on the state of his affairs and finances, which were far from flourishing. His pocket-money was almost gone, and for a time he had been reduced to clay pipes and cheap cubas. He was without the means, in fact, of travelling so far as the Mauritius; and as Mr. Basset—good-natured, easy-tempered Mr. Basset—whose character had no particular point save perfect amiability, though half intending or adopting the idea that Cramply, the son of his "old friend Tom Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's Inn," should accompany him abroad, had never made an offer of means to enable him to do so; thus our Texan Ranger was somewhat at his wit's end on the evening in question—an evening of which, at that moment, he little foresaw the end; and he rambled under the stately oaks of the ancient chase with a cloudy expression of eye, though still wearing the melodramatic scarlet cap and Spanish sash, which had excited considerable speculation among the rustic hobnails of Acton-Rennel.

Hawkshaw had imbibed rather too much of Mr. Basset's Amontillado after dinner; this, with some champagne, of which he had partaken freely during that meal, and a glass of brandy, imbibed as a corrective after it, rendered him somewhat blind alike to consequences, and to foregone conclusions. Thus, on suddenly meeting Ethel in such a secluded place, he resolved on speaking more openly of his love to her.

Had Mrs. Basset survived at this period of our story, there can be little doubt that she would speedily have relieved Ethel from the presence and advances of such a lover, despite her husband's reverence for the memory of "old Tom Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's Inn." As the matter stood now, the village gossips, at the tap of the "Royal Oak," the blacksmith's forge, and other rustic resorts, had long since settled the whole affair. Ethel was the affianced of Morley Ashton, and poor little Rose was assigned to "the captain with the red thingumbob cap."

"'Fortune favours the brave;' 'nothing venture, nothing have.' They are two old saws; but I must keep them in view, nevertheless," thought Hawkshaw, as he threw away his cigar and joined Ethel Basset, on whose cheek there was a charming flush, for the May evening was warm. She had been walking fast, to learn what tidings the electric wire had for her and Morley; and the last farewell of an old cottager, who dwelt by the skirts of the chase, had agitated her.

The captain opened the trenches by some of the remarks usually made about the weather, and the beauty of the evening; then he adverted to his good fortune in meeting her, especially in such a place; how much he had longed for an opportunity of speaking with her alone, as his future happiness or misery would be the result—an opportunity that had not occurred for some time (since Morley Ashton's arrival he might have said), and so, after sundry awkward pauses, he proceeded to declare his regard, his esteem, his passion for Ethel.

She listened to him with considerable annoyance and concern, but barely slackened her pace as he spoke.

The extreme self-possession, the quiet manner, the cool and gentle aspect of Ethel, baffled Hawkshaw, and irritated him so much, that there were times, when in his self-communings he actually felt a doubt whether he loved or—hated her!

And now, while he spoke of love, volubly, but yet with agitation, she continued to fit on a lemon-coloured kid glove, with provoking care and accuracy, on her small, pretty hand, and seemed to be fully more occupied with it than with him.

The very movements of her hands, the white parting of her smooth, dark hair—all betokened a placidity which, as he said, mentally, "served to worry him." Yet Ethel was greatly agitated, though Hawkshaw's eye had not the acuteness, nor had he the refinement, to be aware of it.

"I am deeply grieved to hear all this, Captain Hawkshaw," said she; "for already you must be assured," she added, in a tremulous voice—"assured that I cannot love you in return."

"Now, Ethel, call me Hawkshaw, Cramply, which you will, or anything you please that is not formal, but do not, for Heaven's sake, speak so coldly. And so—and so it is quite impossible?"

"Quite," she said in a low voice.

"Wherefore? Am I so hideous?"

"Far from it."

Hawkshaw was aware of her undisguised preference for Morley Ashton; and though he knew, or feared what her reply would be, the wine he had imbibed, or some strange emotion that stirred within his breast, made him urge the hopeless matter still.

"Ethel," said he, softly, but through his clenched teeth, and while his cheek grew pale with suppressed passion; "you will, perhaps, have the kindness to explain?"

Trembling with excitement and annoyance, and while tears started to her eyes, she replied:

"Explain, sir! Why should I be called upon to explain? You know well that since I was seventeen I have been engaged—have loved another."

"At seventeen, interesting age, a girl is in the first flush of womanhood," began Hawkshaw, in his sneering tone; "fresh in feeling and tender in sensibility; the consequence is that, of a necessity, she falls in love with the first fellow, be he good, bad, or indifferent, who presents himself."

"But I did not fall in love, as you phrase it, with the first who presented himself, any more than I am likely to do with the last," replied Ethel, with an air that now was one of unconcealed annoyance. "My sister Rose is a girl whom all allow to be charming, and is as much admired as any in the county, and she has passed seventeen, your rubicon, your girlish equator, your ideal line, without 'falling in love' with anyone——"

"That you know of, Miss Basset," said Hawkshaw, sharply.

"Rose has no secrets from me, sir!"

"Do not let us quarrel, for Heaven's sake. I apologise."

"How tiresome—how impertinent! and yet I dare not tell Morley," sighed Ethel, in her heart, as she continued to walk very fast; but Laurel Lodge was a long way off, and the sunlit waste of the chase stretched for, at least, a mile before them yet.

Bitterly did she now repent having entrusted Morley with the ring, as it might lead to some unseemly quarrel between him and Hawkshaw; on this occasion she had an admirable opportunity for returning it personally. After a pause:

"With all this fancied attachment to your first love, I do not think you very romantic, Ethel," said Hawkshaw.

"You are right, sir; indeed, I am quite matter-of-fact."

"Caramba! it is too bad for a charming girl of two-and-twenty to be so."

"What right have you to deem me charming, or to assume my age?" asked Ethel, angrily, and with her eyes now full of tears, which the short veil of her little hat concealed.

"I can no more help deeming you so than help admiring the sunshine. But, ah, Ethel, if I had you where I have been—where the volcanic mountains of the Sierra Nevada look down on the valley of the Colorado, I could teach you, or perhaps infuse into your impulsive nature something of the fire, the romance—the glorious romance—of Spanish South America."

"Thank you," replied Ethel, relieved and laughing, when she found Hawkshaw was indulging in one of his platitudes; "but I would rather learn it here, amid a sweet English landscape, like this old wooded chase, than among flaming volcanoes, tawny savages, stinging mosquitoes, and your old friends, the Barradas."

"The Barradas!" repeated Hawkshaw, starting, as his eyes flashed with a gleam of malevolence and alarm; his brows knit, his hands twitched spasmodically, and he gave Ethel a keen glance of inquiry; for she had unwittingly touched some hidden spring, some secret sore—or it might be sorrow. For a moment he looked as if he could have sprang upon her; but he laughed, and said, with an evident effort at being jocular: "To return to the subject—to this love of thrilling, blushing, and susceptible seventeen, which deprives me of you, occurred five years ago?"

"And since then I have found no reason to change my mind. Here is the gate of Miss Page's house, where I wish to call. Good evening, captain. Her brother Jack will see me home."

Ethel bowed, left him, and closed the iron gate.

She was, in reality, full of intense anxiety to learn what tidings Morley had received by the telegraph from London; but being bored and worried by Hawkshaw's cool and impudent love-making, she took this opportunity of quitting him, which, in her nervous haste, she did, perhaps, rather too abruptly.

A shower of tears relieved her; but Hawkshaw, as he watched her figure flitting up the Pages' avenue of lilacs, balsam, poplars, and giant hollyhocks, bit his nether lip till the blood nearly came, and his sinister eyes emitted one of their most malevolent gleams.

"Curse her!" he muttered, hoarsely and deeply, "curse her! She spoke of the Barradas, too! But I shall crush her proud heart yet—crush it like a rotten castano!"

Then he turned away towards the seashore, with vengeance burning in his heart, and had not proceeded a quarter of a mile before he encountered Morley Ashton, perhaps the last person in the world he could have wished to meet at such a time, and when in such a bitter mood.

CHAPTER VIII.

MORLEY AND HAWKSHAW.

A fierce and panther-like spirit swelled up in the breast of Hawkshaw on seeing his fortunate rival approach. He felt a strong desire to strangle him, and thus, by one determined stroke, remove him from his path, and gain revenge on Ethel too!

He had more than once conceived the idea, in his wilder and more bitter moods, of giving Morley a quietus of strychnine, or putting a loaded revolver in his hand, so that it might go off conveniently, and, to all appearance, unawares; but coroners' inquests often brought unpleasant things to light, and Morley was completely master of that ticklish fire-arm, the "six-shooter," as well as himself, and our Texan captain was far too politic to risk his valuable neck, in committing an open outrage on the queen's highway in England, whatever he may have done in his well-beloved Mexico, among the wild inhabitants of which he had learned the art—no small one certainly—of veiling alike every purpose, love, hate, or fear, under a bland and smiling exterior, when it suited his purpose to do so.

The man he hated most on earth was Morley Ashton, yet he walked up to him frankly, with a smile in his deep eyes, and on his cruel lip (though his moustache concealed that), his right hand extended, and a cigar-case in his left——

"A lovely evening, Ashton," said he. "Had a pleasant walk? Have a weed—eh? Try a cigar?"

"Thank you—I don't smoke cubas."

"Do you prefer a regalia?"

"Thank you, I have some here."

"Caramba! I have smoked them two feet long ere this."

"In Texas?"

"Yes."

"I thought so," replied Morley, laughing. He was in excellent spirits. A telegram to Acton-Rennel had announced that his cabin passage to the Isle of France had been secured on board the Hermione, immediately on receipt of his mandate, and added, that a letter, duly announcing the circumstance, had been posted for Laurel Lodge.

"I never received it, Hawkshaw—odd, isn't it?" said Morley; "but it matters nothing now."

Hawkshaw gave a bitter smile unnoticed. No wonder that Morley had never received it, as his quondam friend had found the letter referred to, in Mr. Basset's post-bag, which hung in the hall, and, after making himself master of the contents, had quietly put it in the fire, thinking by delay to create confusion, and, perhaps, stultify Morley's intentions altogether.

In his joy, honest, good-hearted Morley felt blandly disposed even to Hawkshaw, of whom he had such a constitutional mistrust. He had now an excellent opportunity for returning the ring, with which Ethel (whom Hawkshaw, incidentally, assured him was from home) had so unwisely entrusted to him; but in the height of his own satisfaction, he felt loth to mortify his luckless rival, and so delayed the matter for a time, while, smoking their cigars, they walked together slowly, side by side, up the hill, towards the rocks that overhung the sea, and border on the Yale of Acton.

"And so, old boy," said Morley to the silent and brooding Hawkshaw, "I am to go with our dear friends, the Bassets, after all."

"And what follows?"

"Of course, I shall have to look about me for some employment the moment we land, because I would rather die than be dependent on any man; but when I have the new judge's influence to second my exertions, something suitable and jolly will be sure to turn up."

"Ah—yes," accorded the other, smoking vigorously.

"Then, I shall have all the joy of the voyage with—(Ethel, he had almost said)—with my old friends the voyage through those very waters I so recently traversed on my half-hopeless homeward journey—a most miserable dog in my own estimation.

Morley, who, in the exuberance of his joy, began to whistle "A Life on the Ocean Wave," seemed to commune with himself rather than Hawkshaw, whose sinister visage at this moment presented somewhat of a picture as he listened.

"Like you, friend Ashton," said he, "I have failed to climb

"'The steep ascent where Fortune frowns afar.'

But I have learnt to fling a bowie-knife, point foremost, with deadly effect, and to handle a six-shooter ditto, damme—yes, and that is something."

Had Morley looked at Hawkshaw as he spoke, he would have seen a fierce glitter in his usually cunning eyes, betokening mischief.

"Well," he resumed, "any place is better than this conventional England. One of the greatest annoyances to me is the state of society in it; so you are wise to squat elsewhere."

"Indeed! How?" asked Morley, watching his cigar smoke as it curled away in the breeze that came from the sea, whose breakers they could now hear bursting on the rocks.

"Because that state compels us, as if we wore a vizard—a mask—to conceal our suspicions, our loves, and our hatreds—yes, Mr. Ashton, still more especially our hatreds—under a suave and cold-blooded exterior."

"The result of good breeding, I presume?"

"The result of cursed conventionality, I call it. The stronger the hate, too often, the brighter and softer is the smile that conceals it. Maladette! 'Tis not so in some of the sunny lands where I have been, and where a little homicide, now and then, is considered but a casual occurrence."

The captain was in what Morley and Mr. Basset were wont to term one of his "bitter and bouncing moods"—moods which rather amused them; so as this was scarcely a moment in which to proffer the ring, Morley lit another cigar, and to put off the time until he could meet Ethel, strolled on till they reached the summit of the cliffs, from whence could be seen the far extent of the dark blue sea, that stretched away to the south-west, with the sails that dotted it, shining red, rather than white, in the ruddy light of the setting sun. There, too, was visible the smoke of more than one steamer, rolling far astern, like a long and fading pennant on the sky.

So the rivals continued to ramble on in no very companionable mood, for Morley was happy and abstracted, while Hawkshaw was bitter and quarrelsome, till the deep hoarse booming of the breakers announced that they were close to Acton Chine, towards which, as if by silent and tacit consent, they proceeded.

The evening was lovely, and its calm beauty increased as the sun set and twilight stole on.

With the shrill practical whistle of an occasional locomotive on the London and North-Western line, there came on the breath of the soft west wind the more poetical tinkling of the waggon-bells from the dusty highway, in the green vale far down below; and now, though the placid air rang joyously, the evening chime from the broad, low Norman spire of Acton church, the solid outline of which stood defined and dark against the flush of the saffron sky beyond.

And with the breeze that wafted the sound came the fragrant perfume of the ripening fields, their warmth and fertility, as if it had stolen "o'er a bed of violets." Sunk in deepening shadow now, green Acton Chase, with all its great oaks blending in a mass, stretched far away in the distance to the foot of the uplands.

Acton Chine—the reader may perhaps have seen it—is a seam or chasm in the rocks, rising to the height of four hundred feet or more, sheer from the sea, whose waves for ever roar, toil, and boil in snow-white foam against its base.

Standing where Morley and Hawkshaw did, on the evening in question, one might say with Edgar, but perhaps more truly than he did of Dover:

                                                        "How fearful
And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low!
The crows and choughs, that wing the midway air,
Show scarce so large as beetles * * *
The murmuring surge,
That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more,
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong."

There, too, as at Dover, on the dark face of those rocks, the fine green tufts of the samphire grow. The waves outside the chine are white as snow with foam and fury, while within the water is calm, deep, and dark as those of a far-sunk well.

Above, around, and below, the sea-birds wheel and scream, for the clefts and crannies of the rocks are full of their nests. And here, in explanation, we may add that chine is an old Anglo-Norman word, derived from echine—a gash or rent; and these chasms are so named in some parts of England, particularly about the Isle of Wight, where we find Compton Chine, Brook Chine, and the Black Gang Chine.

Morley peeped over into the awful profundity below, and then shrank back instinctively, with an emotion of inexpressible alarm and awe—it seemed so vast, so terrible!

Retiring, he seated himself on the verge of the giddy cliff and removed his hat, that the sea-breeze might play on his hot and flushed forehead. Cool and grateful, it refreshed, soothed, and calmed him.

Impressed by the beauty of the scene and of the evening, a calm joy pervaded Morley's heart, and he prayed a voiceless prayer to God to strengthen him for his destiny.

What put prayer into his head at such a time?

The scene was grandly terrible on one side, and softly serene on the other; but Morley was familiar with both.

Was it present happiness, or a solemn foreboding of future woe, that filled his soul with pious thoughts?

Morley himself could not tell. He thought of the future; and none can foresee what is in the womb of Time.

To be separated from Ethel—ah! there was no chance of that now; but Hawkshaw—the cunning and hateful Cramply Hawkshaw—for some brief space would hover about her still!

What of that? The broad waters of the mighty sea on which he looked, and whose breakers boiled against the rocks four hundred feet below him—the sea from which a red moon, round and vast as a chariot-wheel, was rising—would be around him and Ethel, and this man Hawkshaw would be left behind.

While these thoughts occurred to Morley, he opened his portemonnaie, and drew forth the ring he had promised to return.

At that moment Hawkshaw, who was seated behind him, crept near, with a visage pale, damp, and distorted by malevolence, and with a fiendish glare in his eye.

* * * * *

About an hour after this, the captain was seen leisurely proceeding along the road to Laurel Lodge.

He was alone!

CHAPTER IX.

ALARM.

Darkness had set in, and candles had been lighted for an hour nearly, when Hawkshaw entered the now half dismantled drawing-room of Laurel Lodge.

Rose was idling over the piano; Ethel was seated near the unremoved tea equipage, and Mr. Basset was busy among some papers in his escritoire. Hawkshaw, for reasons of his own, dared not encounter the pale, inquiring face of Ethel.

"Have you seen anything of Mr. Ashton?" asked her father, looking up, with one glance at Hawkshaw, and another at the clock on the mantel-piece. "It is past nine. He was only going to the railway station, and has not yet returned. His absence is most singular."

Hawkshaw hesitated, and looked at his watch with a confused air, as he muttered:

"Past nine—yes, ten minutes."

"He was seen to pass the gate with you," said Ethel.

"With me?" said Hawkshaw, starting.

"Yes."

"By whom?" he asked, with some asperity.

"Nance Folgate," said Rose.

"Ah—true, yes—we took a turn together; and when I saw him last he was going towards the chine."

"The chine!" exclaimed the girls together, in a tone of surprise that was not unmingled with alarm.

"The chine, at this hour!" repeated Mr. Basset.

"It was eight then; and he said he intended to enjoy a quiet weed along the cliffs."

"Most strange!" said Ethel, "when he had news of importance to communicate to me."

"He cannot be long now. I returned without him, as I felt odd—giddy; the regalias I sometimes smoke here don't agree with me. I used to get such prime ones in Mexico."

"You look pale—absolutely ill," said Mr. Basset; "have some wine. What is the matter?"

"Thanks," replied Hawkshaw, almost tottering into a chair, and tossing his red cap aside.

"The last bottle of our Cliquot is on the sideboard."

The cork was soon cut, and Hawkshaw nearly filled a crystal rummer with the foaming champagne, of which he drank thirstily. As he did so, his hand trembled, and the vessel was heard to rattle against his teeth.

Whence this unusual emotion, which did not escape the anxious eyes of Ethel.

"Oh, Heaven!" thought she in her heart, "if he should have quarrelled with Morley! His manner is so excited, so strange, something unpleasant—terrible—must have happened."

Time passed slowly.

Half-past nine struck, then ten, but there was no appearance of Morley. Ethel watched at the windows which opened to the lawn; she listened and lingered at the front door. Then Rose and she ventured to the foot of the avenue, now lighted by a clear, cold moon, and gazed down the long green lane, in which she had first met him on his return; but all was still, not a footfall was heard, nor aught but the dew dropping from the leaves.

Far into the darkness and silence stretched the vista of that long and shady lane, so famed for its wild roses in summer, its filberts and black brambleberries in autumn, its scarlet hips and haws in frosty winter—a real old English lane.

A sound breaks the impressive silence—it is the distant clock of the village church striking the hour of eleven.

Anon twelve struck, and no Morley came.

Ethel wept aloud. Mr. Basset now became seriously alarmed, and knowing how dangerous was the chine, and indeed, how much so were all the cliffs along the adjacent coast, he closely questioned Hawkshaw (who had now become more composed) as to when, where, and how he had last seen Morley, and his story never varied—that they had separated at the pathway which ascended upwards from the old London road to Acton Chine; that Ashton was in high spirits, having had a most satisfactory telegram from town, and that the speaker, when looking back, had last seen the outline of his figure between the earth and the sky on the summit of the rocks above the chine.

"He must have fallen and hurt himself—broken a bone, perhaps," suggested Mr. Basset, rising, and proposing to start.

"Oh, for mercy's sake—papa! papa!" began Ethel.

"Let us go forth to search—I am at your service!" said Hawkshaw.

"Nance Folgate, summon the gardener; let us get lanterns—a rope, a pole or two, so as to be ready for any emergency."

Pale, trembling, faint, and in tears with apprehension and vague fears of some impending disaster, Ethel would have accompanied them, but for the opposition made by her father and Hawkshaw; and with sickening anxiety, she saw them depart, knowing that some hours must necessarily elapse before they could bring intelligence that might relieve her agony or crush her heart for ever.

Muffled in cloaks and shawls, she and Rose, with old Nance Folgate, lingered at the end of the avenue, so long as the lantern lights were visible; and hour after hour, till dawn was drawing near, did they wait, trembling with every respiration, and listening in an agony of expectation to every sound, till the shades of night began to pass away.

When Mr. Basset, Hawkshaw, and the gardener set out, a little after twelve, the night had become dark—unusually so for the season—cloudy and windy.

They traversed the road leading to that portion of the cliffs on which Hawkshaw averred he had last seen Morley Ashton lingering in the twilight.

Hallooing from time to time, as they continued to ascend the pathway to the shore, they pushed on rapidly, yet pausing ever and anon to listen; but there came no response on the gusts of wind that occasionally swept past them.

The clock of Acton church in the valley below struck the hour of two, when they reached the summit of the cliffs, when weird and wild was the scene around them. Masses of cloud, like dark floating palls, were hurrying across the heavens; the stars between them shone out clear and brightly; the ocean, that stretched in distance far away, and blended with the sky, was flecked with foam, for there was a gale coming on from the seaward, and the boom of the hurrying waves as they rolled in white surf against the rock-bound coast, and mingled their roar with the bellowing wind in that deep and awful chasm, the chine, was terrifically grand and impressive, especially at such an hour.

Disturbed by the lantern-lights, and the voices of the three searchers, the wild sea-birds screamed and wheeled about in flocks.

The soft close turf grew to the very verge of the shore and wall-like cliff, and as the searchers proceeded along the giddy summit, seeking for traces of feet and hallooing from time to time, the utmost caution was necessary for their own safety.

Gradually they drew near the chine.

"Hallo—what is this?" exclaimed Mr. Basset, as he trod on something; "a hat—and near it, a kid glove."

They picked them up, and recognised Morley's light grey "wide-awake," and a glove supposed to be his, all uncertainty about the first-mentioned article being ended, by their perceiving his name written on the lining thereof.

Proceeding with greater care, a little farther on they found his cigar-case, and a few feet below, near the edge of the cliff, the ends of two half-used cigars.

"I told you he was enjoying a quiet weed," said Hawkshaw.

Mr. Basset and the gardener made no reply; but with eyes and lanterns close to the ground, were breathlessly examining several footmarks impressed in the soft gravelly soil and sea grass about the mouth of the chine.

"For Heaven's sake, take care, sir," exclaimed the gardener, whom the scene, the place, the hour, and the awful booming of the black sea in the profundity four hundred feet below, appalled. "But look here, sir," he added almost immediately; "oh, sir, look here!"

Two deep ruts in the gravel, as if formed by a man's foot slipping downwards, and two places from which the grass had been recently torn away by hands that had clutched them evidently in despair, showed but too plainly and too terribly that some one had fallen over there.

"Look here, captain—look here!" continued the excited gardener.

Hawkshaw was pale as death, and he drew back with an irrepressible shudder.

"Oh, heavens!" exclaimed Mr. Basset, "poor Ethel!—he has fallen over here, and must have perished—most miserably perished!"

"Nothing could save him, sir," said the gardener, in a low voice, "he would be drowned, if he was not dead before he reached the water."

After lingering hopelessly for a time, as if loth to accept the fact of such a sudden calamity, they began to descend from the chine, and slowly and sorrowfully retraced their steps to Laurel Lodge, to increase by their story the alarm, dismay, and grief, which already reigned there.

* * * * *

In vain were descriptions of Morley Ashton's person and dress circulated in the local papers, in vain were they distributed among the rural police, fishermen, and coastguard, by Mr. Basset, during the few days that remained before he left England.

In vain were telegrams dispatched along the coast, north and south (at Mr. Basset's expense), by Hawkshaw, who made himself most singularly and kindly active; no trace could be found of the missing one; and after three days had elapsed, there remained not a shadow of a doubt that he had been drowned by falling or being thrown over the cliff of the chine. The London detectives who examined the spot were suspicious enough to aver the latter, from the traces they found, and, in their opinion, Mr. Basset and Hawkshaw, the latter most unwillingly, ultimately found themselves compelled to concur.

CHAPTER X.

POOR ETHEL.

The day that followed the return of Mr. Basset and Hawkshaw from the perilous exploration of Acton Chine was one of dreadful suffering for poor Ethel.

Kind old Nance Folgate had forced the girls to retire to bed as dawn was breaking; but no sleep closed the eyes of Ethel Basset.

Morning came—a bright May morning—and still no word of Morley; for she could not realise as yet the idea, the dread conviction, of his death—that he had indeed perished so miserably.

Oh! was this the world of yesterday?

Her sister, Rose, weary with watching overnight, was now asleep. Happy Rose, who could gain oblivion in slumber. Ethel quitted her restless bed, opened the window, and looked forth into the sunny morning.

There was still the garden, with its trees and flowers, the first rays of the sun shining through the conservatory, a distant glimpse of the village church through a long vista of oaks, and the blue sea beyond. There, in the distance, she could trace the road that wound over the uplands towards that fatal Chine—the road he must have pursued but yesterday. There also—but tears, hot and blinding, welled up in her eyes, and she nestled again beside her sleeping and unconscious sister.

"Gone! Morley gone—Morley dead—Morley drowned!"

These words seemed ever on her lips, written in the air before her, to be whispered in her ears and in her heart, while fancy drew an agonising picture of his fall from that dreadful cliff into the yawning profundity below, where he would be tossed and dashed upon the rocks, till his poor, uncoffined remains were chafed to pieces by the waves.

As the lagging day drew on, she did not quit her bed; but, after a time, total prostration of mind and body enabled her to sleep soundly and deeply, with her aching head pillowed on the bosom of Rose; while her father, with Hawkshaw and others, pursued a hopeless and fruitless search for the missing man.

This slumber lasted little more than an hour, and waking brought her back to misery—a misery that flashed upon her vividly, keenly, and suddenly, calling all her half dormant faculties into instant life and action.

It was indeed coming back to agony.

Vainly did Rose speak to her of hope, that it might not have been he whom Hawkshaw had watched proceeding towards the Chine, and that the half-smoked cigars might not have been his.

"But the hat, with his name written in it, and the glove—his glove, Rose; see where I sewed it for him yesterday—only yesterday!" she would exclaim, while pressing it to her lips as she sat up in bed, with her dark hair all dishevelled about her white and polished shoulders, pale, worn, and crushed by an anguish there was no alleviating—for the loss of the poor dear heart, who had loved her so truly and so tenderly.

When re-examined by day, the verge of the Chine, by the abrasion of the soil, bore conclusive evidence that a short struggle had taken place, and that some one had fallen or been pushed over there. A few drops of blood were detected on the stones; but of this circumstance Ethel was not informed.

"Eat something, Miss Ethel—a bit of cake; take a little tea, a glass of wine, or anything; you must, darling, you must!" said old Nance Folgate, pillowing her favourite's head on her breast, towards the close of this most dreadful day.

Ethel silently declined, for the smallest crumb would have choked her; but grief is thirsty, so she drank the wine and water with gratitude, or rather permitted Rose to pour it between her pale and passive lips.

Then a shower of tears followed, and she moaned and sobbed aloud, and heavily. Another night followed, another day dawned; but no hope dawned with it, and no tidings came.

The first shock over, there settled on the mind and soul of Ethel a deep and settled grief. She ceased to weep, save when alone. For a time she was reckless of the future, or viewed it with sullen indifference or composure, none knew which. She cared not how soon they quitted Laurel Lodge now, nor how soon she saw the shores of England fade from view, though she thought, with a shudder, of the ocean which she knew must have entombed the corpse of him she loved so long and well.

And Cramply Hawkshaw—how did he comport himself during this painful crisis? Quietly, earnestly, full of apparent solicitude, ready in suggestion and active in inquiry. He remained mostly with Rose; but when Ethel appeared on the evening of the second day in the dining-room, he was ready, with hand and arm, to attend her politely, and silently.

She entered Morley's bed-room, now empty of its tenant. She flung herself upon the couch in an agony of grief, for the place seemed full of his presence, and his beloved form appeared to rise up embodied before her.

There were his travelling bag; his telescope and flask, his hair-brushes, a stray glove or so, and a miniature of herself, which had been the poor fellow's only solace when far away from her in Africa. There were other mementoes of the beloved one she would never see more; he whose poor remains, if they were not lying at the foot of that dreadful Chine, were being, perhaps, swept away to sea—that sea which, at times, she hoped she might not live to traverse.

Here prostrate on the couch she was found by Rose and Nance Folgate, who conveyed her out, and locked the door.

This event, by the confusion and anxiety it created, delayed the departure of the Bassets from Laurel Lodge for a week longer.

There were times when Ethel wished that she might die, though she shrank from the idea of being separated from her father and sister, and from not sharing their perilous journey; but her mother's grave under the close-clipped grass looked so calm and peaceful in the sunshine of the old English churchyard, that she almost longed to be laid by her side. However, as some one says, "Grief rivets the chain of our life instead of breaking it." So Ethel did not die; but she fell into a state of languid apathy, which caused her father and sister the most serious apprehension.

There were other times, when dreadful thoughts occurred to Ethel—thoughts that came to her mind unbidden, and that she dared express to none; but she could not help associating the mysterious and terrible calamity which had befallen Morley with the idea of Hawkshaw, his rival.

She remembered the unusual and unnatural pallor of his cheek, and his strange excitement on the eventful night; how he complained of illness; how thirstily he drank of the champagne; and how his hand shook so that the crystal which contained the wine rattled nervously against his teeth.

The thought of his story of the Barranco Secco; of his having too surely associated in California, and elsewhere, with such men as Pedro and Zuares Barraddas; and she remembered many episodes of his Mexican life, which he had incidentally related, and at which, though she and Rose had been wont to laugh at them, she shuddered now, and knew not why!

She perceived, too, that Hawkshaw wore his own ring once more, so Morley Ashton must have formally returned it to him on that fatal evening.

Prior to Morley's final arrangement to accompany them, Ethel had schooled her little heart to bear the separation, consequent on their anticipated sea voyage, and change of home, contemplating it as a sorrow that might have a happy end when brighter fortune smiled upon them all; but now she had lost him by a separation that would endure while life lasted.

The slight tinge of colour which her delicate cheek usually wore faded completely away. Her eyes lost their brilliant and calm expression, her lips their wonted smile, her spirits all their buoyancy.

Mr. Basset, we have said, saw this with alarm, and by every means in his power hastened to break up his household, and leave Acton-Rennel.

His daughter's thoughts were with the dead; but still the living, and the duties of life, claimed her care. One cannot live in the world and not be of it; thus, one of her last days spent at pleasant Laurel Lodge was occupied in paying farewell visits—supported between Rose and Hawkshaw—to her old pensioners and dependents in the thatched cottages among those lovely green lanes, that ere long were to know her footsteps no more, and these old people mingled their blessings with tearful hopes of her happiness and long life, in the new home to which she was about to depart.

On the tenth day after Morley's disappearance she found herself, with her father, Rose, Hawkshaw, and old Nurse Folgate, seated in a first-class carriage, speeding along the London and North-Western line towards the metropolis.

Laurel Lodge had long since vanished, with its whole locality.

Steeped in summer haze, the landscape flew past like the wind; but Ethel was listless. To her it seemed that the purpose of life, the joy of existence, the romance of love, and the charm of youth, had all gone for ever.

Hawkshaw was seated opposite to her. She lowered her veil to conceal her face; he held the last number of Punch well up to conceal his.

As Morley had disappeared thus, and beyond all trace, and as his berth was secured in their ship, the Hermione, which was to sail for the Isle of France, as soon as her cargo was all hoisted in, Hawkshaw availed himself of the circumstance to go in his place; by which means this most enterprising Texan officer secured his passage free.

CHAPTER XL

DARKNESS MADE LIGHT.

We last left Morley Ashton and Hawkshaw seated near the verge of Acton Chine.

The former was extracting from his portemonnaie the ring which Ethel Basset had so unwisely commissioned him to return, and he remained with it in his hand for a minute or two, forming in his own mind the least offensive mode of tendering it. At that time the chimes of the church of Acton-Rennel rung out joyously their closing peal, and the sound, together with the beauty of the evening, the softness of the wooded landscape on one hand, and the wild grandeur of the surf-beaten rocks on the other, were not without a most soothing influence on the somewhat poetic and imaginative temperament of Morley, who reflected on the shortness of the time he would be permitted to look on that familiar scene, and the changes that must take place ere—if ever—he saw it again.

He said something of this kind to Hawkshaw, who was alternately silent or nervously garrulous, adding, with a sad smile—

"I never hear the chimes of old Acton, ringing over the woodlands, without thinking of the lines—

"'Those evening bells, those evening bells,
How many a tale their music tells,
Of youth, of home, and native clime,
When last I heard their soothing chime.'

And then the scenery here about is so glorious, and so thoroughly English in its character and fertility!"

"Bah! you don't call this scenery, do you?" asked Hawkshaw, brusquely.

"Is it not charming?"

"May be so to you; but to me, who have hunted, scouted, and trapped over the mighty Sierras, which divide Texas from New Mexico—Sierras covered to their cloud-clapped summits with forests of oak, pine, and cedar, and all alive with wild horses and cattle; or to me, who have seen the yet denser woods out of which the Arkansas and Trinidad rivers come roaring to the sea, your mild, Dutch-looking, English landscape, is no more than a rat-ranche would be if compared to St. Paul's Cathedral?"

"It must be somewhat dangerous, a land teeming with wild horses and cattle?" said Morley, to change the subject, and smiling, as he lit a fresh cigar.

"Dangerous? Caramba! I rather calculate it is!"

"How?" asked Morley, carelessly.

"In those mountain ranges are wild trappers, and lawless bandidos, like those Barradas I told you of one evening—do you remember?"

"Perfectly."

"Fellows of all colours—white, black, and brown, yellow, and copper-coloured—who may be off with your purse and scalp before you know where you are. Then there are bears, conguars, buffaloes, panthers, wolves, foxes, and alligators. I was nearly gobbled up by one when bathing in the Red River. Immortal smash! I had a close run for it, and only kept him off by splashing and kicking like a sunfish in a breeze."

After a pause—

"I wish we had the ladies here," said Morley; "the evening is so lovely—the sunset is so rich."

"Aye—our Ethel is romantic, very!" observed Hawkshaw; "she rather likes 'Thaddeus of Warsaw,' and copies verses in a hot-pressed album; sighs often when alone, no doubt, and always ties the ribbons of her bonnet in a true-lover's knot."

Morley looked fixedly at the speaker, for the whole speech, and the phrase, "our Ethel," displeased him.

"Mr. Hawkshaw," said he, gravely, "there is something of a sneer in your tone, which I do not understand."

"Sneer—not at all. Do you imagine that I would sneer at one so charming as our friend, Miss Basset—one whom we mutually admire so much?" replied Hawkshaw; but as he spoke the fire of secret hate mingled in his eye with that of the admiration, we cannot term it love, he bore for Ethel.

"Apropos of Miss Basset," said Morley, now careless whether he offended or not, "I have here a ring of yours, Captain Hawkshaw, which she commissioned me to return to you, as, on reflection, she cannot think of depriving you of so interesting a relic of your Mexican campaigns."

"Thank you," replied Hawkshaw, with a quiet stare, as he took the ring from Morley, and placed it on one of his fingers, even his bushy moustache failing to conceal the fierce quiver of his upper lip; "I received it at a ball, from the eldest daughter of General Santa Anna, and so can well afford to receive it back from a daughter of old Scriven Basset."

This was the third or fourth history of the ring Morley had heard; but he only smiled in silence.

"You think you have done your duty," resumed the captain, as the resolution to quarrel became strong in his breast, so strong that he cared not to repress it; "but I reckon, friend Ashton, that you are slightly up a tree, as the Yankees say."

"Sir, I do not understand you," said Morley.

"I am not so vernal as to fail in perceiving that you are awfully spooney upon Miss Basset."

"If I am to construe your slang into meaning that I love her, you are quite right," replied Morley, coldly, as he rose up.

"But you cannot think of marrying her, even if old Basset be donkey enough to let you!"

"Captain Hawkshaw!"

"For one who can scarcely float himself, it is thankless work to take a sinking craft in tow," continued the captain, whose phrases were quite as often nautical as Mexican.

"Sir, you are impertinent."

"Caramba! not at all—but truthful—only truthful," replied Hawkshaw, with a studied insolence of manner, as he continued to knock the ashes off his cigar, so that they flew all over Morley's face. "If I had you in Mexico, I would give you advice more seriously; as it is, in this tame, stupid land of good order, coroners' inquests, rural police, and city bluebottles, I must content myself with what I have said."

"Stand back, sir, and permit me to pass you!" said Morley, haughtily, as he found that, on rising, he was unpleasantly near the verge of the rocks, and that Hawkshaw, with a dark and dangerous gleam in his eyes, stood menacingly between him and the safer portion of the edge.

It was at that moment, that unexpectedly as a star falls, or light flashes, a diabolical idea occurred to Hawkshaw, just as if a fiend, unseen, was at his ear to whisper and to urge him on.

A sudden silence seemed to fill the air—to pervade the land and sea. He ceased to hear the roar of the waves in the Chine below, or the screaming of the wild sea-birds in mid air. A clamorous ferocity—a terrible anxiety, seemed to possess his whole soul.

He cast a hasty glance around him; not a person was near, and no eye was upon them, save One in heaven, and that dread eye he forgot. He gave the unsuspecting Morley a dreadful blow with his clenched hand, and then a violent push. The victim staggered backward, reeled forward, and as he fell, clutched wildly at the turf which fringed the edge of the rocks.

"Oh, Heaven!" burst from his lips; "Hawkshaw—you cannot—you dare not mean this! Save me—Ethel!"

The pieces of turf he clutched so desperately gave way, and without a sound he vanished into the awful profundity below!

Hawkshaw lingered a moment by the fatal spot, for in that moment all his senses were paralysed. His breath, his sight, and hearing were gone, and he felt as one who had ceased to live.

Then he glanced carefully, fearfully, and stealthily around, to assure himself again that the dreadful deed he had committed was unseen by mortal eyes, and anon, turning, he proceeded rapidly to descend the winding pathway from the Chine, and then sought the road to Laurel Lodge.

The minutes spent in descending seemed to be so many hours. His feet felt as if glued to the dusty path, and his knees trembled under him. Before he reached the highway the fierce fever of his blood had cooled, though his heart still beat wildly, and his temples throbbed painfully.

There was a revulsion of feeling now, and he began to wish the cruel deed undone. It was an act so tremendous, so fearful to be perpetrated among civilised people, that it appalled him more than he could have expected, though he had witnessed, yes, and acted in many a deed of cruelty and bloodshed, in climes where the law, unless it were Lynch law, was unknown even in name.

The sun had set, and the sombre shadows of evening were deepening on the land and sea.

Hawkshaw walked hurriedly, taking a great circuit, that the perturbation of his spirits might subside a little before he presented himself at Laurel Lodge; but the throbbing of his temples, and the leaping of his heart, continued the same as he hastened on; and now, as the twilight deepened, the trees and shadows began to take strange and threatening forms, and ever before him he seemed to see the last despairing glance of Morley's eyes, and in his ears to hear the rending of the turf as it gave way, with the awful sound of the poor victim's voice, as with the terror of a dreadful death in his soul, he so vainly sought the pitiless destroyer to save him.

In the cool flow of a wayside runnel, he bathed his trembling hands and flushed forehead. Then he began to consider that, as no one had seen him commit the act, he need scarcely wish it undone; that he should dismiss the palsying fear that was gnawing at his heart, for in time he would strive to forget, as he had forgotten and lived down many a thing before.

He had removed a troublesome rival from his path, and fearfully had he punished Ethel for her rejection of his addresses but two hours or so before, it now seemed years ago, and for her open preference of the hapless Morley Ashton; and yet—and yet the emotions of that man's soul were what no pen can depict.

The summer moon that rose so broad and redly from the distant sea now showed her clear, bright, silver disc above the rocks of Acton Chine, but Hawkshaw dared not look upon her lest he might see murder on her face, as slowly, with parched lips, pallid cheeks, and trembling hands, he left the long, green lane, and proceeded up the avenue that led to Laurel Lodge.