CHAPTER III.

CRAMPLY HAWKSHAW.

Before Morley had time to think or inquire--if, indeed, inquiry was necessary--concerning this trinket, a lovely, laughing girl of eighteen burst into the room, and kissed him playfully on each cheek.

"Rose," he exclaimed, "Rose, how you have grown. The little girl I left behind has become quite a woman!"

"Why have you delayed so long, Rose?" said Ethel, almost with annoyance. "Did you not know who was here--that Morley had arrived?"

"No. If so, do you think I would have delayed?"

"Yet you have done so."

"Oh, don't be jealous," replied Rose, laughing, though her answer unwittingly galled Morley, and annoyed Ethel more; "we were not flirting, for the captain was only telling me about the flowers of South America; and I merely amuse myself with him and Jack Page, when I can get no one else."

Morley thought of the strange ring on Ethel's finger, and as he caressed Rose's hand, there arose some unpleasant forebodings in his mind; but at that moment, as lights were brought, and tea announced in the drawing-room, the gentleman whom they styled "captain" entered from the conservatory, throwing back therein the fag-end of his cigar.

Ethel hastened to introduce him to Morley as "Captain Cramply Hawkshaw, the son of papa's old and valued friend."

The captain bowed coldly to Morley, whom he scrutinised from head to foot in a cool and rather supercilious manner.

Hawkshaw was rather under than over the middle height, and possessed a tough and well-knit figure. He had rather a good air and bearing; but at times his manner was absurd and swaggering, and his features, though good and well cut, were decidedly sinister--so much so, that his eyes had in them, occasionally, an expression, which, to a keen observer, was most forbidding.

Under his light grey sack coat, he wore no waistcoat, but had his trousers girt by a Spanish sash; a tasselled smoking-cap, like an Egyptian tarboosh, was placed jauntily on his thick mass of curly dark hair. He rejoiced in a luxuriant beard and pair of long whiskers, with which his moustaches mingled.

He interlarded his conversation somewhat profusely with digger terms, Spanish oaths, and Yankee military phrases, American interjections, and frequent allusions to bowie-knives and six-shooters, and a pair of these weapons always figured on his dressing-table.

In fact, the captain seemed a character, though scarcely worth studying; but one that must frequently appear, more for evil than for good, in these pages.

At a glance, Morley perceived that he was somewhat of a swaggering fool--perhaps worse. He conceived an instinctive aversion for him--an aversion, however, that seemed to be quite mutual--and he marvelled by what idiosyncracy of his nature Mr. Basset could tolerate, or propose to patronise, a guest whose bearing was so questionable, and whose presence was rendered so obnoxious to himself, by his too-evident partiality for Ethel. Nor was this emotion lessened when our hero perceived, that whenever he spoke, a covert sneer stole into the cunning eyes of the captain.

He had been an officer, it appeared, among the Texans, in the Partizan Rangers, or some such distinguished corps; and like Gibbet, in the "Beau's Stratagem," he considered "captain" a good travelling name, and one that kept waiters, grooms, and even railway porters in order; so he still adhered to his regimental rank in the Partizan Rangers, or true-blooded Six-shooters of Texas.

He talked of scalping Red Indians, and shooting Spanish picaroons, as if such were his daily amusement; and when smoking out of doors, would squat on the grass in the mode peculiar to the Texan troopers, among whom he had undoubtedly become a deadly shot, and a good horseman--the only qualities he possessed.

"Papa," said Rose, while Ethel was officiating at the tea-urn, "I wish you to scold Captain Hawkshaw----"

"Why, what has he done now?--been burning your dog's nose with his cigar--smoking it in the drawing-room, or what?"

"He has been laughing at our loveliest azaleas, and saying they were only weeds."

"In Tennessee, my dear Miss Rose, in Tennessee," said the captain, with a deprecating grimace, while caressing his long whiskers; "but your namesake, the rose itself, is perhaps deemed little better than a weed in some countries."

"Where you have been?" inquired Morley.

"But," continued Hawkshaw, without deigning to hear his question, "to me--one who has seen the luscious fruit and gorgeous flower-covered districts of Xalappa, and of Chilpansingo, in the _tierras tiempladas_ of Mexico--there is nothing you can show in this tame England of yours that interests you."

"Ours," retorted Rose; "is it not yours too?"

"Nay, nay," said the captain, shaking his head and the tassel of his tarboosh together, "I am a cosmopolitan."

"And care nothing for your country?" said Morley.

"_Caramba!_ as we say in Texas, I did so once; but the sun shines brighter in other lands than it does in England."

"You will never make me think so, captain," said Mr. Basset, pushing aside his tea-cup; "for even now my heart sinks with deep depression at the thought of leaving home."

"'Tis nothing when you are used to it, sir--positively nothing. However, you have comfortable diggings here, and some very pretty fixings, too," observed the captain, casting his eyes on the mirrors, the hangings, and vases of Sèvres and Dresden china which decorated the drawing-room; "and thus, perhaps, don't care much about sailing in search of 'fresh fields and pastures new,' eh, squire?--or judge, I suppose we should call you?"

"No, I shall leave my heart behind me in England--in dear old Acton-Rennel. But the sooner we are gone the better; for every day now seems to bind me more to the place where my happiest years have been spent," said Mr. Basset, whose eyes grew moist as his heart filled with the memory of the wife whom he had lain in the grave but three years before, and with whom Morley Ashton had been an especial favourite, for he was gentle and lovable, yet manly withal.

In her resting-place--under the old yew at Acton church--he felt that she was still near, and still his; but once away from England, the separation would seem complete indeed.

Half shaded and half lit by the drawing-room lights, Ethel's beauty seemed very striking. Tall and dark-eyed, there was something of great delicacy in her cast of features, over which, as we have said, a pensive shadow often rested; especially when her white eyelids and long, dark lashes were drooping.

She was a girl whose whole air and manner, expression of eye, and turn of thought, were the embodiment of refinement; thus the conversation and brusquerie of the digger captain were by no means suited to her taste.

On the other hand, Rose was somewhat of a brown-haired hoyden; very lovely in her bursts of wild joy and laughter; all smiles and rosy dimples, and full of waggish expressions, in which the quieter Ethel never indulged; so she rather enjoyed the fanfaronades of Hawkshaw, and mimicked some of his idioms and Spanish exclamations with great success.

Tea over, and the piano opened, Morley hung fondly over Ethel, who ran her white fingers over the notes of an old and favourite air, which they had often sung together; while the captain, with his feet planted apart on the rich hearthrug, was romancing, or to use his own phraseology, "bouncing away" about the Tierra Caliente the mighty sierras of New Mexico, and so forth, to Mr. Basset, whose eyes were fixed on the embers that glowed in the bright steel grate, and whose thoughts were elsewhere.

"Your visitor seems quite at home here--a privileged man, in fact," said Morley. "You did not tell me this at first, Ethel," he added, in a lower tone.

Ethel blushed, and replied:

"We have been so used to him that I quite forgot."

"So used--then he has been long here."

"Nearly three months."

"Three months ago, Ethel, I was lying in Tom Bartelot's cabin, off the Bonny River, in hourly expectation of death, and with little hope of being where I am to-night, by your side, dearest, and listening to that old air again. And he has been here three months?"

"Yes, ever since his return from California."

"Is he rich--this captain--what horse-marine corps is he captain of?" continued Morley in an angry whisper.

"Oh, Morley, hush! he is not rich, poor fellow!"

"Poor devil!" muttered Morley.

"But he has realised something; I know not what; though he asserts that he has come back to us poorer than when he went away."

"To us," replied Morley, with growing displeasure, which he strove in vain to conceal. "Who is he?"

"A second cousin, or something of that kind, to papa, and the son of his old friend, Mr. Thomas Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's-inn. But why all these questions?" asked Ethel, looking her lover fully and fondly in the face.

Morley Ashton did not reply, for he felt an instinctive doubt and hatred of Hawkshaw: emotions that rose within his breast he scarcely knew why or wherefore; but, as a Scottish poet has it:

"Men feel by instinct swift as light, The presence of the foe, Whom God has marked in after years To strike the mortal blow!"

Hawkshaw, while talking apparently to Mr. Basset, had his keen and sinister eyes fixed on the couple at the piano. They seemed plainly enough to indicate similar emotions in his breast, and to say:

"You are one too many in my diggings, Mr. Ashton. _Poco e poco_, I must get rid of you, my fine fellow, at whatever risk or cost!"