CHAPTER V.

SUSPICION.

While the ladies listened breathlessly, and uttered proper exclamations of horror, the narrator, with their permission, lighted a cigar, and, squatting on the ground in the Texan mode, continued his story.

"Zuares grovelled in the dust, so dismounting, I picked up the blood-spotted dollars, and was in the act of pocketing them, when a musket flashed in the dark, leafy hollow, a bullet whizzed past my left ear, and----"

"What! did you actually take the poor woman's dollars?" exclaimed Morley.

"Of course," replied Hawkshaw, coolly; "would you have had me leave them on the mountain road?"

"Yes; perhaps no; but----"

"_Caramba!_" said Hawkshaw, angrily, but using his favourite Spanish interjection, "in such a country as that, I was not such a thundering muff."

"Go on, please. What followed, pray?" asked Ethel.

"I took up the money that lay on the road. You, Mr. Ashton, may call it robbery, perhaps--granted. But what do the best men in England, yearly, at the Oaks, the Derby, and elsewhere? Oh, there is no such thing as robbery on the turf, of course. Well, where was I?"

"A musket was fired at you," said Rose.

"Exactly, and then I saw Pedro Barradas, a vast and bulky Spanish seaman, whom, unfortunately, I knew too well, advancing towards me, with his Albacete knife tied by a handkerchief bayonet-wise to the muzzle of his piece. He was a ferocious fellow, and I knew that, when he and Zuares were so far inland, rapine and robbery were their sole objects and means of subsistence.

"These brothers once carried off a poor boy, the son of a widow, who resided near the Laguna d'Alvarado, and kept him among their companions in the mountains, till his mother was well-nigh distracted. A ransom of fifty duros was required by a padre, whom they sent as their messenger. She sent twenty--all she could borrow or scrape together; but, instead of her boy, she received back one of his ears, with a message that other parts of him, perhaps his _cabeza_ (head) would follow, if the fifty duros were not forthcoming.

"The money was collected and intrusted to the padre, who, unknown to himself, was followed by twenty soldiers, sent by the commandant of Orizaba, with special orders to shoot the Barradas and their companions.

"Pedro saw these men approaching, and, believing that the padre had betrayed them, he pocketed the dollars, and with his stiletto stabbed the bearer and the boy to the heart, and fled to the woods of the Rio Blanco.

"Such was the character of the fellow who now advanced against me.

"I sprang upon my horse, unwound my lasso, took the slack of it in my right hand, and, swinging the loop round my head, rode full at him, as I could not encounter him on foot, or escape his aim on horseback, if I permitted him again to reload.

"Shrinking back with an oath and a cry, he twice eluded me; but on the third cast I looped him round the neck, drew the lasso over my right shoulder, stooped hard over my horse's mane, and spurring onward, dragged him headlong over the dusty road, for more than two hundred yards.

"His shrieks were soon stifled, and when I reined up, the blood was gushing from his mouth; his limbs were quivering, and his face was blackened by strangulation; but he was not dead, however.

"Dismounting, I released the loop of the lasso from his bare and muscular throat, and then rode off at full speed, leaving the two brothers, and the mother, whom, in their cruelty and ignorance, they had tracked and destroyed, all lying on the mountain path together. I never looked behind me, nor did I draw bridle till reaching Orizaba, which lies sixty miles westward of Vera Cruz, where I put up at the Posada de Todos Santas (or All Saints) about midnight, when the volcano of Citlaltepetel, which rises from amid forests of vast extent, and covered with perpetual snows, was flaming in the sky eighteen thousand feet above me.

"And there, in Orizaba, the duros sent me by fortune in the Barranca Secco, procured me a good supper, a bottle of vino-bianco, well iced, from the hands of the fair Katarina--a most enchanting fluid it proved, after such a devil of a hot ride. Then I went to bed, and blessed myself that I could sleep with an easier conscience than either Zuares or Pedro Barradas."

This pleasant little episode in the captain's wandering Mexican life, made the listeners regard each other, and him especially, with some surprise.

The girls looked at him blankly under their parasols, and through the short black veils of their little round hats, for the actual horror of the story impressed them less than a certain cool gusto in Hawkshaw's manner, combined with his grim, matter-of-fact mode of relating it; but this story of the Barradas was only one of many such as he related incidentally from time to time.

"It is no easy matter," says Goethe, "for one man to understand another, even if he bring the best disposition with him. What, then, is to be expected if he bring the smallest _prejudice_?"

Aware that he was a rival--a cunning, a daring, and so far as could be gleaned from his conversation, an unscrupulous one, Morley, as may well be supposed, was strongly prejudiced against Hawkshaw, and felt certain that, under a considerable amount of bombast and external _bonhomie_, he concealed a character that was alike mean, fierce, and avaricious; but "every man," says the writer just quoted, "has something in his nature which, were he to reveal it, would make us hate him."

"And such creatures as these were your companions in South America?" exclaimed Ethel Basset, almost with a shudder.

"Do not say so," replied Hawkshaw, who, perhaps, feared that he had been too communicative "but travelling, in such countries especially, acquaints one with strange bed-fellows and strange boon companions, too. But enough of the Barradas, who have likely been shot or garotted long ago. How delightful is this soft grass under the shady trees. By Jove, we are better here than in some places where I have been; the plains of Vera Cruz, for instance, among hot sand, mosquito flies, that sting like wasps, prickly pears, and herds of wild bisons; but, with all its charms, this is a cold-blooded country, this England of yours, Mr. Morley, and ill-suited to such a spirit as mine."

"Is it not your country as well as ours?" asked Morley, coldly.

"I scolded him for speaking thus the other night, when he laughed at my azaleas," said Rose, shaking her parasol at the offender.

"Well, I was certainly raised here, which is my misfortune, and not my fault; but I have been so long where the bowie-knife or revolver, the hatchet or rifle settle all quarrels, disputes, jealousies, or impertinent interferences," he continued with an unfathomable smile, "that I can ill tolerate the system----"

"Of a well-regulated police," interrupted Morley, closing the captain's sentence with a meaning smile, that was not unlike his own.

"_Caramba!_--yes; and, then, on the wild prairies, while one has a good musket and ammunition, we are so careless of money."

"The money of others especially," said Ethel.

Hawkshaw bit his nether lip; but observed with a smile:

"Be assured, my dear Miss Basset, that when in South America I did not squander my cash among tradesmen, or ruin myself by paying tailors and bootmakers."

What Hawkshaw meant by this was not very apparent; but when the little party resumed their promenade among the grand old trees of Acton Chase, Morley gradually drew Ethel somewhat apart from the rest. After being silent some time:

"I entertain a horror of that fellow!" said he; "and I am astonished that your father tolerates or patronises him. Excuse me, dear Ethel; but I cannot help saying so."

"You mean Mr. Hawkshaw?"

"Pray don't omit his rank of captain--yes, Hawkshaw--a most decided aversion for him."

"Though I don't like him, Morley, I am sorry to hear this," said Ethel, gently, while colouring a very little.

"Why?"

"He is such a favourite with papa--for his father's sake, I grant you, rather than his own--for old Mr. Hawkshaw was, indeed, a great and valued friend to papa, when early in life he much required one."

"Listen, Ethel, and, dearest, do be candid with me--has Hawkshaw ever spoken of love to you?"

"Frequently, before you came," said Ethel, smiling.

"D---- his impudence!"

"Oh, fie, Morley!" said she, folding her hands upon his arm, and looking up smilingly in his face.

"And I must quietly endure his presence here, after this most annoying admission from you!"

"There is something worse still you may have to endure," said Ethel, sadly; "the voyage on which he may too probably accompany us."

Morley felt a keen pang in his breast at these words; he glanced, too, at the strange ring on Ethel's finger, which an emotion of pride or pique had hitherto prevented him from referring to.

"It seems preposterous, Ethel," he exclaimed, "that this man should propose to accompany you, while I, your affianced lover, am left behind; and, by Heaven, it shall not be so!"

"Dearest Morley!"

"Poor as I am, Ethel, I am not so poor that I cannot pay my way to the Mauritius--in the same ship, too, and I shall write this very night to London about it!"

"Oh, Morley--oh, what happiness!"

"I shall take a berth in the forecastle bunks, rather than be left behind. You have now at your breast a flower that Hawkshaw gave you."

"A flower!"

"Yes,-a wild rose."

"I had quite forgotten it; but let this show you how it is valued;" said Ethel, laughing, as she threw it on the ground, and placed thereon a pretty little foot, cased in a kid boot, with a heel of very military aspect.

"My own dear Ethel!" exclaimed Morley, pressing to his heart her hand and arm, which leant so lovingly and confidingly on his, "I have one thing more to ask you about--this queer-looking ring with the green stone!"

"Well?"

"Is it a gift of his?"

"Yes; when he first came to Laurel Lodge he begged me to accept of it, saying that it was found in Mexico, at some battle fought by Juarez, at a place with an unpronounceable name."

"It was more likely found as he found those dollars about which he told us some time ago."

"Mercy! do you think so?"

"I am inclined to think the worst of him!" said Morley angrily and emphatically.

"Oh! Morley, do not let prejudice blind you, and do not condescend to be jealous of him," said Ethel, imploringly; "I would return the ring, but that the act might affront him, giving, moreover, to its first acceptation, a significance, an air of importance, I have no wish should be attached to it. Do you understand me, Morley, dear? Then he is papa's friend and guest."

Morley was pale with concealed annoyance.

Ethel perceived this, and that he was distressed by the double prospect of a rival living in the same house with her, and embittering the few days that intervened before their long--alas! it might be final--separation.

With her eyes full of tears, she drew Hawkshaw's gift from her finger, and gave it to Morley, begging him to return it to the donor at a fitting time.

This was, to say the least of it, a most unwise request, with which he readily enough undertook to comply, and secured the ring in his portemonnaie, as they rejoined their friends, who were now gathered round the shamble oak in the centre of the chase.

When Morley reflected on the story told by Hawkshaw, it seemed that there must have existed between him and those lawless brothers, Pedro and Zaures Barradas, a greater intimacy than he had admitted in the narrative; and he became convinced that, under a nonchalant and swaggering air, his rival concealed a real spirit of latent ferocity, with a dark character that had been inured to cruelty and promptitude to vengeance, when such could be taken with safety and secrecy; so Morley Ashton resolved, but somewhat vainly, as we shall show, to be on his guard against him.