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.