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.