Read Ebook: Ancient Law: Its Connection to the History of Early Society by Maine Henry Sumner Sir

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Ebook has 431 lines and 101479 words, and 9 pages

After a pause:

"See, Morley," said the girl, with a lovely smile, as she drew her ribbon from her bosom; "our split sixpence!"

"Here is the other half, dear Ethel. I used to carry it at my watch-guard, but seals and charms are dangerous gear among the black fellows of the Bonny River, who want every trinket they see, so I thought it safer where your lock of hair lay--next my heart. It was a happy hour in which you gave me that dear lock, my sweet Ethel."

"It was on an evening in summer, when we sat yonder by the old stile at the churchyard. How often have I wished to live that hour over again!" sighed his companion.

"And, sweet one, so we shall in reality, as I have often done in my day-dreams, when far, far away from this dear home and you; but this approaching separation crushes the heart within me, and destroys all hope for the future."

"Take courage, Morley, though I have none," said the young girl, while still her tears fell fast.

Ah me! a split sixpence is of small value, yet here it was riches, for it embodied the hopes, the future, and was all the world to two young and loving hearts!

"Amid the pestilent swamps and mangrove creeks of West Africa, where, from September to June, the steamy malaria rises like smoke in the sunshine, baleful," said Morley, "and laden with disease and death, O Ethel, my thoughts were with you! There, while engaged in the stupid and monotonous task of daily bartering old muskets, nails, and buttons, powder, rum, and tobacco, for palm-oil, camwood, ivory, lion-skins, and gorgeous feathers, bartering, cajoling, and often browbeating the hideous and barbarous savages of Eboe and Biafra, for our house in Liverpool, the hope of being reunited to you alone sustained and inspired me. In my wretched hut, built of stakes, roofed with palm-leaves, and plastered with mud, or on board the river craft, where we always sleep at some seasons, and during the horrors of the fever which left me the wreck of myself, it was your memory alone that shed light and hope around me. And there was one terrible night, when the breathless air was still and heavy, and when a green slime covered all the ripples of the rotten sea, while my pulse was as fleet as lightning, and my brain was burning, and when I thought that certainly I must soon die, my old friend Bartelot--you have often heard me speak of Tom Bartelot, of Liverpool--conveyed me to his brig, which rode at her moorings inside Foche Point, and he actually cured me, merely by talking for hours of you, Ethel, and of our meeting again--cured me, when, perhaps, the doctor's doses failed. And now, Ethel, poor though I am, broken in spirit, and crushed in hope--this hour, this moment, and these kisses, dearest, reward me for all, all--toil, danger, suffering, and hoping against hope itself!"

As he spoke he pressed Ethel Basset again to his breast in a long and passionate embrace, and a bright, happy, and lovely smile spread over the face of the young girl.

LAUREL LODGE.

To a certain extent the conversation in the preceding chapter must have served to inform the reader of the relative positions and prospects of those whom, without much preamble, we have introduced--to wit, the hero and heroine of our story.

Morley Ashton was the only son of a once wealthy merchant, whose failure and death had left him well-nigh penniless, to push his fortune in the world as he best could. Thus, as agent of a Liverpool house, he had been, as he stated, broiling for the last three years on the western coast of Africa, with what success the reader has learned from his conversation with Ethel Basset, to whom he had now been engaged for four years.

Ethel was now somewhere about her twentieth year, and though her face was not, perhaps, of that kind which is termed strictly beautiful, it would be difficult to say wherein a defect could be traced.

Her features were regular, and, though somewhat pensive in expression, her occasionally sparkling and piquant smile relieved them from that insipidity which frequently is the characteristic of a perfectly regular face.

Though, in addition to singing, riding, and waltzing to perfection, she could play rather a good stroke at billiards, and make a good shot at the archery butts, her manner was gentle and graceful, her mind intelligent, and she improved on acquaintance, for few could converse with Ethel Basset for half-an-hour without being somehow convinced that she was lovely.

Her taste in dress was excellent, and one felt that from her little gloved hand, or, rather, from her smoothly-braided hair to the little heels of her kid boots, Ethel was a study.

Her mother's death had early inducted her into the cares and mystery of housekeeping, and made her thoughtful, perhaps, beyond her years.

Mr. Scriven Basset, her father, was a kind and warm-hearted, but somewhat easy-tempered man. In early life he had practised successfully as a barrister in London, where he had contracted a wealthy marriage. After this event he had retired to Acton-Rennel, and there, for the last eighteen years or so, his life had passed quietly and happily.

His tastes were elegant, but expensive; thus his villa of Laurel Lodge was fitted up in a style of no ordinary splendour, and to part with the elegancies by which he was surrounded would cost some pangs when the time came.

Since a pecuniary change had come upon his affairs, and as he had procured, by the friendship of the M.P. for Acton-Rennel, a legal colonial appointment, all his household goods must be scattered. He knew this, and that there was no help for it: save his dead wife's portrait, and a few equally dear "lares," all must "come to the hammer," as he phrased it, when he and his two girls sailed for their new home in the tropics.

He knew that poor Morley Ashton and his daughter, Ethel, had loved each other in early youth, when the prospects of the former were fair, and his "expectations" unexceptionable; and, though reverses came which blasted these, and rendered a marriage unadvisable, strange to say he did not separate them.

This was but a part of his easy disposition, and he permitted them to correspond, in the hope that, by absence, their mutual regard would gradually die away, as the mere fancy of a boy and girl.

But fortune ordained it otherwise.

Had Morley come home with wealth , he could have had no objections to their marriage; but there would be many now that Morley had come home poor.

Mr. Basset knew, moreover, that Morley, as his last letter had informed Ethel, was to visit them at Laurel Lodge immediately on his return.

"Well, well," thought the easy Mr. Basset, "a few weeks will separate them hopelessly now, so the poor young folks may as well be left to bill and coo together in peace until we sail for the Mauritius, which will be three times as far off as the Bonny River."

This policy was dangerous, and somewhat questionable; but we shall see how it ended.

Proceeding slowly hand in hand, and while such thoughts as these passed through the mind of papa, who, reclining in his easy-chair, was still lingering over his wine and walnuts, watching dreamily the last flush of the sun, that shone down the dingles of Acton Chase, Morley and Miss Basset reached the end of the green lane, where a handsome white gate closed the avenue that led to Laurel Lodge.

It was long and shady; a double row of giant laurels, from which the villa had its name, bordered the approach, and over these rose some venerable sycamores, in which the lazy rooks were croaking and cawing.

Laurel Lodge was a house of irregular proportions, the oldest part having been built in the middle of the seventeenth century, had small latticed windows, with carved mullions of red sandstone. The modern additions had been built by Mr. Basset, and were lofty and elegant, with large windows, some of which opened to the gravelled walks of the garden.

There was a handsome Elizabethan porch, surmounted, as some thought, rather ostentatiously by the Basset arms, a shield having three bars wavy, supported by two unicorns, armed and collared; and the pillars and arch of this porch, like the roof and clustered chimneys of the older part of the edifice, were covered with masses of dark ivy, fragrant honeysuckle, clematis, and brilliant scarlet-runners.

Through the vestibule beyond, with its tesselated floor and walls, covered with fishing, riding, and shooting appurtenances--rods, nets, boots, whips, guns, and shot-belts--Ethel led Morley to the door of the well-remembered dining-room, where, as we have said, Mr. Basset was still lingering in the twilight, over his full-bodied old port.

Though every feature of this comfortable English villa was known of old to Morley, after his three years' residence in a wigwam on the banks of the Bonny River, its aspect impressed him deeply now, and his eyes wandered rapidly over the furniture of carved walnut and marqueterie, inlaid with representations of game and fruit, the crimson velvet chairs, and old Rembrandt tables of quaint and beautiful designs, the buhl clock on the rich marble mantel-piece, the gorgeous vases of S?vres and Dresden china, the ivory puzzles and Burmese idols, of which he had glimpses between the parted silk and damask curtains of the drawing-room windows.

Then there were the Brussels carpets, the grates that glittered like polished silver, the black wolf and dun deer skins, and the eight-light chandeliers of crystal and Venetian bronze, with armour, pictures, statuary, and rare books in gorgeous bindings--in short, the tout-ensemble of Laurel Lodge, wherein taste, wealth, luxury, and comfort, were all so rarely and singularly combined, formed to the mind of poor Morley a powerful contrast to the cabin of Tom Bartelot's 200-ton brig, and to the before-mentioned wigwam, with its roof of palm-leaves and trellised walls of reeds and bamboo cane, through which the mosquitoes and the malaria came together by night.

"It is Morley, papa," said Ethel, as they entered; "he has come by the very train we expected, and has walked all the way from Acton station."

"The express from Liverpool; but, ah, my dear sir, it was not even quick enough for me. I would have come by telegraph if I could," said the young man, as Mr. Basset shook him warmly by the hand.

"Welcome back to England! welcome home, Morley!" said he. "Sit beside me, lad, and let me see how you look! Ring for wine and more glasses, Ethel. And so, after all your toil and danger, worldly matters have not prospered with you, eh?"

"No, sir," sighed the young man, with his eyes fixed tenderly on Ethel, who had flung her hat and parasol on the sofa, and seated herself beside him; "I have come back to England a poorer fellow than when I left it."

"I am deeply sorry for that, Morley--port or cherry? Under the sideboard are some Marcobrunner, Johannisberg, and Sauterne, too, I think--port you prefer?--then the bottle stands with you. Sorry for your sake, and the sake of others, to hear what you say."

As he spoke he did not glance at Ethel, who was filling Morley's glass; so she sighed and trembled, for it seemed, by his tone and manner, as if he still acknowledged the fact of her engagement with Morley Ashton, but considered it all at an end now.

"Matters have not prospered with me, either," said Mr. Basset, who was a healthy and florid-looking man, nearer fifty than forty, however, but with the dark hair already well seamed with grey; "quite the reverse," he continued, emphatically; "so that I cannot upbraid you with being on worse terms with fortune than myself. You have, of course, heard of all that has occurred?"

"Ethel has told me all," said Morley, sadly.

"Aye, fortune is fickle, and was well portrayed as blind, and as Shakspere has it:--

"'Will fortune never come with both hands full, But write her fair words still in foulest letters? She either gives a stomach and no food,-- Such are the poor in health; or else a feast, And takes away the stomach; such are the rich, That have abundance and enjoy it not."

"He can console himself with scraps from Shakspere, while my heart is bursting," thought Morley.

"And so Ethel has told you all?" resumed Mr. Basset, cracking another walnut of the fruit which had followed a luxurious dinner.

"Yes, sir, and in doing so has wrung the soul within me."

"Oh, Morley," said Ethel, placing her ungloved hand kindly upon his, "do not talk so mournfully."

"Aye, aye, lad," said Mr. Basset, thinking most of himself, as, with his head on one side, one eye closed, and the other admiring the ruby colour of his wine as it shone between him and the flushed sky, "at my age, though I am not very old, but have many settled habits, it is hard to leave one's native country, and to set out with these tender girls on a long, rough voyage; but needs must--you know the rest."

"And so Ethel and I meet again, only to be separated for ever," exclaimed Morley, while he pressed her hand within his own, and in a tone so mournful that Mr. Basset, who, like every matter-of-fact Englishman, hated scenes, as they worried him, fidgeted in his chair, and said to Ethel:

"Where is Rose? Has she not seen Mr. Ashton yet?"

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