A Romance of Wastdale Part 14

"I have waked up. You said I was dreaming. I have waked up, that's all. It is not the sleeper's fault if he hits the man who wakes him."

Gordon bent over as he spoke, and shot the words into Hawke's ear with a savage intensity. In a moment, however, he resumed his former composure.

"But we are wasting time, and we have not much time to waste, have we?

I want three letters."

Hawke dropped the pole of the axe and instinctively moved his right hand to protect his breast-pocket.

"Thank you," said Gordon. "I only wanted to know whether you had them with you. I felt sure you would have, but it was best to make certain.

Don't worry about them now. I will take them--afterwards."

He laid the slightest possible stress upon the word, and continued--

"The shawl is safe enough, too. I am carrying it now. I thought you would like to know that. Is there anything more? Oh, yes! You have taught me a lesson--never to conduct interviews at night with the blind up and the window open."

"Then you--you were outside?"

"Yes! I was outside," cried Gordon, his savage fury boiling over its barriers and sweeping him away on a full flow.

"The fool was asleep, was he? The fool was on the outhouse staring into your face. Who was the fool, eh? Did you think I was blind? Did you think I didn't see you were frightened when I met you yesterday!

Did you think I didn't see you watching my bedroom from the barn? What made you come back and turn my lamp out? Who was the fool, eh? Why, but for you I should never have known, never have suspected, never have killed you."

His voice had risen to a scream, and he thrust his face into Hawke's, livid with hate. A sudden access of pa.s.sion stung the latter into life; he pushed the face away from him and gathering all his strength, half struggled to his feet. On the instant Gordon slipped the steel point of the axe from the bandage round his arm and Hawke fell back, fainting and sick.

"d.a.m.n you!" he whispered, "and the girl, too!"

Gordon uttered a cry, and dying though the man was, struck him on the mouth with his clenched fist.

Hawke took the blow without a moan, fixed one steady look upon the other, and then let his head fall back upon the rock.

After that neither spoke.

A feeling of horror at this last action swept over Gordon. He reproached himself for the blow, and sought to replace the axe in the scarf. His fingers, however, were now too numbed; so he clenched them tightly round the arm and knelt there watching the blanching face and feeling the blood soak about his knees. In a moment or two he saw Hawke's eyeb.a.l.l.s quiver under the half-closed lids and he leaned across the body and blew out the lanthorn-light. The darkness rushed down between them, and almost immediately the storm broke in a pitiless shower of hail.

After awhile it pa.s.sed, and Gordon bethought him of the time, but he was now so starved by the cold that at first he was powerless to unclasp his hands. The feeling of utter helplessness threw him into an agony. He fancied that his hands were dead--dead hands frozen round the dead man's wrist with blood. He looked forward in his mind through the black hours of the night and saw the morning pour down the mountain side and touch the grey face by his knees--nay, more, bring the dalesmen up to discover him riveted to the man he had killed. With this last thought he summoned all his strength to his aid, and making a final effort wrenched his hands free. The body was lying motionless at his side, and he felt along it until he reached the breast. To take the letters, however, he had to unb.u.t.ton the coat, and he paused, shrinking from that. In the end he mustered courage for the task, reb.u.t.toned the coat, and groped his way cautiously to the summit, the rest of the ascent being no more than a rock-strewn slope. From there his path was easy, and although a high wind was now blowing, he descended rapidly. Half-way down he struck a glissade which rare winters of great snow form along an old stone wall, and so slid out of the mist.

CHAPTER X

The glissade stretched down towards a beck which flows between Lingmell and the flank of Scafell. So that when Gordon stopped at the end of the snow, a tinkling of water, as it splashed from stone to stone, rose to his ears, and there seemed to him something strangely sweet and peaceful in the sound. He advanced to its edge and washed carefully in the stream. Then he took his haversack from his shoulders and opened it. Kate Nugent's shawl was the first thing which his fingers touched, and the feel of it sent a s.h.i.+ver through his frame.

It reminded him too clearly of Hawke's scarf and the black stain widening over it. He took it out, and after it, a parcel. For a moment he wondered what that was, and then remembered that he had forgotten to eat his lunch. He repaired the omission on the instant, and proceeded to change his clothes.

That done, he sat down upon a stone, and went over carefully all that had occurred. Reflection showed him no opening for suspicion to arise, either from the deed itself or its attendant circ.u.mstances. Against the latter he had already guarded, while the broken fragments of gla.s.s, the presence of Hawke's own knife open by the side of the body, and even the scarf about his arm, which hung loose and clumsily after the ice-axe had been removed, would all point to the one conclusion-- that the wound was an accident and self-inflicted. Satisfied upon the point, Gordon picked up the clothes which he had discarded, wrapped them in the shawl, and continued his descent. At the bottom of the valley, however, instead of turning to the right in the direction of Wastdale Head, he bent away towards the Lake.

The strong wind, blowing up from the sea, had cleared the mist above his head and was chasing the clouds along the sky. Here and there a star could be seen winking from a blue gap, and so Gordon was able to distinguish when he reached the sh.o.r.e, that no loiterer was near to spy upon his acts. He felt in the pockets of the coat he was carrying and drew out the letters which he had taken from Hawke. Then he fastened the bundle securely about the biggest stone he could find and hurled it far out into the Lake. It sank with a loud splash, and Gordon looked quickly round thinking that some one must have noticed it. The only sound that he heard, however, was the wash of the ripples on the bank, and he turned and made hastily up the valley, across the fields, until he had left the village some hundreds of yards behind.

From there he crossed into the path which leads down from Styhead, and finally reached the farmhouse. It was close upon half-past eight, he noticed, when he entered the parlour. He explained his lateness to Mrs. Jackson by saying that he had taken refuge from the storm. She added, indulgently, that it was a long way to Rosthwaite.

"Oh I did not get as far after all," said he. "Has not Mr. Hawke come yet?"

"Mr. Hawke?"

"Yes! I never told you. I asked him, or rather left a note to that effect, to come up to dinner this evening. I ought to have told you, but the fact is I never thought of inviting him until I had left the house."

Mrs. Jackson disclaimed all responsibility for the dinner, and had not set eyes on Mr. Hawke.

"Then I won't wait for him," said Gordon. "Bring the dinner in! I will just go up and wash."

"And change your clothes."

"I haven't any clothes to change into," he said, with a laugh. "You might lay another plate," he added. "Mr. Hawke may appear yet."

So Gordon dined, and opposite to him a place was laid for the man who was lying dead on Scafell.

The one thing which troubled Gordon was the recollection of the blow he had struck with his fist. He despised himself for that; and besides, the look with which Hawke had returned it somehow remained fixed in his mind. Strive as he might, he could not banish it.

Everything else he had intended, and justice had dictated. But that blow!

At ten o'clock the Inn people sent up to inquire for their lodger.

They had not imagined anything amiss before, as they understood from Lawson that Hawke meant to stay late upon the fells.

"He said he was going to the Pillar," Gordon said, "and he went up Mosedale in that direction."

One dalesman, however, a.s.serted that he pa.s.sed Hawke not later than one in the afternoon by the church in the centre of the valley. He was then going towards Scafell.

Finally two search parties were organised--one to proceed to the Pillar Rock, the other to examine the cliffs of Scafell. Gordon elected to join the former, and they separately started off, with much narrating of past accidents to cheer them on their way.

"Ten men have I brought down from these mountains, stone dead," said one, "and this will be the eleventh."

He repeated his lugubrious statement so often, that Gordon found himself in the end humming the words to the cadence of his steps.

They reached the Rock at last, and this mockery of a search began and was kept up all through the freezing night. In the grey of the morning they came down the path again. A man was running towards them with the news that the body had been found, and he led them up to the cliffs on Scafell. Gordon stood by Hawke's side for a moment, as he lay stretched out in a frozen pool of blood, and then turned away sick; for he had noticed about the corners of his mouth a faint blue mark, like a bruise.

"You will carry him down," he said. "I will follow you."

The men understood his feelings, or rather thought they did, and lifted the body gently and bore it down to the village. On the way they pa.s.sed the glissade on the side of the mountain, and one of them stopped and pointed to the groove in the snow where Gordon had descended.

But he only said, "He will never come down that slide again, poor chap!"

Gordon watched them until they had disappeared round a headland, and then turned and looked down the crags.

"Not there!" he muttered to himself, with a shudder, and crossed over the mountain top down to the screes. He stopped in front of a steep, narrow gully, and far down he could see the quiet waters of the Lake lapping the base of it. He cast one look towards Wastdale. Eastwards the sun was rising over the Pa.s.s; "from Keswick," he thought. He took out of his pocket the three letters and handled them, and his eyes fell upon the signature.