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Dr. C. H. HOPWOOD, 
 CALSTOCK, Cornwall. 
 
A ROMANCE 
 OF WASTDALE 
 
NOVELS BY 
 A. E. W. MASON 
 
 THE WINDING STAIR 
 
 THE SUMMONS 
 
 THE TURNSTILE 
 
 THE WITNESS FOR THE 
 
 DEFENCE 
 AT THE VILLA ROSE 
 A ROMANCE OF WASTDALE 
 THE FOUR CORNERS OF 
 
 THE WORLD 
 RUNNING WATER 
 THE COURTSHIP OF 
 
 MORRICE BUCKLER 
 MIRANDA OF THE BALCONY 
 LAWRENCE CLAVERING 
 THE PHILANDERERS 
 ENSIGN KNIGHTLEY 
 CLEMENTINA 
 THE WATCHERS 
 THE FOUR FEATHERS 
 THE TRUANTS 
 THE BROKEN ROAD 
 
. %' 
 
 
 
 llf 
 
 A ROiMANCE OF 
 WASTDALE 
 
 A. E. W; MASON 
 
 HODDKR AND STOUCHTON 
 LIMITED LONDON 
 
 ♦ 
 
 
 ^1 
 
 

 M ade and Printed in Great lititain 
 ti»teU, WiUson 4- Viney, Ld., London ana Aylesbury, 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 " Mrs. Jackson ! " 
 
 Mrs. Jackson was feeding her ducks at the 
 beck behind the house. But the kitchen door 
 stood open, and she not only heard her name, 
 but recognised the voice which shouted it, 
 
 " It's 'Mi. Gordon," she said to the servant 
 who was with her, and she bustled through 
 the kitchen into the parlour, drying her hands 
 with her apron as she went. 
 
 David Gordon stood by the window, looking 
 dreamily out across the fields. He turned as 
 she entered the room, and shook hands with her. 
 
 " I have given you a surprise," he laughed. 
 
 " You have, indeed, ]\Ir. Gordon. I never 
 expected to see you again at Wastdale Head. 
 You should have written you were coming." 
 
 And she proceeded to hght the fire. 
 
 " I didn't know myself that I was coming 
 until yesterday." 
 I 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 "It is three years since you were here." 
 
 " Three years," Gordon repeated slowly. 
 " Yes 1 I did not realise it until I caught 
 sight of the farm-house again." 
 
 " You will be wanting breakfast ? " 
 
 " The sooner, the better. I have walked 
 from Boot." 
 
 " Already ? " 
 
 " It didn't seem really far ; " and a smile 
 broke over his face as he added — 
 
 " I heard my marriage bells ringing all the 
 way across Burnmoor." 
 
 Mrs. Jackson retired to the kitchen to 
 prepare breakfast and to ponder over his re- 
 mark. The result of her reflections was shown 
 in the unusual strength of the tea and in an 
 extra thickness of butter on the toast. She 
 decked the table with an assortment of jams, 
 and carefully closed the door which opened 
 into the lane, although the April sunUght was 
 pouring through it in a warm flood. It seemed 
 as if Gordon had gained an additional value 
 and herself an additional responsibility. She 
 even took a cushion from the sofa and placed 
 it on his chair, and then waited on him while 
 
A Romance of WastdaU 3 
 
 he breakfasted, nodding and smiling a discreet 
 but inquisitive sympathy. 
 
 On Gordon, however, her pantomime was 
 lost. His thoughts no longer chimed to 
 marriage bells. For Wastdale, and this farm- 
 house in particular, were associated in his 
 mind with the recollection of two friends, of 
 whom one was dead in reality, the other 
 dead to him ; and always vividly responsive 
 to the impression of the moment, he had 
 stepped back across the interval of the past 
 three years, and now dwelled with a strange 
 sense of loneliness amidst a throng of quicken- 
 ing memories. 
 
 The woman, however, got the upper hand in 
 Mrs. Jackson, and she suggested, tentatively — 
 
 " Then maybe, Mr. Gordon, you are going 
 to be married ? " 
 
 " You can omit the ' maybe,' " he laughed. 
 
 " Well, I should never have thought it 1 " 
 she exclaimed. 
 
 " Time brings in his revenges," said he. 
 
 " The way you three gentlemen used to 
 rail at women ! Well, there 1 " 
 
 " But, then, they weren't women. They 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 were Aunt Sallies of our own contriving— 
 mere pasteboard. We were young and we 
 didn't know." 
 
 IVIrs. Jackson inquired the date and place 
 of the ceremony. At Keswick, she was told, 
 and in a week's time. She floated out garrulous 
 on a tide of sentiment. She hoped that 
 Mr. Gordon's two friends would follow his 
 example and find out their mistake, not 
 noticing the shadow which her words brought 
 to her lodger's face. She dropped the name 
 of Hawke and the shadow deepened. 
 
 " I rather fancy," he said abruptly, " that 
 Mr. Hawke found out the mistake at exactly 
 the same time as I did myself." 
 
 Mrs. Jackson was a quick woman, and she 
 took his meaning from the inflection of his 
 voice. 
 
 " He was your rival 1 " 
 
 " I have not seen much of him lately." 
 
 She thought for a moment and said, " Then 
 it's just as well he's staying at the Inn." 
 
 Gordon sprang to his feet. 
 
 " At the Inn ? " he exclaimed. 
 
 " Yes," she answered. " He still comes 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 to climb at Wastdale every Easter. But he 
 has always stayed at the Inn, since you and 
 Mr. Arkwright have stopped away." 
 
 Gordon stood drumming with his fingers 
 on the table-cloth. A sudden impulse of a 
 sentimental kind had persuaded him to spend 
 his last week of bachelorhood alone in the 
 famihar privacy of this spot, and he had 
 obeyed it on the instant, thoughtlessly it 
 now appeared to him. He might have fore- 
 seen the likelihood of Hawke's presence. 
 After all, however, it could not matter. It 
 would be, perhaps, a little awkward if they 
 met, though, indeed, it need not be even 
 that. Their actual rivalry had ended with 
 the announcement of his engagement two 
 years ago. Hawke could gain no end by 
 sustaining the feud. There was, in truth, 
 no reason why they should not shake hands 
 over the matter. So he argued to himself, 
 desire pointing the argument and stifling 
 certain uneasy reflections as to the tenacity of 
 Hawke's nature. 
 
 He sat down to resume his breakfast. The 
 third member of the trio which for years 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 had made the farmhouse the resort durmg 
 Easter vacations claimed Mrs. Jackson's at- 
 tention. 
 
 " And Mr. Arkwright ? " she asked. 
 
 " He's dead," Gordon replied after a pause. 
 " He died last year in Switzerland. It was 
 an accident. I was with him at the time." 
 
 He spoke with spasmodic jerks and ended 
 with something like a sigh of relief. But if 
 Mrs. Jackson loved marriages, she hankered 
 after violent deaths, and so, while she ex- 
 pressed unbounded pity, she insisted upon 
 details. Gordon submitted reluctantly. 
 
 " It happened in the Oberland," he said, and 
 Mrs, Jackson took a chair. " We were coming 
 down a mountain towards the evening — Ark- 
 wright, myself, and a guide. We chanced 
 to be late. The descent was new to us, and 
 knowing that we should not get off the snow 
 before dark we looked out for a spot to camp 
 on. We came to a little plateau of rock just 
 as the night was falling, and determined to 
 remain there. The guide had a bottle of 
 wine left out of our provisions. We had kept 
 it back purposely." 
 
A Romaiice of Wastdale 
 
 Gordon paused for a moment and then went 
 on again with a certain dehberateness of 
 speech as though the episode fascinated him 
 in the teUing of it. 
 
 " Arkwright volunteered to draw the cork. 
 The neck of the bottle burst and cut into his 
 arm. It severed the main artery just above 
 the wrist. I sent the guide down to the 
 valley, but, of course, no help came until 
 the morning. He was dead then." 
 
 " And you stayed with him all the time ? " 
 
 " Yes I " said Gordon, and he rose from the 
 table. 
 
 Mrs. Jackson, however, failed to take the 
 hint. She wanted a description of his feel- 
 ings during that night of watching, and she 
 persisted until she had obtained it. 
 
 " I wonder you can bear to speak about it at 
 all ! " she said almost reproachfully when 
 he had finished. 
 
 Left to himself, Gordon became the prey 
 of a singular depression. The sensation of 
 horror which the recital of the incident re- 
 vived in him was intensified, not merely by 
 its sombre contrast with the former livcli- 
 
8 A Romance of Wast dale 
 
 ness of his thoughts, but by the actual sur- 
 roundings amongst which he stood. The 
 room itself was so suggestive of reminiscences 
 that it seemed instinct with the presence 
 of his dead friend. For the fact that he had 
 but lately entered it after a lapse of years 
 gave a fresh vividness to his memories. It 
 was as if the dust had been suddenly swept 
 from them by a rough hand. 
 
 He walked over to the oak chest which 
 stood against the wall by the fireplace. A 
 book in a red cover lay upon it and he took 
 it up. It was a novel which Arkwright had 
 written at the farmhouse, and it contained 
 an inscription to that effect from the author's 
 hand. 
 
 " I seem likely to pass a pleasant week," 
 he said to himself, and taking his hat, stepped 
 out into the clear sunshine. 
 
 But his thoughts ran ever in the same 
 channel. Each familiar object that he passed 
 recalled his friend, and the remembrance of 
 that night in the Alps hung like a black' cloud 
 about his heart. He tried to thrust it aside, 
 but the more earnestly he tried, the more 
 
A Romance of Wasidale 
 
 persistently it chained his attention, until in 
 the end it seemed to shadow forth some- 
 thing sinister, something almost of menace. 
 For some distance he followed the bed of 
 the valley and then struck upwards to the 
 right, on to the slopes of Scafell Pike. After 
 a while he stopped to light his pipe, and, turn- 
 ing, saw over against him the track mount- 
 ing in sharp zigzags towards the summit of 
 the Styhead Pass. It was as clearly defined 
 on the hill-side as a pencilled line on paper, 
 and his eyes followed its direction mechanically 
 until it bent over the edge of the Pass and 
 disappeared from view. Then equally me- 
 chanically he began to picture in his mind 
 its subsequent course. He had traced it 
 past the tarn and half the way to Borrowdale, 
 when of a sudden a smile dawned through 
 the gloom on his face, " The path to Kes- 
 wick ! " he thought. He traced it consciously 
 after that ; he saw it broaden out into a road, 
 and his imagination set a dainty figure in a 
 white dress and a sailor hat at the end of it. 
 
 Gordon had met Kate Nugent for the first 
 
10 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 time some three years before at Hawke's 
 home in London, and from the outset of their 
 acquaintance she had commenced to dominate 
 his thoughts, not so much on account of her 
 beauty as from a certain distinctness of per- 
 sonality which appealed to him at that time 
 with a very peculiar force. For she came to 
 him at a somewhat critical period in his life. 
 Left an orphan while yet a child, David had 
 spent his boyhood alone in the north of Scot- 
 land. His guardian — an uncle with a seat 
 in Parliament and an estate near Ravenglass 
 — he never saw ; his tutor — an unpractical 
 scholar of the old-fashioned type — he neglected, 
 in order to follow the marsh-lamps of his 
 own dreamy and somewhat morbid imagina- 
 tion. And so dividing his time between the 
 study of the more exuberant poets and solitary 
 rides along the bleak sea-coast, he mapped 
 out the world for himself upon a purely fanciful 
 plan. He first came into contact with actual 
 life on his migration to Oxford. He was 
 brought face to face with new facts and new 
 experiences, which, strive as he might, he 
 could not fit in with his theories. And, be- 
 
A Romance of Wasidale 11 
 
 sides, he seemed to see all around him men 
 actuated by the interests of truth toiling 
 noisily at the overthrow of creeds and erect- 
 ing nothing in their place. As a consequence, 
 his false ideaHsm crumbled beneath him, 
 he lost his self-reHance, and felt hemmed in 
 by a confused tangle of truth and falsehood 
 which there was no clue to help him to unravel. 
 The step between an intellectual scepticism 
 and personal cynicism is an easy one for most 
 men to take. Gordon strode over the inter- 
 vening gaps unconsciously the moment he 
 ceased to trust himself, since his own sensa- 
 tions had, of necessity, been the one standard 
 by which he judged. 
 
 His meeting with Kate Nugent, however, 
 changed the whole tenor of his mind. She 
 appeared to him the one real thing that he 
 had found in his journey through a world 
 of shadows. He pictured her standing out 
 white and clear from a background of shifting 
 haze, and his very self-distrust diminished 
 since ho referred his thoughts and actions 
 to his conception of her as to a touchstone for 
 the testing of them. 
 
12 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 After their engagement, she became almost 
 his religion. He re-fashioned a second world 
 in her image, faith coming to him like a child 
 bom from the joining of their hearts. His 
 ambitions, so long dulled to inaction, sprang 
 into new vigour and he followed their lead with 
 a confident patience. There was, in fact, an 
 element of quaint extravagance in his de- 
 votion, such as one finds mirrored in the 
 love-poems of the seventeenth century. 
 
 Hence it came about that as he walked 
 home in the fall of the afternoon, matching 
 the sunset with the colour of his thoughts, 
 the sight of the white Inn walls, prominent 
 in a dark clump of firs, recalled to him not 
 only the fact of Hawke's proximity, but his 
 desire to put an end to their estrangement. 
 The desire grew as he dwelled upon it, until 
 he began to feel an absolute repulsion from the 
 prospect of starting along this new stage of his 
 life at enmity with an old comrade. 
 
 He determined to make the overture, and 
 continuing his way onwards to the Inn, in- 
 quired for JVIr. Hawke. He was out, they 
 told him. He had waited until the postman 
 
A Romance of Wasidale 13 
 
 came at twelve, and had then set out for 
 the fells. Gordon rummaged m his pockets 
 and unearthed a card. He scribbled on it a 
 request that Hawke would visit him during 
 the evening, and turned back to the farm-house 
 in a glow of satisfaction. A wild fancy shot 
 through him that Hawke and himself had 
 been designedly brought together into the 
 seclusion of the valley. He laughed it aside 
 for the moment. 
 
 But it returned to him afterwards with 
 overwhelming conviction. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Austen Hawke strolled down from Yew- 
 barrow an hour later. He was a man of a tall 
 figure, spare of limb and lithe of movement, 
 with a keen, narrow face, which fitted itself 
 into one's memory. Inside his sitting-room it 
 was already dark, and he rang for lights and 
 stretched himself complacently in an arm-chair 
 before the fire. The mistress of the Inn an- 
 swered the bell and informed him, with in- 
 tervals between the words as she scratched 
 ofE the heads of refractory matches, that a 
 gentleman had called to see him during the 
 afternoon. Hawke swung round towards her, 
 a look of annoyance showing in his face. He 
 hastily ran over in his mind the names of his 
 friends. 
 
 " Did he leave no message ? " he asked in 
 perplexity. 
 
 The card was produced, and Hawke took it, 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 15 
 
 and stooping over the grate read Gordon's name 
 and invitation by the light of the fire. The look of 
 annoyance changed to one of utter incredulity. 
 He read the card again, peering at it as if he 
 expected each moment to see the letters dance 
 from their order and group themselves afresh. 
 By this time, however, the gas was lit, and aa 
 he rose erect, his eyes fell upon an envelope 
 addressed to him in a clear, bold hand, which 
 stood plain to view against the clock on the 
 mantelpiece. 
 
 " Mr. Gordon, of course, wrote his message 
 in here ? " he asked, and a note of anxiety 
 struggled through the indifference of his 
 tone. 
 
 He was assured, however, that his visitor 
 had come no further than the doorway of the 
 hall. 
 
 " You should have asked him in," he said 
 carelessly, and slipped the envelope into his 
 pocket. 
 
 After dinner he smoked his pipe in his chair 
 until the clock struck nine. Then ho took 
 out his watch, adjusted the hands exactly 
 to the hour, and walked up the lane to the 
 
16 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 farm. The door stood on the latch and ho flung 
 it open noisily. 
 
 The sound roused Gordon from a doze, and 
 he started suddenly to his feet. On the in- 
 stant Hawke stepped backwards to the thres- 
 hold and stood in the doorway, eyeing him 
 searchingly. For a moment the two men 
 measured one another in silence, and Gordon 
 fancied, with some wonderment, that there was 
 an expression of more than mere antagonism, 
 an expression of actual fear, in his visitor's 
 attitude. 
 
 " Well ? " said Hawke at last, and there 
 was a ring of defiance in his voice. 
 
 " Austen I " the other replied simply, and 
 he held out his hand. 
 
 There was no doubting the wistful sincerity 
 of his appeal ; and yet Hawke came forward 
 but slowly, and took the outstretched hand 
 with a watchful suspicion. 
 
 " You are a stranger here," he said. 
 
 Gordon answered the implied question. 
 
 " Well, I was only in the way at Keswick." 
 He stopped abruptly, mindful that he trod 
 delicate ground. 
 
A Romance of Wast dale 17 
 
 Hawke shot a rapid glance at him. 
 "Why?" he asked. 
 
 " Bridesmaids, you know. I was a flounder 
 in a shoal of mermaids," and Gordon laughed 
 apologetically. 
 
 But Hawke joined in the laugh, and said 
 — " Yes ; the bridegroom is of no value imtil 
 the wedding-day ; " and he added softly, "and 
 sometimes he is of no value after it." 
 
 Gordon smiled confidently and observed — 
 " At all events, you have not changed." 
 
 " My dear fellow, we are not all " He 
 
 cast about for an epithet less offensive than 
 that ready to his tongue. " We are not all 
 versatile." 
 
 " The adjective hardly explains my case ; 
 for I don't seem to have existed at all be- 
 fore." 
 
 " Don't," Hawke broke in. " Please don't. 
 I will take your sentiment for granted." 
 
 Gordon appreciated that he had brought the 
 rejoinder upon himself by a misplaced egotism, 
 and relapsed into his chair. Hawke came 
 and stood immediately above him, leaning 
 against the edge of the table. 
 
18 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 " And so," said he, " you came to Wast- 
 dale just to see me." He laid his hand on 
 Gordon's arm with a show of cordiality, but 
 he spoke slowly and with a faint flavour of irony 
 about the words. 
 
 " What made you think that ? " Gordon 
 asked in surprise. 
 
 " Your message, of course." 
 
 " You misunderstood it. I had no idea 
 you were here until I arrived myself. I meant 
 to spend the week at Ravenglass, but my 
 uncle was summoned to town yesterday. So 
 I thought that I would come over to the old 
 place again." 
 
 " Oh ! Is that all ? " 
 
 Hawke's voice told of relief. Gordon 
 noticed the change, and turned inquiring eyes 
 on him sharply. Just for the second their 
 glances crossed ; Hawke was off his guard ; 
 and it appeared to his companion that the 
 very spirit of malice was blazing triumphantly 
 in his eyes. Hawke rose hastily from the 
 table, and Gordon cried out — ■ 
 
 " Take care ! You will have the whisky 
 on the floor." 
 
A Romance of Wasidale 19 
 
 " I didn't notice it. Shall I help you ? " 
 
 " Thanks I " 
 
 Hawke measured out the whisky into the 
 glasses and filled them from the kettle which 
 sang on the fire. 
 
 " It's quite like old times," he said geni- 
 ally. 
 
 " Not quite ! " 
 
 " You mean Arkwright ? Yes, poor devil ! 
 I had forgotten him. Tell me how it hap- 
 pened." And he lay down on the sofa. 
 
 " Why, didn't you hear 1 " 
 
 " Only vaguely." 
 
 He hesitated, shot a furtive look at Gordon, 
 and added, tentatively — 
 
 " I was in India at the time." 
 
 " Were you in India, too ? " Gordon ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 Hawke turned his head to the wall to conceal 
 the smile on his face, and answered — 
 
 " Yes, I was there. But why ' too ' ? " 
 
 " Well, because " 
 
 " Yes ? " 
 
 " Well, Miss Nugent happened to bo at 
 Poonah." 
 
20 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 "Heally? But tell me about Arkwright." 
 
 For the second time that day Gordon re- 
 lated the story of the accident. 
 
 " Here's to better luck next time I " Hawke 
 yawned when be had finished. " By the 
 ^ay, you are not drinking. That is one 
 of the signs of impending matrimony, I 
 suppose." 
 
 " Oh, no ! " Gordon laughed. " Only you 
 have made it so confoundedly strong." 
 
 " It will help you to sleep." 
 
 " I shan't need help." 
 
 " Ah ! You look tired, and I am keeping 
 you up." 
 
 Hawke drew his watch from his pocket. 
 
 " By Jove, it's past eleven I " 
 
 He rose from the sofa and took bis 
 hat. 
 
 " Are you going ? " asked Gordon. 
 
 " Yes. Good night I " 
 
 Gordon went to the door. 
 
 "Don't you bother to come out ! " cried 
 Hawke quickly. 
 
 But Gordon Ufted the latch and stepped 
 out into the porch. Instantly Hawke slipped 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 21 
 
 by him and hurried across the little garden 
 to the gate. He looked eagerly up and down 
 the lane, but there was nothing to be seen. 
 The night was moonless and cloudy, with a 
 cold wind blowing from the north. 
 
 " Good night ! " he repeated as Gordon 
 joined him. " It's cold out here." 
 
 " What is the matter ? " Gordon inquired. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " Hawke turned 
 sharply to the speaker. 
 
 " You looked as if you expected to see some 
 one." 
 
 " Here ? At this time ? Why, I suppose 
 you and I are the only Uving beings awake for 
 ten miles round," and he laughed, uneasily 
 to Gordon's thinking. 
 
 " I shall see you to-morrow, I suppose ? " 
 
 " I doubt it," Hawke replied. " I mean to 
 cross into Eskdale, if it is fine, and come back 
 over Alickledoor, So I shall probably not 
 reach home till late." 
 
 And he started oil down the lane. 
 
 Gordon returned to the room, latched the 
 door, and came thoughtfully back to the fire. 
 "Why was Hawke afraid ? " he asked himself. 
 
22 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 Of the fact of his alarm there could be no doubt. 
 His sudden recoil when Gordon rose to greet 
 him was evidence enough by itself. But, 
 besides, there was the betrayal of relief when 
 he ascertained the absence of design in Gordon's 
 visit to the valley. And, beyond these par- 
 ticular proofs, throughout the interview sus- 
 picion had been visibly alert in the man, 
 showing in his face, in his words, in his very 
 posture. It must have been fear, Gordon 
 argued, which had prompted him to pretend 
 acceptance of the proffered reconciliation. 
 For that he did but pretend was plain from the 
 irrepressible irony in his voice, and, above 
 all, from that flash of malice which just for a 
 second had, as it were, lit up the face of his 
 mind. But the reason of it all ? Why was 
 Hawke afraid of him ? 
 
 Gordon's thoughts circled blankly about 
 the question. Finally he tried to forget it, 
 lit his candle, and went upstairs to bed. 
 Sleep, however, had now become impossible 
 to him. He had flogged his wits out of their 
 drowsiness, and he tossed from side to side 
 in a fever of tired unrest until his speculations 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 23 
 
 lost shape and form, and loomed vaguely 
 into premonitions of evil. The very muscles 
 of his limbs seemed braced like an athlete's, 
 with the sense of a coming contest. 
 
 Of a sudden, however, as he lay ransacking 
 his memory for the least detail of the con- 
 versation, it occurred to him that he had left 
 the lamp burning in the parlour. He felt 
 for the matches at his bedside, and as he 
 opened the box he heard a light sound as of a 
 cautious step rise through the open window. 
 He struck a match, it flared up into a flame 
 Eind the sound was repeated more distinctly 
 — a hurried shuffle of the pebbles. 
 
 Gordon remained quite still in his bed, and 
 the match burned down to his fingers. But 
 there was no further movement. Then he 
 rose and crept to the window. The night 
 was like a bandage before his eyes. But after 
 a while it thinned to a veil, and he made 
 out the barn wall facing him (for his room 
 lay at the side of the house), and as he 
 watched something moved from the shadow 
 of it, stood for a second in the open opposite 
 the window, and then slipped round the 
 
24 A Romance of IVasidale 
 
 corner of the barn and disappeared down 
 the lane. 
 
 It could be no one but Hawke, Gordon 
 thought. The man's own remark flashed 
 into his mind. " I suppose that you and I 
 are the only Uving beings awake for ten miles 
 round." For some reason he had been wait- 
 ing until all was quiet in the house. Gordon 
 flung on his clothes hurriedly, lit the candle, 
 and went downstairs. But as he pushed open 
 the door of the parlour a sudden gust of wind 
 extinguished the light in his hand. The room 
 was in darkness ; only facing where he stood 
 there was a panel of twilight, and through it 
 he could see the boughs of trees rising and 
 falling. 
 
 The door into the lane stood open, and the 
 lamp had been turned out. 
 
 Gordon stood fixed there in a panic, listen- 
 ing. But no sound menaced him. Inside, 
 the beat of the clock merely emphasized the 
 silence ; outside, the wind moaned among 
 the hills with a dreary lift and drop, like snrf 
 upon a distant beach. He walked through the 
 garden and strained his eyes up and down 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 25 
 
 the road. No moving thing was visible, but 
 he remembered that Hawke had scanned 
 the surroundings too, and he hung on the gate, 
 charged with expectancy. 
 
 After a time he noticed a white speck in the 
 black of the opposite field. He observed it 
 casually at first, but it grew larger and ap- 
 proached him, and shaped itself into the 
 figure of a woman. She climbed over a stile 
 in the boundary wall facing the gate and 
 brushed quickly by without noticing his 
 presence. She was closely muffled in a large 
 shawl, 80 that Gordon could see nothing of 
 her face. But it struck him, from the mo- 
 mentary glimpse of her which he caught as 
 she swung past him, that there was some- 
 thing familiar in her gait and bearing. The 
 perception was a spark to the train of 
 his fears. They flashed into one monstrous 
 conjecture. Gordon thrust it down ; it sprang 
 up again and clutched at his throat, stifling 
 him. 
 
 Beyond that field, the track from Styhead 
 — the track which he had watched that 
 afternoon — ran towards the lake. If you came 
 
26 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 from the Pass to the upper part of Wastdale 
 — say to the Inn — you crossed the field, you 
 joined the lane at the very spot where Gordon 
 stood. And over the Pass the woman had 
 come — must have come. For Gordon's farm 
 was the outpost of the village. The next house 
 was built in Borrowdale. 
 
 In the stillness he could hear the foot- 
 steps rattling on the loose stones. Then all 
 at once they stopped, and Gordon felt his 
 heart stop with them. The silence, however, 
 pointed to the necessity of speed, and 
 he followed the woman cautiously down 
 the lane, creeping close under cover of the 
 wall. 
 
 But there was no one outside the Inn, and 
 no sign of life within it. The front stared 
 bUndly into the night. He stole up to the 
 door and laid his ear to the panel. A second 
 after the bolt grated with an almost imper- 
 ceptible jar as it was eased into its socket. 
 He just heard a faint rustling sound as of 
 feet stealthily receding along a flagged pas- 
 sage, and all was quiet again. 
 
 He raised his hand to the bell, but a 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 27 
 
 sudden thought checked his impulse. Sup- 
 pose that his conjecture was false I And 
 yet another thought came to second the 
 first. Suppose that his conjecture was 
 true I His arm dropped nervously to his 
 side. For the girl's sake he dared not rouse 
 the inmates. 
 
 And yet what action should he take ? He 
 stood paralysed, feeling the question beat 
 into his brain like a hammer, until a yellow 
 beam of light leaped out on to the trees at 
 the west comer of the house. Gordon hurried 
 round to the spot and perceived that it came 
 from a window on the first floor in the end of the 
 building. He looked eagerly about for a means 
 of reaching it. Immediately under the window 
 the space was clear, but a little farther towards 
 the back of the Inn an outhouse with a thatched 
 sloping roof jutted forth at a right angle. 
 From the extreme point of that roof Gordon 
 believed that he could command a view of the 
 room. In this way he would at all events 
 ascertain the truth. 
 
 A short examination showed him a tree 
 which leaned against the far side of the build- 
 
28 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 ing. Scaling the trunk, he crept out along a 
 bough, dropped lightly on the thatch, and 
 crept up to its apex. Over the edge he 
 looked into the room, as from the opposite 
 point at the base of a triangle. Three-fourths 
 of its area were within his view, and this was 
 what he saw. 
 
 Hawke sat almost facing him in front of 
 a table with his back towards a blazing fire. 
 A number of letters lay before him, and he 
 was evidently reading them aloud, for now 
 and again he looked up with narrowed eyes 
 and a crafty smile, much as Gordon re- 
 membered him when he held a winning hand 
 at whist. 
 
 The sex of his visitor was revealed by a 
 shawl trailing on the hearthrug. But of her 
 person, Gordon caught not so much as a 
 glimpse. For she stood on the near side of 
 the room, concealed from him. 
 
 Hawke, as he finished each letter, placed - 
 it methodically on a file which lay by his side. 
 One, however, seemed longer than the rest 
 and afforded him peculiar interest. He turned 
 back to the first page and read it a second 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 29 
 
 time, pointing here and there to passages 
 with his finger. All at once the slender 
 figure of a girl moved into the light. She 
 passed round the table and stood behind 
 Hawke's shoulder, her face gleaming pale as 
 ivory from a cloud of tumbled hair. Gordon 
 recognized her on the instant. It was Kate 
 Nugent. She bent over Hawke as if to follow 
 h im more closely, and with a sudden clutch 
 tore the paper from his hand and flung it into 
 the fire. Hawke started to his feet, trans- 
 figured. Some such flame as was shrivelling 
 the letter seemed to leap across his face. He 
 pinned Kate's wrist to the table and thrust 
 his head close down upon hers. What he 
 said Gordon could not distinguish for the closed 
 window, but he noticed a savage incisiveness 
 about the movement of his lips, and saw the 
 veins swell upon his forehead and along his 
 throat. 
 
 For a moment the girl confronted him, re- 
 turning glance for glance, but only for a mo- 
 ment. The defiance flickered out of her face, 
 her lips shaped to an entreaty, and, with 
 a meek gentleness which was infinitely piti- 
 
30 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 ful, she unclasped the fingers about her 
 wrist. She moved towards the window, 
 stumbling as she went. She felt blindly for 
 the catch, unfastened it as though her 
 hands were numbed, and slowly lifted 
 the sash. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 She leaned against the sill, gazing into the 
 darkness. After a while she turned. Hawke 
 was watching her with a complacent smile. 
 
 " And it pleases you to torture me I You 
 enjoy seeing a woman suffer. I couldn't 
 have believed that any man could be such 
 a coward and so mean ! " 
 
 Hawke laughed pleasantly. 
 
 " Give them to me I " she cried. 
 
 " Think ! " he answered in a mock appeal. 
 " They will be my only consolation after 
 you are married," 
 
 " Give them to me I " she cried again. 
 
 Hawke was standing by the fireplace and 
 she moved towards him, changing her tone 
 to one of wondering reproach. 
 
 " You can't mean to keep them I You are 
 just laughing at me — for the minute. Yes I 
 yes 1 I know. That was your way. But 
 
82 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 you will give me the letters in the end, won't 
 you ? Look I I will kneel to you for them. 
 Only give them to me I " And she sank on 
 her knees at his feet before the fire. 
 
 " They wiU be much safer with me," he re- 
 plied. " You might leave them about. David 
 might pry. And it would strain even his 
 innocence to misunderstand them." 
 
 " Can you think I should keep them ? " she 
 said with a shiver of disgust. *' Give them 
 to me or burn them yourself I Yes I " she 
 continued, feverishly, clutching his arm, 
 " burn them yourself — now — here — and I wiU 
 thank you all my life." 
 
 She stirred the coals into a blaze. 
 
 " See 1 They will burn so quickly," and 
 she darted out her hands towards the 
 
 file. 
 
 Hawke snatched it away. " No, no I " he 
 laughed. " You must vary your game if 
 you mean to win." 
 
 He reached up and hung it on the mirror 
 over his mantelpiece. 
 
 " There I " said he. " You will have to 
 jump for them." 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 33 
 
 The girl stared at him incredulously ; the 
 words seeming to her some trick of her 
 strained senses. But she glanced upwards 
 to the file and sank back with a low 
 moan. 
 
 " Will nothing touch you ? " she said. 
 
 For a moment there was a pause. Only 
 the noise of the brook laughing happily as 
 it raced over the stones behind the house 
 broke the silence in the room. Kate heard 
 it vaguely, and it awoke a reminiscence. 
 
 " Do you remember ? " she said. " At 
 Poonah ? There was a stream running past 
 the verandah there." 
 
 She was speaking wearily, with closed eyes, 
 and the firelight played upon a face as white 
 and impassive as a wax mask. 
 
 " Yes I I remember," answered Hawke, his 
 voice softening with the memory of those few 
 months in India, The recollection was not of 
 what they had thought or said or done — 
 that would not have moved him ; but simply 
 of how he had felt towards her. He stood and 
 watched her curiously. The dark lashes be- 
 gan to glisten, and then all in a moment her 
 3 
 
34 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 apathy broke up, and she was shaking in an 
 agony of tears. 
 
 " I was never so hard to you," she faltered 
 between her sobs. 
 
 The words floated out freely to Gordon and 
 set his senses reeling. In Hawke they deepened 
 the phantom tenderness already aroused. 
 There was something so childlike in their sim- 
 plicity. Indeed, as she crouched upon the floor 
 in her abandonment, her white frock stained 
 by her long journey, her sash all crumpled, 
 her loosened hair curling vagrantly about her 
 neck, and her slender figure quivering down 
 to the tips of her shoes, she looked little more 
 than a child masquerading in the emotions of 
 a woman. 
 
 He took down the file and swung it irreso- 
 lutely to and fro upon his finger. Kate turned 
 to him impulsively. 
 
 " Give them to me ! You promised you 
 would if I came to fetch them. You can't 
 break that promise now ! Think what you 
 have made me risk ! Suppose they find 
 out at home ? It would have been cruel 
 enough if that had been the only danger. 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 35 
 
 But to bring me to the village where you 
 and Dav — where you and he are the only 
 strangers ! " 
 
 " That was not my fault," Hawke interposed. 
 " How could I tell he was going to blunder 
 over here ? I only met him this afternoon. 
 However, you needn't be afraid. The fool's 
 asleep." 
 
 Gordon felt an almost overpowering im- 
 pulse to laugh aloud. The irony of the situa- 
 tion was the one thing which his mind could 
 grasp. However, he set his teeth fast to 
 restrain the desire. He would learn all that 
 was to be known first. He could disclose him- 
 self to Hawke afterwards. 
 
 " Arc you sure he suspects nothing ? " Kate 
 asked. 
 
 " Perfectly. I was with him this evening, 
 I tell you. He left his lamp burning, so that 
 I had to wait until the place was quiet to put 
 it out, for fear you should mistake the house. 
 There is nothing to fear. Why, he told me 
 that ho hadn't even existed until he met 
 
 you." 
 
 " Don't 1 " Kate exclaimed. 
 
36 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 You need not reproach yourself for his 
 credulity. They say it's quite good for a 
 man to believe in a woman." 
 
 Kate remained silent, knowing that replies 
 were but fuel to his sneers. But her eyes 
 caught the clock and awoke her to the lapse 
 of time. 
 
 " Look ! " she cried. " It is past one. I 
 must go back, and it is so far. Give me the 
 letters, I am tired," 
 
 Hawke determined to comply. So much 
 the sight of her fresh, young beauty, drooping 
 at his feet, had wrung from him. But he 
 was an epicure where women were concerned. 
 He took a natural delight in evoking their 
 emotions, and when the display gratified him, 
 he allowed no obtrusive knowledge of its cost 
 to them to abridge his enjoyment. So he 
 merely repeated — 
 
 " They will be safe with me." 
 
 " I cannot trust you." 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 The question rang cold and sharp, like the 
 crack of a pistol. Kate looked at his face 
 and realised that she had lost her ground. But, 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 37 
 
 8ts she had said, she was tired. She was 
 too over-wrought to choose her phrases. 
 
 " I dare not marry him and leave those 
 letters in your hands." 
 
 *' Why not ? You have trusted me with 
 more than your letters." 
 
 The brutality of the remark was emphasised 
 by the harshness of his tone. But she re- 
 plied, quietly — 
 
 " And you taunt me with my trust ! Surely 
 that is reason enough." 
 
 " You are afraid that I shall use them 1 " 
 
 "I don't know. I only know that if you 
 keep them, I may be his wife, but you 
 will be my master ; and I dare not face that." 
 
 The explanation appeased Hawke. It 
 warmed his vanity and disposed him to reward 
 BO clear an appreciation of his power. Only 
 the reward she asked was nothing less than the 
 renunciation of that power. He paused over 
 that. 
 
 " Tell me," Kate continued, " why did you 
 force me to come here ? " 
 
 " I am not sure," he replied, musingly. 
 " Perhaps I wanted to see you again." 
 
38 yl Romance of Wastdale 
 
 " No ! That was not why. You would 
 have come to me yourself, if that had been 
 the cause." 
 
 " What was the reason, then ? " Hawke 
 smiled indulgently. This scrutiny of his in- 
 tentions added to his satisfaction. It lifted 
 him in his self-esteem, attributed to him an 
 unusual personality. For, as a rule, people 
 find the twenty-four hours barely long enough 
 to discover what their neighbours do, and 
 so are compelled to leave their thoughts 
 and aims alone. Hawke loomed larger on 
 his own horizon, the more particularly be- 
 cause the analyst was a young woman and 
 well-favoured. 
 
 " What was the reason ? " 
 
 " Just my marriage. You felt that I was 
 slipping out of your grasp — escaping you. 
 I know you so well." 
 
 " But it's almost a year since I have seen 
 you. I have left you alone during all that 
 time. So, even if I had possessed any power, 
 you can't urge that I have used it." 
 
 " No I But because you possessed it," 
 Kate insisted. " Because you were certain 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 39 
 
 you possessed it ; and so you were content 
 to let things lie. Now, however, everything 
 was changing. I was escaping you ; and 
 you made me come here at night, across that 
 horrible lonely pass, just to assert your 
 mastery over me — just to convince your- 
 self it was real. Don't you see ? I dare 
 not go back and leave those letters with 
 
 you." 
 
 Hawke wavered. If he gave her what she 
 wished, she would escape him, as she had 
 said. She would pass clean beyond his reach. 
 She would have no fear of him — no strong 
 feeling of any kind. 
 
 " Suppose that I give you your way," he 
 said, hesitatingly ; " what is going to happen 
 between you and me ? " 
 
 The unexpected question scared the girl, 
 and she answered, catching her breath — 
 
 " Everything was over between us — ages 
 ago, it seems to me. You have not seen me 
 for a year. You said so yourself." 
 
 " Yes ! I know," he replied, slowly, 
 and Kato felt that he was watching her 
 keenly. " But now that I do see you again. 
 
40 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 it is like meeting you for the first time 
 without the trouble of having to make 
 friends." 
 
 Kate half rose to her feet, with a slight 
 cry. 
 
 " Don't get up ! " Hawke exclaimed, 
 and he smoothed her hair caressingly with 
 his hand. " You look so pretty like 
 that." 
 
 She clenched her nails in her palms. Her 
 whole nature rose against the man. The 
 mere touch of his fingers turned her sick. 
 At last, however, she forced herself to 
 meet his gaze. She saw that he was 
 going to speak, and began first, coaxing him, 
 while a deadly humiliation set her cheeks 
 ablaze. 
 
 " Friends ? Yes I We might be friends. 
 Only give me the letters, and I will think of 
 you as a friend 1 " 
 
 " For just so long as it takes you to reach 
 Keswick." 
 
 " No ; always," she said simply. '* You 
 don't know what a woman can forgive when 
 once she has felt as I have felt towards you.'* 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 41 
 
 There was a pause. Hawke suddenly 
 stripped the letters off the file. 
 
 " I will give them to you," he said. 
 
 Kate held out her hands to him eagerly, 
 with a low cry of joy. But Hawke dropped 
 the packet on the table, and seized her out- 
 stretched wrists. 
 
 " But they have their price," he whispered, 
 bending over her. 
 
 Kate shrank away in a whirl of terror. But 
 his grasp only tightened, and he drew her to- 
 wards him, laughing. 
 
 "Only a kiss," he said. "One kiss for 
 each." 
 
 " No 1 " She almost shouted the word. 
 
 " Hush 1 " he laughed. " You will rouse 
 the house. One kiss for each," and he 
 laughed again almost hysterically. 
 
 " It is not a heavy price — it is not even a 
 new price. You have paid it before with no- 
 thing to buy. Think of the distance you have 
 come, of the horrible lonely pass \ " 
 
 He repeated her words with a burlesque 
 shudder. But the taunts fell upon deaf ears. 
 Kate was engrossed in the shame of hia pro- 
 
42 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 posal. It was so characteristic of him, she 
 thought. He had chosen the one device which 
 would humiliate her most effectually. Its 
 very puerility added to her sense of degrada- 
 tion. There was a touch of the ludicrous 
 in the notion so grotesquely incongruous with 
 the pain it caused her. She pictured the 
 Bcene with a spectator. " How he would 
 laugh I " she thought, bitterly. However, 
 there would be no spectator — and it was the 
 only way. 
 
 " Well ? " Hawke asked. 
 
 "Yes!" she replied. 
 
 He released her wrists, and she stood up 
 and faced him. He took the letters and 
 handed them to her, one by one ; and for 
 each letter that he gave her, she kissed him 
 on the lips. 
 
 And outside the window was the spectator. 
 Only he did not laugh. 
 
 Hawke also had grown serious. The sight 
 of Kate Nugent after so long an interval, the 
 familiar sound of her voice, and to some de- 
 gree also a certain distorted pleasure which 
 he drew from the knowledge of Gordon's 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 43 
 
 proximity, had served to prepare his passions. 
 Now they were tinder to the touch of her lips. 
 So, as he let the last letter go and she turned 
 her face upwards to complete the bargain, 
 he suddenly placed his hands behmd her 
 shoulders, drew her towards him, and returned 
 her kiss with a fervour. 
 
 The change in him came almost as a relief 
 to Kate. It diminished her sense of humilia- 
 tion. For the moment he began to show 
 passion, the less she felt herself his toy. So, 
 for a second, she did not resist his embrace. 
 Then she struggled to free herself. 
 
 " I have paid you," she said. 
 
 Hawke dropped his arms, and she moved 
 towards the fireplace. One by one, she noted 
 the dates of the letters, tore them across and 
 let them fall into the flames. Then she 
 stood thinking. 
 
 " You have not given me all." 
 
 "All I showed you." 
 
 " There are four more, written on my way 
 homo from Calcutta, Aden, Brindisi, and 
 London." 
 
 "Three 1 You were rude enough to burn one." 
 
44 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 " Where are they ? " 
 
 " Here ! " Hawke tapped his breast pocket 
 as he spoke. 
 
 " Fulfil your bargam ! Give them to 
 me! " 
 
 " They will cost more." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The strain upon Gordon's nerves had become 
 intolerable. When he first mounted the out- 
 house roof he had been wholly absorbed in 
 the horror of his conjecture that Hawke's 
 midnight visitor was the girl to whom he 
 was betrothed, and the need of either verify- 
 ing or disproving it was the one thing clear 
 to him amid the turmoil of his brain. Of 
 what the visit might actually imply he took 
 no thought. Now, however, he knew ; the 
 interview which he had witnessed left him not 
 a glimmer of doubt. But during the two 
 years of their engagement, Kate Nugent had 
 80 grown into the heart of his life, had be- 
 come so real a part of him, that she was not 
 easily dethroned from his respect. He clung 
 instinctively to a vague hope that there might 
 have been some compelling cause of wliioh 
 he knew nothing to account for her subjeo- 
 
46 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 tion to Hawke. That this subjection meant 
 treachery to him, treachery of an unpardonable 
 kind, whatever its cause, he realised in a way, 
 but as yet did he not feel it. The blow had 
 stunned his reason, had even dulled his senses, 
 had, in a word, struck at the very roots of 
 his being. He was adrift in a maze of bewilder- 
 ment. The scene he was witnessing grew in 
 the end shadowy and unreal. Even Hawke 
 seemed to lose his individuality ; he became 
 just a detail in the sum of the mystery, a thing 
 to be explained, not a man to be punished. 
 Gordon, in fact, was left conscious of but 
 one feeling — the overwhelming desire to see 
 the woman he had worshipped face to face 
 with him, to speak with her, and realising 
 the necessity of getting solid ground beneath 
 his feet, if he was to accomplish his wish, 
 he clambered from his perch — just too soon 
 to see Kate strike Hawke across the mouth, 
 as her answer to the last words he had only 
 dimly heard. 
 
 Gordon reached the earth securely and crept 
 softly back to his garden gate. The sky had 
 cleared during the last half hour, and the 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 47 
 
 valley lay pure and clean in the starlight. 
 After a while a sound reached him. It struck 
 upon muffled senses at first, meaninglessly ; 
 but its continued repetition fixed his attention, 
 and he perceived that it was the sound of 
 Kate's footsteps on the stones again at the 
 bottom of the lane. She was returning. 
 Gordon was still in that dazed condition when 
 the brain, unable to take a complete impression, 
 or, to speak more plainly, unable to combine 
 its different impressions into one whole, fixes 
 itself upon some small particular sensation 
 and magnifies that, to the thorough exclusion 
 of the rest. So, now as he listened to her 
 steps drawing nearer and nearer, he noticed 
 acutely a diflerence in the manner of her walk, 
 a certain hesitancy, absent when she swept 
 by him on her way to the Inn. Then her 
 footfalls had rung surely and rhythmically, 
 betokening some quest in view ; now they 
 wavered, timidly, with uncertain beats as if 
 the hope had gone out of her limbs. The 
 sound was somehow familiar to Gordon, and, 
 curiously ransacking his memories, he dis- 
 covered the reason. lie had marked women 
 
48 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 walk like that, with the same weariness, with 
 the same hopelessness, late at night in the 
 quiet of the London streets. This chance 
 association of ideas acted on him like a shock. 
 It woke him from his stupor, revivified him, 
 set him with clear vision fronting facts. He 
 grasped the full meaning of Kate's interview 
 with Hawke. It rose before him like an 
 acted scene in a play, and he recollected 
 with a sudden horror those last words, " They 
 will cost more." How long was it since he 
 had climbed down from the outhouse roof ? 
 How long had he been waiting by the gate ? 
 He had been unconscious of time. Hours 
 might have lapsed for all he knew. Mean- 
 while the steps drew nearer. He saw her 
 plainly advancing towards him. She was 
 walking with her eyes on the ground, and so 
 did not observe him barring her path until 
 she almost knocked against him. She lifted 
 her head, stood for a second looking search- 
 ingly into his face, as if he were a ghost, the 
 fancied embodiment of her fears, and then, 
 with an inarticulate moan like the cry of 
 the dumb, she reeled agaiast the wall of the 
 
A Romance of Wast dale 49 
 
 lane. Gordon heard her breath coming 
 and going in quick jets and the scrabbling 
 of her finger-nails as she clutched at the 
 stones. 
 
 " Is it you ? " she said, attempting a light 
 surprise. " How you startled me ! I am 
 late, very late. I was delayed. I came over 
 to— to " 
 
 '* To recover your letters," Gordon broke 
 in bitterly upon her labouring effort to dig 
 up an excuse. " You were right to come 
 late. That kind of errand can't be run by 
 daylight.^ 
 
 Kate drew herself up and moved toward 
 him, but he thrust his hands out with a gesture 
 of repulsion to check her approach. 
 
 " Those last three letters ? " 
 He hue them still." 
 Come in ! " Gordon said. The relief he 
 experienced gave a gentleness to the tone 
 of his voice. That loathsome dread at all 
 events was dispelled. For even then ho 
 did not doubt the truth of her words. 
 
 " Ck)mo in ! " and ho turned and went into 
 
 the parlour. The girl followed him in ailenco, 
 4 
 
 C( 
 
50 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 drew a chair close to the dying fire and hung 
 over it, shivering. Gordon lit the lamp, 
 saying — 
 
 " Yes ; it is cold. These April nights always 
 are up here." 
 
 Kate looked at the clock, and Gordon's 
 eyes followed her gaze. The hands pointed 
 to half -past one. He had heard her implore 
 Hawke that it was past the hour, some 
 time before he quitted his post of obser- 
 vation. So there could have been but the 
 briefest interval between her departure and 
 his own. 
 
 •* Be quick 1 What do you want with me ? 
 I have no time to lose ! " 
 
 Kate flung the words at him petulantly. 
 The knowledge that she had been discovered 
 exasperated her against Gordon. 
 
 " Well, why don't you speak ? " 
 
 She turned towards him. Gordon was still 
 standing at the table by the lamp. For, 
 now that his object was attained and she 
 was alone with him, he found no words to 
 express the questions he had meant to ask. 
 The Ught fell full upon the delicate beauty 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 51 
 
 of her face, and indeed nearly drove the ques- 
 tions themselves from his mind. " You al- 
 ways look to me as if you had just come out 
 of a convent," he had once said to her ; and 
 that sentence most exactly indicated the 
 nature of the passion he had felt for her — 
 an intense love refined and exalted by a blind, 
 unreasoning reverence. There was, in truth, 
 a certain air of spirituality about her manifest 
 to most people on their first introduction. 
 But it belonged to the face, not to the ex- 
 pression. It was due to the fragile purity 
 of her features, not to the mind which ani- 
 mated them, and was consequently more 
 noticeable when she was in repose. The 
 impression, as a rule, wore off upon a closer 
 acquaintance, but Gordon had fallen in love 
 and saw her always through the mist of his 
 feelings. 
 
 So the memory of all that she had meant to 
 him kept hira silent now. His thoughts seemed 
 almost a sacrilege — plainly impossible to speak 
 unless Kate gave him a decided lead. He 
 waited and watched her. The skin of her 
 wrist had broken when Hawke gripped it, 
 
52 A llomance of Wastdale 
 
 and every now and then a drop of blood 
 would fall on to her white dress and trickle 
 down in a red wavering line. The sight 
 somehow fascinated Gordon, and as each 
 drop fell he waited and watched for the 
 next. 
 
 To Kate, his silence became intolerable. 
 She would have preferred reproaches, abuse, 
 even violence — anything, in a word — to this 
 leaden reticence. For it accused her more 
 sharply than any words. Her lover had al- 
 ways been as an easy book to her keen in- 
 telligence, and she could read clearly enough 
 that what kept his lips locked now was the 
 conflict between his new knowledge and his 
 old loyalty. In a flash she imagined Hawke's 
 behaviour under the like circumstances and 
 contrasted it with Gordon's bearing. Side 
 by side the two men toed the line for her 
 mental inspection, and the result was a feminine 
 outcry against Fate, the Powers above and 
 below — what you will, in a word, except her 
 concrete self. 
 
 " What brought you over here ? " she cried. 
 " You said you were going to Ravenglass. 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 53 
 
 You told mo so. What brought you over to 
 Wastdale ? " 
 
 She spoke fiercely, almost vindictively, 
 and it seemed as if the pair had suddenly 
 changed places, as if she were the accuser 
 and he the culprit, standing meekly self- 
 condemned. Indeed, to complete the il- 
 lusion, there was even a tinge of remorse in 
 his tone aa he answered her. 
 
 " God, perhaps. Who knows ? " 
 
 " Oh I yes, yes, yes I " she went on. " Preach 
 to me 1 Preach to me 1 Go on I Only be 
 quick about it and make the sermon 
 short 1 " 
 
 " Don't, Kitty ! " he said, and added, wist- 
 fully, " It can't be your true self that is 
 speaking." 
 
 " Yea, it is," she replied, struggling with 
 a sense of pity for him (evoked by the quiet 
 sadness of his voice). " My very own self, 
 my real true self, that you have never known 
 — that you never would know. You always 
 had wrong ideas about me. I tried to open 
 your eyes at first, but it was no good, and 
 1 gave it up. You always dressed me up in 
 
54 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 virtues that didn't fit me. I used to feel as 
 if I were wearing a strait- waistcoat." 
 
 Gordon drew up a chair and sat opposite to 
 her on the other side of the fireplace. 
 
 " Then it was all my fault," he said. 
 
 Kate glanced at him quickly, but there 
 was no trace of irony in his manner. He was 
 speaking quite seriously. As a matter of fact, 
 it had just begun to dawn on him that a frank 
 expectation of ideal behaviour is the most 
 exacting form of tyranny a man can exercise 
 over a woman. 
 
 " No," she replied. " No I It was my 
 fault. I ought never to have become engaged 
 to you ; for I never loved you, even at the 
 beginning. Oh, it is no use shirking the 
 truth now," she went on, as Gordon rose 
 with a cry of pain. " I never loved you. I 
 realised that very soon after we were engaged. 
 I had always liked you. I liked you better 
 than any man I had met, and so in time 1 
 thought I might come to love you as well. 
 I don't know whether I ever should have 
 reached that if I had been left alone. But 
 you made it impossible. You would not 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 55 
 
 see that I had faults and caprices. You would 
 not see that those very faults pleased me, 
 that I meant to keep them, that I did not 
 want to change. No ! Whenever- you came 
 to me, I always felt as if I was being lifted up 
 reverently and set on a very high and a 
 very small pedestal. And there I had to 
 stand, with my heels together, and my toes 
 turned out, in an attitude of decorum until 
 you had gone. Well, you want people with 
 flat heels to enjoy that. I always wore high 
 ones, and the attitude tired me." 
 
 Instinctively she stretched one foot out 
 as she spoke. The sparkle of the firelight on 
 the buckle caught Gordon's eye, and he saw 
 that she was wearing thin kid slippers with 
 a strap across the instep. 
 
 " You must be wet through," he exclaimed. 
 
 " No," she answered. " I rode to the head 
 of the Pass, and left the horse tied up to the 
 footbriflgo over the stream. It was dry 
 enough the rest of the way." 
 
 " You rode over here 1 " he exclaimed. 
 " Then they must have known you were 
 coming ? " 
 
56 A Romance of Waatdale 
 
 "Who must have known?" she asked, in 
 a sudden alarm. 
 
 " Your father and your aunt. She is staying 
 with you still, I suppose." 
 
 " Yes. But they knew nothing, of course. 
 My father had some people to dinner to-night. 
 I left them early, saying that I was tired. 
 I should have had no time to change if I had 
 thought of it, as it was close on ten. I had 
 told Martin, our groom, that I should want 
 a horse — you know he would do anything 
 for me — and he had it ready saddled. So 
 I locked my room door, took the key with me, 
 and came away just as I was." 
 
 She stopped abruptly. The mention of her 
 home aroused her to the consequences of her 
 detection. Up till now the fact that Gordon 
 had found her out had alone possessed her 
 mind. Now, however, she was compelled to 
 look forward. What would he do ? He was 
 to have married her in a week, in just seven 
 days. Would he disclose the truth ? She 
 scanned his face for an answer to her con- 
 jectures. 
 
 Gordon was leaning against the mantel- 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 57 
 
 shelf above her, and his eyes met her inquiring 
 gaze. 
 
 " WeU ? " he asked. 
 
 " So you see," she faltered, " I am pretty 
 safe for to-night ; but to-morrow ? ** 
 
 " To-morrow ? " He seemed not to have 
 grasped her drift. 
 
 " Yes I To-morrow," she repeated. "What 
 do you mean to do ? " 
 
 The question startled Gordon. He had 
 been thinking of her, not of himself. Yes, 
 to-morrow he would have to act. But 
 how ? 
 
 " I don't know," he answered. ** I must 
 have time to think. I have not mastered to- 
 day yet." 
 
 " You will spare me as much as you can ? " 
 
 There was something very pitiful in the 
 childlike entreaty ; at least so it seemed 
 to Gordon. She was so young for all 
 this misery. Her very humility pained 
 him, all the more because it was so strange 
 to him. 
 
 " I will 8[)aro you altogether, child," 
 he replied. " You need not bo afraid of 
 
58 A Romance of Wasidale 
 
 me. I have loved you too well to hurt you 
 now." 
 
 For a moment or two he paced about the 
 room restlessly, trying to discover some means 
 by which he could break the marriage off and 
 take the blame upon himself. But no likely 
 plan occurred to him. His brain refused to 
 act. Disconnected scraps of ideas and ludi- 
 crous reminiscences, all foreign to the matter, 
 forced themselves upon his mind, the harder 
 he strove to think. He gave the effort up. 
 He would be able to concentrate his attention 
 better when he was alone. Besides, he re- 
 collected he had not heard the whole story as 
 yet. Some clue to an issue might perhaps be 
 found in the untold remainder. 
 
 " Tell me the rest I " he said, returning to 
 his chair. 
 
 " The rest ? " she inquired. Gordon's gene- 
 rosity had pierced straight to her heart at 
 last, and had sent the tears rolling down her 
 cheeks. 
 
 " Yes I The rest of the story down to to- 
 night." 
 
 "Oh I I can't," she cried. " Not now 1 I 
 
A Romance of Wast dale 59 
 
 can't 1 If you had been rough and harsh, 
 yes 1 But you have been so gentle with 
 me. 
 
 " It will be the kindest way for me," Gordon 
 rephed. " I must know the truth some way 
 or another, and I would rather have you tell 
 it me than ferret it out for myself." 
 
 " Very well, then," she said, wearily ; and 
 for a space there was silence in the room. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 " My mother died," she began, " eight months 
 after our engagement, and then I went out 
 to Poonah on a visit to my uncle. It is just 
 a year and a half since I started." 
 
 " Yea ! I remember. I did not want you 
 to go." 
 
 " And I insisted. You know why now." 
 
 " Yes I I know why now." 
 
 Gordon repeated her words with a shiver. 
 If only he had understood her a little better, 
 he thought. 
 
 Kate hardly noticed his interruption. She 
 was staring straight into the fire and speaking 
 in a dull monotone, with no spring in her voice. 
 She would have spared him now, had she been 
 able, but she felt irresistibly impelled to lay 
 all her disloyalty bare before his eyes — to 
 show him at how empty a shrine he had been 
 worshipping. It seemed to her almost as if 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 61 
 
 some stronger will was prompting her, and 
 the very sound of her words was thin and 
 strange to her ears, as though some one else 
 was speaking them at a great distance. 
 
 " Yes," she continued, " I wanted to get 
 away from you — to slip out of my shackles 
 for a time. So I went to Poonah, and — and 
 there I found Austen." 
 
 " Austen I Austen ! " Gordon burst out 
 in a frenzy. " For God's sake, don't call 
 him that ! " and he brought his clenched 
 fist down on the table with all his strength. 
 The glasses on it rattled at the blow, and the 
 tumbler which Hawke had used, standing 
 close at the edge, fell and splintered on the 
 floor. Gordon laughed at the sight. 
 
 " That was his glass," he explained. " He 
 was here to-night, drinking with me," and he 
 laughed again, harshly. 
 
 The girl hurriedly drew her skirts away 
 from the broken fragments. 
 
 " I am sorry," Gordon said, recovering his 
 composure, " I interrupted you. Go on ! " 
 
 But there was a new hardness in his tone. 
 Kate remarked it, and it grated on her 
 
62 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 painfully after his forbearance. She paused 
 for a moment, looking at him anxiously. 
 But he made no further sign, and she took up 
 the burden of her tale again. 
 
 '* There I found Mr. Hawke. I don't 
 think I had ever given a thought to him before. 
 But from this time he began to influence me, 
 because of the difference between yourself 
 and him. He paid me no respect, no de- 
 ference, and outwardly, indeed, no attention ; 
 but all the time I felt that he was consciously 
 and deliberately taking possession of me, 
 and I made no struggle to resist him. He 
 became my master — imposed himself upon me 
 until I lost the sense of responsibility for 
 my own actions. It was not that he gave 
 me orders or even suggested them, but some- 
 how I always realised what he wanted me 
 to do, and did it. And I knew besides that 
 he was conscious of my submission and counted 
 
 on it." 
 
 Kate had relapsed into the impersonal 
 commonplace manner which had characterised 
 her speech before Gordon broke in. The 
 words fell from her lips in a level regularity, 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 63 
 
 without rise or fall, and she was abstractedly 
 smoothing out one of the broad ribbons of 
 her sash — an old trick of hers, very familiar 
 to her listener. For all the , emotion 
 that she showed she might have been dis- 
 secting the character of an uninteresting 
 acquaintance. 
 
 " So that is the way for men to win women I " 
 
 " Some women, yes ! " 
 
 " Well, there is nothing like buying one's 
 experience, they say." 
 
 The attempt at sarcasm only served to 
 reveal the intensity of Gordon's suffering. 
 He was sitting with his body bent forward and 
 his chin pressed against his chest ; his hands 
 were clenched between his knees, and his 
 whole attitude told of the strain hia self- 
 repression caused him. 
 
 " Go on," he muttered. 
 
 " I have told you enough," she exclaimed, 
 tossed out of her apathy by a sudden com- 
 prehension of the torture her story inflicted. 
 
 " No ! no i " Gordon replied, hoarsely. " Go 
 on I Go on and finish it I " 
 
 " Well," she continued, her voice sinking 
 
64 A Romance of Wasidale 
 
 into a tremulous whisper, " one evening I 
 was left in the house alone. The rest had 
 gone out to a dance, but I was worn out by 
 the heat, and remained at home. It was 
 very hot ; there was hardly a breath of air, 
 I remember, and I curled myself up in a 
 long chair on the verandah and fell fast 
 asleep. I was awakened by some one pulling 
 my hair, and when I looked up I saw who 
 it was." 
 
 " How long was that before you left India ? " 
 "Two months." 
 
 " And during those two months you kept 
 writing home to me and saying how slowly 
 the time passed." 
 
 Gordon spoke with an accent of incredulous 
 wonder. Each moment thrust a new incon- 
 ceivable fact before his eyes, and forced him 
 to contemplate it. He felt that his world 
 was toppling in ruins about him, much as it 
 had done in that first year of his University 
 life. 
 
 " That was not my fault," the girl exclaimed. 
 " He made me do it. I wanted to write to 
 you and break the engagement off ; but he 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 65 
 
 would not let me. I suppose he was afraid 
 I should bother him to marry me himself," 
 she concluded, contemptuously. 
 
 " And you obeyed him in that, too ? " 
 
 " I tell you, I was at his mercy. He did 
 what he liked with me. He made me write 
 those letters to you ; " and she added, with 
 a certain softness, " and in a way, too, I was 
 glad he did." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Because even then I was afraid of him. 
 I distrusted him, and you seemed a kind of 
 anchor for me, and every letter an extra link 
 in the cable." 
 
 The words touched Gordon strangely. The 
 surface impUcation that he was valued merely 
 as a convenient refuge from the consequences 
 of folly did not occur to him. He applied a 
 deeper meaning to them, and fancied that she 
 had been willing to retain her hold on him 
 for much the same reason which had made 
 him cling to her — out of an instinctive need 
 to feel something stable in a world of shadow. 
 She had taken an open knife from the table 
 and was mechanically tracing with its point 
 5 
 
66 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 the crimson lines upon her dress, and he 
 thought her tired helplessness was the saddest 
 sight man could ever see. Sentences out of 
 the letters came back to him. 
 
 " So, in a way," he said, almost with a smile, 
 " you meant what you wrote." 
 
 " Yes ! What I wrote. But I wrote so 
 little of them myself. I mean," she went 
 on, noticing the surprise in the other's 
 face, " I put the words down. He dictated 
 them." 
 
 " What ! " 
 
 A sudden fury seized upon Gordon. For 
 the first time since he had been talking with 
 Kate, he realised Hawke the man, a living 
 treacherous being, flesh and blood, that could 
 be crushed and kiUed. The idea sent a thrill 
 through his veins. The lust for revenge 
 sprang up, winged and armed, in a flame of 
 hatred. His imagination pictured the scene, 
 clear cut as a cameo ; he saw the keen, pointed 
 face bending over Kate's shoulder ; he heard 
 him unctuously rolling out loving phrases, 
 savouring them as he spoke, and chuckling ove* 
 the deceit. 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 67 
 
 He turned on Kate in a frenzy. 
 
 " He dictated them ; and he laughed as 
 he did it, I suppose. Did he laugh ? Tell 
 me 1 Did he laugh ? " 
 
 Gordon shook the girl's arm savagely, his 
 face Hvid and working with passion. His 
 aspect terrified her. She dared not tell him 
 the truth, and she turned away with a 
 shudder. 
 
 "That is answer enough," and he dropped 
 her arm and began again pacing about the 
 room. Now, however, he walked quietly and 
 softly, with his shoulders rounded and his 
 head thrust forward. His lips were drawn 
 back from his teeth, and there was something 
 catlike in his tread, which reminded Kate 
 irresistibly of Hawke. Indeed, to her fevered 
 eyes, he began to change and to grow like his 
 enemy in face and bearing. 
 
 " Don't," she whispered. " You frighten 
 me. You remind mo of him." 
 
 The words recalled Gordon to himself. 
 There was something else ho wished to know. 
 What was it ? He beat his forehead with 
 the palms of his hands in the efTort to ro- 
 
68 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 collect. If only he could banish Hawke from 
 his mind until she had gone 1 At last the 
 question took shape. 
 
 " The letters he was reading to you ? " 
 
 " They were notes and appointments written 
 when we were both at Poonah," she answered, 
 submissively. " I never thought that he 
 would keep them, though I might have known 
 he would." 
 
 " And the three he has still ? " 
 
 " They were the only real letters I ever 
 wrote to him. There were four, but I burned 
 one to-night." 
 
 "Yes! I saw." 
 
 " I wrote them on the way home, from Cal- 
 cutta, Aden, Brindisi and the last from London 
 the evening I arrived." 
 
 " You have never written since ? " 
 
 " Never ! Nor have I seen him since until 
 he compelled me to come to-night." 
 
 She stopped suddenly, as if some new idea 
 had crossed her mind. In a moment, how- 
 ever, she began again, but she was speaking 
 to herself. 
 
 " No. I had to come. There was no other 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 69 
 
 way. I dared not leave those letters in his 
 hands. Oh ! how I hate him I " 
 
 She uttered the words with a slow in- 
 tensity which enforced conviction, looking 
 straight at Gordon ; and he saw a flame 
 commence to glow in the depths of her eyes 
 and spread until her whole face was ablaze 
 with it. 
 
 " Do you mean that ? " he queried, almost 
 eagerly. 
 
 " Can you doubt it ? " she replied, starting 
 to her feet. " Oh, yes, you would ! I forgot. 
 Oh, David, if only you had understood me 
 better ! " 
 
 It was what he had been saying to himself, 
 with a deep self-reproach, and her repetition 
 of his thought, coupled with a weary gesture 
 of despair, exaggerated the feeling on him by 
 the addition of a very lively pity. 
 
 " So that is true, then ? " he asked, hesitat- 
 ingly. " You no longer care for him ? " 
 
 The mere weakness of the question be- 
 tokened a mind in doubt, as to its choice 
 of action, betrayed a certain tentative in- 
 "decision. 
 
70 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 " I never really cared for him," she an- 
 swered. 
 
 A look of actual gladness showed in the 
 man's face. They were standing opposite to 
 one another, and the girl shut her eyelids tight, 
 as if the sight hurt her. 
 
 " That pleases you ! " she exclaimed, twist- 
 ing her hands convulsively. " Ah 1 Don't 
 you understand ? It is the most horrible 
 part of it all to me — that I never cared for 
 him. It doubles my shame. He dominated 
 me when he was with me, close to me, by my 
 side ; but I never cared for him. I had 
 realised that by the time I reached Eng- 
 land, and my last letter was to tell him 
 
 so. 
 
 Her whole attitude expressed humiliation. 
 Had she been able to look back upon a 
 passion overmastering both Hawke and her- 
 self, and encircling them in a ring of flame 
 which, by its very brightness, made the 
 world beyond look colourless and empty, 
 she could have found some plea to alleviate 
 her consciousness of guilt. As it was, how- 
 ever, the episode appeared nakedly sordid to 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 71 
 
 her recollection, unredeemed by even a flavour 
 of romance. 
 
 " So you never really cared for him ! " 
 
 Gordon's earnest insistence struck her as 
 singular. He seemed to have taken no note 
 of the last words, but dwelt upon that one 
 point — clung to it, it appeared. What differ- 
 ence could it make to him, she wondered, 
 whether she had cared or not ; the sin lay 
 between them none the less. She watched 
 his face for the solution. Perplexity was 
 shown in the contracted forehead and in a 
 tremulous twitching of the lips. As a matter 
 of fact, Gordon was hunting a will-o'-the-wisp 
 of hope, and it had led him to the brink of 
 a resolve. Should he take the leap, or soberly 
 decline it 1 He hesitated, half made up 
 his mind, took one short halting step to- 
 wards Kate and stopped, checked by a new 
 thought. 
 
 " You said you would have broken oil our 
 engagement had ho allowed you I " 
 
 "Yes! I said that." 
 
 " Why didn't you when you returned to 
 England and felt free from him ? " 
 
I id 
 
 2 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 The girl gained a hint of his drift more 
 from his manner than his question, and an- 
 swered him warily, with a spark of hope. 
 
 " Because, as I told you, I relied on you 
 BO much, and I felt the need of some one I 
 could trust more than ever then. Besides, 
 every one approved of the marriage." 
 
 An abrupt movement warned her that she had 
 chosen a wrong turning. A quick traverse, 
 however, brought her out upon the right road 
 again. 
 
 " It is not so easy for a girl to cut the knot. 
 She must find explanations to justify her — 
 valid not only to her parents, but to the man. 
 And I knew you would not let me go so 
 lightly. I knew that I meant all the world 
 to you." 
 
 She paused, but Gordon gave no sign, 
 and she repeated her words with a nervous 
 smile. 
 
 " It sounds queer, but it is true aU the 
 same. I knew that I meant all the world to 
 you." 
 
 Again she waited, but with a like result. 
 He was still pondering, still in doubt. The 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 7S 
 
 way in which he drew his breath, now in short, 
 jerky catches, now in a long, labouring sigh, 
 made that plain to her. Her shot had failed 
 of its aim. 
 
 A sudden gust of the wind brought the rustle 
 of the trees through the open door. Kate 
 looked at the clock ; the hands made one 
 threatening line. 
 
 " Two o'clock ! " she cried, with a start. 
 " I must get back to Keswick while they are 
 still asleep — asleep." She spoke the word 
 again with a melancholy longing in her voice 
 which was indescribably sad. 
 
 " You will write, then," she resumed, " and 
 break it off." 
 
 Gordon nodded assent, and she turned away 
 in search for something. 
 
 The action helped to decide Gordon by 
 pointing out the necessity of decision. What 
 course should he take ? He had thought 
 to choose his path on careful reflection when 
 Kate was on her way back to Keswick ; but 
 he saw now that would be too late. It would 
 be time enough then to consider the conse- 
 quences of his choice, how best to cope with 
 
74 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 them and force them to his service ; but the 
 choice itself could not be deferred. For if 
 he let her go quietly without another word 
 the matter would be settled finally, the choice 
 determined, a prison wall raised to further 
 effort. What course should he take ? The 
 question pressed urgently for an immediate 
 answer. 
 
 He went to the door and out into the porch. 
 The sudden slip into night seemed to him a 
 symbol of what his life would mean if he 
 kept silence. His mind played with the idea 
 and carried it further. It pictured him 
 standing alone in the empty darkness and 
 the girl behind him alone in the empty light. 
 The beck, too, at the back of the house, 
 whispered its music in his ears and pleaded 
 with him. 
 
 A timid hand was laid on his arm : Kate 
 was by his side. 
 
 " David ! " 
 
 " I was listening to the brook," he 
 said. 
 
 For a while they both stood quiet in the 
 gloom of the porch. 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 75 
 
 " What do you hear in it ?" he asked. 
 
 " I dare not tell you. What do you ? " 
 
 " I hear all my days to come flowing down 
 and down with a sound of tears." , 
 
 " David ! " she said, her voice breaking on 
 the name. 
 
 He had often noticed the wonderful clear- 
 ness of her eyes, and they shone very softly 
 on him now. He drew her towards him in 
 the gloom of the porch. 
 
 " Kitty ! " he whispered, " tell me that it 
 isn't true I Tell me I have been dreaming I 
 I will believe you. I must believe you. For 
 if I lose faith in you, I lose faith in every- 
 thing. You have been the light of my life, 
 making the world real. If that dies out, I 
 live in the dark, always." 
 
 Her heart sank lower with every word he 
 uttered. She had hoped for forgiveness, for 
 a recognition of the dead sin, with a belief in 
 an atoning future. But he gave her no hint 
 of that. Nay, his very phrases proved that 
 the conception was beyond his reach. " H 
 I lose faitli in you, I lose faith in everything." 
 The sentence showed the exotic sickliness 
 
76 A Romance of Wasidale 
 
 of his faith, demonstrated it no vital inherent 
 part of him rooted in his being, but an aUen 
 graft watered and kept alive by his passion. 
 He had not the sturdiness to accept the facts, 
 nor the sincerity to foresee the possibility 
 of redemption. He would marry her. Yes ! 
 But his motive was an instinct of self-pre- 
 servation rather than his love for her. She 
 would still have to pose upon her pedestal, 
 apeing the stainless goddess ; he would still 
 have to kneel at her feet, apeing the wor- 
 shipper ; and both in their hearts would know 
 the hollowness of their pretence. 
 
 Kate realised the futility of such a marriage, 
 and looking forward, caught a glimpse of 
 the day when the sham would shred and 
 vanish before the truth, like a morning mist 
 at sunrise. 
 
 Gordon felt her whole frame relax and draw 
 away from him. He clasped her hands ; 
 there was no response in them. He held her 
 closer, placed one hand behind her head and 
 turned her face up towards him, whUe the 
 warm curls nestled and twined about his 
 fingers. 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 77 
 
 "Kitty! Why don't you answer? Tell 
 me that it isn't true I Every belief I have 
 depends on that." 
 
 " Oh ! Don't make me responsible for 
 everything," she replied, with a flash of her 
 old petulance. " I am only one woman in 
 the world." 
 
 " But the only woman in the world for me. 
 You know it. You said so yourself. Tell 
 me that it isn't true ! Lie to me, if you 
 must ! " he added, with a passionate cry. 
 " I will believe the lie." 
 
 " That could be of no use either to you 
 or to me." 
 
 She spoke coldly, with the familiar feeling 
 of repugnance reawakened by his effort to 
 canonise her afresh. Besides, the knowledge 
 of the truth vibrated in every tone of his voice, 
 and his despairing resolve to crush and drown 
 that knowledge added a sense of mockery to her 
 repulsion. 
 
 " That could be of no use," she said. " There 
 was just a chance of our joining hands again, 
 but what you have said has destroyed it." 
 
 " I don't understand." 
 
78 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 " You may some day." 
 
 " It is true," she resumed. " All that you 
 saw, all that you heard Austen Hawke say, 
 all that I have told you — every word of it is 
 
 true." 
 
 She turned from him and went back into the 
 room, while Gordon sank upon the low coping 
 of the garden fence. 
 
 The girl came out to him again after a 
 while. 
 
 " Have you seen my shawl ? I can't find 
 
 it." 
 
 " Did you bring it away from the Inn ? " 
 Gordon asked, dully. 
 
 The question made Kate start. She must 
 have left it there. 
 
 " Never mind," Gordon said ; "I will get 
 it back with the letters." 
 
 He passed through the porch and took 
 down a lanthom from a nail in the wall. 
 
 " I will come up with you to the head of 
 the Pass." 
 
 "Don't light it," she said. "It might be 
 
 seen." 
 
 Very well I 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 79 
 
 He was on the point of replacing it, but 
 stopped and asked — 
 
 " Did you bring one with your horse ? " 
 
 " No ! " 
 
 " Then I had better take it. It will keep 
 you from stumbling when you are riding home. 
 There is a scarf on the sofa." 
 
 Kate twisted it over her head and they passed 
 out softly into the lane. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The wind had dropped with the advance of 
 morning, and only an impalpable breath — a 
 faint reminiscence of the wind it seemed — 
 stirring the larch-clumps, dotted here and 
 there along the lower edges of their path, 
 broke the stillness for a moment as they 
 passed. They paused by the side of a water- 
 course which, descending from Great Gable, 
 the mountain on their left, cut through the 
 track on its way to the centre of the valley 
 and caused a gap of some fifty feet. Stones 
 planted at intervals uncertainly in the stream 
 gave an insecure footing, and afforded the 
 only traverse to the opposite side ; and in the 
 darkness their position was dimly shown, or, 
 rather, could be hazily guessed at, by little 
 points of white where the water swirled and 
 broke about them. 
 
 *' I must have crossed it when I came," said 
 
 80 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 81 
 
 Kate, blankly. " But I don't remember. 
 I don't seem to have noticed it at all. I 
 should slip on the stepping-stones now." 
 
 " Let me carry you over ! " 
 
 " No ! " she replied quickly. " I crossed 
 it safely before. I can do the same 
 again." 
 
 There was a greater confidence in her words 
 than in her voice, and she still hesitated on 
 the brink. Instinctively she laid a hand 
 upon Gordon's sleeve for steadiness, but drew 
 it away hurriedly when she felt the contact 
 of his arm. Her companion renewed his offer 
 of help, but, without answering him, she 
 stepped forward on to the nearest boulder. 
 Her foot, set down timidly, slipped on its 
 polished roundness. Gordon, however, was 
 alert to her fatigue, and his arm was round 
 her waist before she had completely lost her 
 
 « 
 
 balance. 
 
 " Lean towards me," he said, and lightly 
 lifted her back on to the bank. She remained 
 for a second in his support, lulled by a phy- 
 sical feeling of security induced in her by the 
 strong clasp of his arm. Then she freed her- 
 
82 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 self almost roughly, and silently faced the 
 stream again. 
 
 " It will be best if I go first," said Gordon. 
 " I can give you a hand then." 
 
 " Is there no other crossing ? " she asked, 
 straining her gaze vainly up and down the 
 stream. 
 
 " No ! Surely you can take that much help 
 from me." 
 
 He planted himself as firmly as he could, 
 Colossus- wise on the rocks. 
 
 " All right ! " he said, and stretched out 
 a hand towards her. She took it reluctantly 
 and made a second trial, wavered as she 
 reached the stone on which she had slipped, 
 and secured her balance by tightening her 
 grasp. So they proceeded until a wider inter- 
 val than usual flowed between their foot- 
 holds. 
 
 Gordon turned his head round to her. 
 
 " You must let go of me here ! " 
 
 " Must I ? " 
 
 " Yes ! or I may slip and drag you in." 
 
 She only realised how hard had been her 
 grip when she relaxed it, and the consequent 
 
A Romance of Wasidale 83 
 
 knowledge of the assistance she had needed 
 gave her a momentary sense of loneliness now 
 that it was removed. Gordon was just able 
 to bridge the distance between the boulders 
 with the full reach of his stride. That on 
 which he now stood, however, was flat and 
 broad, a platform that gave sure footing. 
 
 " You will have to sprmg," he cried. 
 " I can catch you. I am solid enough 
 here." 
 
 " I can't," she replied, " I daren't 
 move." 
 
 She stood looking into the water bubbling 
 at her feet, and its swift flow made her feel 
 giddy and insecure. 
 
 " What am I to do ? " she cried plain- 
 tively. 
 
 " You must jump," Gordon answered. " It 
 is the only way. Jump boldly 1 Don't be 
 afraid, I will catch you." 
 
 The ring of confidence in his voice enhcart- 
 ened her, and she tried to face the leap, but 
 recoiled from it. Why had she refused hia 
 offer, was her first thought ; why had ho 
 not renewed it, her second. The stone on 
 
84 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 which she was standing rolled with the move- 
 ment, and she uttered a cry. 
 
 " Dav — ," she began, and shore the name of 
 its tail. 
 
 In a moment he was by her side, standing 
 on the bed of the channel and the water up 
 to his thighs. The girl clung to him. 
 
 ** I seem to have lost my nerve al- 
 together," and she essayed a laugh 
 unsuccessfully. 
 
 "You are tu-ed, that's all." 
 
 "Yes, I am tired," she answered, "very 
 tired." 
 
 And she leaned her weight upon him, rest- 
 ing her arm on his shoulders. Their muscular 
 breadth renewed in her the feeling of pro- 
 tection, and she waited expectantly for him 
 to propose again to carry her, or, better still, 
 to just lift her up without a word and so 
 spare her a repast of her own words. To all 
 seeming, however, Gordon was waiting too. 
 " He means the request to come from me," 
 she thought. As a matter of fact, nothing was 
 farther from his reflections. The experience 
 of the past few hours had rendered the perfect 
 
A Romance of Wasidale 85 
 
 control of his faculties impossible, and the 
 shuttles in the loom of his mind, set at work 
 by the touch of any chance suggestion, were 
 weaving his thoughts in a grotesque incon- 
 sequence. The tension of her attitude re- 
 called the pedestal on which he had perched 
 her, as she said, to the undoing of them both. 
 He had a vision of a pair of tiny feet, deli- 
 cately shod in grey kid slippers, straining to 
 fix high heels firmly on a smooth sloping 
 surface. 
 
 Kate threw out a more patent suggestion. 
 
 "I am very tired, and this stone is not 
 over restful." 
 
 " I was just thinking," he answered ab- 
 stractedly. " it must be as awkward as my 
 pedestal." 
 
 The unconscious sarcasm stung her to the 
 quick. 
 
 " Don't laugh at me ! " she pleaded, and 
 realised that she was pleading. 
 
 " Laugh at you ? " he replied. " Good 
 God ! I have got to finish my laugh at my- 
 self first, and I think it will take mo all my 
 life." 
 
86 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 " For believing in me ? " she asked rather 
 sadly. The bitterness of his remark seemed 
 to show her that he grasped at last the full 
 folly of his faith in her. It was the goal at 
 which she had been aiming, and yet, now 
 that it was reached, she felt a keen pang of 
 regret. 
 
 " No I For demanding so much myself." 
 The knowledge that she had mistaken 
 his meaning gratified her and, indeed, raised 
 him in her respect. The words, spoken at 
 another time, would only have served to streng- 
 then her old conception of him, and to justify 
 that lurking contempt for his humility which 
 formed a factor in her ready reliance upon 
 his services. Now, however, she stood in 
 sore need of his help ; he was there dominat- 
 ing her plainly by the superiority of his 
 physical strength, and he could afford to be 
 humble, nay, rather bettered his position by 
 the contrast. 
 Kate gave in and said weakly : 
 " I am afraid that I shall have to ask you 
 to carry me across after all." 
 
 " It is what I came ba«k for," he answered, 
 
A Romance of Wasidale 87 
 
 no suspicion of her thoughts occurring to 
 him. He lifted her sHght figure with an ab- 
 sence of effort or jerk which told of practised 
 sinews, and Kate clasped her hands behind 
 his neck and nestled down into his arms with 
 a child's sigh of content. To Gordon the 
 sigh conveyed no direct or immediate mean- 
 ing. His fanciful tendency to symbolism 
 made it expressive only of the relief she had 
 experienced on stepping down from her 
 pedestal. 
 
 Had he but known it, however, he was 
 nearer to her heart than he had ever been. 
 He was showing himself in the man's shape 
 which most appealed to her. He was the 
 protector, not the attendant, with strength 
 to be appreciated as masterful, not to be 
 carelessly used and forgotten. Had he 
 stopped dead in mid-streani and asserted 
 his cause with a like mental force, claiming 
 her and her sins to himself with the courage 
 of a confident love, he would have undone 
 the harm of his maladroit pleading in the 
 porch. 
 
 It was the crucial moment of his life. But 
 
88 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 his dominance was of the body, not the spirit, 
 and he passed through it without an inkling 
 of its importance. 
 
 The next moment he reached the farther 
 bank and set her eilently on the ground, apart 
 from him. 
 
 From this point the path rose steeply along 
 the side of Great Gable, and as they mounted, 
 the brisk freshness of the air revived the 
 girl's languid spirits. Her lassitude and the 
 feeling of helpless weakness which it engendered 
 gradually gave place to a hvely buoyancy. 
 A new vigour entered her Umbs. Gordon was 
 walking a few paces ahead of her, the lanthom 
 swinging at his side on a shoulder-strap, and 
 now and again he turned to help her over some 
 rough portion of the track. But the way 
 was almost as familiar to her as it was to him, 
 and as they rose she needed his assistance 
 less and less. The limpid clearness of the 
 night, too, contributed in no small measure 
 to this invigoration of her nature. The sky was 
 unstained by a cloud, and glittered with a 
 multitude of stars that shone like points of 
 silver, bo that the darkness below had a 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 89 
 
 certain translucency. One seemed to see 
 right into the heart of the night ; at the same 
 time, the landmarks and boundary walls in 
 the valley — always productive of a sense of 
 limit — were invisible, and the very mountains 
 appeared but deeper shadows, a massing of 
 the darkness, as it were, at separate spots, 
 with here and there a gap from the faint 
 glimmer of a snowdrift. The journey thus 
 appealed to Kate's senses by its aspect of 
 spaciousness and filled her with a new and 
 strange feeling of liberty. The feeling pene- 
 trated to her mind and set in motion a train 
 of thought which, in turn, gave back to it 
 a fresh strength and colour. A conscious- 
 ness of distinct relief forced itself into evidence 
 as the main result to her of Gordon's chance 
 visit to Wastdale Head, and obliterated to a 
 great degree the shame of the disclosures which 
 had paved the way for it. She was free alike 
 from the brutal authority of Austen Hawke 
 and from the irksome tyranny of Gordon's 
 adoration ; for the former's power rested 
 upon its concealment and was killed by Gordon's 
 discovery of its existence. Every trace of 
 
90 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 it would vanish when he recovered the three 
 remaining letters. Of the means by which 
 they were to be regained she took no more 
 thought than Gordon at this time did him- 
 self. She was too absorbed by her newly- 
 found freedom to foresee the possibility of 
 danger there. Its forcible pre-occupation of 
 her mind indeed blinded her to all ideas which 
 hinted antagonism. She barely wasted a 
 conjecture on the pretext which her com- 
 panion would select for the breaking ofE of 
 their engagement almost on the eve of their 
 marriage. She just caught a dim glimpse 
 of him taking the blame upon himself, and 
 was restfully content to leave the exact 
 solution in his hands. " I will spare you 
 altogether," he had said ; and she knew him 
 well enough for complete assurance that he 
 would keep his word. That she owed her 
 liberty entirely to the generosity of her lover, 
 she hardly felt at all now ; from habit, she 
 was incapable of accounting that quality 
 of his at its true value. For a moment, it ia 
 true, at the outset of her interview with him 
 in the farm-house, she appreciated with some 
 
A Romance of Wasidale 91 
 
 accuracy the measure of his devotion ; but 
 this estimation was due merely to the im- 
 mediate succession of his presence to that of 
 Hawke and to the pronounced contrast between 
 their attitudes. As their conversation wore 
 on, however, his voice, his words, and certain 
 tricks of manner, gradually brought back 
 to her the familiar conceptions of character 
 which she had always associated with them. 
 And in consequence of the return of those 
 conceptions, the old habit of expecting sacri- 
 fices from him as his usual tribute reasserted 
 itself afresh. Her sense of liberty was thus 
 unmarred by doubts or fears, and the re- 
 bound of her nature from a preceding despair 
 gave to it a double exhilaration. She drank 
 in the night air with a keen pleasure, its brisk 
 sharpness seeming somehow to harmonise with 
 her thoughts. She would begin her life anew 
 to-morrow, using her knowledge as a clear 
 light for the guiding of her steps. She had 
 a vision of morning mists clearing of! a long 
 white road and leaving it vividly distinct 
 — a road in Normandy. 
 
 The influence of the hour and the locality 
 
92 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 was no less predominant over her fellow- 
 traveller, but it led his thoughts in a far op- 
 posite direction. All the way up that weari- 
 some ascent he was strewing his steps with 
 the dead leaves of his illusions. The ediiSce 
 of idealism which he had built up, fancy 
 upon fancy, with such care and such seeming 
 solidity, crumbled in an irresistible decay 
 and forced him to the contemplation of its 
 ruins. And the surrounding space, shape- 
 less and empty of life, stimulated his poignant 
 sense of desolation. He tried to picture and 
 place actual features of the dale, to map out 
 the darkness by his recollections of what it 
 hid. Across there would be the dark mouth 
 of Peer's Ghyll ; or had he passed it ? — 
 above his head the cliffs of Great Gable, with 
 its familiar Pinnacle ; now he should be op- 
 posite the bathing-pool at the bottom of the 
 valley. But it was all uncertainty and surmise, 
 and so far was Gordon from drawing solace from 
 his conjectures, that the intervening gloom, 
 by its sensuous effect, helped largely to re- 
 animate and nurse his old belief in the shifty 
 unreality of things. He came to feel certain 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 93 
 
 of nothing except the narrow strip of path 
 he trod and the light footsteps behind which 
 were following him for the last time, and 
 of which the sound to his ears was exquisitely 
 sad. 
 
 They had reached the highest point of the 
 track, where two masses of rock, ranged on 
 either side, form a ruined gateway to the 
 Pass. From there the ground slopes quickly 
 to the Sty head Tarn, and as they skirted its 
 edge they heard the welcoming neigh of Kate's 
 horse. It was tied to the far end of a primitive 
 footbridge which spans the beck in the valley 
 but a few yards beyond. Gordon lit the lan- 
 thom and fastened it to the saddle, and, stand- 
 ing on the end of the bridge, lifted the girl 
 on to the horse's back. For a moment they 
 remained there, she in the shadow, he with 
 the light streaming full on his face, and then 
 without a word Kate gathered up the reins 
 and rode off eastwards along the Pass. She 
 felt that he was still standing on the bridge in 
 the darkness, but she never turned her head. 
 After a while, she heard him cry out her name 
 " Kitty ! " The sound echoed down the hollow 
 
94 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 in a despairing wail, like a death-cry, and was 
 faintly repeated by the mountains that closed 
 her in, but she only pressed her horse the 
 harder, and rode more steadily towards her 
 home. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 In a sense, indeed, it was a death-cry that she 
 heard. For Gordon, as he watched her ride 
 away, and listened to the lanthorn clanking 
 against the saddle, knew that his real self 
 went with her. 
 
 The extended sympathy for his fellows 
 which he had fostered during these last two 
 years, his interest lq their comings and goings, 
 his ambitions and his assiduous patience 
 in straining after their attainment — in fact, 
 the finer qualities of his nature seemed not 
 merely to have been awakened by his one 
 great passion, but to have gained their being 
 from it and to bo dependent upon it for their 
 life. They were, if one may use the phrase, 
 the reflex of his imaginative belief in the 
 worth of his mistress — a belief founded 
 purely upon sentiment and sustained by 
 misconceptions of different points in her 
 
 05 
 
96 A Romance of Wasidale 
 
 bearing, such as a certain air of disdain she 
 habitually wore, which was in itself only 
 the result of a fastidious intuition in mat- 
 ters of taste and the like, and which Gordon 
 mistook for the visible sign of an innate 
 superiority. 
 
 And so this mute farewell meant some- 
 thing more to him than even the final parting 
 from the woman he loved ; it was also a part- 
 ing from his gentler nature. All that there 
 was of goodness and truth in him had come into 
 his life through Kate Nugent, and now that 
 she took her gift back with her as she went, 
 she left him stripped almost of his humanity, 
 bare and scarred as the rugged crags sur- 
 roanding him. So intense and poignant 
 grew the feeling of his loss, that he came 
 to fancy, with the imagery peculiar to his 
 bent, that his very soul was the flame of the 
 candle in the lanthorn, which he saw, like a 
 red star, moving farther and farther into the 
 distance. 
 
 He made one last spasmodic effort, like 
 a dying man clutching at his life. He ran 
 forward in a mad revolt, and the well-loved 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 97 
 
 name sprang to his lips. " Kitty ! " he 
 shouted, his whole being in the cry. But 
 no answer came back to him ; he heard 
 the lanthorn still faintly clanking against 
 the saddle, and the mountains drearily 
 mocking him with their melancholy repetition 
 of his word, while the light went steadily 
 dwindling down the Pass — a pin's head of 
 fire. 
 
 For a moment he waited stone-still, staring 
 after it, and then flung himself face-downwards 
 in the bracken, tearing the roots convulsively 
 with his fingers. A savage fury seized him 
 and ran through his veins like a flame, de- 
 manding action and retaliation. Any passive 
 return to the old trough of his cynicism was 
 barred by a clear consciousness of what might 
 have been had Kate but matched his truth 
 to her with a like truth to him, and by an ex- 
 aggerated self-reproach which led him still 
 to fix the chief blame for her treachery upon 
 his own failure to understand her. But there 
 was another man to share his blame. The 
 thought swept down upon him — a black whirl- 
 wind blotting out even the imago of Kat«^ 
 7 
 
98 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 If he had erred himself, it was through excess 
 of chivalry ; he could, at all events, plead that. 
 But Hawke ! Gordon was unable to think 
 of him ; he only saw him a sinister picture of 
 malice and craft, and as he looked he became 
 filled with a venom of hate. Hawke's face 
 rose before his mind, every feature magnified 
 and stamped with the brand of his character, 
 and remained fixed in full view leering at him. 
 Gordon's loathing grew until he felt sick with 
 the strength of it. He sprang hastily to his 
 feet. The night was very clear, and low down 
 to the ground a spark was just visible in the 
 far distance. But he did not look that way ; 
 he turned his back towards Keswick and 
 blindly, with stumbling steps, descended into 
 Wastdale towards his enemy. And all the 
 length of that path Hawke's face bore him 
 company. 
 
 • a • ■ ■ 
 
 It was close upon four when Kate started 
 off upon her long ride, and, with the know- 
 ledge that she had no time to spare, she urged 
 her horse on at a greater speed than the rough- 
 ness of the Pass made prudent. Once, indeed, 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 99 
 
 at the far end, when the track takes a sudden 
 turn at right angles to its previous course, 
 and begins to wind down into Borrowdale, 
 she barely escaped a heavy fall, and was 
 only saved by the quick recovery of the beast 
 she rode. At the bottom of the decline, 
 however, after crossing Stockley Bridge, the 
 path widens out on to more level ground. 
 But it runs through pastures, and Kate's 
 progress was impeded by a succession of gates 
 which, since she carried no crop, compelled her 
 to dismount to open them. But by the time 
 she had reached Sea Toller — the long white 
 house, lying two miles from the base of Sty- 
 head — the difficulties of her journey were 
 ended. A firm, broad road led straight from 
 that point over the nine miles which separated 
 Kate from Keswick, and she roused her horse 
 to a gallop. The animal stretched itself out 
 in a full stride as if it realised the need for 
 haste, making the night air ring with the 
 clatter of its hoofs, and it seemed to Kate 
 that barely a minute could have passed 
 before she burst through the little village of 
 Rosthwaite. 
 
100 A Romance of Wasidale 
 
 This quick approach to home, however, 
 plunged a new fear into her breast. 
 
 What if her family had discovered her ab- 
 sence ? 
 
 The question was a fever to her blood. At 
 the time she had set off from Keswick the 
 chance of that discovery had appeared to her 
 the least of the dangers that she ran, so com- 
 pletely had she been engrossed by the necessity 
 of regaining her letters ; and, besides, she had 
 laid her plans carefully, with perfect confi- 
 dence in the fidelity of the groom. Afterwards, 
 at Wastdale, the hurry of events had ob- 
 scured her to all speculation on the matter, 
 compelling a concentration of her faculties 
 upon immediate issues. Now, however, she 
 began to see a hundred threatening possi- 
 bihties. 
 
 She had pleaded a headache. What more 
 likely than that her father or her aunt should 
 have come to her room to inquire after her 
 before they went to bed ? Her father ? — she 
 dismissed him with a moment's reflection. 
 The good man took life and his daughter's ail- 
 ments easily. But her aunt ! Kate re- 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 101 
 
 membercd with a shiver that she was a 
 homoeopathist. She was bound to have in- 
 quired. She could not enter the room, it is 
 true, for Kate had locked the door and held 
 the key safe in her pocket. 
 
 She felt in her dress suddenly, half-expecting 
 to find that she had dropped it. It was safe, 
 however, and she experienced a relief ; but 
 the relief was only momentary. 
 
 For the window of her bedroom opened 
 level on to the garden. A lucky advantage, 
 she had considered it before, as affording an 
 easy egress and return. Now it seemed to 
 her the most vulnerable point in her plan. 
 For if her aunt made inquiries at the door, 
 and received no answer, she had but to step 
 into the garden to solve her perplexities. A 
 passing vision of an old lady in bedroom 
 slippers padding over the grass with a box 
 of pills failed to distract her. Kate sent 
 her wits abroad on the wings of fear in 
 search of excuses, but thoy returned to her 
 empty-handed. Her dread was, moreover, 
 accentuated by a retrospect upon the other 
 dangers of that night. Her successful evasion 
 
102 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 of them only made this last risk loom the 
 larger. 
 
 The nearer she drew towards home, the 
 more it overshadowed her. When she crossed 
 the marsh land at the end of the Lake, dis- 
 covery had already become the probability ; 
 by the time she passed Lodore, a certainty, 
 and when she topped Castle Hill, just above 
 Keswick town, she strained her eyes to- 
 wards the water's edge, fully expecting to 
 see every window of their house ablaze with 
 light. 
 
 All was in darkness, however, except for 
 one faint glimmer, which Kate guessed came 
 from the stables. The revulsion of feeling 
 which she underwent acted on her like a shock, 
 and she reined up her horse and clung to 
 the saddle, dizzy. In the hollow a clock 
 chimed the half-hour, lifting a silvery encour- 
 agement, and she moved on again slowly 
 down the hill. Some twenty yards from 
 the front of the house she dismounted, led 
 the horse into a lane which gave on to the 
 road, crossed a paddock at the back of the 
 garden, and reached the stables, which stood 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 103 
 
 apart from the main building. The light 
 which she had noticed came from the harness- 
 room ; she tapped softly on the window- 
 pane and was answered by a low growl, fol- 
 lowed by a sharp " Quiet ! " 
 
 Immediately afterwards the door was opened 
 cautiously, and the groom Martin appeared 
 and led the horse in quietly. Kate followed 
 him and closed the door. 
 
 " What time is it ? " she asked, in a 
 whisper. 
 
 " Just gone half-past five, Miss." 
 
 " Has any one — I mean, no one has noticed 
 my absence ? " 
 
 Martin reassured her, with a touch of patron- 
 age in his tone, which a cockney deficiency 
 of aspirates made singularly unpalatable. 
 She turned to the collie ; he had followed 
 Martin from the harness-room and was wisely 
 superintending the proceedings with his ear 
 cocked and his head on one side. 
 
 " You brought Charlie in." 
 
 " Yes, Miss I I dursn't leave him in the 
 yard. He mightn't have known your foot- 
 steps at once." 
 
104 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 " That was thoughtful of you." 
 The dog took the compliment to itself after 
 the fashion of its kind, and showed his 
 appreciation by planting his forepaws as 
 high up on her as he could, and stretching 
 itself lazily, 
 
 " Thank you very much," said Kate. 
 " Good night ! " and she hurried across the 
 yard, pursued by a whispered — 
 
 " You 're very welcome, Miss, I'm sure." 
 A wicket-gate gave her entrance into the 
 garden, and she crept softly to the window of 
 her bedroom, and opened it with a palpitating 
 heart. Nothing, however, had been disar- 
 ranged, the room was as she had left it. She 
 did not dare to risk a light, but flung off her 
 clothes quickly in the dark, unlocked the 
 door, and tumbled into bed. For a long 
 time sleep would not come to her in spite of 
 her fatigue. She heard the clock strike six, 
 and then half-past. For now that she herself 
 was safe, her thoughts unconsciously reverted 
 to Gordon. She saw his face again framed 
 in the darkness, as the light fell on it from her 
 lanthom, and wondered whether he was still 
 
A Romance of Wasidale 105 
 
 on the bridge, looking eastwards down the 
 Pass. That last cry of his recurred to her. 
 *' Kitty I " The name rang in her ears, 
 stretched out into a threnody. She tried 
 to flee from it, and it pursued her, now swelling 
 into the deep peal of an organ-note, now 
 sinking into a pitiful wail. And it was not 
 merely the cry she heard, but Gordon's voice 
 in it, vibrating with its hopeless misery. For 
 a time it accused her sharply, but with con- 
 tinual repetition began to lose its meaning. 
 The girl started to murmur the word to her- 
 self mechanically, in an undertone of accom- 
 paniment. Finally it became a lullabye, and 
 so hymned her to sleep. 
 
 " Kitty 1 " 
 
 Was she destined to hear it all her life, Kate 
 questioned on the borderland of sleep. 
 
 " Kitty ! " 
 
 A hand was laid on her shoulder and she 
 woke with a start. A girl-cousin, one of the 
 intending bridesmaids, was standing by her 
 bedside. 
 
 *' How startled you look I " 
 
 " I thought you wore " Kato checked 
 
106 A Romance of Wasidale 
 
 herself in confusion, and a peal of laughter 
 rippled through the room. It warned her of 
 the part she had to play. 
 
 " What time is it ? " she asked hastily. 
 
 " Ten o'clock ! Your aunt would not 
 have you called before. How is your 
 head ? " 
 
 Kate asserted complete recovery and pro- 
 ceeded to dress, though with a languid dilatori- 
 ness which belied her statement. The house 
 was nearly full of her women-folk relations, 
 and she dreaded to face them. She looked 
 at herself in the mirror and fancied every one 
 would read her night's ride in her jaded pallor 
 and the shadows about her eyes. Even her 
 father noticed them when she entered the break- 
 fast-room, with a " You don't look over bright, 
 Kitty 1 " The company was assembled in 
 fuU force about the table, and she had to run 
 the gauntlet of their smirking condolements. 
 " Never mind. I will put you right. It's 
 bile." Homoeopathy smiled comfortably 
 from behind the tea-urn, and Kate for the first 
 time thanked Providence for the birth of 
 Dr. Hahnemann. She noticed with reUef that 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 107 
 
 the meal was nearly over, but gained no re- 
 spite thereby. For, after breakfast, there 
 were new presents to be inspected and ac- 
 claimed — noticeably one from Poonah, a jade 
 idol of most admired ugliness. Kate explained 
 her shiver of repulsion by the carven malice 
 of its features. Then followed consultations 
 upon frocks, interspersed with eulogies of 
 David and predictions of the happiness in 
 store for well-assorted couples, plainly calling 
 for enthusiastic answers nicely tempered by 
 a diffident modesty. At times, indeed, the 
 task almost exceeded her powers of endurance, 
 and she felt madly spurred to hurl the truth 
 like a bombshell into the midst of the flum- 
 mery. She restrained herself, however, draw- 
 ing a faint solace of amusement from a mental 
 picture of the resultant chaos, and somehow 
 or another the day wore on to its close. 
 " They will know in the morning," she re- 
 flected. But she was mistaken. It was not 
 until the tliird day that the news of the 
 liberation came. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 Gordon quickened his pace as ho reached 
 
108 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 the basin of the valley under an apprehension 
 lest he should find the farm people already 
 risen. For, although it was still quite dark, 
 there was all around him that universal move- 
 ment, as if the earth itself were stirring from 
 its sleep, which tells of an approaching dawn. 
 The last two fields he covered at a run and 
 regained the farm only to discover that his 
 fears were groundless. The lamp in his parlour 
 was still alight, but beginning to flicker for 
 want of replenishing. Gordon cautiously 
 opened the door at the foot of the staircase 
 and listened. But he could hear nothing but 
 his own breathing ; evidently no one was 
 moving as yet. He returned into the room 
 to blow out the lamp, but was checked by the 
 sight of his writing case on a cabinet against 
 the wall. He went to it, drew out a packet 
 of letters, and, pulling up a chair to the table, 
 read, by the last spurts of the light, those 
 which Kate had sent to him from Poonah. 
 How blind he must have been, he thought. 
 Why, effort was visible in every line of them, 
 coldness seeking to screen itself beneath a 
 wealth of phrases. He commenced to speculate 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 109 
 
 curiously which portions were Hawke's dic- 
 tation and which her own work ; otherwise 
 the letters awakened no feeling in him. 
 Phrases here and there fixed his attention. 
 " You came into my life like a ray of sunlight 
 into a musty room." Yes ! Hawke would 
 have invented that, knowing how it would 
 appeal to him. And, again, " I feel that 
 I can rely on you whatever comes " — a post- 
 script, scribbled hastily and smudged, evidently 
 Kate's own, and written covertly in Hawke's 
 presence. The extinction of the lamp put 
 an end to this unprofitable investigation, 
 and Gordon gathered the letters together, 
 placed them in the grate, and set them ablaze. 
 He waited until the last spark had died out 
 and a heap of black flaky ashes was all that was 
 left of the false tokens which he had treasured 
 aa sacred, and then crept cautiously up to 
 his room. For some time he remained by 
 his window, thinking. Ho noticed the angle 
 in the barn- wall from which Hawko had 
 dartc<i out, and it seemed to him that the 
 century might well have run to its end 
 since then. His mind wandered to a side- 
 
110 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 issue, jumping at a stray suggestion that 
 Time was held to mark age only because it 
 represented the conventional progress of self- 
 knowledge. 
 
 But what if the knowledge of twenty years 
 were crowded into one night ? Gordon felt 
 that that had been the case with him. He 
 understood so much now ; for instance, the 
 fancy which had fleetingly occurred to him 
 that they both had been brought into the 
 isolation of that valley to work out a predes- 
 tined purpose. He understood that purpose, 
 could explain it, and would demonstrate his 
 explanation to the other's ignorance to- 
 morrow. A gradual fading of colour from the 
 sky made him correct himself. " To-day," 
 he murmured, with something of quiet exulta- 
 tion in his voice. Only he must spare Kate ; 
 no suspicion must be allowed to connect 
 her with the solution of his problem. " I feel 
 that I can rely on you whatever comes," she 
 had written. Well, he must prove to her 
 that she was right — some way or another. The 
 sound of movement in the interior of the 
 house brought him back to the present and 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 111 
 
 hinted the advantage of rest. So Gordon 
 went to bed and slept dreamlessly until the 
 8un stood high above the shoulder of Great 
 End. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 As Gordon was breakfasting next morning, 
 the door was thrown open and Hawke strolled 
 in from the lane. 
 
 " Well, have you got over your fatigue yet ? " 
 he asked, with a show of cordiality. 
 
 " Quite, thanks ! " 
 
 Gordon let a moment or two slip before he 
 found his tongue. For his new knowledge, 
 acting vividly upon a somewhat morbid 
 imagination, had not merely changed his con- 
 ceptions of Hawke's character, but, with them, 
 also his very impressions of his appearance. 
 He had been unconsciously developing the 
 man's features and body to express the 
 qualities which he now attributed to him, 
 moulding them, as it were, by the model of 
 his own thoughts. So that, at the first, when 
 Hawke stood before him in the flesh, clearly 
 
 iia 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 113 
 
 lit by the sunlight, which was pouring in 
 through the open doorway, he hardly recog- 
 nised his enemy. The very colloquialism of 
 his speech seemed incongruous and out of 
 place. 
 
 " You slept soundly ? " asked Hawke. 
 
 There was a shade of anxiety in the question 
 appreciable by his observer, and a faint symp- 
 tom of a sneer about the lips when the answer 
 was received. 
 
 " Like a humming-top." 
 
 " You are going over to Eskdale, aren't 
 you ? " Gordon resumed. 
 
 " I shall if I have time." 
 
 " You have changed your plans 1 " The 
 query was put with a sudden alacrity. 
 
 " More or less. Lawson arrived at the Inn 
 this morning from Drigg." 
 
 "Lawson ? " 
 
 " I don't fancy you know him, but he was 
 a friend of Ark Wright's." 
 
 " And is ho going to stay here ? " The 
 anxiety was upon Gordon's side now. Every- 
 thing dci)cndcd on the answer. For the 
 
 presence of this interloper, oven for a day, 
 8 
 
114 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 would render the accomplishment of his 
 purpose impossible. 
 
 " No ! He is on his way to Buttermere. 
 I am going with him part of the distance, and 
 we mean to spend an hour or so on the Pillar 
 Rock. If I have time I shall work round to 
 Eskdale afterwards." 
 
 " It will mean a long day." 
 
 " Yes I But I have to leave for London 
 to-morrow. And, by the way, that is 
 what brought me up here. I shall be late 
 back, I expect, and I want to borrow your 
 lanthorn." 
 
 Hawke turned towards the nail on which he 
 had seen it hanging the previous night. Gordon 
 just managed to check an involuntary start 
 from his chair when the other wheeled quickly 
 round. 
 
 " Why, it is gone ! " he said suspiciously. 
 
 " Haven't they any at the Inn ? " 
 
 The counter-thrust was delivered with a 
 perfect assumption of carelessness, and Hawke 
 parried it clumsily. 
 
 " Only one, and that's broken. So I thought 
 I would borrow yours." 
 
A Romance of Wasidale 115 
 
 " I should have been pleased to lend it you, 
 but it belongs to the house. I suppose the 
 farmer has taken it." 
 
 The indifference with which Gordon spoke 
 disarmed Hawke, and the next moment a 
 shadow darkening the doorway effectually 
 prevented any further investigation as to the 
 whereabouts of the missing article. The new- 
 comer carried a lanthorn. 
 
 " I hope you don't mind me intruding," he 
 said. " It's rather unceremonious, I know. 
 But Hawke said he was going to borrow your 
 lanthorn. Why, the landlady had two or 
 three," he went on, turning to Hawke. " She 
 said she would have lent you one with pleasure. 
 So I brought it for you." 
 
 " Thanks ! Thanks I " Hawke interposed in 
 confusion. " I must have misunderstood her. 
 I never could unravel her dialect." He 
 abruptly introduced his friend to Gordon, and 
 resumed : " I was just speaking of you. Gor- 
 don, you know, was with Arkwright when ho 
 died." 
 
 The conversation drifted into the desired 
 channel, but too late to prevent Gordon rea- 
 
116 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 Using that the request for a lanthorn had 
 been the merest pretext to enable Hawke to 
 assure himself that the night's proceedings 
 remained a secret. It was interrupted, how- 
 ever, by the servant, who bustled Ln with 
 the tray to clear the table, and Gordon thought 
 with a tremor : Suppose she had entered a 
 minute earlier ? Hawke would have been 
 certain to question her, and to repeat his re- 
 quest ; as it was, however, he was too anxious 
 to cover his slip to risk broaching the subject 
 again. 
 
 " That is a good-looking girl," said Lawson, 
 when she had left the room. 
 
 "Is she ? " Gordon inquired. " I have 
 not noticed her." 
 
 Lawson smothered an incredulous laugh, 
 and Hawke broke in : " Oh, it's true enough 1 
 Gordon never notices women's looks. They 
 are too sacred to him." 
 
 " And you nothing but their looks, I am 
 told," Lawson rephed. " Well, I shall try 
 to strike the golden mean," 
 
 " You wUl be making a mistake if you do," 
 Hawke answered. 
 
A Romance of Wastdnle 117 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Because women are moods. Nothing 
 more. They can cover the distance between 
 Diana and Phryne at a jump. They are mere 
 moods, and always to be construed in the pre- 
 sent tense. You must take them as they are." 
 
 " You seem to have made a grammatical 
 study of the subject," Lawson laughed. 
 
 " No ! That is exactly what I have not 
 done. It is of no use. For, being moods, 
 they are unintelligble, and the man who tries 
 to solve them usually comes to grief. Besides, 
 the effort is really unnecessary." 
 
 " You speak from experience ? " Gordon 
 asked quietly. 
 
 " I don't say that," Hawke replied, and 
 with a shade more of earnestness than the 
 occasion seemed to demand. " No, I don't 
 say that. You may call it a theory of mine 
 if you like. But I believe that it is true 
 all the same. All that you want to know 
 about a woman is the colour of her hair and 
 eyes, whether she paints, how she is dressed, 
 the texture of her gloves, and the size of her 
 boots." 
 
118 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 " I fancied a woman liked to be talked to 
 about herself," Lawson objected. 
 
 " But those things constitute herself — at 
 all events to most women," he added, seeing 
 that the other was about to interpose. " I 
 admit there may be exceptions." 
 
 " But you have never met one." 
 
 Hawke shot a quick glance from beneath 
 knitted brows at Gordon as the latter spoke ; 
 but the remark had fallen quite casually from 
 his lips, and he appeared only bored by the 
 discussion. 
 
 " I don't want to have my ideas attributed 
 to personal causes. An anchorite may theo- 
 rise," Hawke replied. 
 
 " Anchorite is good," said Lawson. 
 
 " Believe it or not, that is the right plan. 
 A woman's self is an awkward thing to 
 tackle. It perplexes you if you begin to think 
 about it, and the more you think, the more 
 it perplexes you, and, consequently, the 
 stronger the hold it seizes on you. And just 
 because a woman's bewildering, you run the 
 risk of ending by respecting her — and that is 
 fatal." 
 
A Romance of Wast dale 119 
 
 " Indeed ! Why ? " 
 
 " Because the moment you begin to respect 
 her, she begins to despise you." 
 
 Lawson burst out into a hearty laugh and 
 said, " Come along, Hawke ! That is enough 
 lecture for to-day. You have made me laugh 
 and bored Gordon to death." 
 
 " You epitomise the fate of unconventional 
 truths," Hawke answered, and then turned 
 to Gordon. 
 
 " What do you think of my theory ? Does 
 it bore you ? " 
 
 " I think," Gordon replied, quietly, " that it 
 is one of those theories which, to use your 
 own words, sooner or later bring a man to 
 grief." 
 
 " By Jove, yes I and irretrievably," said 
 Lawson. " So you had better take care, 
 Master Hawke. I have often noticed that 1 " 
 he continued musingly. " When a man comes 
 to grief over facts, he can pull round if ho 
 has any luck. But when he comes a croi)pcr 
 over theories, there's an end of him for good 
 and all." 
 
 The chance remark made Gordon look 
 
120 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 towards the speaker with an active interest. 
 Hawke's lecture, as Lawson had said, merely 
 bored him. The views it set forth were pre- 
 cisely those which he had attributed to the 
 man, and he felt so certain of the accuracy of 
 his opinion that the actual utterance of the 
 views sounded to him little more than a re- 
 petition. His resolve, besides, to exact a full 
 and speedy retribution from Hawke was mail 
 of proof alike against the covert innuendo 
 of the disquisition and the ironical malice 
 which had prompted it. But these last words 
 of Lawson seemed to him instinct with truth, 
 and found a convincing commentary in his 
 own experience. 
 
 Lawson shook hands with Gordon and 
 went out in the porch, with Hawke after him. 
 The latter paused at the door to adjust the 
 rucksack in which he carried their lunch on 
 to his back, and shot a careless " I may see 
 you again this evening " backwards over 
 his shoulder, and they both passed the 
 house and turned along the track to Black 
 SaU. 
 
 Gordon followed them into the opm air. 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 121 
 
 He crossed the field in front of the farm, and 
 climbing on to the top of a huge moss-grown 
 mound of stones which fills an angle in the 
 boundary wall, lit his pipe and lay in the warm 
 sunlight watching them. He could see them 
 for some time toiling up the side of Kirkfell 
 into Mosedale, and every now and then he 
 caught a flash as the sun glittered on the steel 
 head of an ice-axe. Mosedale forms, as it 
 were, a recess in Wastdale, running back from 
 the valley on the side opposite to Scafell, and 
 the Pillar mountain makes the end wall of this 
 recess. The Pillar Rock, however, to which 
 Lawson and Hawke were directing their steps, 
 projects from the further side of the moun- 
 tain and lies in the northern valley of Ennerdale, 
 and the distance between that spot and Wast- 
 dale cannot be traversed at the quickest 
 in less than an hour. 
 
 Gordon looked at his watch ; it was a quarter 
 to ten when they passed from his sight behind 
 the shoulder of Kirkfell, and ho began to cal- 
 culate the time when he might hope to meet 
 Hawke on Alicklcdoor Chasm. For that was 
 the spot which ho had chosen, its bleak solitude 
 
122 A Romance of Wasidale 
 
 appealing to him with a sense of appropriate- 
 ness. Hawke, he reflected, would have to 
 cross Great Gable, and the Styhead, continue 
 in the same direction southwards along Esk- 
 Hause, the pass to Langdale, and then turn 
 to the right into Eskdale, which is separated 
 from the valley of Wastdale by the barrier of 
 the Scafell chain. From there he would have 
 to ascend the southern slope of the latter 
 mountain, and Gordon reckoned that under no 
 circumstances could he reach Mickledoor, 
 the ridge between Scafell and Scafell Pikes, 
 before half -past six. 
 
 It would then be dark. 
 
 That Hawke might change his plan and 
 return home by the way he set out did not 
 occur to him until hours after. For the 
 half-formed idea that he was working under 
 destiny had grown into a living conviction. 
 He had come to look upon himself as the 
 tool and agent in the completion of an ordained 
 plan. So keen indeed had this feeling of 
 personal irresponsibility become, that he gave 
 no thoughts as to the details by which he 
 was to carry out his purpose, confidently 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 123 
 
 leaving occasion to direct the act. A line of 
 Beatrice Cenci's in Shelley's play kept march- 
 ing through his brain — 
 
 " Tliou wert a weapon in the hand of God 
 To a just use." 
 
 In a word, he was looking across the interval 
 of the next few hours, and dignifying as the 
 judicial execution of a law what was in reality 
 only the gratification of a savage lust for re- 
 venge ; a distinction which he might have 
 grasped from a certain luxurious feeling in 
 the anticipation of it had he not abandoned 
 his habit of self-analysis. 
 
 The illusion was, moreover, very naturally 
 strengthened by the fact that circumstances 
 seemed strangely shaping themselves to fit 
 in with his resolve. The very appearance 
 of Lawson, which Gordon had considered 
 at first an insuperable obstacle, now showed 
 as an additional advantage. For the couple 
 had ascended in full view towards the Pillar, 
 in the reverse direction to Scafell, and conse- 
 quently if Hawke's body were found by the 
 latter mountain, suspicion would bo diverted 
 from the idea of a premeditated attack. It 
 
124 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 would look as if Hawke had changed hia 
 route by chance, made the cu-cuit of the 
 valley, and then slipped on the cliffs at the 
 opposite end. For Gordon reckoned that 
 no one but Lawson and himself knew of 
 Hawke's projected expedition, and the former, 
 being ignorant of the hostility between the 
 two men, would have no reason to con- 
 nect him with the accident. That Hawke 
 had not mentioned his intentions to the Inn 
 people seemed fairly evident from his lie 
 about the lanthorn. Lawson, it is true, 
 might have told them, for he borrowed it. 
 Gordon determined to find that out. For at 
 all costs suspicion must be diverted from 
 himself for the sake of the girl waiting for his 
 message fifteen miles away. He would go 
 down to the Inn now ; and besides, he 
 recollected he had another mission to accom- 
 plish there. 
 
 Gordon rose from his resting-place and had 
 already proceeded some way in that direction 
 when he suddenly stopped. After a moment's 
 thought he turned on his steps and went back 
 to the farm. He shouted to his landlady to 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 125 
 
 pack up his lunch in a parcel, and mounted 
 to his room. The day before he had brought 
 over such few articles as he required in a 
 rucksack — the bag, half knapsack, half 
 haversack, peculiar to mountaineers — and 
 at the bottom of this lay, still folded up, 
 an extra coat and pair of knee-breeches of 
 the same cloth as those which he was wear- 
 ing now. He emptied the bag of its other 
 contents and descended with it to the parlour. 
 The landlady presently brought in the packet 
 which he had ordered, and he placed it with 
 his flask inside the rucksack and fastened the 
 strings. 
 
 "Dinner at half-past seven," he said. "I 
 don't expect to be in till then, I am going 
 over to Rostliwaito to get some fresh nails 
 hammered into my boots." 
 
 And he slung the rucksack on to his shoulders 
 and went down to the Inn. He inquired what 
 time they expected Mr. Hawke back. Mr. 
 Hawko, they told him, had borrowed a lan- 
 thom and set out for the Pillar, with a friend 
 some time since. He knew that, but when 
 did they expect him homo ? They wore not 
 
126 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 quite sure, late they gathered, but Mr. Hawke 
 had said nothing of the matter to them. In 
 fact it was his friend who had borrowed the 
 lanthorn. Could Mr. Gordon leave a note ? 
 Certainly 1 Would he write it in the coffee- 
 room ? Oh I He knew Mr. Hawke's sit- 
 ting-room then. No ? The servant would 
 show him to it if he preferred to write it 
 there. 
 
 Gordon was accordingly ushered up into 
 the room where the first act of his tragical- 
 comical history had been presented to his eyes 
 the night before. He wasted no time over 
 his recollections, however, but just cast one 
 curious glance towards the outhouse on which 
 he had hung, and proceeded to hunt for Kate's 
 missing shawl. The room was furnished upon 
 strictly utilitarian principles, and seemed de- 
 fiantly to challenge inspection by flaunting 
 its incapacity for concealment. The search 
 was consequently short. Gordon stopped be- 
 fore a cupboard in a recess by the side of the 
 fireplace. There was another of a similar 
 make in a corresponding position on the farther 
 side, but that stood open, while this one was 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 127 
 
 locked and the key removed. Gordon stooped 
 to examine the lock ; it belonged to that 
 type which appears to have been invented 
 in a genial spirit in order to excite curiosity 
 and gratify it, and Gordon's knife proved a 
 quick skeleton-key. He found the shawl, as 
 he had expected, carelessly tumbled on to 
 the shelf, and he took it down and ran the 
 white fleecy wool through his fingers with a 
 queer sensation, as if he were handling some- 
 thing which he ought to recognise and yet could 
 not. As a matter of fact, he knew the shawl 
 quite well. He had bought it for Kate him- 
 self at Goring last September, when the evenings 
 were growing chilly on the river. But he 
 had rather fancied that the touch of it would 
 somehow send a thrill through his deadened 
 emotions, and the entire absence of any 
 pulsation or throb made him hazily 
 wonder for a moment whether this that ho 
 held was the real shawl of which he was in 
 search. 
 
 He added it, however, to the other contents 
 of his bag, and closed the cupboard door. 
 His knife had left little or no trace upon the 
 
128 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 wood-work, which was soft and yielded pli- 
 antly ; and this Gordon looked upon as an 
 important detail. Since, when the room was 
 searched, as it would be afterwards, any fresh 
 marks or scratches about the lock might, 
 he thought, draw attention to himself, and 
 suggest the possibility of an ulterior motive 
 for his visit beyond the mere inditing of a 
 note. As to the lock itself, in all probability 
 no one but Hawke knew that it had been fas- 
 tened, and Hawke's knowledge, he reflected, 
 with a smile, would then be a matter of no 
 importance. So he only stayed to scribble a 
 hasty line — an invitation to dinner that 
 evening was the somewhat gruesome device 
 on which his ingenuity had hit — and then set 
 out upon his way, following the path which 
 he had ascended in the early hours of the 
 morning. 
 
 Nothing so clearly showed the change 
 which had taken place in Gordon as his in- 
 difference in retraversing this ground. For 
 although he recollected with perfect complete- 
 ness every feature of that previous journey, he 
 recollected it with no shadow of emotion, and 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 129 
 
 almost without interest. The facts recurred 
 to him, but devoid of personal application. 
 Gordon remembered them much as a man may 
 remember vividly the details of a death which 
 ho has mourned, when ho has well-nigh lost 
 the memory of his regret. 
 
 It was barely one when he reached the cairn 
 upon Styhead Pass, and realising that he had 
 five hours still to wear away, he turned to the 
 right along Esk House and ascended the 
 central gully in the cliffs of Great End. The 
 sky had darkened since the morning, and 
 the air was growing heavy and still with a 
 prophecy of a storm ; so that he was not 
 surprised, when he came out on the summit 
 of the crags, to find the clouds brooding angrily 
 about the tops of the fells. Far away, it is 
 true, from one broad solitary rift, he could 
 see the sunlight pouring on to Helvellyn and 
 tinting its white slopes to a sheet of gold. 
 But there were black masses clustered close 
 above it, as if jealous of its glow, and even 
 as he watched, the rift closed up and the 
 snow was discoloured to a dull, cheerless 
 groy. 
 
 9 
 
130 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 From that point Gordon doubled back along 
 the edge, descended slowly to the gloomy 
 fissure of Piers Gill, crossed the depression at 
 its head and the neck of land between Scafell 
 Pikes and Lingmell, and turned up to the 
 left towards Mickledoor, the sunken ridge 
 between the former mountain and Scafell. It 
 was half-past five when he stood finally upon 
 the top of the gap, and already growing rapidly 
 dark. The cold, moreover, had become in- 
 tense ; so that that silent wilderness of stones, 
 overhung by black crags, seemed to him in 
 the dim light the most desolate spot in all 
 the world. On both sides the ridge sloped 
 steeply down in an incline of scree and shattered 
 boulders, the debris of the clififs above. Below 
 that were rounded promontories of brown 
 grass strewn here and there with soiled patches 
 of snow. But as far as the eye could see there 
 was no trace of a living thing ; for the village 
 of Wastdale itself was excluded from view by 
 the intervening barrier of Lingmell. 
 
 Gordon strained his eyes in the opposite 
 direction to catch a glimpse of Hawke mount- 
 ing from Eskdalo. But there was no sign of 
 
A Romance of Wasidale 131 
 
 hia coming, not even the clatter of a dislodged 
 stone. " It is early yet," he muttered to him- 
 self, though with the chill of a inisgiving. 
 For the first time that day hia confidence 
 began to fail him. If Hawke should have 
 abandoned his intention of making the circuit 
 of the hills, and gone quickly home 1 He 
 would discover the note, find that Gordon 
 had come to his rooms, and ascertain the disap- 
 pearance of the shawl. He would know the 
 game was up, and, worse still, would have 
 time to get clear away. Gordon tried to 
 banish the supposition ; he dared not face 
 it, the mere utterance of it seeming to accuse 
 him of a breach of trust. None the less, how- 
 ever, it clung to his back and thrashed him 
 into an aimless activity. He descended the 
 ridge towards Wftstdalo in hot haste. There, 
 to add to his dismay, he beheld a mist floating 
 quickly up the valleys in tongues of smoke, 
 and he knew that the moment it swept across 
 Mickledoor, adding its thick confusion to 
 the increasing gloom, his chances of discovering 
 Hawke, even if he, came that way, were prac- 
 (ififtlly dostroy'd. He tiirnrd on liis sU^ps in 
 
132 A Romance of Wasldale 
 
 a panic and raced back to the top of the ridge. 
 The same stagnant silence enveloped it. There 
 was not even a stir of the wind. Looking back, 
 he saw the mist was already licking the boulders 
 at the bottom of the steep incline. It would 
 pour over the gap in a minute, he thought, 
 and, without stopping to reason, he ran down 
 the slope from it on the Eskdale side. It 
 occurred to him, upon subsequent thought, 
 that this action was the most ill-advised he 
 could have adopted, for the gap on both sides 
 widens rapidly from its summit. Had he cal- 
 culated chances with any approach to accuracy, 
 he would have remained where he was on 
 the apex and narrowest part of the ridge. 
 And yet to this mistake he owed the com- 
 pletion of his design. For ho kept close to 
 Scafell as he went and he had not moved many 
 yards when he heard right above his head the 
 metallic clink of an ice-axe. He was stand- 
 ing by a narrow cleft in the rocks known as 
 " the Chimney," which, for a climber, affords 
 an issue on to the actual summit of Scafell. 
 Hawke, then, was crossing the mountain it- 
 self. The sound told Gordon that ta was 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 133 
 
 as yet not far up the side. He must have 
 entered the cleft after Gordon's arrival, and 
 while the latter was on the farther side of the 
 ridge. 
 
 Gordon wondered how it was that he had 
 not originally noticed his approach. At that 
 moment the mist swept over Mickledoor, 
 and a plan shaped itself in his mind. Parallel 
 to the chimney, but some yards to the west 
 of it, the cliffs offer a simpler reuto, called 
 " Broad Stand," and after a certain height 
 is attained by that way, a man may reach by 
 an easy traverse a spot where Hawke must 
 leave his gully and climb out on to the face 
 of the rock. This latter manosuvre is always 
 attended with a certain difficulty, since the 
 walls of the gully afford no foothold and 
 give only on to a shelving slab. Gordon, 
 therefore, had little fear that Hawke would 
 outstrip him, and determined to join him 
 by way of Broad Stand. So he turned back 
 once more and rcasccndcd the incline, treading 
 cautiously and feeling along the mountain 
 as ho went, lest in the darkness he should pass 
 the point at which the climb began. After 
 
134 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 proceeding in this manner for about a minute, 
 he came to a narrow vertical slit in the rock, 
 which was just discernible. It was the spot 
 of which he was in search, and he entered it, 
 appearing to be swallowed up in the cliff, A 
 walk of a few yards brought him to some huge 
 blocks piled one above another, and shaped 
 in pyramidal steps. These formed the pathway 
 of his ascent. They present no great difficulty 
 as a rule, but now they were coated with a 
 thin glaze of ice, and as Gordon had brought 
 no axe with him, purposely, in order to sustain 
 the supposition that he had spent the after- 
 noon in crossing the Styhead Pass towards 
 Rosthwaite, he was compelled at each step that 
 he took to clear out the next footing above, 
 with the sole aid of his numbed fingers. Conse- 
 quently he made his way but slowly. An 
 overpowering dread that his enemy might 
 escape while he was yet struggling below the 
 traverse began to creep over him and strung 
 his nerves to more strenuous efforts. His 
 hatred, tantalised by the possibility, took a 
 renewed life and sent the blood spinning 
 through his veins like fire. He forgot the cold 
 
A Roviance of Wastdale 135 
 
 in his limbs, and the ice on the rocks, and 
 clambered up in a reckless fury. 
 
 Meanwhile the mist was thickening con- 
 tinually, and by the time Gordon had com- 
 pleted his ascent and reached the point from 
 which he had to diverge along the cliff's face, 
 the night had fallen pitch-dark. He stood 
 still for a moment, with his head bent forward, 
 listening eagerly for a sound. Was he too 
 late ? Then he heard the scrabbling of boot- 
 nails upon the slab, and a minute after the 
 stamping of feet a few yards away to his left. 
 The noise drove all his thoughts of averting 
 suspicion from his mind. The mere know- 
 ledge that his enemy was there filled him ; a 
 cry of exultation rose up to his lips and he 
 barely checked it, and crept silently forwards. 
 A thin buttress of rock ran down shoulder- 
 high between the two men, and this Gordon 
 had forgotten. lie came upon it unawares as 
 he was moving with outstretched hands, and, 
 understanding that he had traversed the 
 space diagonally instead of in a direct line, 
 he descended a little to round it. As he 
 was doing this ho heard the spirt of a match. 
 
136 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 There was not a breath of wind, and the tiny 
 flame burnt steadily, throwing out a brown 
 light upon the mirky gloom. To Gordon it 
 seemed blood-red. He paused and waited for 
 the match to blow out. Instead of that, how- 
 ever, it grew brighter, and he remembered 
 that Hawke carried a lanthorn. For a second 
 he was staggered as by an unexpected blow, 
 and stood thinking. Then he continued his 
 stealthy descent to the end of the buttress. 
 As he turned the corner he drew his knife and 
 crouched Hke an animal. Hawke was some 
 fifteen feet away, kneeling on the ground 
 by the light and fumbling a small bottle 
 clumsily in his frozen hands. Gordon measured 
 the intervening space with his eye, and chose 
 the point between Hawke's shoulders, where 
 he meant to strike, gently swaying his body 
 to and fro the while in preparation for a 
 spring. As he threw his weight backwards, 
 however, for the last time, his heel slipped 
 on a loose stone and sent it echoing behind 
 him down the crags. 
 
 " Who is that ? " cried Hawke, Uftmg the 
 lanthorn and standing upright. 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 137 
 
 Gordon stepped forward on the instant, 
 slipping his knife with its open blade into his 
 pocket, and the flame of the lanthorn encircled 
 them both in a little ring of Ught. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 " You 1 " cried Hawke. 
 
 The wall of the rock made a right angle be- 
 hind him, and he backed into the corner of 
 it, fronting Gordon with the lanthorn held 
 aloft between them. There was a rmg of 
 terror in his voice, and his eyes glanced rapidly 
 round with a hunted look. 
 
 Gordon saw the look and smiled ; for the 
 little platform on which they stood was open 
 only upon two sides, of which the gully guarded 
 one and himself the other. 
 
 He did not answer Hawke's exclamation 
 at once, for the sudden check had aroused 
 him to the need of wariness. A struggle had 
 to be avoided at all costs, he thought ; for 
 it would land them both, locked together, on 
 the screes below. It was very pleasant to 
 him, besides, to watch the shrinking fear 
 visible in his enemy's attitude. The very 
 
 1S8 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 139 
 
 lanthorn was rattling in his unsteady grasp, 
 and the sound of it was music to Gordon's 
 ears. 
 
 " You did not expect to see me, did 
 you, Austen ? " he said at last, purring the 
 words. 
 
 " You did rather startle me, I own. You 
 came along so quietly." 
 
 " One needs to be careful when it is as dark 
 as this. As it was, I lost my way. If you 
 had not lit that lanthorn I should have been 
 over the chfls. I may thank you for my life," 
 and Gordon laughed cheerfully. 
 
 His words and the familiarity of his voice 
 helped Hawke back to some portion of his 
 confidence. But he still hold the lanthorn 
 above their heads. 
 
 During these last days he had lived in a 
 constant dread of detection, Gordon's unfore- 
 seen visit to the dale wearing to him almost the 
 appearance of a fatality. He cursed the infatua- 
 tion which had led hira to summon Kate Nu- 
 gent, and each fresh sight of the man he had 
 wronged awakened in him a shudder of alarm. 
 It is true that he had voluntarily sought 
 
140 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 Gordon's company at the farm-house the 
 night before and again this morning. But the 
 inconsistency of the proceeding was purely on 
 the surface. He had felt compelled to that 
 course by the urgency of his dread, which 
 shook him chiefly when alone. And it was 
 the effect of these solitary cogitations which 
 produced his inexpressible terror on each 
 occasion that he met the man. Once in his 
 presence, however, the feeling wore off. He 
 had always been accustomed to regard 
 Gordon somewhat contemptuously in the 
 light of an unpractical dreamer, and as he 
 listened to his voice and watched his 
 gestures, this habit reasserted itself from an 
 association of ideas. He came to the conclu- 
 sion that there were no grounds for his fears, 
 crediting Gordon with no great powers of 
 self-repression. 
 
 Viewed generally, this latter judgment of 
 Hawke's was correct. The fatal mistake, 
 however, which he committed was to make no 
 allowance for a possible concentration of 
 his entire faculties upon a single aim, under 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 141 
 
 the influence of an overmastering passion, 
 such as the lust for revenge which absorbed 
 Gordon now. 
 
 On this particular occasion, however, 
 Hawke had been more than usually startled. 
 He had intended to leave Wastdale Head 
 early the next morning, and liad planned this 
 expedition in order to avoid meeting Gordon 
 again — nay, more, had actually given him 
 a false description of his route. Conse- 
 quently his sudden appearance from the 
 surrounding darkness and the silence of 
 his approach had intensified his feeling of 
 alarm and betrayed it unmistakably to his 
 companion. 
 
 " You have made the circuit quickly," Gordon 
 resumed. 
 
 " I gave up the idea of Eskdale when the 
 skv clouded," Hawke roj^lied, " and came 
 straight across from the Pillar." 
 
 '• I wonder we did not meet before." 
 
 Gordon was speaking at random, watching 
 keenly for a chance ; but Hawke still faced 
 him, with his back to the rock. 
 
142 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 *' Oh I I have been on the mountain for 
 some time. You have only just come, I 
 suppose." 
 
 *' I came with the mist." 
 
 " It's a poor companion," Hawke resumed. 
 " I found rather a good glissade just behind 
 these cliffs running into Eskdale. I spent 
 most of the afternoon on that. You ought 
 to try it." 
 
 " I will." 
 
 " It lands you out close to Mickledoor and 
 not far below the chimney. So I thought I 
 would go home this way. But if I had 
 known it was going to grow as cold and dark 
 as this I would have seen myself damned first." 
 
 "It is cold," Gordon assented, although 
 his senses gave him no knowledge of the fact. 
 He was wondering whether Hawke would 
 ever move. If only he would set the lanthorn 
 down 1 
 
 " Suppose that we move," he went on. 
 " You have got the lanthorn, so you had better 
 go first." 
 
 He drew to one side as he spoke, and made 
 room for Hawke to pass. But at the very 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 143 
 
 moment that he was taking the step, Hawke 
 suddenly placed the lanthorn on the ground, 
 and cried — 
 
 " Wait a moment ! " 
 
 The next instant he stood upright, and that 
 opportunity was gone. 
 
 " I have got a bottle of brandy here," said 
 Hawke. " We had better open it. Has 
 your knife got a corkscrew ? " 
 
 Gordon thrust his hand quickly into his 
 pocket and felt the sharp blade cut into his 
 flesh. But he drew his hand out again empty, 
 and said — 
 
 " I haven't got a knife at all. I left mine 
 at home." 
 
 " We must use mine, then, and knock the 
 neck off. They have jammed the cork in so 
 tightly, that there is no other way. Here 1 
 hold the bottle." 
 
 Hawke handed him the bottle and searched 
 in his pocket for his knife. He was perfectly 
 defenceless at the moment, but the memory 
 of Arkwright's accident had suddenly flashed 
 upon Gordon and suggested to him a safer 
 plan. 
 
144 A Romance of Wasidale 
 
 He added another item to his supposed 
 new knowledge. He understood now, he 
 fancied, why the recollection of that night in 
 the Alps had so persistently mingled with 
 his thoughts yesterday, and he laughed 
 gleefully. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " Hawke asked. 
 " You seem pleased." 
 
 " I am," he replied. " It is the brandy 
 warming me through the cork." 
 
 Hawke laughed. " It wasn't a bad sugges- 
 tion, was it ? " 
 
 " It was the best I ever heard from you." 
 
 Hawke found his knife and held it out to 
 Gordon, saying — 
 
 " You had better do it ! My fingers are so 
 cursedly numbed, I should only cut myself or 
 drop the bottle." 
 
 Gordon took the knife with his right hand, 
 and Hawke exclaimed — 
 
 " What on earth have you done to your 
 hand ? It is covered with blood." 
 
 " Oh, it's nothing," Gordon answered 
 quickly. " I cut it on a pointed piece of rock, 
 that's all." 
 
A Bomance of Wasidcde 145 
 
 For a moment he stood with the bottle poised 
 in one hand and the knife in the other, think- 
 ing. Then he said — 
 
 " Just take this while I open the blade," and 
 he handed the bottle back. 
 
 " The handle will serve," said Hawke. 
 
 " The blade will do it cleaner." 
 
 Hawke took the bottle back while Gordon 
 opened the knife. It was of a strong and 
 heavy make, with a long, powerful blade. 
 Gordon ran his thumb along the edge and 
 found it sharp and even. 
 
 " Now if you will hold the bottle out," he 
 said, " I will operate. Not that way ! Wo 
 shall spill it all ; " and he readjusted the 
 bottle in Hawke's hands, settling the base in 
 his upturned palms, with the cork pointing 
 towards himself. 
 
 " That's riglit," he said, and struck the neck 
 
 on the side nearest to Hawke, slipped the 
 
 blade on the glass, and drove it with all his 
 
 force down into his left arm where it showed 
 
 white below his sleeve. 
 
 The bottle crashed on the ground. 
 
 Hawke reeled against the rock wall behind 
 lo 
 
146 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 him, clutching the injured wrist with his 
 disengaged hand. 
 
 " God I " he shrieked. " It's an artery." 
 
 Gordon could see the blood spurting in quick 
 jets, and said, quietly — 
 
 ** It reminds me of Arkwright. That was 
 an accident, too." 
 
 " Don't stand there, man — dreaming 1 Do 
 something ! " 
 
 Gordon laughed at the words — a low, 
 happy laugh, which struck a new horror 
 into Hawke. 
 
 " You meant to do it ? " 
 
 Gordon nodded to him, knowingly. 
 
 " Damn you I " Hawke hissed and sunk 
 down upon the platform beside the lanthom, 
 concentrating all his strength into the oath. 
 He was still vainly endeavouring to stop the 
 bursts from the vein by the pressure of his 
 fingers. 
 
 Gordon knelt by his side. 
 
 " Let me look," he said. 
 
 Hawke dragged himself a few inches farther 
 away, \\'ith an inarticulate snarl, and turned 
 his back. 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 147 
 
 " Won't you let me help you ? " Gordon 
 asked, in a tone of gentle remonstrance. 
 
 The other shot a quick glance across 
 his shoulder, and replied, with a beaten 
 air — 
 
 " I could believe it was myself said 
 that." 
 
 " But I mean it. There's the difference. 
 Won't you let me bind up your arm ? " 
 
 Hawke looked at him again and rolled 
 over to face him, his eyes alive with 
 hope. 
 
 "Oh, if you will," he said. "But be 
 quick 1 quick I Use my scarf 1 Only be 
 quick I " 
 
 Something in his manner recalled vividly 
 to Gordon Kate's appeal to Hawke of the 
 night before ; but he unwound the scarf from 
 the neck of the wounded man. The latter 
 could not repress a convulsive shiver as ho felt 
 the touch of his fingers. 
 
 " I ara sorry," Gordon apolgiacd. " I know 
 it must be unpleasant." 
 
 The scarf was of thick white wool, and 
 he twisted it round the arm just above the 
 
148 A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 cut and tied it firmly ; but a dark stain 
 came through it at once and widened ovei 
 the folds. 
 
 " The ice-axe," gasped Hawke. " It is by 
 your side." 
 
 Gordon took it from where it was resting 
 on the ground, and inserting the pick into 
 the wool, used it as a tourniquet, and strained 
 the bandage tight. 
 
 " Thanks ! thanks 1 " murmured Hawke. 
 " That will hold. Give me the pole of the axe. 
 Now run down to the Inn and get help. I 
 may be able to last out — ^if only I don't freeze 
 to death," he added, with a moan. 
 
 *' It is a pity the brandy's spilt." 
 
 " Never mind that I Hurry down to the 
 Inn." 
 
 *' No 1 no 1 Austen," Gordon replied, indul 
 gently, much as one refuses a child an iir 
 possible request. " I don't think I can dv. 
 that." 
 
 Hawke raised himself upon his right elbow 
 and peered into the other's face. Neither 
 of them spoke, but the animation flickered 
 out of Hawke's features, and it seemed as 
 
A Romance of Wastdale 149 
 
 if a veil were drawn across the pupils of Lis 
 eyes. 
 
 " You have murdered me," he said, sinking 
 back and letting his head fall sideways on the 
 ground. 
 
 " I have waked up. You said I was dream- 
 ing. 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 in- 
 tensity. In a moment, however, ho 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 polo of the axe and in- 
 stinctively moved his right hand to protect 
 hia 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— after- 
 wards." 
 
150 A Bomcmce of Wastdale 
 
 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 1 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 sweep- 
 ing him away on a full flow. 
 
 " The fool was asleep, was he ? The fool 
 (vas 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 1 Did 
 you think I didn't see you watching my bed- 
 room 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 Romance of Wastdale 151 
 
 A sudden access of passion 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. 
 
 " Damn you ! " he whispered, ** and the 
 girl, too 1 " 
 
 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 blanchmg 
 face and feeling the blood soak about his knees. 
 In a moment or two he saw Hawko's eyeballs 
 quiver under the half-closed lids and ho leaned 
 
152 A llomance of Wasidule 
 
 across the body and blow 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 passed, and Gordon be- 
 thought him of the time, but he was now so 
 starved by the cold that at first he was power- 
 less to unclasp his hands. The feeling of 
 utter helplessness threw him into an agony. 
 Ke 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 morn- 
 ing 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 un- 
 button the coat, and he paused, shrinking from 
 that. In the end ho mustered courage for the 
 task, rebuttoned the coat, and groped his 
 
A Romance of Wasidale 153 
 
 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 sUd 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 shiver 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 mo- 
 ment 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. 
 
A Romance of Wasidale 155 
 
 That done, he sat down upon a stone, and 
 went over carefully all that had occurred. 
 Reflection showed him no opening for sus- 
 picion to arise, either from the deed itself or 
 its attendant circumstances. Against the 
 latter he had already guarded, while the 
 broken fragments of glass, 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. Hero 
 and there a star could bo seen wmking from a 
 blue gap, and so Gordon was able to distinguish 
 when he reached the shore, that no loiterer 
 
15G A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 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 farm- 
 house. 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 
 
A Romance of Wasidale 157 
 
 rather left a note to that efiFect, 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 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, ho could not banish 
 it. Everything else ho had intended, and 
 justice had dictated. But that blow I 
 
158 A Romance of Wasidale 
 
 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, asserted that he 
 passed Hawke not later than one in the after- 
 noon 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 acci- 
 dents 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 hum- 
 ming the words to the cadence of his steps. 
 
 They reached the Rock at last, and this 
 
A Romance of Wasidale 159 
 
 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 comers 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 passed 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 1 " 
 
 Gordon watched them until they had disap- 
 peared round a headland, and then turned 
 and looked down the crags. 
 
IGO A Romance of Wastdale 
 
 " Not there I " 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 Wast- 
 dale. Eastwards the sun was rising over 
 the Pass ; " from Keswick," he thought. He 
 took out of his pocket the three letters and 
 handled them, and his eyes fell upon the 
 
 signature. 
 
 • I t I • 
 
 Two days afterwards he was found by a 
 fisherman at the bottom of the gully, caught 
 by a boulder on the water's edge. One hand 
 was trailing in the water and it clenched a 
 torn scrap of sodden paper. 
 
 Made and Printed in Great Britain. 
 Hatell, Watson &■ Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury 
 
DATE DUE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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