A Romance of Wastdale

by A. E. W. Mason

After that neither spoke.

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

After awhile it passed, and Gordon bethought him of the time, but he was now so starved by the cold that at first he was powerless to unclasp his hands. The feeling of utter helplessness threw him into an agony. He fancied that his hands were dead--dead hands frozen round the dead man's wrist with blood. He looked forward in his mind through the black hours of the night and saw the morning pour down the mountain side and touch the grey face by his knees--nay, more, bring the dalesmen up to discover him riveted to the man he had killed. With this last thought he summoned all his strength to his aid, and making a final effort wrenched his hands free. The body was lying motionless at his side, and he felt along it until he reached the breast. To take the letters, however, he had to unbutton the coat, and he paused, shrinking from that. In the end he mustered courage for the task, rebuttoned the coat, and groped his way cautiously to the summit, the rest of the ascent being no more than a rock-strewn slope. From there his path was easy, and although a high wind was now blowing, he descended rapidly. Half-way down he struck a glissade which rare winters of great snow form along an old stone wall, and so slid out of the mist.

[CHAPTER X]

The glissade stretched down towards a beck which flows between Lingmell and the flank of Scafell. So that when Gordon stopped at the end of the snow, a tinkling of water, as it splashed from stone to stone, rose to his ears, and there seemed to him something strangely sweet and peaceful in the sound. He advanced to its edge and washed carefully in the stream. Then he took his haversack from his shoulders and opened it. Kate Nugent's shawl was the first thing which his fingers touched, and the feel of it sent a 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 moment he wondered what that was, and then remembered that he had forgotten to eat his lunch. He repaired the omission on the instant, and proceeded to change his clothes.

That done, he sat down upon a stone, and went over carefully all that had occurred. Reflection showed him no opening for suspicion to arise, either from the deed itself or its attendant 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. Here and there a star could be seen winking from a blue gap, and so Gordon was able to distinguish when he reached the shore, that no loiterer was near to spy upon his acts. He felt in the pockets of the coat he was carrying and drew out the letters which he had taken from Hawke. Then he fastened the bundle securely about the biggest stone he could find and hurled it far out into the Lake. It sank with a loud splash, and Gordon looked quickly round thinking that some one must have noticed it. The only sound that he heard, however, was the wash of the ripples on the bank, and he turned and made hastily up the valley, across the fields, until he had left the village some hundreds of yards behind. From there he crossed into the path which leads down from Styhead, and finally reached the farmhouse. It was close upon half-past eight, he noticed, when he entered the parlour. He explained his lateness to Mrs. Jackson by saying that he had taken refuge from the storm. She added, indulgently, that it was a long way to Rosthwaite.

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

"Mr. Hawke?"

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