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 conceptions 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 lit by the sunlight, which was
pouring in through the open doorway, he hardly recognised 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 symptom 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?" 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 Arkwright's."
"And is he going to stay here?" The anxiety was upon Gordon's side
now. Everything depended on the answer. For the presence of this
interloper, even for a day, 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! 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."
"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 newcomer 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!" 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. Gordon, you know, was with Arkwright when he died."
The conversation drifted into the desired channel, but too late to
prevent Gordon realising 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, however, by the
servant, who bustled in 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 request; 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! Gordon never notices women's looks. They are too sacred
to him."
"And you nothing but their looks, I am told," Lawson replied. "Well, I
shall try to strike the golden mean."
"You will be making a mistake if you do," Hawke answered.
"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 present 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."
"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 theorise," 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."
"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! and irretrievably," said Lawson. "So you had better
take care, Master Hawke. I have often noticed that!" he continued
musingly. "When a man comes to grief over facts, he can pull round if
he has any luck. But when he comes a cropper over theories, there's an
end of him for good and all."
The chance remark made Gordon look towards the speaker with an active
interest. Hawke's lecture, as Lawson had said, merely bored him. The
views it set forth were precisely 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
repetition. 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 Sail.
Gordon followed them into the open air. 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 mountain and lies in the northern valley of
Ennerdale, and the distance between that spot and Wastdale 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 he began to
calculate the time when he might hope to meet Hawke on Mickledoor
Chasm. For that was the spot which he had chosen, its bleak solitude
appealing to him with a sense of appropriateness. 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 leaving occasion to
direct the act. A line of Beatrice Cenci's in Shelley's play kept
marching through his brain--
"Thou 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 revenge; 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 consequently if
Hawke's body were found by the latter mountain, suspicion would be
diverted from the idea of a premeditated attack. It would look as if
Hawke had changed his route by chance, made the circuit 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 connect 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 accomplish 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 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
wearing 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 Rosthwaite 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. Hawke,
they told him, had borrowed a lanthorn and set out for the Pillar,
with a friend some time since. He knew that, but when did they expect
him home? They were not 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!
Would he write it in the coffee-room? Oh! He knew Mr. Hawke's
sitting-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 defiantly to
challenge inspection by flaunting its incapacity for concealment. The
search was consequently short. Gordon stopped before 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 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 something 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 himself 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 he 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
wood-work, which was soft and yielded pliantly; 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 fastened, 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 indifference in retraversing this ground. For although he
recollected with perfect completeness every feature of that previous
journey, he recollected it with no shadow of emotion, and 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 he has mourned, when he 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 grey.
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 intense; 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 cliffs 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 mounting from Eskdale. But there was no sign of his coming,
not even the clatter of a dislodged stone. "It is early yet," he
muttered to himself, though with the chill of a misgiving. For the
first time that day his confidence began to fail him. If Hawke should
have abandoned his intention of making the circuit of the hills, and
gone quickly home! He would discover the note, find that Gordon had
come to his rooms, and ascertain the disappearance 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, however, it clung to his back and thrashed him
into an aimless activity. He descended the ridge towards Wastdale 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 practically destroyed. He turned on his steps in 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
calculated 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 completion of his design. For he 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
standing 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 itself. The sound told Gordon
that he was 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 route, 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 man[oe]uvre 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 reascended the incline, treading cautiously and feeling along
the mountain as he went, lest in the darkness he should pass the point
at which the climb began. After 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 afternoon 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. Consequently 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 in his limbs, and the ice on
the rocks, and clambered up in a reckless fury.
Meanwhile the mist was thickening continually, and by the time Gordon
had completed 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 knowledge 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. He 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 he heard the spirt of a match. 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, however, 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 like 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, lifting the lanthorn and standing upright.
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 light.