A Romance of Wastdale Part 11

"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 b.u.t.termere. 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 a.s.sumption 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 a.s.sure 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 const.i.tute 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 repet.i.tion. 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances 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 Sh.e.l.ley's play kept marching through his brain--

"Thou wert a weapon in the hand of G.o.d To a just use."