A Romance of Wastdale Part 4

"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 replied, quietly--

"And you taunt me with my trust! Surely that is reason enough."

"You are afraid that I shall use them!"

"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 so 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."

"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 intentions 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 because the a.n.a.lyst 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! But because you possessed it," Kate insisted. "Because you were certain 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 pa.s.s, just to a.s.sert your mastery over me--just to convince yourself 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 pa.s.s 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 Kate felt that he was watching her keenly. "But now that I do see you again, 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! We might be friends. Only give me the letters, and I will think of you as a friend!"

"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."

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 outstretched 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 towards him, laughing.

"Only a kiss," he said. "One kiss for each."

"No!" She almost shouted the word.

"Hus.h.!.+" 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 nothing to buy. Think of the distance you have come, of the horrible lonely pa.s.s!"

He repeated her words with a burlesque shudder. But the taunts fell upon deaf ears. Kate was engrossed in the shame of his proposal. 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 degradation. There was a touch of the ludicrous in the notion so grotesquely incongruous with the pain it caused her.

She pictured the scene with a spectator. "How he would laugh!" 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 degree also a certain distorted pleasure which he drew from the knowledge of Gordon's proximity, had served to prepare his pa.s.sions. 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 behind 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 humiliation. For the moment he began to show pa.s.sion, 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 home from Calcutta, Aden, Brindisi, and London."

"Three! You were rude enough to burn one."