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59 pages

English

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David Gordon and Kate Nugent, deeply in love, are headed for a lifetime of wedded bliss. But despite David's unwavering love of Kate, her past isn't as pristine as she has made it out to be. When she finds herself the target of a nefarious blackmail plot, the pair of lovebirds put their heads together and devise a truly diabolical revenge scheme.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 juillet 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776583232
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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A ROMANCE OF WASTDALE
* * *
A. E. W. MASON

*
A Romance of Wastdale First published in 1910 Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-323-2 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-324-9 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X
Chapter I
*
"Mrs. Jackson!"
Mrs. Jackson was feeding her ducks at the beck behind the house. Butthe kitchen door stood open, and she not only heard her name, butrecognised the voice which shouted it.
"It's Mr. Gordon," she said to the servant who was with her, and shebustled through the kitchen into the parlour, drying her hands withher apron as she went.
David Gordon stood by the window, looking dreamily out across thefields. He turned as she entered the room, and shook hands with her.
"I have given you a surprise," he laughed.
"You have, indeed, Mr. Gordon. I never expected to see you again atWastdale Head. You should have written you were coming."
And she proceeded to light the fire.
"I didn't know myself that I was coming until yesterday."
"It is three years since you were here."
"Three years," Gordon repeated slowly. "Yes! I did not realise ituntil 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 headded—
"I heard my marriage bells ringing all the way across Burnmoor."
Mrs. Jackson retired to the kitchen to prepare breakfast and to ponderover his remark. The result of her reflections was shown in theunusual strength of the tea and in an extra thickness of butter on thetoast. She decked the table with an assortment of jams, and carefullyclosed the door which opened into the lane, although the Aprilsunlight was pouring through it in a warm flood. It seemed as ifGordon had gained an additional value and herself an additionalresponsibility. She even took a cushion from the sofa and placed it onhis chair, and then waited on him while he breakfasted, nodding andsmiling a discreet but inquisitive sympathy.
On Gordon, however, her pantomime was lost. His thoughts no longerchimed to marriage bells. For Wastdale, and this farmhouse inparticular, were associated in his mind with the recollection of twofriends, of whom one was dead in reality, the other dead to him; andalways vividly responsive to the impression of the moment, he hadstepped back across the interval of the past three years, and nowdwelled with a strange sense of loneliness amidst a throng ofquickening memories.
The woman, however, got the upper hand in Mrs. Jackson, and shesuggested, 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!" she exclaimed.
"Time brings in his revenges," said he.
"The way you three gentlemen used to rail at women! Well, there!"
"But, then, they weren't women. They were Aunt Sallies of our owncontriving—mere pasteboard. We were young and we didn't know."
Mrs. 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 atide of sentiment. She hoped that Mr. Gordon's two friends wouldfollow his example and find out their mistake, not noticing the shadowwhich her words brought to her lodger's face. She dropped the name ofHawke and the shadow deepened.
"I rather fancy," he said abruptly, "that Mr. Hawke found out themistake at exactly the same time as I did myself."
Mrs. Jackson was a quick woman, and she took his meaning from theinflection of his voice.
"He was your rival!"
"I have not seen much of him lately."
She thought for a moment and said, "Then it's just as well he'sstaying at the Inn."
Gordon sprang to his feet.
"At the Inn?" he exclaimed.
"Yes," she answered. "He still comes to climb at Wastdale everyEaster. 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 suddenimpulse of a sentimental kind had persuaded him to spend his last weekof bachelorhood alone in the familiar privacy of this spot, and he hadobeyed it on the instant, thoughtlessly it now appeared to him. Hemight have foreseen the likelihood of Hawke's presence. After all,however, it could not matter. It would be, perhaps, a little awkwardif they met, though, indeed, it need not be even that. Their actualrivalry had ended with the announcement of his engagement two yearsago. Hawke could gain no end by sustaining the feud. There was, intruth, no reason why they should not shake hands over the matter. Sohe argued to himself, desire pointing the argument and stiflingcertain uneasy reflections as to the tenacity of Hawke's nature.
He sat down to resume his breakfast. The third member of the triowhich for years had made the farmhouse the resort during Eastervacations claimed Mrs. Jackson's attention.
"And Mr. Arkwright?" she asked.
"He's dead," Gordon replied after a pause. "He died last year inSwitzerland. It was an accident. I was with him at the time."
He spoke with spasmodic jerks and ended with something like a sigh ofrelief. But if Mrs. Jackson loved marriages, she hankered afterviolent deaths, and so, while she expressed unbounded pity, sheinsisted 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—Arkwright,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 lookedout for a spot to camp on. We came to a little plateau of rock just asthe night was falling, and determined to remain there. The guide had abottle of wine left out of our provisions. We had kept it backpurposely."
Gordon paused for a moment and then went on again with a certaindeliberateness of speech as though the episode fascinated him in thetelling of it.
"Arkwright volunteered to draw the cork. The neck of the bottle burstand 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 cameuntil the morning. He was dead then."
"And you stayed with him all the time?"
"Yes!" said Gordon, and he rose from the table.
Mrs. Jackson, however, failed to take the hint. She wanted adescription of his feelings during that night of watching, and shepersisted until she had obtained it.
"I wonder you can bear to speak about it at all!" she said almostreproachfully when he had finished.
Left to himself, Gordon became the prey of a singular depression. Thesensation of horror which the recital of the incident revived in himwas intensified, not merely by its sombre contrast with the formerliveliness of his thoughts, but by the actual surroundings amongstwhich he stood. The room itself was so suggestive of reminiscencesthat it seemed instinct with the presence of his dead friend. For thefact that he had but lately entered it after a lapse of years gave afresh vividness to his memories. It was as if the dust had beensuddenly swept from them by a rough hand.
He walked over to the oak chest which stood against the wall by thefireplace. A book in a red cover lay upon it and he took it up. It wasa novel which Arkwright had written at the farmhouse, and it containedan inscription to that effect from the author's hand.
"I seem likely to pass a pleasant week," he said to himself, andtaking his hat, stepped out into the clear sunshine.
But his thoughts ran ever in the same channel. Each familiar objectthat he passed recalled his friend, and the remembrance of that nightin the Alps hung like a black cloud about his heart. He tried tothrust it aside, but the more earnestly he tried, the morepersistently it chained his attention, until in the end it seemed toshadow forth something sinister, something almost of menace. For somedistance he followed the bed of the valley and then struck upwards tothe right, on to the slopes of Scafell Pike. After a while he stoppedto light his pipe, and, turning, saw over against him the trackmounting in sharp zigzags towards the summit of the Styhead Pass. Itwas as clearly defined on the hill-side as a pencilled line on paper,and his eyes followed its direction mechanically until it bent overthe edge of the Pass and disappeared from view. Then equallymechanically he began to picture in his mind its subsequent course. Hehad traced it past the tarn and half the way to Borrowdale, when of asudden a smile dawned through the gloom on his face, "The path toKeswick!" he thought. He traced it consciously after that; he saw itbroaden out into a road, and his imagination set a dainty figure in awhite dress and a sailor hat at the end of it.
Gordon had met Kate Nugent for the first time some three years beforeat Hawke's home in London, and from the outset of their acquaintanceshe had commenced to dominate his thoughts, not so much on account ofher beauty as from a certain distinctness of personality whichappealed to him at that time with a very peculiar force. For she cameto him at a somewhat critical period in his life.
Left an orphan while yet a child, David had spent his boyhood alone inthe north of Scotland. His guardian—an uncle with a seat inParliament and an estate near Ravenglass—he never saw; his tutor—anunprac