But the sun, as I have said, was everywhere; it illumined the deep places over which, not knowing where to turn next, he halted and lingered, and showed him nothing but the stony Alpine void--nothing so human even as death.At noon he paused in his quest and sat down on a stone;the conviction was pressing upon him that the worst that was now possible was true.He suspended his search; he was afraid to go on.
He sat there for an hour, sick to the depths of his soul.
Without his knowing why, several things, chiefly trivial, that had happened during the last two years and that he had quite forgotten, became vividly present to his mind.He was aroused at last by the sound of a stone dislodged near by, which rattled down the mountain.
In a moment, on a steep, rocky slope opposite to him, he beheld a figure cautiously descending--a figure which was not Roderick.
It was Singleton, who had seen him and began to beckon to him.
"Come down--come down!" cried the painter, steadily ****** his own way down.
Rowland saw that as he moved, and even as he selected his foothold and watched his steps, he was looking at something at the bottom of the cliff.
This was a great rugged wall which had fallen backward from the perpendicular, and the descent, though difficult, was with care sufficiently practicable.
"What do you see?" cried Rowland.
Singleton stopped, looked across at him and seemed to hesitate;then, "Come down--come down!" he simply repeated.
Rowland's course was also a steep descent, and he attacked it so precipitately that he afterwards marveled he had not broken his neck.
It was a ten minutes' headlong scramble.Half-way down he saw something that made him dizzy; he saw what Singleton had seen.
In the gorge below them a vague white mass lay tumbled upon the stones.
He let himself go, blindly, fiercely.Singleton had reached the rocky bottom of the ravine before him, and had bounded forward and fallen upon his knees.Rowland overtook him and his own legs collapsed.
The thing that yesterday was his friend lay before him as the chance of the last breath had left it, and out of it Roderick's face stared upward, open-eyed, at the sky.
He had fallen from a great height, but he was singularly little disfigured.
The rain had spent its torrents upon him, and his clothes and hair were as wet as if the billows of the ocean had flung him upon the strand.
An attempt to move him would show some hideous fracture, some horrible physical dishonor; but what Rowland saw on first looking at him was only a strangely serene expression of life.
The eyes were dead, but in a short time, when Rowland had closed them, the whole face seemed to awake.The rain had washed away all blood;it was as if Violence, having done her work, had stolen away in shame.
Roderick's face might have shamed her; it looked admirably handsome.
"He was a beautiful man!" said Singleton.
They looked up through their horror at the cliff from which he had apparently fallen, and which lifted its blank and stony face above him, with no care now but to drink the sunshine on which his eyes were closed, and then Rowland had an immense outbreak of pity and anguish.
At last they spoke of carrying him back to the inn."There must be three or four men," Rowland said, "and they must be brought here quickly.
I have not the least idea where we are."
"We are at about three hours' walk from home," said Singleton.
"I will go for help; I can find my way."