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+*Project Gutenberg Etext of The Frozen Deep, by Wilkie Collins*
+#14 in our series by Wilkie Collins
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+THE FROZEN DEEP
+
+by Wilkie Collins
+
+February, 1999  [Etext #1625]
+[Date last updated: March 5, 2005]
+
+
+*Project Gutenberg Etext of The Frozen Deep, by Wilkie Collins*
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+[Etext prepared by James Rusk, jrusk@cyberramp.net. Italics are
+indicated by the underscore character.]
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FROZEN DEEP
+
+by Wilkie Collins
+
+
+
+
+First Scene--The Ball-room
+
+Chapter 1.
+
+The date is between twenty and thirty years ago. The place is an
+English sea-port. The time is night. And the business of the
+moment is--dancing.
+
+The Mayor and Corporation of the town are giving a grand ball, in
+celebration of the departure of an Arctic expedition from their
+port. The ships of the expedition are two in number--the
+_Wanderer_ and the _Sea-mew_. They are to sail (in search of the
+Northwest Passage) on the next day, with the morning tide.
+
+Honor to the Mayor and Corporation! It is a brilliant ball. The
+band is complete. The room is spacious. The large conservatory
+opening out of it is pleasantly lighted with Chinese lanterns,
+and beautifully decorated with shrubs and flowers. All officers
+of the army and navy who are present wear their uniforms in honor
+of the occasion. Among the ladies, the display of dresses (a
+subject which the men don't understand) is bewildering--and the
+average of beauty (a subject which the men do understand) is the
+highest average attainable, in all parts of the room.
+
+For the moment, the dance which is in progress is a quadrille.
+General admiration selects two of the ladies who are dancing as
+its favorite objects. One is a dark beauty in the prime of
+womanhood--the wife of First Lieutenant Crayford, of the
+_Wanderer_. The other is a young girl, pale and delicate; dressed
+simply in white; with no ornament on her head but her own lovely
+brown hair. This is Miss Clara Burnham--an orphan. She is Mrs.
+Crayford's dearest friend, and she is to stay with Mrs. Crayford
+during the lieutenant's absence in the Arctic regions. She is now
+dancing, with the lieutenant himself for partner, and with Mrs.
+Crayford and Captain Helding (commanding officer of the
+_Wanderer_) for vis-a-vis--in plain English, for opposite couple.
+
+The conversation between Captain Helding and Mrs. Crayford, in
+one of the intervals of the dance, turns on Miss Burnham. The
+captain is greatly interested in Clara. He admires her beauty;
+but he thinks her manner--for a young girl--strangely serious and
+subdued. Is she in delicate health?
+
+Mrs. Crayford shakes her head; sighs mysteriously; and answers,
+
+"In _very_ delicate health, Captain Helding."
+
+"Consumptive?"
+
+"Not in the least."
+
+"I am glad to hear that. She is a charming creature, Mrs.
+Crayford. She interests me indescribably. If I was only twenty
+years younger--perhaps (as I am not twenty years younger) I had
+better not finish the sentence? Is it indiscreet, my dear lady,
+to inquire what _is_ the matter with her?"
+
+"It might be indiscreet, on the part of a stranger," said Mrs.
+Crayford. "An old friend like you may make any inquiries. I wish
+I could tell you what is the matter with Clara. It is a mystery
+to the doctors themselves. Some of the mischief is due, in my
+humble opinion, to the manner in which she has been brought up."
+
+"Ay! ay! A bad school, I suppose."
+
+"Very bad, Captain Helding. But not the sort of school which you
+have in your mind at this moment. Clara's early years were spent
+in a lonely old house in the Highlands of Scotland. The ignorant
+people about her were the people who did the mischief which I
+have just been speaking of. They filled her mind with the
+superstitions which are still respected as truths in the wild
+North--especially the superstition called the Second Sight."
+
+"God bless me!" cried the captain, "you don't mean to say she
+believes in such stuff as that? In these enlightened times too!"
+
+Mrs. Crayford looked at her partner with a satirical smile.
+
+"In these enlightened times, Captain Helding, we only believe in
+dancing tables, and in messages sent from the other world by
+spirits who can't spell! By comparison with such superstitions as
+these, even the Second Sight has something--in the shape of
+poetry--to recommend it, surely? Estimate for yourself," she
+continued seriously, "the effect of such surroundings as I have
+described on a delicate, sensitive young creature--a girl with a
+naturally imaginative temperament leading a lonely, neglected
+life. Is it so very surprising that she should catch the
+infection of the superstition about her? And is it quite
+incomprehensible that her nervous system should suffer
+accordingly, at a very critical period of her life?"
+
+"Not at all, Mrs. Crayford--not at all, ma'am, as you put it.
+Still it is a little startling, to a commonplace man like me, to
+meet a young lady at a ball who believes in the Second Sight.
+Does she really profess to see into the future? Am I to
+understand that she positively falls into a trance, and sees
+people in distant countries, and foretells events to come? That
+is the Second Sight, is it not?"
+
+"That is the Second Sight, captain. And that is, really and
+positively, what she does."
+
+"The young lady who is dancing opposite to us?"
+
+"The young lady who is dancing opposite to us."
+
+The captain waited a little--letting the new flood of information
+which had poured in on him settle itself steadily in his mind.
+This process accomplished, the Arctic explorer proceeded
+resolutely on his way to further discoveries.
+
+"May I ask, ma'am, if you have ever seen her in a state of trance
+with your own eyes?" he inquired.
+
+"My sister and I both saw her in the trance, little more than a
+month since," Mrs. Crayford replied. "She had been nervous and
+irritable all the morning; and we took her out into the garden to
+breathe the fresh air. Suddenly, without any reason for it, the
+color left her face. She stood between us, insensible to touch,
+insensible to sound; motionless as stone, and cold as death in a
+moment. The first change we noticed came after a lapse of some
+minutes. Her hands began to move slowly, as if she was groping in
+the dark. Words dropped one by one from her lips, in a lost,
+vacant tone, as if she was talking in her sleep. Whether what she
+said referred to past or future I cannot tell you. She spoke of
+persons in a foreign country--perfect strangers to my sister and
+to me. After a little interval, she suddenly became silent. A
+momentary color appeared in her face, and left it again. Her eyes
+closed--her feet failed her--and she sank insensible into our
+arms."
+
+"Sank insensible into your arms," repeated the captain, absorbing
+his new information. "Most extraordinary! And--in this state of
+health--she goes out to parties, and dances. More extraordinary
+still!"
+
+"You are entirely mistaken," said Mrs. Crayford. "She is only
+here to-night to please me; and she is only dancing to please my
+husband. As a rule, she shuns all society. The doctor recommends
+change and amusement for her. She won't listen to him. Except on
+rare occasions like this, she persists in remaining at home."
+
+Captain Helding brightened at the allusion to the doctor.
+Something practical might be got out of the doctor. Scientific
+man. Sure to see this very obscure subject under a new light.
+"How does it strike the doctor now?" said the captain. "Viewed
+simply as a Case, ma'am, how does it strike the doctor?"
+
+"He will give no positive opinion," Mrs. Crayford answered. "He
+told me that such cases as Clara's were by no means unfamiliar to
+medical practice. 'We know,' he told me, 'that certain disordered
+conditions of the brain and the nervous system produce results
+quite as extraordinary as any that you have described--and there
+our knowledge ends. Neither my science nor any man's science can
+clear up the mystery in this case. It is an especially difficult
+case to deal with, because Miss Burnham's early associations
+dispose her to attach a superstitious importance to the
+malady--the hysterical malady as some doctors would call it--from
+which she suffers. I can give you instructions for preserving her
+general health; and I can recommend you to try some change in her
+life--provided you first relieve her mind of any secret anxieties
+that may possibly be preying on it.'"
+
+The captain smiled self-approvingly. The doctor had justified his
+anticipations. The doctor had suggested a practical solution of
+the difficulty.
+
+"Ay! ay! At last we have hit the nail on the head! Secret
+anxieties. Yes! yes! Plain enough now. A disappointment in
+love--eh, Mrs. Crayford?"
+
+"I don't know, Captain Helding; I am quite in the dark. Clara's
+confidence in me--in other matters unbounded--is, in this matter
+of her (supposed) anxieties, a confidence still withheld. In all
+else we are like sisters. I sometimes fear there may indeed be
+some trouble preying secretly on her mind. I sometimes feel a
+little hurt at her incomprehensible silence."
+
+Captain Helding was ready with his own practical remedy for this
+difficulty.
+
+"Encouragement is all she wants, ma'am. Take my word for it, this
+matter rests entirely with you. It's all in a nutshell. Encourage
+her to confide in you--and she _will_ confide."
+
+"I am waiting to encourage her, captain, until she is left alone
+with me--after you have all sailed for the Arctic seas. In the
+meantime, will you consider what I have said to you as intended
+for your ear only? And will you forgive me, if I own that the
+turn the subject has taken does not tempt me to pursue it any
+further?"
+
+The captain took the hint. He instantly changed the subject;
+choosing, on this occasion, safe professional topics. He spoke of
+ships that were ordered on foreign service; and, finding that
+these as subjects failed to interest Mrs. Crayford, he spoke next
+of ships that were ordered home again. This last experiment
+produced its effect--an effect which the captain had not
+bargained for.
+
+"Do you know," he began, "that the _Atalanta_ is expected back
+from the West Coast of Africa every day? Have you any
+acquaintances among the officers of that ship?"
+
+As it so happened, he put those questions to Mrs. Crayford while
+they were engaged in one of the figures of the dance which
+brought them within hearing of the opposite couple. At the same
+moment--to the astonishment of her friends and admirers--Miss
+Clara Burnham threw the quadrille into confusion by making a
+mistake! Everybody waited to see her set the mistake right. She
+made no attempt to set it right--she turned deadly pale and
+caught her partner by the arm.
+
+"The heat!" she said, faintly. "Take me away--take me into the
+air!"
+
+Lieutenant Crayford instantly led her out of the dance, and took
+her into the cool and empty conservatory, at the end of the room.
+As a matter of course, Captain Helding and Mrs. Crayford left the
+quadrille at the same time. The captain saw his way to a joke.
+
+"Is this the trance coming on?" he whispered. "If it is, as
+commander of the Arctic expedition, I have a particular request
+to make. Will the Second Sight oblige me by seeing the shortest
+way to the Northwest Passage, before we leave England?"
+
+Mrs. Crayford declined to humor the joke. "If you will excuse my
+leaving you," she said quietly, "I will try and find out what is
+the matter with Miss Burnham."
+
+At the entrance to the conservatory, Mrs. Crayford encountered
+her husband. The lieutenant was of middle age, tall and comely. A
+man with a winning simplicity and gentleness in his manner, and
+an irresistible kindness in his brave blue eyes. In one word, a
+man whom everybody loved--including his wife.
+
+"Don't be alarmed," said the lieutenant. "The heat has overcome
+her--that's all."
+
+Mrs. Crayford shook her head, and looked at her husband, half
+satirically, half fondly.
+
+"You dear old innocent!" she exclaimed, "that excuse may do for
+_you_. For my part, I don't believe a word of it. Go and get
+another partner, and leave Clara to me."
+
+She entered the conservatory and seated herself by Clara's side.
+
+
+
+Chapter 2.
+
+
+"Now, my dear!" Mrs. Crayford began, "what does this mean?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"That won't do, Clara. Try again."
+
+"The heat of the room--"
+
+"That won't do, either. Say that you choose to keep your own
+secrets, and I shall understand what you mean."
+
+Clara's sad, clear gray eyes looked up for the first time in Mrs.
+Crayford's face, and suddenly became dimmed with tears.
+
+"If I only dared tell you!" she murmured. "I hold so to your good
+opinion of me, Lucy--and I am so afraid of losing it."
+
+Mrs. Crayford's manner changed. Her eyes rested gravely and
+anxiously on Clara's face.
+
+"You know as well as I do that nothing can shake my affection for
+you," she said. "Do justice, my child, to your old friend. There
+is nobody here to listen to what we say. Open your heart, Clara.
+I see you are in trouble, and I want to comfort you."
+
+Clara began to yield. In other words, she began to make
+conditions.
+
+"Will you promise to keep what I tell you a secret from every
+living creature?" she began.
+
+Mrs. Crayford met that question, by putting a question on her
+side.
+
+"Does 'every living creature' include my husband?"
+
+"Your husband more than anybody! I love him, I revere him. He is
+so noble; he is so good! If I told him what I am going to tell
+you, he would despise me. Own it plainly, Lucy, if I am asking
+too much in asking you to keep a secret from your husband."
+
+"Nonsense, child! When you are married, you will know that the
+easiest of all secrets to keep is a secret from your husband. I
+give you my promise. Now begin!"
+
+Clara hesitated painfully.
+
+"I don't know how to begin!" she exclaimed, with a burst of
+despair. "The words won't come to me."
+
+"Then I must help you. Do you feel ill tonight? Do you feel as
+you felt that day when you were with my sister and me in the
+garden?"
+
+"Oh no."
+
+"You are not ill, you are not really affected by the heat--and
+yet you turn as pale as ashes, and you are obliged to leave the
+quadrille! There must be some reason for this."
+
+"There is a reason. Captain Helding--"
+
+"Captain Helding! What in the name of wonder has the captain to
+do with it?"
+
+"He told you something about the _Atalanta_. He said the
+_Atalanta_ was expected back from Africa immediately."
+
+"Well, and what of that? Is there anybody in whom you are
+interested coming home in the ship?"
+
+"Somebody whom I am afraid of is coming home in the ship."
+
+Mrs. Crayford's magnificent black eyes opened wide in amazement.
+
+"My dear Clara! do you really mean what you say?"
+
+"Wait a little, Lucy, and you shall judge for yourself. We must
+go back--if I am to make you understand me--to the year before we
+knew each other--to the last year of my father's life. Did I ever
+tell you that my father moved southward, for the sake of his
+health, to a house in Kent that was lent to him by a friend?"
+
+"No, my dear; I don't remember ever hearing of the house in Kent.
+Tell me about it."
+
+"There is nothing to tell, except this: the new house was near a
+fine country-seat standing in its own park. The owner of the
+place was a gentleman named Wardour. He, too, was one of my
+father's Kentish friends. He had an only son."
+
+She paused, and played nervously with her fan. Mrs. Crayford
+looked at her attentively. Clara's eyes remained fixed on her
+fan--Clara said no more. "What was the son's name?" asked Mrs.
+Crayford, quietly.
+
+"Richard."
+
+"Am I right, Clara, in suspecting that Mr. Richard Wardour
+admired you?"
+
+The question produced its intended effect. The question helped
+Clara to go on.
+
+"I hardly knew at first," she said, "whether he admired me or
+not. He was very strange in his ways--headstrong, terribly
+headstrong and passionate; but generous and affectionate in spite
+of his faults of temper. Can you understand such a character?"
+
+"Such characters exist by thousands. I have my faults of temper.
+I begin to like Richard already. Go on."
+
+"The days went by, Lucy, and the weeks went by. We were thrown
+very much together. I began, little by little, to have some
+suspicion of the truth."
+
+"And Richard helped to confirm your suspicions, of course?"
+
+"No. He was not--unhappily for me--he was not that sort of man.
+He never spoke of the feeling with which he regarded me. It was I
+who saw it. I couldn't help seeing it. I did all I could to show
+that I was willing to be a sister to him, and that I could never
+be anything else. He did not understand me, or he would not, I
+can't say which."
+
+"'Would not,' is the most likely, my dear. Go on."
+
+"It might have been as you say. There was a strange, rough
+bashfulness about him. He confused and puzzled me. He never spoke
+out. He seemed to treat me as if our future lives had been
+provided for while we were children. What could I do, Lucy?"
+
+"Do? You could have asked your father to end the difficulty for
+you."
+
+"Impossible! You forget what I have just told you. My father was
+suffering at that time under the illness which afterward caused
+his death. He was quite unfit to interfere."
+
+"Was there no one else who could help you?"
+
+"No one."
+
+"No lady in whom you could confide?"
+
+"I had acquaintances among the ladies in the neighborhood. I had
+no friends."
+
+"What did you do, then?"
+
+"Nothing. I hesitated; I put off coming to an explanation with
+him, unfortunately, until it was too late."
+
+"What do you mean by too late?"
+
+"You shall hear. I ought to have told you that Richard Wardour is
+in the navy--"
+
+"Indeed! I am more interested in him than ever. Well?"
+
+"One spring day Richard came to our house to take leave of us
+before he joined his ship. I thought he was gone, and I went into
+the next room. It was my own sitting-room, and it opened on to
+the garden."--
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Richard must have been watching me. He suddenly appeared in the
+garden. Without waiting for me to invite him, he walked into the
+room. I was a little startled as well as surprised, but I managed
+to hide it. I said, 'What is it, Mr. Wardour?' He stepped close
+up to me; he said, in his quick, rough way: 'Clara! I am going to
+the African coast. If I live, I shall come back promoted; and we
+both know what will happen then.' He kissed me. I was half
+frightened, half angry. Before I could compose myself to say a
+word, he was out in the garden again--he was gone! I ought to
+have spoken, I know. It was not honorable, not kind toward him.
+You can't reproach me for my want of courage and frankness more
+bitterly than I reproach myself!"
+
+"My dear child, I don't reproach you. I only think you might have
+written to him."
+
+"I did write."
+
+"Plainly?"
+
+"Yes. I told him in so many words that he was deceiving himself,
+and that I could never marry him."
+
+"Plain enough, in all conscience! Having said that, surely you
+are not to blame. What are you fretting about now?"
+
+"Suppose my letter has never reached him?"
+
+"Why should you suppose anything of the sort?"
+
+"What I wrote required an answer, Lucy--_asked_ for an answer.
+The answer has never come. What is the plain conclusion? My
+letter has never reached him. And the _Atalanta_ is expected
+back! Richard Wardour is returning to England--Richard Wardour
+will claim me as his wife! You wondered just now if I really
+meant what I said. Do you doubt it still?"
+
+Mrs. Crayford leaned back absently in her chair. For the first
+time since the conversation had begun, she let a question pass
+without making a reply. The truth is, Mrs. Crayford was thinking.
+
+She saw Clara's position plainly; she understood the disturbing
+effect of it on the mind of a young girl. Still, making all
+allowances, she felt quite at a loss, so far, to account for
+Clara's excessive agitation. Her quick observing faculty had just
+detected that Clara's face showed no signs of relief, now that
+she had unburdened herself of her secret. There was something
+clearly under the surface here--something of importance that
+still remained to be discovered. A shrewd doubt crossed Mrs.
+Crayford's mind, and inspired the next words which she addressed
+to her young friend.
+
+"My dear," she said abruptly, "have you told me all?"
+
+Clara started as if the question terrified her. Feeling sure that
+she now had the clew in her hand, Mrs. Crayford deliberately
+repeated her question, in another form of words. Instead of
+answering, Clara suddenly looked up. At the same moment a faint
+flush of color appeared in her face for the first time.
+
+Looking up instinctively on her side, Mrs. Crayford became aware
+of the presence, in the conservatory, of a young gentleman who
+was claiming Clara as his partner in the coming waltz. Mrs.
+Crayford fell into thinking once more. Had this young gentleman
+(she asked herself) anything to do with the untold end of the
+story? Was this the true secret of Clara Burnham's terror at the
+impending return of Richard Wardour? Mrs. Crayford decided on
+putting her doubts to the test.
+
+"A friend of yours, my dear?" she asked, innocently. "Suppose you
+introduce us to each other."
+
+Clara confusedly introduced the young gentleman.
+
+"Mr. Francis Aldersley, Lucy. Mr. Aldersley belongs to the Arctic
+expedition."
+
+"Attached to the expedition?" Mrs. Crayford repeated. "I am
+attached to the expedition too--in my way. I had better introduce
+myself, Mr. Aldersley, as Clara seems to have forgotten to do it
+for me. I am Mrs. Crayford. My husband is Lieutenant Crayford, of
+the _Wanderer_. Do you belong to that ship?"
+
+"I have not the honor, Mrs. Crayford. I belong to the _Sea-mew_."
+
+Mrs. Crayford's superb eyes looked shrewdly backward and forward
+between Clara and Francis Aldersley, and saw the untold sequel to
+Clara's story. The young officer was a bright, handsome,
+gentleman-like lad. Just the person to seriously complicate the
+difficulty with Richard Wardour! There was no time for making any
+further inquiries. The band had begun the prelude to the waltz,
+and Francis Aldersley was waiting for his partner. With a word of
+apology to the young man, Mrs. Crayford drew Clara aside for a
+moment, and spoke to her in a whisper.
+
+"One word, my dear, before you return to the ball-room. It may
+sound conceited, after the little you have told me; but I think I
+understand your position _now_, better than you do yourself. Do
+you want to hear my opinion?"
+
+"I am longing to hear it, Lucy! I want your opinion; I want your
+advice."
+
+"You shall have both in the plainest and fewest words. First, my
+opinion: You have no choice but to come to an explanation with
+Mr. Wardour as soon as he returns. Second, my advice: If you wish
+to make the explanation easy to both sides, take care that you
+make it in the character of a free woman."
+
+She laid a strong emphasis on the last three words, and looked
+pointedly at Francis Aldersley as she pronounced them. "I won't
+keep you from your partner any longer, Clara," she resumed, and
+led the way back to the ball-room.
+
+
+
+Chapter 3.
+
+
+The burden on Clara's mind weighs on it more heavily than ever,
+after what Mrs. Crayford has said to her. She is too unhappy to
+feel the inspiriting influence of the dance. After a turn round
+the room, she complains of fatigue. Mr. Francis Aldersley looks
+at the conservatory (still as invitingly cool and empty as ever);
+leads her back to it; and places her on a seat among the shrubs.
+She tries--very feebly--to dismiss him.
+
+"Don't let me keep you from dancing, Mr. Aldersley."
+
+He seats himself by her side, and feasts his eyes on the lovely
+downcast face that dares not turn toward him. He whispers to her:
+
+"Call me Frank."
+
+She longs to call him Frank--she loves him with all her heart.
+But Mrs. Crayford's warning words are still in her mind. She
+never opens her lips. Her lover moves a little closer, and asks
+another favor. Men are all alike on these occasions. Silence
+invariably encourages them to try again.
+
+"Clara! have you forgotten what I said at the concert yesterday?
+May I say it again?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"We sail to-morrow for the Arctic seas. I may not return for
+years. Don't send me away without hope! Think of the long, lonely
+time in the dark North! Make it a happy time for _me_."
+
+Though he speaks with the fervor of a man, he is little more than
+a lad: he is only twenty years old, and he is going to risk his
+young life on the frozen deep! Clara pities him as she never
+pitied any human creature before. He gently takes her hand. She
+tries to release it.
+
+"What! not even that little favor on the last night?"
+
+Her faithful heart takes his part, in spite of her. Her hand
+remains in his, and feels its soft persuasive pressure. She is a
+lost woman. It is only a question of time now!
+
+"Clara! do you love me?"
+
+There is a pause. She shrinks from looking at him--she trembles
+with strange contradictory sensations of pleasure and pain. His
+arm steals round her; he repeats his question in a whisper; his
+lips almost touch her little rosy ear as he says it again:
+
+"Do you love me?"
+
+She closes her eyes faintly--she hears nothing but those
+words--feels nothing but his arm round her--forgets Mrs.
+Crayford's warning--forgets Richard Wardour himself--turns
+suddenly, with a loving woman's desperate disregard of everything
+but her love--nestles her head on his bosom, and answers him in
+that way, at last!
+
+He lifts the beautiful drooping head--their lips meet in their
+first kiss--they are both in heaven: it is Clara who brings them
+back to earth again with a start--it is Clara who says, "Oh! what
+have I done?"--as usual, when it is too late.
+
+Frank answers the question.
+
+"You have made me happy, my angel. Now, when I come back, I come
+back to make you my wife."
+
+She shudders. She remembers Richard Wardour again at those words.
+
+"Mind!" she says, "nobody is to know we are engaged till I permit
+you to mention it. Remember that!"
+
+He promises to remember it. His arm tries to wind round her once
+more. No! She is mistress of herself; she can positively dismiss
+him now--after she has let him kiss her!
+
+"Go!" she says. "I want to see Mrs. Crayford. Find her! Say I am
+here, waiting to speak to her. Go at once, Frank--for my sake!"
+
+There is no alternative but to obey her. His eyes drink a last
+draught of her beauty. He hurries away on his errand--the
+happiest man in the room. Five minutes since she was only his
+partner in the dance. He has spoken--and she has pledged herself
+to be his partner for life!
+
+
+
+Chapter 4.
+
+
+It was not easy to find Mrs. Crayford in the crowd. Searching
+here, and searching there, Frank became conscious of a stranger,
+who appeared to be looking for somebody, on his side. He was a
+dark, heavy-browed, strongly-built man, dressed in a shabby old
+naval officer's uniform. His manner--strikingly resolute and
+self-contained--was unmistakably the manner of a gentleman. He
+wound his way slowly through the crowd; stopping to look at every
+lady whom he passed, and then looking away again with a frown.
+Little by little he approached the conservatory--entered it,
+after a moment's reflection--detected the glimmer of a white
+dress in the distance, through the shrubs and flowers--advanced
+to get a nearer view of the lady--and burst into Clara's presence
+with a cry of delight.
+
+She sprang to her feet. She stood before him speechless,
+motionless, struck to stone. All her life was in her eyes--the
+eyes which told her she was looking at Richard Wardour.
+
+He was the first to speak.
+
+"I am sorry I startled you, my darling. I forgot everything but
+the happiness of seeing you again. We only reached our moorings
+two hours since. I was some time inquiring after you, and some
+time getting my ticket when they told me you were at the ball.
+Wish me joy, Clara! I am promoted. I have come back to make you
+my wife."
+
+A momentary change passed over the blank terror of her face. Her
+color rose faintly, her lips moved. She abruptly put a question
+to him.
+
+"Did you get my letter?"
+
+He started. "A letter from you? I never received it."
+
+The momentary animation died out of her face again. She drew back
+from him and dropped into a chair. He advanced toward her,
+astonished and alarmed. She shrank in the chair--shrank, as if
+she was frightened of him.
+
+"Clara, you have not even shaken hands with me! What does it
+mean?"
+
+He paused; waiting and watching her. She made no reply. A flash
+of the quick temper in him leaped up in his eyes. He repeated his
+last words in louder and sterner tones:
+
+"What does it mean?"
+
+She replied this time. His tone had hurt her--his tone had roused
+her sinking courage.
+
+"It means, Mr. Wardour, that you have been mistaken from the
+first."
+
+"How have I been mistaken?"
+
+"You have been under a wrong impression, and you have given me no
+opportunity of setting you right."
+
+"In what way have I been wrong?"
+
+"You have been too hasty and too confident about yourself and
+about me. You have entirely misunderstood me. I am grieved to
+distress you, but for your sake I must speak plainly. I am your
+friend always, Mr. Wardour. I can never be your wife."
+
+He mechanically repeated the last words. He seemed to doubt
+whether he had heard her aright.
+
+"You can never be my wife?"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+There was no answer. She was incapable of telling him a
+falsehood. She was ashamed to tell him the truth.
+
+He stooped over her, and suddenly possessed himself of her hand.
+Holding her hand firmly, he stooped a little lower; searching for
+the signs which might answer him in her face. His own face
+darkened slowly while he looked. He was beginning to suspect her;
+and he acknowledged it in his next words.
+
+"Something has changed you toward me, Clara. Somebody has
+influenced you against me. Is it--you force me to ask the
+question--is it some other man?"
+
+"You have no right to ask me that."
+
+He went on without noticing what she had said to him.
+
+"Has that other man come between you and me? I speak plainly on
+my side. Speak plainly on yours."
+
+"I _have_ spoken. I have nothing more to say."
+
+There was a pause. She saw the warning light which told of the
+fire within him, growing brighter and brighter in his eyes. She
+felt his grasp strengthening on her hand. He appealed to her for
+the last time.
+
+"Reflect," he said, "reflect before it is too late. Your silence
+will not serve you. If you persist in not answering me, I shall
+take your silence as a confession. Do you hear me?"
+
+"I hear you."
+
+"Clara Burnham! I am not to be trifled with. Clara Burnham! I
+insist on the truth. Are you false to me?"
+
+She resented that searching question with a woman's keen sense of
+the insult that is implied in doubting her to her face.
+
+"Mr. Wardour! you forget yourself when you call me to account in
+that way. I never encouraged you. I never gave you promise or
+pledge--"
+
+He passionately interrupted her before she could say more.
+
+"You have engaged yourself in my absence. Your words own it; your
+looks own it! You have engaged yourself to another man!"
+
+"If I _have_ engaged myself, what right have you to complain of
+it?" she answered firmly. "What right have you to control my
+actions--?"
+
+The next words died away on her lips. He suddenly dropped her
+hand. A marked change appeared in the expression of his eyes--a
+change which told her of the terrible passions that she had let
+loose in him. She read, dimly read, something in his face which
+made her tremble--not for herself, but for Frank.
+
+Little by little the dark color faded out of his face. His deep
+voice dropped suddenly to a low and quiet tone as he spoke the
+parting words.
+
+"Say no more, Miss Burnham--you have said enough. I am answered;
+I am dismissed." He paused, and, stepping close up to her, laid
+his hand on her arm.
+
+"The time may come," he said, "when I shall forgive you. But the
+man who has robbed me of you shall rue the day when you and he
+first met."
+
+He turned and left her.
+
+A few minutes later, Mrs. Crayford, entering the conservatory,
+was met by one of the attendants at the ball. The man stopped as
+if he wished to speak to her.
+
+"What do you want?" she asked.
+
+"I beg your pardon, ma'am. Do you happen to have a
+smelling-bottle about you? There is a young lady in the
+conservatory who is taken faint."
+
+Between the Scenes
+
+The Landing Stage
+
+Chapter 5.
+
+
+The morning of the next day--the morning on which the ships were
+to sail--came bright and breezy. Mrs. Crayford, having arranged
+to follow her husband to the water-side, and see the last of him
+before he embarked, entered Clara's room on her way out of the
+house, anxious to hear how her young friend passed the night. To
+her astonishment she found Clara had risen, and was dressed, like
+herself, to go out.
+
+"What does this mean, my dear? After what you suffered last
+night--after the shock of seeing that man--why don't you take my
+advice and rest in your bed?"
+
+"I can't rest. I have not slept all night. Have you been out
+yet?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Have you seen or heard anything of Richard Wardour?"
+
+"What an extraordinary question!"
+
+"Answer my question! Don't trifle with me!"
+
+"Compose yourself, Clara. I have neither seen nor heard anything
+of Richard Wardour. Take my word for it, he is far enough away by
+this time."
+
+"No! He is here! He is near us! All night long the presentiment
+has pursued me--Frank and Richard Wardour will meet."
+
+"My dear child! what are you thinking of? They are total
+strangers to each other."
+
+"Something will happen to bring them together. I feel it! I know
+it! They will meet--there will be a mortal quarrel between
+them--and I shall be to blame. Oh, Lucy! why didn't I take your
+advice? Why was I mad enough to let Frank know that I loved him?
+Are you going to the landing-stage? I am all ready--I must go
+with you."
+
+"You must not think of it, Clara. There will be crowding and
+confusion at the water-side. You are not strong enough to bear
+it. Wait--I won't be long away--wait till I come back."
+
+"I must and will go with you! Crowd? _He_ will be among the
+crowd! Confusion? In that confusion _he_ will find his way to
+Frank! Don't ask me to wait. I shall go mad if I wait. I shall
+not know a moment's ease until I have seen Frank, with my own
+eyes, safe in the boat which takes him to his ship! You have got
+your bonnet on; what are we stopping here for? Come! or I shall
+go without you. Look at the clock; we have not a moment to lose!"
+
+It was useless to contend with her. Mrs. Crayford yielded. The
+two women left the house together.
+
+The landing-stage, as Mrs. Crayford had predicted, was thronged
+with spectators. Not only the relatives and friends of the Arctic
+voyagers, but strangers as well, had assembled in large numbers
+to see the ships sail. Clara's eyes wandered affrightedly hither
+and thither among the strange faces in the crowd; searching for
+the one face that she dreaded to see, and not finding it. So
+completely were her nerves unstrung, that she started with a cry
+of alarm on suddenly hearing Frank's voice behind her.
+
+"The _Sea-mew_'s boats are waiting," he said. "I must go,
+darling. How pale you are looking, Clara! Are you ill?"
+
+She never answered. She questioned him with wild eyes and
+trembling lips.
+
+"Has anything happened to you, Frank? anything out of the
+common?"
+
+Frank laughed at the strange question.
+
+"Anything out of the common?" he repeated. "Nothing that I know
+of, except sailing for the Arctic seas. That's out of the common,
+I suppose--isn't it?"
+
+"Has anybody spoken to you since last night? Has any stranger
+followed you in the street?"
+
+Frank turned in blank amazement to Mrs. Crayford.
+
+"What on earth does she mean?"
+
+Mrs. Crayford's lively invention supplied her with an answer on
+the spur of the moment.
+
+"Do you believe in dreams, Frank? Of course you don't! Clara has
+been dreaming about you; and Clara is foolish enough to believe
+in dreams. That's all--it's not worth talking about. Hark! they
+are calling you. Say good-by, or you will be too late for the
+boat."
+
+Frank took Clara's hand. Long afterward--in the dark Arctic days,
+in the dreary Arctic nights--he remembered how coldly and how
+passively that hand lay in his.
+
+"Courage, Clara!" he said, gayly. "A sailor's sweetheart must
+accustom herself to partings. The time will soon pass. Good-by,
+my darling! Good-by, my wife!"
+
+He kissed the cold hand; he looked his last--for many a long
+year, perhaps!--at the pale and beautiful face. "How she loves
+me!" he thought. "How the parting distresses her!" He still held
+her hand; he would have lingered longer, if Mrs. Crayford had not
+wisely waived all ceremony and pushed him away.
+
+The two ladies followed him at a safe distance through the crowd,
+and saw him step into the boat. The oars struck the water; Frank
+waved his cap to Clara. In a moment more a vessel at anchor hid
+the boat from view. They had seen the last of him on his way to
+the Frozen Deep!
+
+"No Richard Wardour in the boat," said Mrs. Crayford. "No Richard
+Wardour on the shore. Let this be a lesson to you, my dear. Never
+be foolish enough to believe in presentiments again."
+
+Clara's eyes still wandered suspiciously to and fro among the
+crowd.
+
+"Are you not satisfied yet?" asked Mrs. Crayford.
+
+"No," Clara answered, "I am not satisfied yet."
+
+"What! still looking for him? This is really too absurd. Here is
+my husband coming. I shall tell him to call a cab, and send you
+home."
+
+Clara drew back a few steps.
+
+"I won't be in the way, Lucy, while you are taking leave of your
+good husband," she said. "I will wait here."
+
+"Wait here! What for?"
+
+"For something which I may yet see; or for something which I may
+still hear."
+
+"Richard Wardour?"
+
+"Richard Wardour."
+
+Mrs. Crayford turned to her husband without another word. Clara's
+infatuation was beyond the reach of remonstrance.
+
+The boats of the _Wanderer_ took the place at the landing-stage
+vacated by the boats of the _Sea-mew_. A burst of cheering among
+the outer ranks of the crowd announced the arrival of the
+commander of the expedition on the scene. Captain Helding
+appeared, looking right and left for his first lieutenant.
+Finding Crayford with his wife, the captain made his apologies
+for interfering, with his best grace.
+
+"Give him up to his professional duties for one minute, Mrs.
+Crayford, and you shall have him back again for half an hour. The
+Arctic expedition is to blame, my dear lady--not the captain--for
+parting man and wife. In Crayford's place, I should have left it
+to the bachelors to find the Northwest Passage, and have stopped
+at home with you!"
+
+Excusing himself in those bluntly complimentary terms, Captain
+Helding drew the lieutenant aside a few steps, accidentally
+taking a direction that led the two officers close to the place
+at which Clara was standing. Both the captain and the lieutenant
+were too completely absorbed in their professional business to
+notice her. Neither the one nor the other had the faintest
+suspicion that she could and did hear every word of the talk that
+passed between them.
+
+"You received my note this morning?" the captain began.
+
+"Certainly, Captain Helding, or I should have been on board the
+ship before this."
+
+"I am going on board myself at once," the captain proceeded, "but
+I must ask you to keep your boat waiting for half an hour more.
+You will be all the longer with your wife, you know. I thought of
+that, Crayford."
+
+"I am much obliged to you, Captain Helding. I suppose there is
+some other reason for inverting the customary order of things,
+and keeping the lieutenant on shore after the captain is on
+board?"
+
+"Quite true! there _is_ another reason. I want you to wait for a
+volunteer who has just joined us."
+
+"A volunteer!"
+
+"Yes. He has his outfit to get in a hurry, and he may be half an
+hour late."
+
+"It's rather a sudden appointment, isn't it?"
+
+"No doubt. Very sudden."
+
+"And--pardon me--it's rather a long time (as we are situated) to
+keep the ships waiting for one man?"
+
+"Quite true, again. But a man who is worth having is worth
+waiting for. This man is worth having; this man is worth his
+weight in gold to such an expedition as ours. Seasoned to all
+climates and all fatigues--a strong fellow, a brave fellow, a
+clever fellow--in short, an excellent officer. I know him well,
+or I should never have taken him. The country gets plenty of work
+out of my new volunteer, Crayford. He only returned yesterday
+from foreign service."
+
+"He only returned yesterday from foreign service! And he
+volunteers this morning to join the Arctic expedition? You
+astonish me."
+
+"I dare say I do! You can't be more astonished than I was, when
+he presented himself at my hotel and told me what he wanted.
+'Why, my good fellow, you have just got home,' I said. 'Are you
+weary of your freedom, after only a few hours' experience of it?'
+His answer rather startled me. He said, 'I am weary of my life,
+sir. I have come home and found a trouble to welcome me, which
+goes near to break my heart. If I don't take refuge in absence
+and hard work, I am a lost man. Will you give me a refuge?'
+That's what he said, Crayford, word for word."
+
+"Did you ask him to explain himself further?"
+
+"Not I! I knew his value, and I took the poor devil on the spot,
+without pestering him with any more questions. No need to ask him
+to explain himself. The facts speak for themselves in these
+cases. The old story, my good friend! There's a woman at the
+bottom of it, of course."
+
+
+Mrs. Crayford, waiting for the return of her husband as patiently
+as she could, was startled by feeling a hand suddenly laid on her
+shoulder. She looked round, and confronted Clara. Her first
+feeling of surprise changed instantly to alarm. Clara was
+trembling from head to foot.
+
+"What is the matter? What has frightened you, my dear?"
+
+"Lucy! I _have_ heard of him!"
+
+"Richard Wardour again?"
+
+"Remember what I told you. I have heard every word of the
+conversation between Captain Helding and your husband. A man came
+to the captain this morning and volunteered to join the
+_Wanderer_. The captain has taken him. The man is Richard
+Wardour."
+
+"You don't mean it! Are you sure? Did you hear Captain Helding
+mention his name?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then how do you know it's Richard Wardour?"
+
+"Don't ask me! I am as certain of it, as that I am standing here!
+They are going away together, Lucy--away to the eternal ice and
+snow. My foreboding has come true! The two will meet--the man who
+is to marry me and the man whose heart I have broken!"
+
+"Your foreboding has _not_ come true, Clara! The men have not met
+here--the men are not likely to meet elsewhere. They are
+appointed to separate ships. Frank belongs to the _Sea-mew_, and
+Wardour to the _Wanderer_. See! Captain Helding has done. My
+husband is coming this way. Let me make sure. Let me speak to
+him."
+
+Lieutenant Crayford returned to his wife. She spoke to him
+instantly.
+
+"William! you have got a new volunteer who joins the _Wanderer_?"
+
+"What! you have been listening to the captain and me?"
+
+"I want to know his name?"
+
+"How in the world did you manage to hear what we said to each
+other?"
+
+"His name? has the captain given you his name?"
+
+"Don't excite yourself, my dear. Look! you are positively
+alarming Miss Burnham. The new volunteer is a perfect stranger to
+us. There is his name--last on the ship's list."
+
+Mrs. Crayford snatched the list out of her husband's hand, and
+read the name:
+
+"RICHARD WARDOUR."
+
+
+
+Second Scene.
+
+The Hut of the _Sea-mew_.
+
+Chapter 6.
+
+
+Good-by to England! Good-by to inhabited and civilized regions of
+the earth!
+
+Two years have passed since the voyagers sailed from their native
+shores. The enterprise has failed--the Arctic expedition is lost
+and ice-locked in the Polar wastes. The good ships _Wanderer_ and
+_Sea-mew_, entombed in ice, will never ride the buoyant waters
+more. Stripped of their lighter timbers, both vessels have been
+used for the construction of huts, erected on the nearest land.
+
+The largest of the two buildings which now shelter the lost men
+is occupied by the surviving officers and crew of the _Sea-mew_.
+On one side of the principal room are the sleeping berths and the
+fire-place. The other side discloses a broad doorway (closed by a
+canvas screen), which serves as a means of communication with an
+inner apartment, devoted to the superior officers. A hammock is
+slung to the rough raftered roof of the main room, as an extra
+bed. A man, completely hidden by his bedclothes, is sleeping in
+the hammock. By the fireside there is a second man--supposed to
+be on the watch--fast asleep, poor wretch! at the present moment.
+Behind the sleeper stands an old cask, which serves for a table.
+The objects at present on the table are, a pestle and mortar, and
+a saucepanful of the dry bones of animals--in plain words, the
+dinner for the day. By way of ornament to the dull brown walls,
+icicles appear in the crevices of the timber, gleaming at
+intervals in the red fire-light. No wind whistles outside the
+lonely dwelling--no cry of bird or beast is heard. Indoors, and
+out-of-doors, the awful silence of the Polar desert reigns, for
+the moment, undisturbed.
+
+
+
+Chapter 7.
+
+
+The first sound that broke the silence came from the inner
+apartment. An officer lifted the canvas screen in the hut of the
+_Sea-mew_ and entered the main room. Cold and privation had badly
+thinned the ranks. The commander of the ship--Captain
+Ebsworth--was dangerously ill. The first lieutenant was dead. An
+officer of the _Wanderer_ filled their places for the time, with
+Captain Helding's permission. The officer so employed
+was--Lieutenant Crayford.
+
+He approached the man at the fireside, and awakened him.
+
+"Jump up, Bateson! It's your turn to be relieved."
+
+The relief appeared, rising from a heap of old sails at the back
+of the hut. Bateson vanished, yawning, to his bed. Lieutenant
+Crayford walked backward and forward briskly, trying what
+exercise would do toward warming his blood.
+
+The pestle and mortar on the cask attracted his attention. He
+stopped and looked up at the man in the hammock.
+
+"I must rouse the cook," he said to himself, with a smile. "That
+fellow little thinks how useful he is in keeping up my spirits.
+The most inveterate croaker and grumbler in the world--and yet,
+according to his own account, the only cheerful man in the whole
+ship's company. John Want! John Want! Rouse up, there!"
+
+A head rose slowly out of the bedclothes, covered with a red
+night-cap. A melancholy nose rested itself on the edge of the
+hammock. A voice, worthy of the nose, expressed its opinion of
+the Arctic climate, in these words:
+
+"Lord! Lord! here's all my breath on my blanket. Icicles, if you
+please, sir, all round my mouth and all over my blanket. Every
+time I have snored, I've frozen something. When a man gets the
+cold into him to that extent that he ices his own bed, it can't
+last much longer. Never mind! _I_ don't grumble."
+
+Crayford tapped the saucepan of bones impatiently. John Want
+lowered himself to the floor--grumbling all the way--by a rope
+attached to the rafters at his bed head. Instead of approaching
+his superior officer and his saucepan, he hobbled, shivering, to
+the fire-place, and held his chin as close as he possibly could
+over the fire. Crayford looked after him.
+
+"Halloo! what are you doing there?"
+
+"Thawing my beard, sir."
+
+"Come here directly, and set to work on these bones."
+
+John Want remained immovably attached to the fire-place, holding
+something else over the fire. Crayford began to lose his temper.
+
+"What the devil are you about now?"
+
+"Thawing my watch, sir. It's been under my pillow all night, and
+the cold has stopped it. Cheerful, wholesome, bracing sort of
+climate to live in; isn't it, sir? Never mind! _I_ don't
+grumble."
+
+"No, we all know that. Look here! Are these bones pounded small
+enough?"
+
+John Want suddenly approached the lieutenant, and looked at him
+with an appearance of the deepest interest.
+
+"You'll excuse me, sir," he said; "how very hollow your voice
+sounds this morning!"
+
+"Never mind my voice. The bones! the bones!"
+
+"Yes, sir--the bones. They'll take a trifle more pounding. I'll
+do my best with them, sir, for your sake."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+John Want shook his head, and looked at Crayford with a dreary
+smile.
+
+"I don't think I shall have the honor of making much more bone
+soup for you, sir. Do you think yourself you'll last long, sir? I
+don't, saving your presence. I think about another week or ten
+days will do for us all. Never mind! _I_ don't grumble."
+
+He poured the bones into the mortar, and began to pound
+them--under protest. At the same moment a sailor appeared,
+entering from the inner hut.
+
+"A message from Captain Ebsworth, sir."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"The captain is worse than ever with his freezing pains, sir. He
+wants to see you immediately."
+
+"I will go at once. Rouse the doctor."
+
+Answering in those terms, Crayford returned to the inner hut,
+followed by the sailor. John Want shook his head again, and
+smiled more drearily than ever.
+
+"Rouse the doctor?" he repeated. "Suppose the doctor should be
+frozen? He hadn't a ha'porth of warmth in him last night, and his
+voice sounded like a whisper in a speaking-trumpet. Will the
+bones do now? Yes, the bones will do now. Into the saucepan with
+you," cried John Want, suiting the action to the word, "and
+flavor the hot water if you can! When I remember that I was once
+an apprentice at a pastry-cook's--when I think of the gallons of
+turtle-soup that this hand has stirred up in a jolly hot
+kitchen--and when I find myself mixing bones and hot water for
+soup, and turning into ice as fast as I can; if I wasn't of a
+cheerful disposition I should feel inclined to grumble. John
+Want! John Want! whatever had you done with your natural senses
+when you made up your mind to go to sea?"
+
+A new voice hailed the cook, speaking from one of the bed-places
+in the side of the hut. It was the voice of Francis Aldersley.
+
+"Who's that croaking over the fire?"
+
+"Croaking?" repeated John Want, with the air of a man who
+considered himself the object of a gratuitous insult. "Croaking?
+You don't find your own voice at all altered for the worse--do
+you, Mr. Frank? I don't give _him_," John proceeded, speaking
+confidentially to himself, "more than six hours to last. He's one
+of your grumblers."
+
+"What are you doing there?" asked Frank.
+
+"I'm making bone soup, sir, and wondering why I ever went to
+sea."
+
+"Well, and why did you go to sea?"
+
+"I'm not certain, Mr. Frank. Sometimes I think it was natural
+perversity; sometimes I think it was false pride at getting over
+sea-sickness; sometimes I think it was reading 'Robinson Crusoe,'
+and books warning of me _not_ to go to sea."
+
+Frank laughed. "You're an odd fellow. What do you mean by false
+pride at getting over sea-sickness? Did you get over sea-sickness
+in some new way?"
+
+John Want's dismal face brightened in spite of himself. Frank had
+recalled to the cook's memory one of the noteworthy passages in
+the cook's life.
+
+"That's it, sir!" he said. "If ever a man cured sea-sickness in a
+new way yet, I am that man--I got over it, Mr. Frank, by dint of
+hard eating. I was a passenger on board a packet-boat, sir, when
+first I saw blue water. A nasty lopp of a sea came on at
+dinner-time, and I began to feel queer the moment the soup was
+put on the table. 'Sick?' says the captain. 'Rather, sir,' says
+I. 'Will you try my cure?' says the captain. 'Certainly, sir,'
+says I. 'Is your heart in your mouth yet?' says the captain. 'Not
+quite, sir,' says I. 'Mock-turtle soup?' says the captain, and
+helps me. I swallow a couple of spoonfuls, and turn as white as a
+sheet. The captain cocks his eye at me. 'Go on deck, sir,' says
+he; 'get rid of the soup, and then come back to the cabin.' I got
+rid of the soup, and came back to the cabin. 'Cod's
+head-and-shoulders,' says the captain, and helps me. 'I can't
+stand it, sir,' says I. 'You must,' says the captain, 'because
+it's the cure.' I crammed down a mouthful, and turned paler than
+ever. 'Go on deck,' says the captain. 'Get rid of the cod's head,
+and come back to the cabin.' Off I go, and back I come. 'Boiled
+leg of mutton and trimmings,' says the captain, and helps me. 'No
+fat, sir,' says I. 'Fat's the cure,' says the captain, and makes
+me eat it. 'Lean's the cure,' says the captain, and makes me eat
+it. 'Steady?' says the captain. 'Sick,' says I. 'Go on deck,'
+says the captain; 'get rid of the boiled leg of mutton and
+trimmings and come back to the cabin.' Off I go, staggering--back
+I come, more dead than alive. 'Deviled kidneys,' says the
+captain. I shut my eyes, and got 'em down. 'Cure's beginning,'
+says the captain. 'Mutton-chop and pickles.' I shut my eyes, and
+got _them_ down. 'Broiled ham and cayenne pepper,' says the
+captain. 'Glass of stout and cranberry tart. Want to go on deck
+again?' 'No, sir,' says I. 'Cure's done,' says the captain.
+'Never you give in to your stomach, and your stomach will end in
+giving in to you.'"
+
+Having stated the moral purpose of his story in those
+unanswerable words, John Want took himself and his saucepan into
+the kitchen. A moment later, Crayford returned to the hut and
+astonished Frank Aldersley by an unexpected question.
+
+"Have you anything in your berth, Frank, that you set a value
+on?"
+
+"Nothing that I set the smallest value on--when I am out of it,"
+he replied. "What does your question mean?"
+
+"We are almost as short of fuel as we are of provisions,"
+Crayford proceeded. "Your berth will make good firing. I have
+directed Bateson to be here in ten minutes with his ax."
+
+"Very attentive and considerate on your part," said Frank. "What
+is to become of me, if you please, when Bateson has chopped my
+bed into fire-wood?"
+
+"Can't you guess?"
+
+"I suppose the cold has stupefied me. The riddle is beyond my
+reading. Suppose you give me a hint?"
+
+"Certainly. There will be beds to spare soon--there is to be a
+change at last in our wretched lives here. Do you see it now?"
+
+Frank's eyes sparkled. He sprang out of his berth, and waved his
+fur cap in triumph.
+
+"See it?" he exclaimed; "of course I do! The exploring party is
+to start at last. Do I go with the expedition?"
+
+"It is not very long since you were in the doctor's hands,
+Frank," said Crayford, kindly. "I doubt if you are strong enough
+yet to make one of the exploring party."
+
+"Strong enough or not," returned Frank, "any risk is better than
+pining and perishing here. Put me down, Crayford, among those who
+volunteer to go."
+
+"Volunteers will not be accepted, in this case," said Crayford.
+"Captain Helding and Captain Ebsworth see serious objections, as
+we are situated, to that method of proceeding."
+
+"Do they mean to keep the appointments in their own hands?" asked
+Frank. "I for one object to that."
+
+"Wait a little," said Crayford. "You were playing backgammon the
+other day with one of the officers. Does the board belong to him
+or to you?"
+
+"It belongs to me. I have got it in my locker here. What do you
+want with it?"
+
+"I want the dice and the box for casting lots. The captains have
+arranged--most wisely, as I think--that Chance shall decide among
+us who goes with the expedition and who stays behind in the huts.
+The officers and crew of the _Wanderer_ will be here in a few
+minutes to cast the lots. Neither you nor any one can object to
+that way of deciding among us. Officers and men alike take their
+chance together. Nobody can grumble."
+
+"I am quite satisfied," said Frank. "But I know of one man among
+the officers who is sure to make objections."
+
+"Who is the man?"
+
+"You know him well enough, too. The 'Bear of the Expeditions'
+Richard Wardour."
+
+"Frank! Frank! you have a bad habit of letting your tongue run
+away with you. Don't repeat that stupid nickname when you talk of
+my good friend, Richard Wardour."
+
+"Your good friend? Crayford! your liking for that man amazes me."
+
+Crayford laid his hand kindly on Frank's shoulder. Of all the
+officers of the _Sea-mew_, Crayford's favorite was Frank.
+
+"Why should it amaze you?" he asked. "What opportunities have you
+had of judging? You and Wardour have always belonged to different
+ships. I have never seen you in Wardour's society for five
+minutes together. How can _you_ form a fair estimate of his
+character?"
+
+"I take the general estimate of his character," Frank answered.
+"He has got his nickname because he is the most unpopular man in
+his ship. Nobody likes him--there must be some reason for that."
+
+"There is only one reason for it," Crayford rejoined. "Nobody
+understands Richard Wardour. I am not talking at random.
+Remember, I sailed from England with him in the _Wanderer_; and I
+was only transferred to the _Sea-mew_ long after we were locked
+up in the ice. I was Richard Wardour's companion on board ship
+for months, and I learned there to do him justice. Under all his
+outward defects, I tell you, there beats a great and generous
+heart. Suspend your opinion, my lad, until you know my friend as
+well as I do. No more of this now. Give me the dice and the box."
+
+Frank opened his locker. At the same moment the silence of the
+snowy waste outside was broken by a shouting of voices hailing
+the hut--"_Sea-mew_, ahoy!"
+
+
+
+Chapter 8.
+
+
+The sailor on watch opened the outer door. There, plodding over
+the ghastly white snow, were the officers of the _Wanderer_
+approaching the hut. There, scattered under the merciless black
+sky, were the crew, with the dogs and the sledges, waiting the
+word which was to start them on their perilous and doubtful
+journey.
+
+Captain Helding of the _Wanderer_, accompanied by his officers,
+entered the hut, in high spirits at the prospect of a change.
+Behind them, lounging in slowly by himself, was a dark, sullen,
+heavy-browed man. He neither spoke, nor offered his hand to
+anybody: he was the one person present who seemed to be perfectly
+indifferent to the fate in store for him. This was the man whom
+his brother officers had nicknamed the Bear of the Expedition. In
+other words--Richard Wardour.
+
+Crayford advanced to welcome Captain Helding. Frank, remembering
+the friendly reproof which he had just received, passed over the
+other officers of the _Wanderer_, and made a special effort to be
+civil to Crayford's friend.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Wardour," he said. "We may congratulate each
+other on the chance of leaving this horrible place."
+
+"_You_ may think it horrible," Wardour retorted; "I like it."
+
+"Like it? Good Heavens! why?"
+
+"Because there are no women here."
+
+Frank turned to his brother officers, without making any further
+advances in the direction of Richard Wardour. The Bear of the
+Expedition was more unapproachable than ever.
+
+In the meantime, the hut had become thronged by the able-bodied
+officers and men of the two ships. Captain Helding, standing in
+the midst of them, with Crayford by his side, proceeded to
+explain the purpose of the contemplated expedition to the
+audience which surrounded him.
+
+He began in these words:
+
+"Brother officers and men of the _Wanderer_ and _Sea-mew_, it is
+my duty to tell you, very briefly, the reasons which have decided
+Captain Ebsworth and myself on dispatching an exploring party in
+search of help. Without recalling all the hardships we have
+suffered for the last two years--the destruction, first of one of
+our ships, then of the other; the death of some of our bravest
+and best companions; the vain battles we have been fighting with
+the ice and snow, and boundless desolation of these inhospitable
+regions--without dwelling on these things, it is my duty to
+remind you that this, the last place in which we have taken
+refuge, is far beyond the track of any previous expedition, and
+that consequently our chance of being discovered by any rescuing
+parties that may be sent to look after us is, to say the least of
+it, a chance of the most uncertain kind. You all agree with me,
+gentlemen, so far?"
+
+The officers (with the exception of Wardour, who stood apart in
+sullen silence) all agreed, so far.
+
+The captain went on.
+
+"It is therefore urgently necessary that we should make another,
+and probably a last, effort to extricate ourselves. The winter is
+not far off, game is getting scarcer and scarcer, our stock of
+provisions is running low, and the sick--especially, I am sorry
+to say, the sick in the _Wanderer_'s hut--are increasing in
+number day by day. We must look to our own lives, and to the
+lives of those who are dependent on us; and we have no time to
+lose."
+
+The officers echoed the words cheerfully.
+
+"Right! right! No time to lose."
+
+Captain Helding resumed:
+
+"The plan proposed is, that a detachment of the able-bodied
+officers and men among us should set forth this very day, and
+make another effort to reach the nearest inhabited settlements,
+from which help and provisions may be dispatched to those who
+remain here. The new direction to be taken, and the various
+precautions to be adopted, are all drawn out ready. The only
+question now before us is, Who is to stop here, and who is to
+undertake the journey?"
+
+The officers answered the question with one accord--"Volunteers!"
+
+The men echoed their officers. "Ay, ay, volunteers."
+
+Wardour still preserved his sullen silence. Crayford noticed him.
+standing apart from the rest, and appealed to him personally.
+
+"Do you say nothing?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing," Wardour answered. "Go or stay, it's all one to me."
+
+"I hope you don't really mean that?" said Crayford.
+
+"I do."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it, Wardour."
+
+Captain Helding answered the general suggestion in favor of
+volunteering by a question which instantly checked the rising
+enthusiasm of the meeting.
+
+"Well," he said, "suppose we say volunteers. Who volunteers to
+stop in the huts?"
+
+There was a dead silence. The officers and men looked at each
+other confusedly. The captain continued:
+
+"You see we can't settle it by volunteering. You all want to go.
+Every man among us who has the use of his limbs naturally wants
+to go. But what is to become of those who have not got the use of
+their limbs? Some of us must stay here, and take care of the
+sick."
+
+Everybody admitted that this was true.
+
+"So we get back again," said the captain, "to the old
+question--Who among the able-bodied is to go? and who is to stay?
+Captain Ebsworth says, and I say, let chance decide it. Here are
+dice. The numbers run as high as twelve--double sixes. All who
+throw under six, stay; all who throw over six, go. Officers of
+the _Wanderer_ and the _Sea-mew_, do you agree to that way of
+meeting the difficulty?"
+
+All the officers agreed, with the one exception of Wardour, who
+still kept silence.
+
+"Men of the _Wanderer_ and _Sea-mew_, your officers agree to cast
+lots. Do you agree too?"
+
+The men agreed without a dissentient voice. Crayford handed the
+box and the dice to Captain Helding.
+
+"You throw first, sir. Under six, 'Stay.' Over six, 'Go.'"
+
+Captain Helding cast the dice; the top of the cask serving for a
+table. He threw seven.
+
+"Go," said Crayford. "I congratulate you, sir. Now for my own
+chance." He cast the dice in his turn. Three! "Stay! Ah, well!
+well! if I can do my duty, and be of use to others, what does it
+matter whether I go or stay? Wardour, you are next, in the
+absence of your first lieutenant."
+
+Wardour prepared to cast, without shaking the dice.
+
+"Shake the box, man!" cried Crayford. "Give yourself a chance of
+luck!"
+
+Wardour persisted in letting the dice fall out carelessly, just
+as they lay in the box.
+
+"Not I!" he muttered to himself. "I've done with luck." Saying
+those words, he threw down the empty box, and seated himself on
+the nearest chest, without looking to see how the dice had
+fallen.
+
+Crayford examined them. "Six!" he exclaimed. "There! you have a
+second chance, in spite of yourself. You are neither under nor
+over--you throw again."
+
+"Bah!" growled the Bear. "It's not worth the trouble of getting
+up for. Somebody else throw for me." He suddenly looked at Frank.
+"You! you have got what the women call a lucky face."
+
+Frank appealed to Crayford. "Shall I?"
+
+"Yes, if he wishes it," said Crayford.
+
+Frank cast the dice. "Two! He stays! Wardour, I am sorry I have
+thrown against you."
+
+"Go or stay," reiterated Wardour, "it's all one to me. You will
+be luckier, young one, when you cast for yourself."
+
+Frank cast for himself.
+
+"Eight. Hurrah! I go!"
+
+"What did I tell you?" said Wardour. "The chance was yours. You
+have thriven on my ill luck."
+
+He rose, as he spoke, to leave the hut. Crayford stopped him.
+
+"Have you anything particular to do, Richard?"
+
+"What has anybody to do here?"
+
+"Wait a little, then. I want to speak to you when this business
+is over."
+
+"Are you going to give me any more good advice?"
+
+"Don't look at me in that sour way, Richard. I am going to ask
+you a question about something which concerns yourself."
+
+Wardour yielded without a word more. He returned to his chest,
+and cynically composed himself to slumber. The casting of the
+lots went on rapidly among the officers and men. In another
+half-hour chance had decided the question of "Go" or "Stay" for
+all alike. The men left the hut. The officers entered the inner
+apartment for a last conference with the bed-ridden captain of
+the _Sea-mew_. Wardour and Crayford were left together, alone.
+
+
+
+Chapter 9.
+
+
+Crayford touched his friend on the shoulder to rouse him. Wardour
+looked up, impatiently, with a frown.
+
+"I was just asleep," he said. "Why do you wake me?"
+
+"Look round you, Richard. We are alone."
+
+"Well--and what of that?"
+
+"I wish to speak to you privately; and this is my opportunity.
+You have disappointed and surprised me to-day. Why did you say it
+was all one to you whether you went or stayed? Why are you the
+only man among us who seems to be perfectly indifferent whether
+we are rescued or not?"
+
+"Can a man always give a reason for what is strange in his manner
+or his words?" Wardour retorted.
+
+"He can try," said Crayford, quietly--"when his friend asks him."
+
+Wardour's manner softened.
+
+"That's true," he said. "I _will_ try. Do you remember the first
+night at sea when we sailed from England in the _Wanderer_?"
+
+"As well as if it was yesterday."
+
+"A calm, still night," the other went on, thoughtfully. "No
+clouds, no stars. Nothing in the sky but the broad moon, and
+hardly a ripple to break the path of light she made in the quiet
+water. Mine was the middle watch that night. You came on deck,
+and found me alone--"
+
+He stopped. Crayford took his hand, and finished the sentence for
+him.
+
+"Alone--and in tears."
+
+"The last I shall ever shed," Wardour added, bitterly.
+
+"Don't say that! There are times when a man is to be pitied
+indeed, if he can shed no tears. Go on, Richard."
+
+Wardour proceeded--still following the old recollections, still
+preserving his gentler tones.
+
+"I should have quarreled with any other man who had surprised me
+at that moment," he said. "There was something, I suppose, in
+your voice when you asked my pardon for disturbing me, that
+softened my heart. I told you I had met with a disappointment
+which had broken me for life. There was no need to explain
+further. The only hopeless wretchedness in this world is the
+wretchedness that women cause."
+
+"And the only unalloyed happiness," said Crayford, "the happiness
+that women bring."
+
+"That may be your experience of them," Wardour answered; "mine is
+different. All the devotion, the patience, the humility, the
+worship that there is in man, I laid at the feet of a woman. She
+accepted the offering as women do--accepted it, easily,
+gracefully, unfeelingly--accepted it as a matter of course. I
+left England to win a high place in my profession, before I dared
+to win _her_. I braved danger, and faced death. I staked my life
+in the fever swamps of Africa, to gain the promotion that I only
+desired for her sake--and gained it. I came back to give her all,
+and to ask nothing in return, but to rest my weary heart in the
+sunshine of her smile. And her own lips--the lips I had kissed at
+parting--told me that another man had robbed me of her. I spoke
+but few words when I heard that confession, and left her forever.
+'The time may come,' I told her, 'when I shall forgive _you_. But
+the man who has robbed me of you shall rue the day when you and
+he first met.' Don't ask me who he was! I have yet to discover
+him. The treachery had been kept secret; nobody could tell me
+where to find him; nobody could tell me who he was. What did it
+matter? When I had lived out the first agony, I could rely on
+myself--I could be patient, and bide my time."
+
+"Your time? What time?"
+
+"The time when I and that man shall meet face to face. I knew it
+then; I know it now--it was written on my heart then, it is
+written on my heart now--we two shall meet and know each other!
+With that conviction strong within me, I volunteered for this
+service, as I would have volunteered for anything that set work
+and hardship and danger, like ramparts, between my misery and me.
+With that conviction strong within me still, I tell you it is no
+matter whether I stay here with the sick, or go hence with the
+strong. I shall live till I have met that man! There is a day of
+reckoning appointed between us. Here in the freezing cold, or
+away in the deadly heat; in battle or in shipwreck; in the face
+of starvation; under the shadow of pestilence--I, though hundreds
+are falling round me, I shall live! live for the coming of one
+day! live for the meeting with one man!"
+
+He stopped, trembling, body and soul, under the hold that his own
+terrible superstition had fastened on him. Crayford drew back in
+silent horror. Wardour noticed the action--he resented it--he
+appealed, in defense of his one cherished conviction, to
+Crayford's own experience of him.
+
+"Look at me!" he cried. "Look how I have lived and thriven, with
+the heart-ache gnawing at me at home, and the winds of the icy
+north whistling round me here! I am the strongest man among you.
+Why? I have fought through hardships that have laid the
+best-seasoned men of all our party on their backs. Why? What have
+_I_ done, that my life should throb as bravely through every vein
+in my body at this minute, and in this deadly place, as ever it
+did in the wholesome breezes of home? What am I preserved for? I
+tell you again, for the coming of one day--for the meeting with
+one man."
+
+He paused once more. This time Crayford spoke.
+
+"Richard!" he said, "since we first met, I have believed in your
+better nature, against all outward appearance. I have believed in
+you, firmly, truly, as your brother might. You are putting that
+belief to a hard test. If your enemy had told me that you had
+ever talked as you talk now, that you had ever looked as you look
+now, I would have turned my back on him as the utterer of a vile
+calumny against a just, a brave, an upright man. Oh! my friend,
+my friend, if ever I have deserved well of you, put away these
+thoughts from your heart! Face me again, with the stainless look
+of a man who has trampled under his feet the bloody superstitions
+of revenge, and knows them no more! Never, never, let the time
+come when I cannot offer you my hand as I offer it now, to the
+man I can still admire--to the brother I can still love!"
+
+The heart that no other voice could touch felt that appeal. The
+fierce eyes, the hard voice, softened under Crayford's influence.
+Richard Wardour's head sank on his breast.
+
+"You are kinder to me than I deserve," he said. "Be kinder still,
+and forget what I have been talking about. No! no more about me;
+I am not worth it. We'll change the subject, and never go back to
+it again. Let's do something. Work, Crayford--that's the true
+elixir of our life! Work, that stretches the muscles and sets the
+blood a-glowing. Work, that tires the body and rests the mind. Is
+there nothing in hand that I can do? Nothing to cut? nothing to
+carry?"
+
+The door opened as he put the question. Bateson--appointed to
+chop Frank's bed-place into firing--appeared punctually with his
+ax. Wardour, without a word of warning, snatched the ax out of
+the man's hand.
+
+"What was this wanted for?" he asked.
+
+"To cut up Mr. Aldersley's berth there into firing, sir."
+
+"I'll do it for you! I'll have it down in no time!" He turned to
+Crayford. "You needn't be afraid about me, old friend. I am going
+to do the right thing. I am going to tire my body and rest my
+mind."
+
+The evil spirit in him was plainly subdued--for the time, at
+least. Crayford took his hand in silence; and then (followed by
+Bateson) left him to his work.
+
+
+
+Chapter 10.
+
+
+Ax in hand, Wardour approached Frank's bed-place.
+
+"If I could only cut the thoughts out of me," he said to himself,
+"as I am going to cut the billets out of this wood!" He attacked
+the bed-place with the ax, like a man who well knew the use of
+his instrument. "Oh me!" he thought, sadly, "if I had only been
+born a carpenter instead of a gentleman! A good ax, Master
+Bateson--I wonder where you got it? Something like a grip, my
+man, on this handle. Poor Crayford! his words stick in my throat.
+A fine fellow! a noble fellow! No use thinking, no use
+regretting; what is said, is said. Work! work! work!"
+
+Plank after plank fell out on the floor. He laughed over the easy
+task of destruction. "Aha! young Aldersley! It doesn't take much
+to demolish your bed-place. I'll have it down! I would have the
+whole hut down, if they would only give me the chance of chopping
+at it!"
+
+A long strip of wood fell to his ax--long enough to require
+cutting in two. He turned it, and stooped over it. Something
+caught his eye--letters carved in the wood. He looked closer. The
+letters were very faintly and badly cut. He could only make out
+the first three of them; and even of those he was not quite
+certain. They looked like C L A--if they looked like anything. He
+threw down the strip of wood irritably.
+
+"D--n the fellow (whoever he is) who cut this! Why should he
+carve _that_ name, of all the names in the world?"
+
+He paused, considering--then determined to go on again with his
+self-imposed labor. He was ashamed of his own outburst. He looked
+eagerly for the ax. "Work, work! Nothing for it but work." He
+found the ax, and went on again.
+
+He cut out another plank.
+
+He stopped, and looked at it suspiciously.
+
+There was carving again, on this plank. The letters F. and A.
+appeared on it.
+
+He put down the ax. There were vague misgivings in him which he
+was not able to realize. The state of his own mind was fast
+becoming a puzzle to him.
+
+"More carving," he said to himself. "That's the way these young
+idlers employ their long hours. F. A.? Those must be _his_
+initials--Frank Aldersley. Who carved the letters on the other
+plank? Frank Aldersley, too?"
+
+He turned the piece of wood in his hand nearer to the light, and
+looked lower down it. More carving again, lower down! Under the
+initials F. A. were two more letters--C. B.
+
+"C. B.?" he repeated to himself. "His sweet heart's initials, I
+suppose? Of course--at his age--his sweetheart's initials."
+
+He paused once more. A spasm of inner pain showed the shadow of
+its mysterious passage, outwardly on his face.
+
+"_Her_ cipher is C. B.," he said, in low, broken tones. "C.
+B.--Clara Burnham."
+
+He waited, with the plank in his hand; repeating the name over
+and over again, as if it was a question he was putting to
+himself.
+
+"Clara Burnham? Clara Burnham?"
+
+He dropped the plank, and turned deadly pale in a moment. His
+eyes wandered furtively backward and forward between the strip of
+wood on the floor and the half-demolished berth. "Oh, God! what
+has come to me now?" he said to himself, in a whisper. He
+snatched up the ax, with a strange cry--something between rage
+and terror. He tried--fiercely, desperately tried--to go on with
+his work. No! strong as he was, he could not use the ax. His
+hands were helpless; they trembled incessantly. He went to the
+fire; he held his hands over it. They still trembled incessantly;
+they infected the rest of him. He shuddered all over. He knew
+fear. His own thoughts terrified him.
+
+"Crayford!" he cried out. "Crayford! come here, and let's go
+hunting."
+
+No friendly voice answered him. No friendly face showed itself at
+the door.
+
+An interval passed; and there came over him another change. He
+recovered his self-possession almost as suddenly as he had lost
+it. A smile--a horrid, deforming, unnatural smile--spread slowly,
+stealthily, devilishly over his face. He left the fire; he put
+the ax away softly in a corner; he sat down in his old place,
+deliberately self-abandoned to a frenzy of vindictive joy. He had
+found the man! There, at the end of the world--there, at the last
+fight of the Arctic voyagers against starvation and death, he had
+found the man!
+
+The minutes passed.
+
+He became conscious, on a sudden, of a freezing stream of air
+pouring into the room.
+
+He turned, and saw Crayford opening the door of the hut. A man
+was behind him. Wardour rose eagerly, and looked over Crayford's
+shoulder.
+
+Was it--could it be--the man who had carved the letters on the
+plank? Yes! Frank Aldersley!
+
+
+
+Chapter 11.
+
+
+"Still at work!" Crayford exclaimed, looking at the
+half-demolished bed-place. "Give yourself a little rest, Richard.
+The exploring party is ready to start. If you wish to take leave
+of your brother officers before they go, you have no time to
+lose."
+
+He checked himself there, looking Wardour full in the face.
+
+"Good Heavens!" he cried, "how pale you are! Has anything
+happened?"
+
+Frank--searching in his locker for articles of clothing which he
+might require on the journey--looked round. He was startled, as
+Crayford had been startled, by the sudden change in Wardour since
+they had last seen him.
+
+"Are you ill?" he asked. "I hear you have been doing Bateson's
+work for him. Have you hurt yourself?"
+
+Wardour suddenly moved his head, so as to hide his face from both
+Crayford and Frank. He took out his handkerchief, and wound it
+clumsily round his left hand.
+
+"Yes," he said; "I hurt myself with the ax. It's nothing. Never
+mind. Pain always has a curious effect on me. I tell you it's
+nothing! Don't notice it!"
+
+He turned his face toward them again as suddenly as he had turned
+it away. He advanced a few steps, and addressed himself with an
+uneasy familiarity to Frank.
+
+"I didn't answer you civilly when you spoke to me some little
+time since. I mean when I first came in here along with the rest
+of them. I apologize. Shake hands! How are you? Ready for the
+march?"
+
+Frank met the oddly abrupt advance which had been made to him
+with perfect good humor.
+
+"I am glad to be friends with you, Mr. Wardour. I wish I was as
+well seasoned to fatigue as you are."
+
+Wardour burst into a hard, joyless, unnatural laugh.
+
+"Not strong, eh? You don't look it. The dice had better have sent
+me away, and kept you here. I never felt in better condition in
+my life." He paused and added, with his eye on Frank and with a
+strong emphasis on the words: "We men of Kent are made of tough
+material."
+
+Frank advanced a step on his side, with a new interest in Richard
+Wardour.
+
+"You come from Kent?" he said.
+
+"Yes. From East Kent." He waited a little once more, and looked
+hard at Frank. "Do you know that part of the country?" he asked.
+
+"I ought to know something about East Kent," Frank answered.
+"Some dear friends of mine once lived there."
+
+"Friends of yours?" Wardour repeated. "One of the county
+families, I suppose?"
+
+As he put the question, he abruptly looked over his shoulder. He
+was standing between Crayford and Frank. Crayford, taking no part
+in the conversation, had been watching him, and listening to him
+more and more attentively as that conversation went on. Within
+the last moment or two Wardour had become instinctively conscious
+of this. He resented Crayford's conduct with needless
+irritability.
+
+"Why are you staring at me?" he asked.
+
+"Why are you looking unlike yourself?" Crayford answered,
+quietly.
+
+Wardour made no reply. He renewed the conversation with Frank.
+
+"One of the county families?" he resumed. "The Winterbys of Yew
+Grange, I dare say?"
+
+"No," said Frank; "but friends of the Witherbys, very likely. The
+Burnhams."
+
+Desperately as he struggled to maintain it, Wardour's
+self-control failed him. He started violently. The clumsily-wound
+handkerchief fell off his hand. Still looking at him attentively,
+Crayford picked it up.
+
+"There is your handkerchief, Richard," he said. "Strange!"
+
+"What is strange?"
+
+"You told us you had hurt yourself with the ax--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"There is no blood on your handkerchief."
+
+Wardour snatched the handkerchief out of Crayford's hand, and,
+turning away, approached the outer door of the hut. "No blood on
+the handkerchief," he said to himself. "There may be a stain or
+two when Crayford sees it again." He stopped within a few paces
+of the door, and spoke to Crayford. "You recommended me to take
+leave of my brother officers before it was too late," he said. "I
+am going to follow your advice."
+
+The door was opened from the outer side as he laid his hand on
+the lock.
+
+One of the quartermasters of the _Wanderer_ entered the hut.
+
+"Is Captain Helding here, sir?" he asked, addressing himself to
+Wardour.
+
+Wardour pointed to Crayford.
+
+"The lieutenant will tell you," he said.
+
+Crayford advanced and questioned the quartermaster. "What do you
+want with Captain Helding?" he asked.
+
+"I have a report to make, sir. There has been an accident on the
+ice."
+
+"To one of your men?"
+
+"No, sir. To one of our officers."
+
+Wardour, on the point of going out, paused when the quartermaster
+made that reply. For a moment he considered with himself. Then he
+walked slowly back to the part of the room in which Frank was
+standing. Crayford, directing the quartermaster, pointed to the
+arched door way in the side of the hut.
+
+"I am sorry to hear of the accident," he said. "You will find
+Captain Helding in that room."
+
+For the second time, with singular persistency, Wardour renewed
+the conversation with Frank.
+
+"So you knew the Burnhams?" he said. "What became of Clara when
+her father died?"
+
+Frank's face flushed angrily on the instant.
+
+"Clara!" he repeated. "What authorizes you to speak of Miss
+Burnham in that familiar manner?"
+
+Wardour seized the opportunity of quarreling with him.
+
+"What right have you to ask?" he retorted, coarsely.
+
+Frank's blood was up. He forgot his promise to Clara to keep
+their engagement secret--he forgot everything but the unbridled
+insolence of Wardour's language and manner.
+
+"A right which I insist on your respecting," he answered. "The
+right of being engaged to marry her."
+
+Crayford's steady eyes were still on the watch, and Wardour felt
+them on him. A little more and Crayford might openly interfere.
+Even Wardour recognized for once the necessity of controlling his
+temper, cost him what it might. He made his apologies, with
+overstrained politeness, to Frank.
+
+"Impossible to dispute such a right as yours," he said. "Perhaps
+you will excuse me when you know that I am one of Miss Burnham's
+old friends. My father and her father were neighbors. We have
+always met like brother and sister--"
+
+Frank generously stopped the apology there.
+
+"Say no more," he interposed. "I was in the wrong--I lost my
+temper. Pray forgive me."
+
+Wardour looked at him with a strange, reluctant interest while he
+was speaking. Wardour asked an extraordinary question when he had
+done.
+
+"Is she very fond of you?"
+
+Frank burst out laughing.
+
+"My dear fellow," he said, "come to our wedding, and judge for
+yourself."
+
+"Come to your wedding?" As he repeated the words Wardour stole
+one glance at Frank which Frank (employed in buckling his
+knapsack) failed to see. Crayford noticed it, and Crayford's
+blood ran cold. Comparing the words which Wardour had spoken to
+him while they were alone together with the words that had just
+passed in his presence, he could draw but one conclusion. The
+woman whom Wardour had loved and lost was--Clara Burnham. The man
+who had robbed him of her was Frank Aldersley. And Wardour had
+discovered it in the interval since they had last met. "Thank
+God!" thought Crayford, "the dice have parted them! Frank goes
+with the expedition, and Wardour stays behind with me."
+
+The reflection had barely occurred to him--Frank's thoughtless
+invitation to Wardour had just passed his lips--when the canvas
+screen over the doorway was drawn aside. Captain Helding and the
+officers who were to leave with the exploring party returned to
+the main room on their way out. Seeing Crayford, Captain Helding
+stopped to speak to him.
+
+"I have a casualty to report," said the captain, "which
+diminishes our numbers by one. My second lieutenant, who was to
+have joined the exploring party, has had a fall on the ice.
+Judging by what the quartermaster tells me, I am afraid the poor
+fellow has broken his leg."
+
+"I will supply his place," cried a voice at the other end of the
+hut.
+
+Everybody looked round. The man who had spoken was Richard
+Wardour.
+
+Crayford instantly interfered--so vehemently as to astonish all
+who knew him.
+
+"No!" he said. "Not you, Richard! not you!"
+
+"Why not?" Wardour asked, sternly.
+
+"Why not, indeed?" added Captain Helding. "Wardour is the very
+man to be useful on a long march. He is in perfect health, and he
+is the best shot among us. I was on the point of proposing him
+myself."
+
+Crayford failed to show his customary respect for his superior
+officer. He openly disputed the captain's conclusion.
+
+"Wardour has no right to volunteer," he rejoined. "It has been
+settled, Captain Helding, that chance shall decide who is to go
+and who is to stay."
+
+"And chance _has_ decided it," cried Wardour. "Do you think we
+are going to cast the dice again, and give an officer of the
+_Sea-mew_ a chance of replacing an officer of the _Wanderer_?
+There is a vacancy in our party, not in yours; and we claim the
+right of filling it as we please. I volunteer, and my captain
+backs me. Whose authority is to keep me here after that?"
+
+"Gently, Wardour," said Captain Helding. "A man who is in the
+right can afford to speak with moderation." He turned to
+Crayford. "You must admit yourself," he continued, "that Wardour
+is right this time. The missing man belongs to my command, and in
+common justice one of my officers ought to supply his place."
+
+It was impossible to dispute the matter further. The dullest man
+present could see that the captain's reply was unanswerable. In
+sheer despair, Crayford took Frank's arm and led him aside a few
+steps. The last chance left of parting the two men was the chance
+of appealing to Frank.
+
+"My dear boy," he began, "I want to say one friendly word to you
+on the subject of your health. I have already, if you remember,
+expressed my doubts whether you are strong enough to make one of
+an exploring party. I feel those doubts more strongly than ever
+at this moment. Will you take the advice of a friend who wishes
+you well?"
+
+Wardour had followed Crayford. Wardour roughly interposed before
+Frank could reply.
+
+"Let him alone!"
+
+Crayford paid no heed to the interruption. He was too earnestly
+bent on withdrawing Frank from the expedition to notice anything
+that was said or done by the persons about him.
+
+"Don't, pray don't, risk hardships which you are unfit to bear!"
+he went on, entreatingly. "Your place can be easily filled.
+Change your mind, Frank. Stay here with me."
+
+Again Wardour interfered. Again he called out, "Leave him alone!"
+more roughly than ever. Still deaf and blind to every
+consideration but one, Crayford pressed his entreaties on Frank.
+
+"You owned yourself just now that you were not well seasoned to
+fatigue," he persisted. "You feel (you _must_ feel) how weak that
+last illness has left you? You know (I am sure you know) how
+unfit you are to brave exposure to cold, and long marches over
+the snow."
+
+Irritated beyond endurance by Crayford's obstinacy; seeing, or
+thinking he saw, signs of yielding in Frank's face, Wardour so
+far forgot himself as to seize Crayford by the arm and attempt to
+drag him away from Frank. Crayford turned and looked at him.
+
+"Richard," he said, very quietly, "you are not yourself. I pity
+you. Drop your hand."
+
+Wardour relaxed his hold, with something of the sullen submission
+of a wild animal to its keeper. The momentary silence which
+followed gave Frank an opportunity of speaking at last.
+
+"I am gratefully sensible, Crayford," he began, "of the interest
+which you take in me--"
+
+"And you will follow my advice?" Crayford interposed, eagerly.
+
+"My mind is made up, old friend," Frank answered, firmly and
+sadly. "Forgive me for disappointing you. I am appointed to the
+expedition. With the expedition I go." He moved nearer to
+Wardour. In his innocence of all suspicion he clapped Wardour
+heartily on the shoulder. "When I feel the fatigue," said poor
+simple Frank, "you will help me, comrade--won't you? Come along!"
+
+Wardour snatched his gun out of the hands of the sailor who was
+carrying it for him. His dark face became suddenly irradiated
+with a terrible joy.
+
+"Come!" he cried. "Over the snow and over the ice! Come! where no
+human footsteps have ever trodden, and where no human trace is
+ever left."
+
+Blindly, instinctively, Crayford made an effort to part them. His
+brother officers, standing near, pulled him back. They looked at
+each other anxiously. The merciless cold, striking its victims in
+various ways, had struck in some instances at their reason first.
+Everybody loved Crayford. Was he, too, going on the dark way that
+others had taken before him? They forced him to seat himself on
+one of the lockers. "Steady, old fellow!" they said
+kindly--"steady!" Crayford yielded, writhing inwardly under the
+sense of his own helplessness. What in God's name could he do?
+Could he denounce Wardour to Captain Helding on bare
+suspicion--without so much as the shadow of a proof to justify
+what he said? The captain would decline to insult one of his
+officers by even mentioning the monstrous accusation to him. The
+captain would conclude, as others had already concluded, that
+Crayford's mind was giving way under stress of cold and
+privation. No hope--literally, no hope now, but in the numbers of
+the expedition. Officers and men, they all liked Frank. As long
+as they could stir hand or foot, they would help him on the
+way--they would see that no harm came to him.
+
+The word of command was given; the door was thrown open; the hut
+emptied rapidly. Over the merciless white snow--under the
+merciless black sky--the exploring party began to move. The sick
+and helpless men, whose last hope of rescue centered in their
+departing messmates, cheered faintly. Some few whose days were
+numbered sobbed and cried like women. Frank's voice faltered as
+he turned back at the door to say his last words to the friend
+who had been a father to him.
+
+"God bless you, Crayford!"
+
+Crayford broke away from the officers near him; and, hurrying
+forward, seized Frank by both hands. Crayford held him as if he
+would never let him go.
+
+"God preserve you, Frank! I would give all I have in the world to
+be with you. Good-by! Good-by!"
+
+Frank waved his hand--dashed away the tears that were gathering
+in his eyes--and hurried out. Crayford called after him, the
+last, the only warning that he could give:
+
+"While you can stand, keep with the main body, Frank!"
+
+Wardour, waiting till the last--Wardour, following Frank through
+the snow-drift--stopped, stepped back, and answered Crayford at
+the door:
+
+"While he can stand, he keeps with Me."
+
+
+
+Third Scene
+
+The Iceberg.
+
+Chapter 12.
+
+
+Alone! alone on the Frozen Deep!
+
+The Arctic sun is rising dimly in the dreary sky. The beams of
+the cold northern moon, mingling strangely with the dawning
+light, clothe the snowy plains in hues of livid gray. An
+ice-field on the far horizon is moving slowly southward in the
+spectral light. Nearer, a stream of open water rolls its slow
+black waves past the edges of the ice. Nearer still, following
+the drift, an iceberg rears its crags and pinnacles to the sky;
+here, glittering in the moonbeams; there, looming dim and
+ghost-like in the ashy light.
+
+Midway on the long sweep of the lower slope of the iceberg, what
+objects rise, and break the desolate monotony of the scene? In
+this awful solitude, can signs appear which tell of human Life?
+Yes! The black outline of a boat just shows itself, hauled up on
+the berg. In an ice-cavern behind the boat the last red embers of
+a dying fire flicker from time to time over the figures of two
+men. One is seated, resting his back against the side of the
+cavern. The other lies prostrate, with his head on his comrade's
+knee. The first of these men is awake, and thinking. The second
+reclines, with his still white face turned up to the
+sky--sleeping or dead. Days and days since, these two have fallen
+behind on the march of the expedition of relief. Days and days
+since, these two have been given up by their weary and failing
+companions as doomed and lost. He who sits thinking is Richard
+Wardour. He who lies sleeping or dead is Frank Aldersley.
+
+The iceberg drifts slowly, over the black water, through the ashy
+light. Minute by minute the dying fire sinks. Minute by minute
+the deathly cold creeps nearer and nearer to the lost men.
+
+Richard Wardour rouses himself from his thoughts--looks at the
+still white face beneath him--and places his hand on Frank's
+heart. It still beats feebly. Give him his share of the food and
+fuel still stored in the boat, and Frank may live through it.
+Leave him neglected where he lies, and his death is a question of
+hours--perhaps minutes; who knows?
+
+Richard Wardour lifts the sleeper's head and rests it against the
+cavern side. He goes to the boat, and returns with a billet of
+wood. He stoops to place the wood on the fire--and stops. Frank
+is dreaming, and murmuring in his dream. A woman's name passes
+his lips. Frank is in England again--at the ball--whispering to
+Clara the confession of his love.
+
+Over Richard Wardour's face there passes the shadow of a deadly
+thought. He rises from the fire; he takes the wood back to the
+boat. His iron strength is shaken, but it still holds out. They
+are drifting nearer and nearer to the open sea. He can launch the
+boat without help; he can take the food and the fuel with him.
+The sleeper on the iceberg is the man who has robbed him of
+Clara--who has wrecked the hope and the happiness of his life.
+Leave the man in his sleep, and let him die!
+
+So the tempter whispers. Richard Wardour tries his strength on
+the boat. It moves: he has got it under control. He stops, and
+looks round. Beyond him is the open sea. Beneath him is the man
+who has robbed him of Clara. The shadow of the deadly thought
+grows and darkens over his face. He waits with his hands on the
+boat--waits and thinks.
+
+The iceberg drifts slowly--over the black water; through the ashy
+light. Minute by minute, the dying fire sinks. Minute by minute,
+the deathly cold creeps nearer to the sleeping man. And still
+Richard Wardour waits--waits and thinks.
+
+
+
+Fourth Scene.
+
+The Garden.
+
+Chapter 13.
+
+
+The spring has come. The air of the April night just lifts the
+leaves of the sleeping flowers. The moon is queen in the
+cloudless and starless sky. The stillness of the midnight hour is
+abroad, over land and over sea.
+
+In a villa on the westward shore of the Isle of Wight, the glass
+doors which lead from the drawing-room to the garden are yet
+open. The shaded lamp yet burns on the table. A lady sits by the
+lamp, reading. From time to time she looks out into the garden,
+and sees the white-robed figure of a young girl pacing slowly to
+and fro in the soft brightness of the moonlight on the lawn.
+Sorrow and suspense have set their mark on the lady. Not rivals
+only, but friends who formerly admired her, agree now that she
+looks worn and aged. The more merciful judgment of others
+remarks, with equal truth, that her eyes, her hair, her simple
+grace and grandeur of movement have lost but little of their
+olden charms. The truth lies, as usual, between the two extremes.
+In spite of sorrow and suffering, Mrs. Crayford is the beautiful
+Mrs. Crayford still.
+
+The delicious silence of the hour is softly disturbed by the
+voice of the younger lady in the garden.
+
+"Go to the piano, Lucy. It is a night for music. Play something
+that is worthy of the night."
+
+Mrs. Crayford looks round at the clock on the mantelpiece.
+
+"My dear Clara, it is past twelve! Remember what the doctor told
+you. You ought to have been in bed an hour ago."
+
+"Half an hour, Lucy--give me half an hour more! Look at the
+moonlight on the sea. Is it possible to go to bed on such a night
+as this? Play something, Lucy--something spiritual and divine."
+
+Earnestly pleading with her friend, Clara advances toward the
+window. She too has suffered under the wasting influences of
+suspense. Her face has lost its youthful freshness; no delicate
+flush of color rises on it when she speaks. The soft gray eyes
+which won Frank's heart in the by-gone time are sadly altered
+now. In repose, they have a dimmed and wearied look. In action,
+they are wild and restless, like eyes suddenly wakened from
+startling dreams. Robed in white--her soft brown hair hanging
+loosely over her shoulders--there is something weird and
+ghost-like in the girl, as she moves nearer and nearer to the
+window in the full light of the moon--pleading for music that
+shall be worthy of the mystery and the beauty of the night.
+
+"Will you come in here if I play to you?" Mrs. Crayford asks. "It
+is a risk, my love, to be out so long in the night air."
+
+"No! no! I like it. Play--while I am out here looking at the sea.
+It quiets me; it comforts me; it does me good."
+
+She glides back, ghost-like, over the lawn. Mrs. Crayford rises,
+and puts down the volume that she has been reading. It is a
+record of explorations in the Arctic seas. The time has gone by
+when the two lonely women could take an interest in subjects not
+connected with their own anxieties. Now, when hope is fast
+failing them--now, when their last news of the _Wanderer_ and the
+_Sea-mew_ is news that is more than two years old--they can read
+of nothing, they can think of nothing, but dangers and
+discoveries, losses and rescues in the terrible Polar seas.
+
+Unwillingly, Mrs. Crayford puts her book aside, and opens the
+piano--Mozart's "Air in A, with Variations," lies open on the
+instrument. One after another she plays the lovely melodies, so
+simply, so purely beautiful, of that unpretending and unrivaled
+work. At the close of the ninth Variation (Clara's favorite), she
+pauses, and turns toward the garden.
+
+"Shall I stop there?" she asks.
+
+There is no answer. Has Clara wandered away out of hearing of the
+music that she loves--the music that harmonizes so subtly with
+the tender beauty of the night? Mrs. Crayford rises and advances
+to the window.
+
+No! there is the white figure standing alone on the slope of the
+lawn--the head turned away from the house; the face looking out
+over the calm sea, whose gently rippling waters end in the dim
+line on the horizon which is the line of the Hampshire coast.
+
+Mrs. Crayford advances as far as the path before the window, and
+calls to her.
+
+"Clara!"
+
+Again there is no answer. The white figure still stands immovably
+in its place.
+
+With signs of distress in her face, but with no appearance of
+alarm, Mrs. Crayford returns to the room. Her own sad experience
+tells her what has happened. She summons the servants and directs
+them to wait in the drawing-room until she calls to them. This
+done, she returns to the garden, and approaches the mysterious
+figure on the lawn.
+
+Dead to the outer world, as if she lay already in her
+grave--insensible to touch, insensible to sound, motionless as
+stone, cold as stone--Clara stands on the moonlit lawn, facing
+the seaward view. Mrs. Crayford waits at her side, patiently
+watching for the change which she knows is to come. "Catalepsy,"
+as some call it--"hysteria," as others say--this alone is
+certain, the same interval always passes; the same change always
+appears.
+
+It comes now. Not a change in her eyes; they still remain wide
+open, fixed and glassy. The first movement is a movement of her
+hands. They rise slowly from her side and waver in the air like
+the hands of a person groping in the dark. Another interval, and
+the movement spreads to her lips: they part and tremble. A few
+minutes more, and words begin to drop, one by one, from those
+parted lips--words spoken in a lost, vacant tone, as if she is
+talking in her sleep.
+
+Mrs. Crayford looks back at the house. Sad experience makes her
+suspicious of the servants' curiosity. Sad experience has long
+since warned her that the servants are not to be trusted within
+hearing of the wild words which Clara speaks in the trance. Has
+any one of them ventured into the garden? No. They are out of
+hearing at the window, waiting for the signal which tells them
+that their help is needed.
+
+Turning toward Clara once more, Mrs. Crayford hears the vacantly
+uttered words, falling faster and faster from her lips,
+
+"Frank! Frank! Frank! Don't drop behind--don't trust Richard
+Wardour. While you can stand, keep with the other men, Frank!"
+
+(The farewell warning of Crayford in the solitudes of the Frozen
+Deep, repeated by Clara in the garden of her English home!)
+
+A moment of silence follows; and, in that moment, the vision has
+changed. She sees him on the iceberg now, at the mercy of the
+bitterest enemy he has on earth. She sees him drifting--over the
+black water, through the ashy light.
+
+"Wake, Frank! wake and defend yourself! Richard Wardour knows
+that I love you--Richard Wardour's vengeance will take your life!
+Wake, Frank--wake! You are drifting to your death!" A low groan
+of horror bursts from her, sinister and terrible to hear.
+"Drifting! drifting!" she whispers to herself--"drifting to his
+death!"
+
+Her glassy eyes suddenly soften--then close. A long shudder runs
+through her. A faint flush shows itself on the deadly pallor of
+her face, and fades again. Her limbs fail her. She sinks into
+Mrs. Crayford's arms.
+
+The servants, answering the call for help, carry her into the
+house. They lay her insensible on her bed. After half an hour or
+more, her eyes open again--this time with the light of life in
+them--open, and rest languidly on the friend sitting by the
+bedside.
+
+"I have had a dreadful dream," she murmurs faintly. "Am I ill,
+Lucy? I feel so weak."
+
+Even as she says the words, sleep, gentle, natural sleep, takes
+her suddenly, as it takes young children weary with their play.
+Though it is all over now, though no further watching is
+required, Mrs. Crayford still keeps her place by the bedside, too
+anxious and too wakeful to retire to her own room.
+
+On other occasions, she is accustomed to dismiss from her mind
+the words which drop from Clara in the trance. This time the
+effort to dismiss them is beyond her power. The words haunt her.
+Vainly she recalls to memory all that the doctors have said to
+her, in speaking of Clara in the state of trance. "What she
+vaguely dreads for the lost man whom she loves is mingled in her
+mind with what she is constantly reading, of trials, dangers, and
+escapes in the Arctic seas. The most startling things that she
+may say or do are all attributable to this cause, and may all be
+explained in this way." So the doctors have spoken; and, thus
+far, Mrs. Crayford has shared their view. It is only to-night
+that the girl's words ring in her ear, with a strange prophetic
+sound in them. It is only to-night that she asks herself: "Is
+Clara present, in the spirit, with our loved and lost ones in the
+lonely North? Can mortal vision see the dead and living in the
+solitudes of the Frozen Deep?"
+
+
+
+Chapter 14.
+
+
+The night had passed.
+
+Far and near the garden view looked its gayest and brightest in
+the light of the noonday sun. The cheering sounds which tell of
+life and action were audible all round the villa. From the garden
+of the nearest house rose the voices of children at play. Along
+the road at the back sounded the roll of wheels, as carts and
+carriages passed at intervals. Out on the blue sea, the distant
+splash of the paddles, the distant thump of the engines, told
+from time to time of the passage of steamers, entering or leaving
+the strait between the island and the mainland. In the trees, the
+birds sang gayly among the rustling leaves. In the house, the
+women-servants were laughing over some jest or story that cheered
+them at their work. It was a lively and pleasant time--a bright,
+enjoyable day.
+
+The two ladies were out together; resting on a garden seat, after
+a walk round the grounds.
+
+They exchanged a few trivial words relating to the beauty of the
+day, and then said no more. Possessing the same consciousness of
+what she had seen in the trance which persons in general possess
+of what they have seen in a dream--believing in the vision as a
+supernatural revelation--Clara's worst forebodings were now, to
+her mind, realized as truths. Her last faint hope of ever seeing
+Frank again was now at an end. Intimate experience of her told
+Mrs. Crayford what was passing in Clara's mind, and warned her
+that the attempt to reason and remonstrate would be little better
+than a voluntary waste of words and time. The disposition which
+she had herself felt on the previous night, to attach a
+superstitious importance to the words that Clara had spoken in
+the trance, had vanished with the return of the morning. Rest and
+reflection had quieted her mind, and had restored the composing
+influence of her sober sense. Sympathizing with Clara in all
+besides, she had no sympathy, as they sat together in the
+pleasant sunshine, with Clara's gloomy despair of the future.
+She, who could still hope, had nothing to say to the sad
+companion who had done with hope. So the quiet minutes succeeded
+each other, and the two friends sat side by side in silence.
+
+An hour passed, and the gate-bell of the villa rang.
+
+They both started--they both knew the ring. It was the hour when
+the postman brought their newspapers from London. In past days,
+what hundreds on hundreds of times they had torn off the cover
+which inclosed the newspaper, and looked at the same column with
+the same weary mingling of hope and despair! There to-day--as it
+was yesterday; as it would be, if they lived, to-morrow--there
+was the servant with Lucy's newspaper and Clara's newspaper in
+his hand!
+
+Would both of them do again to-day what both had done so often in
+the days that were gone?
+
+No! Mrs. Crayford removed the cover from her newspaper as usual.
+Clara laid _her_ newspaper aside, unopened, on the garden seat.
+
+In silence, Mrs. Crayford looked, where she always looked, at the
+column devoted to the Latest Intelligence from foreign parts. The
+instant her eye fell on the page she started with a loud cry of
+joy. The newspaper fell from her trembling hand. She caught Clara
+in her arms. "Oh, my darling! my darling! news of them at last."
+
+Without answering, without the slightest change in look or
+manner, Clara took the newspaper from the ground, and read the
+top line in the column, printed in capital letters:
+
+THE ARCTIC EXPEDITION.
+
+She waited, and looked at Mrs. Crayford.
+
+"Can you bear to hear it, Lucy," she asked, "if I read it aloud?"
+
+Mrs. Crayford was too agitated to answer in words. She signed
+impatiently to Clara to go on.
+
+Clara read the news which followed the heading in capital
+letters. Thus it ran:
+
+"The following intelligence, from St. Johns, Newfoundland, has
+reached us for publication. The whaling-vessel _Blythewood_ is
+reported to have met with the surviving officers and men of the
+Expedition in Davis Strait. Many are stated to be dead, and some
+are supposed to be missing. The list of the saved, as collected
+by the people of the whaler, is not vouched for as being
+absolutely correct, the circumstances having been adverse to
+investigation. The vessel was pressed for time; and the members
+of the Expedition, all more or less suffering from exhaustion,
+were not in a position to give the necessary assistance to
+inquiry. Further particulars may be looked for by the next mail."
+
+The list of the survivors followed, beginning with the officers
+in the order of their rank. They both read the list together. The
+first name was Captain Helding; the second was Lieutenant
+Crayford.
+
+There the wife's joy overpowered her. After a pause, she put her
+arm around Clara's waist, and spoke to her.
+
+"Oh, my love!" she murmured, "are you as happy as I am? Is
+Frank's name there too? The tears are in my eyes. Read for me--I
+can't read for myself."
+
+The answer came, in still, sad tones:
+
+"I have read as far as your husband's name. I have no need to
+read further."
+
+Mrs. Crayford dashed the tears from her eyes--steadied
+herself--and looked at the newspaper.
+
+On the list of the survivors, the search was vain. Frank's name
+was not among them. On a second list, headed "Dead or Missing,"
+the first two names that appeared were:
+
+FRANCIS ALDERSLEY. RICHARD WARDOUR.
+
+In speechless distress and dismay, Mrs. Crayford looked at Clara.
+Had she force enough in her feeble health to sustain the shock
+that had fallen on her? Yes! she bore it with a strange unnatural
+resignation--she looked, she spoke, with the sad self-possession
+of despair.
+
+"I was prepared for it," she said. "I saw them in the spirit last
+night. Richard Wardour has discovered the truth; and Frank has
+paid the penalty with his life--and I, I alone, am to blame." She
+shuddered, and put her hand on her heart. "We shall not be long
+parted, Lucy. I shall go to him. He will not return to me."
+
+Those words were spoken with a calm certainty of conviction that
+was terrible to hear. "I have no more to say," she added, after a
+moment, and rose to return to the house. Mrs. Crayford caught her
+by the hand, and forced her to take her seat again.
+
+"Don't look at me, don't speak to me, in that horrible manner!"
+she exclaimed. "Clara! it is unworthy of a reasonable being, it
+is doubting the mercy of God, to say what you have just said.
+Look at the newspaper again. See! They tell you plainly that
+their information is not to be depended on--they warn you to wait
+for further particulars. The very words at the top of the list
+show how little they knew of the truth 'Dead _or_ Missing!' On
+their own showing, it is quite as likely that Frank is missing as
+that Frank is dead. For all you know, the next mail may bring a
+letter from him. Are you listening to me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Can you deny what I say?"
+
+"No."
+
+"'Yes!' 'No!' Is that the way to answer me when I am so
+distressed and so anxious about you?"
+
+"I am sorry I spoke as I did, Lucy. We look at some subjects in
+very different ways. I don't dispute, dear, that yours is the
+reasonable view."
+
+"You don't dispute?" retorted Mrs. Crayford, warmly. "No! you do
+what is worse--you believe in your own opinion; you persist in
+your own conclusion--with the newspaper before you! Do you, or do
+you not, believe the newspaper?"
+
+"I believe in what I saw last night."
+
+"In what you saw last night! You, an educated woman, a clever
+woman, believing in a vision of your own fancy--a mere dream! I
+wonder you are not ashamed to acknowledge it!"
+
+"Call it a dream if you like, Lucy. I have had other dreams at
+other times--and I have known them to be fulfilled."
+
+"Yes!" said Mrs. Crayford. "For once in a way they may have been
+fulfilled, by chance--and you notice it, and remember it, and pin
+your faith on it. Come, Clara, be honest!--What about the
+occasions when the chance has been against you, and your dreams
+have not been fulfilled? You superstitious people are all alike.
+You conveniently forget when your dreams and your presentiments
+prove false. For my sake, dear, if not for your own," she
+continued, in gentler and tenderer tones, "try to be more
+reasonable and more hopeful. Don't lose your trust in the future,
+and your trust in God. God, who has saved my husband, can save
+Frank. While there is doubt, there is hope. Don't embitter my
+happiness, Clara! Try to think as I think--if it is only to show
+that you love me."
+
+She put her arm round the girl's neck, and kissed her. Clara
+returned the kiss; Clara answered, sadly and submissively,
+
+"I do love you, Lucy. I _will_ try."
+
+Having answered in those terms, she sighed to herself, and said
+no more. It would have been plain, only too plain, to far less
+observant eyes than Mrs. Crayford's that no salutary impression
+had been produced on her. She had ceased to defend her own way of
+thinking, she spoke of it no more--but there was the terrible
+conviction of Frank's death at Wardour's hands rooted as firmly
+as ever in her mind! Discouraged and distressed, Mrs. Crayford
+left her, and walked back toward the house.
+
+
+
+Chapter 15.
+
+
+At the drawing-room window of the villa there appeared a polite
+little man, with bright intelligent eyes, and cheerful sociable
+manners. Neatly dressed in professional black, he stood,
+self-proclaimed, a prosperous country doctor--successful and
+popular in a wide circle of patients and friends. As Mrs.
+Crayford approached him, he stepped out briskly to meet her on
+the lawn, with both hands extended in courteous and cordial
+greeting.
+
+"My dear madam, accept my heartfelt congratulations!" cried the
+doctor. "I have seen the good news in the paper; and I could
+hardly feel more rejoiced than I do now if I had the honor of
+knowing Lieutenant Crayford personally. We mean to celebrate the
+occasion at home. I said to my wife before I came out, 'A bottle
+of the old Madeira at dinner to-day, mind!--to drink the
+lieutenant's health; God bless him!' And how is our interesting
+patient? The news is not altogether what we could wish, so far as
+she is concerned. I felt a little anxious, to tell you the truth,
+about the effect of it; and I have paid my visit to-day before my
+usual time. Not that I take a gloomy view of the news myself. No!
+There is clearly a doubt about the correctness of the
+information, so far as Mr. Aldersley is concerned--and that is a
+point, a great point in Mr. Aldersley's favor. I give him the
+benefit of the doubt, as the lawyers say. Does Miss Burnham give
+him the benefit of the doubt too? I hardly dare hope it, I
+confess."
+
+"Miss Burnham has grieved and alarmed me," Mrs. Crayford
+answered. "I was just thinking of sending for you when we met
+here."
+
+With those introductory words, she told the doctor exactly what
+had happened; repeating not only the conversation of that morning
+between Clara and herself, but also the words which had fallen
+from Clara, in the trance of the past night.
+
+The doctor listened attentively. Little by little, its easy
+smiling composure vanished from his face, as Mrs. Crayford went
+on, and left him completely transformed into a grave and
+thoughtful man.
+
+"Let us go and look at her," he said.
+
+He seated himself by Clara's side, and carefully studied her
+face, with his hand on her pulse. There was no sympathy here
+between the dreamy mystical temperament of the patient and the
+downright practical character of the doctor. Clara secretly
+disliked her medical attendant. She submitted impatiently to the
+close investigation of which he made her the object. He
+questioned her--and she answered irritably. Advancing a step
+further (the doctor was not easily discouraged) he adverted to
+the news of the Expedition, and took up the tone of remonstrance
+which had been already adopted by Mrs. Crayford. Clara declined
+to discuss the question. She rose with formal politeness, and
+requested permission to return to the house. The doctor attempted
+no further resistance. "By all means, Miss Burnham," he answered,
+resignedly--having first cast a look at Mrs. Crayford which said
+plainly, "Stay here with me." Clara bowed her acknowledgments in
+cold silence, and left them together. The doctor's bright eyes
+followed the girl's wasted, yet still graceful figure as it
+slowly receded from view, with an expression of grave anxiety
+which Mrs. Crayford noticed with grave misgiving on her side. He
+said nothing, until Clara had disappeared under the veranda which
+ran round the garden-side of the house.
+
+"I think you told me," he began, "that Miss Burnham has neither
+father nor mother living?"
+
+"Yes. Miss Burnham is an orphan."
+
+"Has she any near relatives?"
+
+"No. You may speak to me as her guardian and her friend. Are you
+alarmed about her?"
+
+"I am seriously alarmed. It is only two days since I called here
+last, and I see a marked change in her for the worse--physically
+and morally, a change for the worse. Don't needlessly alarm
+yourself! The case is not, I trust, entirely beyond the reach of
+remedy. The great hope for us is the hope that Mr. Aldersley may
+still be living. In that event, I should feel no misgivings about
+the future. Her marriage would make a healthy and a happy woman
+of her. But as things are, I own I dread that settled conviction
+in her mind that Mr. Aldersley is dead, and that her own death is
+soon to follow. In her present state of health this idea
+(haunting her as it certainly will night and day) will have its
+influence on her body as well as on her mind. Unless we can check
+the mischief, her last reserves of strength will give way. If you
+wish for other advice, by all means send for it. You have my
+opinion."
+
+"I am quite satisfied with your opinion," Mrs. Crayford replied.
+"For God's sake, tell me, what can we do?"
+
+"We can try a complete change," said the doctor. "We can remove
+her at once from this place."
+
+"She will refuse to leave it," Mrs. Crayford rejoined. "I have
+more than once proposed a change to her--and she always says No."
+
+The doctor paused for a moment, like a man collecting his
+thoughts.
+
+"I heard something on my way here," he proceeded, "which suggests
+to my mind a method of meeting the difficulty that you have just
+mentioned. Unless I am entirely mistaken, Miss Burnham will not
+say No to the change that I have in view for her."
+
+"What is it?" asked Mrs. Crayford, eagerly.
+
+"Pardon me if I ask you a question, on my part, before I reply,"
+said the doctor. "Are you fortunate enough to possess any
+interest at the Admiralty?"
+
+"Certainly. My father is in the Secretary's office; and two of
+the Lords of the Admiralty are friends of his."
+
+"Excellent! Now I can speak out plainly with little fear of
+disappointing you. After what I have said, you will agree with
+me, that the only change in Miss Burnham's life which will be of
+any use to her is a change that will alter the present tone of
+her mind on the subject of Mr. Aldersley. Place her in a position
+to discover--not by reference to her own distempered fancies and
+visions, but by reference to actual evidence and actual
+fact--whether Mr. Aldersley is, or is not, a living man; and
+there will be an end of the hysterical delusions which now
+threaten to fatally undermine her health. Even taking matters at
+their worst--even assuming that Mr. Aldersley has died in the
+Arctic seas--it will be less injurious to her to discover this
+positively, than to leave her mind to feed on its own morbid
+superstitions and speculations, for weeks and weeks together,
+while the next news from the Expedition is on its way to England.
+In one word, I want you to be in a position, before the week is
+out, to put Miss Burnham's present conviction to a practical
+test. Suppose you could say to her, 'We differ, my dear, about
+Mr. Francis Aldersley. You declare, without the shadow of a
+reason for it, that he is certainly dead, and, worse still, that
+he has died by the act of one of his brother officers. I assert,
+on the authority of the newspaper, that nothing of the sort has
+happened, and that the chances are all in favor of his being
+still a living man. What do you say to crossing the Atlantic, and
+deciding which of us is right--you or I?' Do you think Miss
+Burnham will say No to that, Mrs. Crayford? If I know anything of
+human nature, she will seize the opportunity as a means of
+converting you to a belief in the Second Sight."
+
+"Good Heavens, doctor! do you mean to tell me that we are to go
+to sea and meet the Arctic Expedition on its way home?"
+
+"Admirably guessed, Mrs. Crayford! That is exactly what I mean."
+
+"But how is it to be done?"
+
+"I will tell you immediately. I mentioned--didn't I?--that I had
+heard something on my road to this house."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I met an old friend at my own gate, who walked with me a
+part of the way here. Last night my friend dined with the admiral
+at Portsmouth. Among the guests there was a member of the
+Ministry who had brought the news about the Expedition with him
+from London. This gentleman told the company there was very
+little doubt that the Admiralty would immediately send out a
+steam-vessel, to meet the rescued men on the shores of America,
+and bring them home. Wait a little, Mrs. Crayford! Nobody knows,
+as yet, under what rules and regulations the vessel will sail.
+Under somewhat similar circumstances, privileged people have been
+received as passengers, or rather as guests, in her majesty's
+ships--and what has been conceded on former occasions may, by
+bare possibility, be conceded now. I can say no more. If you are
+not afraid of the voyage for yourself, I am not afraid of it
+(nay, I am all in favor of it on medical grounds) for my patient.
+What do you say? Will you write to your father, and ask him to
+try what his interest will do with his friends at the Admiralty?"
+
+Mrs. Crayford rose excitedly to her feet.
+
+"Write!" she exclaimed. "I will do better than write. The journey
+to London is no great matter--and my housekeeper here is to be
+trusted to take care of Clara in my absence. I will see my father
+to-night! He shall make good use of his interest at the
+Admiralty--you may rely on that. Oh, my dear doctor, what a
+prospect it is! My husband! Clara! What a discovery you have
+made--what a treasure you are! How can I thank you?"
+
+"Compose yourself, my dear madam. Don't make too sure of success.
+We may consider Miss Burnham's objections as disposed of
+beforehand. But suppose the Lords of the Admiralty say No?"
+
+"In that case, I shall be in London, doctor; and I shall go to
+them myself. Lords are only men; and men are not in the habit of
+saying No to me."
+
+So they parted.
+
+
+
+In a week from that day, her majesty's ship _Amazon_ sailed for
+North America. Certain privileged persons, specially interested
+in the Arctic voyagers, were permitted to occupy the empty
+state-rooms on board. On the list of these favored guests of the
+ship were the names of two ladies--Mrs. Crayford and Miss
+Burnham.
+
+
+
+Fifth Scene
+
+The Boat-House.
+
+Chapter 16.
+
+
+Once more the open sea--the sea whose waters break on the shores
+of Newfoundland! An English steamship lies at anchor in the
+offing. The vessel is plainly visible through the open doorway of
+a large boat-house on the shore--one of the buildings attached to
+a fishing-station on the coast of the island.
+
+The only person in the boat-house at this moment is a man in the
+dress of a sailor. He is seated on a chest, with a piece of cord
+in his hand, looking out idly at the sea. On the rough
+carpenter's table near him lies a strange object to be left in
+such a place--a woman's veil.
+
+What is the vessel lying at anchor in the offing?
+
+The vessel is the _Amazon_--dispatched from England to receive
+the surviving officers and men of the Arctic Expedition. The
+meeting has been successfully effected, on the shores of North
+America, three days since. But the homeward voyage has been
+delayed by a storm which has driven the ship out of her course.
+Taking advantage, on the third day, of the first returning calm,
+the commander of the _Amazon_ has anchored off the coast of
+Newfoundland, and has sent ashore to increase his supplies of
+water before he sails for England. The weary passengers have
+landed for a few hours, to refresh themselves after the
+discomforts of the tempest. Among them are the two ladies. The
+veil left on the table in the boat-house is Clara's veil.
+
+And who is the man sitting on the chest, with the cord in his
+hand, looking out idly at the sea? The man is the only cheerful
+person in the ship's company. In other words--John Want.
+
+Still reposing on the chest, our friend, who never grumbles, is
+surprised by the sudden appearance of a sailor at the boat-house
+door.
+
+"Look sharp with your work there, John Want!" says the sailor.
+"Lieutenant Crayford is just coming in to look after you."
+
+With this warning the messenger disappears again. John Want rises
+with a groan, turns the chest up on one end, and begins to fasten
+the cord round it. The ship's cook is not a man to look back on
+his rescue with the feeling of unmitigated satisfaction which
+animates his companions in trouble. On the contrary, he is
+ungratefully disposed to regret the North Pole.
+
+"If I had only known"--thus runs the train of thought in the mind
+of John Want--"if I had only known, before I was rescued, that I
+was to be brought to this place, I believe I should have
+preferred staying at the North Pole. I was very happy keeping up
+everybody's spirits at the North Pole. Taking one thing with
+another, I think I must have been very comfortable at the North
+Pole--if I had only known it. Another man in my place might be
+inclined to say that this Newfoundland boat-house was rather a
+sloppy, slimy, draughty, fishy sort of a habitation to take
+shelter in. Another man might object to perpetual Newfoundland
+fogs, perpetual Newfoundland cod-fish, and perpetual Newfoundland
+dogs. We had some very nice bears at the North Pole. Never mind!
+it's all one to me--_I_ don't grumble."
+
+"Have you done cording that box?"
+
+This time the voice is a voice of authority--the man at the
+doorway is Lieutenant Crayford himself. John Want answers his
+officer in his own cheerful way.
+
+"I've done it as well as I can, sir--but the damp of this place
+is beginning to tell upon our very ropes. I say nothing about our
+lungs--I only say our ropes."
+
+Crayford answers sharply. He seems to have lost his former relish
+for the humor of John Want.
+
+"Pooh! To look at your wry face, one would think that our rescue
+from the Arctic regions was a downright misfortune. You deserve
+to be sent back again."
+
+"I could be just as cheerful as ever, sir, if I _was_ sent back
+again; I hope I'm thankful; but I don't like to hear the North
+Pole run down in such a fishy place as this. It was very clean
+and snowy at the North Pole--and it's very damp and sandy here.
+Do you never miss your bone-soup, sir? _I_ do. It mightn't have
+been strong; but it was very hot; and the cold seemed to give it
+a kind of a meaty flavor as it went down. Was it you that was
+a-coughing so long last night, sir? I don't presume to say
+anything against the air of these latitudes; but I should be glad
+to know it wasn't you that was a-coughing so hollow. Would you be
+so obliging as just to feel the state of these ropes with the
+ends of your fingers, sir? You can dry them afterward on the back
+of my jacket."
+
+"You ought to have a stick laid on the back of your jacket. Take
+that box down to the boat directly. You croaking vagabond! You
+would have grumbled in the Garden of Eden."
+
+The philosopher of the Expedition was not a man to be silenced by
+referring him to the Garden of Eden. Paradise itself was not
+perfect to John Want.
+
+"I hope I could be cheerful anywhere, sir," said the ship's cook.
+"But you mark my words--there must have been a deal of
+troublesome work with the flower-beds in the Garden of Eden."
+
+Having entered that unanswerable protest, John Want shouldered
+the box, and drifted drearily out of the boat-house.
+
+Left by himself, Crayford looked at his watch, and called to a
+sailor outside.
+
+"Where are the ladies?" he asked.
+
+"Mrs. Crayford is coming this way, sir. She was just behind you
+when you came in."
+
+"Is Miss Burnham with her?"
+
+"No, sir; Miss Burnham is down on the beach with the passengers.
+I heard the young lady asking after you, sir."
+
+"Asking after me?" Crayford considered with himself as he
+repeated the words. He added, in lower and graver tones, "You had
+better tell Miss Burnham you have seen me here."
+
+The man made his salute and went out. Crayford took a turn in the
+boat-house.
+
+Rescued from death in the Arctic wastes, and reunited to a
+beautiful wife, the lieutenant looked, nevertheless,
+unaccountably anxious and depressed. What could he be thinking
+of? He was thinking of Clara.
+
+On the first day when the rescued men were received on board the
+_Amazon_, Clara had embarrassed and distressed, not Crayford
+only, but the other officers of the Expedition as well, by the
+manner in which she questioned them on the subject of Francis
+Aldersley and Richard Wardour. She had shown no signs of dismay
+or despair when she heard that no news had been received of the
+two missing men. She had even smiled sadly to herself, when
+Crayford (out of compassionate regard for her) declared that he
+and his comrades had not given up the hope of seeing Frank and
+Wardour yet. It was only when the lieutenant had expressed
+himself in those terms and when it was hoped that the painful
+subject had been dismissed--that Clara had startled every one
+present by announcing that she had something still to say in
+relation to Frank and Wardour, which had not been said yet.
+Though she spoke guardedly, her next words revealed suspicions of
+foul play lurking in her mind--exactly reflecting similar
+suspicions lurking in Crayford's mind--which so distressed the
+lieutenant, and so surprised his comrades, as to render them
+quite incapable of answering her. The warnings of the storm which
+shortly afterward broke over the vessel were then visible in sea
+and sky. Crayford made them his excuse for abruptly leaving the
+cabin in which the conversation had taken place. His brother
+officers, profiting by his example, pleaded their duties on deck,
+and followed him out.
+
+On the next day, and the next, the tempest still raged--and the
+passengers were not able to leave their state-rooms. But now,
+when the weather had moderated and the ship had anchored--now,
+when officers and passengers alike were on shore, with leisure
+time at their disposal--Clara had opportunities of returning to
+the subject of the lost men, and of asking questions in relation
+to them which would make it impossible for Crayford to plead an
+excuse for not answering her. How was he to meet those questions?
+How could he still keep her in ignorance of the truth?
+
+These were the reflections which now troubled Crayford, and which
+presented him, after his rescue, in the strangely inappropriate
+character of a depressed and anxious man. His brother officers,
+as he well knew, looked to him to take the chief responsibility.
+If he declined to accept it, he would instantly confirm the
+horrible suspicion in Clara's mind. The emergency must be met;
+but how to meet it--at once honorably and mercifully--was more
+than Crayford could tell. He was still lost in his own gloomy
+thoughts when his wife entered the boat-house. Turning to look at
+her, he saw his own perturbations and anxieties plainly reflected
+in Mrs. Crayford's face.
+
+"Have you seen anything of Clara?" he asked. "Is she still on the
+beach?"
+
+"She is following me to this place," Mrs. Crayford replied. "I
+have been speaking to her this morning. She is just as resolute
+as ever to insist on your telling her of the circumstances under
+which Frank is missing. As things are, you have no alternative
+but to answer her."
+
+"Help me to answer her, Lucy. Tell me, before she comes in, how
+this dreadful suspicion first took possession of her. All she
+could possibly have known when we left England was that the two
+men were appointed to separate ships. What could have led her to
+suspect that they had come together?"
+
+"She was firmly persuaded, William, that they _would_ come
+together when the Expedition left England. And she had read in
+books of Arctic travel, of men left behind by their comrades on
+the march, and of men adrift on ice-bergs. With her mind full of
+these images and forebodings, she saw Frank and Wardour (or
+dreamed of them) in one of her attacks of trance. I was by her
+side; I heard what she said at the time. She warned Frank that
+Wardour had discovered the truth. She called out to him, 'While
+you can stand, keep with the other men, Frank!'"
+
+"Good God!" cried Crayford; "I warned him myself, almost in those
+very words, the last time I saw him!"
+
+"Don't acknowledge it, William! Keep her in ignorance of what you
+have just told me. She will not take it for what it is--a
+startling coincidence, and nothing more. She will accept it as
+positive confirmation of the faith, the miserable superstitious
+faith, that is in her. So long as you don't actually know that
+Frank is dead, and that he has died by Wardour's hand, deny what
+she says--mislead her for her own sake--dispute all her
+conclusions as I dispute them. Help me to raise her to the better
+and nobler belief in the mercy of God!" She stopped, and looked
+round nervously at the doorway. "Hush!" she whispered. "Do as I
+have told you. Clara is here."
+
+
+
+Chapter 17.
+
+
+Clara stopped at the doorway, looking backward and forward
+distrustfully between the husband and wife. Entering the
+boat-house, and approaching Crayford, she took his arm, and led
+him away a few steps from the place in which Mrs. Crayford was
+standing.
+
+"There is no storm now, and there are no duties to be done on
+board the ship," she said, with the faint, sad smile which it
+wrung Crayford's heart to see. "You are Lucy's husband, and you
+have an interest in me for Lucy's sake. Don't shrink on that
+account from giving me pain: I can bear pain. Friend and brother!
+will you believe that I have courage enough to hear the worst?
+Will you promise not to deceive me about Frank?"
+
+The gentle resignation in her voice, the sad pleading in her
+look, shook Crayford's self-possession at the outset. He answered
+her in the worst possible manner; he answered evasively.
+
+"My dear Clara," he said, "what have I done that you should
+suspect me of deceiving you?"
+
+She looked him searchingly in the face, then glanced with renewed
+distrust at Mrs. Crayford. There was a moment of silence. Before
+any of the three could speak again, they were interrupted by the
+appearance of one of Crayford's brother officers, followed by two
+sailors carrying a hamper between them. Crayford instantly
+dropped Clara's arm, and seized the welcome opportunity of
+speaking of other things.
+
+"Any instructions from the ship, Steventon?" he asked,
+approaching the officer.
+
+"Verbal instructions only," Steventon replied. "The ship will
+sail with the flood-tide. We shall fire a gun to collect the
+people, and send another boat ashore. In the meantime here are
+some refreshments for the passengers. The ship is in a state of
+confusion; the ladies will eat their luncheon more comfortably
+here."
+
+Hearing this, Mrs. Crayford took _her_ opportunity of silencing
+Clara next.
+
+"Come, my dear," she said. "Let us lay the cloth before the
+gentlemen come in."
+
+Clara was too seriously bent on attaining the object which she
+had in view to be silenced in that way. "I will help you
+directly," she answered--then crossed the room and addressed
+herself to the officer, whose name was Steventon.
+
+"Can you spare me a few minutes?" she asked. "I have something to
+say to you."
+
+"I am entirely at your service, Miss Burnham."
+
+Answering in those words, Steventon dismissed the two sailors.
+Mrs. Crayford looked anxiously at her husband. Crayford whispered
+to her, "Don't be alarmed about Steventon. I have cautioned him;
+his discretion is to be depended on."
+
+Clara beckoned to Crayford to return to her.
+
+"I will not keep you long," she said. "I will promise not to
+distress Mr. Steventon. Young as I am, you shall both find that I
+am capable of self-control. I won't ask you to go back to the
+story of your past sufferings; I only want to be sure that I am
+right about one thing--I mean about what happened at the time
+when the exploring party was dispatched in search of help. As I
+understand it, you cast lots among yourselves who was to go with
+the party, and who was to remain behind. Frank cast the lot to
+go." She paused, shuddering. "And Richard Wardour," she went on,
+"cast the lot to remain behind. On your honor, as officers and
+gentlemen, is this the truth?"
+
+"On my honor," Crayford answered, "it is the truth."
+
+"On my honor," Steventon repeated, "it is the truth."
+
+She looked at them, carefully considering her next words, before
+she spoke again.
+
+"You both drew the lot to stay in the huts," she said, addressing
+Crayford and Steventon. "And you are both here. Richard Wardour
+drew the lot to stay, and Richard Wardour is not here. How does
+his name come to be with Frank's on the list of the missing?"
+
+The question was a dangerous one to answer. Steventon left it to
+Crayford to reply. Once again he answered evasively.
+
+"It doesn't follow, my dear," he said, "that the two men were
+missing together because their names happen to come together on
+the list."
+
+Clara instantly drew the inevitable conclusion from that
+ill-considered reply.
+
+"Frank is missing from the party of relief," she said. "Am I to
+understand that Wardour is missing from the huts?"
+
+Both Crayford and Steventon hesitated. Mrs. Crayford cast one
+indignant look at them, and told the necessary lie, without a
+moment's hesitation!
+
+"Yes!" she said. "Wardour is missing from the huts."
+
+Quickly as she had spoken, she had still spoken too late. Clara
+had noticed the momentary hesitation on the part of the two
+officers. She turned to Steventon.
+
+"I trust to your honor," she said, quietly. "Am I right, or
+wrong, in believing that Mrs. Crayford is mistaken?"
+
+She had addressed herself to the right man of the two. Steventon
+had no wife present to exercise authority over him. Steventon,
+put on his honor, and fairly forced to say something, owned the
+truth. Wardour had replaced an officer whom accident had disabled
+from accompanying the party of relief, and Wardour and Frank were
+missing together.
+
+Clara looked at Mrs. Crayford.
+
+"You hear?" she said. "It is you who are mistaken, not I. What
+you call 'Accident,' what I call 'Fate,' brought Richard Wardour
+and Frank together as members of the same Expedition, after all."
+Without waiting for a reply, she again turned to Steventon, and
+surprised him by changing the painful subject of the conversation
+of her own accord.
+
+"Have you been in the Highlands of Scotland?" she asked.
+
+"I have never been in the Highlands," the lieutenant replied.
+
+"Have you ever read, in books about the Highlands, of such a
+thing as 'The Second Sight'?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you believe in the Second Sight?"
+
+Steventon politely declined to commit himself to a direct reply.
+
+"I don't know what I might have done, if I had ever been in the
+Highlands," he said. "As it is, I have had no opportunities of
+giving the subject any serious consideration."
+
+"I won't put your credulity to the test," Clara proceeded. "I
+won't ask you to believe anything more extraordinary than that I
+had a strange dream in England not very long since. My dream
+showed me what you have just acknowledged--and more than that.
+How did the two missing men come to be parted from their
+companions? Were they lost by pure accident, or were they
+deliberately left behind on the march?"
+
+Crayford made a last vain effort to check her inquiries at the
+point which they had now reached.
+
+"Neither Steventon nor I were members of the party of relief," he
+said. "How are we to answer you?"
+
+"Your brother officers who _were_ members of the party must have
+told you what happened," Clara rejoined. "I only ask you and Mr.
+Steventon to tell me what they told you."
+
+Mrs. Crayford interposed again, with a practical suggestion this
+time.
+
+"The luncheon is not unpacked yet," she said. "Come, Clara! this
+is our business, and the time is passing."
+
+"The luncheon can wait a few minutes longer," Clara answered.
+"Bear with my obstinacy," she went on, laying her hand
+caressingly on Crayford's shoulder. "Tell me how those two came
+to be separated from the rest. You have always been the kindest
+of friends--don't begin to be cruel to me now!"
+
+The tone in which she made her entreaty to Crayford went straight
+to the sailor's heart. He gave up the hopeless struggle: he let
+her see a glimpse of the truth.
+
+"On the third day out," he said, "Frank's strength failed him.  He
+fell behind the rest from fatigue."
+
+"Surely they waited for him?"
+
+"It was a serious risk to wait for him, my child. Their lives
+(and the lives of the men they had left in the huts) depended, in
+that dreadful climate, on their pushing on. But Frank was a
+favorite. They waited half a day to give Frank the chance of
+recovering his strength."
+
+There he stopped. There the imprudence into which his fondness
+for Clara had led him showed itself plainly, and closed his lips.
+
+It was too late to take refuge in silence. Clara was determined
+on hearing more.
+
+She questioned Steventon next.
+
+"Did Frank go on again after the half-day's rest?" she asked.
+
+"He tried to go on--"
+
+"And failed?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What did the men do when he failed? Did they turn cowards? Did
+they desert Frank?"
+
+She had purposely used language which might irritate Steventon
+into answering her plainly. He was a young man--he fell into the
+snare that she had set for him.
+
+"Not one among them was a coward, Miss Burnham!" he replied,
+warmly. "You are speaking cruelly and unjustly of as brave a set
+of fellows as ever lived! The strongest man among them set the
+example; he volunteered to stay by Frank, and to bring him on in
+the track of the exploring party."
+
+There Steventon stopped--conscious, on his side, that he had said
+too much. Would she ask him who this volunteer was? No. She went
+straight on to the most embarrassing question that she had put
+yet--referring to the volunteer, as if Steventon had already
+mentioned his name.
+
+"What made Richard Wardour so ready to risk his life for Frank's
+sake?" she said to Crayford. "Did he do it out of friendship for
+Frank? Surely you can tell me that? Carry your memory back to the
+days when you were all living in the huts. Were Frank and Wardour
+friends at that time? Did you never hear any angry words pass
+between them?"
+
+There Mrs. Crayford saw her opportunity of giving her husband a
+timely hint.
+
+"My dear child!" she said; "how can you expect him to remember
+that? There must have been plenty of quarrels among the men, all
+shut up together, and all weary of each other's company, no
+doubt."
+
+"Plenty of quarrels!" Crayford repeated; "and every one of them
+made up again."
+
+"And every one of them made up again," Mrs. Crayford reiterated,
+in her turn. "There! a plainer answer than that you can't wish to
+have. Now are you satisfied? Mr. Steventon, come and lend a hand
+(as you say at sea) with the hamper--Clara won't help me.
+William, don't stand there doing nothing. This hamper holds a
+great deal; we must have a division of labor. Your division shall
+be laying the tablecloth. Don't handle it in that clumsy way! You
+unfold a table-cloth as if you were unfurling a sail. Put the
+knives on the right, and the forks on the left, and the napkin
+and the bread between them. Clara, if you are not hungry in this
+fine air, you ought to be. Come and do your duty; come and have
+some lunch!"
+
+She looked up as she spoke. Clara appeared to have yielded at
+last to the conspiracy to keep her in the dark. She had returned
+slowly to the boat-house doorway, and she was standing alone on
+the threshold, looking out. Approaching her to lead her to the
+luncheon-table, Mrs. Crayford could hear that she was speaking
+softly to herself. She was repeating the farewell words which
+Richard Wardour had spoken to her at the ball.
+
+"'A time may come when I shall forgive _you_. But the man who has
+robbed me of you shall rue the day when you and he first met.'
+Oh, Frank! Frank! does Richard still live, with your blood on his
+conscience, and my image in his heart?"
+
+Her lips suddenly closed. She started, and drew back from the
+doorway, trembling violently. Mrs. Crayford looked out at the
+quiet seaward view.
+
+"Anything there that frightens you, my dear?" she asked. "I can
+see nothing, except the boats drawn up on the beach."
+
+"_I_ can see nothing either, Lucy."
+
+"And yet you are trembling as if there was something dreadful in
+the view from this door."
+
+"There _is_ something dreadful! I feel it, though I see nothing.
+I feel it, nearer and nearer in the empty air, darker and darker
+in the sunny light. I don't know what it is. Take me away! No.
+Not out on the beach. I can't pass the door. Somewhere else!
+somewhere else!"
+
+Mrs. Crayford looked round her, and noticed a second door at the
+inner end of the boat-house. She spoke to her husband.
+
+"See where that door leads to, William."
+
+Crayford opened the door. It led into a desolate inclosure, half
+garden, half yard. Some nets stretched on poles were hanging up
+to dry. No other objects were visible--not a living creature
+appeared in the place. "It doesn't look very inviting, my dear,"
+said Mrs. Crayford. "I am at your service, however. What do you
+say?"
+
+She offered her arm to Clara as she spoke. Clara refused it. She
+took Crayford's arm, and clung to him.
+
+"I'm frightened, dreadfully frightened!" she said to him,
+faintly. "You keep with me--a woman is no protection; I want to
+be with you." She looked round again at the boat-house doorway.
+"Oh!" she whispered, "I'm cold all over--I'm frozen with fear of
+this place. Come into the yard! Come into the yard!"
+
+"Leave her to me," said Crayford to his wife. "I will call you,
+if she doesn't get better in the open air."
+
+He took her out at once, and closed the yard door behind them.
+
+"Mr. Steventon, do you understand this?" asked Mrs. Crayford.
+"What can she possibly be frightened of?"
+
+She put the question, still looking mechanically at the door by
+which her husband and Clara had gone out. Receiving no reply, she
+glanced round at Steventon. He was standing on the opposite side
+of the luncheon-table, with his eyes fixed attentively on the
+view from the main doorway of the boat-house. Mrs. Crayford
+looked where Steventon was looking. This time there was something
+visible. She saw the shadow of a human figure projected on the
+stretch of smooth yellow sand in front of the boat-house.
+
+In a moment more the figure appeared. A man came slowly into
+view, and stopped on the threshold of the door.
+
+
+
+Chapter 18.
+
+
+The man was a sinister and terrible object to look at. His eyes
+glared like the eyes of a wild animal; his head was bare; his
+long gray hair was torn and tangled; his miserable garments hung
+about him in rags. He stood in the doorway, a speechless figure
+of misery and want, staring at the well-spread table like a
+hungry dog.
+
+Steventon spoke to him.
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+He answered, in a hoarse, hollow voice,
+
+"A starving man."
+
+He advanced a few steps, slowly and painfully, as if he were
+sinking under fatigue.
+
+"Throw me some bones from the table," he said. "Give me my share
+along with the dogs."
+
+There was madness as well as hunger in his eyes while he spoke
+those words. Steventon placed Mrs. Crayford behind him, so that
+he might be easily able to protect her in case of need, and
+beckoned to two sailors who were passing the door of the
+boat-house at the time.
+
+"Give the man some bread and meat," he said, "and wait near him."
+
+The outcast seized on the bread and meat with lean, long-nailed
+hands that looked like claws. After his first mouthful of the
+food, he stopped, considered vacantly with himself, and broke the
+bread and meat into two portions. One portion he put into an old
+canvas wallet that hung over his shoulder; the other he devoured
+voraciously. Steventon questioned him.
+
+"Where do you come from?"
+
+"From the sea."
+
+"Wrecked?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Steventon turned to Mrs. Crayford.
+
+"There may be some truth in the poor wretch's story," he said. "I
+heard something of a strange boat having been cast on the beach
+thirty or forty miles higher up the coast. When were you wrecked,
+my man?"
+
+The starving creature looked up from his food, and made an effort
+to collect his thoughts--to exert his memory. It was not to be
+done. He gave up the attempt in despair. His language, when he
+spoke, was as wild as his looks.
+
+"I can't tell you," he said. "I can't get the wash of the sea out
+of my ears. I can't get the shining stars all night, and the
+burning sun all day, out of my brain. When was I wrecked? When
+was I first adrift in the boat? When did I get the tiller in my
+hand and fight against hunger and sleep? When did the gnawing in
+my breast, and the burning in my head, first begin? I have lost
+all reckoning of it. I can't think; I can't sleep; I can't get
+the wash of the sea out of my ears. What are you baiting me with
+questions for? Let me eat!"
+
+Even the sailors pitied him. The sailors asked leave of their
+officer to add a little drink to his meal.
+
+"We've got a drop of grog with us, sir, in a bottle. May we give
+it to him?"
+
+"Certainly!"
+
+He took the bottle fiercely, as he had taken the food, drank a
+little, stopped, and considered with himself again. He held up
+the bottle to the light, and, marking how much liquor it
+contained, carefully drank half of it only. This done, he put the
+bottle in his wallet along with the food.
+
+"Are you saving it up for another time?" said Steventon.
+
+"I'm saving it up," the man answered. "Never mind what for.
+That's my secret."
+
+He looked round the boat-house as he made that reply, and noticed
+Mrs. Crayford for the first time.
+
+"A woman among you!" he said. "Is she English? Is she young? Let
+me look closer at her."
+
+He advanced a few steps toward the table.
+
+"Don't be afraid, Mrs. Crayford," said Steventon.
+
+"I am not afraid," Mrs. Crayford replied. "He frightened me at
+first--he interests me now. Let him speak to me if he wishes it!"
+
+He never spoke. He stood, in dead silence, looking long and
+anxiously at the beautiful Englishwoman.
+
+"Well?" said Steventon.
+
+He shook his head sadly, and drew back again with a heavy sigh.
+
+"No!" he said to himself, "that's not _her_ face. No! not found
+yet."
+
+Mrs. Crayford's interest was strongly excited. She ventured to
+speak to him.
+
+"Who is it you want to find?" she asked. "Your wife?"
+
+He shook his head again.
+
+"Who, then? What is she like?"
+
+He answered that question in words. His hoarse, hollow voice
+softened, little by little, into sorrowful and gentle tones.
+
+"Young," he said; "with a fair, sad face--with kind, tender
+eyes--with a soft, clear voice. Young and loving and merciful. I
+keep her face in my mind, though I can keep nothing else. I must
+wander, wander, wander--restless, sleepless, homeless--till I
+find _her!_ Over the ice and over the snow; tossing on the sea,
+tramping over the land; awake all night, awake all day; wander,
+wander, wander, till I find _her!_"
+
+He waved his hand with a gesture of farewell, and turned wearily
+to go out.
+
+At the same moment Crayford opened the yard door.
+
+"I think you had better come to Clara," he began, and checked
+himself, noticing the stranger. "Who is that?"
+
+The shipwrecked man, hearing another voice in the room, looked
+round slowly over his shoulder. Struck by his appearance,
+Crayford advanced a little nearer to him. Mrs. Crayford spoke to
+her husband as he passed her.
+
+"It's only a poor, mad creature, William," she
+whispered--"shipwrecked and starving."
+
+"Mad?" Crayford repeated, approaching nearer and nearer to the
+man. "Am _I_ in my right senses?" He suddenly sprang on the
+outcast, and seized him by the throat. "Richard Wardour!" he
+cried, in a voice of fury. "Alive!--alive, to answer for Frank!"
+
+The man struggled. Crayford held him.
+
+"Where is Frank?" he said. "You villain, where is Frank?"
+
+The man resisted no longer. He repeated vacantly,
+
+"Villain? and where is Frank?"
+
+As the name escaped his lips, Clara appeared at the open yard
+door, and hurried into the room.
+
+"I heard Richard's name!" she said. "I heard Frank's name! What
+does it mean?"
+
+At the sound of her voice the outcast renewed the struggle to
+free himself, with a sudden frenzy of strength which Crayford was
+not able to resist. He broke away before the sailors could come
+to their officer's assistance. Half-way down the length of the
+room he and Clara met one another face to face. A new light
+sparkled in the poor wretch's eyes; a cry of recognition burst
+from his lips. He flung one hand up wildly in the air. "Found!"
+he shouted, and rushed out to the beach before any of the men
+present could stop him.
+
+Mrs. Crayford put her arms round Clara and held her up. She had
+not made a movement: she had not spoken a word. The sight of
+Wardour's face had petrified her.
+
+The minutes passed, and there rose a sudden burst of cheering
+from the sailors on the beach, near the spot where the
+fishermen's boats were drawn up. Every man left his work. Every
+man waved his cap in the air. The passengers, near at hand,
+caught the infection of enthusiasm, and joined the crew. A moment
+more, and Richard Wardour appeared again in the doorway, carrying
+a man in his arms. He staggered, breathless with the effort that
+he was making, to the place where Clara stood, held up in Mrs.
+Crayford's arms.
+
+"Saved, Clara!" he cried. "Saved for _you!_"
+
+He released the man, and placed him in Clara's arms.
+
+Frank! foot-sore and weary--but living--saved; saved for _her!_
+
+"Now, Clara!" cried Mrs. Crayford, "which of us is right? I who
+believed in the mercy of God? or you who believed in a dream?"
+
+She never answered; she clung to Frank in speechless ecstasy. She
+never even looked at the man who had preserved him, in the first
+absorbing joy of seeing Frank alive. Step by step, slower and
+slower, Richard Wardour drew back, and left them by themselves.
+
+"I may rest now," he said, faintly. "I may sleep at last. The
+task is done. The struggle is over."
+
+His last reserves of strength had been given to Frank. He
+stopped--he staggered--his hands waved feebly in search of
+support. But for one faithful friend he would have fallen.
+Crayford caught him. Crayford laid his old comrade gently on some
+sails strewn in a corner, and pillowed Wardour's weary head on
+his own bosom. The tears streamed over his face. "Richard! dear
+Richard!" he said. "Remember--and forgive me."
+
+Richard neither heeded nor heard him. His dim eyes still looked
+across the room at Clara and Frank.
+
+"I have made _her_ happy!" he murmured. "I may lay down my weary
+head now on the mother earth that hushes all her children to rest
+at last. Sink, heart! sink, sink to rest! Oh, look at them!" he
+said to Crayford, with a burst of grief. "They have forgotten
+_me_ already."
+
+It was true! The interest was all with the two lovers. Frank was
+young and handsome and popular. Officers, passengers, and
+sailors, they all crowded round Frank. They all forgot the
+martyred man who had saved him--the man who was dying in
+Crayford's arms.
+
+Crayford tried once more to attract his attention--to win his
+recognition while there was yet time. "Richard, speak to me!
+Speak to your old friend!"
+
+He look round; he vacantly repeated Crayford's last word.
+
+"Friend?" he said. "My eyes are dim, friend--my mind is dull. I
+have lost all memories but the memory of _her_. Dead
+thoughts--all dead thoughts but that one! And yet you look at me
+kindly! Why has your face gone down with the wreck of all the
+rest?"
+
+He paused; his face changed; his thoughts drifted back from
+present to past; he looked at Crayford vacantly, lost in the
+terrible remembrances that were rising in him, as the shadows
+rise with the coming night.
+
+"Hark ye, friend," he whispered. "Never let Frank know it. There
+was a time when the fiend within me hungered for his life. I had
+my hands on the boat. I heard the voice of the Tempter speaking
+to me: Launch it, and leave him to die! I waited with my hands on
+the boat, and my eyes on the place where he slept. 'Leave him!
+leave him!' the voice whispered. 'Love him!' the lad's voice
+answered, moaning and murmuring in his sleep. 'Love him, Clara,
+for helping _me!_' I heard the morning wind come up in the
+silence over the great deep. Far and near, I heard the groaning
+of the floating ice; floating, floating to the clear water and
+the balmy air. And the wicked Voice floated away with it--away,
+away, away forever! 'Love him! love him, Clara, for helping
+_me!_' No wind could float that away! 'Love him, Clara--'"
+
+His voice sank into silence; his head dropped on Crayford's
+breast. Frank saw it. Frank struggled up on his bleeding feet and
+parted the friendly throng round him. Frank had not forgotten the
+man who had saved him.
+
+"Let me go to him!" he cried. "I must and will go to him! Clara,
+come with me."
+
+Clara and Steventon supported him between them. He fell on his
+knees at Wardour's side; he put his hand on Wardour's bosom.
+
+"Richard!"
+
+The weary eyes opened again. The sinking voice was heard feebly
+once more.
+
+"Ah! poor Frank. I didn't forget you, Frank, when I came here to
+beg. I remembered you lying down outside in the shadow of the
+boats. I saved you your share of the food and drink. Too weak to
+get at it now! A little rest, Frank! I shall soon be strong
+enough to carry you down to the ship."
+
+The end was near. They all saw it now. The men reverently
+uncovered their heads in the presence of Death. In an agony of
+despair, Frank appealed to the friends round him.
+
+"Get something to strengthen him, for God's sake! Oh, men! men! I
+should never have been here but for him! He has given all his
+strength to my weakness; and now, see how strong I am, and how
+weak _he_ is! Clara, I held by his arm all over the ice and snow.
+_He_ kept watch when I was senseless in the open boat. _His_ hand
+dragged me out of the waves when we were wrecked. Speak to him,
+Clara! speak to him!" His voice failed him, and his head dropped
+on Wardour's breast.
+
+She spoke, as well as her tears would let her.
+
+"Richard, have you forgotten me?"
+
+He rallied at the sound of that beloved voice. He looked up at
+her as she knelt at his head.
+
+"Forgotten you?" Still looking at her, he lifted his hand with an
+effort, and laid it on Frank. "Should I have been strong enough
+to save him, if I could have forgotten you?" He waited a moment
+and turned his face feebly toward Crayford. "Stay!" he said.
+"Someone was here and spoke to me." A faint light of recognition
+glimmered in his eyes. "Ah, Crayford! I recollect now. Dear
+Crayford! come nearer! My mind clears, but my eyes grow dim. You
+will remember me kindly for Frank's sake? Poor Frank! why does he
+hide his face? Is he crying? Nearer, Clara--I want to look my
+last at _you_. My sister, Clara! Kiss me, sister, kiss me before
+I die!"
+
+She stooped and kissed his forehead. A faint smile trembled on
+his lips. It passed away; and stillness possessed the face--the
+stillness of Death.
+
+Crayford's voice was heard in the silence.
+
+"The loss is ours," he said. "The gain is his. He has won the
+greatest of all conquests--the conquest of himself. And he has
+died in the moment of victory. Not one of us here but may live to
+envy _his_ glorious death."
+
+The distant report of a gun came from the ship in the offing, and
+signaled the return to England and to home.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Frozen Deep, by Wilkie Collins*
+
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