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 carvethatname, 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 behisinitials—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.
“Hercipher 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!
“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 theWandererentered 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 chancehasdecided it,” cried Wardour. “Do you think we are going to cast the dice again, and give an officer of theSea-mewa chance of replacing an officer of theWanderer? 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 (youmustfeel) 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.”
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.
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 theWandererand theSea-mewis 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?”
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 laidhernewspaper 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-vesselBlythewoodis 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 ‘DeadorMissing!’ 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. Iwilltry.”
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.