Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1715 page)

“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 labour. 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.