Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1720 page)

“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 honour, as officers and gentlemen, is this the truth?”

“On my honour,” Crayford answered, “it is the truth.”

“On my honour,” 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 honour,” 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 honour, 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.”