Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1955 page)

A Drama.

IN THREE ACTS

1866.

PERSONS OF THE DRAMA.

CAPTAIN HELDING, of the Ship Wanderer.
LIEUTENANT CRAYFORD, of the Ship Sea-Mew.
FRANK ALDERSLEY.
RICHARD WARDOUR.
LIEUTENANT STEVENTON.
JOHN WANT, Ship’s Cook.
BATESON, }two of the Sea-Mew’s People
DARKER,   }
                        Officers and Sailors

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CLARA BURNHAM.
LUCY CRAYFORD.
ROSE EBSWORTH.
MRS. STEVENTON.

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Scene of the First Act — A Country-house in Devonshire.
Scene of the Second Act — A Hut in the Arctic Regions.
Scene of the Third Act — A Cavern on the Coast of Newfoundland.

Period — The Present Time.

THE FROZEN DEEP.

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ACT I.

SCENE. —
A handsomely furnished room in a country-house, with a bay-window at the back of the stage, looking out, over corn-fields, on a village church. Flowers are disposed about the room on stands. On one side, a tea-table, with tea-things on it. On the other, a round table, with work on it. Time, shortly before sunset. The entrance to the room is on the left-hand side of the actor.

MRS. STEVENTON
and
ROSE
are discovered at the tea-table. The maid-servant enters to them at the rise of the curtain, with the newspaper which has arrived by the post.
MRS. S.
takes it.

Rose.
Any news, Caroline?

Mrs. S.
(
reading
). “Arrived, the Fortune, from Valparaiso; the Ariel, from Jamaica. Spoken, the Sisters, from Liverpool to California, eight days out. Reported drifting among ice at sea, waterlogged and abandoned, the Hope.” (
Repressing a shudder.
) No, Rose — no news to interest
us.

Rose.
Shall I give you some more tea? (MRS. S.
declines.
) Has the doctor gone yet?

Mrs. S.
Lucy is still talking to him about Clara; and Clara has retired to her own room. (
The maid enters with gardening-scissors and a basket, which she hands to
MRS. S.,
and goes out again.
MRS. S.
rises, and attends to the flowers as the dialogue proceeds.
) Rose, I have been doubting lately whether it was wise for us four women to shut ourselves up in this solitary house, while our natural protectors are away from us in the expedition to the Arctic Seas.

Rose
(
taking her work
). What could we do better than wait here till they come back? Have we any friends to go to, whom we should honestly like to live with? Would it have been pleasant for you to go home, after your husband had sailed with the expedition?

Mrs. S.
Home! where they have turned their backs on me for marrying a poor man! I go home, and hear my husband despised?

Rose.
And I, with no mother alive — with my father, like your husband, away with the Arctic ships — where could I have been happier than here, with my oldest and dearest friend, Lucy Crayford?

Mrs. S.
And Lucy certainly has no home to go to. Her only near relation is her brother, who is serving in the expedition.

Rose.
Well, you see there are three of us, at any rate, who could have done no better than come here and make one household of it. As for the fourth; as for Clara —

Mrs. S.
Clara’s situation differs from yours, and Lucy’s, and mine. It is not her father, or her brother, or her husband who is away — but her husband that is to be. Then, again, Clara has a mother alive —

Rose.
A mother who has gone abroad, and married again! A mother who has never forgiven Clara for objecting to a foreign stepfather!

Mrs. S.
I dare say you may be right, my dear. (
The maid enters, relieves
MRS. S.
of the scissors, &c., and goes out.
) But now, when more than a year has passed, and no tidings from the Arctic expedition have reached us, I think we ought to see other sights from day to day besides the sight of our own sad faces. We are passing our lives, Rose, in unrelieved solitude and suspense; and we are all of us the worse for it — Clara especially.

Rose.
You may be right about Clara.

Mrs. S.
Right! Who can doubt it? When we first established ourselves here, Clara was nervous and excitable — but she neither said, or did, anything to alarm us. Time went on — the lonely, hopeless time in this house — and we began to hear of dreadful dreams that frightened her at night, and dreadful interpretations of them, which she brooded over all day. Next, came those long fainting-fits, so frightfully like death while they lasted. And now, what has followed the fainting-fits?

Rose.
The Trance that alarmed us all, three days since.

Mrs. S.
You say she was in a Trance. Lucy says it was a nervous seizure. Call it what you like, the plain truth is that the attack was serious enough to oblige us to send for a great physician from London, and that the great physician is now up-stairs giving Lucy his opinion on the case.

Rose
(
looking towards the open door on the left
). The opinion is given, and the doctor has gone. Here comes Lucy to bring us the news.

Enter
LUCY CRAYFORD.

Mrs. S.
Well, what does the doctor from London say?

Lucy.
Very little that is encouraging. The sum and substance of his opinion is this — that Clara’s case, which is a mystery to
us,
is a mystery to
him.

Rose.
Has he been all this time talking to you, and has it only ended in that?

Lucy.
He has been all this time making
me
talk to
him.
After he had seen Clara, and had sent her away to her own room, he asked me to tell him all I knew of her past life. I told him that her early years had been spent in a lonely old house in the Highlands, and that the ignorant people about her had filled her mind with the superstitions which are still respected as truths in the wild north — especially the superstition about the Second Sight. From that, I got on to the later time when Clara came southward to live in Kent. Then I touched on her marriage-engagement; and, lastly, I mentioned the circumstances under which we are all four living together in this house.

Mrs. S.
And what did the doctor think of it, so far?

Lucy.
He said I was helping him to understand Clara’s case; and he begged me next to describe the strange attack that seized her in the garden three days since.

Rose.
I
should have found it no easy matter to comply with his request. How did you describe it?

Lucy.
As nearly as I can remember, in these words. I said, “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 colour left her face. She stood still in the midst of 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. A momentary colour appeared in her face, and left it again. Her eyes closed — her feet failed her — and she sank insensible into our arms.” That was what I told the doctor; and that, I think, was exactly what happened.

Mrs. S.
Did you go on, and tell him what she said when she came to her senses?

Lucy.
Yes. I said she firmly believed herself to have seen, in the Trance, the lost men in the expedition to the Polar Seas. (
To
ROSE.) Your father; (
to
MRS. S.) your husband; my brother; and the lover to whom she herself is betrothed. I was obliged to add — for no half-confidences are possible with a medical man — that she mixes up with this conviction the Highland superstition instilled into her in her early life, and that she persists in believing herself to be gifted with the Second Sight.

Rose.
I should hardly have had the courage to tell him that.

Mrs. S.
Nor I. People are so unmercifully superior to superstition in these enlightened times.

Lucy.
Yes! In these enlightened times, we only believe in dancing-tables, and in messages sent from the other world by spirits who can’t spell!

Rose.
But how did it strike the doctor?

Lucy.
He told me that such cases as Clara’s were by no means unfamiliar to medical practice. “We know,” he said, “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 of what you have told me. I can give you instructions for preserving her general health; and I can recommend you to try some change in her life — provided you can first relieve her mind of any secret anxieties that may now be preying on it. I can give you this advice, and I can do no more.” Those were the doctor’s last words — the words, as I think, of a very honest and a very sensible man.

Mrs. S.
I entirely agree with him about the necessity for a change in Clara’s life. (LUCY
shakes her head.
) Why not? What objection can there be?

Lucy.
We have the doctor’s word for it that no change will help her, if there is any secret trouble on her mind. I was persuaded she had some secret trouble when she first came among us — and I am persuaded of it still.

Rose.
Surely, you might induce her to confide it to
you?
She will do things for you that she will do for neither of us.

Lucy.
I will try to win her confidence, if I can find the opportunity. Hush! we had better change the subject.

Mrs. S.
Why?

Lucy
(
approaching the door
). Because Clara is coming down-stairs. I hear her footstep.

Enter
CLARA BURNHAN,
hurried and agitated.

Clara.
Where are you all? Why did you leave me, Lucy? I hate and dread being alone — and you all forsake me. You care for nobody! You forget everything!

(
Seats herself, sullenly.
)

Mrs. S.
We thought you were asleep in your own room.