The Frozen Deep by Dave Moyer (booksvooks .txt) 📕

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 tablecloth 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 boathouse 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 boathouse. 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 boathouse 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 boathouse. 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 boathouse. In a moment more the figure appeared. A man came slowly into view, and stopped on the threshold of the door.

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 boathouse 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 gnawi ng 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 boathouse 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!”