The Frozen Deep

“Have you anything particular to do, Richard?”

“What has anybody to do here?”

“Wait a little, then. I want to speak to you when this business is over.”

“Are you going to give me any more good advice?”

“Don’t look at me in that sour way, Richard. I am going to ask you a question about something which concerns yourself.”

Wardour yielded without a word more. He returned to his chest, and cynically composed himself to slumber. The casting of the lots went on rapidly among the officers and men. In another half-hour chance had decided the question of “Go” or “Stay” for all alike. The men left the hut. The officers entered the inner apartment for a last conference with the bed-ridden captain of the Sea-mew. Wardour and Crayford were left together, alone.

Chapter 9.

Crayford touched his friend on the shoulder to rouse him. Wardour looked up, impatiently, with a frown.

“I was just asleep,” he said. “Why do you wake me?”

“Look round you, Richard. We are alone.”

“Well—and what of that?”

“I wish to speak to you privately; and this is my opportunity. You have disappointed and surprised me to-day. Why did you say it was all one to you whether you went or stayed? Why are you the only man among us who seems to be perfectly indifferent whether we are rescued or not?”

“Can a man always give a reason for what is strange in his manner or his words?” Wardour retorted.

“He can try,” said Crayford, quietly—“when his friend asks him.”

Wardour’s manner softened.

“That’s true,” he said. “I will try. Do you remember the first night at sea when we sailed from England in the Wanderer?”

“As well as if it was yesterday.”

“A calm, still night,” the other went on, thoughtfully. “No clouds, no stars. Nothing in the sky but the broad moon, and hardly a ripple to break the path of light she made in the quiet water. Mine was the middle watch that night. You cam e on deck, and found me alone—”

He stopped. Crayford took his hand, and finished the sentence for him.

“Alone—and in tears.”

“The last I shall ever shed,” Wardour added, bitterly.

“Don’t say that! There are times when a man is to be pitied indeed, if he can shed no tears. Go on, Richard.”

Wardour proceeded—still following the old recollections, still preserving his gentler tones.

“I should have quarreled with any other man who had surprised me at that moment,” he said. “There was something, I suppose, in your voice when you asked my pardon for disturbing me, that softened my heart. I told you I had met with a disappointment which had broken me for life. There was no need to explain further. The only hopeless wretchedness in this world is the wretchedness that women cause.”

“And the only unalloyed happiness,” said Crayford, “the happiness that women bring.”

“That may be your experience of them,” Wardour answered; “mine is different. All the devotion, the patience, the humility, the worship that there is in man, I laid at the feet of a woman. She accepted the offering as women do—accepted it, easily, gracefully, unfeelingly—accepted it as a matter of course. I left England to win a high place in my profession, before I dared to win her. I braved danger, and faced death. I staked my life in the fever swamps of Africa, to gain the promotion that I only desired for her sake—and gained it. I came back to give her all, and to ask nothing in return, but to rest my weary heart in the sunshine of her smile. And her own lips—the lips I had kissed at parting—told me that another man had robbed me of her. I spoke but few words when I heard that confession, and left her forever. ‘The time may come,’ I told her, ‘when I shall forgive you. But the man who has robbed me of you shall rue the day when you and he first met.’ Don’t ask me who he was! I have yet to discover him. The treachery had been kept secret; nobody could tell me where to find him; nobody could tell me who he was. What did it matter? When I had lived out the first agony, I could rely on myself—I could be patient, and bide my time.”

“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