"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.
"There is your handkerchief, Richard," he said. "Strange!"
"What is strange?"
"You told us you had hurt yourself with the ax--"
"Well?"
"There is no blood on your handkerchief."
Wardour snatched the handkerchief out of Crayford's hand, and, turning away, approached the outer door of the hut. "No blood on the handkerchief," he said to himself. "There may be a stain or two when Crayford sees it again." He stopped within a few paces of the door, and spoke to Crayford. "You recommended me to take leave of my brother officers before it was too late," he said. "I am going to follow your advice."
The door was opened from the outer side as he laid his hand on the lock.
One of the quartermasters of the Wanderer entered the hut.
"Is Captain Helding here, sir?" he asked, addressing himself to Wardour.
Wardour pointed to Crayford.
"The lieutenant will tell you," he said.
Crayford advanced and questioned the quartermaster. "What do you want with Captain Helding?" he asked.
"I have a report to make, sir. There has been an accident on the ice."
"To one of your men?"
"No, sir. To one of our officers."
Wardour, on the point of going out, paused when the quartermaster made that reply. For a moment he considered with himself. Then he walked slowly back to the part of the room in which Frank was standing. Crayford, directing the quartermaster, pointed to the arched door way in the side of the hut.
"I am sorry to hear of the accident," he said. "You will find Captain Helding in that room."
For the second time, with singular persistency, Wardour renewed the conversation with Frank.
"So you knew the Burnhams?" he said. "What became of Clara when her father died?"
Frank's face flushed angrily on the instant.
"Clara!" he repeated. "What authorizes you to speak of Miss Burnham in that familiar manner?"
Wardour seized the opportunity of quarreling with him.
"What right have you to ask?" he retorted, coarsely.
Frank's blood was up. He forgot his promise to Clara to keep their engagement secret--he forgot everything but the unbridled insolence of Wardour's language and manner.
"A right which I insist on your respecting," he answered. "The right of being engaged to marry her."
Crayford's steady eyes were still on the watch, and Wardour felt them on him. A little more and Crayford might openly interfere. Even Wardour recognized for once the necessity of controlling his temper, cost him what it might. He made his apologies, with overstrained politeness, to Frank.
"Impos sible to dispute such a right as yours," he said. "Perhaps you will excuse me when you know that I am one of Miss Burnham's old friends. My father and her father were neighbors. We have always met like brother and sister--"
Frank generously stopped the apology there.
"Say no more," he interposed. "I was in the wrong--I lost my temper. Pray forgive me."
Wardour looked at him with a strange, reluctant interest while he was speaking. Wardour asked an extraordinary question when he had done.
"Is she very fond of you?"
Frank burst out laughing.
"My dear fellow," he said, "come to our wedding, and judge for yourself."
"Come to your wedding?" As he repeated the words Wardour stole one glance at Frank which Frank (employed in buckling his knapsack) failed to see. Crayford noticed it, and Crayford's blood ran cold. Comparing the words which Wardour had spoken to him while they were alone together with the words that had just passed in his presence, he could draw but one conclusion. The woman whom Wardour had loved and lost was--Clara Burnham. The man who had robbed him of her was Frank Aldersley. And Wardour had discovered it in the interval since they had last met. "Thank God!" thought Crayford, "the dice have parted them! Frank goes with the expedition, and Wardour stays behind with me."
The reflection had barely occurred to him--Frank's thoughtless invitation to Wardour had just passed his lips--when the canvas screen over the doorway was drawn aside. Captain Helding and the officers who were to leave with the exploring party returned to the main room on their way out. Seeing Crayford, Captain Helding stopped to speak to him.
"I have a casualty to report," said the captain, "which diminishes our numbers by one. My second lieutenant, who was to have joined the exploring party, has had a fall on the ice. Judging by what the quartermaster tells me, I am afraid the poor fellow has broken his leg."
"I will supply his place," cried a voice at the other end of the hut.
Everybody looked round. The man who had spoken was Richard Wardour.
Crayford instantly interfered--so vehemently as to astonish all who knew him.
"No!" he said. "Not you, Richard! not you!"
"Why not?" Wardour asked, sternly.
"Why not, indeed?" added Captain Helding. "Wardour is the very man to be useful on a long march. He is in perfect health, and he is the best shot among us. I was on the point of proposing him myself."
Crayford failed to show his customary respect for his superior officer. He openly disputed the captain's conclusion.
"Wardour has no right to volunteer," he rejoined. "It has been settled, Captain Helding, that chance shall decide who is to go and who is to stay."
"And chance has decided it," cried Wardour. "Do you think we are going to cast the dice again, and give an officer of the Sea-mew a chance of replacing an officer of the Wanderer? There is a vacancy in our party, not in yours; and we claim the right of filling it as we please.