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 honor, as officers and gentlemen, is this the truth?"
"On my honor," Crayford answered, "it is the truth."
"On my honor," 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 honor," 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 honor, 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 behin d 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."
"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.