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."