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Page 23
"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 came 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!"
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