Fumbling about among his clothes to lay him down comfortably on the
bearskin (for of course we had saved no bedding from the wreck), I
happened to knock out once more the same locket that I had seen when he
was emptying the drag-net. There was a photograph in it of a young lady.
The seal-oil lamp didn't give very much light in the dark hut (it was
still the long winter night on the Liakov Islands), but even so I
couldn't help seeing and recognizing the young lady's features. Great
Heaven support me! uphold me! I reeled with horror and amazement. It was
Dora.
Yes; his little girl, that he spoke of so carelessly, that he lied to so
easily, that he meant to marry so cruelly, was my Dora.
I had pitied the woman who was to be Harry Lemarchant's wife even when I
didn't know who she was in any way; I pitied her terribly, with all my
heart, when I knew that she was Dora--my own Dora. If I have become a
murderer, after all, it was to save Dora--to save Dora from that
unutterable, abominable ruffian.
I clutched the photograph in the locket eagerly, and held it up to the
man's eyes. He opened them dreamily. "Is that the lady you are going to
marry?" I asked him, with all the boiling indignation of that terrible
discovery seething and burning in my very face.
He smiled, and took it all in in half a minute. "It is," he answered, in
spite of the fever, with all his old dare-devil carelessness. "And now I
recollect they told me the fellow she was engaged to was a doctor in
London, and a brother of the parson. By Jove, I never thought of it
before that your name, too, was actually Robinson. That's the worst of
having such a deuced common name as yours; no one ever dreams of
recognizing your relations. Hang it all, if you're the man, I suppose
now, out of revenge, you'll be wanting next to go and poison me."
"You judge others by yourself, I'm afraid," I answered sternly. Oh, how
the words seem to rise up in judgment against me at last, now the
dreadful thing is all over!
I doctored him as well as I was able, hoping all the time in my inmost
soul (for I will confess all now) that he would never recover. Already
in wish I had become a murderer. It was too horrible to think that such
a man as that should marry Dora. I had loved her once and I loved her
still; I love her now; I shall always love her. Murderer as I am, I say
it nevertheless, I shall always love her.
But at last, to my grief and disappointment, the man began to mend and
get better. My doctoring had done him good; and the sailors, though even
they did not love him, had shot him once or twice a small bird, of which
we made fresh soup that seemed to revive him. Yes, yes, he was coming
round; and my cursed medicines had done it all. He was getting well, and
he would still go back to marry Dora.
The very idea put me into such a fever of terror and excitement that at
last I began to exhibit the same symptoms as Lemarchant himself had
done. The Captain saw I was sickening, and feared the fever might prove
an epidemic. It wasn't: I knew that. Mine was brain, Lemarchant's was
intermittent; but the Captain insisted upon disbelieving me. So he put
me and Lemarchant into the same hut, and made all the others clear out,
so as to turn it into a sort of temporary hospital.
Every night I put out from the medicine-chest two quinine powders
apiece, for myself and Lemarchant.
One night, it was the 7th of April (I can't forget it), I woke feebly
from my feverish sleep, and noticed in a faint sort of fashion that
Lemarchant was moving about restlessly in the cabin.
"Lemarchant," I cried authoritatively (for as surgeon I was, of course,
responsible for the health of the expedition), "go back and lie down
upon your bearskin this minute! You're a great deal too weak to go
getting anything for yourself as yet. Go back this minute, sir, and if
you want anything, I'll pull the string, and Paterson'll come and see
what you're after." For we had fixed up a string between the two huts,
tied to a box at the end, as a rough means of communication.
"All right, old fellow," he answered, more cordially than I had ever yet
heard him speak to me. "It's all square, I assure you. I was only seeing
whether you were quite warm and comfortable on your rug there."
"Perhaps," I thought, "the care I've taken of him has made him really
feel a little grateful to me." So I dozed off and thought nothing more
at the moment about it.
Presently, I heard a noise again, and woke up quietly, without starting,
but just opened my eyes and peered about as well as the dim light of the
little oil-lamp would allow me.
To my great surprise, I could make out somehow that Lemarchant was
meddling with the bottles in the medicine-chest.
"Perhaps," thought I again, "he wants another dose of quinine. Anyhow,
I'm too tired and sleepy to ask him anything just now about it."
I knew he hated me, and I knew he was unscrupulous, but it didn't occur
to me to think he would poison the man who had just helped him through a
dangerous fever.
At four I woke, as I always did, and proceeded to take one of my
powders. Curiously enough, before I tasted it, the grain appeared to me
to be rather coarser and more granular than the quinine I had originally
put there. I took a pinch between my finger and thumb, and placed it on
my tongue by way of testing it. Instead of being bitter, the powder, I
found, was insipid and almost tasteless.
Could I possibly in my fever and delirium (though I had not consciously
been delirious) have put some other powder instead of the quinine into
the two papers? The bare idea made me tremble with horror. If so, I
might have poisoned Lemarchant, who had taken one of his powders
already, and was now sleeping quietly upon his bearskin. At least, I
thought so.
Glancing accidentally to his place that moment, I was vaguely conscious
that he was not really sleeping, but lying with his eyes held half open,
gazing at me cautiously and furtively through his closed eyelids.
Then the horrid truth flashed suddenly across me. Lemarchant was trying
to poison me.
Yes, he had always hated me; and now that he knew I was Dora's discarded
lover, he hated me worse than ever. He had got up and taken a bottle
from the medicine-chest, I felt certain, and put something else instead
of my quinine inside my paper.
I knew his eyes were fixed upon me then, and for the moment I
dissembled. I turned round and pretended to swallow the contents of the
packet, and then lay down upon my rug as if nothing unusual had
happened. The fever was burning me fiercely, but I lay awake, kept up
by the excitement, till I saw that he was really asleep, and then I once
more undid the paper.
Looking at it closely by the light of the lamp, I saw a finer powder
sticking closely to the folded edges. I wetted my finger, put it down
and tasted it. Yes, that was quite bitter. That was quinine, not a doubt
about it.
I saw at once what Lemarchant had done. He had emptied out the quinine
and replaced it by some other white powder, probably arsenic. But a
little of the quinine still adhered to the folds in the paper, because
he had been obliged to substitute it hurriedly; and that at once proved
that it was no mistake of my own, but that Lemarchant had really made
the deliberate attempt to poison me.
This is a confession, and a confession only, so I shall make no effort
in any way to exculpate myself for the horrid crime I committed the next
moment. True, I was wild with fever and delirium; I was maddened with
the thought that this wretched man would marry Dora; I was horrified at
the idea of sleeping in the same room with him any longer. But still, I
acknowledge it now, face to face with a lonely death upon this frozen
island, it was murder--wilful murder. I meant to poison him, and I did
it.
"He has set this powder for me, the villain," I said to myself, "and now
I shall make him take it without knowing it. How do I know that it's
arsenic or anything else to do him any harm? His blood be upon his own
head, for aught I know about it. What I put there was simply quinine. If
anybody has changed it, he has changed it himself. The pit that he dug
for another, he himself shall fall therein."
I wouldn't even test it, for fear I should find it was arsenic, and be
unable to give it to him innocently and harmlessly.
I rose up and went over to Lemarchant's side. Horror of horrors, he was
sleeping soundly! Yes, the man had tried to poison me; and when he
thought he had seen me swallow his poisonous powder, so callous and
hardened was his nature that he didn't even lie awake to watch the
effect of it. He had dropped off soundly, as if nothing had happened,
and was sleeping now, to all appearance, the sleep of innocence. Being
convalescent, in fact, and therefore in need of rest, he slept with
unusual soundness.
I laid the altered powder quietly by his pillow, took away his that I
had laid out in readiness for him, and crept back to my own place
noiselessly. There I lay awake, hot and feverish, wondering to myself
hour after hour when he would ever wake and take it.
At last he woke, and looked over towards me with unusual interest.
"Hullo, Doctor," he said quite genially, "how are you this morning, eh?
getting on well, I hope." It was the first time during all my illness
that he had ever inquired after me.
I lied to him deliberately to keep the delusion up. "I have a terrible
grinding pain in my chest," I said, pretending to writhe. I had sunk to
his level, it seems. I was a liar and a murderer.
He looked quite gay over it, and laughed. "It's nothing," he said,
grinning horribly. "It's a good symptom. I felt just like that myself,
my dear fellow, when I was beginning to recover."
Then I knew he had tried to poison me, and I felt no remorse for my
terrible action. It was a good deed to prevent such a man as that from
ever carrying away Dora--my Dora--into a horrid slavery. Sooner than
that he should marry Dora, I would poison him--I would poison him a
thousand times over.
He sat up, took the spoon full of treacle, and poured the powder as
usual into the very middle of it. I watched him take it off at a single
gulp without perceiving the difference, and then I sank back exhausted
upon my roll of sealskins.
* * * * *
All that day I was very ill; and Lemarchant, lying tossing beside me,
groaned and moaned in a fearful fashion. At last the truth seemed to
dawn upon him gradually, and he cried aloud to me: "Doctor, Doctor,
quick, for Heaven's sake! you must get me out an antidote. The powders
must have got mixed up somehow, and you've given me arsenic instead of
quinine, I'm certain."
"Not a bit of it, Lemarchant," I said, with some devilish malice; "I've
given you one of my own packets, that was lying here beside my pillow."
He turned as white as a sheet the moment he heard that, and gasped out
horribly, "That--that--why, that was arsenic!" But he never explained in
a single word how he knew it, or where it came from. I knew. I needed no
explanation, and I wanted no lies, so I didn't question him.
I treated him as well as I could for arsenic poisoning, without saying a
word to the captain and the other men about it; for if he died, I said,
it would be by his own act, and if my skill could still avail, he should
have the benefit of it; but the poison had had full time to work before
I gave him the antidote, and he died by seven o'clock that night in
fearful agonies.
Then I knew that I was really a murderer.
My fingers are beginning to get horribly numb, and I'm afraid I shan't
be able to write much longer. I must be quick about it, if I want to
finish this confession.
* * * * *
After that came my retribution. I have been punished for it, and
punished terribly.
As soon as they all heard Lemarchant was dead--a severe relapse, I
called it--they set to work to carry him out and lay him somewhere. Then
for the first time the idea flashed across my mind that they couldn't
possibly bury him. The ice was too deep everywhere, and underneath it
lay the solid rock of the bare granite islands. There was no snow even,
for the wind swept it away as it fell, and we couldn't so much as
decently cover him. There was nothing for it but to lay him out upon the
icy surface.
So we carried the stark frozen body, with its hideous staring eyes wide
open, out by the jutting point of rock behind the hut, and there we
placed it, dressed and upright. We stood it up against the point exactly
as if it were alive, and by-and-by the snow came and froze it to the
rock; and there it stands to this moment, glaring for ever fiercely upon
me.
Whenever I went in or out of the hut, for three long months, that
hideous thing stood there staring me in the face with mute indignation.
At night, when I tried to sleep, the murdered man stood there still in
the darkness beside me. O God! I dared not say a word to anybody: but I
trembled every time I passed it, and I knew what it was to be a
murderer.
In May, the sun came back again, but still no open water for our one
boat. In June, we had the long day, but no open water. The captain began
to get impatient and despondent, as you will read in the log: he was
afraid now we might never get a chance of making the mouth of the Lena.
By-and-by, the scurvy came (I have no time now for details, my hands are
so cramped with cold), and then we began to run short of provisions.
Soon I had them all down upon my hands, and presently we had to place
Paterson's corpse beside Lemarchant's on the little headland. Then they
sank, one after another--sank of cold and hunger, as you will read in
the log--till I alone, who wanted least to live, was the last left
living.
I was left alone with those nine corpses propped up awfully against the
naked rock, and one of the nine the man I had murdered.
May Heaven forgive me for that terrible crime; and for pity's sake,
whoever you may be, keep it from Dora--keep it from Dora!
My brother's address is in my pocket-book.
The fever and remorse alone have given me strength to hold the pen. My
hands are quite numbed now. I can write no longer.
* * * * *
There the manuscript ended. Heaven knows what effect it may have upon
all of you, who read it quietly at home in your own easy-chairs in
England; but we of the search party, who took those almost illegible
sheets of shaky writing from the cold fingers of the one solitary corpse
within the frozen cabin on the Liakov Islands--we read them through with
such a mingled thrill of awe and horror and sympathy and pity as no one
can fully understand who has not been upon an Arctic expedition. And
when we gathered our sad burdens up to take them off for burial at home,
the corpse to which we gave the most reverent attention was certainly
that of the self-accused murderer.
_HARRY'S INHERITANCE._