by Frank Norris
“That may be true or not,” he answered with an indifferent movement of his shoulders. “It is all one to me. I have made up my mind that you shall leave this house this morning, and believe me, Miss Searight, I shall carry my point.”
For the moment Lloyd caught her breath. For the moment she saw clearly with just what sort of man she had to deal. There was a conviction in his manner — now that he had quieted himself — that suddenly appeared unanswerable. It was like the slow, still moving of a piston.
But the next moment her own character reasserted itself. She remembered what she was herself. If he was determined, she was obstinate; if he was resolved, she was stubborn; if he was powerful, she was unyielding. Never had she conceded her point before; never had she allowed herself to be thwarted in the pursuance of a course she believed to be right. Was she, of all women, to yield now? The consciousness of her own power of resistance came suddenly to her aid. Bennett was strong, but was she not strong herself? Where under the blue sky was the power that could break down her will? When death itself could not prevail against her, what in life could shake her resolution?
Suddenly the tremendous import of the moment, the magnitude of the situation, flashed upon Lloyd. Both of them had staked everything upon this issue. Two characters of extraordinary power clashed violently together. There was to be no compromise, no half-measures. Either she or Bennett must in the end be beaten. One of them was to be broken and humbled beyond all retrieving. There in that commonplace little room, with its trivial accessories, its inadequate background, a battle royal swiftly prepared itself. With the abruptness of an explosion the crisis developed.
“Do I need to tell you,” remarked Bennett, “that your life is rather more to me than any other consideration in the world? Do you suppose when the lives of every member of my command depended upon me I was any less resolved to succeed than I am now? I succeeded then, and I shall succeed now, now when there is much more at stake. I am not accustomed to failure, and I shall not fail now. I assure you that I shall stop at nothing.”
It was beyond Lloyd to retain her calmness under such aggression. It seemed as though her self-respect demanded that she should lose her temper.
“And you think you can drive me as you drove your deck-hands?” she exclaimed. “What have you to do with me? Am I your subordinate? Do you think you can bully me? We are not in Kolyuchin Bay, Mr. Bennett.”
“You’re the woman I love,” he answered with an abrupt return of vehemence, “and, by God! I shall stop at nothing to save your life.”
“And my love for you, that you pretend is so much to you, I suppose that this is the means you take to awaken it. Admitting, for the moment, that you could induce me to shirk my duty, how should I love you for it? Ask yourself that.”
But Bennett had but one answer to all her words. He struck his fist into the palm of his hand as he answered:
“Your life is more to me than any other consideration.”
“But my life — how do you know it is a question of my life? Come, if we are to quarrel, let us quarrel upon reasonable grounds. It does not follow that I risk my life by staying—”
“Leave the house first; we can talk of that afterward.”
“I have allowed you to talk too much already,” she exclaimed angrily. “Let us come to the bottom of things at once. I will not be influenced nor cajoled nor bullied into leaving my post. Now, do you understand? That is my final answer. You who were a commander, who were a leader of men, what would you have done if one of your party had left his post at a time of danger? I can tell you what you would have done — you would have shot him, after first disgracing him, and now you would disgrace me. Is it reasonable? Is it consistent?”
Bennett snapped his fingers.
“That for consistency!”
“And you would be willing to disgrace me — to have me disgrace myself?”
“Your life—” began Bennett again.
But suddenly Lloyd flashed out upon him with: “My life! My life! Are there not some things better than life? You, above all men, should understand that much. Oh, be yourself, be the man I thought you were. You have your code; let me have mine. You could not be what you are, you could not have done what you did, if you had not set so many things above merely your life. Admit that you could not have loved me unless you believed that I could do the same. How could you still love me if you knew I had failed in my duty? How could you still love me if you knew that you had broken down my will? I know you better than you know yourself. You loved me because you knew me to be strong and brave and to be above petty deceptions and shams and subterfuges. And now you ask me to fail, to give up, to shirk, and you tell me you do so because you love me.”
“That is all so many words to me. I cannot argue with you, and there is no time for it. I did not come here to — converse.”
Never in her life before had Lloyd been so angry as at that moment. The sombre crimson of her cheeks had suddenly given place to an unwonted paleness; even her dull-blue eyes, that so rarely sparkled, were all alight. She straightened herself.
“Very well, then,” she answered quietly, “our conversation can stop where it is. You will excuse me, Mr. Bennett, if I leave you. I have my work to do.”
Bennett was standing between her and the door. He did not move. Very gravely he said:
“Don’t. Please don’t bring it — to that.”
Lloyd flashed a look at him, her eyes wide, exclaiming:
“You don’t mean — you don’t dare—”
“I tell you again that I mean to carry my point.”
“And I tell you that I shall not leave my patient.”
Bennett met her glance for an instant, and, holding her gaze with his, answered but two words. Speaking in a low voice and with measured slowness, he said:
“You — shall.”
There was a silence. The two stood there, looking straight into one another’s eyes, their mutual opposition at its climax. The seconds began to pass. The conflict between the man’s aggression and the woman’s resistance reached its turning point. Before another word should be spoken, before the minute should pass, one of the two must give ground.
And then it was that Lloyd felt something breakdown within her, something to which she could not put a name. A mysterious element of her character, hitherto rigid and intact, was beginning at last to crumble. Somewhere a breach had been opened; somewhere the barrier had been undermined. The fine steadfastness that was hers, and that she had so dearly prized, her strength in which she had gloried, her independence, her splendid arrogant self-confidence and conscious power seemed all at once to weaken before this iron resolve that shut its ears and eyes, this colossal, untutored, savage intensity of purpose.
And abruptly her eyes were opened, and the inherent weakness of her sex became apparent to her. Was it a mistake, then? Could not a woman be strong? Was her strength grafted upon elemental weakness — not her individual weakness, but the weakness of her sex, the intended natural weakness of the woman? Had she built her fancied impregnable fortress upon sand?
But habit was too strong. For an instant, brief as the opening and shutting of an eye, a vision was vouchsafed to her, one of those swift glimpses into unplumbed depths that come sometimes to the human mind in the moments of its exaltation, but that are gone with such rapidity that they may not be trusted. For an instant Lloyd saw deep down into the black, mysterious gulf of sex — down, down, down where, immeasurably below the world of little things, the changeless, dreadful machinery of Life itself worked, clashing and resistless in its grooves. It was a glimpse fortunately brief, a vision that does not come too often, lest reason, brought to the edge of the abyss, grow giddy at the sight and, reeling, topple headlong. But quick the vision passed, the gulf closed, and she felt the firm ground again beneath her feet.
“I shall not,” she cried.
Was it the same woman who had spoken but one moment before? Did her voice ring with the same undaunted defiance? Was t
here not a note of despair in her tones, a barely perceptible quaver, the symbol of her wavering resolve? Was not the very fact that she must question her strength proof positive that her strength was waning?
But her courage was unshaken, even if her strength was breaking. To the last she would strive, to the end she would hold her forehead high. Not till the last hope had been tried would she acknowledge her defeat.
“But in any case,” she said, “risk is better than certainty. If I risk my life by staying, it is certain that he will die if I leave him at this critical moment.”
“So much the worse, then — you cannot stay.”
Lloyd stared at him in amazement.
“It isn’t possible; I don’t believe you can understand. Do you know how sick he is? Do you know that he is lying at the point of death at this very moment, and that the longer I stay away from him the more his life is in peril? Has he not rights as well as I; has he not a right to live? It is not only my own humiliation that is at stake, it is the life of your dearest friend, the man who stood by you, and helped you, and who suffered the same hardships and privations as yourself.”
“What’s that?” demanded Bennett with a sudden frown.
“If I leave Mr. Ferriss now, if he is left alone here for so much as half an hour, I will not answer—”
“Ferriss! What are you talking about? What is your patient’s name?”
“Didn’t you know?”
“Ferriss! Dick Ferriss! Don’t tell me it’s Dick Ferriss.”
“I thought all the time you knew — that you had heard. Yes, it is Mr. Ferriss.”
“Is he very sick? What is he doing out here? No, I had not heard; nobody told me. Pitts was to write — to — to wire. Will he pull through? What’s the matter with him? Is it he who had typhoid?”
“He is very dangerously ill. Dr. Pitts brought him here. This is his house. We do not know if he will get well. It is only by watching him every instant that we can hope for anything. At this moment there is no one with him but a servant. Now, Mr. Bennett, am I to go to my patient?”
“But — but — we can get some one else.”
“Not before three hours, and it’s only the truth when I tell you he may die at any minute. Am I to go?”
In a second of time the hideous situation leaped up before Bennett’s eyes. Right or wrong, the conviction that Lloyd was terribly imperilling her life by remaining at her patient’s bedside had sunk into his mind and was not to be eradicated. It was a terror that had gripped him close and that could not be reasoned away. But Ferriss? What of him? Now it had brusquely transpired that his life, too, hung in the balance. How to decide? How to meet this abominable complication wherein he must sacrifice the woman he so dearly loved or the man who was the Damon to his Pythias, the Jonathan to his David?
“Am I to go?” repeated Lloyd for the third time.
Bennett closed his eyes, clasping his head with both hands.
“Great God, wait — wait — I can’t think — I — I, oh, this is terrible!”
Lloyd drove home her advantage mercilessly.
“Wait? I tell you we can’t wait.”
Then Bennett realised with a great spasm of horror that for him there was no going back. All his life, accustomed to quick decisions in moments of supreme peril, he took his decision now, facing, with such courage as he could muster, its unspeakable consequences, consequences that he knew must harry and hound him all the rest of his life. Whichever way he decided, he opened his heart to the beak and talons of a pitiless remorse. He could no longer see, in the dreadful confusion of his mind, the right of things or the wrong of things, could not accurately weigh chances or possibilities. For him only two alternatives presented themselves, the death of Ferriss or the death of Lloyd. He could see no compromise, could imagine no escape. It was as though a headsman with ready axe stood at his elbow, awaiting his commands. And, besides all this, he had long since passed the limit — though perhaps he did not know it himself — where he could see anything but the point he had determined to gain, the goal he had determined to reach. His mind was made up. His furious energy, his resolve to conquer at all costs, had become at last a sort of directed frenzy. The engine he had set in motion was now beyond his control. He could not now — whether he would or no — reverse its action, swerve it from its iron path, call it back from the monstrous catastrophe toward which it was speeding him.
“God help us all!” he muttered.
“Well,” said Lloyd expectantly.
Bennett drew a deep breath, his hands falling helplessly at his sides. In a way he appeared suddenly bowed; the great frame of bone and sinew seemed in some strange, indefinable manner to shrink, to stagger under the sudden assumption of an intolerable burden — a burden that was never to be lifted.
Even then, however, Bennett still believed in the wisdom of his course, still believed himself to be right. But, right or wrong, he now must go forward. Was it fate, was it doom, was it destiny?
Bennett’s entire life had been spent in the working out of great ideas in the face of great obstacles; continually he had been called upon to overcome enormous difficulties with enormous strength. For long periods of time he had been isolated from civilisation, had been face to face with the simple, crude forces of an elemental world — forces that were to be combated and overthrown by means no less simple and crude than themselves. He had lost the faculty, possessed, no doubt, by smaller minds, of dealing with complicated situations. To resort to expedients, to make concessions, was all beyond him. For him a thing was absolutely right or absolutely wrong, and between the two there was no gradation. For so long a time had he looked at the larger, broader situations of life that his mental vision had become all deformed and confused. He saw things invariably magnified beyond all proportion, or else dwarfed to a littleness that was beneath consideration. Normal vision was denied him. It was as though he studied the world through one or the other ends of a telescope, and when, as at present, his emotions were aroused, matters were only made the worse. The idea that Ferriss might recover, though Lloyd should leave him at this moment, hardly presented itself to his mind. He was convinced that if Lloyd went away Ferriss would die; Lloyd had said as much herself. The hope that Lloyd might, after all, nurse him through his sickness without danger to herself was so remote that he did not consider it for one instant. If Lloyd remained she, like the other nurse, would contract the disease and die.
These were the half-way measures Bennett did not understand, the expedients he could no longer see. It was either Lloyd or Ferriss. He must choose between them.
Bennett went to the door of the room, closed it and leaned against it.
“No,” he said.
Lloyd was stricken speechless. For the instant she shrank before him as if from a murderer. Bennett now knew precisely the terrible danger in which he left the man who was his dearest friend. Would he actually consent to his death? It was almost beyond belief, and for the moment Lloyd herself quailed before him. Her first thoughts were not of herself, but of Ferriss. If he was Bennett’s friend he was her friend too. At that very moment he might be dying for want of her care. She was fast becoming desperate. For the moment she could put all thought of herself and of her own dignity in the background.
“What is it you want?” she cried. “Is it my humiliation you ask? Well, then, you have it. It is as hard for me to ask favours as it is for you. I am as proud as you, but I entreat you, you hear me, as humbly as I can, to let me go. What do you want more than that? Oh, can’t you understand? While we talk here, while you keep me here, he may be dying. Is it a time for arguments, is it a time for misunderstandings, is it a time to think of ourselves, of our own lives, our own little affairs?” She clasped her hands. “Will you please — can I, can I say more than that; will you please let me go?”
“No.”
With a great effort Lloyd tried to regain her self-control. She paused a moment, then:
“Listen!” she said. “You say that you
love me; that I am more to you than even Mr. Ferriss, your truest friend. I do not wish to think of myself at such a time as this, but supposing that you should make me — that I should consent to leave my patient. Think of me then, afterward. Can I go back there to the house, the house that I built? Can I face the women of my profession? What would they think of me? What would my friends think of me — I who have held my head so high? You will ruin my life. I should have to give up my profession. Oh, can’t you see in what position you would place me?” Suddenly the tears sprang to her eyes. “No!” she cried vehemently. “No, no, no, I will not, I will not be disgraced!”
“I have no wish to disgrace you,” answered Bennett. “It is strange for you to say that to me, if I love you so well that I can give up Ferriss for—”
“Then, if you love me so much as that, there must be one thing that you would set even above my life. Do you wish to make me hate you?”
“There is nothing in the world more to me than your life; you know that. How can you think it of me?”
“Because you don’t understand — because you don’t know that — oh, that I love you! I — no — I didn’t mean — I didn’t mean—”
What had she said? What had happened? How was it that the words that yesterday she would have been ashamed to so much as whisper to herself had now rushed to her lips almost of their own accord? After all those years of repression, suddenly the sweet, dim thought she had hidden in her secretest heart’s heart had leaped to light and to articulate words. Unasked, unbidden, she had told him that she loved him. She, she had done this thing when, but a few moments before, her anger against him had shaken her to her very finger-tips. The hot, intolerable shame of it smote like fire into her face. Her world was cracking about her ears; everything she had prized the dearest was being torn from her, everything she had fancied the strongest was being overthrown. Had she, she who had held herself so proud and high, come at last to this?