by Frank Norris
“It was only because I wanted to spare you further trouble and — and embarrassment, Lloyd, that I told Miss Douglass to take your place. This call is from Medford. Dr. Pitts was here himself this morning, and he thought as I did.”
“Thought what? I don’t understand.”
“It seemed to me,” answered the superintendent nurse, “that this one case of all others would be the hardest, the most disagreeable for you to take. It seems that Mr. Bennett has leased Dr. Pitts’s house from him. He is there now. At the time when Mr. Ferriss was beginning to be ill Mr. Bennett was with him a great deal and undertook to nurse him till Dr. Pitts interfered and put a professional nurse on the case. Since then, too, the doctor has found out that Mr. Bennett has exposed himself imprudently. At any rate, in some way he has contracted the same disease and is rather seriously ill with it. Dr. Pitts wants us to send him a nurse at once. It just happened that it was your turn, and I thought I had better skip your name and send Louise Douglass.”
Lloyd sank into a chair, her hands falling limply in her lap. A frown of perplexity gathered on her forehead. But suddenly she exclaimed:
“I know — that’s all as it may be; but all the staff know that it is my turn to go; everybody in the house knows who is on call. How will it be — what will be thought when it is known that I haven’t gone — and after — after my failing once — after this — this other affair? No, I must go. I, of all people, must go — and just because it is a typhoid case, like the other.”
“But, Lloyd, how can you?”
True, how could she? Her patient would be the same man who had humiliated her and broken her, had so cruelly misunderstood and wronged her, for whom all her love was dead. How could she face him again? Yet how refuse to take the case? How explain a second failure to her companions? Lloyd made a little movement of distress, clasping her hands together. How the complications followed fast upon each other! No sooner was one difficult situation met and disposed of than another presented itself. Bennett was nothing to her now, yet, for all that, she recoiled instinctively from meeting him again. Not only must she meet him, but she must be with him day after day, hour after hour, at his very side, in all the intimacy that the sick-room involved. On the other hand, how could she decline this case? The staff might condone one apparent and inexplicable defection; another would certainly not be overlooked. But was not this new situation a happy and unlooked-for opportunity to vindicate her impaired prestige in the eyes of her companions? Lloyd made up her mind upon the instant. She rose.
“I shall take the case,” she said.
She was not a little surprised at herself. Hardly an instant had she hesitated. On that other occasion when she had believed it right to make confession to her associates it had been hard — at times almost impossible — for her to do her duty as she saw and understood it. This new complication was scarcely less difficult, but once having attained the fine, moral rigour that had carried her through her former ordeal, it became easy now to do right under all or any circumstances, however adverse. If she had failed then, she certainly would have failed now. That she had succeeded then made it all the easier to succeed now. Dimly Lloyd commenced to understand that the mastery of self, the steady, firm control of natural, intuitive impulses, selfish because natural, was a progression. Each victory not only gained the immediate end in view, but braced the mind and increased the force of will for the next shock, the next struggle. She had imagined and had told herself that Bennett had broken her strength for good. But was it really so? Had not defeat in that case been only temporary? Was she not slowly getting back her strength by an unflinching adherence to the simple, fundamental principles of right, and duty, and truth? Was not the struggle with one’s self the greatest fight of all, greater, far greater, than had been the conflict between Bennett’s will and her own?
Within the hour she found herself once again on her way to Medford. How much had happened, through what changes had she passed since the occasion of her first journey; and Bennett, how he, too, changed; how different he had come to stand in her estimation! Once the thought that he was in danger had been a constant terror to her, and haunted her days and lurked at her side through many a waking night. Was it possible that now his life or death was no more to her than that of any of her former patients? She could not say; she avoided answering the question. Certainly her heart beat no faster at this moment to know that he was in the grip of a perilous disease. She told herself that her Bennett was dead already; that she was coming back to Medford not to care for and watch over the individual, but to combat the disease.
When she arrived at the doctor’s house in Medford, a strange-looking man opened the door for her, and asked immediately if she was the nurse.
“Yes,” said Lloyd, “I am. Is Dr. Pitts here?”
“Upstairs in his room,” answered the other in a whisper, closing the front door with infinite softness. “He won’t let me go in, the doctor won’t; I — I ain’t seen him in four days. Ask the doctor if I can’t just have a blink at him — just a little blink through the crack of the door. Just think, Miss, I ain’t seen him in four days! Just think of that! And look here, they ain’t giving him enough to eat — nothing but milk and chicken soup with rice in it. He never did like rice; that’s no kind of rations for a sick man. I fixed him up a bit of duff yesterday, what he used to like so much aboard ship, and Pitts wouldn’t let him have it. He regularly laughed in my face.”
Lloyd sent word to the doctor by the housekeeper that she had arrived, and on going up found Pitts waiting for her at the door of the sick-room, not that which had been occupied by Ferriss, but another — the guest-chamber of the house, situated toward the rear of the building.
“Why, I expected Miss Douglass!” exclaimed the doctor in a low voice as soon as his eye fell upon Lloyd. “Any one of them but you!”
“I had to come,” Lloyd answered quietly, flushing hotly for all that. “It was my turn, and it was not right for me to stay away.”
The doctor hesitated an instant, and then dismissed the subject, putting his chin in the air as if to say that, after all, it was not his affair.
“Well,” he said, “it’s queer to see how things will tangle themselves sometimes. I don’t know whether he took this thing from Ferriss or not. Both of them were exposed to the same conditions when their expedition went to pieces and they were taken off by the whaling ships — bad water, weakened constitution, not much power of resistance; in prime condition for the bacillus, and the same cause might have produced the same effect; at any rate, he’s in a bad way.”
“Is he — very bad?” asked Lloyd.
“Well, he’s not the hang-on sort that Mr. Ferriss was; nothing undecided about Captain Ward Bennett; when he’s sick, he’s sick; rushes right at it like a blind bull. He’s as bad now as Mr. Ferriss was in his third week.”
“Do you think he will recognise me?”
The doctor shook his head. “No; delirious most of the time — of course — regulation thing. If we don’t keep the fever down he’ll go out sure. That’s the danger in his case. Look at him yourself; here he is. The devil! The animal is sitting up again.”
As Lloyd entered the room she saw Bennett sitting bolt upright in his bed, staring straight before him, his small eyes, with their deforming cast, open to their fullest extent, the fingers of his shrunken, bony hands dancing nervously on the coverlet. A week’s growth of stubble blackened the lower part of his face. Without a moment’s pause he mumbled and muttered with astonishing rapidity, but for the most part the words were undistinguishable. It was, indeed, not the same Bennett, Lloyd had last seen. The great body was collapsed upon itself; the skin of the face was like dry, brown parchment, and behind it the big, massive bones stood out in great knobs and ridges. It needed but a glance to know that here was a man dangerously near to his death. While Lloyd was removing her hat and preparing herself for her work the doctor got Bennett upon his back again and replenished the ice-pack about his head.
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br /> “Not much strength left in our friend now,” he murmured.
“How long has he been like this?” asked Lloyd as she arranged the contents of her nurse’s bag on a table near the window.
“Pretty close to eight hours now. He was conscious yesterday morning, however, for a little while, and wanted to know what his chances were.”
They were neither good nor many; the strength once so formidable was ebbing away like a refluent tide, and that with ominous swiftness. Stimulate the life as the doctor would, strive against the enemy’s advance as Lloyd might, Bennett continued to sink.
“The devil of it is,” muttered the doctor, “that he don’t seem to care. He had as soon give up as not. It’s hard to save a patient that don’t want to save himself. If he’d fight for his life as he did in the arctic, we could pull him through yet. Otherwise—” he shrugged his shoulders almost helplessly.
The next night toward nine o’clock Lloyd took the doctor’s place at their patient’s bedside, and Pitts, without taking off his clothes, stretched himself out upon the sofa in one of the rooms on the lower floor of the house, with the understanding that the nurse was to call him in case of any change.
But as the doctor was groping his way down the darkened stairway he stumbled against Adler and Kamiska. Adler was sitting on one of the steps, and the dog was on her haunches close at his side; the two were huddled together there in the dark, broad awake, shoulder to shoulder, waiting, watching, and listening for the faint sounds that came at long intervals from the direction of the room where Bennett lay.
As the physician passed him Adler stood up and saluted:
“Is he doing any better now, sir?” he whispered.
“Nothing new,” returned the other brusquely. “He may get well in three weeks’ time or he may die before midnight; so there you are. You know as much about it as I do. Damn that dog!”
He trod upon Kamiska, who forbore heroically to yelp, and went on his way. Adler resumed his place on the stairs, sitting down gingerly, so that the boards should not creak under his weight. He took Kamiska’s head between his hands and rocked himself gently to and fro.
“What are we going to do, little dog?” he whispered. “What are we going to do if — if our captain should — if he shouldn’t—” he had no words to finish. Kamiska took her place again by his side, and the two resumed their vigil.
Meanwhile, not fifty feet away, a low voice, monotonous and rapid, was keeping up a continuous, murmuring flow of words.
“That’s well your number two sledge. All hands on the McClintock now. You’ve got to do it, men. Forward, get forward, get forward; get on to the south, always to the south — south, south, south!... There, there’s the ice again. That’s the biggest ridge yet. At it now! Smash through; I’ll break you yet; believe me, I will! There, we broke it! I knew you could, men. I’ll pull you through. Now, then, h’up your other sledge. Forward! There will be double rations to-night all round — no — half-rations, quarter-rations.... No, three-fifths of an ounce of dog-meat and a spoonful of alcohol — that’s all; that’s all, men. Pretty cold night, this — minus thirty-eight. Only a quarter of a mile covered to-day. Everybody suffering in their feet, and so weak — and starving — and freezing.” All at once the voice became a wail. “My God! is it never going to end?... Sh — h, steady, what was that? Who whimpered? Was that Ward Bennett? No whimpering, whatever comes. Stick it out like men, anyway. Fight it out till we drop, but no whimpering.... Who said there were steam whalers off the floe? That’s a lie! Forward, forward, get forward to the south — no, not the south; to the north, to the north! We’ll reach it, we’ll succeed; we’re most there, men; come on, come on! I tell you this time we’ll reach it; one more effort, men! We’re most there! What’s the latitude? Eighty-five-twenty — eighty-six.” The voice began to grow louder: “Come on, men; we’re most there! Eighty-seven — eighty-eight — eighty-nine-twenty-five!” He rose to a sitting position. “Eighty-nine-thirty — eighty-nine-forty-five.” Suddenly the voice rose to a shout. “Ninety degrees! By God, it’s the Pole!”
The voice died away to indistinct mutterings.
Lloyd was at the bedside by now, and quietly pressed Bennett down upon his back. But as she did so a thrill of infinite pity and compassion quivered through her. She had forced him down so easily. He was so pitifully weak. Woman though she was, she could, with one small hand upon his breast, control this man who at one time had been of such colossal strength — such vast physical force.
Suddenly Bennett began again. “Where’s Ferriss? Where’s Richard Ferriss? Where’s the chief engineer of the Freja Arctic Exploring Expedition?”
He fell silent again, and but for the twitching, dancing hands, lay quiet. Then he cried:
“Attention to the roll-call!”
Rapidly and in a low voice he began calling off the muster of the Freja’s men and officers, giving the answers himself.
“Adler — here; Blair — here; Dahl — here; Fishbaugh — here; Hawes — here; McPherson — here; Muck Tu — here; Woodward — here; Captain Ward Bennett — here; Dr. Sheridan Dennison — here; Chief Engineer Richard Ferriss—” no answer. Bennett waited for a moment, then repeated the name, “Chief Engineer Richard Ferriss—” Again he was silent; but after a few seconds he called aloud in agony of anxiety, “Chief Engineer Richard Ferriss, answer to the roll-call!”
Then once more he began; his disordered wits calling to mind a different order of things:
“Adler — here; Blair — died from exhaustion at Point Kane; Dahl — here; Fishbaugh — starved to death on the march to Kolyuchin Bay; Hawes — died of arctic fever at Cape Kammeni; McPherson — unable to keep up, and abandoned at ninth camp; Muck Tu — here; Woodward — died from starvation at twelfth camp; Dr. Sheridan Dennison — frozen to death at Kolyuchin Bay; Chief Engineer Richard Ferriss — died by the act of his best friend, Captain Ward Bennett!” Again and again Bennett repeated this phrase, calling: “Richard Ferriss! Richard Ferriss!” and immediately adding in a broken voice: “Died by the act of his best friend, Captain Ward Bennett.” Or at times it was only the absence of Ferriss that seemed to torture him. He would call the roll, answering “here” to each name until he reached Ferriss; then he would not respond, but instead would cry aloud over and over again, in accents of the bitterest grief, “Richard Ferriss, answer to the roll-call; Richard Ferriss, answer to the roll-call—” Then suddenly, with a feeble, quavering cry, “For God’s sake, Dick, answer to the roll-call!”
The hours passed. Ten o’clock struck, then eleven. At midnight Lloyd took the temperature (which had decreased considerably) and the pulse, and refilled the ice-pack about the head. Bennett was still muttering in the throes of delirium, still calling for Ferriss, imploring him to answer to the roll-call; or repeating the words: “Dick Ferriss, chief engineer — died at the hands of his best friend, Ward Bennett,” in tones so pitiful, so heart-broken that more than once Lloyd felt the tears running down her cheeks.
“Richard Ferriss, Richard Ferriss, answer to the roll-call; Dick, old man, won’t you answer, won’t you answer, old chap, when I call you? Won’t you come back and say ‘It’s all right?’ Ferriss, Ferriss, answer to my roll-call. ... Died at the hands of his best friend. ... At Kolyuchin Bay. ... Killed, and I did it. ... Forward, men; you’ve got to do it; snowing to-day and all the ice in motion. ... H’up y’r other sledge. Come on with y’r number four; more pressure-ridges, I’ll break you yet! Come on with y’r number four! ... Lloyd Searight, what are you doing in this room?”
On the instant the voice had changed from confused mutterings to distinct, clear-cut words. The transition was so sudden that Lloyd, at the moment busy at her nurse’s bag, her back to the bed, wheeled sharply about to find Bennett sitting bolt upright, looking straight at her with intelligent, wide-open eyes. Lloyd’s heart for an instant stood still, almost in terror. This sudden leap back from the darkness of delirium into the daylight of consciousness was almost like a rising from t
he dead, ghost-like, appalling. She caught her breath, trembling in spite of her best efforts, and for an instant leaned a hand upon the table behind her.
But on Bennett’s face, ghastly, ravaged by disease, with its vast, protruding jaw, its narrow contracted forehead and unkempt growth of beard, the dawning of intelligence and surprise swiftly gave place to an expression of terrible anxiety and apprehension.
“What are you doing here, Lloyd?” he cried.
“Hush!” she answered quickly as she came forward; “above all things you must not sit up; lie down again and don’t talk. You are very sick.”
“I know, I know,” he answered feebly. “I know what it is. But you must leave here. It’s a terrible risk every moment you stay in this room. I want you to go. You understand — at once! Call the doctor. Don’t come near the bed,” he went on excitedly, struggling to keep himself from sinking back upon the pillows. His breath was coming quick; his eyes were flashing. All the poor, shattered senses were aroused and quivering with excitement and dread.
“It will kill you to stay here,” he continued, almost breathless. “Out of this room!” he commanded. “Out of this house! It is mine now; I’m the master here — do you understand? Don’t!” he exclaimed as Lloyd put her hands upon his shoulders to force him to lie down again.
“Don’t, don’t touch me! Stand away from me!”
He tried to draw back from her in the bed. Then suddenly he made a great effort to rise, resisting her efforts.
“I shall put you out, then,” he declared, struggling against Lloyd’s clasp upon his shoulders, catching at her wrists. His excitement was so intense, his fervour so great that it could almost be said he touched the edge of his delirium again.
“Do you hear, do you hear? Out of this room!”
“No,” said Lloyd calmly; “you must be quiet; you must try to go to sleep. This time you cannot make me leave.”
He caught her by one arm, and, bracing himself with the other against the headboard of the bed, thrust her back from him with all his might.