by Frank Norris
“Keep away from me, I tell you; keep back! You shall do as I say! I have always carried my point, and I shall not fail now. Believe me, I shall not. You — you—” he panted as he struggled with her, ashamed of his weakness, humiliated beyond words that she should know it. “I — you shall — you will compel me to use force. Don’t let it come to that.”
Calmly Lloyd took both his wrists in the strong, quiet clasp of one palm, and while she supported his shoulders with her other arm, laid him down among the pillows again as though he had been a child.
“I’m — I’m a bit weak and trembly just now,” he admitted, panting with his exertion; “but, Lloyd, listen. I know how you must dislike me now, but will you please go — go, go at once!”
“No.”
What a strange spinning of the wheel of fate was here! In so short a time had their mutual positions been reversed. Now it was she who was strong and he who was weak. It was she who conquered and he who was subdued. It was she who triumphed and he who was humiliated. It was he who implored and she who denied. It was her will and no longer his that must issue victorious from the struggle.
And how complete now was Bennett’s defeat! The very contingency he had fought so desperately to avert and for which he had sacrificed Ferriss — Lloyd’s care of so perilous a disease — behold! the mysterious turn of the wheel had brought it about, and now he was powerless to resist.
“Oh!” he cried, “have I not enough upon my mind already — Ferriss and his death? Are you going to make me imperil your life too, and after I have tried so hard? You must not stay here.”
“I shall stay,” she answered.
“I order you to go. This is my house. Send the doctor here. Where’s Adler?” Suddenly he fainted.
An hour or two later, in the gray of the morning, at a time when Bennett was sleeping quietly under the influence of opiates, Lloyd found herself sitting at the window in front of the small table there, her head resting on her hand, thoughtful, absorbed, and watching with but half-seeing eyes the dawn growing pink over the tops of the apple-trees in the orchard near by.
The window was open just wide enough for the proper ventilation of the room. For a long time she sat thus without moving, only from time to time smoothing back the heavy, bronze-red hair from her temples and ears. By degrees the thinking faculties of her brain, as it were, a myriad of delicate interlacing wheels, slowly decreased in the rapidity and intensity of their functions. She began to feel instead of to think. As the activity of her mind lapsed to a certain pleasant numbness, a vague, formless, nameless emotion seemed to be welling to the surface. It was no longer a question of the brain. What then? Was it the heart? She gave no name to this new emotion; it was too confused as yet, too undefinable. A certain great sweetness seemed to be coming upon her, but she could not say whether she was infinitely sad or supremely happy; a smile was on her lips, and yet the tears began to brim in her dull-blue eyes.
She felt as if some long, fierce struggle, or series of struggles, were at last accomplished; as if for a long period of time she had been involved in the maze and tortuous passages of some gloomy cavern, but at length, thence issuing, had again beheld the stars. A great tenderness, a certain tremulous joy in all things that were true and good and right, grew big and strong within her; the delight in living returned to her. The dawn was brightening and flushing over all the world, and colour, light, and warmth were coming back into her life. The night had been still and mild, but now the first breath of the morning breeze stirred in the trees, in the grass, in the flowers, and the thick, dew-drenched bushes along the roadside, and a delicious aroma of fields and woods and gardens came to her. The sweetness of life and the sweetness of those things better than life and more enduring, the things that do not fail, nor cease, nor vanish away, suddenly entered into that room and descended upon her almost in the sense of a benediction, a visitation, something mystic and miraculous. It was a moment to hope all things, to believe all things, to endure all things.
She caught her breath, listening — for what she did not know. Once again, just as it had been in that other dawn, in that other room where the Enemy had been conquered, the sense of some great happiness was in the air, was coming to her swiftly. But now the greater Enemy had been outfought, the morning of a greater day was breaking and spreading, and the greatest happiness in the world was preparing for her. How it had happened she did not know. Now was not the moment to think, to reason, to reflect. It seemed as though the rushing of wings was all about her, as though a light brighter than the day was just about to break upon her sight, as though a music divinely beautiful was just about to burst upon her ear. But the light was not for her eye; the music was not for her ear. The radiance and the harmony came from herself, from within her. The intellect was numb. Only the heart was alive on this wonderful midsummer’s morning, and it was in her heart that the radiance shone and the harmony vibrated. Back in his place once more, high on his throne, the love that she believed had forever departed from her sat exalted and triumphant, singing to the cadence of that unheard music, shining and magnificent in the glory of that new-dawned light.
Would Bennett live? Suddenly that question leaped up in her mind and stood in the eye of her imagination, terrible, menacing — a hideous, grim spectre, before which Lloyd quailed with failing heart and breath. The light, the almost divine radiance that had burst upon her, nevertheless threw a dreadful shadow before it. Beneath the music she heard the growl of the thunder. Her new-found happiness was not without its accompanying dismay. Love had not returned to her heart alone. With it had returned the old Enemy she had once believed had left her forever. Now it had come back. As before, it lurked and leered at her from dark corners. It crept to her side, to her back, ready to leap, ready to strike, to clutch at her throat with cold fingers and bear her to the earth, rending her heart with a grief she told herself she could not endure and live. She loved him now with all her mind and might; how could it ever have been otherwise? He belonged to her — and she? Why, she only lived with his life; she seemed so bound to him as to be part of his very self. Literally, she could not understand how it would be possible for her to live if he should die. It seemed to her that with his death some mysterious element of her life, something vital and fundamental, for which there was no name, would disintegrate upon the instant and leave her without the strength necessary for further existence. But this would, however, be a relief. The prospect of the years after his death, the fearful loneliness of life without him, was a horror before which she veritably believed her reason itself must collapse.
“Lloyd.”
Bennett was awake again and watching her with feverish anxiety from where he lay among the pillows. “Lloyd,” he repeated, the voice once so deep and powerful quavering pitifully. “I was wrong. I don’t want you to go. Don’t leave me.”
In an instant Lloyd was at his side, kneeling by the bed. She caught one of the great, gnarled hands, seamed and corded and burning with the fever. “Never, never, dearest; never so long as I shall live.”
IX.
When Adler heard Bennett’s uncertain steps upon the stairs and the sound of Lloyd’s voice speaking to him and urging that there was no hurry, and that he was to take but one step at a time, he wheeled swiftly about from the windows of the glass-room, where he had been watching the October breeze stirring the crimson and yellow leaves in the orchard, and drew back his master’s chair from the breakfast table and stood behind it expectantly, his eyes watching the door.
Lloyd held back the door, and Bennett came in, leaning heavily on Dr. Pitts’s shoulder. Adler stiffened upon the instant as if in answer to some unheard bugle-call, and when Bennett had taken his seat, pushed his chair gently to the table and unfolded his napkin with a flourish as though giving a banner to the wind. Pitts almost immediately left the room, but Lloyd remained supervising Bennett’s breakfast, pouring his milk, buttering his toast, and opening his eggs.
“Coffee?” suddenly inquired Bennett.
Lloyd shook her head.
“Not for another week.”
Bennett looked with grim disfavour upon the glass of milk that Lloyd had placed at his elbow.
“Such slop!” he growled. “Why not a little sugar and warm water, and be done with it? Lloyd, I can’t drink this stuff any more. Why, it’s warm yet!” he exclaimed aggrievedly and with deep disgust, abruptly setting down the glass.
“Why, of course it is,” she answered; “we brought the cow here especially for you, and the boy has just done milking her — and it’s not slop.”
“Slop! slop!” declared Bennett. He picked up the glass again and looked at her over the rim.
“I’ll drink this stuff this one more time to please you,” he said. “But I promise you this will be the last time. You needn’t ask me again. I have drunk enough milk the past three weeks to support a foundling hospital for a year.”
Invariably, since the period of his convalescence began, Bennett made this scene over his hourly glass of milk, and invariably it ended by his gulping it down at nearly a single swallow.
Adler brought in the mail and the morning paper. Three letters had come for Lloyd, and for Bennett a small volume on “Recent Arctic Research and Exploration,” sent by his publisher with a note to the effect that, as the latest authority on the subject, Bennett was sure to find it of great interest. In an appendix, inserted after the body of the book had been made up, the Freja expedition and his own work were briefly described. Lloyd put her letters aside, and, unfolding the paper, said, “I’ll read it while you eat your breakfast. Have you everything you want? Did you drink your milk — all of it?” But out of the corner of her eye she noted that Adler was chuckling behind the tray that he held to his face, and with growing suspicion she leaned forward and peered about among the breakfast things. Bennett had hidden his glass behind the toast-rack.
“And it’s only two-thirds empty,” she declared. “Ward, why will you be such a boy?”
“Oh, well,” he grumbled, and without more ado drank off the balance.
“Now I’ll read to you if you have everything you want. Adler, I think you can open one of those windows; it’s so warm out of doors.”
While he ate his breakfast of toast, milk, and eggs Lloyd skimmed through the paper, reading aloud everything she thought would be of interest to him. Then, after a moment, her eye was caught and held by a half-column article expanded from an Associated Press despatch.
“Oh!” she cried, “listen to this!” and continued: “‘Word has been received at this place of the safe arrival of the arctic steamship Curlew at Tasiusak, on the Greenland coast, bearing eighteen members of the Duane-Parsons expedition. Captain Duane reports all well and an uneventful voyage. It is his intention to pass the winter at Tasiusak, collecting dogs and also Esquimau sledges, which he believes superior to European manufacture for work in rubble-ice, and to push on with the Curlew in the spring as soon as Smith Sound shall be navigable. This may be later than Captain Duane supposes, as the whalers who have been working in the sound during the past months bring back news of an unusually early winter and extraordinary quantities of pack-ice both in the sound itself and in Kane Basin. This means a proportionately late open season next year, and the Curlew’s departure from Tasiusak may be considerably later than anticipated. It is considered by the best arctic experts an unfortunate circumstance that Captain Duane elected to winter south of Cape Sabine, as the condition of the ice in Smith Sound can never be relied upon nor foretold. Should the entrance to the sound still be encumbered with ice as late as July, which is by no means impossible, Captain Duane will be obliged to spend another winter at Tasiusak or Upernvick, consuming alike his store of provisions and the patience of his men.’”
There was a silence when Lloyd finished reading. Bennett chipped at the end of his second egg.
“Well?” she said at length.
“Well,” returned Bennett, “what’s all that to me?”
“It’s your work,” she answered almost vehemently.
“No, indeed. It’s Duane’s work.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let him try now.”
“And you?” exclaimed Lloyd, looking intently at him.
“My dear girl, I had my chance and failed. Now—” he raised a shoulder indifferently— “now, I don’t care much about it. I’ve lost interest.”
“I don’t believe you,” she cried energetically; “you of all men.” Behind Bennett’s chair she had a momentary glimpse of Adler, who had tucked his tray under his arm and was silently applauding in elaborate pantomime. She saw his lips form the words “That’s it; that’s right. Go right ahead.”
“Besides, I have my book to do, and, besides that, I’m an invalid — an invalid who drinks slop.”
“And you intend to give it all up — your career?”
“Well — if I should, what then?” Suddenly he turned to her abruptly. “I should not think you would want me to go again. Do you urge me to go?”
Lloyd made a sudden little gasp, and her hand involuntarily closed upon his as it rested near her on the table.
“Oh, no!” she cried. “Oh, no, I don’t! You are right. It’s not your work now.”
“Well, then,” muttered Bennett as though the question was forever settled.
Lloyd turned to her mail, and one after another slit the envelopes, woman fashion, with a shell hairpin. But while she was glancing over the contents of her letters Bennett began to stir uneasily in his place. From time to time he stopped eating and shot a glance at Lloyd from under his frown, noting the crisp, white texture of her gown and waist, the white scarf with its high, tight bands about the neck, the tiny, golden buttons in her cuffs, the sombre, ruddy glow of her cheeks, her dull-blue eyes, and the piles and coils of her bronze-red hair. Then, abruptly, he said:
“Adler, you can go.”
Adler saluted and withdrew.
“Whom are your letters from?” Bennett demanded by way of a beginning.
Lloyd replaced the hairpin in her hair, answering:
“From Dr. Street, from Louise Douglass, and from — Mr. Campbell.”
“Hum! well, what do they say? Dr. Street and — Louise Douglass?”
“Dr. Street asks me to take a very important surgical case as soon as I get through here, ‘one of the most important and delicate, as well as one of the most interesting, operations in his professional experience.’ Those are his words. Louise writes four pages, but she says nothing; just chatters.”
“And Campbell?” Bennett indicated with his chin the third rather voluminous letter at Lloyd’s elbow. “He seems to have written rather more than four pages. What does he say? Does he ‘chatter’ too?”
Lloyd smoothed back her hair from one temple.
“H’m — no. He says — something. But never mind what he says. Ward, I must be going back to the City. You don’t need a nurse any more.”
“What’s that?” Bennett’s frown gathered on the instant, and with a sharp movement of the head that was habitual to him he brought his one good eye to bear upon her.
Lloyd repeated her statement, answering his remonstrance and expostulation with:
“You are almost perfectly well, and it would not be at all — discreet for me to stay here an hour longer than absolutely necessary. I shall go back to-morrow or next day.”
“But, I tell you, I am still very sick. I’m a poor, miserable, shattered wreck.”
He made a great show of coughing in hollow, lamentable tones.
“Listen to that, and last night I had a high fever, and this morning I had a queer sort of pain about here—” he vaguely indicated the region of his chest. “I think I am about to have a relapse.”
“Nonsense! You can’t frighten me at all.”
“Oh, well,” he answered easily, “I shall go with you — that is all. I suppose you want to see me venture out in such raw, bleak weather as this — with my weak lungs.”
“Your weak lungs? How long since?�
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“Well, I — I’ve sometimes thought my lungs were not very strong.”
“Why, dear me, you poor thing; I suppose the climate at Kolyuchin Bay was a trifle too bracing—”
“What does Campbell say?”
“ — and the diet too rich for your blood—”
“What does Campbell say?”
“ — and perhaps you did overexert—”
“Lloyd Searight, what does Mr. Campbell say in that—”
“He asks me to marry him.”
“To mum — mar — marry him? Well, damn his impudence!”
“Mr. Campbell is an eminently respectable and worthy gentleman.”
“Oh, well, I don’t care. Go! Go, marry Mr. Campbell. Be happy. I forgive you both. Go, leave me to die alone.”
“Sir, I will go. Forget that you ever knew an unhappy wom — female, whose only fault was that she loved you.”
“Go! and sometimes think of me far away on the billow and drop a silent tear — I say, how are you going to answer Campbell’s letter?”
“Just one word— ‘Come.’”
“Lloyd, be serious. This is no joke.”
“Joke!” she repeated hollowly. “It is, indeed, a sorry joke. Ah! had I but loved with a girlish love, it would have been better for me.”
Then suddenly she caught him about the neck with both her arms, and kissed him on the cheek and on the lips, a little quiver running through her to her finger-tips, her mood changing abruptly to a deep, sweet earnestness.
“Oh, Ward, Ward!” she cried, “all our unhappiness and all our sorrow and trials and anxiety and cruel suspense are over now, and now we really have each other and love each other, dear, and all the years to come are only going to bring happiness to us, and draw us closer and nearer to each other.”
“But here’s a point, Lloyd,” said Bennett after a few moments and when they had returned to coherent speech; “how about your work? You talk about my career; what about yours? We are to be married, but I know just how you have loved your work. It will be a hard wrench for you if you give that up. I am not sure that I should ask it of you. This letter of Street’s, now. I know just how eager you must be to take charge of such operations — such important cases as he mentions. It would be very selfish of me to ask you to give up your work. It’s your life-work, your profession, your career.”