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?
Swiftly she turned from him and clasped her hands before her eyes and sank down into the chair she had quitted, bowing her head upon her arms, hiding her face, shutting herself from the light of day, quivering and thrilling with an agony of shame and with an utter, an abject self-contempt that was beyond all power of expression. But the instant she felt Bennett's touch upon her shoulder she sprang up as if a knife had pierced her, and shrank from him, turning her head away, her hand, palm outward, before her eyes.
"Oh, please!" she begged piteously, almost inarticulately in the stress of her emotion, "don't—if you are a man—don't take advantage—please, please don't touch me. Let me go away."
She was talking to deaf ears. In two steps Bennett had reached her side and had taken her in his arms. Lloyd could not resist. Her vigour of body as well as of mind was crushed and broken and beaten down; and why was it that in spite of her shame, that in spite of her unutterable self-reproach, the very touch of her cheek upon his shoulder was a comfort? Why was it that to feel herself carried away in the rush of this harsh, impetuous, masculine power was a happiness? Why was it that to know that her prided fortitude and hitherto unshaken power were being overwhelmed and broken with a brutal, ruthless strength was an exultation and a glory? Why was it that she who but a moment before quailed from his lightest touch now put her arms about his neck and clung to him with a sense of protection and of refuge, the need of which she had always and until that very moment disdained?
"Why should you be sorry because you spoke?" said Bennett. "I knew that you loved me and you knew that I loved you. What does it matter if you said it or did not say it? We know each other, you and I. We understand. You knew that I loved you. You think that I have been strong and determined, and have done the things I set out to do; what I am is what you made me. What I have done I have done because I thought you would approve. Do you think I would have come back if I had not known that I was coming back to you?" Suddenly an impatient exclamation escaped him, and his clasp about her tightened. "Oh! words—the mere things that one can say, seem so pitiful, so miserably inadequate. Don't you know, can't you feel what you are to me? Tell me, do you think I love you?"
But she could not bear to meet his glance just yet. Her eyes were closed, and she could only nod her head.
But Bennett took her head in both his hands and turned her face to his. Even yet she kept her eyes closed.
"Lloyd," he said, and his voice was almost a command; "Lloyd, look at me. Do you love me?"
She drew a deep breath. Then her sweet dull-blue eyes opened, and through the tears that brimmed them and wet her lashes she looked at him and met his glance fearlessly and almost proudly, and her voice trembled and vibrated with an infinite tenderness as she answered:
"I do love you, Ward; love you with all my heart."
Then, after a pause, she said, drawing a little from him and resting a hand upon either shoulder:
"But listen, dear; we must not think of ourselves now. We must think of him, so sick and weak and helpless. This is a terrible moment in our lives. I don't know why it has come to us. I don't know why it should all have happened as it has this morning. Just a few moments ago I was angry as I never was in my life before—and at you—and now it seems to me that I never was so happy; I don't know myself any more. Everything is confused; all we can do is to hold to what we know is right and trust that everything will be well in the end. It is a crisis, isn't it? And all our lives and all our happiness depend upon how we meet it. I am all different now. I am not the woman I was a half-hour ago. You must be brave for me now, and you must be strong for me and help me to do my duty. We must live up to the best that is in us and do what we think is right, no matter what risks we run, no matter what the consequences are. I would not have asked you to help me before—before what has happened—but now I need your help. You have said I helped you to be brave; help me to be brave now, and to do what I know is right."
But Bennett was still blind. If she had been dear to him before, how doubly so had she become since she had confessed her love for him! Ferriss was forgotten, ignored. He could not let her go, he could not let her run the slightest risk. Was he to take any chance of losing her now? He shook his head.
"Ward!" she exclaimed with deep and serious earnestness. "If you do not wish me to risk my life by going to my post, be careful, oh, be very careful, that you do not risk something that is more to us both than life itself, by keeping me from it. Do you think I could love you so deeply and so truly as I do if I had not kept my standards high; if I had not believed in the things that were better than life, and stronger than death, and dearer to me than even love itself? There are some things I cannot do: I cannot be false, I cannot be cowardly, I cannot shirk my duty. Now I am helpless in your hands. You have conquered, and you can do with me as you choose. But if you make me do what is false, and what is cowardly, and what is dishonourable; if you stand between me and what I know is my duty, how can I love you, how can I love you?"
Persistently, perversely, Bennett stopped his ears to every consideration, to every argument. She wished to hazard her life. That was all he understood.
"No, Lloyd," he answered, "you must not do it."
"—and I want to love you," she went on, as though she had not heard. "I want you to be everything to me. I have trusted you so long—had faith in you so long, I don't want to think of you as the man who failed me when I most needed his help, who made me do the thing that was contemptible and unworthy. Believe me," she went on with sudden energy, "you will kill my love for you if you persist."
But before Bennett could answer there was a cry.
"It is the servant," exclaimed Lloyd quickly. "She has been watching—there in the room with him."
"Nurse—Miss Searight," came the cry, "quick—there is something wrong—I don't know—oh, hurry!"
"Do you hear?" cried Lloyd. "It is the crisis—he may be dying. Oh, Ward, it is the man you love! We can save him." She stamped her foot in the frenzy of her emotion, her hands twisting together. "I will go. I forbid you to keep—to hinder—to—to, oh, what is to become of us? If you love me, if you love him—Ward, will you let me go?"
Bennett put his hands over his ears, his eyes closed. In the horror of that moment, when he realised that no matter how he might desire it he could not waver in his resolution, it seemed to him that his reason must give way. But he set his back to the door, his hand gripped tight upon the knob, and through his set teeth his answer came as before:
"No."
"Nurse—Miss Searight, where are you? Hurry, oh, hurry!"
"Will you let me go?"
"No."
Lloyd caught at his hand, shut so desperately upon the knob, striving to loosen his clasp. She hardly knew what she was doing; she threw her arms about his neck, imploring, commanding, now submissive, now imperious, her voice now vibrating with anger, now trembling with passionate entreaty.
"You are not only killing him, you are killing my love for you; will you let me go—the love that is so dear to me? Let me love you, Ward; listen to me; don't make me hate you; let me love you, dear—"
"Hurry, oh, hurry!"
"Let me love you; let him live. I want to love you. It's the best happiness in my life. Let me be happy. Can't you see what this moment is to mean for us? It is our happiness or wretchedness forever. Will you let me go?"
"No."
"For the last time, Ward, listen! It is my love for you and his life. Don't crush us both—yes, and yourself. You who can, who are so powerful, don't trample all our happiness under foot."
"Hurry, hurry; oh, will nobody come to help?"
"Will you let me go?"
"No."
Her strength seemed all at once to leave her. All the fabric of her character, so mercilessly assaulted, appeared in that moment to reel, topple, and go crashing to its wreck. She was shattered, broken, humbled, and beaten down to the dust. Her pride was gone, her faith in herself was gone, her fine, strong energy was gone. The pity of it, the grief of it; all that she held dearest; her fine and confident steadfastness; the great love that had brought such happiness into her life—that had been her inspiration, all torn from her and tossed aside like chaff. And her patient—Ferriss, the man who loved her, who had undergone such suffering, such hardship, who trusted her and whom it was her duty to nurse back to life and health—if he should perish for want of her care, then what infinite sorrow, then what endless remorse, then what long agony of unavailing regret! Her world, her universe grew dark to her; she was driven from her firm stand. She was lost, she was whirled away—away with the storm, landmarks obliterated, lights gone; away with the storm; out into the darkness, out into the void, out into the waste places and wilderness and trackless desolation.
"Hurry, oh, hurry!"
It was too late. She had failed; the mistake had been made, the question had been decided. That insensate, bestial determination, iron-hearted, iron-strong, had beaten down opposition, had carried its point. Life and love had been crushed beneath its trampling without pity, without hesitation. The tragedy of the hour was done; the tragedy of the long years to come was just beginning.
Lloyd sank down in the chair before the table, and the head that she had held so high bowed down upon her folded arms. The violence of her grief shook her from head to foot like a dry, light reed. Her heart seemed literally to be breaking. She must set her teeth with all her strength to keep from groaning aloud, from crying out in her hopeless sorrow her impotent shame and despair.
Once more came the cry for help. Then the house fell silent. The minutes passed. But for Lloyd's stifled grief there was no sound. Bennett—leaning heavily against the door, his great shoulders stooping and bent, his face ashen, his eyes fixed—did not move. He did not speak to Lloyd. There was no word of comfort he could address to her—that would have seemed the last mockery. He had prevailed, as he knew he should, as he knew he must, when once his resolve was taken. The force that, once it was unleashed, was beyond him to control, had accomplished its purpose. His will remained unbroken; but at what cost? However, that was for future consideration. The costs? Had he not his whole life before him in which to count them? The present moment still called upon him to act. He looked at his watch.
The next quarter of an hour was all a confusion to him. Its incidents refused to define themselves upon his memory when afterward he tried to recall them. He could remember, however, that when he helped Lloyd into the carryall that was to take her to the depot in the village she had shrunk from his touch and had drawn away from him as if from a criminal—a murderer. He placed her satchel on the front seat with the driver, and got up beside the driver himself. She had drawn her veil over her face, and during the drive sat silent and motionless.
"Can you make it?" asked Bennett of the driver, watch in hand. The time was of the shortest, but the driver put the whip to his horses and, at a run, they reached the railway station a few moments ahead of time. Bennett told the driver to wait, and while Lloyd remained in her place he bought her ticket for the City. Then he went to the telegraph office and sent a peremptory despatch to the house on Calumet Square.
A few moments later the train had come and gone, an abrupt eruption of roaring iron and shrieking steam. Bennett was left on the platform alone, watching it lessen to a smoky blur where the rails converged toward the horizon. For an instant he stood watching, watching a resistless, iron-hearted force whirling her away, out of his reach, out of his life. Then he shook himself, turning sharply about.
"Back to the doctor's house, now," he commanded the driver; "on the run, you understand."
But the other protested. His horses were all but exhausted. Twice they had covered that distance at top speed and under the whip. He refused to return. Bennett took the young man by the arm and lifted him from his seat to the ground. Then he sprang to his place and lashed the horses to a gallop.
When he arrived at Dr. Pitts's house he did not stop to tie the horses, but threw the reins over their backs and entered the front hall, out of breath and panting. But the doctor, during Bennett's absence, had returned, and it was he who met him half-way up the stairs.
"How is he?" demanded Bennett. "I have sent for another nurse; she will be out here on the next train. I wired from the station."
"The only objection to that," answered the doctor, looking fixedly at him, "is that it is not necessary. Mr. Ferriss has just died."
VII
Throughout her ride from Medford to the City it was impossible for Lloyd, so great was the confusion in her mind, to think connectedly. She had been so fiercely shocked, so violently shattered and weakened, that for a time she lacked the power and even the desire to collect and to concentrate her scattering thoughts. For the time being she felt, but only dimly, that a great blow had fallen, that a great calamity had overwhelmed her, but so extraordinary was the condition of her mind that more than once she found herself calmly awaiting the inevitable moment when the full extent of the catastrophe would burst upon her. For the moment she was merely tired. She was willing even to put off this reaction for a while, willing to remain passive and dizzied and stupefied, resigning herself helplessly and supinely to the swift current of events.
Yet while that part of her mind which registered the greater, deeper, and more lasting impressions remained inactive, the smaller faculty, that took cognisance of the little, minute-to-minute matters, was as busy and bright as ever. It appeared that the blow had been struck over this latter faculty, and not, as one so often supposes, through it. She seemed in that hour to understand the reasonableness of this phenomenon, that before had always appeared so inexplicable, and saw how great sorrow as well as great joy strikes only at the greater machinery of the brain, overpassing and ignoring the little wheels and cogs, that work on as briskly as ever in storm or calm, being moved only by temporary and trivial emotions and impressions.
So it was that for upward of an hour while the train carried her swiftly back to the City, Lloyd sat quietly in her place, watching the landscape rushing past her and cut into regular divisions by the telegraph poles like the whirling pictures of a kinetoscope. She noted, and even with some particularity, the other passengers—a young girl in a smart tailor-made gown reading a book, cutting the leaves raggedly with a hairpin; a well-groomed gentleman with a large stomach, who breathed loudly through his nose; the book agent with his oval boxes of dried figs and endless thread of talk; a woman with a little boy who wore spectacles and who was continually making unsteady raids upon the water-cooler, and the brakeman and train conductor laughing and chatting in the forward seat.
She took an interest in every unusual feature of the country through which the train was speeding, and noted each stop or increase of speed. She found a certain diversion, as she had often done before, in watching for the mile-posts and in keeping count of the miles. She even asked the conductor at what time the train would reach the City, and uttered a little murmur of vexation when she was told that it was a half-hour late. The next instant she was asking herself why this delay should seem annoying to her. Then, toward the close of the afternoon, came the City itself. First a dull-gray smudge on the horizon, then a world of grimy streets, rows of miserable tenements festooned with rags, then a tunnel or two, and at length the echoing glass-arched terminal of the station. Lloyd alighted, and, remembering that the distance was short, walked steadily toward her destination till the streets and neighbourhood became familiar. Suddenly she came into the square. Directly opposite was the massive granite front of the agency. She paused abruptly. She was returning to the house after abandoning her post. What was she to say to them, the other women of her profession?
Then all at once came the reaction. Instantly the larger machinery of the mind resumed its functions, the hurt of the blow came back. With a fierce wrench of pain, the wound reopened, full consciousness returned. Lloyd remembered then that she had proved false to her trust at a moment of danger, that Ferriss would probably die because of what she had done, that her strength of will and of mind wherein she had gloried was broken beyond redemption; that Bennett had failed her, that her love for him, the one great happiness of her life, was dead and cold and could never be revived, and that in the eyes of the world she stood dishonoured and disgraced.
Now she must enter that house, now she must face its inmates, her companions. What to say to them? How explain her defection? How tell them that she had not left her post of her own will? Lloyd fancied herself saying in substance that the man who loved her and whom she loved had made her abandon her patient. She set her teeth. No, not that confession of miserable weakness; not that of all things. And yet the other alternative, what was that? It could be only that she had been afraid—she, Lloyd Searight! Must she, who had been the bravest of them all, stand before that little band of devoted women in the light of a self-confessed coward?
She remembered the case of the young English woman, Harriet Freeze, who, when called upon to nurse a smallpox patient, had been found wanting in courage at the crucial moment, and had discovered an excuse for leaving her post. Miss Freeze had been expelled dishonourably from the midst of her companions. And now she, Lloyd, standing apparently convicted of the same dishonour, must face the same tribunal. There was no escape. She must enter that house, she must endure that ordeal, and this at precisely the time when her resolution had been shattered, her will broken, her courage daunted. For a moment the idea of flight suggested itself to her—she would avoid the issue. She would hide from reproach and contumely, and without further explanation go back to her place in the country at Bannister. But the little exigencies of her position made this impossible. Besides her nurse's bag, her satchel was the only baggage she had at that moment, and she knew that there was but little money in her purse.
All at once she realised that while debating the question she had been sitting on one of the benches under the trees in the square. The sun was setting; evening was coming on. Maybe if she waited until six o'clock she could enter the house while the other nurses were at supper, gain her room unobserved, then lock herself in and deny herself to all callers. But Lloyd made a weary, resigned movement of her shoulders. Sooner or later she must meet them all eye to eye. It would be only putting off the humiliation.
She rose, and, turning to the house, began to walk slowly toward it. Why put it off? It would be as hard at one time as another. But so great was her sense of shame that even as she walked she fancied that the very passers-by, the loungers on the benches around the fountain, must know that here was a disgraced woman. Was it not apparent in her very face, in the very uncertainty of her gait? She told herself she had not done wisely to sit even for a moment upon the bench she had just quitted. She wondered if she had been observed, and furtively glanced about her. There! Was not that nursemaid studying her too narrowly? And the policeman close at hand, was he not watching her quizzically? She quickened her gait, moved with a sudden impulse to get out of sight, to hide within doors—where? In the house? There where, so soon as she set foot in it, her companions, the other nurses, must know her dishonour? Where was she to go? Where to turn? What was to become of her?
But she must go to the house. It was inevitable. She went forward, as it were, step by step. That little journey across the square under the elms and cottonwoods was for her a veritable chemin de la croix. Every step was an agony; every yard covered only brought her nearer the time and place of exposure. It was all the more humiliating because she knew that her impelling motive was not one of duty. There was nothing lofty in the matter—nothing self-sacrificing. She went back because she had to go back. Little material necessities, almost ludicrous in their pettiness, forced her on.
As she came nearer she looked cautiously at the windows of the agency. Who would be the first to note her home-coming? Would it be Miss Douglass, or Esther Thielman, or Miss Bergyn, the superintendent nurse? What would first be said to her? With what words would she respond? Then how the news of the betrayal of her trust would flash from room to room! How it would be discussed, how condemned, how deplored! Not one of the nurses of that little band but would not feel herself hurt by what she had done—by what she had been forced to do. And the news of her failure would spread to all her acquaintances and friends throughout the City. Dr. Street would know it; every physician to whom she had hitherto been so welcome an aid would know it. In all the hospitals it would be a nine days' gossip. Campbell would hear of it, and Hattie.
All at once, within thirty feet of the house, Lloyd turned about and walked rapidly away from it. The movement was all but involuntary; every instinct in her, every sense of shame, brusquely revolted. It was stronger than she. A power, for the moment irresistible, dragged her back from that doorway. Once entering here, she left all hope behind. Yet the threshold must be crossed, yet the hope must be abandoned.
She felt that if she faced about now a second time she would indeed attract attention. So, while her cheeks flamed hot at the meanness, the miserable ridiculousness of the imposture, she assumed a brisk, determined gait, as though she knew just where she were going, and, turning out of the square down a by-street, walked around the block, even stopping once or twice before a store, pretending an interest in the display. It seemed to her that by now everybody in the streets must have noted that there was something wrong with her. Twice as a passer-by brushed past her she looked back to see if he was watching her. How to live through the next ten minutes? If she were only in her room, bolted in, locked and double-locked in. Why was there not some back way through which she could creep to that seclusion?
And so it was that Lloyd came back to the house she had built, to the little community she had so proudly organised, to the agency she had founded, and with her own money endowed and supported.
At last she found herself at the bottom of the steps, her foot upon the lowest one, her hand clasping the heavy bronze rail. There was no going back now. She went up and pushed the button of the electric bell, and then, the step once taken, the irrevocable once dared, something like the calmness of resignation came to her. There was no help for it. Now for the ordeal. Rownie opened the door for her with a cheery welcome. Lloyd was dimly conscious that the girl said something about her mail, and that she was just in time for supper. But the hall and stairway were deserted and empty, while from the dining-room came a subdued murmur of conversation and the clink of dishes. The nurses were at supper, as Lloyd had hoped. The moment favoured her, and she brushed by Rownie, and almost ran, panic-stricken and trembling, up the stairs.
She gained the hall of the second floor. There was the door of her room standing ajar. With a little gasp of infinite relief, she hurried to it, entered, shut and locked and bolted it behind her, and, casting her satchel and handbag from her, flung herself down upon the great couch, and buried her head deep among the cushions.
At Lloyd's abrupt entrance Miss Douglass turned about from the book-shelves in an angle of the room and stared a moment in no little surprise. Then she exclaimed:
"Why, Lloyd, why, what is it—what is the matter?"