Kitabı oku: «A Man's Woman», sayfa 12

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?"

"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."

Lloyd took up Dr. Street's letter, and, holding it delicately at arm's length, tore it in two and let the pieces flutter to the floor.

"That, for my life-work," said Lloyd Searight.

As she drew back from him an instant later Bennett all at once and very earnestly demanded:

"Lloyd, do you love me?"

"With all my heart, Ward."

"And you will be my wife?"

"You know that I will."

"Then"—Bennett picked up the little volume of "Arctic Research" which he had received that morning, and tossed it from him upon the floor—"that, for my career," he answered.

For a moment they were silent, looking gladly into each other's eyes. Then Bennett drew her to him again and held her close to him, and once more she put her arms around his neck and nestled her head down upon his shoulder with a little comfortable sigh of contentment and relief and quiet joy, for that the long, fierce trial was over; that there were no more fights to be fought, no more grim, hard situations to face, no more relentless duties to be done. She had endured and she had prevailed; now her reward was come. Now for the long, calm years of happiness.

Later in the day, about an hour after noon, Bennett took his daily nap, carefully wrapped in shawls and stretched out in a wicker steamer-chair in the glass-room. Lloyd, in the meantime, was busy in the garden at the side of the house, gathering flowers which she intended to put in a huge china bowl in Bennett's room. While she was thus occupied Adler, followed by Kamiska, came up. Adler pulled off his cap.

"I beg pardon, Miss," he began, turning his cap about between his fingers. "I don't want to seem to intrude, and if I do I just guess you'd better tell me so first off. But what did he say—or did he say anything—the captain, I mean—this morning about going up again? I heard you talking to him at breakfast. That's it, that's the kind of talk he needs. I can't talk that talk to him. I'm so main scared of him. I wouldn't 'a' believed the captain would ever say he'd give up, would ever say he was beaten. But, Miss, I'm thinking as there's something wrong, main wrong with the captain these days besides fever. He's getting soft—that's what he is. If you'd only know the man that he was—before—while we was up there in the Ice! That's his work, that's what he's cut out for. There ain't nobody can do it but him, and to see him quit, to see him chuck up his chance to a third-rate ice-pilot like Duane—a coastwise college professor that don't know no more about Ice than—than you do—it regularly makes me sick. Why, what will become of the captain now if he quits? He'll just settle down to an ordinary stay-at-home, write-in-a-book professor, and write articles for the papers and magazines, and bye-and-bye, maybe, he'll get down to lecturing! Just fancy, Miss, him, the captain, lecturing! And while he stays at home and writes, and—oh, Lord!—lectures, somebody else, without a fifth of his ability, will do the work. It'll just naturally break my heart, it will!" exclaimed Adler, "if the captain chucks. I wouldn't be so main sorry that he won't reach the Pole as that he quit trying—as that a man like the captain—or like what I thought he was—gave up and chucked when he could win."

"But, Adler," returned Lloyd, "the captain—Mr. Bennett, it seems to me, has done his share. Think what he's been through. You can't have forgotten the march to Kolyuchin Bay?"

But Adler made an impatient gesture with the hand that held the cap. "The danger don't figure; what he'd have to go through with don't figure; the chances of life or death don't figure; nothing in the world don't figure. It's his work; God A'mighty cut him out for that, and he's got to do it. Ain't you got any influence with him, Miss? Won't you talk good talk to him? Don't let him chuck; don't let him get soft. Make him be a Man and not a professor."

When Adler had left her Lloyd sank into a little seat at the edge of the garden walk, and let the flowers drop into her lap, and leaned back in her place, wide-eyed and thoughtful, reviewing in her imagination the events of the past few months. What a change that summer had brought to both of them; how they had been shaped anew in the mould of circumstance!

Suddenly and without warning, they two, high-spirited, strong, determined, had clashed together, the man's force against the woman's strength; and the woman, inherently weaker, had been crushed and humbled. For a time it seemed to her that she had been broken beyond hope; so humbled that she could never rise again; as though a great crisis had developed in her life, and that, having failed once, she must fail again, and again, and again—as if her whole subsequent life must be one long failure. But a greater crisis had followed hard upon the heels of the first—the struggle with self, the greatest struggle of all. Against the abstract principle of evil the woman who had failed in the material conflict with a masculine, masterful will, had succeeded, had conquered self, had been true when it was easy to be false, had dared the judgment of her peers so only that she might not deceive.

Her momentary, perhaps fancied, hatred of Bennett, who had so cruelly misunderstood and humiliated her, had apparently, of its own accord, departed from her heart. Then had come the hour when the strange hazard of fortune had reversed their former positions, when she could be masterful while he was weak; when it was the man's turn to be broken, to be prevailed against. Her own discomfiture had been offset by his. She no longer need look to him as her conqueror, her master. And when she had seen him so weak, so pathetically unable to resist the lightest pressure of her hand; when it was given her not only to witness but to relieve his suffering, the great love for him that could not die had returned. With the mastery of self had come the forgetfulness of self; and her profession, her life-work, of which she had been so proud, had seemed to her of small concern. Now she was his, and his life was hers. She should—so she told herself—be henceforward happy in his happiness, and her only pride would be the pride in his achievements.

But now the unexpected had happened, and Bennett had given up his career. During the period of Bennett's convalescence Lloyd had often talked long and earnestly with him, and partly from what he had told her and partly from much that she inferred she had at last been able to trace out and follow the mental processes and changes through which Bennett had passed. He, too, had been proved by fire; he, too, had had his ordeal, his trial.

By nature, by training, and by virtue of the life he lived Bennett had been a man, harsh, somewhat brutal, inordinately selfish, and at all times magnificently arrogant. He had neither patience nor toleration for natural human weakness. While selfish, he was not self-conscious, and it never occurred to him, it was impossible for him to see that he was a giant among men. His heart was callous; his whole nature and character hard and flinty from the buffetings he gave rather than received.

Then had come misfortune. Ferriss had died, and Bennett's recognition and acknowledgment of the fact that he, Ward Bennett, who never failed, who never blundered, had made at last the great and terrible error of his life, had shaken his character to its very foundations. This was only the beginning; the breach once made, Humanity entered into the gloomy, waste places of his soul; remorse crowded hard upon his wonted arrogance; generosity and the impulse to make amends took the place of selfishness; kindness thrust out the native brutality; the old-time harshness and imperiousness gave way to a certain spirit of toleration.

It was the influence of these new emotions that had moved Bennett to make the statement to Adler that had so astonished and perplexed his old-time subordinate. He, Bennett, too, like Lloyd, was at that time endeavouring to free himself from a false position, and through the medium of confession stand in his true colours in the eyes of his associates. Unconsciously they were both working out their salvation along the same lines.

Then had come Bennett's resolve to give Ferriss the conspicuous and prominent place in his book, the account of the expedition. The more Bennett dwelt upon Ferriss's heroism, intelligence, and ability the more his task became a labour of love, and the more the idea of self dropped away from his thought and imagination. Then—and perhaps this was not the least important factor in Bennett's transformation—sickness had befallen; the strong and self-reliant man had been brought to the weakness of a child, whom the pressure of a finger could control. He suddenly changed places with the woman he believed he had, at such fearful cost, broken and subdued. His physical strength, once so enormous, was as a reed in the woman's hand; his will, so indomitable, was as powerless as an infant's before the woman's calm resolve, rising up there before him and overmastering him at a time he believed it to be forever weakened.

Bennett had come forth from the ordeal chastened, softened, and humbled. But he was shattered, broken, brought to the earth with sorrow and the load of unavailing regret. Ambition was numb and lifeless within him. Reaction from his former attitude of aggression and defiance had carried him far beyond the normal.

Here widened the difference between the man and the woman. Lloyd's discontinuance of her life-work had been in the nature of heroic subjugation of self. Bennett's abandonment of his career was hardly better than weakness. In the one it had been renunciation; in the other surrender. In the end, and after all was over, it was the woman who remained the stronger.

But for her, the woman, was it true that all was over? Had the last conflict been fought? Was it not rather to be believed that life was one long conflict? Was it not for her, Lloyd, to rouse that sluggard ambition? Was not this her career, after all, to be his inspiration, his incentive, to urge him to the accomplishment of a great work? Now, of the two, she was the stronger. In these new conditions what was her duty? Adler's clumsy phrases persisted in her mind. "That's his work," Adler had said. "God Almighty cut him out for that, and he's got to do it. Don't let him chuck, don't let him get soft; make him be a man and not a professor."

Had she so much influence over Bennett? Could she rouse the restless, daring spirit again? Perhaps; but what would it mean for her—for her, who must be left behind to wait, and wait, and wait—for three years, for five years, for ten years—perhaps forever? And now, at this moment, when she believed that at last happiness had come to her; when the duty had been done, the grim problems solved; when sickness had been overcome; when love had come back, and the calm, untroubled days seemed lengthening out ahead, there came to her recollection the hideous lapse of time that had intervened between the departure of the Freja and the expedition's return; what sleepless nights, what days of unspeakable suspense, what dreadful alternations between hope and despair, what silent, repressed suffering, what haunting, ever-present dread of a thing she dared not name! Was the Fear to come into her life again; the Enemy that lurked and leered and forebore to strike, that hung upon her heels at every hour of the day, that sat down with her to her every occupation, that followed after when she stirred abroad, that came close to her in the still watches of the night, creeping, creeping to her bedside, looming over her in the darkness; the cold fingers reaching closer and closer, the awful face growing ever more distinct, till the suspense of waiting for the blow to fall, for the fingers to grip, became more than she could bear, and she sprang from her bed with a stifled sob of anguish, driven from her rest with quivering lips and streaming eyes?

Abruptly Lloyd rose to her feet, the flowers falling unheeded from her lap, her arms rigid at her side, her hands shut tight.

"No," she murmured, "I cannot. This, at last, is more than I can do."

Instantly Adler's halting words went ringing through her brain: "The danger don't figure; nothing in the world don't figure. It's his work."

Adler's words were the words of the world. She alone of the thousands whose eyes were turned toward Bennett was blinded. She was wrong. She belonged to him, but he did not belong to her. The world demanded him; the world called him from her side to do the terrible work that God had made him for. Was she, because she loved him, because of her own single anguish, to stand between him and the clamour of the world, between him and his work, between him and God?

A work there was for him to do. He must play the man's part. The battle must be fought again. That horrible, grisly Enemy far up there to the north, upon the high curve of the globe, the shoulder of the world, huge, remorseless, terrible in its vast, Titanic strength, guarding its secret through all the centuries in the innermost of a thousand gleaming coils, must be defied again. The monster that defended the great prize, the object of so many fruitless quests must be once more attacked.

His was the work, for him the shock of battle, the rigour of the fight, the fierce assault, the ceaseless onset, the unfailing and unflinching courage.

Hers was the woman's part. Already she had assumed it; steadfast unselfishness, renunciation, patience, the heroism greater than all others, that sits with folded hands, quiet, unshaken, and under fearful stress, endures, and endures, and endures. To be the inspiration of great deeds, high hopes, and firm resolves, and then, while the fight was dared, to wait in calmness for its issue—that was her duty, that, the woman's part in the world's great work.

Lloyd was dimly conscious of a certain sweet and subtle element in her love for Bennett that only of late she had begun to recognise and be aware of. This was a certain vague protective, almost maternal, instinct. Perhaps it was because of his present weakness both of body and character, or perhaps it was an element always to be found in the deep and earnest love of any noble-hearted woman. She felt that she, not as herself individually, but as a woman, was not only stronger than Bennett, but in a manner older, more mature. She was conscious of depths in her nature far greater than in his, and also that she was capable of attaining heights of heroism, devotion, and sacrifice which he, for all his masculine force, could not only never reach, but could not even conceive of. It was this consciousness of her larger, better nature that made her feel for Bennett somewhat as a mother feels for a son, a sister for her younger brother. A great tenderness mingled with her affection, a vast and almost divine magnanimity, a broad, womanly pity for his shortcomings, his errors, his faults. It was to her he must look for encouragement. It was for her to bind up and reshape the great energy that had been so rudely checked, and not only to call back his strength, but to guide it and direct into its appointed channels.