V.

When Lloyd at length managed to free herself and jump to the ground

Bennett came quickly toward her and drew her away to the side of the

road.

"Are you hurt?" he demanded. "Tell me, are you hurt?"

"No, no; not in the least."

"Why in the world did you want to drive such a horse? Don't ever take

such chances again. I won't have it."

For a few moments Lloyd was too excited to trust herself to talk, and

could only stand helplessly to one side, watching Bennett as he stripped

off the harness from the dead horse, stowed it away under the seat of

the cart, and rolled the cart itself to the edge of the road. Then at

length she said, trying to smile and to steady her voice:

"It--it seems to me, Mr. Bennett, you do about--about as you like with

my sta-bub-ble."

"Sit down!" he commanded, "you are trembling all over. Sit down on that

rock there."

"--and with me," she added, sinking down upon the boulder he had

indicated with a movement of his head, his hands busy with the harness.

"I'm sorry I had to do that," he explained; "but there was no help for

it--nothing else to do. He would have had you in the canal in another

second, if he did not kill you on the way there."

"Poor old Rox," murmured Lloyd; "I was very fond of Rox."

Bennett put himself in her way as she stepped forward. He had the

lap-robe over his arm and the whip in his hand.

"No, don't look at him. He's not a pretty sight. Come, shall I take you

home? Don't worry about the cart; I will see that it is sent back."

"And that Rox is buried--somewhere? I don't want him left out there for

the crows." In spite of Bennett's injunction she looked over her

shoulder for a moment as they started off down the road. "I only hope

you were sure there was nothing else to do, Mr. Bennett," she said.

"There was no time to think," he answered, "and I wasn't taking any

chances."

But the savagery of the whole affair stuck in Lloyd's imagination. There

was a primitiveness, a certain hideous simplicity in the way Bennett had

met the situation that filled her with wonder and with even a little

terror and mistrust of him. The vast, brutal directness of the deed was

out of place and incongruous at this end-of-the-century time. It ignored

two thousand years of civilisation. It was a harsh, clanging, brazen

note, powerful, uncomplicated, which came jangling in, discordant and

inharmonious with the tune of the age. It savoured of the days when men

fought the brutes with their hands or with their clubs. But also it was

an indication of a force and a power of mind that stopped at nothing to

attain its ends, that chose the shortest cut, the most direct means,

disdainful of hesitation, holding delicacy and finessing in measureless

contempt, rushing straight to its object, driving in, breaking down

resistance, smashing through obstacles with a boundless, crude, blind

Brobdignag power, to oppose which was to be trampled under foot upon the

instant.

It was long before their talk turned from the incident of the morning,

but when it did its subject was Richard Ferriss. Bennett was sounding

his praises and commending upon his pluck and endurance during the

retreat from the ship, when Lloyd, after hesitating once or twice,

asked:

"How is Mr. Ferriss? In your note you said he was ill."

"So he is," he told her, "and I could not have left him if I was not

sure I was doing him harm by staying. But the doctor is to wire me if he

gets any worse, and only if he does. I am to believe that no news is

good news."

But this meeting with Lloyd and the intense excitement of those few

moments by the canal had quite driven from Bennett's mind the fact that

he had _not_ forwarded his present address either to Ferriss or to his

doctor. He had so intended that morning, but all the faculties of his

mind were suddenly concentrated upon another issue. For the moment he

believed that he had actually written to Dr. Pitts, as he had planned,

and when he thought of his intended message at all, thought of it as an

accomplished fact. The matter did not occur to him again.

As he walked by Lloyd's side, listening to her and talking to her,

snapping the whip the while, or flicking the heads from the mullein

stalks by the roadside with its lash, he was thinking how best he might

say to her what he had come from the City to say. To lead up to his

subject, to guide the conversation, to prepare the right psychological

moment skilfully and without apparent effort, were maneuvers in the game

that Bennett ignored and despised. He knew only that he loved her, that

she was there at his side, that the object of all his desires and hopes

was within his reach. Straight as a homing pigeon he went to his goal.

"Miss Searight," he began, his harsh, bass voice pitched even lower than

usual, "what do you think I am down here for? This is not the only part

of the world where I could recuperate, I suppose, and as for spending

God's day in chipping at stones, like a professor of a young ladies'

seminary"--he hurled the hammer from him into the bushes--"that for

geology! Now we can talk. You know very well that I love you, and I

believe that you love me. I have come down here to ask you to marry me."

Lloyd might have done any one of a dozen things--might have answered in

any one of a dozen ways. But what she did do, what she did say, took

Bennett completely by surprise. A little coldly and very calmly she

answered:

"You believe--you say you believe that I--" she broke off, then began

again: "It is not right for you to say that to me. I have never led you

to believe that I cared for you. Whatever our relations are to be, let

us have that understood at once."

Bennett uttered an impatient exclamation "I am not good at fencing and

quibbling," he declared. "I tell you that I love you with all my heart.

I tell you that I want you to be my wife, and I tell you that I know you

do love me. You are not like other women; why should you coquette with

me? Good God! Are you not big enough to be above such things? I know you

are. Of all the people in the world we two ought to be above pretence,

ought to understand each other. If I did not know you cared for me I

would not have spoken."

"I don't understand you," she answered. "I think we had better talk of

other things this morning."

"I came down here to talk of just this and nothing else," he declared.

"Very well, then," she said, squaring her shoulders with a quick, brisk

movement, "we will talk of it. You say we two should understand each

other. Let us come to the bottom of things at once. I despise quibbling

and fencing as much, perhaps, as you. Tell me how have I ever led you to

believe that I cared for you?"

"At a time when our last hope was gone," answered Bennett, meeting her

eyes, "when I was very near to death and thought that I should go to my

God within the day, I was made happier than I think I ever was in my

life before by finding out that I was dear to you--that you loved me."

Lloyd searched his face with a look of surprise and bewilderment.

"I do not understand you," she repeated.

"Oh!" exclaimed Bennett with sudden vehemence, "you could say it to

Ferriss; why can't you say it to me?"

"To Mr. Ferriss?"

"You could tell _him_ that you cared."

"I--tell Mr. Ferriss--that I cared for you?" She began to smile. "You

are a little absurd, Mr. Bennett."

"And I cannot see why you should deny it now. Or if anything has caused

you to change your mind--to be sorry for what you said, why should I not

know it? Even a petty thief may be heard in his own defence. I loved you

because I believed you to be a woman, a great, strong, noble, man's

woman, above little things, above the little, niggling, contemptible

devices of the drawing-room. I loved you because the great things of the

world interested you, because you had no place in your life for petty

graces, petty affectations, petty deceits and shams and insincerities.

If you did not love me, why did you say so? If you do love me now, why

should you not admit it? Do you think you can play with me? Do you think

you can coquette with me? If you were small enough to stoop to such

means, do you think I am small enough to submit to them? I have known

Ferriss too well. I know him to be incapable of such falsity as you

would charge him with. To have told such a lie, such an uncalled-for,

useless, gratuitous lie, is a thing he could not have done. You must

have told him that you cared. Why aren't you--you of all women--brave

enough, strong enough, big enough to stand by your words?"

"Because I never said them. What do you think of me? Even if I did care,

do you suppose I would say as much--and to another man? Oh!" she

exclaimed with sudden indignation, "let's talk of something else. This

is too--preposterous."

"You never told Ferriss that you cared for me?"

"No."

Bennett took off his cap. "Very well, then. That is enough. Good-bye,

Miss Searight."

"Do you believe I told Mr. Ferriss I loved you?"

"I do not believe that the man who has been more to me than a brother is

a liar and a rascal."

"Good-morning, Mr. Bennett."

They had come rather near to the farmhouse by this time. Without another

word Bennett gave the whip and the lap-robe into her hands, and, turning

upon his heel, walked away down the road.

Lloyd told Lewis as much of the morning's accident by the canal as was

necessary, and gave orders about the dog-cart and the burying of Rox.

Then slowly, her eyes fixed and wide, she went up to her own room and,

without removing either her hat or her gloves, sat down upon the edge of

the bed, letting her hands fall limply into her lap, gazing abstractedly

at the white curtain just stirring at the open window.

She could not say which hurt her most--that Ferriss had told the lie or

that Bennett believed it. But why, in heaven's name why, had Ferriss so

spoken to Bennett; what object had he in view; what had he to gain by

it? Why had Ferriss, the man who loved her, chosen so to humiliate her,

to put her in a position so galling to her pride, her dignity? Bennett,

too, loved her. How could he believe that she had so demeaned herself?

She had been hurt and to the heart, at a point where she believed

herself most unassailable, and he who held the weapon was the man that

with all the heart of her and soul of her she loved.

Much of the situation was all beyond her. Try as she would she could not

understand. One thing, however, she saw clearly, unmistakably: Bennett

believed that she loved him, believed that she had told as much to

Ferriss, and that when she had denied all knowledge of Ferriss's lie she

was only coquetting with him. She knew Bennett and his character well

enough to realise that an idea once rooted in his mind was all but

ineradicable. Bennett was not a man of easy changes; nothing mobile

about him.

The thought of this belief of Bennett's was intolerable. As she sat

there alone in her white room the dull crimson of her cheeks flamed

suddenly scarlet, and with a quick, involuntary gesture she threw her

hand, palm outward, across her face to hide it from the sunlight. She

went quickly from one mood to another. Now her anger grew suddenly hot

against Ferriss. How had he dared? How had he dared to put this

indignity, this outrageous insult, upon her? Now her wrath turned upon

Bennett. What audacity had been his to believe that she would so forget

herself? She set her teeth in her impotent anger, rising to her feet,

her hands clenching, tears of sheer passion starting to her eyes.

For the greater part of the afternoon she kept to her room, pacing the

floor from wall to wall, trying to think clearly, to resolve upon

something that would readjust the situation, that would give her back

her peace of mind, her dignity, and her happiness of the early morning.

For now the great joy that had come to her in his safe return was all

but gone. For one moment she even told herself she could not love him,

but the next was willing to admit that it was only because of her love

of him, as strong and deep as ever, that the humiliation cut so deeply

and cruelly now. Ferriss had lied about her, and Bennett had believed

the lie. To meet Bennett again under such circumstances was not to be

thought of for one moment. Her vacation was spoiled; the charm of the

country had vanished. Lloyd returned to the City the next day.

She found that she was glad to get back to her work. The subdued murmur

of the City that hourly assaulted her windows was a relief to her ears

after the profound and numbing silence of the country. The square was

never so beautiful as at this time of summer, and even the restless

shadow pictures, that after dark were thrown upon the ceiling of her

room by the electrics shining through the great elms in the square

below, were a pleasure.

On the morning after her arrival and as she was unpacking her trunk Miss

Douglass came into her room and seated herself, according to her custom,

on the couch. After some half-hour's give-and-take talk, the fever nurse

said:

"Do you remember, Lloyd, what I told you about typhoid in the

spring--that it was almost epidemic?"

Lloyd nodded, turning about from her trunk, her arms full of dresses.

"It's worse than ever now," continued Miss Douglass; "three of our

people have been on cases only in the short time you have been away. And

there's a case out in Medford that has killed one nurse."

"Well!" exclaimed Lloyd in some astonishment, "it seems to me that one

should confine typhoid easily enough."

"Not always, not always," answered the other; "a virulent case would be

quite as bad as yellow fever or smallpox. You remember when we were at

the hospital Miss Helmuth, that little Polish nurse, contracted it from

her case and died even before her patient did. Then there was Eva

Blayne. She very nearly died. I did like the way Miss Wakeley took this

case out at Medford even when the other nurse had died. She never

hesitated for--"

"Has one of our people got this case?" inquired Lloyd.

"Of course. Didn't I tell you?"

"I hope we cure it," said Lloyd, her trunk-tray in her hands. "I don't

think we have ever lost a case yet when good nursing could pull it

through, and in typhoid the whole treatment really is the nursing."

"Lloyd," said Miss Douglass decisively, "I would give anything I can

think of now to have been on that hip disease case of yours and have

brought my patient through as you did. You should hear what Dr. Street

says of you--and the little girl's father. By the way, I had nearly

forgotten. Hattie Campbell--that's her name, isn't it?--telephoned to

know if you had come back from the country yet. That was yesterday. I

said we expected you to-day, and she told me to say she was coming to

see you."

The next afternoon toward three o'clock Hattie and her father drove to

the square in an open carriage, Hattie carrying a great bunch of violets

for Lloyd. The little invalid was well on the way to complete recovery

by now. Sometimes she was allowed to walk a little, but as often as not

her maid wheeled her about in an invalid's chair. She drove out in the

carriage frequently by way of exercise. She would, no doubt, always limp

a little, but in the end it was certain she would be sound and strong.

For Hattie and her father Lloyd had become a sort of tutelary

semi-deity. In what was left of the family she had her place, hardly

less revered than even the dead wife. Campbell himself, who had made a

fortune in Bessemer steel, a well-looking, well-groomed gentleman,

smooth-shaven and with hair that was none too gray, more than once

caught himself standing before Lloyd's picture that stood on the

mantelpiece in Hattie's room, looking at it vaguely as he clipped the

nib from his cigar.

But on this occasion as the carriage stopped in front of the ample pile

of the house Hattie called out, "Oh, there she is now," and Lloyd came

down the steps, carrying her nurse's bag in her hand.

"Are we too late?" began Hattie; "are you going out; are you on a case?

Is that why you've got your bag? We thought you were on a vacation."

Campbell, yielding to a certain feeling of uneasiness that Lloyd should

stand on the curb while he remained seated, got out of the carriage and

stood at her side, gravely listening to the talk between the nurse and

her one-time patient. Lloyd was obliged to explain, turning now to

Hattie, now to her father. She told them that she was in something of a

hurry. She had just been specially called to take a very bad case of

typhoid fever in a little suburb of the City, called Medford. It was not

her turn to go, but the physicians in charge of the case, as sometimes

happened, had asked especially for her.

"One of our people, a young woman named Miss Wakeley, has been on this

case," she continued, "but it seems she has allowed herself to contract

the disease herself. She went to the hospital this noon."

Campbell, his gravity suddenly broken up, exclaimed:

"Surely, Miss Searight, this is not the same case I read of in

yesterday's paper--it must be, too--Medford was the name of the place.

That case has killed one nurse already, and now the second one is down.

Don't tell me you are going to take the same case."

"It is the same case," answered Lloyd, "and, of course, I am going to

take it. Did you ever hear of a nurse doing otherwise? Why, it would

seem--seem so--funny--"

There was no dissuading her, and Campbell and Hattie soon ceased even to

try. She was impatient to be gone. The station was close at hand, and

she would not hear of taking the carriage thither. However, before she

left them she recurred again to the subject of her letter to Mr.

Campbell, and then and there it was decided that Hattie and her maid

should spend the following ten days at Lloyd's place in Bannister. The

still country air, now that Hattie was able to take the short journey,

would be more to her than many medicines, and the ponies and Lloyd's

phaeton would be left there with Lewis for her use.

"And write often, won't you, Miss Searight?" exclaimed Hattie as Lloyd

was saying good-bye. Lloyd shook her head.

"Not that of all things," she answered. "If I did that we might have

you, too, down with typhoid. But you may write to me, and I hope you

will," and she gave Hattie her new address.

"Harriet," said Campbell as the carriage drove back across the square,

the father and daughter waving their hands to Lloyd, briskly on her way

to the railroad station, "Harriet."

"Yes, papa."

"There goes a noble woman. Pluck, intelligence, strong will--she has

them all--and a great big heart that--heart that--" He clipped the end

of a cigar thoughtfully and fell silent.

A day or two later, as Hattie was sitting in her little wheel-chair on

the veranda of Mrs. Applegate's house watching Charley-Joe hunting

grasshoppers underneath the currant bushes, she was surprised by the

sharp closing of the front gate. A huge man with one squint eye and a

heavy, square-cut jaw was coming up the walk, followed by a

strange-looking dog. Charley-Joe withdrew, swiftly to his particular

hole under the veranda, moving rapidly, his body low to the ground, and

taking an unnecessary number of very short steps.

The little city-bred girl distinguished the visitor from a country man

at once. Hattie had ideas of her own as to propriety, and so rose to her

feet as Bennett came up, and after a moment's hesitation made him a

little bow. Bennett at once gravely took off his cap.

"Excuse me," he said as though Hattie were twenty-five instead of

twelve. "Is Miss Searight at home?"

"Oh," exclaimed Hattie, delighted, "do you know Miss Searight? She was

my nurse when I was so sick--because you know I had hip disease and

there was an operation. No, she's not here any more. She's gone away,

gone back to the City."

"Gone back to the City?"

"Yes, three or four days ago. But I'm going to write to her this

afternoon. Shall I say who called?" Then, without waiting for a reply,

she added, "I guess I had better introduce myself. My name is Harriet

Campbell, and my papa is Craig V. Campbell, of the Hercules Wrought

Steel Company in the City. Won't you have a chair?"

The little convalescent and the arctic explorer shook hands with great

solemnity.

"I'm so pleased to meet you," said Bennett. "I haven't a card, but my

name is Ward Bennett--of the Freja expedition," he added. But, to his

relief, the little girl had not heard of him.

"Very well," she said, "I'll tell Miss Searight Mr. Bennett called."

"No," he replied, hesitatingly, "no, you needn't do that."

"Why, she won't answer my letter, you know," explained Hattie,

"because she is afraid her letters would give me typhoid fever,

that they might"--she continued carefully, hazarding a remembered

phrase--"carry the contagion. You see she has gone to nurse a dreadful

case of typhoid fever out at Medford, near the City, and we're so worried

and anxious about her--papa and I. One nurse that had this case has died

already and another one has caught the disease and is very sick, and Miss

Searight, though she knew just how dangerous it was, would go, just

like--like--" Hattie hesitated, then confused memories of her school

reader coming to her, finished with "like Casabianca."

"Oh," said Bennett, turning his head so as to fix her with his own good

eye. "She has gone to nurse a typhoid fever patient, has she?"

"Yes, and papa told me--" and Hattie became suddenly very grave, "that

we might--might--oh, dear--never see her again."

"Hum! Whereabouts is this place in Medford? She gave you her address;

what is it?" Hattie told him, and he took himself abruptly away.

Bennett had gone some little distance down the road before the real

shock came upon him. Lloyd was in a position of imminent peril; her life

was in the issue. With blind, unreasoned directness he leaped at once to

this conclusion, and as he strode along with teeth and fists tight shut

he kept muttering to himself: "She may die, she may die--we--we may

never see her again." Then suddenly came the fear, the sickening sink of

heart, the choke at the throat, first the tightening and then the sudden

relaxing of all the nerves. Lashed and harried by the sense of a fearful

calamity, an unspeakable grief that was pursuing after him, Bennett did

not stop to think, to reflect. He chose instantly to believe that Lloyd

was near her death, and once the idea was fixed in his brain it was not

thereafter to be reasoned away. Suddenly, at a turn in the road, he

stopped, his hands deep in his pockets, his bootheel digging into the

ground. "Now, then," he exclaimed, "what's to be done?"

Just one thing: Lloyd must leave the case at once, that very day if it

were possible. He must save her; must turn her back from this

destruction toward which she was rushing, impelled by such a foolish,

mistaken notion of duty.

"Yes," he said, "there's just that to be done, and, by God! it shall be

done."

But would Lloyd be turned back from a course she had chosen for herself?

Could he persuade her? Then with this thought of possible opposition

Bennett's resolve all at once tightened to the sticking point. Never in

the darkest hours of his struggle with the arctic ice had his

determination grown so fierce; never had his resolution so girded

itself, so nerved itself to crush down resistance. The force of his will

seemed brusquely to be quadrupled and decupled. He would do as he

desired; come what might he would gain his end. He would stop at

nothing, hesitate at nothing. It would probably be difficult to get her

from her post, but with all his giant's strength Bennett set himself to

gain her safety.

A great point that he believed was in his favour, a consideration that

influenced him to adopt so irrevocable a resolution, was his belief that

Lloyd loved him. Bennett was not a woman's man. Men he could understand

and handle like so many manikins, but the nature of his life and work

did not conduce to a knowledge of women. Bennett did not understand

them. In his interview with Lloyd when she had so strenuously denied

Ferriss' story Bennett could not catch the ring of truth. It had gotten

into his mind that Lloyd loved him. He believed easily what he wanted to

believe, and his faith in Lloyd's love for him had become a part and

parcel of his fundamental idea of things, not readily to be driven out

even by Lloyd herself.

Bennett's resolution was taken. Never had he failed in accomplishing

that upon which he set his mind. He would not fail now. Beyond a certain

limit--a limit which now he swiftly reached and passed--Bennett's

determination to carry his point became, as it were, a sort of

obsession; the sweep of the tremendous power he unchained carried his

own self along with it in its resistless onrush. At such, times there

was no light of reason in his actions. He saw only his point, beheld

only his goal; deaf to all voices that would call him back, blind to all

consideration that would lead him to swerve, reckless of everything that

he trampled under foot, he stuck to his aim until that aim was an

accomplished fact. When the grip of the Ice had threatened to close upon

him and crush him, he had hurled himself against its barriers with an

energy and resolve to conquer that was little short of directed frenzy.

So it was with him now.

* * * * *

When Lloyd had parted from the Campbells in the square before the house,

she had gone directly to the railway station of a suburban line, and,

within the hour, was on her way to Medford. As always happened when an

interesting case was to be treated, her mind became gradually filled

with it to the exclusion of everything else. The Campbells, and

Bennett's ready acceptance of a story that put her in so humiliating a

light, were forgotten as the train swept her from the heat and dust of

the City out into the green reaches of country to the southward. What

had been done upon the case she had no means of telling. She only knew

that the case was of unusual virulence and well advanced. It had killed

one nurse already and seriously endangered the life of another, but so

far from reflecting on the danger to herself, Lloyd felt a certain

exhilaration in the thought that she was expected to succeed where

others had succumbed. Another battle with the Enemy was at hand, the

Enemy who, though conquered on a hundred fields, must inevitably triumph

in the end. Once again this Enemy had stooped and caught a human being

in his cold grip. Once again Life and Death were at grapples, and Death

was strong, and from out the struggle a cry had come--had come to her--a

cry for help.

All the exuberance of battle grew big within her breast. She was

impatient to be there--there at hand--to face the Enemy again across the

sick-bed, where she had so often faced and outfought him before; and,

matching her force against his force, her obstinacy against his

strength--the strength that would pull the life from her grasp--her

sleepless vigilance against his stealth, her intelligence against his

cunning, her courage against his terrors, her resistance against his

attack, her skill against his strategy, her science against his

world-old, worldwide experience, win the fight, save the life, hold firm

against his slow, resistless pull and triumph again, if it was only for

the day.

Succeed she would and must. Her inborn obstinacy, her sturdy refusal to

yield her ground, whatever it should be, her stubborn power of

resistance, her tenacity of her chosen course, came to her aid as she

drew swiftly near to the spot whereon the battle would be fought.

Mentally she braced herself, holding back with all her fine,

hard-tempered, native strength. No, she would not yield the life to the

Enemy; no, she would not give up; no, she would not recede. Let the

Enemy do his worst--she was strong against his efforts.

At Medford, which she reached toward four in the afternoon, after an

hour's ride from the City, she found a conveyance waiting for her, and

was driven rapidly through streets bordered with villas and closely

shaven lawns to a fair-sized country seat on the outskirts of the town.

The housekeeper met her at the door with the information that the doctor

was, at the moment, in the sick-room, and had left orders that the nurse

should be brought to him the moment she arrived. The housekeeper showed

Lloyd the way to the second landing, knocking upon the half-open door at

the end of the hall, and ushering her in without waiting for an answer.

Lloyd took in the room at a glance--the closely drawn curtains, the

screen between the bed and the windows, the doctor standing on the

hearth-rug, and the fever-inflamed face of the patient on the pillow.

Then all her power of self-repression could not keep her from uttering a

smothered exclamation.

For she, the woman who, with all the savage energy of him, Bennett

loved, had, at peril of her life, come to nurse Bennett's nearest

friend, the man of all others dear to him--Richard Ferriss.