X.

The months passed; Christmas came and went. Until then the winter had

been unusually mild, but January set in with a succession of vicious

cold snaps and great blustering winds out of the northeast. Lloyd and

Bennett had elected to remain quietly in their new home at Medford. They

had no desire to travel, and Bennett's forthcoming book demanded his

attention. Adler stayed on about the house. He and the dog Kamiska were

companions inseparable. At long intervals visitors presented

themselves--Dr. Street, or Pitts, or certain friends of Bennett's. But

the great rush of interviewers, editors, and projectors of marvellous

schemes that had crowded Bennett's anterooms during the spring and early

summer was conspicuously dwindling. The press ceased to speak of him;

even his mail had fallen away. Now, whenever the journals of the day

devoted space to arctic exploration, it was invariably in reference to

the English expedition wintering on the Greenland coast. That world that

had clamoured so loudly upon Bennett's return, while, perhaps, not yet

forgetting him, was already ignoring him, was looking in other

directions. Another man was in the public eye.

But in every sense these two--Lloyd and Bennett--were out of the world.

They had freed themselves from the current of affairs. They stood aside

while the great tide went careering past swift and turbulent, and one of

them at least lacked even the interest to look on and watch its

progress.

For a time Lloyd was supremely happy. Their life was unbroken,

uneventful. The calm, monotonous days of undisturbed happiness to which

she had looked forward were come at last. Thus it was always to be.

Isolated and apart, she could shut her ears to the thunder of the

world's great tide that somewhere, off beyond the hills in the direction

of the City, went swirling through its channels. Hardly an hour went by

that she and Bennett were not together. Lloyd had transferred her stable

to her new home; Lewis was added to the number of their servants, and

until Bennett's old-time vigour completely returned to him she drove out

almost daily with her husband, covering the country for miles around.

Much of their time, however, they spent in Bennett's study. This was a

great apartment in the rear of the house, scantily, almost meanly,

furnished. Papers littered the floor; bundles of manuscripts, lists,

charts, and observations, the worn and battered tin box of records,

note-books, journals, tables of logarithms were piled upon Bennett's

desk. A bookcase crammed with volumes of reference, statistical

pamphlets, and the like stood between the windows, while one of the

walls was nearly entirely occupied by a vast map of the arctic circle,

upon which the course of the Freja, her drift in the pack, and the route

of the expedition's southerly march were accurately plotted.

The room was bare of ornament; the desk and a couple of chairs were its

only furniture. Pictures there were none. Their places were taken by

photographs and a great blue print of the shipbuilder's plans and

specifications of the Freja.

The photographs were some of those that Dennison had made of the

expedition--the Freja nipped in the ice, a group of the officers and

crew upon the forward deck, the coast of Wrangel Island, Cape Kammeni,

peculiar ice formations, views of the pack under different conditions

and temperatures, pressure-ridges and scenes of the expedition's daily

life in the arctic, bear-hunts, the manufacture of sledges, dog-teams,

Bennett taking soundings and reading the wind-gauge, and one, the last

view of the Freja, taken just as the ship--her ice-sheathed dripping

bows heaved high in the air, the flag still at the peak--sank from

sight.

However, on the wall over the blue-print plans of the Freja, one of the

boat's flags, that had been used by the expedition throughout all the

time of its stay in the ice, hung suspended--a faded, tattered square of

stars and bars.

As the new life settled quietly and evenly to its grooves a routine

began to develop. About an hour after breakfast Lloyd and Bennett shut

themselves in Bennett's "workroom," as he called it, Lloyd taking her

place at the desk. She had become his amanuensis, had insisted upon

writing to his dictation.

"Look at that manuscript," she had exclaimed one day, turning the sheets

that Bennett had written; "literally the very worst handwriting I have

ever seen. What do you suppose a printer would make out of your 'thes'

and 'ands'? It's hieroglyphics, you know," she informed him gravely,

nodding her head at him.

It was quite true. Bennett wrote with amazing rapidity and with ragged,

vigorous strokes of the pen, not unfrequently driving the point through

the paper itself; his script was pothooks, clumsy, slanting in all

directions, all but illegible. In the end Lloyd had almost pushed him

from his place at the desk, taking the pen from between his fingers,

exclaiming:

"Get up! Give me your chair--and that pen. Handwriting like that is

nothing else but a sin."

Bennett allowed her to bully him, protesting merely for the enjoyment of

squabbling with her.

"Come, I like this. What are you doing in my workroom anyhow, Mrs.

Bennett? I think you had better go to your housework."

"Don't talk," she answered. "Here are your notes and journal. Now tell

me what to write."

In the end matters adjusted themselves. Daily Lloyd took her place at

the desk, pen in hand, the sleeve of her right arm rolled back to the

elbow (a habit of hers whenever writing, and which Bennett found to be

charming beyond words), her pen travelling steadily from line to line.

He on his part paced the floor, a cigar between his teeth, his notes and

note-books in his hand, dictating comments of his own, or quoting from

the pages, stained, frayed, and crumpled, written by the light of the

auroras, the midnight suns, or the unsteady, flickering of train-oil

lanterns and blubber-lamps.

What long, delicious hours they spent thus, as the winter drew on, in

the absolute quiet of that country house, ignored and lost in the brown,

bare fields and leafless orchards of the open country! No one troubled

them. No one came near them. They asked nothing better than that the

world wherein they once had lived, whose hurtling activity and febrile

unrest they both had known so well, should leave them alone.

Only one jarring note, and that none too resonant, broke the long

harmony of Lloyd's happiness during these days. Bennett was deaf to it;

but for Lloyd it vibrated continuously and, as time passed, with

increasing insistence and distinctness. But for one person in the world

Lloyd could have told herself that her life was without a single element

of discontent.

This was Adler. It was not that his presence about the house was a

reproach to Bennett's wife, for the man was scrupulously unobtrusive. He

had the instinctive delicacy that one sometimes discovers in simple,

undeveloped natures--seafaring folk especially--and though he could not

bring himself to leave his former chief, he had withdrawn himself more

than ever from notice since the time of Bennett's marriage. He rarely

even waited on the table these days, for Lloyd and Bennett often chose

to breakfast and dine quite to themselves.

But, for all that, Lloyd saw Adler from time to time, Kamiska invariably

at his heels. She came upon him polishing the brasses upon the door of

the house, or binding strips of burlaps and sacking about the

rose-bushes in the garden, or returning from the village post-office

with the mail, invariably wearing the same woollen cap, the old

pea-jacket, and the jersey with the name "Freja" upon the breast. He

rarely spoke to her unless she first addressed him, and then always with

a precise salute, bringing his heels sharply together, standing stiffly

at attention.

But the man, though all unwittingly, radiated gloom. Lloyd readily saw

that Adler was labouring under a certain cloud of disappointment and

deferred hope. Naturally she understood the cause. Lloyd was too

large-hearted to feel any irritation at the sight of Adler. But she

could not regard him with indifference. To her mind he stood for all

that Bennett had given up, for the great career that had stopped

half-way, for the work half done, the task only half completed. In a way

was not Adler now superior to Bennett? His one thought and aim and hope

was to "try again." His ambition was yet alive and alight; the soldier

was willing where the chief lost heart. Never again had Adler addressed

himself to Lloyd on the subject of Bennett's inactivity. Now he seemed

to understand--to realise that once married--and to Lloyd--he must no

longer expect Bennett to continue the work. All this Lloyd interpreted

from Adler's attitude, and again and again told herself that she could

read the man's thoughts aright. She even fancied she caught a mute

appeal in his eyes upon those rare occasions when they met, as though he

looked to her as the only hope, the only means to wake Bennett from his

lethargy. She imagined that she heard him say:

"Ain't you got any influence with him, Miss? Won't you talk good talk to

him? Don't let him chuck. Make him be a man, and not a professor.

Nothing else 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."

His work, his work, God made him for that; appointed the task, made the

man, and now she came between. God, Man, and the Work,--the three vast

elements of an entire system, the whole universe epitomised in the

tremendous trinity. Again and again such thoughts assailed her. Duty

once more stirred and awoke. It seemed to her as if some great engine

ordained of Heaven to run its appointed course had come to a standstill,

was rusting to its ruin, and that she alone of all the world had power

to grasp its lever, to send it on its way; whither, she did not know;

why, she could not tell. She knew only that it was right that she should

act. By degrees her resolution hardened. Bennett must try again. But at

first it seemed to her as though her heart would break, and more than

once she wavered.

As Bennett continued to dictate to her the story of the expedition he

arrived at the account of the march toward Kolyuchin Bay, and, finally,

at the description of the last week, with its terrors, its sufferings,

its starvation, its despair, when, one by one, the men died in their

sleeping-bags, to be buried under slabs of ice. When this point in the

narrative was reached Bennett inserted no comment of his own; but while

Lloyd wrote, read simply and with grim directness from the entries in

his journal precisely as they had been written.

Lloyd had known in a vague way that the expedition had suffered

abominably, but hitherto Bennett had never consented to tell her the

story in detail. "It was a hard week," he informed her, "a rather bad

grind."

Now, for the first time, she was to know just what had happened, just

what he had endured.

As usual, Bennett paced the floor from wall to wall, his cigar in his

teeth, his tattered, grimy ice-journal in his hand. At the desk Lloyd's

round, bare arm, the sleeve turned up to the elbow, moved evenly back

and forth as she wrote. In the intervals of Bennett's dictation the

scratching of Lloyd's pen made itself heard. A little fire snapped and

crackled on the hearth. The morning's sun came flooding in at the

windows.

"... Gale of wind from the northeast," prompted Lloyd, raising her head

from her writing. Bennett continued:

"Impossible to march against it in our weakened condition."

He paused for her to complete the sentence.

"... Must camp here till it abates...."

"Have you got that?" Lloyd nodded.

"... Made soup of the last of the dog-meat this afternoon.... Our

last pemmican gone."

There was a pause; then Bennett resumed:

"December 1st, Wednesday--Everybody getting weaker.... Metz breaking

down.... Sent Adler to the shore to gather shrimps ... we had about

a mouthful apiece at noon ... supper, a spoonful of glycerine and

hot water."

Lloyd put her hand to her temple, smoothing back her hair, her face

turned away. As before, in the park, on that warm and glowing summer

afternoon, a swift, clear vision of the Ice was vouchsafed to her. She

saw the coast of Kolyuchin Bay--primordial desolation, whirling

dust-like snow, the unleashed wind yelling like a sabbath of witches,

leaping and somersaulting from rock to rock, folly-stricken and

insensate in its hideous dance of death. Bennett continued. His voice

insensibly lowered itself, a certain gravity of manner came upon him. At

times he looked at the written pages in his hand with vague, unseeing

eyes. No doubt he, too, was remembering.

He resumed:

"December 2d, Thursday--Metz died during the night.... Hansen dying.

Still blowing a gale from the northeast.... A hard night."

Lloyd's pen moved slower and slower as she wrote. The lines of the

manuscript began to blur and swim before her eyes.

And it was to this that she must send him. To this inhuman, horrible

region; to this life of prolonged suffering, where death came slowly

through days of starvation, exhaustion, and agony hourly renewed. He

must dare it all again. She must force him to it. Her decision had been

taken; her duty was plain to her. Now it was irrevocable.

"... Hansen died during early morning.... Dennison breaking down....

"... December 5th--Sunday--Dennison found dead this morning between

Adler and myself...."

The vision became plainer, more distinct. She fancied she saw the

interior of the tent and the dwindling number of the Freja's survivors

moving about on their hands and knees in its gloomy half-light. Their

hair and beards were long, their faces black with dirt, monstrously

distended and fat with the bloated irony of starvation. They were no

longer men. After that unspeakable stress of misery nothing but the

animal remained.

"... Too weak to bury him, or even carry him out of the tent.... He

must lie where he is.... Last spoonful of glycerine and hot

water.... Divine service at 5:30 P.M...."

Once more Lloyd faltered in her writing; her hand moved slower. Shut her

teeth though she might, the sobs would come; swiftly the tears brimmed

her eyes, but she tried to wink them back, lest Bennett should see.

Heroically she wrote to the end of the sentence. A pause followed:

"Yes--' divine services at'--I--I--"

The pen dropped from her fingers and she sank down upon her desk, her

head bowed in the hollow of her bare arm, shaken from head to foot with

the violence of the crudest grief she had ever known. Bennett threw his

journal from him, and came to her, taking her in his arms, putting her

head upon his shoulder.

"Why, Lloyd, what is it--why, old chap, what the devil! I was a beast to

read that to you. It wasn't really as bad as that, you know, and

besides, look here, look at me. It all happened three years ago. It's

all over with now."

Without raising her head, and clinging to him all the closer, Lloyd

answered brokenly:

"No, no; it's not all over. It never, never will be."

"Pshaw, nonsense!" Bennett blustered, "you must not take it to heart

like this. We're going to forget all about it now. Here, damn the book,

anyhow! We've had enough of it to-day. Put your hat on. We'll have the

ponies out and drive somewhere. And to-night we'll go into town and see

a show at a theatre."

"No," protested Lloyd, pushing back from him, drying her eyes. "You

shall not think I'm so weak. We will go on with what we have to do--with

our work. I'm all right now."

Bennett marched her out of the room without more ado, and, following

her, closed and locked the door behind them. "We'll not write another

word of that stuff to-day. Get your hat and things. I'm going out to

tell Lewis to put the ponies in."

But that day marked a beginning. From that time on Lloyd never faltered,

and if there were moments when the iron bit deeper than usual into her

heart, Bennett never knew her pain. By degrees a course of action

planned itself for her. A direct appeal to Bennett she believed would

not only be useless, but beyond even her heroic courage. She must

influence him indirectly. The initiative must appear to come from him.

It must seem to him that he, of his own accord, roused his dormant

resolution. It was a situation that called for all her feminine tact,

all her delicacy, all her instinctive diplomacy.

The round of their daily life was renewed, but now there was a change.

It was subtle, illusive, a vague, indefinite trouble in the air. Lloyd

had addressed herself to her task, and from day to day, from hour to

hour, she held to it, unseen, unnoticed. Now it was a remark dropped as

if by chance in the course of conversation; now an extract cut from a

newspaper or scientific journal, and left where Bennett would find it;

now merely a look in her eyes, an instant's significant glance when her

gaze met her husband's, or a moment's enthusiasm over the news of some

discovery. Insensibly and with infinite caution she directed his

attention to the world he believed he had abjured; she called into being

his interest in his own field of action, reading to him by the hour from

the writings of other men, or advancing and championing theories which

she knew to be false and ridiculous, but which she goaded him to deny

and refute.

One morning she even feigned an exclamation of unbounded astonishment as

she opened the newspaper while the two were at breakfast, pretending to

read from imaginary headlines.

"Ward, listen! 'The Pole at Last. A Norwegian Expedition Solves the

Mystery of the Arctic. The Goal Reached After--'"

"What!" cried Bennett sharply, his frown lowering.

"'--After Centuries of Failure.'" Lloyd put down the paper with a note

of laughter.

"Suppose you should read it some day."

Bennett subsided with a good-humoured growl.

"You did scare me for a moment. I thought--I thought--"

"I did scare you? Why were you scared? What did you think?" She leaned

toward him eagerly.

"I thought--well--oh--that some other chap, Duane, perhaps--"

"He's still at Tasiusak. But he will succeed, I do believe. I've read a

great deal about him. He has energy and determination. If anybody

succeeds it will be Duane."

"He? Never!"

"Somebody, then."

"You said once that if your husband couldn't nobody could."

"Yes, yes, I know," she answered cheerfully. "But you--you are out of

it now."

"Huh!" he grumbled. "It's not because I don't think I could if I wanted

to."

"No, you could not, Ward. Nobody can."

"But you just said you thought somebody would some day."

"Did I? Oh, suppose you really should one of these days!"

"And suppose I never came back?"

"Nonsense! Of course you would come back. They all do nowadays."

"De Long didn't."

"But you are not De Long."

And for the rest of the day Lloyd noted with a sinking heart that

Bennett was unusually thoughtful and preoccupied. She said nothing, and

was studious to avoid breaking in upon his reflections, whatever they

might be. She kept out of his way as much as possible, but left upon his

desk, as if by accident, a copy of a pamphlet issued by a geographical

society, open at an article upon the future of exploration within the

arctic circle. At supper that night Bennett suddenly broke in upon a

rather prolonged silence with:

"It's all in the ship. Build a ship strong enough to withstand lateral

pressure of the ice and the whole thing becomes easy."

Lloyd yawned and stirred her tea indifferently as she answered:

"Yes, but you know that can't be done."

Bennett frowned thoughtfully, drumming upon the table.

"I'll wager _I_ could build one."

"But it's not the ship alone. It's the man. Whom would you get to

command your ship?"

Bennett stared.

"Why, I would take her, of course."

"You? You have had your share--your chance. Now you can afford to stay

home and finish your book--and--well, you might deliver lectures."

"What rot, Lloyd! Can you see me posing on a lecture platform?"

"I would rather see you doing that than trying to beat Duane, than

getting into the ice again. I would rather see you doing that than to

know that you were away up there--in the north, in the ice, at your work

again, fighting your way toward the Pole, leading your men and

overcoming every obstacle that stood in your way, never giving up, never

losing heart, trying to do the great, splendid, impossible thing;

risking your life to reach merely a point on a chart. Yes, I would

rather see you on a lecture platform than on the deck of an arctic

steamship. You know that, Ward."

He shot a glance at her.

"I would like to know what you mean," he muttered.

The winter went by, then the spring, and by June all the country around

Medford was royal with summer. During the last days of May, Bennett

practically had completed the body of his book and now occupied himself

with its appendix. There was little variation in their daily life. Adler

became more and more of a fixture about the place. In the first week of

June, Lloyd and Bennett had a visitor, a guest; this was Hattie

Campbell. Mr. Campbell was away upon a business trip, and Lloyd had

arranged to have the little girl spend the fortnight of his absence

with her at Medford.

The summer was delightful. A vast, pervading warmth lay close over all

the world. The trees, the orchards, the rose-bushes in the garden about

the house, all the teeming life of trees and plants hung motionless and

poised in the still, tideless ocean of the air. It was very quiet; all

distant noises, the crowing of cocks, the persistent calling of robins

and jays, the sound of wheels upon the road, the rumble of the trains

passing the station down in the town, seemed muffled and subdued. The

long, calm summer days succeeded one another in an unbroken, glimmering

procession. From dawn to twilight one heard the faint, innumerable

murmurs of the summer, the dull bourdon of bees in the rose and lilac

bushes, the prolonged, strident buzzing of blue-bottle-flies, the harsh,

dry scrape of grasshoppers, the stridulating of an occasional cricket.

In the twilight and all through the night itself the frogs shrilled from

the hedgerows and in the damp, north corners of the fields, while from

the direction of the hills toward the east the whippoorwills called

incessantly. During the day the air was full of odours, distilled as it

were by the heat of high noon--the sweet smell of ripening apples, the

fragrance of warm sap and leaves and growing grass, the smell of cows

from the nearby pastures, the pungent, ammoniacal suggestion of the

stable back of the house, and the odour of scorching paint blistering on

the southern walls.

July was very hot. No breath of wind stirred the vast, invisible sea of

air, quivering and oily under the vertical sun. The landscape was

deserted of animated life; there was little stirring abroad. In the

house one kept within the cool, darkened rooms with matting on the

floors and comfortable, deep wicker chairs, the windows wide to the

least stirring of the breeze. Adler dozed in his canvas hammock slung

between a hitching-post and a crab-apple tree in the shade behind the

stable. Kamiska sprawled at full length underneath the water-trough, her

tongue lolling, panting incessantly. An immeasurable Sunday stillness

seemed to hang suspended in the atmosphere--a drowsy, numbing hush.

There was no thought of the passing of time. The day of the week was

always a matter of conjecture. It seemed as though this life of heat and

quiet and unbroken silence was to last forever.

Then suddenly there was an _alerte_. One morning, a day or so after

Hattie Campbell had returned to the City, just as Lloyd and Bennett were

finishing their breakfast in the now heavily awninged glass-room, they

were surprised to see Adler running down the road toward the house,

Kamiska racing on ahead, barking excitedly. Adler had gone into the town

for the mail and morning's paper. This latter he held wide open in his

hand, and as soon as he caught sight of Lloyd and Bennett waved it about

him, shouting as he ran.

Lloyd's heart began to beat. There was only one thing that could excite

Adler to this degree--the English expedition; Adler had news of it; it

was in the paper. Duane had succeeded; had been working steadily

northward during all these past months, while Bennett--

"Stuck in the ice! stuck in the ice!" shouted Adler as he swung wide the

front gate and came hastening toward the veranda across the lawn. "What

did we say! Hooray! He's stuck. I knew it; any galoot might 'a' known

it. Duane's stuck tighter'n a wedge off Bache Island, in Kane Basin.

Here it all is; read it for yourself."

Bennett took the paper from him and read aloud to the effect that the

Curlew, accompanied by her collier, which was to follow her to the

southerly limit of Kane Basin, had attempted the passage of Smith Sound

late in June. But the season, as had been feared, was late. The enormous

quantities of ice reported by the whalers the previous year had not

debouched from the narrow channel, and on the last day of June the

Curlew had found her further progress effectually blocked. In essaying

to force her way into a lead the ice had closed in behind her, and,

while not as yet nipped, the vessel was immobilised. There was no hope

that she would advance northward until the following summer. The

collier, which had not been beset, had returned to Tasiusak with the

news of the failure.

"What a galoot! What a--a professor!" exclaimed Adler with a vast

disdain. "Him loafing at Tasiusak waiting for open water, when the Alert

wintered in eighty-two-twenty-four! Well, he's shelved for another year,

anyhow."

Later on, after breakfast, Lloyd and Bennett shut themselves in

Bennett's workroom, and for upward of three hours addressed themselves

to the unfinished work of the previous day, compiling from Bennett's

notes a table of temperatures of the sea-water taken at different

soundings. Alternating with the scratching of Lloyd's pen, Bennett's

voice continued monotonously:

"August 15th--2,000 meters or 1,093 fathoms--minus .66 degrees

centigrade or 30.81 Fahrenheit."

"Fahrenheit," repeated Lloyd as she wrote the last word.

"August 16th--1,600 meters or 874 fathoms--"

"Eight hundred and seventy-four fathoms," repeated Lloyd as Bennett

paused abstractedly.

"Or ... he's in a bad way, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"It's a bad bit of navigation along there. The Proteus was nipped and

crushed to kindling in about that same latitude ... h'm" ... Bennett

tugged at his mustache. Then, suddenly, as if coming to himself:

"Well--these temperatures now. Where were we? 'Eight hundred and

seventy-four fathoms, minus forty-six hundredths degrees centigrade.'"

On the afternoon of the next day, just as they were finishing this

table, there was a knock at the door. It was Adler, and as Bennett

opened the door he saluted and handed him three calling-cards. Bennett

uttered an exclamation of surprise, and Lloyd turned about from the

desk, her pen poised in the air over the half-written sheet.

"They might have let me know they were coming," she heard Bennett

mutter. "What do they want?"

"Guess they came on that noon train, sir," hazarded Adler. "They didn't

say what they wanted, just inquired for you."

"Who is it?" asked Lloyd, coming forward.

Bennett read off the names on the cards.

"Well, it's Tremlidge--that's the Tremlidge of the Times; he's the

editor and proprietor--and Hamilton Garlock--has something to do with

that new geographical society--president, I believe--and this one"--he

handed her the third card--"is a friend of yours, Craig V. Campbell, of

the Hercules Wrought Steel Company."

Lloyd stared. "What can they want?" she murmured, looking up to him from

the card in some perplexity. Bennett shook his head.

"Tell them to come up here," he said to Adler.

Lloyd hastily drew down her sleeve over her bare arm.

"Why up here, Ward?" she inquired abruptly.

"Should we have seen them downstairs?" he demanded with a frown. "I

suppose so; I didn't think. Don't go," he added, putting a hand on her

arm as she started for the door. "You might as well hear what they have

to say."

The visitors entered, Adler holding open the door--Campbell, well

groomed, clean-shaven, and gloved even in that warm weather; Tremlidge,

the editor of one of the greater daily papers of the City (and of the

country for the matter of that), who wore a monocle and carried a straw

hat under his arm; and Garlock, the vice-president of an international

geographical society, an old man, with beautiful white hair curling

about his ears, a great bow of black silk knotted about his

old-fashioned collar. The group presented, all unconsciously, three

great and highly developed phases of nineteenth-century

intelligence--science, manufactures, and journalism--each man of them a

master in his calling.

When the introductions and preliminaries were over, Bennett took up his

position again in front of the fireplace, leaning against the mantle,

his hands in his pockets. Lloyd sat opposite to him at the desk, resting

her elbow on the edge. Hanging against the wall behind her was the vast

chart of the arctic circle. Tremlidge, the editor, sat on the bamboo

sofa near the end of the room, his elbows on his knees, gently tapping

the floor with the ferrule of his slim walking-stick; Garlock, the

scientist, had dropped into the depths of a huge leather chair and

leaned back in it comfortably, his legs crossed, one boot swinging

gently; Campbell stood behind this chair, drumming on the back

occasionally with the fingers of one hand, speaking to Bennett over

Garlock's shoulder, and from time to time turning to Tremlidge for

corroboration and support of what he was saying.

Abruptly the conference began.

"Well, Mr. Bennett, you got our wire?" Campbell said by way of

commencement.

Bennett shook his head.

"No," he returned in some surprise; "no, I got no wire."

"That's strange," said Tremlidge. "I wired three days ago asking for

this interview. The address was right, I think. I wired: 'Care of Dr.

Pitts.' Isn't that right?"

"That probably accounts for it," answered Bennett. "This is Pitts's

house, but he does not live here now. Your despatch, no doubt, went to

his office in the City, and was forwarded to him. He's away just now,

travelling, I believe. But--you're here. That's the essential."

"Yes," murmured Garlock, looking to Campbell. "We're here, and we want

to have a talk with you."

Campbell, who had evidently been chosen spokesman, cleared his throat.

"Well, Mr. Bennett, I don't know just how to begin, so suppose

I begin at the beginning. Tremlidge and I belong to the same club in

the City, and in some way or other we have managed to see a good deal

of each other during the last half-dozen years. We find that we have

a good deal in common. I don't think his editorial columns are for

sale, and he doesn't believe there are blow-holes in my steel plates.

I really do believe we have certain convictions. Tremlidge seems to

have an idea that journalism can be clean and yet enterprising, and

tries to run his sheet accordingly, and I am afraid that I would not

make a bid for bridge girders below what it would cost to manufacture

them honestly. Tremlidge and I differ in politics; we hold conflicting

views as to municipal government; we attend different churches; we are

at variance in the matter of public education, of the tariff, of

emigration, and, heaven save the mark! of capital and labour, but we

tell ourselves that we are public-spirited and are a little proud that

God allowed us to be born in the United States; also it appears that we

have more money than Henry George believes to be right. Now," continued

Mr. Campbell, straightening himself as though he were about to touch

upon the real subject of his talk, "when the news of your return, Mr.

Bennett, was received, it was, as of course you understand, the one

topic of conversation in the streets, the clubs, the newspaper

offices--everywhere. Tremlidge and I met at our club at luncheon the

next week, and I remember perfectly well how long and how very earnestly

we talked of your work and of arctic exploration in general.

"We found out all of a sudden that here at last was a subject we were

agreed upon, a subject in which we took an extraordinary mutual

interest. We discovered that we had read almost every explorer's book

from Sir John Franklin down. We knew all about the different theories

and plans of reaching the Pole. We knew how and why they had all failed;

but, for all that, we were both of the opinion" (Campbell leaned

forward, speaking with considerable energy) "that it can be done, and

that America ought to do it. That would be something better than even a

World's Fair.

"We give out a good deal of money, Tremlidge and I, every year to public

works and one thing or another. We buy pictures by American

artists--pictures that we don't want; we found a scholarship now and

then; we contribute money to build groups of statuary in the park; we

give checks to the finance committees of libraries and museums and all

the rest of it, but, for the lives of us, we can feel only a mild

interest in the pictures and statues, and museums and colleges, though

we go on buying the one and supporting the other, because we think that

somehow it is right for us to do it. I'm afraid we are men more of

action than of art, literature, and the like. Tremlidge is, I know. He

wants facts, accomplished results. When he gives out his money he wants

to see the concrete, substantial return--and I'm not sure that I am not

of the same way of thinking.

"Well, with this and with that, and after talking it all over a dozen

times--twenty times--we came to the conclusion that what we would most

like to aid financially would be a successful attempt by an

American-built ship, manned by American seamen, led by an American

commander, to reach the North Pole. We came to be very enthusiastic

about our idea; but we want it American from start to finish. We will

start the subscription, and want to head the list with our checks; but

we want every bolt in that ship forged in American foundries from metal

dug out of American soil. We want every plank in her hull shaped from

American trees, every sail of her woven by American looms, every man of

her born of American parents, and we want it this way because we believe

in American manufactures, because we believe in American shipbuilding,

because we believe in American sailmakers, and because we believe in the

intelligence and pluck and endurance and courage of the American sailor.

"Well," Campbell continued, changing his position and speaking in a

quieter voice, "we did not say much to anybody, and, in fact, we never

really planned any expedition at all. We merely talked about its

practical nature and the desirability of having it distinctively

American. This was all last summer. What we wanted to do was to make the

scheme a popular one. It would not be hard to raise a hundred thousand

dollars from among a dozen or so men whom we both know, and we found

that we could count upon the financial support of Mr. Garlock's society.

That was all very well, but we wanted the _people_ to back this

enterprise. We would rather get a thousand five-dollar subscriptions

than five of a thousand dollars each. When our ship went out we wanted

her commander to feel, not that there were merely a few millionaires,

who had paid for his equipment and his vessel, behind him, but that he

had seventy millions of people, a whole nation, at his back.

"So Tremlidge went to work and telegraphed instructions to the

Washington correspondents of his paper to sound quietly the temper of as

many Congressmen as possible in the matter of making an appropriation

toward such an expedition. It was not so much the money we wanted as the

sanction of the United States. Anything that has to do with the Navy is

popular just at present. We had got a Congressman to introduce and

father an appropriation bill, and we could count upon the support of

enough members of both houses to put it through. We wanted Congress to

appropriate twenty thousand dollars. We hoped to raise another ten

thousand dollars by popular subscription. Mr. Garlock could assure us

two thousand dollars; Tremlidge would contribute twenty thousand dollars

in the name of the Times, and I pledged myself to ten thousand dollars,

and promised to build the ship's engines and fittings. We kept our

intentions to ourselves, as Tremlidge did not want the other papers to

get hold of the story before the Times printed it. But we continued to

lay our wires at Washington. Everything was going as smooth as oil; we

seemed sure of the success of our appropriation bill, and it was even to

be introduced next week, when the news came of the collapse of the

English expedition--the Duane-Parsons affair.

"You would have expected precisely an opposite effect, but it has

knocked our chances with Congress into a cocked hat. Our member, who was

to father the bill, declared to us that so sure as it was brought up now

it would be killed in committee. I went to Washington at once; it was

this, and not, as you supposed, private business that has taken me away.

I saw our member and Tremlidge's head correspondent. It was absolutely

no use. These men who have their finger upon the Congressional pulse

were all of the same opinion. It would be useless to try to put through

our bill at present. Our member said 'Wait;' all Tremlidge's men said

'Wait--wait for another year, until this English expedition and its

failure are forgotten, and then try again.' But we don't want to wait.

Suppose Duane _is_ blocked for the present. He has a tremendous start.

He's on the ground. By next summer the chances are the ice will have so

broken up as to permit him to push ahead, and by the time our bill gets

through and our ship built and launched he may be--heaven knows where,

right up to the Pole, perhaps. No, we can't afford to give England such

long odds. We want to lay the keel of our ship as soon as we can--next

week, if possible; we've got the balance of the summer and all the

winter to prepare in, and a year from this month we want our American

expedition to be inside the polar circle, to be up with Duane, and at

least to break even with England. If we can do that we're not afraid of

the result, provided," continued Mr. Campbell, "provided _you_, Mr.

Bennett, are in command. If you consent to make the attempt, only one

point remains to be settled. Congress has failed us. We will give up the

idea of an appropriation. Now, then, and this is particularly what we

want to consult you about, how are we going to raise the twenty thousand

dollars?"

Lloyd rose to her feet.

"You may draw on me for the amount," she said quietly.

Garlock uncrossed his legs and sat up abruptly in the deep-seated chair.

Tremlidge screwed his monocle into his eye and stared, while Campbell

turned about sharply at the sound of Lloyd's voice with a murmur of

astonishment. Bennett alone did not move. As before, he leaned heavily

against the mantelpiece, his hands in his pockets, his head and his huge

shoulders a little bent. Only from under his thick, knotted frown he

shot a swift glance toward his wife. Lloyd paid no attention to the

others. After that one quiet movement that had brought her to her feet

she remained motionless and erect, her hands hanging straight at her

sides, the colour slowly mounting to her cheeks. She met Bennett's

glance and held it steadily, calmly, looking straight into his eyes. She

said no word, but all her love for him, all her hopes of him, all the

fine, strong resolve that, come what would, his career should not be

broken, his ambition should not faint through any weakness of hers, all

her eager sympathy for his great work, all her strong, womanly

encouragement for him to accomplish his destiny spoke to him, and called

to him in that long, earnest look of her dull-blue eyes. Now she was no

longer weak; now she could face the dreary consequences that, for her,

must follow the rousing of his dormant energy; now was no longer the

time for indirect appeal; the screen was down between them. More

eloquent than any spoken words was the calm, steady gaze in which she

held his own.

There was a long silence while husband and wife stood looking deep into

each other's eyes. And then, as a certain slow kindling took place in

his look, Lloyd saw that at last Bennett _understood_.

After that the conference broke up rapidly. Campbell, as the head and

spokesman of the committee, noted the long, significant glance that had

passed between Bennett and Lloyd, and, perhaps, vaguely divined that he

had touched upon a matter of a particularly delicate and intimate

nature. Something was in the air, something was passing between husband

and wife in which the outside world had no concern--something not meant

for him to see. He brought the interview to an end as quickly as

possible. He begged of Bennett to consider this talk as a mere

preliminary--a breaking of the ground. He would give Bennett time to

think it over. Speaking for himself and the others, he was deeply

impressed with that generous offer to meet the unexpected deficiency,

but it had been made upon the spur of the moment. No doubt Mr. Bennett

and his wife would wish to talk it over between themselves, to consider

the whole matter. The committee temporarily had its headquarters in his

(Campbell's) offices. He left Bennett the address. He would await his

decision and answer there.

When the conference ended Bennett accompanied the members of the

committee downstairs and to the front door of the house. The three had,

with thanks and excuses, declined all invitations to dine at Medford

with Bennett and his wife. They could conveniently catch the next train

back to the City; Campbell and Tremlidge were in a hurry to return to

their respective businesses.

The front gate closed. Bennett was left alone. He shut the front door of

the house, and for an instant stood leaning against it, his small eyes

twinkling under his frown, his glance straying aimlessly about amid the

familiar objects of the hallway and adjoining rooms. He was thoughtful,

perturbed, tugging slowly at the ends of his mustache. Slowly he

ascended the stairs, gaining the landing on the second floor and going

on toward the half-open door of the "workroom" he had just quitted.

Lloyd was uppermost in his mind. He wanted her, his wife, and that at

once. He was conscious that a great thing had suddenly transpired; that

all the calm and infinitely happy life of the last year was ruthlessly

broken up; but in his mind there was nothing more definite, nothing

stronger than the thought of his wife and the desire for her

companionship and advice.

He came into the "workroom," closing the door behind him with his heel,

his hands deep in his pockets. Lloyd was still there, standing opposite

him as he entered. She hardly seemed to have moved while he had been

gone. They did not immediately speak. Once more their eyes met. Then at

length:

"Well, Lloyd?"

"Well, my husband?"

Bennett was about to answer--what, he hardly knew; but at that moment

there was a diversion.

The old boat's flag, the tattered little square of faded stars and bars

that had been used to mark the line of many a weary march, had been

hanging, as usual, over the blue-print plans of the Freja on the wail

opposite the window. Inadequately fixed in its place, the jar of the

closing door as Bennett shut it behind him dislodged it, and it fell to

the floor close beside him.

He stooped and picked it up, and, holding it in his hand, turned toward

the spot whence it had fallen. He cast a glance at the wall above the

plans of the Freja, about to replace it, willing for the instant to

defer the momentous words he felt must soon be spoken, willing to put

off the inevitable a few seconds longer.

"I don't know," he muttered, looking from the flag to the empty

wall-spaces about the room; "I don't know just where to put this. Do

you--"

"Don't you know?" interrupted Lloyd suddenly, her blue eyes all alight.

"No," said Bennett; "I--"

Lloyd caught the flag from his hands and, with one great sweep of her

arm, drove its steel-shod shaft full into the centre of the great chart

of the polar region, into the innermost concentric circle where the Pole

was marked.

"Put that flag there!" she cried.