A Man's Woman

But Bennett was still blind. If she had been dear to him before, how doubly so had she become since she had confessed her love for him! Ferriss was forgotten, ignored. He could not let her go, he could not let her run the slightest risk. Was he to take any chance of losing her now? He shook his head.

"Ward!" she exclaimed with deep and serious earnestness. "If you do not wish me to risk my life by going to my post, be careful, oh, be very careful, that you do not risk something that is more to us both than life itself, by keeping me from it. Do you think I could love you so deeply and so truly as I do if I had not kept my standards high; if I had not believed in the things that were better than life, and stronger than death, and dearer to me than even love itself? There are some things I cannot do: I cannot be false, I cannot be cowardly, I cannot shirk my duty. Now I am helpless in your hands. You have conquered, and you can do with me as you choose. But if you make me do what is false, and what is cowardly, and what is dishonourable; if you stand between me and what I know is my duty, how can I love you, how can I love you?"

Persistently, perversely, Bennett stopped his ears to every consideration, to every argument. She wished to hazard her life. That was all he understood.

"No, Lloyd," he answered, "you must not do it."

"—and I want to love you," she went on, as though she had not heard. "I want you to be everything to me. I have trusted you so long—had faith in you so long, I don't want to think of you as the man who failed me when I most needed his help, who made me do the thing that was contemptible and unworthy. Believe me," she went on with sudden energy, "you will kill my love for you if you persist."

But before Bennett could answer there was a cry.

"It is the servant," exclaimed Lloyd quickly. "She has been watching—there in the room with him."

"Nurse—Miss Searight," came the cry, "quick—there is something wrong—I don't know—oh, hurry!"

"Do you hear?" cried Lloyd. "It is the crisis—he may be dying. Oh, Ward, it is the man you love! We can save him." She stamped her foot in the frenzy of her emotion, her hands twisting together. "I will go. I forbid you to keep—to hinder—to—to, oh, what is to become of us? If you love me, if you love him—Ward, will you let me go?"

Bennett put his hands over his ears, his eyes closed. In the horror of that moment, when he realised that no matter how he might desire it he could not waver in his resolution, it seemed to him that his reason must give way. But he set his back to the door, his hand gripped tight upon the knob, and through his set teeth his answer came as before:

"No."

"Nurse—Miss Searight, where are you? Hurry, oh, hurry!"

"Will you let me go?"

"No."

Lloyd caught at his hand, shut so desperately upon the knob, striving to loosen his clasp. She hardly knew what she was doing; she threw her arms about his neck, imploring, commanding, now submissive, now imperious, her voice now vibrating with anger, now trembling with passionate entreaty.

"You are not only killing him, you are killing my love for you; will you let me go—the love that is so dear to me? Let me love you, Ward; listen to me; don't make me hate you; let me love you, dear—"

"Hurry, oh, hurry!"

"Let me love you; let him live. I want to love you. It's the best happiness in my life. Let me be happy. Can't you see what this moment is to mean for us? It is our happiness or wretchedness forever. Will you let me go?"

"No."

"For the last time, Ward, listen! It is my love for you and his life. Don't crush us both—yes, and yourself. You who can, who are so powerful, don't trample all our happiness under foot."

"Hurry, hurry; oh, will nobody come to help?"

"Will you let me go?"

"No."

Her strength seemed all at once to leave her. All the fabric of her character, so mercilessly assaulted, appeared in that moment to reel, topple, and go crashing to its wreck. She was shattered, broken, humbled, and beaten down to the dust. Her pride was gone, her faith in herself was gone, her fine, strong energy was gone. The pity of it, the grief of it; all that she held dearest; her fine and confident steadfastness; the great love that had brought such happiness into her life—that had been her inspiration, all torn from her and tossed aside like chaff. And her patient—Ferriss, the man who loved her, who had undergone such suffering, such hardship, who trusted her and whom it was her duty to nurse back to life and health—if he should perish for want of her care, then what infinite sorrow, then what endless remorse, then what long agony of unavailing regret! Her world, her universe grew dark to her; she was driven from her firm stand. She was lost, she was whirled away—away with the storm, landmarks obliterated, lights gone; away with the storm; out into the darkness, out into the void, out into the waste places and wilderness and trackless desolation.

"Hurry, oh, hurry!"

It was too late. She had failed; the mistake had been made, the question had been decided. That insensate, bestial determination, iron-hearted, iron-strong, had beaten down opposition, had carried its point. Life and love had been crushed beneath its trampling without pity, without hesitation. The tragedy of the hour was done; the tragedy of the long years to come was just beginning.

Lloyd sank down in the chair before the table, and the head that she had held so high bowed down upon her folded arms. The violence of her grief shook her from head to foot like a dry, light reed. Her heart seemed literally to be breaking. She must set her teeth with all her strength to keep from groaning aloud, from crying out in her hopeless sorrow her impotent shame and despair.

Once more came the cry for help. Then the house fell silent. The minutes passed. But for Lloyd's stifled grief there was no sound. Bennett—leaning heavily against the door, his great shoulders stooping and bent, his face ashen, his eyes fixed—did not move. He did not speak to Lloyd. There was no word of comfort he could address to her—that would have seemed the last mockery. He had prevailed, as he knew he should, as he knew he must, when once his resolve was taken. The force that, once it was unleashed, was beyond him to control, had accomplished its purpose. His will remained unbroken; but at what cost? However, that was for future consideration. The costs? Had he not his whole life before him in which to count them? The present moment still called upon him to act. He looked at his watch.

The next quarter of an hour was all a confusion to him. Its incidents refused to define themselves upon his memory when afterward he tried to recall them. He could remember, however, that when he helped Lloyd into the carryall that was to take her to the depot in the village she had shrunk from his touch and had drawn away from him as if from a criminal—a murderer. He placed her satchel on the front seat with the driver, and got up beside the driver himself. She had drawn her veil over her face, and during the drive sat silent and motionless.

"Can you make it?" asked Bennett of the driver, watch in hand. The time was of the shortest, but the driver put the whip to his horses and, at a run, they reached the railway station a few moments ahead of time. Bennett told the driver to wait, and while Lloyd remained in her place he bought her ticket for the City. Then he went to the telegraph office and sent a peremptory despatch to the house on Calumet Square.

A few moments later the train had come and gone, an abrupt eruption of roaring iron and shrieking steam. Bennett was left on the platform alone, watching it lessen to a smoky blur where the rails converged toward the horizon. For an instant he stood watching, watching a resistless, iron-hearted force whirling her away, out of his reach, out of his life. Then he shook himself, turning sharply about.

"Back to the doctor's house, now," he commanded the driver; "on the run, you understand."

But the other protested. His horses were all but exhausted. Twice they had covered that distance at top speed and under the whip. He refused to return. Bennett took the young man by the arm and lifted him from his seat to the ground. Then he sprang to his place and lashed the horses to a gallop.

When he arrived at Dr. Pitts's house he did not stop to tie the horses, but threw the reins over their backs and entered the front hall, out of breath and panting. But the doctor, during Bennett's absence, had returned, and it was he who met him half-way up the stairs.

"How is he?" demanded Bennett. "I have sent for another nurse; she will be out here on the next train. I wired from the station."

"The only objection to that," answered the doctor, looking fixedly at him, "is that it is not necessary. Mr. Ferriss has just died."

VII

Throughout her ride from Medford to the City it was impossible for Lloyd, so great was the confusion in her mind, to think connectedly. She had been so fiercely shocked, so violently shattered and weakened, that for a time she lacked the power and even the desire to collect and to concentrate her scattering thoughts. For the time being she felt, but only dimly, that a great blow had fallen, that a great calamity had overwhelmed her, but so extraordinary was the condition of her mind that more than once she found herself calmly awaiting the inevitable moment when the full extent of the catastrophe would burst upon her. For the moment she was merely tired. She was willing even to put off this reaction for a while, willing to remain passive and dizzied and stupefied, resigning herself helplessly and supinely to the swift current of events.

Yet while that part of her mind which registered the greater, deeper, and more lasting impressions remained inactive, the smaller faculty, that took cognisance of the little, minute-to-minute matters, was as busy and bright as ever. It appeared that the blow had been struck over this latter faculty, and not, as one so often supposes, through it. She seemed in that hour to understand the reasonableness of this phenomenon, that before had always appeared so inexplicable, and saw how great sorrow as well as great joy strikes only at the greater machinery of the brain, overpassing and ignoring the little wheels and cogs, that work on as briskly as ever in storm or calm, being moved only by temporary and trivial emotions and impressions.

So it was that for upward of an hour while the train carried her swiftly back to the City, Lloyd sat quietly in her place, watching the landscape rushing past her and cut into regular divisions by the telegraph poles like the whirling pictures of a kinetoscope. She noted, and even with some particularity, the other passengers—a young girl in a smart tailor-made gown reading a book, cutting the leaves raggedly with a hairpin; a well-groomed gentleman with a large stomach, who breathed loudly through his nose; the book agent with his oval boxes of dried figs and endless thread of talk; a woman with a little boy who wore spectacles and who was continually making unsteady raids upon the water-cooler, and the brakeman and train conductor laughing and chatting in the forward seat.

She took an interest in every unusual feature of the country through which the train was speeding, and noted each stop or increase of speed. She found a certain diversion, as she had often done before, in watching for the mile-posts and in keeping count of the miles. She even asked the conductor at what time the train would reach the City, and uttered a little murmur of vexation when she was told that it was a half-hour late. The next instant she was asking herself why this delay should seem annoying to her. Then, toward the close of the afternoon, came the City itself. First a dull-gray smudge on the horizon, then a world of grimy streets, rows of miserable tenements festooned with rags, then a tunnel or two, and at length the echoing glass-arched terminal of the station. Lloyd alighted, and, remembering that the distance was short, walked steadily toward her destination till the streets and neighbourhood became familiar. Suddenly she came into the square. Directly opposite was the massive granite front of the agency. She paused abruptly. She was returning to the house after abandoning her post. What was she to say to them, the other women of her profession?

Then all at once came the reaction. Instantly the larger machinery of the mind resumed its functions, the hurt of the blow came back. With a fierce wrench of pain, the wound reopened, full consciousness returned. Lloyd remembered then that she had proved false to her trust at a moment of danger, that Ferriss would probably die because of what she had done, that her strength of will and of mind wherein she had gloried was broken beyond redemption; that Bennett had failed her, that her love for him, the one great happiness of her life, was dead and cold and could never be revived, and that in the eyes of the world she stood dishonoured and disgraced.

Now she must enter that house, now she must face its inmates, her companions. What to say to them? How explain her defection? How tell them that she had not left her post of her own will? Lloyd fancied herself saying in substance that the man who loved her and whom she loved had made her abandon her patient. She set her teeth. No, not that confession of miserable weakness; not that of all things. And yet the other alternative, what was that? It could be only that she had been afraid—she, Lloyd Searight! Must she, who had been the bravest of them all, stand before that little band of devoted women in the light of a self-confessed coward?

She remembered the case of the young English woman, Harriet Freeze, who, when called upon to nurse a smallpox patient, had been found wanting in courage at the crucial moment, and had discovered an excuse for leaving her post. Miss Freeze had been expelled dishonourably from the midst of her companions. And now she, Lloyd, standing apparently convicted of the same dishonour, must face the same tribunal. There was no escape. She must enter that house, she must endure that ordeal, and this at precisely the time when her resolution had been shattered, her will broken, her courage daunted. For a moment the idea of flight suggested itself to her—she would avoid the issue. She would hide from reproach and contumely, and without further explanation go back to her place in the country at Bannister. But the little exigencies of her position made this impossible. Besides her nurse's bag, her satchel was the only baggage she had at that moment, and she knew that there was but little money in her purse.

All at once she realised that while debating the question she had been sitting on one of the benches under the trees in the square. The sun was setting; evening was coming on. Maybe if she waited until six o'clock she could enter the house while the other nurses were at supper, gain her room unobserved, then lock herself in and deny herself to all callers. But Lloyd made a weary, resigned movement of her shoulders. Sooner or later she must meet them all eye to eye. It would be only putting off the humiliation.

She rose, and, turning to the house, began to walk slowly toward it. Why put it off? It would be as hard at one time as another. But so great was her sense of shame that even as she walked she fancied that the very passers-by, the loungers on the benches around the fountain, must know that here was a disgraced woman. Was it not apparent in her very face, in the very uncertainty of her gait? She told herself she had not done wisely to sit even for a moment upon the bench she had just quitted. She wondered if she had been observed, and furtively glanced about her. There! Was not that nursemaid studying her too narrowly? And the policeman close at hand, was he not watching her quizzically? She quickened her gait, moved with a sudden impulse to get out of sight, to hide within doors—where? In the house? There where, so soon as she set foot in it, her companions, the other nurses, must know her dishonour? Where was she to go? Where to turn? What was to become of her?

But she must go to the house. It was inevitable. She went forward, as it were, step by step. That little journey across the square under the elms and cottonwoods was for her a veritable chemin de la croix. Every step was an agony; every yard covered only brought her nearer the time and place of exposure. It was all the more humiliating because she knew that her impelling motive was not one of duty. There was nothing lofty in the matter—nothing self-sacrificing. She went back because she had to go back. Little material necessities, almost ludicrous in their pettiness, forced her on.

As she came nearer she looked cautiously at the windows of the agency. Who would be the first to note her home-coming? Would it be Miss Douglass, or Esther Thielman, or Miss Bergyn, the superintendent nurse? What would first be said to her? With what words would she respond? Then how the news of the betrayal of her trust would flash from room to room! How it would be discussed, how condemned, how deplored! Not one of the nurses of that little band but would not feel herself hurt by what she had done—by what she had been forced to do. And the news of her failure would spread to all her acquaintances and friends throughout the City. Dr. Street would know it; every physician to whom she had hitherto been so welcome an aid would know it. In all the hospitals it would be a nine days' gossip. Campbell would hear of it, and Hattie.

All at once, within thirty feet of the house, Lloyd turned about and walked rapidly away from it. The movement was all but involuntary; every instinct in her, every sense of shame, brusquely revolted. It was stronger than she. A power, for the moment irresistible, dragged her back from that doorway. Once entering here, she left all hope behind. Yet the threshold must be crossed, yet the hope must be abandoned.

She felt that if she faced about now a second time she would indeed attract attention. So, while her cheeks flamed hot at the meanness, the miserable ridiculousness of the imposture, she assumed a brisk, determined gait, as though she knew just where she were going, and, turning out of the square down a by-street, walked around the block, even stopping once or twice before a store, pretending an interest in the display. It seemed to her that by now everybody in the streets must have noted that there was something wrong with her. Twice as a passer-by brushed past her she looked back to see if he was watching her. How to live through the next ten minutes? If she were only in her room, bolted in, locked and double-locked in. Why was there not some back way through which she could creep to that seclusion?

And so it was that Lloyd came back to the house she had built, to the little community she had so proudly organised, to the agency she had founded, and with her own money endowed and supported.

At last she found herself at the bottom of the steps, her foot upon the lowest one, her hand clasping the heavy bronze rail. There was no going back now. She went up and pushed the button of the electric bell, and then, the step once taken, the irrevocable once dared, something like the calmness of resignation came to her. There was no help for it. Now for the ordeal. Rownie opened the door for her with a cheery welcome. Lloyd was dimly conscious that the girl said something about her mail, and that she was just in time for supper. But the hall and stairway were deserted and empty, while from the dining-room came a subdued murmur of conversation and the clink of dishes. The nurses were at supper, as Lloyd had hoped. The moment favoured her, and she brushed by Rownie, and almost ran, panic-stricken and trembling, up the stairs.

She gained the hall of the second floor. There was the door of her room standing ajar. With a little gasp of infinite relief, she hurried to it, entered, shut and locked and bolted it behind her, and, casting her satchel and handbag from her, flung herself down upon the great couch, and buried her head deep among the cushions.

At Lloyd's abrupt entrance Miss Douglass turned about from the book-shelves in an angle of the room and stared a moment in no little surprise. Then she exclaimed:

"Why, Lloyd, why, what is it—what is the matter?"

Lloyd sprang up sharply at the sound of her voice, and then sank down to a sitting posture upon the edge of the couch. Quietly enough she said:

"Oh, is it you? I didn't know—expect to find any one—"

"You don't mind, do you? I just ran in to get a book—something to read. I've had a headache all day, and didn't go down to supper."

Lloyd nodded. "Of course—I don't mind," she said, a little wearily.

"But tell me," continued the fever nurse, "whatever is the matter? When you came in just now—I never saw you so—oh, I understand, your case at Medford—"

Lloyd's hands closed tight upon the edge of the couch.

"No one could have got a patient through when the fever had got as far as that," continued the other. "This must have been the fifth or sixth week. The second telegram came just in time to prevent my going. I was just going out of the door when the boy came with it."

"You? What telegram?" inquired Lloyd.

"Yes, I was on call. The first despatch asking for another extra nurse came about two o'clock. The four-twenty was the first train I could have taken—the two-forty-five express is a through train and don't stop at Medford—and, as I say, I was just going out of the door when Dr. Pitts's second despatch came, countermanding the first, and telling us that the patient had died. It seems that it was one of the officers of the Freja expedition. We didn't know—"

"Died?" interrupted Lloyd, looking fixedly at her.

"But Lloyd, you mustn't take it so to heart. You couldn't have got him through. No one could at that time. He was probably dying when you were sent for. We must all lose a case now and then."

"Died?" repeated Lloyd; "Dr. Pitts wired that Mr. Ferriss died?"

"Yes; it was to prevent my coming out there uselessly. He must have sent the wire quite an hour before you left. It was very thoughtful of him."

"He's dead," said Lloyd in a low, expressionless voice, looking vacantly about the room. "Mr. Ferriss is dead." Then suddenly she put a fist to either temple, horror-struck and for the moment shaken with hysteria from head to foot, her eyes widening with an expression almost of terror. "Dead!" she cried. "Oh, it's horrible! Why didn't I—why couldn't I—"

"I know just how you feel," answered Miss Douglass soothingly. "I am that way myself sometimes. It's not professional, I know, but when you have been successful in two or three bad cases you think you can always win; and then when you lose the next case you believe that somehow it must have been your fault—that if you had been a little more careful at just that moment, or done a little different in that particular point, you might have saved your patient. But you, of all people, ought not to feel like that. If you could not have saved your case nobody could."

"It was just because I had the case that it was lost."

"Nonsense, Lloyd; don't talk like that. You've not had enough sleep; your nerves have been over-strained. You're worn out and a little hysterical and morbid. Now lie down and keep quiet, and I'll bring you your supper. You need a good night's sleep and bromide of potassium."

When she had gone Lloyd rose to her feet and drew her hand wearily across her eyes. The situation adjusted itself in her mind. After the first recoil of horror at Ferriss's death she was able to see the false position in which she stood. She had been so certain already that Ferriss would die, leaving him as she did at so critical a moment, that now the sharpness of Miss Douglass's news was blunted a little. She had only been unprepared for the suddenness of the shock. But now she understood clearly how Miss Douglass had been deceived by circumstances. The fever nurse had heard of Ferriss's death early in the afternoon, and supposed, of course, that Lloyd had left the case after, and not before, it had occurred. This was the story the other nurses would believe. Instantly, in the flood of grief and remorse and humiliation that had overwhelmed her, Lloyd caught at this straw of hope. Only Dr. Pitts and Bennett knew the real facts. Bennett, of course, would not speak, and Lloyd knew that the physician would understand the cruelty and injustice of her situation, and because of that would also keep silence. To make sure of this she could write him a letter, or, better still, see him personally. It would be hard to tell him the truth. But that was nothing when compared with the world's denunciation of her.