A Man's Woman

"Dick—Dick, old man, you're gone, gone from me, and it was I who did it; and Lloyd, she too—she—God help me!"

Then the tension snapped. The great, massive frame shook with grief from head to heel, and the harsh, angular face, with its salient jaw and hard, uncouth lines, was wet with the first tears he had ever known.

He was roused at length by a sudden movement on the part of the dog. Kamiska had risen to her feet with a low growl, then, as the gate-latch clinked, she threw up her head and gave tongue to the night with all the force of her lungs. Bennett straightened up, thanking fortune that the night was dark, and looked about him. A figure was coming up the front walk, the gravel crunching under foot. It was the figure of a man. At the foot of the steps of the veranda he paused, and as Bennett made a movement turned in his direction and said:

"Is this Dr. Pitts's house?"

Bennett's reply was drowned in the clamour of the dog, but the other seemed to understand, for he answered:

"I'm looking for Mr. Ferriss—Richard Ferriss, of the Freja; they told me he was brought here."

Kamiska stopped her barking, sniffed once or twice at the man's trouser legs; then, in brusque frenzy of delight, leaped against him, licking his hands, dancing about him on two legs, whining and yelping.

Bennett came forward, and the man changed his position so that the light from the half-open front door shone upon his face.

"Why, Adler!" exclaimed Bennett; "well, where did you come from?"

"Mr. Bennett!" almost shouted the other, snatching off his cap. "It ain't really you, sir!" His face beamed and radiated a joy little short of beatitude. The man was actually trembling with happiness. Words failed him, and as with a certain clumsy tenderness he clasped Bennett's hand in both his own his old-time chief saw the tears in his eyes.

"Oh! Maybe I ain't glad to see you, sir—I thought you had gone away—I didn't know where—I—I didn't know as I was ever going to see you again."

Kamiska herself had been no less tremulously glad to see Adler than was Adler to see Bennett. He stammered, he confused himself, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his eyes danced, he laughed and choked, he dropped his cap. His joy was that of a child, unrestrained, unaffected, as genuine as gold. When they turned back to the veranda he eagerly drew up Bennett's chair for him, his eyes never leaving his face. It was the quivering, inarticulate affection of a dog for its master, faithful, submissive, unquestioning, happy for hours over a chance look, a kind word, a touch of the hand. To Adler's mind it would have been a privilege and an honour to have died for Bennett. Why, he was his chief, his king, his god, his master, who could do no wrong. Bennett could have slain him where he stood and Adler would still have trusted him.

Adler would not sit down until Bennett had twice ordered him to do so, and then he deposited himself in a nearby chair, in as uncomfortable a position as he could devise, allowing only the smallest fraction of his body to be supported as a mark of deference. He remained uncovered, and from time to time nervously saluted. But suddenly he remembered the object of his visit.

"Oh, but I forgot—seeing you like this, unexpected, sir, clean drove Mr. Ferriss out of my mind. How is he getting on? I saw in the papers he was main sick."

"He's dead," said Bennett quietly.

Adler was for the moment stricken speechless. His jaw dropped; he stared, and caught his breath.

"Mr. Ferriss dead!" he exclaimed at length. "I—I can't believe it." He crossed himself rapidly. Bennett made no reply, and for upward of five minutes the two men sat motionless in the chairs, looking off into the night. After a while Adler broke silence and asked a few questions as to Ferriss's sickness and the nature and time of his death—questions which Bennett answered as best he might. But it was evident that Bennett, alive and present there in the flesh, was more to Adler than Ferriss dead.

"But you're all right, sir, ain't you?" he asked at length. "There ain't anything the matter with you?"

"No," said Bennett; looking at him steadily; then suddenly he added:

"Adler, I was to blame for Mr. Ferriss's death. If it hadn't been for me he would probably have been alive to-night. It was my fault. I did what I thought was right, when I knew all the time, just as I know now, that I was wrong. So, when any one asks you about Mr. Ferriss's death you are to tell him just what you know about it—understand? Through a mistake I was responsible for his death. I shall not tell you more than that, but that much you ought to know."

Adler looked at Bennett curiously and with infinite amazement. The order of his universe was breaking up about his ears. Bennett, the inscrutable, who performed his wonders in a mystery, impenetrable to common eyes, who moved with his head in the clouds, behold! he was rendering account to him, Adler, the meanest of his subjects—the king was condescending to the vassal, was admitting him to his confidence. And what was this thing he was saying, that he was responsible for Ferriss's death? Adler did not understand; his wits could not adjust themselves to such information. Ferriss was dead, but how was Bennett to blame? The king could do no wrong. Adler did not understand. No doubt Bennett was referring to something that had happened during the retreat over the ice—something that had to be done, and that in the end, and after all this lapse of time, had brought about Mr. Ferriss's death. In any case Bennett had done what was right. For that matter he had been responsible for McPherson's death; but what else had there been to do?

Bennett had spoken as he did after a moment's rapid thinking. To Adler's questions as to the manner of the chief engineer's death Bennett had at first given evasive replies. But a sudden sense of shame at being compelled to dissemble before a subordinate had lashed him across the face. True, he had made a mistake—a fearful, unspeakable mistake—but at least let him be man enough to face and to accept its consequences. It might not be necessary or even expedient to make acknowledgment of his folly in all quarters, but at that moment it seemed to him that his men—at least one of them—who had been under the command of himself and his friend, had a right to be told the truth. It had been only one degree less distasteful to undeceive Adler than it had been to deceive him in the first place. Bennett was not the general to explain his actions to his men. But he had not hesitated a moment.

However, Adler was full of another subject, and soon broke out with:

"You know, sir, there's another expedition forming; I suppose you have heard—an English one. They call it the Duane-Parsons expedition. They are going to try the old route by Smith Sound. They are going to winter at Tasiusak, and try to get through the sound as soon as the ice breaks up in the spring. But Duane's ideas are all wrong. He'll make no very high northing, not above eighty-five. I'll bet a hat. When we go up again, sir, will you—will you let me—will you take me along? Did I give satisfaction this last—"

"I'm never going up again, Adler," answered Bennett.

"Sho!" said Adler a little blankly. "I thought sure—I never thought that you—why, there ain't no one else but you can do it, captain."

"Oh, yes, there is," said Bennett listlessly. "Duane can—if he has luck. I know him. He's a good man. No, I'm out of it, Adler; I had my chance. It is somebody else's turn now. Do you want to go with Duane? I can give you letters to him. He'd be glad to have you, I know."

Adler started from his place.

"Why, do you think—" he exclaimed vehemently—"do you think I'd go with anybody else but you, sir? Oh, you will be going some of these days, I'm sure of it. We—we'll have another try at it, sir, before we die. We ain't beaten yet."

"Yes, we are, Adler," returned Bennett, smiling calmly; "we'll stay at home now and write our book. But we'll let some one else reach the Pole. That's not for us—never will be, Adler."

At the end of their talk some half-hour later Adler stood up, remarking:

"Guess I'd better be standing by if I'm to get the last train back to the City to-night. They told me at the station that she'd clear about midnight." Suddenly he began to show signs of uneasiness, turning his cap about between his fingers, changing his weight from foot to foot. Then at length:

"You wouldn't be wanting a man about the place, would you, sir?" And before Bennett could reply he continued eagerly, "I've been a bit of most trades in my time, and I know how to take care of a garden like as you have here; I'm a main good hand with plants and flower things, and I could help around generally." Then, earnestly, "Let me stay, sir—it won't cost—I wouldn't think of taking a cent from you, captain. Just let me act as your orderly for a spell, sir. I'd sure give satisfaction; will you, sir—will you?"

"Nonsense, Adler," returned Bennett; "stay, if you like. I presume I can find use for you. But you must be paid, of course."

"Not a soomarkee," protested the other almost indignantly.

The next day Adler brought his chest down from the City and took up his quarters with Bennett at Medford. Though Dr. Pitts had long since ceased to keep horses, the stable still adjoined the house, and Adler swung his hammock in the coachman's old room. Bennett could not induce him to room in the house itself. Adler prided himself that he knew his place. After their first evening's conversation he never spoke to Bennett until spoken to first, and the resumed relationship of commander and subordinate was inexpressibly dear to him. It was something to see Adler waiting on the table in the "glass-room" in his blue jersey, standing at attention at the door, happy in the mere sight of Bennett at his meals. In the mornings, as soon as breakfast was ready, it was Adler's privilege to announce the fact to Bennett, whom he usually found already at work upon his writing. Returning thence to the dining-room, Adler waited for his lord to appear. As soon as he heard Bennett's step in the hall a little tremor of excitement possessed him. He ran to Bennett's chair, drawing it back for him, and as soon as Bennett had seated himself circled about him with all the pride and solicitude of a motherly hen. He opened his napkin for him, delivered him his paper, and pushed his cup of coffee a half-inch nearer his hand. Throughout the duration of the meal he hardly took his eyes from Bennett's face, watching his every movement with a glow of pride, his hands gently stroking one another in an excess of satisfaction and silent enjoyment.

The days passed; soon a fortnight was gone by. Drearily, mechanically, Bennett had begun work upon his book, the narrative of the expedition. It was repugnant to him. Long since he had lost all interest in polar exploration. As he had said to Adler, he was out of it, finally and irrevocably. His bolt was shot; his role upon the stage of the world was ended. He only desired now to be forgotten as quickly as possible, to lapse into mediocrity as easily and quietly as he could. Fame was nothing to him now. The thundering applause of an entire world that had once been his was mere noise, empty and meaningless. He did not care to reawaken it. The appearance of his book he knew was expected and waited for in every civilised nation of the globe. It would be printed in languages whereof he was ignorant, but it was all one with him now.

The task of writing was hateful to him beyond expression, but with such determination as he could yet summon to his aid Bennett stuck to it, eight, ten, and sometimes fourteen hours each day. In a way his narrative was an atonement. Ferriss was its hero. Almost instinctively Bennett kept the figure of himself, his own achievements, his own plans and ideas, in the background. On more than one page he deliberately ascribed to Ferriss triumphs which no one but himself had attained. It was Ferriss who was the leader, the victor to whom all laurels were due. It was Ferriss whose example had stimulated the expedition to its best efforts in the darkest hours; it was, practically, Ferriss who had saved the party after the destruction of the ship; whose determination, unbroken courage, endurance, and intelligence had pervaded all minds and hearts during the retreat to Kolyuchin Bay.

"Though nominally in command," wrote Bennett, "I continually gave place to him. Without his leadership we should all, unquestionably, have perished before even reaching land. His resolution to conquer, at whatever cost, was an inspiration to us all. Where he showed the way we had to follow; his courage was never daunted, his hope was never dimmed, his foresight, his intelligence, his ingenuity in meeting and dealing with apparently unsolvable problems were nothing short of marvellous. His was the genius of leadership. He was the explorer, born to his work."

One day, just after luncheon, as Bennett, according to his custom, was walking in the garden by the house, smoking a cigar before returning to his work, he was surprised to find himself bleeding at the nose. It was but a trifling matter, and passed off in a few moments, but the fact of its occurrence directed his attention to the state of his health, and he told himself that for the last few days he had not been at all his accustomed self. There had been dull pains in his back and legs; more than once his head had pained him, and of late the continuance of his work had been growing steadily more obnoxious to him, the very physical effort of driving the pen from line to line was a burden.

"Hum!" he said to himself later on in the day, when the bleeding at the nose returned upon him, "I think we need a little quinine."

But the next day he found he could not eat, and all the afternoon, though he held doggedly to his work, he was troubled with nausea. At times a great weakness, a relaxing of all the muscles, came over him. In the evening he sent a note to Dr. Pitts's address in the City, asking him to come down to Medford the next day.

On the Monday morning of the following week, some two hours after breakfast, Lloyd met Miss Douglass on the stairs, dressed for the street and carrying her nurse's bag.

"Are you going out?" she asked of the fever nurse in some astonishment. "Where are you going?" for Lloyd had returned to duty, and it was her name that now stood at the top of the list; "I thought it was my turn to go out," she added.

Miss Douglass was evidently much confused.

Her meeting with Lloyd had apparently been unexpected. She halted upon the stairs in great embarrassment, stammering:

"No—no, I'm on call. I—I was called out of my turn—specially called—that was it."

"Were you?" demanded Lloyd sharply, for the other nurse was disturbed to an extraordinary degree.

"Well, then; no, I wasn't, but the superintendent—Miss Bergyn—she thought—she advised—you had better see her."

"I will see her," declared Lloyd, "but don't you go till I find out why I was skipped."

Lloyd hurried at once to Miss Bergyn's room, indignant at this slight. Surely, after what had happened, she was entitled to more consideration than this. Of all the staff in the house she should have been the one to be preferred.

Miss Bergyn rose at Lloyd's sudden entrance into her room, and to her question responded:

"It was only because I wanted to spare you further trouble and—and embarrassment, Lloyd, that I told Miss Douglass to take your place. This call is from Medford. Dr. Pitts was here himself this morning, and he thought as I did."

"Thought what? I don't understand."

"It seemed to me," answered the superintendent nurse, "that this one case of all others would be the hardest, the most disagreeable for you to take. It seems that Mr. Bennett has leased Dr. Pitts's house from him. He is there now. At the time when Mr. Ferriss was beginning to be ill Mr. Bennett was with him a great deal and undertook to nurse him till Dr. Pitts interfered and put a professional nurse on the case. Since then, too, the doctor has found out that Mr. Bennett has exposed himself imprudently. At any rate, in some way he has contracted the same disease and is rather seriously ill with it. Dr. Pitts wants us to send him a nurse at once. It just happened that it was your turn, and I thought I had better skip your name and send Louise Douglass."

Lloyd sank into a chair, her hands falling limply in her lap. A frown of perplexity gathered on her forehead. But suddenly she exclaimed:

"I know—that's all as it may be; but all the staff know that it is my turn to go; everybody in the house knows who is on call. How will it be—what will be thought when it is known that I haven't gone—and after—after my failing once—after this—this other affair? No, I must go. I, of all people, must go—and just because it is a typhoid case, like the other."

"But, Lloyd, how can you?"

True, how could she? Her patient would be the same man who had humiliated her and broken her, had so cruelly misunderstood and wronged her, for whom all her love was dead. How could she face him again? Yet how refuse to take the case? How explain a second failure to her companions? Lloyd made a little movement of distress, clasping her hands together. How the complications followed fast upon each other! No sooner was one difficult situation met and disposed of than another presented itself. Bennett was nothing to her now, yet, for all that, she recoiled instinctively from meeting him again. Not only must she meet him, but she must be with him day after day, hour after hour, at his very side, in all the intimacy that the sick-room involved. On the other hand, how could she decline this case? The staff might condone one apparent and inexplicable defection; another would certainly not be overlooked. But was not this new situation a happy and unlooked-for opportunity to vindicate her impaired prestige in the eyes of her companions? Lloyd made up her mind upon the instant. She rose.

"I shall take the case," she said.

She was not a little surprised at herself. Hardly an instant had she hesitated. On that other occasion when she had believed it right to make confession to her associates it had been hard—at times almost impossible—for her to do her duty as she saw and understood it. This new complication was scarcely less difficult, but once having attained the fine, moral rigour that had carried her through her former ordeal, it became easy now to do right under all or any circumstances, however adverse. If she had failed then, she certainly would have failed now. That she had succeeded then made it all the easier to succeed now. Dimly Lloyd commenced to understand that the mastery of self, the steady, firm control of natural, intuitive impulses, selfish because natural, was a progression. Each victory not only gained the immediate end in view, but braced the mind and increased the force of will for the next shock, the next struggle. She had imagined and had told herself that Bennett had broken her strength for good. But was it really so? Had not defeat in that case been only temporary? Was she not slowly getting back her strength by an unflinching adherence to the simple, fundamental principles of right, and duty, and truth? Was not the struggle with one's self the greatest fight of all, greater, far greater, than had been the conflict between Bennett's will and her own?

Within the hour she found herself once again on her way to Medford. How much had happened, through what changes had she passed since the occasion of her first journey; and Bennett, how he, too, changed; how different he had come to stand in her estimation! Once the thought that he was in danger had been a constant terror to her, and haunted her days and lurked at her side through many a waking night. Was it possible that now his life or death was no more to her than that of any of her former patients? She could not say; she avoided answering the question. Certainly her heart beat no faster at this moment to know that he was in the grip of a perilous disease. She told herself that her Bennett was dead already; that she was coming back to Medford not to care for and watch over the individual, but to combat the disease.

When she arrived at the doctor's house in Medford, a strange-looking man opened the door for her, and asked immediately if she was the nurse.

"Yes," said Lloyd, "I am. Is Dr. Pitts here?"

"Upstairs in his room," answered the other in a whisper, closing the front door with infinite softness. "He won't let me go in, the doctor won't; I—I ain't seen him in four days. Ask the doctor if I can't just have a blink at him—just a little blink through the crack of the door. Just think, Miss, I ain't seen him in four days! Just think of that! And look here, they ain't giving him enough to eat—nothing but milk and chicken soup with rice in it. He never did like rice; that's no kind of rations for a sick man. I fixed him up a bit of duff yesterday, what he used to like so much aboard ship, and Pitts wouldn't let him have it. He regularly laughed in my face."

Lloyd sent word to the doctor by the housekeeper that she had arrived, and on going up found Pitts waiting for her at the door of the sick-room, not that which had been occupied by Ferriss, but another—the guest-chamber of the house, situated toward the rear of the building.

"Why, I expected Miss Douglass!" exclaimed the doctor in a low voice as soon as his eye fell upon Lloyd. "Any one of them but you!"

"I had to come," Lloyd answered quietly, flushing hotly for all that. "It was my turn, and it was not right for me to stay away."

The doctor hesitated an instant, and then dismissed the subject, putting his chin in the air as if to say that, after all, it was not his affair.

"Well," he said, "it's queer to see how things will tangle themselves sometimes. I don't know whether he took this thing from Ferriss or not. Both of them were exposed to the same conditions when their expedition went to pieces and they were taken off by the whaling ships—bad water, weakened constitution, not much power of resistance; in prime condition for the bacillus, and the same cause might have produced the same effect; at any rate, he's in a bad way."

"Is he—very bad?" asked Lloyd.

"Well, he's not the hang-on sort that Mr. Ferriss was; nothing undecided about Captain Ward Bennett; when he's sick, he's sick; rushes right at it like a blind bull. He's as bad now as Mr. Ferriss was in his third week."

"Do you think he will recognise me?"

The doctor shook his head. "No; delirious most of the time—of course—regulation thing. If we don't keep the fever down he'll go out sure. That's the danger in his case. Look at him yourself; here he is. The devil! The animal is sitting up again."

As Lloyd entered the room she saw Bennett sitting bolt upright in his bed, staring straight before him, his small eyes, with their deforming cast, open to their fullest extent, the fingers of his shrunken, bony hands dancing nervously on the coverlet. A week's growth of stubble blackened the lower part of his face. Without a moment's pause he mumbled and muttered with astonishing rapidity, but for the most part the words were undistinguishable. It was, indeed, not the same Bennett, Lloyd had last seen. The great body was collapsed upon itself; the skin of the face was like dry, brown parchment, and behind it the big, massive bones stood out in great knobs and ridges. It needed but a glance to know that here was a man dangerously near to his death. While Lloyd was removing her hat and preparing herself for her work the doctor got Bennett upon his back again and replenished the ice-pack about his head.

"Not much strength left in our friend now," he murmured.

"How long has he been like this?" asked Lloyd as she arranged the contents of her nurse's bag on a table near the window.

"Pretty close to eight hours now. He was conscious yesterday morning, however, for a little while, and wanted to know what his chances were."

They were neither good nor many; the strength once so formidable was ebbing away like a refluent tide, and that with ominous swiftness. Stimulate the life as the doctor would, strive against the enemy's advance as Lloyd might, Bennett continued to sink.

"The devil of it is," muttered the doctor, "that he don't seem to care. He had as soon give up as not. It's hard to save a patient that don't want to save himself. If he'd fight for his life as he did in the arctic, we could pull him through yet. Otherwise—" he shrugged his shoulders almost helplessly.