_ CHAPTER 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.
If she had really been false to her charge, if she had actually flinched and faltered at the crucial moment, had truly been the coward, this deception which had been thrust upon her at the moment of her return to the house, this part which it was so easy to play, would have been a hideous and unspeakable hypocrisy. But Lloyd had not faltered, had not been false. In her heart of hearts she had been true to herself and to her trust. How would she deceive her companions then by allowing them to continue in the belief of her constancy, fidelity, and courage? What she hid from them, or rather what they could not see, was a state of things that it was impossible for any one but herself to understand. She could not--no woman could--bring herself to confess to another woman what had happened that day at Medford. It would be believed that she could have stayed at her patient's bedside if she had so desired. No one who did not know Bennett could understand the terrible, vast force of the man.
Try as she would, Lloyd could not but think first of herself at this moment. Bennett was ignored, forgotten. Once she had loved him, but that was all over now. The thought of Ferriss's death, for which in a manner she had been forced to be responsible, came rushing to her mind from time to time, and filled her with a horror and, at times, even a perverse sense of remorse, almost beyond words. But Lloyd's pride, her self-confidence, her strength of character and independence had been dearer to her than almost anything in life. So she told herself, and, at that moment, honestly believed. And though she knew that her pride had been humbled, it was not gone, and enough of it remained to make her desire and strive to keep the fact a secret from the world. It seemed very easy. She would only have to remain passive. Circumstances acted for her.
Miss Douglass returned, followed by Rownie carrying a tray. When the mulatto had gone, after arranging Lloyd's supper on a little table near the couch, the fever nurse drew up a chair.
"Now we can talk," she said, "unless you are too tired. I've been so interested in this case at Medford. Tell me what was the immediate cause of death; was it perforation or just gradual collapse?"
"It was neither," said Lloyd quickly. "It was a hemorrhage."
She had uttered the words with as little consciousness as a phonograph, and the lie had escaped her before she was aware. How did she know what had been the immediate cause of death? What right had she to speak? Why was it that all at once a falsehood had come so easy to her, to her whose whole life until then had been so sincere, so genuine?
"A hemorrhage?" repeated the other. "Had there been many before then? Was there coma vigil when the end came? I--"
"Oh," cried Lloyd with a quick gesture of impatience, "don't, don't ask me any more. I am tired--nervous; I am worn out."
"Yes, of course you must be," answered the fever nurse. "We won't talk any more about it."
That night and the following day were terrible. Lloyd neither ate nor slept. Not once did she set foot out of her room, giving out that she was ill, which was not far from the truth, and keeping to herself and to the companionship of the thoughts and terrors that crowded her mind. Until that day at Medford her life had run easily and happily and in well-ordered channels. She was successful in her chosen profession and work. She imagined herself to be stronger and of finer fibre than most other women, and her love for Bennett had lent a happiness and a sweetness to her life dear to her beyond all words. Suddenly, and within an hour's time, she had lost everything. Her will had been broken, her spirit crushed; she had been forced to become fearfully instrumental in causing the death of her patient--a man who loved and trusted her--while her love for Bennett, which for years had been her deep and abiding joy, the one great influence of her life, was cold and dead, and could never be revived.
This in the end came to be Lloyd's greatest grief. She could forget that she herself had been humbled and broken. Horrible, unspeakably horrible, as Ferriss's death seemed to her, it was upon Bennett, and not upon her, that its responsibility must be laid. She had done what she could. Of that she was assured. But, first and above all things, Lloyd was a woman, and her love for Bennett was a very different matter.
When, during that never-to-be-forgotten scene in the breakfast-room of the doctor's house, she had warned Bennett that if he persisted in his insane resolution he would stamp out her affection for him, Lloyd had only half believed what she said. But when at last it dawned upon her that she had spoken wiser than she knew, that this was actually true, and that now, no matter how she might desire it, she could not love him any longer, it seemed as though her heart must break. It was precisely as though Bennett himself, the Bennett she had known, had been blotted out of existence. It was much worse than if Bennett had merely died. Even then he would have still existed for her, somewhere. As it was, the man she had known simply ceased to be, irrevocably, finally, and the warmth of her love dwindled and grew cold, because now there was nothing left for it to feed upon.
Never until then had Lloyd realised how much he had been to her; how he had not only played so large a part in her life, but how he had become a very part of her life itself. Her love for him had been like the air, like the sunlight; was delicately knitted and intertwined into all the innumerable intricacies of her life and character. Literally, not an hour had ever passed that, directly or indirectly, he had not occupied her thoughts. He had been her inspiration; he had made her want to be brave and strong and determined, and it was because of him that the greater things of the world interested her. She had chosen a work to be done because he had set her an example. So only that she preserved her womanliness, she, too, wanted to count, to help on, to have her place in the world's progress. In reality all her ambitions and hopes had been looking toward one end only, that she might be his equal; that he might find in her a companion and a confidante; one who could share his enthusiasms and understand his vast projects and great aims.
And how had he treated her when at last opportunity had been given her to play her part, to be courageous and strong, to prevail against great odds, while he stood by to see? He had ignored and misunderstood, and tossed aside as childish and absurd that which she had been building up for years. Instead of appreciating her heroism he had forced her to become a coward in the eyes of the world. She had hoped to be his equal, and he had treated her as a school-girl. It had all been a mistake. She was not and could not be the woman she had hoped. He was not and never had been the man she had imagined. They had nothing in common.
But it was not easy to give Bennett up, to let him pass out of her life. She wanted to love him yet. With all her heart and strength, in spite of everything--woman that she was, she had come to that--in spite of everything she wanted to love him. Though he had broken her will, thwarted her ambitions, ignored her cherished hopes, misunderstood and mistaken her, yet, if she could, Lloyd would yet have loved him, loved him even for the very fact that he had been stronger than she.
Again and again she tried to awaken this dead affection, to call back this vanished love. She tried to remember the Bennett she had known; she told herself that he loved her; that he had said that the great things he had done had been done only with an eye to her approval; that she had been his inspiration no less than he had been hers; that he had fought his way back, not only to life, but to her. She thought of all he had suffered, of the hardships and privations beyond her imagination to conceive, that he had undergone. She tried to recall the infinite joy of that night when the news of his safe return had come to her; she thought of him at his very best--how he had always seemed to her the type of the perfect man, masterful, aggressive, accomplishing great projects with an energy and determination almost superhuman, one of the world's great men, whose name the world still shouted. She called to mind how the very ruggedness of his face; with its massive lines and harsh angles, had attracted her; how she had been proud of his giant's strength, the vast span of his shoulders, the bull-like depth of his chest, the sense of enormous physical power suggested by his every movement.
But it was all of no effect. That Bennett was worse than dead to her. The Bennett that now came to her mind and imagination was the brutal, perverse man of the breakfast-room at Medford, coarse, insolent, intractable, stamping out all that was finest in her, breaking and flinging away the very gifts he had inspired her to offer him. It was nothing to him that she should stand degraded in the eyes of the world. He did not want her to be brave and strong. She had been wrong; it was not that kind of woman he desired. He had not acknowledged that she, too, as well as he--a woman as well as a man might have her principles, her standards of honour, her ideas of duty. It was not her character, then, that he prized; the nobility of her nature was nothing to him; he took no thought of the fine-wrought texture of her mind. How, then, did she appeal to him? It was not her mind; it was not her soul. What, then, was left? Nothing but the physical. The shame of it; the degradation of it! To be so cruelly mistaken in the man she loved, to be able to appeal to him only on his lower side! Lloyd clasped her hands over her eyes, shutting her teeth hard against a cry of grief and pain and impotent anger. No, no, now it was irrevocable; now her eyes were opened. The Bennett she had known and loved had been merely a creature of her own imagining; the real man had suddenly discovered himself; and this man, in spite of herself, she hated as a victim hates its tyrant.
But her grief for her vanished happiness--the happiness that this love, however mistaken, had brought into her life--was pitiful. Lloyd could not think of it without the choke coming to her throat and the tears brimming her dull-blue eyes, while at times a veritable paroxysm of sorrow seized upon her and flung her at full length upon her couch, her face buried and her whole body shaken with stifled sobs. It was gone, it was gone, and could never be called back. What was there now left to her to live for? Why continue her profession? Why go on with the work? What pleasure now in striving and overcoming? Where now was the exhilaration of battle with the Enemy, even supposing she yet had the strength to continue the fight? Who was there now to please, to approve, to encourage? To what end the days of grave responsibilities, the long, still nights of vigil?
She began to doubt herself. Bennett, the man, had loved his work for its own sake. But how about herself, the woman? In what spirit had she gone about her work? Had she been genuine, after all? Had she not undertaken it rather as a means than as an end--not because she cared for it, but because she thought he would approve, because she had hoped by means of the work she would come into closer companionship with him? She wondered if this must always be so--the man loving the work for the work's sake; the woman, more complex, weaker, and more dependent, doing the work only in reference to the man.
But often she distrusted her own conclusions, and, no doubt, rightly so. Her mind was yet too confused to reason calmly, soberly, and accurately. Her distress was yet too keen, too poignant to permit her to be logical. At one time she was almost ready to admit that she had misjudged Bennett; that, though he had acted cruelly and unjustly, he had done what he thought was best. His sacrifice of Ferriss was sufficient guarantee of his sincerity. But this mistrust of herself did not affect her feeling toward him. There were moments when she condoned his offence; there was never an instant she did not hate him.
And this sentiment of hatred itself, independent of and apart from its object, was distasteful and foreign to her. Never in her life had Lloyd hated any one before. To be kind, to be gentle, to be womanly was her second nature, and kindness, gentleness, and womanliness were qualities that her profession only intensified and deepened. This newcomer in her heart, this fierce, evil visitor, that goaded her and pricked and harried her from day to day and throughout so many waking nights, that roused the unwonted flash in her eye and drove the hot, angry blood to her smooth, white forehead and knotted her levelled brows to a dark and lowering frown, had entered her life and being, unsought for and undesired. It did not belong to her world. Yet there it sat on its usurped throne deformed and hideous, driving out all tenderness and compunction, ruling her with a rod of iron, hardening her, embittering her, and belittling her, making a mockery of all sweetness, fleering at nobility and magnanimity, lowering the queen to the level of the fishwife.
When the first shock of the catastrophe had spent its strength and Lloyd perforce must turn again to the life she had to live, groping for its scattered, tangled ends, piecing together again as best she might its broken fragments, she set herself honestly to drive this hatred from her heart. If she could not love Bennett, at least she need not hate him. She was moved to this by no feeling of concern for Bennett. It was not a consideration that she owed to him, but something rather that was due to herself. Yet, try as she would, the hatred still remained. She could not put it from her. Hurt her and contaminate her as it did, in spite of all her best efforts, in spite of her very prayers, the evil thing abode with her, deep-rooted, strong, malignant. She saw that in the end she would continue in her profession, but she believed that she could not go on with it consistently, based as it was upon sympathy and love and kindness, while a firm-seated, active hatred dwelt with her, harassing her at every moment, and perverting each good impulse and each unselfish desire. It was an ally of the very Enemy she would be called upon to fight, a traitor that at any moment might open the gates to his triumphant entry.
But was this his only ally; was this the only false and ugly invader that had taken advantage of her shattered defence? Had the unwelcome visitor entered her heart alone? Was there not a companion still more wicked, more perverted, more insidious, more dangerous? For the first time Lloyd knew what it meant to deceive.
It was supposed by her companions, and accepted by them as a matter of course, that she had not left the bedside of her patient until after his death. At first she had joyfully welcomed this mistake as her salvation, the one happy coincidence that was to make her life possible, and for a time had ceased to think about it. That phase of the incident was closed. Matters would readjust themselves. In a few days' time the incident would be forgotten. But she found that she herself could not forget it, and that as days went on the idea of this passive, silent deception she was obliged to maintain occurred to her oftener and oftener. She remembered again how glibly and easily she had lied to her friend upon the evening of her return. How was it that the lie had flowed so smoothly from her lips? To her knowledge she had never deliberately lied before. She would have supposed that, because of this fact, falsehood would come difficult to her, that she would have bungled, hesitated, stammered. But it was the reverse that had been the case. The facility with which she had uttered the lie was what now began to disturb and to alarm her. It argued some sudden collapse of her whole system of morals, some fundamental disarrangement of the entire machine.
Abruptly she recoiled. Whither was she tending? If she supinely resigned herself to the current of circumstance, where would she be carried? Yet how was she to free herself from the current, how to face this new situation that suddenly presented itself at a time when she had fancied the real shock of battle and contention was spent and past?
How was she to go back now? How could she retrace her steps? There was but one way--correct the false impression. It would not be necessary to acknowledge that she had been forced to leave her post; the essential was that her companions should know that she had deceived them--that she had left the bedside before her patient's death. But at the thought of making such confession, public as it must be, everything that was left of her wounded pride revolted. She who had been so firm, she who had held so tenaciously to her principles, she who had posed before them as an example of devotion and courage--she could not bring herself to that.
"No, no," she exclaimed as this alternative presented itself to her mind. "No, I cannot. It is beyond me. I simply cannot do it."
But she could. Yes, she could do it if she would. Deep down in her mind that little thought arose. She could if she wanted to. Hide it though she might, cover it and bury it with what false reasoning she could invent, the little thought would not be smothered, would not be crushed out. Well, then, she would not. Was it not her chance; was not this deception which others and not herself had created, her opportunity to recover herself, to live down what had been done--what she had been forced to do, rather? Absolute right was never to be attained; was not life to be considered rather in the light of a compromise between good and evil? To do what one could under the circumstances, was not that the golden mean?
But she ought. And, quick, another little thought sprang up in the deeper recesses of her mind and took its place beside the other. It was right that she should be true. She ought to do the right. Argument, the pleas of weakness, the demands of expediency, the plausibility of compromise were all of no avail. The idea "I ought" persisted and persisted and persisted. She could and she ought. There was no excuse for her, and no sooner had she thrust aside the shifty mass of sophistries under which she had striven to conceal them, no sooner had she let in the light, than these two conceptions of Duty and Will began suddenly to grow.
But what was she to gain? What would be the result of such a course as her conscience demanded she should adopt? It was inevitable that she would be misunderstood, cruelly misjudged. What action would her confession entail? She could not say. But results did not matter; what she was to gain or lose did not matter. Around her and before her all was dark and vague and terrible. If she was to escape there was but one thing to do. Suddenly her own words came back to her:
"All we can do is to hold to what we know is right, and trust that everything will come well in the end."
She knew what was right, and she had the strength to hold to it. Then all at once there came to Lloyd a grand, breathless sense of uplifting, almost a transfiguration. She felt herself carried high above the sphere of little things, the region of petty considerations What did she care for consequences, what mattered to her the unjust condemnation of her world, if only she remained true to herself, if only she did right? What did she care for what she gained? It was no longer a question of gain or loss--it was a question of being true and strong and brave. The conflict of that day at Medford between the man's power and the woman's resistance had been cruel, the crisis had been intense, and though she had been conquered then, had it, after all, been beyond recall? No, she was not conquered. No, she was not subdued. Her will had not been broken, her courage had not been daunted, her strength had not been weakened. Here was the greater fight, here was the higher test. Here was the ultimate, supreme crisis of all, and here, at last, come what might, she would not, would not, would not fail.
As soon as Lloyd reached this conclusion she sat about carrying her resolution into effect.
"If I don't do it now while I'm strong," she told herself, "if I wait, I never will do it."
Perhaps there was yet a touch of the hysterical in her actions even then. The jangled feminine nerves were yet vibrating far above their normal pitch; she was overwrought and oversensitive, for just as a fanatic rushes eagerly upon the fire and the steel, preferring the more exquisite torture, so Lloyd sought out the more painful situation, the more trying ordeal, the line of action that called for the greatest fortitude, the most unflinching courage.
She chose to make known her real position, to correct the false impression at a time when all the nurses of the house should be together. This would be at supper-time. Since her return from Medford, Lloyd had shut herself away from the other inmates of the house, and had taken her meals in her room. With the exception of Miss Douglass and the superintendent nurse no one had seen her. She had passed her time lying at full length upon her couch, her hands clasped behind her head, or pacing the floor, or gazing listlessly out of her windows, while her thoughts raced at a gallop through her mind.
Now, however, she bestirred herself. She had arrived at her final decision early in the afternoon of the third day after her return, and at once she resolved that she would endure the ordeal that very evening.
She passed the intervening time, singularly enough, in very carefully setting her room to rights, adjusting and readjusting the few ornaments on the mantel-shelf and walls, winding the clock that struck ship's bells instead of the hours, and minutely sorting the letters and papers in her desk. It was the same as if she were going upon a long journey or were preparing for a great sickness. Toward four o'clock Miss Douglass, looking in to ask how she did, found her before her mirror carefully combing and arranging her great bands and braids of dark-red hair. The fever nurse declared that she was immensely improved in appearance, and asked at once if she was not feeling better.
"Yes," answered Lloyd, "very much better," adding: "I shall be down to supper to-night."
For some reason that she could not explain Lloyd took unusual pains with her toilet, debating long over each detail of dress and ornament. At length, toward five o'clock, she was ready, and sat down by her window, a book in her lap, to await the announcement of supper as the condemned await the summons to execution.
Her plan was to delay her appearance in the dining-room until she was sure that everybody was present; then she would go down, and, standing there before them all, say what she had to say, state the few bald facts of the case, without excuse or palliation, and leave them to draw the one inevitable conclusion.
But this final hour of waiting was a long agony for Lloyd. Her moods changed with every moment; the action she contemplated presented itself to her mind in a multitude of varying lights. At one time she quivered with the apprehension of it, as though at the slow approach of hot irons. At another she could see no reason for being greatly concerned over the matter. Did the whole affair amount to so much, after all? Her companions would, of their own accord, make excuses for her. Risking one's life in the case of a virulent, contagious disease was no small matter. No one could be blamed for leaving such a case. At one moment Lloyd's idea of public confession seemed to her little less than sublime; at another, almost ridiculous. But she remembered the case of Harriet Freeze, who had been unable to resist the quiet, unexpressed force of opinion of her fellow-workers. It would be strange if Lloyd should find herself driven from the very house she had built.
The hour before supper-time seemed interminable; the quarter passed, then the half, then the three-quarters. Lloyd imagined she began to detect a faint odour of the kitchen in the air. Suddenly the remaining minutes of the hour began to be stricken from the dial of her clock with bewildering rapidity. From the drawing-room immediately below came the sounds of the piano. That was Esther Thielman, no doubt, playing one of her interminable Polish compositions. All at once the piano stopped, and, with a quick sinking of the heart, Lloyd heard the sliding doors separating the drawing-room from the dining-room roll back. Miss Douglass and another one of the nurses, Miss Truslow, a young girl, a newcomer in the house, came out of the former's room and went downstairs, discussing the merits of burlap as preferable to wall-paper. Lloyd even heard Miss Truslow remark:
"Yes, that's very true, but if it isn't sized it will wrinkle in damp weather."
Rownie came to Lloyd's door and knocked, and, without waiting for a reply, said:
"Dinneh's served, Miss Searight," and Lloyd heard her make the same announcement at Miss Bergyn's room farther down the hall. One by one Lloyd heard the others go downstairs. The rooms and hallways on the second floor fell quiet. A faint, subdued murmur of talk came to her ears in the direction of the dining-room. Lloyd waited for five, for ten, for fifteen minutes. Then she rose, drawing in her breath, straightening herself to her full height. She went to the door, then paused for a moment, looking back at all the familiar objects--the plain, rich furniture, the book-shelves, the great, comfortable couch, the old-fashioned round mirror that hung between the windows, and her writing-desk of blackened mahogany. It seemed to her that in some way she was never to see these things again, as if she were saying good-bye to them and to the life she had led in that room and in their surroundings. She would be a different woman when she came back to that room. Slowly she descended the stairs and halted for a moment in the hall below. It was not too late to turn back even now. She could hear her companions at their supper very plainly, and could distinguish Esther Thielman's laugh as she exclaimed:
"Why, of course, that's the very thing I mean."
It was a strange surprise that Lloyd had in store for them all. Her heart began to beat heavy and thick. Could she even find her voice to speak when the time came? Would it not be better to put it off, to think over the whole matter again between now and to-morrow morning? But she moved her head impatiently. No, she would not turn back. She found that the sliding doors in the drawing-room had been closed, and so went to the door that opened into the dining-room from the hall itself. It stood ajar. Lloyd pushed it open, entered, and, closing the door behind her, stood there leaning against it.
The table was almost full; only two or three places besides her own were unoccupied. There was Miss Bergyn at the head; the fever nurse, Miss Douglass, at her right, and, lower down, Lloyd saw Esther Thielman; Delia Craig, just back from a surgical case of Dr. Street's; Miss Page, the oldest and most experienced nurse of them all; Gilbertson, whom every one called by her last name; Miss Ives and Eleanor Bogart, who had both taken doctors' degrees, and could have practised if they had desired; Miss Wentworth, who had served an apprenticeship in a missionary hospital in Armenia, and had known Clara Barton, and, last of all, the newcomer, Miss Truslow, very young and very pretty, who had never yet had a case, and upon whose diploma the ink was hardly dry.
At first, so quietly had she entered, no one took any notice of Lloyd, and she stood a moment, her back to the door, wondering how she should begin. Everybody seemed to be in the best of humour; a babel of talk was in the air; conversations were going forward, carried on across the table, or over intervening shoulders.
"Why, of course, don't you see, that's the very thing I meant--"
"--I think you can get that already sized, though, and with a stencil figure if you want it--"
"--Really, it's very interesting; the first part is stupid, but she has some very good ideas."
"--Yes, at Vanoni's. But we get a reduction, you know--"
"--and, oh, listen; this is too funny; she turned around and said, very prim and stiff, 'No, indeed; I'm too old a woman.' Funny! If I think of that on my deathbed I shall laugh--"
"--and so that settled it. How could I go on after that--?"
"--Must you tack it on? The walls are so hard--"
"Let Rownie do it; she knows. Oh, here's the invalid!"
"Oh, why, it's Lloyd! We're so glad you're able to come down!"
But when they had done exclaiming over her reappearance among them Lloyd still remained as she was, her back against the door, standing very straight, her hands at her side. She did not immediately reply. Heads were turned in her direction. The talk fell away by rapid degrees as they began to notice the paleness of her face and the strange, firm set of her mouth.
"Sit down, Lloyd," said Miss Bergyn; "don't stand. You are not very well yet; I'll have Rownie bring you a glass of sherry."
There was a silence. Then at length:
"No," said Lloyd quietly. "I don't want any sherry. I don't want any supper. I came down to tell you that you are all wrong in thinking I did what I could with my typhoid case at Medford. You think I left only after the patient had died. I did not; I left before. There was a crisis of some kind. I don't know what it was, because I was not in the sick-room at the time, and I did not go when I was called. The doctor was not there either; he had gone out and left the case in my charge. There was nobody with the patient but a servant. The servant called me, but I did not go. Instead I came away and left the house. The patient died that same day. It is that that I wanted to tell you. Do you all understand--perfectly? I left my patient at the moment of a crisis, and with no one with him but a servant. And he died that same afternoon."
Then she went out, and the closing of the door jarred sharply upon the great silence that had spread throughout the room.
Lloyd went back to her room, closed and locked the door, and, sinking down upon the floor by the couch, bowed her head upon her folded arms. But she was in no mood for weeping, and her eyes were dry. She was conscious chiefly that she had taken an irrevocable step, that her head had begun to ache. There was no exhilaration in her mind now; she did not feel any of the satisfaction of attainment after struggle, of triumph after victory. More than once she even questioned herself if, after all, her confession had been necessary. But now she was weary unto death of the whole wretched business. Now she only knew that her head was aching fiercely; she did not care either to look into the past or forward into the future. The present occupied her; for the present her head was aching.
But before Lloyd went to bed that night Miss Bergyn knew the whole truth as to what had happened at Dr. Pitts's house. The superintendent nurse had followed Lloyd to her room almost immediately, and would not be denied. She knew very well that Lloyd Searight had never left a dying patient of her own volition. Intuitively she guessed at something hidden.
"Lloyd," she said decisively, "don't ask me to believe that you went of your own free will. Tell me just what happened. Why did you go? Ask me to believe anything but that you--no, I won't say the word. There was some very good reason, wasn't there?"
"I--I cannot explain," Lloyd answered. "You must think what you choose. You wouldn't understand."
But, happily, when Lloyd's reticence finally broke Miss Bergyn did understand. The superintendent nurse knew Bennett only by report. But Lloyd she had known for years, and realised that if she had yielded, it had only been after the last hope had been tried. In the end Lloyd told her everything that had occurred. But, though she even admitted Bennett's affection for her, she said nothing about herself, and Miss Bergyn did not ask.
"I know, of course," said the superintendent nurse at length, "you hate to think that you were made to go; but men are stronger than women, Lloyd, and such a man as that must be stronger than most men. You were not to blame because you left the case, and you are certainly not to blame for Mr. Ferriss's death. Now I shall give it out here in the house that you had a very good reason for leaving your case, and that while we can't explain it any more particularly, I have had a talk with you and know all about it, and am perfectly satisfied. Then I shall go out to Medford and see Dr. Pitts. It would be best," she added, for Lloyd had made a gesture of feeble dissent. "He must understand perfectly, and we need not be afraid of any talk about the matter at all. What has happened has happened 'in the profession,' and I don't believe it will go any further."
* * * * *
Lloyd returned to Bannister toward the end of the week. How long she would remain she did not know, but for the present the association of the other nurses was more than she was able to bear. Later, when the affair had become something of an old story, she would return, resuming her work as though nothing had happened.
Hattie met her at the railway station with the phaeton and the ponies. She was radiant with delight at the prospect of having Lloyd all to herself for an indefinite period of time.
"And you didn't get sick, after all?" she exclaimed, clasping her hands. "Was your patient as sick as I was? Weren't his parents glad that you made him well again?"
Lloyd put her hand over the little girl's mouth.
"Let us not talk any 'shop,' Hattie," she said, trying to smile.
But on the morning after her arrival Lloyd woke in her own white room of the old farmhouse, abruptly conscious of some subtle change that had occurred to her overnight. For the first time since the scene in the breakfast-room at Medford she was aware of a certain calmness that had come to her. Perhaps she had at last begun to feel the good effects of the trial by fire which she had voluntarily undergone--to know a certain happiness that now there was no longer any deceit in her heart. This she had uprooted and driven out by force of her own will. It was gone. But now, on this morning, she seemed to feel that this was not all.
Something else had left her--something that of late had harassed her and goaded her and embittered her life, and mocked at her gentleness and kindness, was gone. That fierce, truculent hatred that she had so striven to put from her, now behold! of its own accord, it had seemed to leave her. How had it happened? Before she had dared the ordeal of confession this feeling of hatred, this perverse and ugly changeling that had brooded in her heart, had seemed too strong, too deeply seated to be moved. Now, suddenly, it had departed, unbidden, without effort on her part.
Vaguely Lloyd wondered at this thing. In driving deceit from her it would appear that she had also driven out hatred, that the one could not stay so soon as the other had departed. Could the one exist apart from the other? Was there, then, some strange affinity in all evil, as, perhaps, in all good, so that a victory over one bad impulse meant a victory over many? Without thought of gain or of reward, she had held to what was right through the confusion and storm and darkness. Was this to be, after all, her reward, her gain? Possibly; but she could not tell, she could not see. The confusion was subsiding, the storm had passed, but much of the darkness yet remained. Deceit she had fought from out her heart; silently Hatred had stolen after it. Love had not returned to his old place, and never, never would, but the changeling was gone, and the house was swept and garnished. _