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Page 28
"Well," she said, expectantly hesitating before attempting to descend.
Then she caught Ferriss's eyes fixed upon her. He was smiling a little,
but the dull, stupefied expression of his face seemed for a brief
instant to give place to one of great sadness. He raised a shoulder
resignedly, and Lloyd, with the suddenness of a blow, remembered that
Ferriss had no hands.
She dropped back in the seat of the phaeton, covering her eyes, shaken
and unnerved for the moment with a great thrill of infinite pity--of
shame at her own awkwardness, and of horror as for one brief instant the
smiling summer park, the afternoon's warmth, the avenue of green,
over-arching trees, the trim, lacquered vehicles and glossy-brown horses
were struck from her mind, and she had a swift vision of the Ice, the
darkness of the winter night, the lacerating, merciless cold, the
blinding, whirling, dust-like snow.
For half an hour they walked slowly about in the park, the carriages
following at a distance. They did not talk very much. It seemed to Lloyd
that she would never tire of scrutinising his face, that her interest in
his point of view, his opinions, would never flag. He had had an
experience that came but to few men. For four years he had been out of
the world, had undergone privation beyond conception. What now was to be
his attitude? How had he changed? That he had not changed to her Lloyd
knew in an instant. He still loved her; that was beyond all doubt. But
this terrible apathy that seemed now to be a part of him! She had heard
of the numbing stupor that invades those who stay beyond their time in
the Ice, but never before had she seen it in its reality. It was not a
lack of intelligence; it seemed rather to be the machinery of
intelligence rusted and clogged from long disuse. He deliberated long
before he spoke. It took him some time to understand things. Speech did
not come to him readily, and he became easily confused in the matter of
words. Once, suddenly, he had interrupted her, breaking out with:
"Oh, the smell of the trees, of the grass! Isn't it wonderful; isn't it
wonderful?" And a few seconds later, quite irrelevantly: "And, after
all, we failed."
At once Lloyd was all aroused, defending him against himself.
"Failed! And you say that? If you did not reach the Pole, what then? The
world will judge you by results perhaps, and the world's judgment will
be wrong. Is it nothing that you have given the world an example of
heroism--"
"Oh, don't call it that."
"Of heroism, of courage, of endurance? Is it nothing that you have
overcome obstacles before which other men would have died? Is it nothing
that you have shown us all how to be patient, how to be strong? There
are some things better even than reaching the Pole. To suffer and be
calm is one of them; not to give up--never to be beaten--is another. Oh,
if I were a man! Ten thousand, a hundred thousand people are reading
to-night of what you have done--of what you have done, you understand,
not of what you have failed to do. They have seen--you have shown them
what the man can do who says _I will_, and you have done a little more,
have gone a little further, have been a little braver, a little hardier,
a little nobler, a little more determined than any one has ever been
before. Whoever fails now cannot excuse himself by saying that he has
done as much as a man can do. He will have to remember the men of the
Freja. He will have to remember you. Don't you suppose I am proud of
you; don't you suppose that I am stronger and better because of what you
have done? Do you think it is nothing for me to be sitting here beside
you, here in this park--to be--yes, to be with you? Can't you
understand? Isn't it something to me that you are the man you are; not
the man whose name the people are shouting just now, not the man to whom
a king gave a bit of ribbon and enamel, but the man who lived like a
man, who would not die just because it was easier to die than to live,
who fought like a man, not only for himself but for the lives of those
he led, who showed us all how to be strong, and how strong one could be
if one would only try? What does the Pole amount to? The world wants
men, great, strong, harsh, brutal men--men with purposes, who let
nothing, nothing, nothing stand in their way."
"You mean Bennett," said Ferriss, looking up quickly. "You commenced by
speaking of me, but it's Bennett you are talking of now."
But he caught her glance and saw that she was looking steadfastly at
him--at him. A look was in her face, a light in her dull-blue eyes, that
he had never seen there before.
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