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Page 34
"That's just what makes it so disgusting," said Lloyd, shaking her whip
at him. He sat down upon his haunches, eyeing her calmly, his tongue
lolling. When she had unbuckled Dan's collar and tossed it into the cart
under the seat she inquired of the farm-hand as to where the new dog
came from.
"It beats me, Miss Searight," he answered; "never saw such a bird in
these parts before; t'other belongs down to Applegate's."
"Come, let's have a look at you," said Lloyd, putting back the whip;
"let me see your collar."
Disregarding the man's warning, she went up to the stranger, whistling
and holding out her hand, and he came up to her--a little suspiciously
at first, but in the end wagging his tail, willing to be friendly. Lloyd
parted the thick fur around his neck and turned the plate of the collar
to the light. On the plate was engraved: "Kamiska, Arctic S.S. 'Freja.'
Return to Ward Bennett."
"Anything on the collar?" asked the man.
Lloyd settled a hairpin in a coil of hair at the back of her neck.
"Nothing--nothing that I can make out."
She climbed into the cart again and dismissed the farm-hand with a
quarter. He disappeared around the turn of the road. But as she was
about to drive on, Lloyd heard a great clattering of stones upon the
hill above her, a crashing in the bushes, and a shrill whistle thrice
repeated. Kamiska started up at once, cocking alternate ears, then
turned about and ran up the hill to meet Ward Bennett, who came
scrambling down, jumping from one granite outcrop to another, holding on
the whiles by the lower branches of the scrub oak-trees.
He was dressed as if for an outing, in knickerbockers and huge,
hob-nailed shoes. He wore an old shooting-coat and a woollen cap; a
little leather sack was slung from his shoulder, and in his hand he
carried a short-handled geologist's hammer.
And then, after so long a time, Lloyd saw his face again--the rugged,
unhandsome face; the massive jaw, huge almost to deformity; the great,
brutal, indomitable lips; the square-cut chin with its forward,
aggressive thrust; the narrow forehead, seamed and contracted, and the
twinkling, keen eyes so marred by the cast, so heavily shadowed by the
shaggy eyebrows. When he spoke the voice came heavy and vibrant from the
great chest, a harsh, deep bass, a voice in which to command men, not a
voice in which to talk to women.
Lloyd, long schooled to self-repression and the control of her emotions
when such repression and control were necessary, sat absolutely moveless
on her high seat, her hands only shutting tighter and tighter upon the
reins. She had often wondered how she would feel, what was to be her
dominant impulse, at such moments as these, and now she realised that it
was not so much joy, not so much excitement, as a resolute determination
not for one instant to lose her poise.
She was thinking rapidly. For four years they had not met. At one time
she believed him to be dead. But in the end he had been saved, had come
back, and, ignoring the plaudits of an entire Christendom, had addressed
himself straight to her. For one of them, at least, this meeting was a
crisis. What would they first say to each other? how be equal to the
situation? how rise to its dramatic possibilities? But the moment had
come to them suddenly, had found them all unprepared. There was no time
to think of adequate words. Afterward, when she reviewed this encounter,
she told herself that they both had failed, and that if the meeting had
been faithfully reproduced upon the stage or in the pages of a novel it
would have seemed tame and commonplace. These two, living the actual
scene, with all the deep, strong, real emotions of them surging to the
surface, the vitality of them, all aroused and vibrating, suddenly
confronting actuality itself, were not even natural; were not even "true
to life." It was as though they had parted but a fortnight ago.
Bennett caught his cap from his head and came toward her, exclaiming:
"Miss Searight, I believe."
And she, reaching her right hand over the left, that still held the
reins, leaned from her high seat, shaking hands with him and replying:
"Well--Mr. Bennett, I'm so very glad to see you again. Where did you
come from?"
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