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Page 48
"I shall not," she cried.
Was it the same woman who had spoken but one moment before? Did her
voice ring with the same undaunted defiance? Was there not a note of
despair in her tones, a barely perceptible quaver, the symbol of her
wavering resolve? Was not the very fact that she must question her
strength proof positive that her strength was waning?
But her courage was unshaken, even if her strength was breaking. To the
last she would strive, to the end she would hold her forehead high. Not
till the last hope had been tried would she acknowledge her defeat.
"But in any case," she said, "risk is better than certainty. If I risk
my life by staying, it is certain that he will die if I leave him at
this critical moment."
"So much the worse, then--you cannot stay."
Lloyd stared at him in amazement.
"It isn't possible; I don't believe you can understand. Do you know how
sick he is? Do you know that he is lying at the point of death at this
very moment, and that the longer I stay away from him the more his life
is in peril? Has he not rights as well as I; has he not a right to live?
It is not only my own humiliation that is at stake, it is the life of
your dearest friend, the man who stood by you, and helped you, and who
suffered the same hardships and privations as yourself."
"What's that?" demanded Bennett with a sudden frown.
"If I leave Mr. Ferriss now, if he is left alone here for so much as
half an hour, I will not answer--"
"Ferriss! What are you talking about? What is your patient's name?"
"Didn't you know?"
"Ferriss! Dick Ferriss! Don't tell me it's Dick Ferriss."
"I thought all the time you knew--that you had heard. Yes, it is Mr.
Ferriss."
"Is he very sick? What is he doing out here? No, I had not heard; nobody
told me. Pitts was to write--to--to wire. Will he pull through? What's
the matter with him? Is it he who had typhoid?"
"He is very dangerously ill. Dr. Pitts brought him here. This is his
house. We do not know if he will get well. It is only by watching him
every instant that we can hope for anything. At this moment there is no
one with him but a servant. _Now_, Mr. Bennett, am I to go to my
patient?"
"But--but--we can get some one else."
"Not before three hours, and it's only the truth when I tell you he may
die at any minute. Am I to go?"
In a second of time the hideous situation leaped up before Bennett's
eyes. Right or wrong, the conviction that Lloyd was terribly imperilling
her life by remaining at her patient's bedside had sunk into his mind
and was not to be eradicated. It was a terror that had gripped him close
and that could not be reasoned away. But Ferriss? What of him? Now it
had brusquely transpired that his life, too, hung in the balance. How to
decide? How to meet this abominable complication wherein he must
sacrifice the woman he so dearly loved or the man who was the Damon to
his Pythias, the Jonathan to his David?
"Am I to go?" repeated Lloyd for the third time.
Bennett closed his eyes, clasping his head with both hands.
"Great God, wait--wait--I can't think--I--I, oh, this is terrible!"
Lloyd drove home her advantage mercilessly.
"Wait? I tell you we can't wait."
Then Bennett realised with a great spasm of horror that for him there
was no going back. All his life, accustomed to quick decisions in
moments of supreme peril, he took his decision now, facing, with such
courage as he could muster, its unspeakable consequences, consequences
that he knew must harry and hound him all the rest of his life.
Whichever way he decided, he opened his heart to the beak and talons of
a pitiless remorse. He could no longer see, in the dreadful confusion of
his mind, the right of things or the wrong of things, could not
accurately weigh chances or possibilities. For him only two alternatives
presented themselves, the death of Ferriss or the death of Lloyd. He
could see no compromise, could imagine no escape. It was as though a
headsman with ready axe stood at his elbow, awaiting his commands. And,
besides all this, he had long since passed the limit--though perhaps he
did not know it himself--where he could see anything but the point he
had determined to gain, the goal he had determined to reach. His mind
was made up. His furious energy, his resolve to conquer at all costs,
had become at last a sort of directed frenzy. The engine he had set in
motion was now beyond his control. He could not now--whether he would or
no--reverse its action, swerve it from its iron path, call it back from
the monstrous catastrophe toward which it was speeding him.
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