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Page 54
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.
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