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Page 55
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--"
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