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Page 59
And this sentiment of hatred itself, independent of and apart from its
object, was distasteful and foreign to her. Never in her life had Lloyd
hated any one before. To be kind, to be gentle, to be womanly was her
second nature, and kindness, gentleness, and womanliness were qualities
that her profession only intensified and deepened. This newcomer in her
heart, this fierce, evil visitor, that goaded her and pricked and
harried her from day to day and throughout so many waking nights, that
roused the unwonted flash in her eye and drove the hot, angry blood to
her smooth, white forehead and knotted her levelled brows to a dark and
lowering frown, had entered her life and being, unsought for and
undesired. It did not belong to her world. Yet there it sat on its
usurped throne deformed and hideous, driving out all tenderness and
compunction, ruling her with a rod of iron, hardening her, embittering
her, and belittling her, making a mockery of all sweetness, fleering at
nobility and magnanimity, lowering the queen to the level of the
fishwife.
When the first shock of the catastrophe had spent its strength and Lloyd
perforce must turn again to the life she had to live, groping for its
scattered, tangled ends, piecing together again as best she might its
broken fragments, she set herself honestly to drive this hatred from her
heart. If she could not love Bennett, at least she need not hate him.
She was moved to this by no feeling of concern for Bennett. It was not a
consideration that she owed to him, but something rather that was due to
herself. Yet, try as she would, the hatred still remained. She could not
put it from her. Hurt her and contaminate her as it did, in spite of all
her best efforts, in spite of her very prayers, the evil thing abode
with her, deep-rooted, strong, malignant. She saw that in the end she
would continue in her profession, but she believed that she could not go
on with it consistently, based as it was upon sympathy and love and
kindness, while a firm-seated, active hatred dwelt with her, harassing
her at every moment, and perverting each good impulse and each unselfish
desire. It was an ally of the very Enemy she would be called upon to
fight, a traitor that at any moment might open the gates to his
triumphant entry.
But was this his only ally; was this the only false and ugly invader
that had taken advantage of her shattered defence? Had the unwelcome
visitor entered her heart alone? Was there not a companion still more
wicked, more perverted, more insidious, more dangerous? For the first
time Lloyd knew what it meant to deceive.
It was supposed by her companions, and accepted by them as a matter of
course, that she had not left the bedside of her patient until after his
death. At first she had joyfully welcomed this mistake as her salvation,
the one happy coincidence that was to make her life possible, and for a
time had ceased to think about it. That phase of the incident was
closed. Matters would readjust themselves. In a few days' time the
incident would be forgotten. But she found that she herself could not
forget it, and that as days went on the idea of this passive, silent
deception she was obliged to maintain occurred to her oftener and
oftener. She remembered again how glibly and easily she had lied to her
friend upon the evening of her return. How was it that the lie had
flowed so smoothly from her lips? To her knowledge she had never
deliberately lied before. She would have supposed that, because of this
fact, falsehood would come difficult to her, that she would have
bungled, hesitated, stammered. But it was the reverse that had been the
case. The facility with which she had uttered the lie was what now began
to disturb and to alarm her. It argued some sudden collapse of her whole
system of morals, some fundamental disarrangement of the entire machine.
Abruptly she recoiled. Whither was she tending? If she supinely resigned
herself to the current of circumstance, where would she be carried? Yet
how was she to free herself from the current, how to face this new
situation that suddenly presented itself at a time when she had fancied
the real shock of battle and contention was spent and past?
How was she to go back now? How could she retrace her steps? There was
but one way--correct the false impression. It would not be necessary to
acknowledge that she had been forced to leave her post; the essential
was that her companions should know that she had deceived them--that she
had left the bedside before her patient's death. But at the thought of
making such confession, public as it must be, everything that was left
of her wounded pride revolted. She who had been so firm, she who had
held so tenaciously to her principles, she who had posed before them as
an example of devotion and courage--she could not bring herself to that.
"No, no," she exclaimed as this alternative presented itself to her
mind. "No, I cannot. It is beyond me. I simply cannot do it."
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