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Page 81
Then had come Bennett's resolve to give Ferriss the conspicuous and
prominent place in his book, the account of the expedition. The more
Bennett dwelt upon Ferriss's heroism, intelligence, and ability the more
his task became a labour of love, and the more the idea of self dropped
away from his thought and imagination. Then--and perhaps this was not
the least important factor in Bennett's transformation--sickness had
befallen; the strong and self-reliant man had been brought to the
weakness of a child, whom the pressure of a finger could control. He
suddenly changed places with the woman he believed he had, at such
fearful cost, broken and subdued. His physical strength, once so
enormous, was as a reed in the woman's hand; his will, so indomitable,
was as powerless as an infant's before the woman's calm resolve, rising
up there before him and overmastering him at a time he believed it to be
forever weakened.
Bennett had come forth from the ordeal chastened, softened, and humbled.
But he was shattered, broken, brought to the earth with sorrow and the
load of unavailing regret. Ambition was numb and lifeless within him.
Reaction from his former attitude of aggression and defiance had carried
him far beyond the normal.
Here widened the difference between the man and the woman. Lloyd's
discontinuance of her life-work had been in the nature of heroic
subjugation of self. Bennett's abandonment of his career was hardly
better than weakness. In the one it had been renunciation; in the other
surrender. In the end, and after all was over, it was the woman who
remained the stronger.
But for her, the woman, was it true that all was over? Had the last
conflict been fought? Was it not rather to be believed that life was one
long conflict? Was it not for her, Lloyd, to rouse that sluggard
ambition? Was not this her career, after all, to be his inspiration, his
incentive, to urge him to the accomplishment of a great work? Now, of
the two, she was the stronger. In these new conditions what was her
duty? Adler's clumsy phrases persisted in her mind. "That's his work,"
Adler had said. "God Almighty cut him out for that, and he's got to do
it. Don't let him chuck, don't let him get soft; make him be a man and
not a professor."
Had she so much influence over Bennett? Could she rouse the restless,
daring spirit again? Perhaps; but what would it mean for her--for her,
who must be left behind to wait, and wait, and wait--for three years,
for five years, for ten years--perhaps forever? And now, at this moment,
when she believed that at last happiness had come to her; when the duty
had been done, the grim problems solved; when sickness had been
overcome; when love had come back, and the calm, untroubled days seemed
lengthening out ahead, there came to her recollection the hideous lapse
of time that had intervened between the departure of the Freja and the
expedition's return; what sleepless nights, what days of unspeakable
suspense, what dreadful alternations between hope and despair, what
silent, repressed suffering, what haunting, ever-present dread of a
thing she dared not name! Was the Fear to come into her life again; the
Enemy that lurked and leered and forebore to strike, that hung upon her
heels at every hour of the day, that sat down with her to her every
occupation, that followed after when she stirred abroad, that came close
to her in the still watches of the night, creeping, creeping to her
bedside, looming over her in the darkness; the cold fingers reaching
closer and closer, the awful face growing ever more distinct, till the
suspense of waiting for the blow to fall, for the fingers to grip,
became more than she could bear, and she sprang from her bed with a
stifled sob of anguish, driven from her rest with quivering lips and
streaming eyes?
Abruptly Lloyd rose to her feet, the flowers falling unheeded from her
lap, her arms rigid at her side, her hands shut tight.
"No," she murmured, "I cannot. This, at last, is more than I can do."
Instantly Adler's halting words went ringing through her brain: "The
danger don't figure; nothing in the world don't figure. It's his work."
Adler's words were the words of the world. She alone of the thousands
whose eyes were turned toward Bennett was blinded. She was wrong. She
belonged to him, but he did not belong to her. The world demanded him;
the world called him from her side to do the terrible work that God had
made him for. Was she, because she loved him, because of her own single
anguish, to stand between him and the clamour of the world, between him
and his work, between him and God?
A work there was for him to do. He must play the man's part. The battle
must be fought again. That horrible, grisly Enemy far up there to the
north, upon the high curve of the globe, the shoulder of the world,
huge, remorseless, terrible in its vast, Titanic strength, guarding its
secret through all the centuries in the innermost of a thousand gleaming
coils, must be defied again. The monster that defended the great prize,
the object of so many fruitless quests must be once more attacked.
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