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Page 87
"Why, Lloyd, what is it--why, old chap, what the devil! I was a beast to
read that to you. It wasn't really as bad as that, you know, and
besides, look here, look at me. It all happened three years ago. It's
all over with now."
Without raising her head, and clinging to him all the closer, Lloyd
answered brokenly:
"No, no; it's not all over. It never, never will be."
"Pshaw, nonsense!" Bennett blustered, "you must not take it to heart
like this. We're going to forget all about it now. Here, damn the book,
anyhow! We've had enough of it to-day. Put your hat on. We'll have the
ponies out and drive somewhere. And to-night we'll go into town and see
a show at a theatre."
"No," protested Lloyd, pushing back from him, drying her eyes. "You
shall not think I'm so weak. We will go on with what we have to do--with
our work. I'm all right now."
Bennett marched her out of the room without more ado, and, following
her, closed and locked the door behind them. "We'll not write another
word of that stuff to-day. Get your hat and things. I'm going out to
tell Lewis to put the ponies in."
But that day marked a beginning. From that time on Lloyd never faltered,
and if there were moments when the iron bit deeper than usual into her
heart, Bennett never knew her pain. By degrees a course of action
planned itself for her. A direct appeal to Bennett she believed would
not only be useless, but beyond even her heroic courage. She must
influence him indirectly. The initiative must appear to come from him.
It must seem to him that he, of his own accord, roused his dormant
resolution. It was a situation that called for all her feminine tact,
all her delicacy, all her instinctive diplomacy.
The round of their daily life was renewed, but now there was a change.
It was subtle, illusive, a vague, indefinite trouble in the air. Lloyd
had addressed herself to her task, and from day to day, from hour to
hour, she held to it, unseen, unnoticed. Now it was a remark dropped as
if by chance in the course of conversation; now an extract cut from a
newspaper or scientific journal, and left where Bennett would find it;
now merely a look in her eyes, an instant's significant glance when her
gaze met her husband's, or a moment's enthusiasm over the news of some
discovery. Insensibly and with infinite caution she directed his
attention to the world he believed he had abjured; she called into being
his interest in his own field of action, reading to him by the hour from
the writings of other men, or advancing and championing theories which
she knew to be false and ridiculous, but which she goaded him to deny
and refute.
One morning she even feigned an exclamation of unbounded astonishment as
she opened the newspaper while the two were at breakfast, pretending to
read from imaginary headlines.
"Ward, listen! 'The Pole at Last. A Norwegian Expedition Solves the
Mystery of the Arctic. The Goal Reached After--'"
"What!" cried Bennett sharply, his frown lowering.
"'--After Centuries of Failure.'" Lloyd put down the paper with a note
of laughter.
"Suppose you should read it some day."
Bennett subsided with a good-humoured growl.
"You did scare me for a moment. I thought--I thought--"
"I did scare you? Why were you scared? What did you think?" She leaned
toward him eagerly.
"I thought--well--oh--that some other chap, Duane, perhaps--"
"He's still at Tasiusak. But he will succeed, I do believe. I've read a
great deal about him. He has energy and determination. If anybody
succeeds it will be Duane."
"He? Never!"
"Somebody, then."
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