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Page 88
"You said once that if your husband couldn't nobody could."
"Yes, yes, I know," she answered cheerfully. "But you--you are out of
it now."
"Huh!" he grumbled. "It's not because I don't think I could if I wanted
to."
"No, you could not, Ward. Nobody can."
"But you just said you thought somebody would some day."
"Did I? Oh, suppose you really should one of these days!"
"And suppose I never came back?"
"Nonsense! Of course you would come back. They all do nowadays."
"De Long didn't."
"But you are not De Long."
And for the rest of the day Lloyd noted with a sinking heart that
Bennett was unusually thoughtful and preoccupied. She said nothing, and
was studious to avoid breaking in upon his reflections, whatever they
might be. She kept out of his way as much as possible, but left upon his
desk, as if by accident, a copy of a pamphlet issued by a geographical
society, open at an article upon the future of exploration within the
arctic circle. At supper that night Bennett suddenly broke in upon a
rather prolonged silence with:
"It's all in the ship. Build a ship strong enough to withstand lateral
pressure of the ice and the whole thing becomes easy."
Lloyd yawned and stirred her tea indifferently as she answered:
"Yes, but you know that can't be done."
Bennett frowned thoughtfully, drumming upon the table.
"I'll wager _I_ could build one."
"But it's not the ship alone. It's the man. Whom would you get to
command your ship?"
Bennett stared.
"Why, I would take her, of course."
"You? You have had your share--your chance. Now you can afford to stay
home and finish your book--and--well, you might deliver lectures."
"What rot, Lloyd! Can you see me posing on a lecture platform?"
"I would rather see you doing that than trying to beat Duane, than
getting into the ice again. I would rather see you doing that than to
know that you were away up there--in the north, in the ice, at your work
again, fighting your way toward the Pole, leading your men and
overcoming every obstacle that stood in your way, never giving up, never
losing heart, trying to do the great, splendid, impossible thing;
risking your life to reach merely a point on a chart. Yes, I would
rather see you on a lecture platform than on the deck of an arctic
steamship. You know that, Ward."
He shot a glance at her.
"I would like to know what you mean," he muttered.
The winter went by, then the spring, and by June all the country around
Medford was royal with summer. During the last days of May, Bennett
practically had completed the body of his book and now occupied himself
with its appendix. There was little variation in their daily life. Adler
became more and more of a fixture about the place. In the first week of
June, Lloyd and Bennett had a visitor, a guest; this was Hattie
Campbell. Mr. Campbell was away upon a business trip, and Lloyd had
arranged to have the little girl spend the fortnight of his absence
with her at Medford.
The summer was delightful. A vast, pervading warmth lay close over all
the world. The trees, the orchards, the rose-bushes in the garden about
the house, all the teeming life of trees and plants hung motionless and
poised in the still, tideless ocean of the air. It was very quiet; all
distant noises, the crowing of cocks, the persistent calling of robins
and jays, the sound of wheels upon the road, the rumble of the trains
passing the station down in the town, seemed muffled and subdued. The
long, calm summer days succeeded one another in an unbroken, glimmering
procession. From dawn to twilight one heard the faint, innumerable
murmurs of the summer, the dull bourdon of bees in the rose and lilac
bushes, the prolonged, strident buzzing of blue-bottle-flies, the harsh,
dry scrape of grasshoppers, the stridulating of an occasional cricket.
In the twilight and all through the night itself the frogs shrilled from
the hedgerows and in the damp, north corners of the fields, while from
the direction of the hills toward the east the whippoorwills called
incessantly. During the day the air was full of odours, distilled as it
were by the heat of high noon--the sweet smell of ripening apples, the
fragrance of warm sap and leaves and growing grass, the smell of cows
from the nearby pastures, the pungent, ammoniacal suggestion of the
stable back of the house, and the odour of scorching paint blistering on
the southern walls.
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