A Man's Woman

"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."

"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.

July was very hot. No breath of wind stirred the vast, invisible sea of air, quivering and oily under the vertical sun. The landscape was deserted of animated life; there was little stirring abroad. In the house one kept within the cool, darkened rooms with matting on the floors and comfortable, deep wicker chairs, the windows wide to the least stirring of the breeze. Adler dozed in his canvas hammock slung between a hitching-post and a crab-apple tree in the shade behind the stable. Kamiska sprawled at full length underneath the water-trough, her tongue lolling, panting incessantly. An immeasurable Sunday stillness seemed to hang suspended in the atmosphere—a drowsy, numbing hush. There was no thought of the passing of time. The day of the week was always a matter of conjecture. It seemed as though this life of heat and quiet and unbroken silence was to last forever.

Then suddenly there was an alerte. One morning, a day or so after Hattie Campbell had returned to the City, just as Lloyd and Bennett were finishing their breakfast in the now heavily awninged glass-room, they were surprised to see Adler running down the road toward the house, Kamiska racing on ahead, barking excitedly. Adler had gone into the town for the mail and morning's paper. This latter he held wide open in his hand, and as soon as he caught sight of Lloyd and Bennett waved it about him, shouting as he ran.

Lloyd's heart began to beat. There was only one thing that could excite Adler to this degree—the English expedition; Adler had news of it; it was in the paper. Duane had succeeded; had been working steadily northward during all these past months, while Bennett—

"Stuck in the ice! stuck in the ice!" shouted Adler as he swung wide the front gate and came hastening toward the veranda across the lawn. "What did we say! Hooray! He's stuck. I knew it; any galoot might 'a' known it. Duane's stuck tighter'n a wedge off Bache Island, in Kane Basin. Here it all is; read it for yourself."