Chapter 12

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."

But she could. Yes, she could do it if she would. Deep down in her mind that little thought arose. She could if she wanted to. Hide it though she might, cover it and bury it with what false reasoning she could invent, the little thought would not be smothered, would not be crushed out. Well, then, she would not. Was it not her chance; was not this deception which others and not herself had created, her opportunity to recover herself, to live down what had been done--what she had been forced to do, rather? Absolute right was never to be attained; was not life to be considered rather in the light of a compromise between good and evil? To do what one could under the circumstances, was not that the golden mean?

But she ought. And, quick, another little thought sprang up in the deeper recesses of her mind and took its place beside the other. It was right that she should be true. She ought to do the right. Argument, the pleas of weakness, the demands of expediency, the plausibility of compromise were all of no avail. The idea "I ought" persisted and persisted and persisted. She could and she ought. There was no excuse for her, and no sooner had she thrust aside the shifty mass of sophistries under which she had striven to conceal them, no sooner had she let in the light, than these two conceptions of Duty and Will began suddenly to grow.

But what was she to gain? What would be the result of such a course as her conscience demanded she should adopt? It was inevitable that she would be misunderstood, cruelly misjudged. What action would her confession entail? She could not say. But results did not matter; what she was to gain or lose did not matter. Around her and before her all was dark and vague and terrible. If she was to escape there was but one thing to do. Suddenly her own words came back to her:

"All we can do is to hold to what we know is right, and trust that everything will come well in the end."

She knew what was right, and she had the strength to hold to it. Then all at once there came to Lloyd a grand, breathless sense of uplifting, almost a transfiguration. She felt herself carried high above the sphere of little things, the region of petty considerations What did she care for consequences, what mattered to her the unjust condemnation of her world, if only she remained true to herself, if only she did right? What did she care for what she gained? It was no longer a question of gain or loss--it was a question of being true and strong and brave. The conflict of that day at Medford between the man's power and the woman's resistance had been cruel, the crisis had been intense, and though she had been conquered then, had it, after all, been beyond recall? No, she was not conquered. No, she was not subdued. Her will had not been broken, her courage had not been daunted, her strength had not been weakened. Here was the greater fight, here was the higher test. Here was the ultimate, supreme crisis of all, and here, at last, come what might, she would not, would not, would not fail.

As soon as Lloyd reached this conclusion she sat about carrying her resolution into effect.

"If I don't do it now while I'm strong," she told herself, "if I wait, I never will do it."

Perhaps there was yet a touch of the hysterical in her actions even then. The jangled feminine nerves were yet vibrating far above their normal pitch; she was overwrought and oversensitive, for just as a fanatic rushes eagerly upon the fire and the steel, preferring the more exquisite torture, so Lloyd sought out the more painful situation, the more trying ordeal, the line of action that called for the greatest fortitude, the most unflinching courage.

She chose to make known her real position, to correct the false impression at a time when all the nurses of the house should be together. This would be at supper-time. Since her return from Medford, Lloyd had shut herself away from the other inmates of the house, and had taken her meals in her room. With the exception of Miss Douglass and the superintendent nurse no one had seen her. She had passed her time lying at full length upon her couch, her hands clasped behind her head, or pacing the floor, or gazing listlessly out of her windows, while her thoughts raced at a gallop through her mind.

Now, however, she bestirred herself. She had arrived at her final decision early in the afternoon of the third day after her return, and at once she resolved that she would endure the ordeal that very evening.

She passed the intervening time, singularly enough, in very carefully setting her room to rights, adjusting and readjusting the few ornaments on the mantel-shelf and walls, winding the clock that struck ship's bells instead of the hours, and minutely sorting the letters and papers in her desk. It was the same as if she were going upon a long journey or were preparing for a great sickness. Toward four o'clock Miss Douglass, looking in to ask how she did, found her before her mirror carefully combing and arranging her great bands and braids of dark-red hair. The fever nurse declared that she was immensely improved in appearance, and asked at once if she was not feeling better.

"Yes," answered Lloyd, "very much better," adding: "I shall be down to supper to-night."

For some reason that she could not explain Lloyd took unusual pains with her toilet, debating long over each detail of dress and ornament. At length, toward five o'clock, she was ready, and sat down by her window, a book in her lap, to await the announcement of supper as the condemned await the summons to execution.

Her plan was to delay her appearance in the dining-room until she was sure that everybody was present; then she would go down, and, standing there before them all, say what she had to say, state the few bald facts of the case, without excuse or palliation, and leave them to draw the one inevitable conclusion.

But this final hour of waiting was a long agony for Lloyd. Her moods changed with every moment; the action she contemplated presented itself to her mind in a multitude of varying lights. At one time she quivered with the apprehension of it, as though at the slow approach of hot irons. At another she could see no reason for being greatly concerned over the matter. Did the whole affair amount to so much, after all? Her companions would, of their own accord, make excuses for her. Risking one's life in the case of a virulent, contagious disease was no small matter. No one could be blamed for leaving such a case. At one moment Lloyd's idea of public confession seemed to her little less than sublime; at another, almost ridiculous. But she remembered the case of Harriet Freeze, who had been unable to resist the quiet, unexpressed force of opinion of her fellow-workers. It would be strange if Lloyd should find herself driven from the very house she had built.

The hour before supper-time seemed interminable; the quarter passed, then the half, then the three-quarters. Lloyd imagined she began to detect a faint odour of the kitchen in the air. Suddenly the remaining minutes of the hour began to be stricken from the dial of her clock with bewildering rapidity. From the drawing-room immediately below came the sounds of the piano. That was Esther Thielman, no doubt, playing one of her interminable Polish compositions. All at once the piano stopped, and, with a quick sinking of the heart, Lloyd heard the sliding doors separating the drawing-room from the dining-room roll back. Miss Douglass and another one of the nurses, Miss Truslow, a young girl, a newcomer in the house, came out of the former's room and went downstairs, discussing the merits of burlap as preferable to wall-paper. Lloyd even heard Miss Truslow remark:

"Yes, that's very true, but if it isn't sized it will wrinkle in damp weather."

Rownie came to Lloyd's door and knocked, and, without waiting for a reply, said:

"Dinneh's served, Miss Searight," and Lloyd heard her make the same announcement at Miss Bergyn's room farther down the hall. One by one Lloyd heard the others go downstairs. The rooms and hallways on the second floor fell quiet. A faint, subdued murmur of talk came to her ears in the direction of the dining-room. Lloyd waited for five, for ten, for fifteen minutes. Then she rose, drawing in her breath, straightening herself to her full height. She went to the door, then paused for a moment, looking back at all the familiar objects--the plain, rich furniture, the book-shelves, the great, comfortable couch, the old-fashioned round mirror that hung between the windows, and her writing-desk of blackened mahogany. It seemed to her that in some way she was never to see these things again, as if she were saying good-bye to them and to the life she had led in that room and in their surroundings. She would be a different woman when she came back to that room. Slowly she descended the stairs and halted for a moment in the hall below. It was not too late to turn back even now. She could hear her companions at their supper very plainly, and could distinguish Esther Thielman's laugh as she exclaimed:

"Why, of course, that's the very thing I mean."

It was a strange surprise that Lloyd had in store for them all. Her heart began to beat heavy and thick. Could she even find her voice to speak when the time came? Would it not be better to put it off, to think over the whole matter again between now and to-morrow morning? But she moved her head impatiently. No, she would not turn back. She found that the sliding doors in the drawing-room had been closed, and so went to the door that opened into the dining-room from the hall itself. It stood ajar. Lloyd pushed it open, entered, and, closing the door behind her, stood there leaning against it.

The table was almost full; only two or three places besides her own were unoccupied. There was Miss Bergyn at the head; the fever nurse, Miss Douglass, at her right, and, lower down, Lloyd saw Esther Thielman; Delia Craig, just back from a surgical case of Dr. Street's; Miss Page, the oldest and most experienced nurse of them all; Gilbertson, whom every one called by her last name; Miss Ives and Eleanor Bogart, who had both taken doctors' degrees, and could have practised if they had desired; Miss Wentworth, who had served an apprenticeship in a missionary hospital in Armenia, and had known Clara Barton, and, last of all, the newcomer, Miss Truslow, very young and very pretty, who had never yet had a case, and upon whose diploma the ink was hardly dry.

At first, so quietly had she entered, no one took any notice of Lloyd, and she stood a moment, her back to the door, wondering how she should begin. Everybody seemed to be in the best of humour; a babel of talk was in the air; conversations were going forward, carried on across the table, or over intervening shoulders.

"Why, of course, don't you see, that's the very thing I meant--"

"--I think you can get that already sized, though, and with a stencil figure if you want it--"

"--Really, it's very interesting; the first part is stupid, but she has some very good ideas."

"--Yes, at Vanoni's. But we get a reduction, you know--"

"--and, oh, listen; this is too funny; she turned around and said, very prim and stiff, 'No, indeed; I'm too old a woman.' Funny! If I think of that on my deathbed I shall laugh--"

"--and so that settled it. How could I go on after that--?"

"--Must you tack it on? The walls are so hard--"

"Let Rownie do it; she knows. Oh, here's the invalid!"

"Oh, why, it's Lloyd! We're so glad you're able to come down!"

But when they had done exclaiming over her reappearance among them Lloyd still remained as she was, her back against the door, standing very straight, her hands at her side. She did not immediately reply. Heads were turned in her direction. The talk fell away by rapid degrees as they began to notice the paleness of her face and the strange, firm set of her mouth.

"Sit down, Lloyd," said Miss Bergyn; "don't stand. You are not very well yet; I'll have Rownie bring you a glass of sherry."

There was a silence. Then at length:

"No," said Lloyd quietly. "I don't want any sherry. I don't want any supper. I came down to tell you that you are all wrong in thinking I did what I could with my typhoid case at Medford. You think I left only after the patient had died. I did not; I left before. There was a crisis of some kind. I don't know what it was, because I was not in the sick-room at the time, and I did not go when I was called. The doctor was not there either; he had gone out and left the case in my charge. There was nobody with the patient but a servant. The servant called me, but I did not go. Instead I came away and left the house. The patient died that same day. It is that that I wanted to tell you. Do you all understand--perfectly? I left my patient at the moment of a crisis, and with no one with him but a servant. And he died that same afternoon."

Then she went out, and the closing of the door jarred sharply upon the great silence that had spread throughout the room.

Lloyd went back to her room, closed and locked the door, and, sinking down upon the floor by the couch, bowed her head upon her folded arms. But she was in no mood for weeping, and her eyes were dry. She was conscious chiefly that she had taken an irrevocable step, that her head had begun to ache. There was no exhilaration in her mind now; she did not feel any of the satisfaction of attainment after struggle, of triumph after victory. More than once she even questioned herself if, after all, her confession had been necessary. But now she was weary unto death of the whole wretched business. Now she only knew that her head was aching fiercely; she did not care either to look into the past or forward into the future. The present occupied her; for the present her head was aching.

But before Lloyd went to bed that night Miss Bergyn knew the whole truth as to what had happened at Dr. Pitts's house. The superintendent nurse had followed Lloyd to her room almost immediately, and would not be denied. She knew very well that Lloyd Searight had never left a dying patient of her own volition. Intuitively she guessed at something hidden.

"Lloyd," she said decisively, "don't ask me to believe that you went of your own free will. Tell me just what happened. Why did you go? Ask me to believe anything but that you--no, I won't say the word. There was some very good reason, wasn't there?"

"I--I cannot explain," Lloyd answered. "You must think what you choose. You wouldn't understand."

But, happily, when Lloyd's reticence finally broke Miss Bergyn did understand. The superintendent nurse knew Bennett only by report. But Lloyd she had known for years, and realised that if she had yielded, it had only been after the last hope had been tried. In the end Lloyd told her everything that had occurred. But, though she even admitted Bennett's affection for her, she said nothing about herself, and Miss Bergyn did not ask.

"I know, of course," said the superintendent nurse at length, "you hate to think that you were made to go; but men are stronger than women, Lloyd, and such a man as that must be stronger than most men. You were not to blame because you left the case, and you are certainly not to blame for Mr. Ferriss's death. Now I shall give it out here in the house that you had a very good reason for leaving your case, and that while we can't explain it any more particularly, I have had a talk with you and know all about it, and am perfectly satisfied. Then I shall go out to Medford and see Dr. Pitts. It would be best," she added, for Lloyd had made a gesture of feeble dissent. "He must understand perfectly, and we need not be afraid of any talk about the matter at all. What has happened has happened 'in the profession,' and I don't believe it will go any further."

* * * * *

Lloyd returned to Bannister toward the end of the week. How long she would remain she did not know, but for the present the association of the other nurses was more than she was able to bear. Later, when the affair had become something of an old story, she would return, resuming her work as though nothing had happened.

Hattie met her at the railway station with the phaeton and the ponies. She was radiant with delight at the prospect of having Lloyd all to herself for an indefinite period of time.

"And you didn't get sick, after all?" she exclaimed, clasping her hands. "Was your patient as sick as I was? Weren't his parents glad that you made him well again?"

Lloyd put her hand over the little girl's mouth.

"Let us not talk any 'shop,' Hattie," she said, trying to smile.

But on the morning after her arrival Lloyd woke in her own white room of the old farmhouse, abruptly conscious of some subtle change that had occurred to her overnight. For the first time since the scene in the breakfast-room at Medford she was aware of a certain calmness that had come to her. Perhaps she had at last begun to feel the good effects of the trial by fire which she had voluntarily undergone--to know a certain happiness that now there was no longer any deceit in her heart. This she had uprooted and driven out by force of her own will. It was gone. But now, on this morning, she seemed to feel that this was not all.

Something else had left her--something that of late had harassed her and goaded her and embittered her life, and mocked at her gentleness and kindness, was gone. That fierce, truculent hatred that she had so striven to put from her, now behold! of its own accord, it had seemed to leave her. How had it happened? Before she had dared the ordeal of confession this feeling of hatred, this perverse and ugly changeling that had brooded in her heart, had seemed too strong, too deeply seated to be moved. Now, suddenly, it had departed, unbidden, without effort on her part.

Vaguely Lloyd wondered at this thing. In driving deceit from her it would appear that she had also driven out hatred, that the one could not stay so soon as the other had departed. Could the one exist apart from the other? Was there, then, some strange affinity in all evil, as, perhaps, in all good, so that a victory over one bad impulse meant a victory over many? Without thought of gain or of reward, she had held to what was right through the confusion and storm and darkness. Was this to be, after all, her reward, her gain? Possibly; but she could not tell, she could not see. The confusion was subsiding, the storm had passed, but much of the darkness yet remained. Deceit she had fought from out her heart; silently Hatred had stolen after it. Love had not returned to his old place, and never, never would, but the changeling was gone, and the house was swept and garnished.

VIII.