Chapter 17

But the man, though all unwittingly, radiated gloom. Lloyd readily saw that Adler was labouring under a certain cloud of disappointment and deferred hope. Naturally she understood the cause. Lloyd was too large-hearted to feel any irritation at the sight of Adler. But she could not regard him with indifference. To her mind he stood for all that Bennett had given up, for the great career that had stopped half-way, for the work half done, the task only half completed. In a way was not Adler now superior to Bennett? His one thought and aim and hope was to "try again." His ambition was yet alive and alight; the soldier was willing where the chief lost heart. Never again had Adler addressed himself to Lloyd on the subject of Bennett's inactivity. Now he seemed to understand--to realise that once married--and to Lloyd--he must no longer expect Bennett to continue the work. All this Lloyd interpreted from Adler's attitude, and again and again told herself that she could read the man's thoughts aright. She even fancied she caught a mute appeal in his eyes upon those rare occasions when they met, as though he looked to her as the only hope, the only means to wake Bennett from his lethargy. She imagined that she heard him say:

"Ain't you got any influence with him, Miss? Won't you talk good talk to him? Don't let him chuck. Make him be a man, and not a professor. Nothing else in the world don't figure. It's his work. God A'mighty cut him out for that, and he's got to do it."

His work, his work, God made him for that; appointed the task, made the man, and now she came between. God, Man, and the Work,--the three vast elements of an entire system, the whole universe epitomised in the tremendous trinity. Again and again such thoughts assailed her. Duty once more stirred and awoke. It seemed to her as if some great engine ordained of Heaven to run its appointed course had come to a standstill, was rusting to its ruin, and that she alone of all the world had power to grasp its lever, to send it on its way; whither, she did not know; why, she could not tell. She knew only that it was right that she should act. By degrees her resolution hardened. Bennett must try again. But at first it seemed to her as though her heart would break, and more than once she wavered.

As Bennett continued to dictate to her the story of the expedition he arrived at the account of the march toward Kolyuchin Bay, and, finally, at the description of the last week, with its terrors, its sufferings, its starvation, its despair, when, one by one, the men died in their sleeping-bags, to be buried under slabs of ice. When this point in the narrative was reached Bennett inserted no comment of his own; but while Lloyd wrote, read simply and with grim directness from the entries in his journal precisely as they had been written.

Lloyd had known in a vague way that the expedition had suffered abominably, but hitherto Bennett had never consented to tell her the story in detail. "It was a hard week," he informed her, "a rather bad grind."

Now, for the first time, she was to know just what had happened, just what he had endured.

As usual, Bennett paced the floor from wall to wall, his cigar in his teeth, his tattered, grimy ice-journal in his hand. At the desk Lloyd's round, bare arm, the sleeve turned up to the elbow, moved evenly back and forth as she wrote. In the intervals of Bennett's dictation the scratching of Lloyd's pen made itself heard. A little fire snapped and crackled on the hearth. The morning's sun came flooding in at the windows.

"... Gale of wind from the northeast," prompted Lloyd, raising her head from her writing. Bennett continued:

"Impossible to march against it in our weakened condition."

He paused for her to complete the sentence.

"... Must camp here till it abates...."

"Have you got that?" Lloyd nodded.

"... Made soup of the last of the dog-meat this afternoon.... Our last pemmican gone."

There was a pause; then Bennett resumed:

"December 1st, Wednesday--Everybody getting weaker.... Metz breaking down.... Sent Adler to the shore to gather shrimps ... we had about a mouthful apiece at noon ... supper, a spoonful of glycerine and hot water."

Lloyd put her hand to her temple, smoothing back her hair, her face turned away. As before, in the park, on that warm and glowing summer afternoon, a swift, clear vision of the Ice was vouchsafed to her. She saw the coast of Kolyuchin Bay--primordial desolation, whirling dust-like snow, the unleashed wind yelling like a sabbath of witches, leaping and somersaulting from rock to rock, folly-stricken and insensate in its hideous dance of death. Bennett continued. His voice insensibly lowered itself, a certain gravity of manner came upon him. At times he looked at the written pages in his hand with vague, unseeing eyes. No doubt he, too, was remembering.

He resumed:

"December 2d, Thursday--Metz died during the night.... Hansen dying. Still blowing a gale from the northeast.... A hard night."

Lloyd's pen moved slower and slower as she wrote. The lines of the manuscript began to blur and swim before her eyes.

And it was to this that she must send him. To this inhuman, horrible region; to this life of prolonged suffering, where death came slowly through days of starvation, exhaustion, and agony hourly renewed. He must dare it all again. She must force him to it. Her decision had been taken; her duty was plain to her. Now it was irrevocable.

"... Hansen died during early morning.... Dennison breaking down....

"... December 5th--Sunday--Dennison found dead this morning between Adler and myself...."

The vision became plainer, more distinct. She fancied she saw the interior of the tent and the dwindling number of the Freja's survivors moving about on their hands and knees in its gloomy half-light. Their hair and beards were long, their faces black with dirt, monstrously distended and fat with the bloated irony of starvation. They were no longer men. After that unspeakable stress of misery nothing but the animal remained.

"... Too weak to bury him, or even carry him out of the tent.... He must lie where he is.... Last spoonful of glycerine and hot water.... Divine service at 5:30 P.M...."

Once more Lloyd faltered in her writing; her hand moved slower. Shut her teeth though she might, the sobs would come; swiftly the tears brimmed her eyes, but she tried to wink them back, lest Bennett should see. Heroically she wrote to the end of the sentence. A pause followed:

"Yes--' divine services at'--I--I--"

The pen dropped from her fingers and she sank down upon her desk, her head bowed in the hollow of her bare arm, shaken from head to foot with the violence of the crudest grief she had ever known. Bennett threw his journal from him, and came to her, taking her in his arms, putting her head upon his shoulder.

"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."

Bennett took the paper from him and read aloud to the effect that the Curlew, accompanied by her collier, which was to follow her to the southerly limit of Kane Basin, had attempted the passage of Smith Sound late in June. But the season, as had been feared, was late. The enormous quantities of ice reported by the whalers the previous year had not debouched from the narrow channel, and on the last day of June the Curlew had found her further progress effectually blocked. In essaying to force her way into a lead the ice had closed in behind her, and, while not as yet nipped, the vessel was immobilised. There was no hope that she would advance northward until the following summer. The collier, which had not been beset, had returned to Tasiusak with the news of the failure.

"What a galoot! What a--a professor!" exclaimed Adler with a vast disdain. "Him loafing at Tasiusak waiting for open water, when the Alert wintered in eighty-two-twenty-four! Well, he's shelved for another year, anyhow."

Later on, after breakfast, Lloyd and Bennett shut themselves in Bennett's workroom, and for upward of three hours addressed themselves to the unfinished work of the previous day, compiling from Bennett's notes a table of temperatures of the sea-water taken at different soundings. Alternating with the scratching of Lloyd's pen, Bennett's voice continued monotonously:

"August 15th--2,000 meters or 1,093 fathoms--minus .66 degrees centigrade or 30.81 Fahrenheit."

"Fahrenheit," repeated Lloyd as she wrote the last word.

"August 16th--1,600 meters or 874 fathoms--"

"Eight hundred and seventy-four fathoms," repeated Lloyd as Bennett paused abstractedly.

"Or ... he's in a bad way, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"It's a bad bit of navigation along there. The Proteus was nipped and crushed to kindling in about that same latitude ... h'm" ... Bennett tugged at his mustache. Then, suddenly, as if coming to himself: "Well--these temperatures now. Where were we? 'Eight hundred and seventy-four fathoms, minus forty-six hundredths degrees centigrade.'"

On the afternoon of the next day, just as they were finishing this table, there was a knock at the door. It was Adler, and as Bennett opened the door he saluted and handed him three calling-cards. Bennett uttered an exclamation of surprise, and Lloyd turned about from the desk, her pen poised in the air over the half-written sheet.

"They might have let me know they were coming," she heard Bennett mutter. "What do they want?"

"Guess they came on that noon train, sir," hazarded Adler. "They didn't say what they wanted, just inquired for you."

"Who is it?" asked Lloyd, coming forward.

Bennett read off the names on the cards.

"Well, it's Tremlidge--that's the Tremlidge of the Times; he's the editor and proprietor--and Hamilton Garlock--has something to do with that new geographical society--president, I believe--and this one"--he handed her the third card--"is a friend of yours, Craig V. Campbell, of the Hercules Wrought Steel Company."

Lloyd stared. "What can they want?" she murmured, looking up to him from the card in some perplexity. Bennett shook his head.

"Tell them to come up here," he said to Adler.

Lloyd hastily drew down her sleeve over her bare arm.

"Why up here, Ward?" she inquired abruptly.

"Should we have seen them downstairs?" he demanded with a frown. "I suppose so; I didn't think. Don't go," he added, putting a hand on her arm as she started for the door. "You might as well hear what they have to say."

The visitors entered, Adler holding open the door--Campbell, well groomed, clean-shaven, and gloved even in that warm weather; Tremlidge, the editor of one of the greater daily papers of the City (and of the country for the matter of that), who wore a monocle and carried a straw hat under his arm; and Garlock, the vice-president of an international geographical society, an old man, with beautiful white hair curling about his ears, a great bow of black silk knotted about his old-fashioned collar. The group presented, all unconsciously, three great and highly developed phases of nineteenth-century intelligence--science, manufactures, and journalism--each man of them a master in his calling.

When the introductions and preliminaries were over, Bennett took up his position again in front of the fireplace, leaning against the mantle, his hands in his pockets. Lloyd sat opposite to him at the desk, resting her elbow on the edge. Hanging against the wall behind her was the vast chart of the arctic circle. Tremlidge, the editor, sat on the bamboo sofa near the end of the room, his elbows on his knees, gently tapping the floor with the ferrule of his slim walking-stick; Garlock, the scientist, had dropped into the depths of a huge leather chair and leaned back in it comfortably, his legs crossed, one boot swinging gently; Campbell stood behind this chair, drumming on the back occasionally with the fingers of one hand, speaking to Bennett over Garlock's shoulder, and from time to time turning to Tremlidge for corroboration and support of what he was saying.

Abruptly the conference began.

"Well, Mr. Bennett, you got our wire?" Campbell said by way of commencement.

Bennett shook his head.

"No," he returned in some surprise; "no, I got no wire."

"That's strange," said Tremlidge. "I wired three days ago asking for this interview. The address was right, I think. I wired: 'Care of Dr. Pitts.' Isn't that right?"

"That probably accounts for it," answered Bennett. "This is Pitts's house, but he does not live here now. Your despatch, no doubt, went to his office in the City, and was forwarded to him. He's away just now, travelling, I believe. But--you're here. That's the essential."

"Yes," murmured Garlock, looking to Campbell. "We're here, and we want to have a talk with you."

Campbell, who had evidently been chosen spokesman, cleared his throat.