Lloyd shook her head.
“I don’t—I can’t believe
you.”
“Do you want to see me go,” demanded Bennett,
“after this last experience? Do you urge
me to it?”
Lloyd turned her head away, leaning it against one
of the veranda pillars. A sudden dimness swam
in her eyes, the choking ache she knew so well came
to her throat. Ah, life was hard for her.
The very greatness of her nature drove from her the
happiness so constantly attained by little minds,
by commonplace souls. When was it to end, this
continual sacrifice of inclination to duty, this eternal
abnegation, this yielding up of herself, her dearest,
most cherished wishes to the demands of duty and the
great world?
“I don’t know what I want,” she
said faintly. “It don’t seem as if
one could be happy—very long.”
All at once she moved close to him and laid her cheek
upon the arm of his chair and clasped his hand in
both her own, murmuring: “But I have you
now, I have you now, no matter what is coming to us.”
A sense of weakness overcame her. What did she
care that Bennett should fulfil his destiny, should
round out his career, should continue to be the Great
Man? It was he, Bennett, that she loved—not
his greatness, not his career. Let it all go,
let ambition die, let others less worthy succeed in
the mighty task. What were fame and honour and
glory and the sense of a divinely appointed duty done
at last to the clasp of his hand and the sound of
his voice?
In November of that year Lloyd and Bennett were married.
Two guests only assisted at the ceremony. These
were Campbell and his little daughter Hattie.
The months passed; Christmas came and went. Until
then the winter had been unusually mild, but January
set in with a succession of vicious cold snaps and
great blustering winds out of the northeast. Lloyd
and Bennett had elected to remain quietly in their
new home at Medford. They had no desire to travel,
and Bennett’s forthcoming book demanded his
attention. Adler stayed on about the house.
He and the dog Kamiska were companions inseparable.
At long intervals visitors presented themselves—Dr.
Street, or Pitts, or certain friends of Bennett’s.
But the great rush of interviewers, editors, and projectors
of marvellous schemes that had crowded Bennett’s
anterooms during the spring and early summer was conspicuously
dwindling. The press ceased to speak of him;
even his mail had fallen away. Now, whenever the
journals of the day devoted space to arctic exploration,
it was invariably in reference to the English expedition
wintering on the Greenland coast. That world that
had clamoured so loudly upon Bennett’s return,
while, perhaps, not yet forgetting him, was already
ignoring him, was looking in other directions.
Another man was in the public eye.
But in every sense these two—Lloyd and
Bennett—were out of the world. They
had freed themselves from the current of affairs.
They stood aside while the great tide went careering
past swift and turbulent, and one of them at least
lacked even the interest to look on and watch its
progress.
