When Lloyd at length managed to free herself and jump to the ground Bennett came quickly toward her and drew her away to the side of the road.
"Are you hurt?" he demanded. "Tell me, are you hurt?"
"No, no; not in the least."
"Why in the world did you want to drive such a horse? Don't ever take such chances again. I won't have it."
For a few moments Lloyd was too excited to trust herself to talk, and could only stand helplessly to one side, watching Bennett as he stripped off the harness from the dead horse, stowed it away under the seat of the cart, and rolled the cart itself to the edge of the road. Then at length she said, trying to smile and to steady her voice:
"It—it seems to me, Mr. Bennett, you do about—about as you like with my sta- bub-ble."
"Sit down!" he commanded, "you are trembling all over. Sit down on that rock there."
"—and with me," she added, sinking down upon the boulder he had indicated with a movement of his head, his hands busy with the harness.
"I'm sorry I had to do that," he explained; "but there was no help for it—nothing else to do. He would have had you in the canal in another second, if he did not kill you on the way there."
"Poor old Rox," murmured Lloyd; "I was very fond of Rox."
Bennett put himself in her way as she stepped forward. He had the lap-robe over his arm and the whip in his hand.
"No, don't look at him. He's not a pretty sight. Come, shall I take you home? Don't worry about the cart; I will see that it is sent back."
"And that Rox is buried—somewhere? I don't want him left out there for the crows." In spite of Bennett's injunction she looked over her shoulder for a moment as they started off down the road. "I only hope you were sure there was nothing else to do, Mr. Bennett," she said.
But the savagery of the whole affair stuck in Lloyd's imagination. There was a primitiveness, a certain hideous simplicity in the way Bennett had met the situation that filled her with wonder and with even a little terror and mistrust of him. The vast, brutal directness of the deed was out of place and incongruous at this end-of-the-century time. It ignored two thousand years of civilisation. It was a harsh, clanging, brazen note, powerful, uncomplicated, which came jangling in, discordant and inharmonious with the tune of the age. It savoured of the days when men fought the brutes with their hands or with their clubs. But also it was an indication of a force and a power of mind that stopped at nothing to attain its ends, that chose the shortest cut, the most direct means, disdainful of hesitation, holding delicacy and finessing in measureless contempt, rushing straight to its object, driving in, breaking down resistance, smashing through obstacles with a boundless, crude, blind Brobdignag power, to oppose which was to be trampled under foot upon the instant.
It was long before their talk turned from the incident of the morning, but when it did its subject was Richard Ferriss. Bennett was sounding his praises and commending upon his pluck and endurance during the retreat from the ship, when Lloyd, after hesitating once or twice, asked:
"How is Mr. Ferriss? In your note you said he was ill."
"So he is," he told her, "and I could not have left him if I was not sure I was doing him harm by staying. But the doctor is to wire me if he gets any worse, and only if he does. I am to believe that no news is good news."
But this meeting with Lloyd and the intense excitement of those few moments by the canal had quite driven from Bennett's mind the fact that he had not forwarded his present address either to Ferriss or to his doctor. He had so intended that morning, but all the faculties of his mind were suddenly concentrated upon another issue. For the moment he believed that he had actually written to Dr. Pitts, as he had planned, and when he thought of his intended message at all, thought of it as an accomplished fact. The matter did not occur to him again.
As he walked by Lloyd's side, listening to her and talking to her, snapping the whip the while, or flicking the heads from the mullein stalks by the roadside with its lash, he was thinking how best he might say to her what he had come from the City to say. To lead up to his subject, to guide the conversation, to prepare the right psychological moment skilfully and without apparent effort, were maneuvers in the game that Bennett ignored and despised. He knew only that he loved her, that she was there at his side, that the object of all his desires and hopes was within his reach. Straight as a homing pigeon he went to his goal.
"Miss Searight," he began, his harsh, bass voice pitched even lower than usual, "what do you think I am down here for? This is not the only part of the world where I could recuperate, I suppose, and as for spending God's day in chipping at stones, like a professor of a young ladies' seminary"—he hurled the hammer from him into the bushes—"that for geology! Now we can talk. You know very well that I love you, and I believe that you love me. I have come down here to ask you to marry me."
Lloyd might have done any one of a dozen things—might have answered in any one of a dozen ways. But what she did do, what she did say, took Bennett completely by surprise. A little coldly and very calmly she answered:
"You believe—you say you believe that I—" she broke off, then began again: "It is not right for you to say that to me. I have never led you to believe that I cared for you. Whatever our relations are to be, let us have that understood at once."
Bennett uttered an impatient exclamation "I am not good at fencing and quibbling," he declared. "I tell you that I love you with all my heart. I tell you that I want you to be my wife, and I tell you that I know you do love me. You are not like other women; why should you coquette with me? Good God! Are you not big enough to be above such things? I know you are. Of all the people in the world we two ought to be above pretence, ought to understand each other. If I did not know you cared for me I would not have spoken."
"I don't understand you," she answered. "I think we had better talk of other things this morning."
"I came down here to talk of just this and nothing else," he declared.
"Very well, then," she said, squaring her shoulders with a quick, brisk movement, "we will talk of it. You say we two should understand each other. Let us come to the bottom of things at once. I despise quibbling and fencing as much, perhaps, as you. Tell me how have I ever led you to believe that I cared for you?"
"At a time when our last hope was gone," answered Bennett, meeting her eyes, "when I was very near to death and thought that I should go to my God within the day, I was made happier than I think I ever was in my life before by finding out that I was dear to you—that you loved me."
Lloyd searched his face with a look of surprise and bewilderment.
"I do not understand you," she repeated.
"Oh!" exclaimed Bennett with sudden vehemence, "you could say it to Ferriss;
why can't you say it to me?"
"You could tell him that you cared."
“I – tell Mr. Ferriss – that I cared for you?” She began to smile. “You are a little absurd, Mr. Bennett.”
"And I cannot see why you should deny it now. Or if anything has caused you to change your mind—to be sorry for what you said, why should I not know it? Even a petty thief may be heard in his own defence. I loved you because I believed you to be a woman, a great, strong, noble, man's woman, above little things, above the little, niggling, contemptible devices of the drawing-room. I loved you because the great things of the world interested you, because you had no place in your life for petty graces, petty affectations, petty deceits and shams and insincerities. If you did not love me, why did you say so? If you do love me now, why should you not admit it? Do you think you can play with me? Do you think you can coquette with me? If you were small enough to stoop to such means, do you think I am small enough to submit to them? I have known Ferriss too well. I know him to be incapable of such falsity as you would charge him with. To have told such a lie, such an uncalled-for, useless, gratuitous lie, is a thing he could not have done. You must have told him that you cared. Why aren't you—you of all women—brave enough, strong enough, big enough to stand by your words?"
"Because I never said them. What do you think of me? Even if I did care, do you suppose I would say as much—and to another man? Oh!" she exclaimed with sudden indignation, "let's talk of something else. This is too—preposterous."
"You never told Ferriss that you cared for me?"
"No.”
Bennett took off his cap. "Very well, then. That is enough. Good-bye, Miss
Searight."
"Do you believe I told Mr. Ferriss I loved you?"
"I do not believe that the man who has been more to me than a brother is a liar and a rascal."
"Good-morning, Mr. Bennett."
They had come rather near to the farmhouse by this time. Without another word Bennett gave the whip and the lap-robe into her hands, and, turning upon his heel, walked away down