A man's woman

by Frank Norris

But Adler made an impatient gesture with the hand that held the cap. "The danger don't figure; what he'd have to go through with don't figure; the chances of life or death don't figure; nothing 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. Ain't you got any influence with him, Miss? Won't you talk good talk to him? Don't let him chuck; don't let him get soft. Make him be a Man and not a professor."

When Adler had left her Lloyd sank into a little seat at the edge of the garden walk, and let the flowers drop into her lap, and leaned back in her place, wide-eyed and thoughtful, reviewing in her imagination the events of the past few months. What a change that summer had brought to both of them; how they had been shaped anew in the mould of circumstance!

Suddenly and without warning, they two, high-spirited, strong, determined, had clashed together, the man's force against the woman's strength; and the woman, inherently weaker, had been crushed and humbled. For a time it seemed to her that she had been broken beyond hope; so humbled that she could never rise again; as though a great crisis had developed in her life, and that, having failed once, she must fail again, and again, and again—as if her whole subsequent life must be one long failure. But a greater crisis had followed hard upon the heels of the first—the struggle with self, the greatest struggle of all. Against the abstract principle of evil the woman who had failed in the material conflict with a masculine, masterful will, had succeeded, had conquered self, had been true when it was easy to be false, had dared the judgment of her peers so only that she might not deceive.

Her momentary, perhaps fancied, hatred of Bennett, who had so cruelly misunderstood and humiliated her, had apparently, of its own accord, departed from her heart. Then had come the hour when the strange hazard of fortune had reversed their former positions, when she could be masterful while he was weak; when it was the man's turn to be broken, to be prevailed against. Her own discomfiture had been offset by his. She no longer need look to him as her conqueror, her master. And when she had seen him so weak, so pathetically unable to resist the lightest pressure of her hand; when it was given her not only to witness but to relieve his suffering, the great love for him that could not die had returned. With the mastery of self had come the forgetfulness of self; and her profession, her life-work, of which she had been so proud, had seemed to her of small concern. Now she was his, and his life was hers. She should—so she told herself—be henceforward happy in his happiness, and her only pride would be the pride in his achievements.

But now the unexpected had happened, and Bennett had given up his career. During the period of Bennett's convalescence Lloyd had often talked long and earnestly with him, and partly from what he had told her and partly from much that she inferred she had at last been able to trace out and follow the mental processes and changes through which Bennett had passed. He, too, had been proved by fire; he, too, had had his ordeal, his trial.

By nature, by training, and by virtue of the life he lived Bennett had been a man, harsh, somewhat brutal, inordinately selfish, and at all times magnificently arrogant. He had neither patience nor toleration for natural human weakness. While selfish, he was not self-conscious, and it never occurred to him, it was impossible for him to see that he was a giant among men. His heart was callous; his whole nature and character hard and flinty from the buffetings he gave rather than received.

Then had come misfortune. Ferriss had died, and Bennett's recognition and acknowledgment of the fact that he, Ward Bennett, who never failed, who never blundered, had made at last the great and terrible error of his life, had shaken his character to its very foundations. This was only the beginning; the breach once made, Humanity entered into the gloomy, waste places of his soul; remorse crowded hard upon his wonted arrogance; generosity and the impulse to make amends took the place of selfishness; kindness thrust out the native brutality; the old-time harshness and imperiousness gave way to a certain spirit of toleration.

It was the influence of these new emotions that had moved Bennett to make the statement to Adler that had so astonished and perplexed his old-time subordinate. He, Bennett, too, like Lloyd, was at that time endeavouring to free himself from a false position, and through the medium of confession stand in his true colours in the eyes of his associates. Unconsciously they were both working out their salvation along the same lines.

Then had come Bennett's resolve to give Ferriss the conspicuous and prominent place in his book, the account of the expedition. The more Bennett dwelt upon Ferriss's heroism, intelligence, and ability the more his task became a labour of love, and the more the idea of self dropped away from his thought and imagination. Then—and perhaps this was not the least important factor in Bennett's transformation—sickness had befallen; the strong and self-reliant man had been brought to the weakness of a child, whom the pressure of a finger could control. He suddenly changed places with the woman he believed he had, at such fearful cost, broken and subdued. His physical strength, once so enormous, was as a reed in the woman's hand; his will, so indomitable, was as powerless as an infant's before the woman's calm resolve, rising up there before him and overmastering him at a time he believed it to be forever weakened.

Bennett had come forth from the ordeal chastened, softened, and humbled. But he was shattered, broken, brought to the earth with sorrow and the load of unavailing regret. Ambition was numb and lifeless within him. Reaction from his former attitude of aggression and defiance had carried him far beyond the normal.