The Fruit of the Tree

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Title: The Fruit of the Tree
Author: Edith Wharton
Illustrator: Alonzo Kimball
Release Date: September 6, 2006 [EBook #19191]
Language: English
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THE FRUIT OF THE TREE
[Illustration: He stood by her in silence, his eyes on the injured
man.]
THE FRUIT OF THE TREE
BY
EDITH WHARTON
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALONZO KIMBALL
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
MDCCCCVII
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
[Illustration: mark]
ILLUSTRATIONS
_He stood by her in silence, his eyes on the injured man_ _Frontispiece_
_"No--I shall have to ask you to take my word for it"_ _Facing p. 82_
_Half-way up the slope they met_ 130
BOOK I
THE FRUIT OF THE TREE
I
IN the surgical ward of the Hope Hospital at Hanaford, a nurse was
bending over a young man whose bandaged right hand and arm lay stretched
along the bed.
His head stirred uneasily, and slipping her arm behind him she effected
a professional readjustment of the pillows. "Is that better?"
As she leaned over, he lifted his anxious bewildered eyes, deep-sunk
under ridges of suffering. "I don't s'pose there's any kind of a show
for me, is there?" he asked, pointing with his free hand--the stained
seamed hand of the mechanic--to the inert bundle on the quilt.
Her only immediate answer was to wipe the dampness from his forehead;
then she said: "We'll talk about that to-morrow."
"Why not now?"
"Because Dr. Disbrow can't tell till the inflammation goes down."
"Will it go down by to-morrow?"
"It will begin to, if you don't excite yourself and keep up the fever."
"Excite myself? I--there's four of 'em at home----"
"Well, then there are four reasons for keeping quiet," she rejoined.
She did not use, in speaking, the soothing inflection of her trade: she
seemed to disdain to cajole or trick the sufferer. Her full young voice
kept its cool note of authority, her sympathy revealing itself only in
the expert touch of her hands and the constant vigilance of her dark
steady eyes. This vigilance softened to pity as the patient turned his
head away with a groan. His free left hand continued to travel the
sheet, clasping and unclasping itself in contortions of feverish unrest.
It was as though all the anguish of his mutilation found expression in
that lonely hand, left without work in the world now that its mate was
useless.
The nurse felt a touch on her shoulder, and rose to face the matron, a
sharp-featured woman with a soft intonation.
"This is Mr. Amherst, Miss Brent. The assistant manager from the mills.
He wishes to see Dillon."
John Amherst's step was singularly noiseless. The nurse, sensitive by
nature and training to all physical characteristics, was struck at once
by the contrast between his alert face and figure and the silent way in
which he moved. She noticed, too, that the same contrast was repeated in
the face itself, its spare energetic outline, with the high nose and
compressed lips of the mover of men, being curiously modified by the
veiled inward gaze of the grey eyes he turned on her. It was one of the
interests of Justine Brent's crowded yet lonely life to attempt a rapid
mental classification of the persons she met; but the contradictions in
Amherst's face baffled her, and she murmured inwardly "I don't know" as
she drew aside to let him approach the bed. He stood by her in silence,
his hands clasped behind him, his eyes on the injured man, who lay
motionless, as if sunk in a lethargy. The matron, at the call of another
nurse, had minced away down the ward, committing Amherst with a glance
to Miss Brent; and the two remained alone by the bed.
After a pause, Amherst moved toward the window beyond the empty cot
adjoining Dillon's. One of the white screens used to isolate dying
patients had been placed against this cot, which was the last at that
end of the ward, and the space beyond formed a secluded corner, where a
few words could be exchanged out of reach of the eyes in the other beds.
"Is he asleep?" Amherst asked, as Miss Brent joined him.
Miss Brent glanced at him again. His voice betokened not merely
education, but something different and deeper--the familiar habit of
gentle speech; and his shabby clothes--carefully brushed, but ill-cut
and worn along the seams--sat on him easily, and with the same
difference.
"The morphine has made him drowsy," she answered. "The wounds were
dressed about an hour ago, and the doctor gave him a hypodermic."
"The wounds--how many are there?"
"Besides the hand, his arm is badly torn up to the elbow."
Amherst listened with bent head and frowning brow.
"What do you think of the case?"
She hesitated. "Dr. Disbrow hasn't said----"
"And it's not your business to?" He smiled slightly. "I know hospital
etiquette. But I have a particular reason for asking." He broke off and
looked at her again, his veiled gaze sharpening to a glance of
concentrated attention. "You're not one of the regular nurses, are you?
Your dress seems to be of a different colour."
She smiled at the "seems to be," which denoted a tardy and imperfect
apprehension of the difference between dark-blue linen and white.
"No: I happened to be staying at Hanaford, and hearing that they were in
want of a surgical nurse, I offered my help."
Amherst nodded. "So much the better. Is there any place where I can say
two words to you?"
"I could hardly leave the ward now, unless Mrs. Ogan comes back."
"I don't care to have you call Mrs. Ogan," he interposed quickly. "When
do you go off duty?"
She looked at him in surprise. "If what you want to ask about
is--anything connected with the management of things here--you know
we're not supposed to talk of our patients outside of the hospital."
"I know. But I am going to ask you to break through the rule--in that
poor fellow's behalf."
A protest wavered on her lip, but he held her eyes steadily, with a
glint of good-humour behind his determination. "When do you go off
duty?"
"At six."
"I'll wait at the corner of South Street and walk a little way with you.
Let me put my case, and if you're not convinced you can refuse to
answer."
"Very well," she said, without farther hesitation; and Amherst, with a
slight nod of farewell, passed through the door near which they had been
standing.
II
WHEN Justine Brent emerged from the Hope Hospital the October dusk had
fallen and the wide suburban street was almost dark, except when the
illuminated bulk of an electric car flashed by under the maples.
She crossed the tracks and approached the narrower thoroughfare where
Amherst awaited her. He hung back a moment, and she was amused to see
that he failed to identify the uniformed nurse with the girl in her trim
dark dress, soberly complete in all its accessories, who advanced to
him, smiling under her little veil.
"Thank you," he said as he turned and walked beside her. "Is this your
way?"
"I am staying in Oak Street. But it's just as short to go by Maplewood
Avenue."
"Yes; and quieter."
For a few yards they walked on in silence, their long steps falling
naturally into time, though Amherst was somewhat taller than his
companion.
At length he said: "I suppose you know nothing about the relation
between Hope Hospital and the Westmore Mills."
"Only that the hospital was endowed by one of the Westmore family."
"Yes; an old Miss Hope, a great-aunt of Westmore's. But there is more
than that between them--all kinds of subterranean passages." He paused,
and began again: "For instance, Dr. Disbrow married the sister of our
manager's wife."
"Your chief at the mills?"
"Yes," he said with a slight grimace. "So you see, if Truscomb--the
manager--thinks one of the mill-hands is only slightly injured, it's
natural that his brother-in-law, Dr. Disbrow, should take an optimistic
view of the case."
"Natural? I don't know----"
"Don't you think it's natural that a man should be influenced by his
wife?"
"Not where his professional honour is concerned."
Amherst smiled. "That sounds very young--if you'll excuse my saying so.
Well, I won't go on to insinuate that, Truscomb being high in favour
with the Westmores, and the Westmores having a lien on the hospital,
Disbrow's position there is also bound up with his taking--more or
less--the same view as Truscomb's."
Miss Brent had paused abruptly on the deserted pavement.
"No, don't go on--if you want me to think well of you," she flashed out.
Amherst met the thrust composedly, perceiving, as she turned to face
him, that what she resented was not so much his insinuation against his
superiors as his allusion to the youthfulness of her sentiments. She
was, in fact, as he now noticed, still young enough to dislike being
excused for her youth. In her severe uniform of blue linen, her dusky
skin darkened by the nurse's cap, and by the pale background of the
hospital walls, she had seemed older, more competent and experienced;
but he now saw how fresh was the pale curve of her cheek, and how
smooth the brow clasped in close waves of hair.
"I began at the wrong end," he acknowledged. "But let me put Dillon's
case before you dismiss me."
She softened. "It is only because of my interest in that poor fellow
that I am here----"
"Because you think he needs help--and that you can help him?"
But she held back once more. "Please tell me about him first," she said,
walking on.
Amherst met the request with another question. "I wonder how much you
know about factory life?"
"Oh, next to nothing. Just what I've managed to pick up in these two
days at the hospital."
He glanced at her small determined profile under its dark roll of hair,
and said, half to himself: "That might be a good deal."
She took no notice of this, and he went on: "Well, I won't try to put
the general situation before you, though Dillon's accident is really the
result of it. He works in the carding room, and on the day of the
accident his 'card' stopped suddenly, and he put his hand behind him to
get a tool he needed out of his trouser-pocket. He reached back a little
too far, and the card behind him caught his hand in its million of
diamond-pointed wires. Truscomb and the overseer of the room maintain
that the accident was due to his own carelessness; but the hands say
that it was caused by the fact of the cards being too near together, and
that just such an accident was bound to happen sooner or later."
Miss Brent drew an eager breath. "And what do _you_ say?"
"That they're right: the carding-room is shamefully overcrowded. Dillon
hasn't been in it long--he worked his way up at the mills from being a
bobbin-boy--and he hadn't yet learned how cautious a man must be in
there. The cards are so close to each other that even the old hands run
narrow risks, and it takes the cleverest operative some time to learn
that he must calculate every movement to a fraction of an inch."
"But why do they crowd the rooms in that way?"
"To get the maximum of profit out of the minimum of floor-space. It
costs more to increase the floor-space than to maim an operative now and
then."
"I see. Go on," she murmured.
"That's the first point; here is the second. Dr. Disbrow told Truscomb
this morning that Dillon's hand would certainly be saved, and that he
might get back to work in a couple of months if the company would
present him with an artificial finger or two."
Miss Brent faced him with a flush of indignation. "Mr. Amherst--who gave
you this version of Dr. Disbrow's report?"
"The manager himself."
"Verbally?"
"No--he showed me Disbrow's letter."
For a moment or two they walked on silently through the quiet street;
then she said, in a voice still stirred with feeling: "As I told you
this afternoon, Dr. Disbrow has said nothing in my hearing."
"And Mrs. Ogan?"
"Oh, Mrs. Ogan--" Her voice broke in a ripple of irony. "Mrs. Ogan
'feels it to be such a beautiful dispensation, my dear, that, owing to a
death that very morning in the surgical ward, we happened to have a bed
ready for the poor man within three hours of the accident.'" She had
exchanged her deep throat-tones for a high reedy note which perfectly
simulated the matron's lady-like inflections.
Amherst, at the change, turned on her with a boyish burst of laughter:
she joined in it, and for a moment they were blent in that closest of
unions, the discovery of a common fund of humour.
She was the first to grow grave. "That three hours' delay didn't help
matters--how is it there is no emergency hospital at the mills?"
Amherst laughed again, but in a different key. "That's part of the
larger question, which we haven't time for now." He waited a moment, and
then added: "You've not yet given me your own impression of Dillon's
case."
"You shall have it, if you saw that letter. Dillon will certainly lose
his hand--and probably the whole arm." She spoke with a thrilling of her
slight frame that transformed the dispassionate professional into a girl
shaken with indignant pity.
Amherst stood still before her. "Good God! Never anything but useless
lumber?"
"Never----"
"And he won't die?"
"Alas!"
"He has a consumptive wife and three children. She ruined her health
swallowing cotton-dust at the factory," Amherst continued.
"So she told me yesterday."
He turned in surprise. "You've had a talk with her?"
"I went out to Westmore last night. I was haunted by her face when she
came to the hospital. She looks forty, but she told me she was only
twenty-six." Miss Brent paused to steady her voice. "It's the curse of
my trade that it's always tempting me to interfere in cases where I can
do no possible good. The fact is, I'm not fit to be a nurse--I shall
live and die a wretched sentimentalist!" she ended, with an angry dash
at the tears on her veil.
Her companion walked on in silence till she had regained her composure.
Then he said: "What did you think of Westmore?"
"I think it's one of the worst places I ever saw--and I am not unused to
slums. It looks so dead. The slums of big cities are much more
cheerful."
He made no answer, and after a moment she asked: "Does the cotton-dust
always affect the lungs?"
"It's likely to, where there is the least phthisical tendency. But of
course the harm could be immensely reduced by taking up the old rough
floors which hold the dust, and by thorough cleanliness and
ventilation."
"What does the company do in such cases? Where an operative breaks down
at twenty-five?"
"The company says there was a phthisical tendency."
"And will they give nothing in return for the two lives they have
taken?"
"They will probably pay for Dillon's care at the hospital, and they have
taken the wife back as a scrubber."
"To clean those uncleanable floors? She's not fit for it!"
"She must work, fit for it or not; and there is less strain in scrubbing
than in bending over the looms or cards. The pay is lower, of course,
but she's very grateful for being taken back at all, now that she's no
longer a first-class worker."
Miss Brent's face glowed with a fine wrath. "She can't possibly stand
more than two or three months of it without breaking down!"
"Well, you see they've told her that in less than that time her husband
will be at work again."
"And what will the company do for them when the wife is a hopeless
invalid, and the husband a cripple?"
Amherst again uttered the dry laugh with which he had met her suggestion
of an emergency hospital. "I know what I should do if I could get
anywhere near Dillon--give him an overdose of morphine, and let the
widow collect his life-insurance, and make a fresh start."
She looked at him curiously. "Should you, I wonder?"
"If I saw the suffering as you see it, and knew the circumstances as I
know them, I believe I should feel justified--" He broke off. "In your
work, don't you ever feel tempted to set a poor devil free?"
She mused. "One might...but perhaps the professional instinct to save
would always come first."
"To save--what? When all the good of life is gone?"
"I daresay," she sighed, "poor Dillon would do it himself if he
could--when he realizes that all the good _is_ gone."
"Yes, but he can't do it himself; and it's the irony of such cases that
his employers, after ruining his life, will do all they can to patch up
the ruins."
"But that at least ought to count in their favour."
"Perhaps; if--" He paused, as though reluctant to lay himself open once
more to the charge of uncharitableness; and suddenly she exclaimed,
looking about her: "I didn't notice we had walked so far down Maplewood
Avenue!"
They had turned a few minutes previously into the wide thoroughfare
crowning the high ground which is covered by the residential quarter of
Hanaford. Here the spacious houses, withdrawn behind shrubberies and
lawns, revealed in their silhouettes every form of architectural
experiment, from the symmetrical pre-Revolutionary structure, with its
classic portico and clipped box-borders, to the latest outbreak in
boulders and Moorish tiles.
Amherst followed his companion's glance with surprise. "We _have_ gone a
block or two out of our way. I always forget where I am when I'm talking
about anything that interests me."
Miss Brent looked at her watch. "My friends don't dine till seven, and I
can get home in time by taking a Grove Street car," she said.
"If you don't mind walking a little farther you can take a Liberty
Street car instead. They run oftener, and you will get home just as
soon."
She made a gesture of assent, and as they walked on he continued: "I
haven't yet explained why I am so anxious to get an unbiassed opinion of
Dillon's case."
She looked at him in surprise. "What you've told me about Dr. Disbrow
and your manager is surely enough."
"Well, hardly, considering that I am Truscomb's subordinate. I shouldn't
have committed a breach of professional etiquette, or asked you to do
so, if I hadn't a hope of bettering things; but I have, and that is why
I've held on at Westmore for the last few months, instead of getting out
of it altogether."
"I'm glad of that," she said quickly.
"The owner of the mills--young Richard Westmore--died last winter," he
went on, "and my hope--it's no more--is that the new broom may sweep a
little cleaner."
"Who is the new broom?"
"Westmore left everything to his widow, and she is coming here to-morrow
to look into the management of the mills."
"Coming? She doesn't live here, then?"
"At Hanaford? Heaven forbid! It's an anomaly nowadays for the employer
to live near the employed. The Westmores have always lived in New
York--and I believe they have a big place on Long Island."
"Well, at any rate she _is_ coming, and that ought to be a good sign.
Did she never show any interest in the mills during her husband's life?"
"Not as far as I know. I've been at Westmore three years, and she's not
been seen there in my time. She is very young, and Westmore himself
didn't care. It was a case of inherited money. He drew the dividends,
and Truscomb did the rest."
Miss Brent reflected. "I don't know much about the constitution of
companies--but I suppose Mrs. Westmore doesn't unite all the offices in
her own person. Is there no one to stand between Truscomb and the
operatives?"
"Oh, the company, on paper, shows the usual official hierarchy. Richard
Westmore, of course, was president, and since his death the former
treasurer--Halford Gaines--has replaced him, and his son, Westmore
Gaines, has been appointed treasurer. You can see by the names that it's
all in the family. Halford Gaines married a Miss Westmore, and
represents the clan at Hanaford--leads society, and keeps up the social
credit of the name. As treasurer, Mr. Halford Gaines kept strictly to
his special business, and always refused to interfere between Truscomb
and the operatives. As president he will probably follow the same
policy, the more so as it fits in with his inherited respect for the
_status quo_, and his blissful ignorance of economics."
"And the new treasurer--young Gaines? Is there no hope of his breaking
away from the family tradition?"
"Westy Gaines has a better head than his father; but he hates Hanaford
and the mills, and his chief object in life is to be taken for a New
Yorker. So far he hasn't been here much, except for the quarterly
meetings, and his routine work is done by another cousin--you perceive
that Westmore is a nest of nepotism."
Miss Brent's work among the poor had developed her interest in social
problems, and she followed these details attentively.
"Well, the outlook is not encouraging, but perhaps Mrs. Westmore's
coming will make a change. I suppose she has more power than any one."
"She might have, if she chose to exert it, for her husband was really
the whole company. The official cousins hold only a few shares apiece."
"Perhaps, then, her visit will open her eyes. Who knows but poor
Dillon's case may help others--prove a beautiful dispensation, as Mrs.
Ogan would say?"
"It does come terribly pat as an illustration of some of the abuses I
want to have remedied. The difficulty will be to get the lady's ear.
That's her house we're coming to, by the way."
An electric street-lamp irradiated the leafless trees and stone
gate-posts of the building before them. Though gardens extended behind
it, the house stood so near the pavement that only two short flights of
steps intervened between the gate-posts and the portico. Light shone
from every window of the pompous rusticated façade--in the turreted
"Tuscan villa" style of the 'fifties--and as Miss Brent and Amherst
approached, their advance was checked by a group of persons who were
just descending from two carriages at the door.
The lamp-light showed every detail of dress and countenance in the
party, which consisted of two men, one slightly lame, with a long white
moustache and a distinguished nose, the other short, lean and
professional, and of two ladies and their laden attendants.
"Why, that must be her party arriving!" Miss Brent exclaimed; and as she
spoke the younger of the two ladies, turning back to her maid, exposed
to the glare of the electric light a fair pale face shadowed by the
projection of her widow's veil.
"Is that Mrs. Westmore?" Miss Brent whispered; and as Amherst muttered:
"I suppose so; I've never seen her----" she continued excitedly: "She
looks so like--do you know what her name was before she married?"
He drew his brows together in a hopeless effort of remembrance. "I don't
know--I must have heard--but I never can recall people's names."
"That's bad, for a leader of men!" she said mockingly, and he answered,
as though touched on a sore point: "I mean people who don't count. I
never forget an operative's name or face."
"One can never tell who may be going to count," she rejoined
sententiously.
He dwelt on this in silence while they walked on catching as they
passed a glimpse of the red-carpeted Westmore hall on which the glass
doors were just being closed. At length he roused himself to ask: "Does
Mrs. Westmore look like some one you know?"
"I fancied so--a girl who was at the Sacred Heart in Paris with me. But
isn't this my corner?" she exclaimed, as they turned into another
street, down which a laden car was descending.
Its approach left them time for no more than a hurried hand-clasp, and
when Miss Brent had been absorbed into the packed interior her
companion, as his habit was, stood for a while where she had left him,
gazing at some indefinite point in space; then, waking to a sudden
consciousness of his surroundings, he walked off toward the centre of
the town.
At the junction of two business streets he met an empty car marked
"Westmore," and springing into it, seated himself in a corner and drew
out a pocket Shakespeare. He read on, indifferent to his surroundings,
till the car left the asphalt streets and illuminated shop-fronts for a
grey intermediate region of mud and macadam. Then he pocketed his volume
and sat looking out into the gloom.
The houses grew less frequent, with darker gaps of night between; and
the rare street-lamps shone on cracked pavements, crooked
telegraph-poles, hoardings tapestried with patent-medicine posters, and
all the mean desolation of an American industrial suburb. Farther on
there came a weed-grown field or two, then a row of operatives' houses,
the showy gables of the "Eldorado" road-house--the only building in
Westmore on which fresh paint was freely lavished--then the company
"store," the machine shops and other out-buildings, the vast forbidding
bulk of the factories looming above the river-bend, and the sudden
neatness of the manager's turf and privet hedges. The scene was so
familiar to Amherst that he had lost the habit of comparison, and his
absorption in the moral and material needs of the workers sometimes made
him forget the outward setting of their lives. But to-night he recalled
the nurse's comment--"it looks so dead"--and the phrase roused him to a
fresh perception of the scene. With sudden disgust he saw the sordidness
of it all--the poor monotonous houses, the trampled grass-banks, the
lean dogs prowling in refuse-heaps, the reflection of a crooked gas-lamp
in a stagnant loop of the river; and he asked himself how it was
possible to put any sense of moral beauty into lives bounded forever by
the low horizon of the factory. There is a fortuitous ugliness that has
life and hope in it: the ugliness of overcrowded city streets, of the
rush and drive of packed activities; but this out-spread meanness of the
suburban working colony, uncircumscribed by any pressure of surrounding
life, and sunk into blank acceptance of its isolation, its banishment
from beauty and variety and surprise, seemed to Amherst the very
negation of hope and life.
"She's right," he mused--"it's dead--stone dead: there isn't a drop of
wholesome blood left in it."
The Moosuc River valley, in the hollow of which, for that river's sake,
the Westmore mills had been planted, lingered in the memory of
pre-industrial Hanaford as the pleasantest suburb of the town. Here,
beyond a region of orchards and farm-houses, several "leading citizens"
had placed, above the river-bank, their prim wood-cut "residences," with
porticoes and terraced lawns; and from the chief of these, Hopewood,
brought into the Westmore family by the Miss Hope who had married an
earlier Westmore, the grim mill-village had been carved. The pillared
"residences" had, after this, inevitably fallen to base uses; but the
old house at Hopewood, in its wooded grounds, remained, neglected but
intact, beyond the first bend of the river, deserted as a dwelling but
"held" in anticipation of rising values, when the inevitable growth of
Westmore should increase the demand for small building lots. Whenever
Amherst's eyes were refreshed by the hanging foliage above the roofs of
Westmore, he longed to convert the abandoned country-seat into a park
and playground for the mill-hands; but he knew that the company counted
on the gradual sale of Hopewood as a source of profit. No--the mill-town
would not grow beautiful as it grew larger--rather, in obedience to the
grim law of industrial prosperity, it would soon lose its one lingering
grace and spread out in unmitigated ugliness, devouring green fields and
shaded slopes like some insect-plague consuming the land. The conditions
were familiar enough to Amherst; and their apparent inevitableness
mocked the hopes he had based on Mrs. Westmore's arrival.
"Where every stone is piled on another, through the whole stupid
structure of selfishness and egotism, how can one be pulled out without
making the whole thing topple? And whatever they're blind to, they
always see that," he mused, reaching up for the strap of the car.
He walked a few yards beyond the manager's house, and turned down a side
street lined with scattered cottages. Approaching one of these by a
gravelled path he pushed open the door, and entered a sitting-room where
a green-shaded lamp shone pleasantly on bookshelves and a crowded
writing-table.
A brisk little woman in black, laying down the evening paper as she
rose, lifted her hands to his tall shoulders.
"Well, mother," he said, stooping to her kiss.
"You're late, John," she smiled back at him, not reproachfully, but with
affection.
She was a wonderfully compact and active creature, with face so young
and hair so white that she looked as unreal as a stage mother till a
close view revealed the fine lines that experience had drawn about her
mouth and eyes. The eyes themselves, brightly black and glancing, had
none of the veiled depths of her son's gaze. Their look was outward, on
a world which had dealt her hard blows and few favours, but in which her
interest was still fresh, amused and unabated.
Amherst glanced at his watch. "Never mind--Duplain will be later still.
I had to go into Hanaford, and he is replacing me at the office."
"So much the better, dear: we can have a minute to ourselves. Sit down
and tell me what kept you."
She picked up her knitting as she spoke, having the kind of hands that
find repose in ceaseless small activities. Her son could not remember a
time when he had not seen those small hands in motion--shaping garments,
darning rents, repairing furniture, exploring the inner economy of
clocks. "I make a sort of rag-carpet of the odd minutes," she had once
explained to a friend who wondered at her turning to her needlework in
the moment's interval between other tasks.
Amherst threw himself wearily into a chair. "I was trying to find out
something about Dillon's case," he said.
His mother turned a quick glance toward the door, rose to close it, and
reseated herself.
"Well?"
"I managed to have a talk with his nurse when she went off duty this
evening."
"The nurse? I wonder you could get her to speak."
"Luckily she's not the regular incumbent, but a volunteer who happened
to be here on a visit. As it was, I had some difficulty in making her
talk--till I told her of Disbrow's letter."
Mrs. Amherst lifted her bright glance from the needles. "He's very bad,
then?"
"Hopelessly maimed!"
She shivered and cast down her eyes. "Do you suppose she really knows?"
"She struck me as quite competent to judge."
"A volunteer, you say, here on a visit? What is her name?"
He raised his head with a vague look. "I never thought of asking her."
Mrs. Amherst laughed. "How like you! Did she say with whom she was
staying?"
"I think she said in Oak Street--but she didn't mention any name."
Mrs. Amherst wrinkled her brows thoughtfully. "I wonder if she's not the
thin dark girl I saw the other day with Mrs. Harry Dressel. Was she tall
and rather handsome?"
"I don't know," murmured Amherst indifferently. As a rule he was
humorously resigned to his mother's habit of deserting the general for
the particular, and following some irrelevant thread of association in
utter disregard of the main issue. But to-night, preoccupied with his
subject, and incapable of conceiving how anyone else could be unaffected
by it, he resented her indifference as a sign of incurable frivolity.
"How she can live close to such suffering and forget it!" was his
thought; then, with a movement of self-reproach, he remembered that the
work flying through her fingers was to take shape as a garment for one
of the infant Dillons. "She takes her pity out in action, like that
quiet nurse, who was as cool as a drum-major till she took off her
uniform--and then!" His face softened at the recollection of the girl's
outbreak. Much as he admired, in theory, the woman who kept a calm
exterior in emergencies, he had all a man's desire to know that the
springs of feeling lay close to the unruffled surface.
Mrs. Amherst had risen and crossed over to his chair. She leaned on it a
moment, pushing the tossed brown hair from his forehead.
"John, have you considered what you mean to do next?"
He threw back his head to meet her gaze.
"About this Dillon case," she continued. "How are all these
investigations going to help you?"
Their eyes rested on each other for a moment; then he said coldly: "You
are afraid I am going to lose my place."
She flushed like a girl and murmured: "It's not the kind of place I ever
wanted to see you in!"
"I know it," he returned in a gentler tone, clasping one of the hands on
his chair-back. "I ought to have followed a profession, like my
grandfather; but my father's blood was too strong in me. I should never
have been content as anything but a working-man."
"How can you call your father a working-man? He had a genius for
mechanics, and if he had lived he would have been as great in his way as
any statesman or lawyer."
Amherst smiled. "Greater, to my thinking; but he gave me his
hard-working hands without the genius to create with them. I wish I had
inherited more from him, or less; but I must make the best of what I am,
rather than try to be somebody else." He laid her hand caressingly
against his cheek. "It's hard on you, mother--but you must bear with
me."
"I have never complained, John; but now you've chosen your work, it's
natural that I should want you to stick to it."
He rose with an impatient gesture. "Never fear; I could easily get
another job----"
"What? If Truscomb black-listed you? Do you forget that Scotch overseer
who was here when we came?"
"And whom Truscomb hounded out of the trade? I remember him," said
Amherst grimly; "but I have an idea I am going to do the hounding this
time."
His mother sighed, but her reply was cut short by the noisy opening of
the outer door. Amherst seemed to hear the sound with relief. "There's
Duplain," he said, going into the passage; but on the threshold he
encountered, not the young Alsatian overseer who boarded with them, but
a small boy who said breathlessly: "Mr. Truscomb wants you to come down
bimeby."
"This evening? To the office?"
"No--he's sick a-bed."
The blood rushed to Amherst's face, and he had to press his lips close
to check an exclamation. "Say I'll come as soon as I've had supper," he
said.
The boy vanished, and Amherst turned back to the sitting-room.
"Truscomb's ill--he has sent for me; and I saw Mrs. Westmore arriving
tonight! Have supper, mother--we won't wait for Duplain." His face still
glowed with excitement, and his eyes were dark with the concentration of
his inward vision.
"Oh, John, John!" Mrs. Amherst sighed, crossing the passage to the
kitchen.
III
AT the manager's door Amherst was met by Mrs. Truscomb, a large flushed
woman in a soiled wrapper and diamond earrings.
"Mr. Truscomb's very sick. He ought not to see you. The doctor thinks--"
she began.
Dr. Disbrow, at this point, emerged from the sitting-room. He was a pale
man, with a beard of mixed grey-and-drab, and a voice of the same
indeterminate quality.
"Good evening, Mr. Amherst. Truscomb is pretty poorly--on the edge of
pneumonia, I'm afraid. As he seems anxious to see you I think you'd
better go up for two minutes--not more, please." He paused, and went on
with a smile: "You won't excite him, of course--nothing unpleasant----"
"He's worried himself sick over that wretched Dillon," Mrs. Truscomb
interposed, draping her wrapper majestically about an indignant bosom.
"That's it--puts too much heart into his work. But we'll have Dillon all
right before long," the physician genially declared.
Mrs. Truscomb, with a reluctant gesture, led Amherst up the handsomely
carpeted stairs to the room where her husband lay, a prey to the cares
of office. She ushered the young man in, and withdrew to the next room,
where he heard her coughing at intervals, as if to remind him that he
was under observation.
The manager of the Westmore mills was not the type of man that Amherst's
comments on his superior suggested. As he sat propped against the
pillows, with a brick-red flush on his cheek-bones, he seemed at first
glance to belong to the innumerable army of American business men--the
sallow, undersized, lacklustre drudges who have never lifted their heads
from the ledger. Even his eye, now bright with fever, was dull and
non-committal in daily life; and perhaps only the ramifications of his
wrinkles could have revealed what particular ambitions had seamed his
soul.
"Good evening, Amherst. I'm down with a confounded cold."
"I'm sorry to hear it," the young man forced himself to say.
"Can't get my breath--that's the trouble." Truscomb paused and gasped.
"I've just heard that Mrs. Westmore is here--and I want you to go
round--tomorrow morning--" He had to break off once more.
"Yes, sir," said Amherst, his heart leaping.
"Needn't see her--ask for her father, Mr. Langhope. Tell him what the
doctor says--I'll be on my legs in a day or two--ask 'em to wait till I
can take 'em over the mills."
He shot one of his fugitive glances at his assistant, and held up a bony
hand. "Wait a minute. On your way there, stop and notify Mr. Gaines. He
was to meet them here. You understand?"
"Yes, sir," said Amherst; and at that moment Mrs. Truscomb appeared on
the threshold.
"I must ask you to come now, Mr. Amherst," she began haughtily; but a
glance from her husband reduced her to a heaving pink nonentity.
"Hold on, Amherst. I hear you've been in to Hanaford. Did you go to the
hospital?"
"Ezra--" his wife murmured: he looked through her.
"Yes," said Amherst.
Truscomb's face seemed to grow smaller and dryer. He transferred his
look from his wife to his assistant.
"All right. You'll just bear in mind that it's Disbrow's business to
report Dillon's case to Mrs. Westmore? You're to confine yourself to my
message. Is that clear?"
"Perfectly clear. Goodnight," Amherst answered, as he turned to follow
Mrs. Truscomb.
* * * * *
That same evening, four persons were seated under the bronze chandelier
in the red satin drawing-room of the Westmore mansion. One of the four,
the young lady in widow's weeds whose face had arrested Miss Brent's
attention that afternoon, rose from a massively upholstered sofa and
drifted over to the fireplace near which her father sat.
"Didn't I tell you it was awful, father?" she sighed, leaning
despondently against the high carved mantelpiece surmounted by a bronze
clock in the form of an obelisk.
Mr. Langhope, who sat smoking, with one faultlessly-clad leg crossed on
the other, and his ebony stick reposing against the arm of his chair,
raised his clear ironical eyes to her face.
"As an archæologist," he said, with a comprehensive wave of his hand, "I
find it positively interesting. I should really like to come here and
dig."
There were no lamps in the room, and the numerous gas-jets of the
chandelier shed their lights impartially on ponderously framed canvases
of the Bay of Naples and the Hudson in Autumn, on Carrara busts and
bronze Indians on velvet pedestals.
"All this," murmured Mr. Langhope, "is getting to be as rare as the
giant sequoias. In another fifty years we shall have collectors fighting
for that Bay of Naples."
Bessy Westmore turned from him impatiently. When she felt deeply on any
subject her father's flippancy annoyed her.
"_You_ can see, Maria," she said, seating herself beside the other lady
of the party, "why I couldn't possibly live here."
Mrs. Eustace Ansell, immediately after dinner, had bent her slender back
above the velvet-covered writing-table, where an inkstand of Vienna
ormolu offered its empty cup to her pen. Being habitually charged with a
voluminous correspondence, she had foreseen this contingency and met it
by despatching her maid for her own writing-case, which was now
outspread before her in all its complex neatness; but at Bessy's appeal
she wiped her pen, and turned a sympathetic gaze on her companion.
Mrs. Ansell's face drew all its charm from its adaptability. It was a
different face to each speaker: now kindling with irony, now gently
maternal, now charged with abstract meditation--and few paused to
reflect that, in each case, it was merely the mirror held up to some one
else's view of life.
"It needs doing over," she admitted, following the widow's melancholy
glance about the room. "But you are a spoilt child to complain. Think of
having a house of your own to come to, instead of having to put up at
the Hanaford hotel!"
Mrs. Westmore's attention was arrested by the first part of the reply.
"Doing over? Why in the world should I do it over? No one could expect
me to come here _now_--could they, Mr. Tredegar?" she exclaimed,
transferring her appeal to the fourth member of the party.
Mr. Tredegar, the family lawyer, who had deemed it his duty to accompany
the widow on her visit of inspection, was strolling up and down the room
with short pompous steps, a cigar between his lips, and his arms behind
him. He cocked his sparrow-like head, scanned the offending apartment,
and terminated his survey by resting his eyes on Mrs. Westmore's
charming petulant face.
"It all depends," he replied axiomatically, "how large an income you
require."
Mr. Tredegar uttered this remark with the air of one who pronounces on
an important point in law: his lightest observation seemed a decision
handed down from the bench to which he had never ascended. He restored
the cigar to his lips, and sought approval in Mrs. Ansell's expressive
eye.
"Ah, that's it, Bessy. You've that to remember," the older lady
murmured, as if struck by the profundity of the remark.
Mrs. Westmore made an impatient gesture. "We've always had money
enough--Dick was perfectly satisfied." Her voice trembled a little on
her husband's name. "And you don't know what the place is like by
daylight--and the people who come to call!"
"Of course you needn't see any one now, dear," Mrs. Ansell reminded her,
"except the Halford Gaineses."
"I am sure they're bad enough. Juliana Gaines will say: 'My dear, is
that the way widows' veils are worn in New York this autumn?' and
Halford will insist on our going to one of those awful family dinners,
all Madeira and terrapin."
"It's too early for terrapin," Mrs. Ansell smiled consolingly; but Bessy
had reverted to her argument. "Besides, what difference would my coming
here make? I shall never understand anything about business," she
declared.
Mr. Tredegar pondered, and once more removed his cigar. "The necessity
has never arisen. But now that you find yourself in almost sole control
of a large property----"
Mr. Langhope laughed gently. "Apply yourself, Bessy. Bring your masterly
intellect to bear on the industrial problem."
Mrs. Ansell restored the innumerable implements to her writing-case, and
laid her arm with a caressing gesture on Mrs. Westmore's shoulder.
"Don't tease her. She's tired, and she misses the baby."
"I shall get a telegram tomorrow morning," exclaimed the young mother,
brightening.
"Of course you will. 'Cicely has just eaten two boiled eggs and a bowl
of porridge, and is bearing up wonderfully.'"
She drew Mrs. Westmore persuasively to her feet, but the widow refused
to relinquish her hold on her grievance.
"You all think I'm extravagant and careless about money," she broke out,
addressing the room in general from the shelter of Mrs. Ansell's
embrace; "but I know one thing: If I had my way I should begin to
economize by selling this horrible house, instead of leaving it shut up
from one year's end to another."
Her father looked up: proposals of retrenchment always struck him as
business-like when they did not affect his own expenditure. "What do you
think of that, eh, Tredegar?"
The eminent lawyer drew in his thin lips. "From the point of view of
policy, I think unfavourably of it," he pronounced.
Bessy's face clouded, and Mrs. Ansell argued gently: "Really, it's too
late to look so far into the future. Remember, my dear, that we are due
at the mills tomorrow at ten."
The reminder that she must rise early had the effect of hastening Mrs.
Westmore's withdrawal, and the two ladies, after an exchange of
goodnights, left the men to their cigars.
Mr. Langhope was the first to speak.
"Bessy's as hopelessly vague about business as I am, Tredegar. Why the
deuce Westmore left her everything outright--but he was only a heedless
boy himself."
"Yes. The way he allowed things to go, it's a wonder there was anything
to leave. This Truscomb must be an able fellow."
"Devoted to Dick's interests, I've always understood."
"He makes the mills pay well, at any rate, and that's not so easy
nowadays. But on general principles it's as well he should see that we
mean to look into everything thoroughly. Of course Halford Gaines will
never be more than a good figure-head, but Truscomb must be made to
understand that Mrs. Westmore intends to interest herself personally in
the business."
"Oh, by all means--of course--" Mr. Langhope assented, his light smile
stiffening into a yawn at the mere suggestion.
He rose with an effort, supporting himself on his stick. "I think I'll
turn in myself. There's not a readable book in that God-forsaken
library, and I believe Maria Ansell has gone off with my volume of
Loti."
* * * * *
The next morning, when Amherst presented himself at the Westmore door,
he had decided to follow his chief's instructions to the letter, and ask
for Mr. Langhope only. The decision had cost him a struggle, for his
heart was big with its purpose; but though he knew that he must soon
place himself in open opposition to Truscomb, he recognized the prudence
of deferring the declaration of war as long as possible.
On his round of the mills, that morning, he had paused in the room where
Mrs. Dillon knelt beside her mop and pail, and had found her, to his
surprise, comparatively reassured and cheerful. Dr. Disbrow, she told
him, had been in the previous evening, and had told her to take heart
about Jim, and left her enough money to get along for a week--and a
wonderful new cough-mixture that he'd put up for her special. Amherst
found it difficult to listen calmly, with the nurse's words still in his
ears, and the sight before him of Mrs. Dillon's lean shoulder-blades
travelling painfully up and down with the sweep of the mop.
"I don't suppose that cost Truscomb ten dollars," he said to himself, as
the lift lowered him to the factory door; but another voice argued that
he had no right to accuse Disbrow of acting as his brother-in-law's
agent, when the gift to Mrs. Dillon might have been prompted by his own
kindness of heart.
"And what prompted the lie about her husband? Well, perhaps he's an
incurable optimist," he summed up, springing into the Hanaford car.
By the time he reached Mrs. Westmore's door his wrath had subsided, and
he felt that he had himself well in hand. He had taken unusual pains
with his appearance that morning--or rather his mother, learning of the
errand on which Truscomb had sent him, had laid out his
carefully-brushed Sunday clothes, and adjusted his tie with skilful
fingers. "You'd really be handsome, Johnny, if you were only a little
vainer," she said, pushing him away to survey the result; and when he
stared at her, repeating: "I never heard that vanity made a man
better-looking," she responded gaily: "Oh, up to a certain point,
because it teaches him how to use what he's got. So remember," she
charged him, as he smiled and took up his hat, "that you're going to see
a pretty young woman, and that you're not a hundred years old yourself."
"I'll try to," he answered, humouring her, "but as I've been forbidden
to ask for her, I am afraid your efforts will be wasted."
The servant to whom he gave his message showed him into the library,
with a request that he should wait; and there, to his surprise, he
found, not the white-moustached gentleman whom he had guessed the night
before to be Mr. Langhope, but a young lady in deep black, who turned on
him a look of not unfriendly enquiry.
It was not Bessy's habit to anticipate the clock; but her distaste for
her surroundings, and the impatience to have done with the tedious
duties awaiting her, had sent her downstairs before the rest of the
party. Her life had been so free from tiresome obligations that she had
but a small stock of patience to meet them with; and already, after a
night at Hanaford, she was pining to get back to the comforts of her own
country-house, the soft rut of her daily habits, the funny chatter of
her little girl, the long stride of her Irish hunter across the
Hempstead plains--to everything, in short, that made it conceivably
worth while to get up in the morning.
The servant who ushered in Amherst, thinking the room empty, had not
mentioned his name; and for a moment he and his hostess examined each
other in silence, Bessy puzzled at the unannounced appearance of a
good-looking young man who might have been some one she had met and
forgotten, while Amherst felt his self-possession slipping away into the
depths of a pair of eyes so dark-lashed and deeply blue that his only
thought was one of wonder at his previous indifference to women's eyes.
"Mrs. Westmore?" he asked, restored to self-command by the perception
that his longed-for opportunity was at hand; and Bessy, his voice
confirming the inference she had drawn from his appearance, replied with
a smile: "I am Mrs. Westmore. But if you have come to see me, I ought to
tell you that in a moment I shall be obliged to go out to our mills. I
have a business appointment with our manager, but if----"
She broke off, gracefully waiting for him to insert his explanation.
"I have come from the manager; I am John Amherst--your assistant
manager," he added, as the mention of his name apparently conveyed no
enlightenment.
Mrs. Westmore's face changed, and she let slip a murmur of surprise
that would certainly have flattered Amherst's mother if she could have
heard it; but it had an opposite effect on the young man, who inwardly
accused himself of having tried to disguise his trade by not putting on
his everyday clothes.
"How stupid of me! I took you for--I had no idea; I didn't expect Mr.
Truscomb here," his employer faltered in embarrassment; then their eyes
met and both smiled.
"Mr. Truscomb sent me to tell you that he is ill, and will not be able
to show you the mills today. I didn't mean to ask for you--I was told to
give the message to Mr. Langhope," Amherst scrupulously explained,
trying to repress the sudden note of joy in his voice.
He was subject to the unobservant man's acute flashes of vision, and
Mrs. Westmore's beauty was like a blinding light abruptly turned on eyes
subdued to obscurity. As he spoke, his glance passed from her face to
her hair, and remained caught in its meshes. He had never seen such
hair--it did not seem to grow in the usual orderly way, but bubbled up
all over her head in independent clusters of brightness, breaking, about
the brow, the temples, the nape, into little irrelevant waves and eddies
of light, with dusky hollows of softness where the hand might plunge. It
takes but the throb of a nerve to carry such a complex impression from
the eye to the mind, but the object of the throb had perhaps felt the
electric flash of its passage, for her colour rose while Amherst spoke.
"Ah, here is my father now," she said with a vague accent of relief, as
Mr. Langhope's stick was heard tapping its way across the hall.
When he entered, accompanied by Mrs. Ansell, his sharp glance of
surprise at her visitor told her that he was as much misled as herself,
and gave her a sense of being agreeably justified in her blunder. "If
_father_ thinks you're a gentleman----" her shining eyes seemed to say,
as she explained: "This is Mr. Amherst, father: Mr. Truscomb has sent
him."
"Mr. Amherst?" Langhope, with extended hand, echoed affably but vaguely;
and it became clear that neither Mrs. Westmore nor her father had ever
before heard the name of their assistant manager.
The discovery stung Amherst to a somewhat unreasoning resentment; and
while he was trying to subordinate this sentiment to the larger feelings
with which he had entered the house, Mrs. Ansell, turning her eyes on
him, said gently: "Your name is unusual. I had a friend named Lucy Warne
who married a very clever man--a mechanical genius----"
Amherst's face cleared. "My father _was_ a genius; and my mother is Lucy
Warne," he said, won by the soft look and the persuasive voice.
"What a delightful coincidence! We were girls together at Albany. You
must remember Judge Warne?" she said, turning to Mr. Langhope, who,
twirling his white moustache, murmured, a shade less cordially: "Of
course--of course--delightful--most interesting."
Amherst did not notice the difference. His perceptions were already
enveloped in the caress that emanated from Mrs. Ansell's voice and
smile; and he only asked himself vaguely if it were possible that this
graceful woman, with her sunny autumnal air, could really be his
mother's contemporary. But the question brought an instant reaction of
bitterness.
"Poverty is the only thing that makes people old nowadays," he
reflected, painfully conscious of his own share in the hardships his
mother had endured; and when Mrs. Ansell went on: "I must go and see
her--you must let me take her by surprise," he said stiffly: "We live
out at the mills, a long way from here."
"Oh, we're going there this morning," she rejoined, unrebuffed by what
she probably took for a mere social awkwardness, while Mrs. Westmore
interposed: "But, Maria, Mr. Truscomb is ill, and has sent Mr. Amherst
to say that we are not to come."
"Yes: so Gaines has just telephoned. It's most unfortunate," Mr.
Langhope grumbled. He too was already beginning to chafe at the
uncongenial exile of Hanaford, and he shared his daughter's desire to
despatch the tiresome business before them.
Mr. Tredegar had meanwhile appeared, and when Amherst had been named to
him, and had received his Olympian nod, Bessy anxiously imparted her
difficulty.
"But how ill is Mr. Truscomb? Do you think he can take us over the mills
tomorrow?" she appealed to Amherst.
"I'm afraid not; I am sure he can't. He has a touch of bronchitis."
This announcement was met by a general outcry, in which sympathy for the
manager was not the predominating note. Mrs. Ansell saved the situation
by breathing feelingly: "Poor man!" and after a decent echo of the
phrase, and a doubtful glance at her father, Mrs. Westmore said: "If
it's bronchitis he may be ill for days, and what in the world are we to
do?"
"Pack up and come back later," suggested Mr. Langhope briskly; but while
Bessy sighed "Oh, that dreadful journey!" Mr. Tredegar interposed with
authority: "One moment, Langhope, please. Mr. Amherst, is Mrs. Westmore
expected at the mills?"
"Yes, I believe they know she is coming."
"Then I think, my dear, that to go back to New York without showing
yourself would, under the circumstances, be--er--an error in judgment."
"Good Lord, Tredegar, you don't expect to keep us kicking our heels here
for days?" her father ejaculated.
"I can certainly not afford to employ mine in that manner for even a
fraction of a day," rejoined the lawyer, always acutely resentful of the
suggestion that he had a disengaged moment; "but meanwhile----"
"Father," Bessy interposed, with an eagerly flushing cheek, "don't you
see that the only thing for us to do is to go over the mills now--at
once--with Mr. Amherst?"
Mr. Langhope stared: he was always adventurously ready to unmake plans,
but it flustered him to be called on to remake them. "Eh--what? Now--at
once? But Gaines was to have gone with us, and how on earth are we to
get at him? He telephoned me that, as the visit was given up, he should
ride out to his farm."
"Oh, never mind--or, at least, all the better!" his daughter urged. "We
can see the mills just as well without him; and we shall get on so much
more quickly."
"Well--well--what do you say, Tredegar?" murmured Mr. Langhope, allured
by her last argument; and Bessy, clasping her hands, summed up
enthusiastically: "And I shall understand so much better without a lot
of people trying to explain to me at once!"
Her sudden enthusiasm surprised no one, for even Mrs. Ansell, expert as
she was in the interpreting of tones, set it down to the natural desire
to have done as quickly as might be with Hanaford.
"Mrs. Westmore has left her little girl at home," she said to Amherst,
with a smile intended to counteract the possible ill-effect of the
impression.
But Amherst suspected no slight in his employer's eagerness to visit
Westmore. His overmastering thought was one of joy as the fulness of his
opportunity broke on him. To show her the mills himself--to bring her
face to face with her people, unhampered by Truscomb's jealous
vigilance, and Truscomb's false explanations; to see the angel of pity
stir the depths of those unfathomable eyes, when they rested, perhaps
for the first time, on suffering that it was in their power to smile
away as easily as they had smiled away his own distrust--all this the
wonderful moment had brought him, and thoughts and arguments thronged so
hot on his lips that he kept silence, fearing lest he should say too
much.
IV
JOHN AMHERST was no one-sided idealist. He felt keenly the growing
complexity of the relation between employer and worker, the seeming
hopelessness of permanently harmonizing their claims, the recurring
necessity of fresh compromises and adjustments. He hated rant, demagogy,
the rash formulating of emotional theories; and his contempt for bad
logic and subjective judgments led him to regard with distrust the
panaceas offered for the cure of economic evils. But his heart ached
for the bitter throes with which the human machine moves on. He felt the
menace of industrial conditions when viewed collectively, their
poignancy when studied in the individual lives of the toilers among whom
his lot was cast; and clearly as he saw the need of a philosophic survey
of the question, he was sure that only through sympathy with its
personal, human side could a solution be reached. The disappearance of
the old familiar contact between master and man seemed to him one of the
great wrongs of the new industrial situation. That the breach must be
farther widened by the ultimate substitution of the stock-company for
the individual employer--a fact obvious to any student of economic
tendencies--presented to Amherst's mind one of the most painful problems
in the scheme of social readjustment. But it was characteristic of him
to dwell rather on the removal of immediate difficulties than in the
contemplation of those to come, and while the individual employer was
still to be reckoned with, the main thing was to bring him closer to his
workers. Till he entered personally into their hardships and
aspirations--till he learned what they wanted and why they wanted
it--Amherst believed that no mere law-making, however enlightened, could
create a wholesome relation between the two.
This feeling was uppermost as he sat with Mrs. Westmore in the carriage
which was carrying them to the mills. He had meant to take the trolley
back to Westmore, but at a murmured word from Mr. Tredegar Bessy had
offered him a seat at her side, leaving others to follow. This
culmination of his hopes--the unlooked-for chance of a half-hour alone
with her--left Amherst oppressed with the swiftness of the minutes. He
had so much to say--so much to prepare her for--yet how begin, while he
was in utter ignorance of her character and her point of view, and while
her lovely nearness left him so little chance of perceiving anything
except itself?
But he was not often the victim of his sensations, and presently there
emerged, out of the very consciousness of her grace and her
completeness, a clearer sense of the conditions which, in a measure, had
gone to produce them. Her dress could not have hung in such subtle
folds, her white chin have nestled in such rich depths of fur, the
pearls in her ears have given back the light from such pure curves, if
thin shoulders in shapeless gingham had not bent, day in, day out, above
the bobbins and carders, and weary ears throbbed even at night with the
tumult of the looms. Amherst, however, felt no sensational resentment at
the contrast. He had lived too much with ugliness and want not to
believe in human nature's abiding need of their opposite. He was glad
there was room for such beauty in the world, and sure that its purpose
was an ameliorating one, if only it could be used as a beautiful spirit
would use it.
The carriage had turned into one of the nondescript thoroughfares, half
incipient street, half decaying lane, which dismally linked the
mill-village to Hanaford. Bessy looked out on the ruts, the hoardings,
the starved trees dangling their palsied leaves in the radiant October
light; then she sighed: "What a good day for a gallop!"
Amherst felt a momentary chill, but the naturalness of the exclamation
disarmed him, and the words called up thrilling memories of his own
college days, when he had ridden his grandfather's horses in the famous
hunting valley not a hundred miles from Hanaford.
Bessy met his smile with a glow of understanding. "You like riding too,
I'm sure?"
"I used to; but I haven't been in the saddle for years. Factory managers
don't keep hunters," he said laughing.
Her murmur of embarrassment showed that she took this as an apologetic
allusion to his reduced condition, and in his haste to correct this
impression he added: "If I regretted anything in my other life, it would
certainly be a gallop on a day like this; but I chose my trade
deliberately, and I've never been sorry for my choice."
He had hardly spoken when he felt the inappropriateness of this avowal;
but her prompt response showed him, a moment later, that it was, after
all, the straightest way to his end.
"You find the work interesting? I'm sure it must be. You'll think me
very ignorant--my husband and I came here so seldom...I feel as if I
ought to know so much more about it," she explained.
At last the note for which he waited had been struck. "Won't you try
to--now you're here? There's so much worth knowing," he broke out
impetuously.
Mrs. Westmore coloured, but rather with surprise than displeasure. "I'm
very stupid--I've no head for business--but I will try to," she said.
"It's not business that I mean; it's the personal relation--just the
thing the business point of view leaves out. Financially, I don't
suppose your mills could be better run; but there are over seven hundred
women working in them, and there's so much to be done, just for them and
their children."
He caught a faint hint of withdrawal in her tone. "I have always
understood that Mr. Truscomb did everything----"
Amherst flushed; but he was beyond caring for the personal rebuff. "Do
you leave it to your little girl's nurses to do everything for her?" he
asked.
Her surprise seemed about to verge on annoyance: he saw the preliminary
ruffling of the woman who is put to the trouble of defending her
dignity. "Really, I don't see--" she began with distant politeness; then
her face changed and melted, and again her blood spoke for her before
her lips.
"I am glad you told me that, Mr. Amherst. Of course I want to do
whatever I can. I should like you to point out everything----"
Amherst's resolve had been taken while she spoke. He _would_ point out
everything, would stretch his opportunity to its limit. All thoughts of
personal prudence were flung to the winds--her blush and tone had routed
the waiting policy. He would declare war on Truscomb at once, and take
the chance of dismissal. At least, before he went he would have brought
this exquisite creature face to face with the wrongs from which her
luxuries were drawn, and set in motion the regenerating impulses of
indignation and pity. He did not stop to weigh the permanent advantage
of this course. His only feeling was that the chance would never again
be given him--that if he let her go away, back to her usual life, with
eyes unopened and heart untouched, there would be no hope of her ever
returning. It was far better that he should leave for good, and that she
should come back, as come back she must, more and more often, if once
she could be made to feel the crying need of her presence.
But where was he to begin? How give her even a glimpse of the packed and
intricate situation?
"Mrs. Westmore," he said, "there's no time to say much now, but before
we get to the mills I want to ask you a favour. If, as you go through
them, you see anything that seems to need explaining, will you let me
come and tell you about it tonight? I say tonight," he added, meeting
her look of enquiry, "because later--tomorrow even--I might not have the
chance. There are some things--a good many--in the management of the
mills that Mr. Truscomb doesn't see as I do. I don't mean business
questions: wages and dividends and so on--those are out of my province.
I speak merely in the line of my own work--my care of the hands, and
what I believe they need and don't get under the present system.
Naturally, if Mr. Truscomb were well, I shouldn't have had this chance
of putting the case to you; but since it's come my way, I must seize it
and take the consequences."
Even as he spoke, by a swift reaction of thought, those consequences
rose before him in all their seriousness. It was not only, or chiefly,
that he feared to lose his place; though he knew his mother had not
spoken lightly in instancing the case of the foreman whom Truscomb, to
gratify a personal spite, had for months kept out of a job in his trade.
And there were special reasons why Amherst should heed her warning. In
adopting a manual trade, instead of one of the gentlemanly professions
which the men of her family had always followed, he had not only
disappointed her hopes, and to a great extent thrown away the benefits
of the education she had pinched herself to give him, but had disturbed
all the habits of her life by removing her from her normal surroundings
to the depressing exile of a factory-settlement. However much he blamed
himself for exacting this sacrifice, it had been made so cheerfully that
the consciousness of it never clouded his life with his mother; but her
self-effacement made him the more alive to his own obligations, and
having placed her in a difficult situation he had always been careful
not to increase its difficulties by any imprudence in his conduct toward
his employers. Yet, grave as these considerations were, they were really
less potent than his personal desire to remain at Westmore. Lightly as
he had just resolved to risk the chance of dismissal, all his future was
bound up in the hope of retaining his place. His heart was in the work
at Westmore, and the fear of not being able to get other employment was
a small factor in his intense desire to keep his post. What he really
wanted was to speak out, and yet escape the consequences: by some
miraculous reversal of probability to retain his position and yet effect
Truscomb's removal. The idea was so fantastic that he felt it merely as
a quickening of all his activities, a tremendous pressure of will along
undetermined lines. He had no wish to take the manager's place; but his
dream was to see Truscomb superseded by a man of the new school, in
sympathy with the awakening social movement--a man sufficiently
practical to "run" the mills successfully, yet imaginative enough to
regard that task as the least of his duties. He saw the promise of such
a man in Louis Duplain, the overseer who boarded with Mrs. Amherst: a
young fellow of Alsatian extraction, a mill-hand from childhood, who had
worked at his trade in Europe as well as in America, and who united with
more manual skill, and a greater nearness to the workman's standpoint,
all Amherst's enthusiasm for the experiments in social betterment that
were making in some of the English and continental factories. His
strongest wish was to see such a man as Duplain in control at Westmore
before he himself turned to the larger work which he had begun to see
before him as the sequel to his factory-training.
All these thoughts swept through him in the instant's pause before Mrs.
Westmore, responding to his last appeal, said with a graceful eagerness:
"Yes, you must come tonight. I want to hear all you can tell me--and if
there is anything wrong you must show me how I can make it better."
"I'll show her, and Truscomb shan't turn me out for it," was the vow he
passionately registered as the carriage drew up at the office-door of
the main building.
How this impossible result was to be achieved he had no farther time to
consider, for in another moment the rest of the party had entered the
factory with them, and speech was followed up in the roar of the
machinery.
Amherst's zeal for his cause was always quickened by the sight of the
mills in action. He loved the work itself as much as he hated the
conditions under which it was done; and he longed to see on the
operatives' faces something of the ardour that lit up his own when he
entered the work-rooms. It was this passion for machinery that at school
had turned him from his books, at college had drawn him to the courses
least in the line of his destined profession; and it always seized on
him afresh when he was face to face with the monstrous energies of the
mills. It was not only the sense of power that thrilled him--he felt a
beauty in the ordered activity of the whole intricate organism, in the
rhythm of dancing bobbins and revolving cards, the swift continuous
outpour of doublers and ribbon-laps, the steady ripple of the long
ply-frames, the terrible gnashing play of the looms--all these varying
subordinate motions, gathered up into the throb of the great engines
which fed the giant's arteries, and were in turn ruled by the invisible
action of quick thought and obedient hands, always produced in Amherst a
responsive rush of life.
He knew this sensation was too specialized to affect his companions; but
he expected Mrs. Westmore to be all the more alive to the other
side--the dark side of monotonous human toil, of the banquet of flesh
and blood and brain perpetually served up to the monster whose
insatiable jaws the looms so grimly typified. Truscomb, as he had told
her, was a good manager from the profit-taking standpoint. Since it was
profitable to keep the machinery in order, he maintained throughout the
factory a high standard of mechanical supervision, except where one or
two favoured overseers--for Truscomb was given to favoritism--shirked
the duties of their departments. But it was of the essence of Truscomb's
policy--and not the least of the qualities which made him a "paying"
manager--that he saved money scrupulously where its outlay would not
have resulted in larger earnings. To keep the floors scrubbed, the
cotton-dust swept up, the rooms freshly whitewashed and well-ventilated,
far from adding the smallest fraction to the quarterly dividends, would
have deducted from them the slight cost of this additional labour; and
Truscomb therefore economized on scrubbers, sweepers and window-washers,
and on all expenses connected with improved ventilation and other
hygienic precautions. Though the whole factory was over-crowded, the
newest buildings were more carefully planned, and had the usual sanitary
improvements; but the old mills had been left in their original state,
and even those most recently built were fast lapsing into squalor. It
was no wonder, therefore, that workers imprisoned within such walls
should reflect their long hours of deadening toil in dull eyes and
anæmic skins, and in the dreary lassitude with which they bent to their
tasks.
Surely, Amherst argued, Mrs. Westmore must feel this; must feel it all
the more keenly, coming from an atmosphere so different, from a life
where, as he instinctively divined, all was in harmony with her own
graceful person. But a deep disappointment awaited him. He was still
under the spell of their last moments in the carriage, when her face and
voice had promised so much, when she had seemed so deeply, if vaguely,
stirred by his appeal. But as they passed from one resounding room to
the other--from the dull throb of the carding-room, the groan of the
ply-frames, the long steady pound of the slashers, back to the angry
shriek of the fierce unappeasable looms--the light faded from her eyes
and she looked merely bewildered and stunned.
Amherst, hardened to the din of the factory, could not measure its
effect on nerves accustomed to the subdued sounds and spacious
stillnesses which are the last refinement of luxury. Habit had made him
unconscious of that malicious multiplication and subdivision of noise
that kept every point of consciousness vibrating to a different note, so
that while one set of nerves was torn as with pincers by the dominant
scream of the looms, others were thrilled with a separate pain by the
ceaseless accompaniment of drumming, hissing, grating and crashing that
shook the great building. Amherst felt this tumult only as part of the
atmosphere of the mills; and to ears trained like his own he could make
his voice heard without difficulty. But his attempts at speech were
unintelligible to Mrs. Westmore and her companions, and after vainly
trying to communicate with him by signs they hurried on as if to escape
as quickly as possible from the pursuing whirlwind.
Amherst could not allow for the depressing effect of this enforced
silence. He did not see that if Bessy could have questioned him the
currents of sympathy might have remained open between them, whereas,
compelled to walk in silence through interminable ranks of meaningless
machines, to which the human workers seemed mere automatic appendages,
she lost all perception of what the scene meant. He had forgotten, too,
that the swift apprehension of suffering in others is as much the result
of training as the immediate perception of beauty. Both perceptions may
be inborn, but if they are not they can be developed only through the
discipline of experience.
"That girl in the hospital would have seen it all," he reflected, as the
vision of Miss Brent's small incisive profile rose before him; but the
next moment he caught the light on Mrs. Westmore's hair, as she bent
above a card, and the paler image faded like a late moon in the sunrise.
Meanwhile Mrs. Ansell, seeing that the detailed inspection of the
buildings was as trying to Mr. Langhope's lameness as to his daughter's
nerves, had proposed to turn back with him and drive to Mrs. Amherst's,
where he might leave her to call while the others were completing their
rounds. It was one of Mrs. Ansell's gifts to detect the first symptoms
of _ennui_ in her companions, and produce a remedy as patly as old
ladies whisk out a scent-bottle or a cough-lozenge; and Mr. Langhope's
look of relief showed the timeliness of her suggestion.
Amherst was too preoccupied to wonder how his mother would take this
visit; but he welcomed Mr. Langhope's departure, hoping that the
withdrawal of his ironic smile would leave his daughter open to gentler
influences. Mr. Tredegar, meanwhile, was projecting his dry glance over
the scene, trying to converse by signs with the overseers of the
different rooms, and pausing now and then to contemplate, not so much
the workers themselves as the special tasks which engaged them.
How these spectators of the party's progress were affected by Mrs.
Westmore's appearance, even Amherst, for all his sympathy with their
views, could not detect. They knew that she was the new owner, that a
disproportionate amount of the result of their toil would in future pass
through her hands, spread carpets for her steps, and hang a setting of
beauty about her eyes; but the knowledge seemed to produce no special
interest in her personality. A change of employer was not likely to make
any change in their lot: their welfare would probably continue to depend
on Truscomb's favour. The men hardly raised their heads as Mrs. Westmore
passed; the women stared, but with curiosity rather than interest; and
Amherst could not tell whether their sullenness reacted on Mrs.
Westmore, or whether they were unconsciously chilled by her
indifference. The result was the same: the distance between them seemed
to increase instead of diminishing; and he smiled ironically to think of
the form his appeal had taken--"If you see anything that seems to need
explaining." Why, she saw nothing--nothing but the greasy floor under
her feet, the cotton-dust in her eyes, the dizzy incomprehensible
whirring of innumerable belts and wheels! Once out of it all, she would
make haste to forget the dreary scene without pausing to ask for any
explanation of its dreariness.
In the intensity of his disappointment he sought a pretext to cut short
the tour of the buildings, that he might remove his eyes from the face
he had so vainly watched for any sign of awakening. And then, as he
despaired of it, the change came.
They had entered the principal carding-room, and were half-way down its
long central passage, when Mr. Tredegar, who led the procession, paused
before one of the cards.
"What's that?" he asked, pointing to a ragged strip of black cloth tied
conspicuously to the frame of the card.
The overseer of the room, a florid young man with dissipated eyes, who,
at Amherst's signal, had attached himself to the party, stopped short
and turned a furious glance on the surrounding operatives.
"What in hell...? It's the first I seen of it," he exclaimed, making an
ineffectual attempt to snatch the mourning emblem from its place.
At the same instant the midday whistle boomed through the building, and
at the signal the machinery stopped, and silence fell on the mills. The
more distant workers at once left their posts to catch up the hats and
coats heaped untidily in the corners; but those nearer by, attracted by
the commotion around the card, stood spell-bound, fixing the visitors
with a dull stare.
Amherst had reddened to the roots of his hair. He knew in a flash what
the token signified, and the sight stirred his pity; but it also jarred
on his strong sense of discipline, and he turned sternly to the
operatives.
"What does this mean?"
There was a short silence; then one of the hands, a thin bent man with
mystic eyes, raised his head and spoke.
"We done that for Dillon," he said.
Amherst's glance swept the crowded faces. "But Dillon was not killed,"
he exclaimed, while the overseer, drawing out his pen-knife, ripped off
the cloth and tossed it contemptuously into a heap of cotton-refuse at
his feet.
"Might better ha' been," came from another hand; and a deep "That's so"
of corroboration ran through the knot of workers.
Amherst felt a touch on his arm, and met Mrs. Westmore's eyes. "What has
happened? What do they mean?" she asked in a startled voice.
"There was an accident here two days ago: a man got caught in the card
behind him, and his right hand was badly crushed."
Mr. Tredegar intervened with his dry note of command. "How serious is
the accident? How did it happen?" he enquired.
"Through the man's own carelessness--ask the manager," the overseer
interposed before Amherst could answer.
A deep murmur of dissent ran through the crowd, but Amherst, without
noticing the overseer's reply, said to Mr. Tredegar: "He's at the Hope
Hospital. He will lose his hand, and probably the whole arm."
He had not meant to add this last phrase. However strongly his
sympathies were aroused, it was against his rule, at such a time, to say
anything which might inflame the quick passions of the workers: he had
meant to make light of the accident, and dismiss the operatives with a
sharp word of reproof. But Mrs. Westmore's face was close to his: he saw
the pity in her eyes, and feared, if he checked its expression, that he
might never again have the chance of calling it forth.
"His right arm? How terrible! But then he will never be able to work
again!" she exclaimed, in all the horror of a first confrontation with
the inexorable fate of the poor.
Her eyes turned from Amherst and rested on the faces pressing about her.
There were many women's faces among them--the faces of fagged
middle-age, and of sallow sedentary girlhood. For the first time Mrs.
Westmore seemed to feel the bond of blood between herself and these dim
creatures of the underworld: as Amherst watched her the lovely miracle
was wrought. Her pallour gave way to a quick rush of colour, her eyes
widened like a frightened child's, and two tears rose and rolled slowly
down her face.
"Oh, why wasn't I told? Is he married? Has he children? What does it
matter whose fault it was?" she cried, her questions pouring out
disconnectedly on a wave of anger and compassion.
"It warn't his fault.... The cards are too close.... It'll happen
again.... He's got three kids at home," broke from the operatives; and
suddenly a voice exclaimed "Here's his wife now," and the crowd divided
to make way for Mrs. Dillon, who, passing through the farther end of the
room, had been waylaid and dragged toward the group.
She hung back, shrinking from the murderous machine, which she beheld
for the first time since her husband's accident; then she saw Amherst,
guessed the identity of the lady at his side, and flushed up to her
haggard forehead. Mrs. Dillon had been good-looking in her earlier
youth, and sufficient prettiness lingered in her hollow-cheeked face to
show how much more had been sacrificed to sickness and unwholesome toil.
"Oh, ma'am, ma'am, it warn't Jim's fault--there ain't a steadier man
living. The cards is too crowded," she sobbed out.
Some of the other women began to cry: a wave of sympathy ran through
the circle, and Mrs. Westmore moved forward with an answering
exclamation. "You poor creature...you poor creature...." She opened her
arms to Mrs. Dillon, and the scrubber's sobs were buried on her
employer's breast.
"I will go to the hospital--I will come and see you--I will see that
everything is done," Bessy reiterated. "But why are you here? How is it
that you have had to leave your children?" She freed herself to turn a
reproachful glance on Amherst. "You don't mean to tell me that, at such
a time, you keep the poor woman at work?"
"Mrs. Dillon has not been working here lately," Amherst answered. "The
manager took her back to-day at her own request, that she might earn
something while her husband was in hospital."
Mrs. Westmore's eyes shone indignantly. "Earn something? But surely----"
She met a silencing look from Mr. Tredegar, who had stepped between Mrs.
Dillon and herself.
"My dear child, no one doubts--none of these good people doubt--that you
will look into the case, and do all you can to alleviate it; but let me
suggest that this is hardly the place----"
She turned from him with an appealing glance at Amherst.
"I think," the latter said, as their eyes met, "that you had better let
me dismiss the hands: they have only an hour at midday."
She signed her assent, and he turned to the operatives and said quietly:
"You have heard Mrs. Westmore's promise; now take yourselves off, and
give her a clear way to the stairs."
They dropped back, and Mr. Tredegar drew Bessy's arm through his; but as
he began to move away she turned and laid her hand on Mrs. Dillon's
shoulder.
"You must not stay here--you must go back to the children. I will make
it right with Mr. Truscomb," she said in a reassuring whisper; then,
through her tears, she smiled a farewell at the lingering knot of
operatives, and followed her companions to the door.
In silence they descended the many stairs and crossed the shabby
unfenced grass-plot between the mills and the manager's office. It was
not till they reached the carriage that Mrs. Westmore spoke.
"But Maria is waiting for us--we must call for her!" she said, rousing
herself; and as Amherst opened the carriage-door she added: "You will
show us the way? You will drive with us?"
During the drive Bessy remained silent, as if re-absorbed in the
distress of the scene she had just witnessed; and Amherst found himself
automatically answering Mr. Tredegar's questions, while his own mind
had no room for anything but the sense of her tremulous lips and of her
eyes enlarged by tears. He had been too much engrossed in the momentous
issues of her visit to the mills to remember that she had promised to
call at his mother's for Mrs. Ansell; but now that they were on their
way thither he found himself wishing that the visit might have been
avoided. He was too proud of his mother to feel any doubt of the
impression she would produce; but what would Mrs. Westmore think of
their way of living, of the cheap jauntiness of the cottage, and the
smell of cooking penetrating all its thin partitions? Duplain, too,
would be coming in for dinner; and Amherst, in spite of his liking for
the young overseer, became conscious of a rather overbearing freedom in
his manner, the kind of misplaced ease which the new-made American
affects as the readiest sign of equality. All these trifles, usually
non-existent or supremely indifferent to Amherst, now assumed a sudden
importance, behind which he detected the uneasy desire that Mrs.
Westmore should not regard him as less of her own class than his
connections and his bringing-up entitled him to be thought. In a flash
he saw what he had forfeited by his choice of a calling--equal contact
with the little circle of people who gave life its crowning grace and
facility; and the next moment he was blushing at this reversal of his
standards, and wondering, almost contemptuously, what could be the
nature of the woman whose mere presence could produce such a change.
But there was no struggling against her influence; and as, the night
before, he had looked at Westmore with the nurse's eyes, so he now found
himself seeing his house as it must appear to Mrs. Westmore. He noticed
the shabby yellow paint of the palings, the neglected garden of their
neighbour, the week's wash flaunting itself indecently through the
denuded shrubs about the kitchen porch; and as he admitted his
companions to the narrow passage he was assailed by the expected whiff
of "boiled dinner," with which the steam of wash-tubs was intimately
mingled.
Duplain was in the passage; he had just come out of the kitchen, and the
fact that he had been washing his hands in the sink was made evident by
his rolled-back shirt-sleeves, and by the shiny redness of the knuckles
he was running through his stiff black hair.
"Hallo, John," he said, in his aggressive voice, which rose abruptly at
sight of Amherst's companions; and at the same moment the frowsy
maid-of-all-work, crimson from stooping over the kitchen stove, thrust
her head out to call after him: "See here, Mr. Duplain, don't you leave
your cravat laying round in my dough."
V
MRS. WESTMORE stayed just long enough not to break in too abruptly on
the flow of her friend's reminiscences, and to impress herself on Mrs.
Amherst's delighted eyes as an embodiment of tactfulness and
grace--looking sympathetically about the little room, which, with its
books, its casts, its photographs of memorable pictures, seemed, after
all, a not incongruous setting to her charms; so that when she rose to
go, saying, as her hand met Amherst's, "Tonight, then, you must tell me
all about those poor Dillons," he had the sense of having penetrated so
far into her intimacy that a new Westmore must inevitably result from
their next meeting.
"Say, John--the boss is a looker," Duplain commented across the
dinner-table, with the slangy grossness he sometimes affected; but
Amherst left it to his mother to look a quiet rebuke, feeling himself
too aloof from such contacts to resent them.
He had to rouse himself with an effort to take in the overseer's next
observation. "There was another lady at the office this morning,"
Duplain went on, while the two men lit their cigars in the porch.
"Asking after you--tried to get me to show her over the mills when I
said you were busy."
"Asking after me? What did she look like?"
"Well, her face was kinder white and small, with an awful lot of black
hair fitting close to it. Said she came from Hope Hospital."
Amherst looked up. "Did you show her over?" he asked with sudden
interest.
Duplain laughed slangily. "What? Me? And have Truscomb get on to it and
turn me down? How'd I know she wasn't a yellow reporter?"
Amherst uttered an impatient exclamation. "I wish to heaven a yellow
reporter _would_ go through these mills, and show them up in head-lines
a yard high!"
He regretted not having seen the nurse again: he felt sure she would
have been interested in the working of the mills, and quick to notice
the signs of discouragement and ill-health in the workers' faces; but a
moment later his regret was dispelled by the thought of his visit to
Mrs. Westmore. The afternoon hours dragged slowly by in the office,
where he was bound to his desk by Truscomb's continued absence; but at
length the evening whistle blew, the clerks in the outer room caught
their hats from the rack, Duplain presented himself with the day's
report, and the two men were free to walk home.
Two hours later Amherst was mounting Mrs. Westmore's steps; and his hand
was on the bell when the door opened and Dr. Disbrow came out. The
physician drew back, as if surprised and slightly disconcerted; but his
smile promptly effaced all signs of vexation, and he held his hand out
affably.
"A fine evening, Mr. Amherst. I'm glad to say I have been able to bring
Mrs. Westmore an excellent report of both patients--Mr. Truscomb, I
mean, and poor Dillon. This mild weather is all in their favour, and I
hope my brother-in-law will be about in a day or two." He passed on with
a nod.
Amherst was once more shown into the library where he had found Mrs.
Westmore that morning; but on this occasion it was Mr. Tredegar who rose
to meet him, and curtly waved him to a seat at a respectful distance
from his own. Amherst at once felt a change of atmosphere, and it was
easy to guess that the lowering of temperature was due to Dr. Disbrow's
recent visit. The thought roused the young man's combative instincts,
and caused him to say, as Mr. Tredegar continued to survey him in
silence from the depths of a capacious easy-chair: "I understood from
Mrs. Westmore that she wished to see me this evening."
It was the wrong note, and he knew it; but he had been unable to conceal
his sense of the vague current of opposition in the air.
"Quite so: I believe she asked you to come," Mr. Tredegar assented,
laying his hands together vertically, and surveying Amherst above the
acute angle formed by his parched finger-tips. As he leaned back,
small, dry, dictatorial, in the careless finish of his evening dress
and pearl-studded shirt-front, his appearance put the finishing touch to
Amherst's irritation. He felt the incongruousness of his rough clothes
in this atmosphere of after-dinner ease, the mud on his walking-boots,
the clinging cotton-dust which seemed to have entered into the very
pores of the skin; and again his annoyance escaped in his voice.
"Perhaps I have come too early--" he began; but Mr. Tredegar interposed
with glacial amenity: "No, I believe you are exactly on time; but Mrs.
Westmore is unexpectedly detained. The fact is, Mr. and Mrs. Halford
Gaines are dining with her, and she has delegated to me the duty of
hearing what you have to say."
Amherst hesitated. His impulse was to exclaim: "There is no duty about
it!" but a moment's thought showed the folly of thus throwing up the
game. With the prospect of Truscomb's being about again in a day or two,
it might well be that this was his last chance of reaching Mrs.
Westmore's ear; and he was bound to put his case while he could,
irrespective of personal feeling. But his disappointment was too keen to
be denied, and after a pause he said: "Could I not speak with Mrs.
Westmore later?"
Mr. Tredegar's cool survey deepened to a frown. The young man's
importunity was really out of proportion to what he signified. "Mrs.
Westmore has asked me to replace her," he said, putting his previous
statement more concisely.
"Then I am not to see her at all?" Amherst exclaimed; and the lawyer
replied indifferently: "I am afraid not, as she leaves tomorrow."
Mr. Tredegar was in his element when refusing a favour. Not that he was
by nature unkind; he was, indeed, capable of a cold beneficence; but to
deny what it was in his power to accord was the readiest way of
proclaiming his authority, that power of loosing and binding which made
him regard himself as almost consecrated to his office.
Having sacrificed to this principle, he felt free to add as a gratuitous
concession to politeness: "You are perhaps not aware that I am Mrs.
Westmore's lawyer, and one of the executors under her husband's will."
He dropped this negligently, as though conscious of the absurdity of
presenting his credentials to a subordinate; but his manner no longer
incensed Amherst: it merely strengthened his resolve to sink all sense
of affront in the supreme effort of obtaining a hearing.
"With that stuffed canary to advise her," he reflected, "there's no hope
for her unless I can assert myself now"; and the unconscious wording of
his thought expressed his inward sense that Bessy Westmore stood in
greater need of help than her work-people.
Still he hesitated, hardly knowing how to begin. To Mr. Tredegar he was
no more than an underling, without authority to speak in his superior's
absence; and the lack of an official warrant, which he could have
disregarded in appealing to Mrs. Westmore, made it hard for him to find
a good opening in addressing her representative. He saw, too, from Mr.
Tredegar's protracted silence, that the latter counted on the effect of
this embarrassment, and was resolved not to minimize it by giving him a
lead; and this had the effect of increasing his caution.
He looked up and met the lawyer's eye. "Mrs. Westmore," he began, "asked
me to let her know something about the condition of the people at the
mills----"
Mr. Tredegar raised his hand. "Excuse me," he said. "I understood from
Mrs. Westmore that it was you who asked her permission to call this
evening and set forth certain grievances on the part of the operatives."
Amherst reddened. "I did ask her--yes. But I don't in any sense
represent the operatives. I simply wanted to say a word for them."
Mr. Tredegar folded his hands again, and crossed one lean little leg
over the other, bringing into his line of vision the glossy tip of a
patent-leather pump, which he studied for a moment in silence.
"Does Mr. Truscomb know of your intention?" he then enquired.
"No, sir," Amherst answered energetically, glad that he had forced the
lawyer out of his passive tactics. "I am here on my own
responsibility--and in direct opposition to my own interests," he
continued with a slight smile. "I know that my proceeding is quite out
of order, and that I have, personally, everything to lose by it, and in
a larger way probably very little to gain; but I thought Mrs. Westmore's
attention ought to be called to certain conditions at the mills, and no
one else seemed likely to speak of them."
"May I ask why you assume that Mr. Truscomb will not do so when he has
the opportunity?"
Amherst could not repress a smile. "Because it is owing to Mr. Truscomb
that they exist."
"The real object of your visit then," said Mr. Tredegar, speaking with
deliberation, "is--er--an underhand attack on your manager's methods?"
Amherst's face darkened, but he kept his temper. "I see nothing
especially underhand in my course----"
"Except," the other interposed ironically, "that you have waited to
speak till Mr. Truscomb was not in a position to defend himself."
"I never had the chance before. It was at Mrs. Westmore's own suggestion
that I took her over the mills, and feeling as I do I should have
thought it cowardly to shirk the chance of pointing out to her the
conditions there."
Mr. Tredegar mused, his eyes still bent on his gently-oscillating foot.
Whenever a sufficient pressure from without parted the fog of
self-complacency in which he moved, he had a shrewd enough outlook on
men and motives; and it may be that the vigorous ring of Amherst's
answer had effected this momentary clearing of the air.
At any rate, his next words were spoken in a more accessible tone. "To
what conditions do you refer?"
"To the conditions under which the mill-hands work and live--to the
whole management of the mills, in fact, in relation to the people
employed."
"That is a large question. Pardon my possible ignorance--" Mr. Tredegar
paused to make sure that his hearer took in the full irony of this--"but
surely in this state there are liability and inspection laws for the
protection of the operatives?"
"There are such laws, yes--but most of them are either a dead letter, or
else so easily evaded that no employer thinks of conforming to them."
"No employer? Then your specific charge against the Westmore mills is
part of a general arraignment of all employers of labour?"
"By no means, sir. I only meant that, where the hands are well treated,
it is due rather to the personal good-will of the employer than to any
fear of the law."
"And in what respect do you think the Westmore hands unfairly treated?"
Amherst paused to measure his words. "The question, as you say, is a
large one," he rejoined. "It has its roots in the way the business is
organized--in the traditional attitude of the company toward the
operatives. I hoped that Mrs. Westmore might return to the mills--might
visit some of the people in their houses. Seeing their way of living, it
might have occurred to her to ask a reason for it--and one enquiry would
have led to another. She spoke this morning of going to the hospital to
see Dillon."
"She did go to the hospital: I went with her. But as Dillon was
sleeping, and as the matron told us he was much better--a piece of news
which, I am happy to say, Dr. Disbrow has just confirmed--she did not go
up to the ward."
Amherst was silent, and Mr. Tredegar pursued: "I gather, from your
bringing up Dillon's case, that for some reason you consider it typical
of the defects you find in Mr. Truscomb's management. Suppose,
therefore, we drop generalizations, and confine ourselves to the
particular instance. What wrong, in your view, has been done the
Dillons?"
He turned, as he spoke, to extract a cigar from the box at his elbow.
"Let me offer you one, Mr. Amherst: we shall talk more comfortably," he
suggested with distant affability; but Amherst, with a gesture of
refusal, plunged into his exposition of the Dillon case. He tried to put
the facts succinctly, presenting them in their bare ugliness, without
emotional drapery; setting forth Dillon's good record for sobriety and
skill, dwelling on the fact that his wife's ill-health was the result of
perfectly remediable conditions in the work-rooms, and giving his
reasons for the belief that the accident had been caused, not by
Dillon's carelessness, but by the over-crowding of the carding-room. Mr.
Tredegar listened attentively, though the cloud of cigar-smoke between
himself and Amherst masked from the latter his possible changes of
expression. When he removed his cigar, his face looked smaller than
ever, as though desiccated by the fumes of the tobacco.
"Have you ever called Mr. Gaines's attention to these matters?"
"No: that would have been useless. He has always refused to discuss the
condition of the mills with any one but the manager."
"H'm--that would seem to prove that Mr. Gaines, who lives here, sees as
much reason for trusting Truscomb's judgment as Mr. Westmore, who
delegated his authority from a distance."
Amherst did not take this up, and after a pause Mr. Tredegar went on:
"You know, of course, the answers I might make to such an indictment. As
a lawyer, I might call your attention to the employé's waiver of risk,
to the strong chances of contributory negligence, and so on; but happily
in this case such arguments are superfluous. You are apparently not
aware that Dillon's injury is much slighter than it ought to be to serve
your purpose. Dr. Disbrow has just told us that he will probably get off
with the loss of a finger; and I need hardly say that, whatever may have
been Dillon's own share in causing the accident--and as to this, as you
admit, opinions differ--Mrs. Westmore will assume all the expenses of
his nursing, besides making a liberal gift to his wife." Mr. Tredegar
laid down his cigar and drew forth a silver-mounted note-case. "Here, in
fact," he continued, "is a cheque which she asks you to transmit, and
which, as I think you will agree, ought to silence, on your part as well
as Mrs. Dillon's, any criticism of Mrs. Westmore's dealings with her
operatives."
The blood rose to Amherst's forehead, and he just restrained himself
from pushing back the cheque which Mr. Tredegar had laid on the table
between them.
"There is no question of criticizing Mrs. Westmore's dealings with her
operatives--as far as I know, she has had none as yet," he rejoined,
unable to control his voice as completely as his hand. "And the proof
of it is the impunity with which her agents deceive her--in this case,
for instance, of Dillon's injury. Dr. Disbrow, who is Mr. Truscomb's
brother-in-law, and apt to be influenced by his views, assures you that
the man will get off with the loss of a finger; but some one equally
competent to speak told me last night that he would lose not only his
hand but his arm."
Amherst's voice had swelled to a deep note of anger, and with his tossed
hair, and eyes darkening under furrowed brows, he presented an image of
revolutionary violence which deepened the disdain on Mr. Tredegar's lip.
"Some one equally competent to speak? Are you prepared to name this
anonymous authority?"
Amherst hesitated. "No--I shall have to ask you to take my word for it,"
he returned with a shade of embarrassment.
"Ah--" Mr. Tredegar murmured, giving to the expressive syllable its
utmost measure of decent exultation.
Amherst quivered under the thin lash, and broke out: "It is all you have
required of Dr. Disbrow--" but at this point Mr. Tredegar rose to his
feet.
"My dear sir, your resorting to such arguments convinces me that nothing
is to be gained by prolonging our talk. I will not even take up your
insinuations against two of the most respected men in the
community--such charges reflect only on those who make them."
Amherst, whose flame of anger had subsided with the sudden sense of its
futility, received this in silence, and the lawyer, reassured, continued
with a touch of condescension: "My only specific charge from Mrs.
Westmore was to hand you this cheque; but, in spite of what has passed,
I take it upon myself to add, in her behalf, that your conduct of today
will not be allowed to weigh against your record at the mills, and that
the extraordinary charges you have seen fit to bring against your
superiors will--if not repeated--simply be ignored."
* * * * *
When, the next morning at about ten, Mrs. Eustace Ansell joined herself
to the two gentlemen who still lingered over a desultory breakfast in
Mrs. Westmore's dining-room, she responded to their greeting with less
than her usual vivacity.
[Illustration: "No--I shall have to ask you to take my word for it."]
It was one of Mrs. Ansell's arts to bring to the breakfast-table just
the right shade of sprightliness, a warmth subdued by discretion as the
early sunlight is tempered by the lingering coolness of night. She was,
in short, as fresh, as temperate, as the hour, yet without the
concomitant chill which too often marks its human atmosphere: rather her
soft effulgence dissipated the morning frosts, opening pinched spirits
to a promise of midday warmth. But on this occasion a mist of
uncertainty hung on her smile, and veiled the glance which she turned
on the contents of the heavy silver dishes successively presented to her
notice. When, at the conclusion of this ceremony, the servants had
withdrawn, she continued for a moment to stir her tea in silence, while
her glance travelled from Mr. Tredegar, sunk in his morning mail, to Mr.
Langhope, who leaned back resignedly in his chair, trying to solace
himself with Hanaford Banner, till midday should bring him a sight of
the metropolitan press.
"I suppose you know," she said suddenly, "that Bessy has telegraphed for
Cicely, and made her arrangements to stay here another week."
Mr. Langhope's stick slipped to the floor with the sudden displacement
of his whole lounging person, and Mr. Tredegar, removing his
tortoise-shell reading-glasses, put them hastily into their case, as
though to declare for instant departure.
"My dear Maria--" Mr. Langhope gasped, while she rose and restored his
stick.
"She considers it, then, her duty to wait and see Truscomb?" the lawyer
asked; and Mrs. Ansell, regaining her seat, murmured discreetly: "She
puts it so--yes."
"My dear Maria--" Mr. Langhope repeated helplessly, tossing aside his
paper and drawing his chair up to the table.
"But it would be perfectly easy to return: it is quite unnecessary to
wait here for his recovery," Mr. Tredegar pursued, as though setting
forth a fact which had not hitherto presented itself to the more limited
intelligence of his hearers.
Mr. Langhope emitted a short laugh, and Mrs. Ansell answered gently:
"She says she detests the long journey."
Mr. Tredegar rose and gathered up his letters with a gesture of
annoyance. "In that case--if I had been notified earlier of this
decision, I might have caught the morning train," he interrupted
himself, glancing resentfully at his watch.
"Oh, don't leave us, Tredegar," Mr. Langhope entreated. "We'll reason
with her--we'll persuade her to go back by the three-forty."
Mrs. Ansell smiled. "She telegraphed at seven. Cicely and the governess
are already on their way."
"At seven? But, my dear friend, why on earth didn't you tell us?"
"I didn't know till a few minutes ago. Bessy called me in as I was
coming down."
"Ah--" Mr. Langhope murmured, meeting her eyes for a fraction of a
second. In the encounter, she appeared to communicate something more
than she had spoken, for as he stooped to pick up his paper he said,
more easily: "My dear Tredegar, if we're in a box there's no reason why
we should force you into it too. Ring for Ropes, and we'll look up a
train for you."
Mr. Tredegar appeared slightly ruffled at this prompt acquiescence in
his threatened departure. "Of course, if I had been notified in advance,
I might have arranged to postpone my engagements another day; but in any
case, it is quite out of the question that I should return in a
week--and quite unnecessary," he added, snapping his lips shut as though
he were closing his last portmanteau.
"Oh, quite--quite," Mr. Langhope assented. "It isn't, in fact, in the
least necessary for any of us either to stay on now or to return.
Truscomb could come to Long Island when he recovers, and answer any
questions we may have to put; but if Bessy has sent for the child, we
must of course put off going for today--at least I must," he added
sighing, "and, though I know it's out of the question to exact such a
sacrifice from you, I have a faint hope that our delightful friend here,
with the altruistic spirit of her sex----"
"Oh, I shall enjoy it--my maid is unpacking," Mrs. Ansell gaily
affirmed; and Mr. Tredegar, shrugging his shoulders, said curtly: "In
that case I will ring for the time-table."
When he had withdrawn to consult it in the seclusion of the library, and
Mrs. Ansell, affecting a sudden desire for a second cup of tea, had
reseated herself to await the replenishment of the kettle, Mr. Langhope
exchanged his own chair for a place at her side.
"Now what on earth does this mean?" he asked, lighting a cigarette in
response to her slight nod of consent.
Mrs. Ansell's gaze lost itself in the depths of the empty tea-pot.
"A number of things--or any one of them," she said at length, extending
her arm toward the tea-caddy.
"For instance--?" he rejoined, following appreciatively the movements of
her long slim hands.
She raised her head and met his eyes. "For instance: it may mean--don't
resent the suggestion--that you and Mr. Tredegar were not quite
well-advised in persuading her not to see Mr. Amherst yesterday
evening."
Mr. Langhope uttered an exclamation of surprise.
"But, my dear Maria--in the name of reason...why, after the doctor's
visit--after his coming here last night, at Truscomb's request, to put
the actual facts before her--should she have gone over the whole
business again with this interfering young fellow? How, in fact, could
she have done so," he added, after vainly waiting for her reply,
"without putting a sort of slight on Truscomb, who is, after all, the
only person entitled to speak with authority?"
Mrs. Ansell received his outburst in silence, and the butler,
reappearing with the kettle and fresh toast, gave her the chance to
prolong her pause for a full minute. When the door had closed on him,
she said: "Judged by reason, your arguments are unanswerable; but when
it comes to a question of feeling----"
"Feeling? What kind of feeling? You don't mean to suggest anything so
preposterous as that Bessy----?"
She made a gesture of smiling protest. "I confess it is to be regretted
that his mother is a lady, and that he looks--you must have noticed
it?--so amazingly like the portraits of the young Schiller. But I only
meant that Bessy forms all her opinions emotionally; and that she must
have been very strongly affected by the scene Mr. Tredegar described to
us."
"Ah," Mr. Langhope interjected, replying first to her parenthesis, "how
a woman of your good sense stumbled on that idea of hunting up the
mother--!" but Mrs. Ansell answered, with a slight grimace: "My dear
Henry, if you could see the house they live in you'd think I had been
providentially guided there!" and, reverting to the main issue, he went
on fretfully: "But why, after hearing the true version of the facts,
should Bessy still be influenced by that sensational scene? Even if it
was not, as Tredegar suspects, cooked up expressly to take her in, she
must see that the hospital doctor is, after all, as likely as any one to
know how the accident really happened, and how seriously the fellow is
hurt."
"There's the point. Why should Bessy believe Dr. Disbrow rather than Mr.
Amherst?"
"For the best of reasons--because Disbrow has nothing to gain by
distorting the facts, whereas this young Amherst, as Tredegar pointed
out, has the very obvious desire to give Truscomb a bad name and shove
himself into his place."
Mrs. Ansell contemplatively turned the rings upon her fingers. "From
what I saw of Amherst I'm inclined to think that, if that is his object,
he is too clever to have shown his hand so soon. But if you are right,
was there not all the more reason for letting Bessy see him and find out
as soon as possible what he was aiming at?"
"If one could have trusted her to find out--but you credit my poor child
with more penetration than I've ever seen in her."
"Perhaps you've looked for it at the wrong time--and about the wrong
things. Bessy has the penetration of the heart."
"The heart! You make mine jump when you use such expressions."
"Oh, I use this one in a general sense. But I want to help you to keep
it from acquiring a more restricted significance."
"Restricted--to the young man himself?"
Mrs. Ansell's expressive hands seemed to commit the question to fate.
"All I ask you to consider for the present is that Bessy is quite
unoccupied and excessively bored."
"Bored? Why, she has everything on earth she can want!"
"The ideal state for producing boredom--the only atmosphere in which it
really thrives. And besides--to be humanly inconsistent--there's just
one thing she hasn't got."
"Well?" Mr. Langhope groaned, fortifying himself with a second
cigarette.
"An occupation for that rudimentary little organ, the mention of which
makes you jump."
"There you go again! Good heavens, Maria, do you want to encourage her
to fall in love?"
"Not with a man, just at present, but with a hobby, an interest, by all
means. If she doesn't, the man will take the place of the
interest--there's a vacuum to be filled, and human nature abhors a
vacuum."
Mr. Langhope shrugged his shoulders. "I don't follow you. She adored her
husband."
His friend's fine smile was like a magnifying glass silently applied to
the gross stupidity of his remark. "Oh, I don't say it was a great
passion--but they got on perfectly," he corrected himself.
"So perfectly that you must expect her to want a little storm and stress
for a change. The mere fact that you and Mr. Tredegar objected to her
seeing Mr. Amherst last night has roused the spirit of opposition in
her. A year ago she hadn't any spirit of opposition."
"There was nothing for her to oppose--poor Dick made her life so
preposterously easy."
"My ingenuous friend! Do you still think that's any reason? The fact is,
Bessy wasn't awake, she wasn't even born, then.... She is now, and you
know the infant's first conscious joy is to smash things."
"It will be rather an expensive joy if the mills are the first thing she
smashes."
"Oh I imagine the mills are pretty substantial. I should, I own," Mrs.
Ansell smiled, "not object to seeing her try her teeth on them."
"Which, in terms of practical conduct, means----?"
"That I advise you not to disapprove of her staying on, or of her
investigating the young man's charges. You must remember that another
peculiarity of the infant mind is to tire soonest of the toy that no one
tries to take away from it."
"_Que diable!_ But suppose Truscomb turns rusty at this very unusual
form of procedure? Perhaps you don't quite know how completely he
represents the prosperity of the mills."
"All the more reason," Mrs. Ansell persisted, rising at the sound of Mr.
Tredegar's approach. "For don't you perceive, my poor distracted friend,
that if Truscomb turns rusty, as he undoubtedly will, the inevitable
result will be his manager's dismissal--and that thereafter there will
presumably be peace in Warsaw?"
"Ah, you divinely wicked woman!" cried Mr. Langhope, snatching at an
appreciative pressure of her hand as the lawyer reappeared in the
doorway.
VI
BEFORE daylight that same morning Amherst, dressing by the gas-flame
above his cheap wash-stand, strove to bring some order into his angry
thoughts. It humbled him to feel his purpose tossing rudderless on
unruly waves of emotion, yet strive as he would he could not regain a
hold on it. The events of the last twenty-four hours had been too rapid
and unexpected for him to preserve his usual clear feeling of mastery;
and he had, besides, to reckon with the first complete surprise of his
senses. His way of life had excluded him from all contact with the
subtler feminine influences, and the primitive side of the relation left
his imagination untouched. He was therefore the more assailable by those
refined forms of the ancient spell that lurk in delicacy of feeling
interpreted by loveliness of face. By his own choice he had cut himself
off from all possibility of such communion; had accepted complete
abstinence for that part of his nature which might have offered a
refuge from the stern prose of his daily task. But his personal
indifference to his surroundings--deliberately encouraged as a defiance
to the attractions of the life he had renounced--proved no defence
against this appeal; rather, the meanness of his surroundings combined
with his inherited refinement of taste to deepen the effect of Bessy's
charm.
As he reviewed the incidents of the past hours, a reaction of
self-derision came to his aid. What was this exquisite opportunity from
which he had cut himself off? What, to reduce the question to a personal
issue, had Mrs. Westmore said or done that, on the part of a plain
woman, would have quickened his pulses by the least fraction of a
second? Why, it was only the old story of the length of Cleopatra's
nose! Because her eyes were a heavenly vehicle for sympathy, because her
voice was pitched to thrill the tender chords, he had been deluded into
thinking that she understood and responded to his appeal. And her own
emotions had been wrought upon by means as cheap: it was only the
obvious, theatrical side of the incident that had affected her. If
Dillon's wife had been old and ugly, would she have been clasped to her
employer's bosom? A more expert knowledge of the sex would have told
Amherst that such ready sympathy is likely to be followed by as prompt a
reaction of indifference. Luckily Mrs. Westmore's course had served as a
corrective for his lack of experience; she had even, as it appeared,
been at some pains to hasten the process of disillusionment. This timely
discipline left him blushing at his own insincerity; for he now saw that
he had risked his future not because of his zeal for the welfare of the
mill-hands, but because Mrs. Westmore's look was like sunshine on his
frozen senses, and because he was resolved, at any cost, to arrest her
attention, to associate himself with her by the only means in his power.
Well, he deserved to fail with such an end in view; and the futility of
his scheme was matched by the vanity of his purpose. In the cold light
of disenchantment it seemed as though he had tried to build an
impregnable fortress out of nursery blocks. How could he have foreseen
anything but failure for so preposterous an attempt? His breach of
discipline would of course be reported at once to Mr. Gaines and
Truscomb; and the manager, already jealous of his assistant's popularity
with the hands, which was a tacit criticism of his own methods, would
promptly seize the pretext to be rid of him. Amherst was aware that only
his technical efficiency, and his knack of getting the maximum of work
out of the operatives, had secured him from Truscomb's animosity. From
the outset there had been small sympathy between the two; but the
scarcity of competent and hard-working assistants had made Truscomb
endure him for what he was worth to the mills. Now, however, his own
folly had put the match to the manager's smouldering dislike, and he saw
himself, in consequence, discharged and black-listed, and perhaps
roaming for months in quest of a job. He knew the efficiency of that
far-reaching system of defamation whereby the employers of labour pursue
and punish the subordinate who incurs their displeasure. In the case of
a mere operative this secret persecution often worked complete ruin; and
even to a man of Amherst's worth it opened the dispiriting prospect of a
long struggle for rehabilitation.
Deep down, he suffered most at the thought that his blow for the
operatives had failed; but on the surface it was the manner of his
failure that exasperated him. For it seemed to prove him unfit for the
very work to which he was drawn: that yearning to help the world forward
that, in some natures, sets the measure to which the personal adventure
must keep step. Amherst had hitherto felt himself secured by his insight
and self-control from the emotional errors besetting the way of the
enthusiast; and behold, he had stumbled into the first sentimental trap
in his path, and tricked his eyes with a Christmas-chromo vision of
lovely woman dispensing coals and blankets! Luckily, though such wounds
to his self-confidence cut deep, he could apply to them the antiseptic
of an unfailing humour; and before he had finished dressing, the
picture of his wide schemes of social reform contracting to a blue-eyed
philanthropy of cheques and groceries, had provoked a reaction of
laughter. Perhaps the laughter came too soon, and rang too loud, to be
true to the core; but at any rate it healed the edges of his hurt, and
gave him a sound surface of composure.
But he could not laugh away the thought of the trials to which his
intemperance had probably exposed his mother; and when, at the
breakfast-table, from which Duplain had already departed, she broke into
praise of their visitor, it was like a burning irritant on his wound.
"What a face, John! Of course I don't often see people of that kind
now--" the words, falling from her too simply to be reproachful, wrung
him, for that, all the more--"but I'm sure that kind of soft loveliness
is rare everywhere; like a sweet summer morning with the mist on it. The
Gaines girls, now, are my idea of the modern type; very handsome, of
course, but you see just _how_ handsome the first minute. I like a story
that keeps one wondering till the end. It was very kind of Maria
Ansell," Mrs. Amherst wandered happily on, "to come and hunt me out
yesterday, and I enjoyed our quiet talk about old times. But what I
liked best was seeing Mrs. Westmore--and, oh, John, if she came to live
here, what a benediction to the mills!"
Amherst was silent, moved most of all by the unimpaired simplicity of
heart with which his mother could take up past relations, and open her
meagre life to the high visitations of grace and fashion, without a
tinge of self-consciousness or apology. "I shall never be as genuine as
that," he thought, remembering how he had wished to have Mrs. Westmore
know that he was of her own class. How mixed our passions are, and how
elastic must be the word that would cover any one of them! Amherst's, at
that moment, were all stained with the deep wound to his self-love.
The discolouration he carried in his eye made the mill-village seem more
than commonly cheerless and ugly as he walked over to the office after
breakfast. Beyond the grim roof-line of the factories a dazzle of rays
sent upward from banked white clouds the promise of another brilliant
day; and he reflected that Mrs. Westmore would soon be speeding home to
the joy of a gallop over the plains.
Far different was the task that awaited him--yet it gave him a pang to
think that he might be performing it for the last time. In spite of Mr.
Tredegar's assurances, he was certain that the report of his conduct
must by this time have reached the President, and been transmitted to
Truscomb; the latter was better that morning, and the next day he would
doubtless call his rebellious assistant to account. Amherst, meanwhile,
took up his routine with a dull heart. Even should his offense be
condoned, his occupation presented, in itself, little future to a man
without money or powerful connections. Money! He had spurned the thought
of it in choosing his work, yet he now saw that, without its aid, he was
powerless to accomplish the object to which his personal desires had
been sacrificed. His love of his craft had gradually been merged in the
larger love for his fellow-workers, and in the resulting desire to lift
and widen their lot. He had once fancied that this end might be attained
by an internal revolution in the management of the Westmore mills; that
he might succeed in creating an industrial object-lesson conspicuous
enough to point the way to wiser law-making and juster relations between
the classes. But the last hours' experiences had shown him how vain it
was to assault single-handed the strong barrier between money and
labour, and how his own dash at the breach had only thrust him farther
back into the obscure ranks of the stragglers. It was, after all, only
through politics that he could return successfully to the attack; and
financial independence was the needful preliminary to a political
career. If he had stuck to the law he might, by this time, have been
nearer his goal; but then the gold might not have mattered, since it was
only by living among the workers that he had learned to care for their
fate. And rather than have forfeited that poignant yet mighty vision of
the onward groping of the mass, rather than have missed the widening of
his own nature that had come through sharing their hopes and pains, he
would still have turned from the easier way, have chosen the deeper
initiation rather than the readier attainment.
But this philosophic view of the situation was a mere thread of light on
the farthest verge of his sky: much nearer were the clouds of immediate
care, amid which his own folly, and his mother's possible suffering from
it, loomed darkest; and these considerations made him resolve that, if
his insubordination were overlooked, he would swallow the affront of a
pardon, and continue for the present in the mechanical performance of
his duties. He had just brought himself to this leaden state of
acquiescence when one of the clerks in the outer office thrust his head
in to say: "A lady asking for you--" and looking up, Amherst beheld
Bessy Westmore.
She came in alone, with an air of high self-possession in marked
contrast to her timidity and indecision of the previous day. Amherst
thought she looked taller, more majestic; so readily may the upward
slant of a soft chin, the firmer line of yielding brows, add a cubit to
the outward woman. Her aspect was so commanding that he fancied she had
come to express her disapproval of his conduct, to rebuke him for lack
of respect to Mr. Tredegar; but a moment later it became clear, even to
his inexperienced perceptions, that it was not to himself that her
challenge was directed.
She advanced toward the seat he had moved forward, but in her absorption
forgot to seat herself, and stood with her clasped hands resting on the
back of the chair.
"I have come back to talk to you," she began, in her sweet voice with
its occasional quick lift of appeal. "I knew that, in Mr. Truscomb's
absence, it would be hard for you to leave the mills, and there are one
or two things I want you to explain before I go away--some of the
things, for instance, that you spoke to Mr. Tredegar about last night."
Amherst's feeling of constraint returned. "I'm afraid I expressed myself
badly; I may have annoyed him--" he began.
She smiled this away, as though irrelevant to the main issue. "Perhaps
you don't quite understand each other--but I am sure you can make it
clear to me." She sank into the chair, resting one arm on the edge of
the desk behind which he had resumed his place. "That is the reason why
I came alone," she continued. "I never can understand when a lot of
people are trying to tell me a thing all at once. And I don't suppose I
care as much as a man would--a lawyer especially--about the forms that
ought to be observed. All I want is to find out what is wrong and how to
remedy it."
Her blue eyes met Amherst's in a look that flowed like warmth about his
heart. How should he have doubted that her feelings were as exquisite as
her means of expressing them? The iron bands of distrust were loosened
from his spirit, and he blushed for his cheap scepticism of the morning.
In a woman so evidently nurtured in dependence, whose views had been
formed, and her actions directed, by the most conventional influences,
the mere fact of coming alone to Westmore, in open defiance of her
advisers, bespoke a persistence of purpose that put his doubts to shame.
"It will make a great difference to the people here if you interest
yourself in them," he rejoined. "I tried to explain to Mr. Tredegar that
I had no wish to criticise the business management of the mills--even if
there had been any excuse for my doing so--but that I was sure the
condition of the operatives could be very much improved, without
permanent harm to the business, by any one who felt a personal sympathy
for them; and in the end I believe such sympathy produces better work,
and so benefits the employer materially."
She listened with her gentle look of trust, as though committing to him,
with the good faith of a child, her ignorance, her credulity, her little
rudimentary convictions and her little tentative aspirations, relying on
him not to abuse or misdirect them in the boundless supremacy of his
masculine understanding.
"That is just what I want you to explain to me," she said. "But first I
should like to know more about the poor man who was hurt. I meant to see
his wife yesterday, but Mr. Gaines told me she would be at work till
six, and it would have been difficult to go after that. I _did_ go to
the hospital; but the man was sleeping--is Dillon his name?--and the
matron told us he was much better. Dr. Disbrow came in the evening and
said the same thing--told us it was all a false report about his having
been so badly hurt, and that Mr. Truscomb was very much annoyed when he
heard of your having said, before the operatives, that Dillon would lose
his arm."
Amherst smiled. "Ah--Mr. Truscomb heard that? Well, he's right to be
annoyed: I ought not to have said it when I did. But unfortunately I am
not the only one to be punished. The operative who tied on the black
cloth was dismissed this morning."
Mrs. Westmore flamed up. "Dismissed for that? Oh, how unjust--how
cruel!"
"You must look at both sides of the case," said Amherst, finding it much
easier to remain temperate in the glow he had kindled than if he had had
to force his own heat into frozen veins. "Of course any act of
insubordination must be reprimanded--but I think a reprimand would have
been enough."
It gave him an undeniable throb of pleasure to find that she was not to
be checked by such arguments. "But he shall be put back--I won't have
any one discharged for such a reason! You must find him for me at
once--you must tell him----"
Once more Amherst gently restrained her. "If you'll forgive my saying
so, I think it is better to let him go, and take his chance of getting
work elsewhere. If he were taken back he might be made to suffer. As
things are organized here, the hands are very much at the mercy of the
overseers, and the overseer in that room would be likely to make it
uncomfortable for a hand who had so openly defied him."
With a heavy sigh she bent her puzzled brows on him. "How complicated it
is! I wonder if I shall ever understand it all. _You_ don't think
Dillon's accident was his own fault, then?"
"Certainly not; there are too many cards in that room. I pointed out the
fact to Mr. Truscomb when the new machines were set up three years ago.
An operative may be ever so expert with his fingers, and yet not learn
to measure his ordinary movements quite as accurately as if he were an
automaton; and that is what a man must do to be safe in the
carding-room."
She sighed again. "The more you tell me, the more difficult it all
seems. Why is the carding-room so over-crowded?"
"To make it pay better," Amherst returned bluntly; and the colour
flushed her sensitive skin.
He thought she was about to punish him for his plain-speaking; but she
went on after a pause: "What you say is dreadful. Each thing seems to
lead back to another--and I feel so ignorant of it all." She hesitated
again, and then said, turning her bluest glance on him: "I am going to
be quite frank with you, Mr. Amherst. Mr. Tredegar repeated to me what
you said to him last night, and I think he was annoyed that you were
unwilling to give any proof of the charges you made."
"Charges? Ah," Amherst exclaimed, with a start of recollection, "he
means my refusing to say who told me that Dr. Disbrow was not telling
the truth about Dillon?"
"Yes. He said that was a very grave accusation to make, and that no one
should have made it without being able to give proof."
"That is quite true, theoretically. But in this case it would be easy
for you or Mr. Tredegar to find out whether I was right."
"But Mr. Tredegar said you refused to say who told you."
"I was bound to, as it happened. But I am not bound to prevent your
trying to get the same information."
"Ah--" she murmured understandingly; and, a sudden thought striking him,
he went on, with a glance at the clock: "If you really wish to judge for
yourself, why not go to the hospital now? I shall be free in five
minutes, and could go with you if you wish it."
Amherst had remembered the nurse's cry of recognition when she saw Mrs.
Westmore's face under the street-lamp; and it immediately occurred to
him that, if the two women had really known each other, Mrs. Westmore
would have no difficulty in obtaining the information she wanted; while,
even if they met as strangers, the dark-eyed girl's perspicacity might
still be trusted to come to their aid. It remained only to be seen how
Mrs. Westmore would take his suggestion; but some instinct was already
telling him that the highhanded method was the one she really preferred.
"To the hospital--now? I should like it of all things," she exclaimed,
rising with what seemed an almost childish zest in the adventure. "Of
course that is the best way of finding out. I ought to have insisted on
seeing Dillon yesterday--but I begin to think the matron didn't want me
to."
Amherst left this inference to work itself out in her mind, contenting
himself, as they drove back to Hanaford, with answering her questions
about Dillon's family, the ages of his children, and his wife's health.
Her enquiries, he noticed, did not extend from the particular to the
general: her curiosity, as yet, was too purely personal and emotional to
lead to any larger consideration of the question. But this larger view
might grow out of the investigation of Dillon's case; and meanwhile
Amherst's own purposes were momentarily lost in the sweet confusion of
feeling her near him--of seeing the exquisite grain of her skin, the way
her lashes grew out of a dusky line on the edge of the white lids, the
way her hair, stealing in spirals of light from brow to ear, wavered off
into a fruity down on the edge of the cheek.
At the hospital they were protestingly admitted by Mrs. Ogan, though the
official "visitors' hour" was not till the afternoon; and beside the
sufferer's bed, Amherst saw again that sudden flowering of compassion
which seemed the key to his companion's beauty: as though her lips had
been formed for consolation and her hands for tender offices. It was
clear enough that Dillon, still sunk in a torpor broken by feverish
tossings, was making no perceptible progress toward recovery; and Mrs.
Ogan was reduced to murmuring some technical explanation about the state
of the wound while Bessy hung above him with reassuring murmurs as to
his wife's fate, and promises that the children should be cared for.
Amherst had noticed, on entering, that a new nurse--a gaping young woman
instantly lost in the study of Mrs. Westmore's toilet--had replaced the
dark-eyed attendant of the day before; and supposing that the latter was
temporarily off duty, he asked Mrs. Ogan if she might be seen.
The matron's face was a picture of genteel perplexity. "The other nurse?
Our regular surgical nurse, Miss Golden, is ill--Miss Hibbs, here, is
replacing her for the present." She indicated the gaping damsel; then,
as Amherst persisted: "Ah," she wondered negligently, "do you mean the
young lady you saw here yesterday? Certainly--I had forgotten: Miss
Brent was merely a--er--temporary substitute. I believe she was
recommended to Dr. Disbrow by one of his patients; but we found her
quite unsuitable--in fact, unfitted--and the doctor discharged her this
morning."
Mrs. Westmore had drawn near, and while the matron delivered her
explanation, with an uneasy sorting and shifting of words, a quick
signal of intelligence passed between her hearers. "You see?" Amherst's
eyes exclaimed; "I see--they have sent her away because she told you,"
Bessy's flashed back in wrath, and his answering look did not deny her
inference.
"Do you know where she has gone?" Amherst enquired; but Mrs. Ogan,
permitting her brows a faint lift of surprise, replied that she had no
idea of Miss Brent's movements, beyond having heard that she was to
leave Hanaford immediately
In the carriage Bessy exclaimed: "It was the nurse, of course--if we
could only find her! Brent--did Mrs. Ogan say her name was Brent?"
"Do you know the name?"
"Yes--at least--but it couldn't, of course, be the girl I knew----"
"Miss Brent saw you the night you arrived, and thought she recognized
you. She said you and she had been at some school or convent together."
"The Sacred Heart? Then it _is_ Justine Brent! I heard they had lost
their money--I haven't seen her for years. But how strange that she
should be a hospital nurse! And why is she at Hanaford, I wonder?"
"She was here only on a visit; she didn't tell me where she lived. She
said she heard that a surgical nurse was wanted at the hospital, and
volunteered her services; I'm afraid she got small thanks for them."
"Do you really think they sent her away for talking to you? How do you
suppose they found out?"
"I waited for her last night when she left the hospital, and I suppose
Mrs. Ogan or one of the doctors saw us. It was thoughtless of me,"
Amherst exclaimed with compunction.
"I wish I had seen her--poor Justine! We were the greatest friends at
the convent. She was the ringleader in all our mischief--I never saw any
one so quick and clever. I suppose her fun is all gone now."
For a moment Mrs. Westmore's mind continued to linger among her
memories; then she reverted to the question of the Dillons, and of what
might best be done for them if Miss Brent's fears should be realized.
As the carriage neared her door she turned to her companion with
extended hand. "Thank you so much, Mr. Amherst. I am glad you suggested
that Mr. Truscomb should find some work for Dillon about the office. But
I must talk to you about this again--can you come in this evening?"
VII
AMHERST could never afterward regain a detailed impression of the weeks
that followed. They lived in his memory chiefly as exponents of the
unforeseen, nothing he had looked for having come to pass in the way or
at the time expected; while the whole movement of life was like the
noon-day flow of a river, in which the separate ripples of brightness
are all merged in one blinding glitter. His recurring conferences with
Mrs. Westmore formed, as it were, the small surprising kernel of fact
about which sensations gathered and grew with the swift ripening of a
magician's fruit. That she should remain on at Hanaford to look into the
condition of the mills did not, in itself, seem surprising to Amherst;
for his short phase of doubt had been succeeded by an abundant inflow of
faith in her intentions. It satisfied his inner craving for harmony that
her face and spirit should, after all, so corroborate and complete each
other; that it needed no moral sophistry to adjust her acts to her
appearance, her words to the promise of her smile. But her immediate
confidence in him, her resolve to support him in his avowed
insubordination, to ignore, with the royal license of her sex, all that
was irregular and inexpedient in asking his guidance while the whole
official strength of the company darkened the background with a
gathering storm of disapproval--this sense of being the glove flung by
her hand in the face of convention, quickened astonishingly the flow of
Amherst's sensations. It was as though a mountain-climber, braced to the
strain of a hard ascent, should suddenly see the way break into roses,
and level itself in a path for his feet.
On his second visit he found the two ladies together, and Mrs. Ansell's
smile of approval seemed to cast a social sanction on the episode, to
classify it as comfortably usual and unimportant. He could see that her
friend's manner put Bessy at ease, helping her to ask her own questions,
and to reflect on his suggestions, with less bewilderment and more
self-confidence. Mrs. Ansell had the faculty of restoring to her the
belief in her reasoning powers that her father could dissolve in a
monosyllable.
The talk, on this occasion, had turned mainly on the future of the
Dillon family, on the best means of compensating for the accident, and,
incidentally, on the care of the young children of the mill-colony.
Though Amherst did not believe in the extremer forms of industrial
paternalism, he was yet of opinion that, where married women were
employed, the employer should care for their children. He had been
gradually, and somewhat reluctantly, brought to this conviction by the
many instances of unavoidable neglect and suffering among the children
of the women-workers at Westmore; and Mrs. Westmore took up the scheme
with all the ardour of her young motherliness, quivering at the thought
of hungry or ailing children while her Cicely, leaning a silken head
against her, lifted puzzled eyes to her face.
On the larger problems of the case it was less easy to fix Bessy's
attention; but Amherst was far from being one of the extreme theorists
who reject temporary remedies lest they defer the day of general
renewal, and since he looked on every gain in the material condition of
the mill-hands as a step in their moral growth, he was quite willing to
hold back his fundamental plans while he discussed the establishment of
a nursery, and of a night-school for the boys in the mills.
The third time he called, he found Mr. Langhope and Mr. Halford Gaines
of the company. The President of the Westmore mills was a trim
middle-sized man, whose high pink varnish of good living would have
turned to purple could he have known Mr. Langhope's opinion of his
jewelled shirt-front and the padded shoulders of his evening-coat.
Happily he had no inkling of these views, and was fortified in his
command of the situation by an unimpaired confidence in his own
appearance; while Mr. Langhope, discreetly withdrawn behind a veil of
cigar-smoke, let his silence play like a fine criticism over the various
phases of the discussion.
It was a surprise to Amherst to find himself in Mr. Gaines's presence.
The President, secluded in his high office, seldom visited the mills,
and when there showed no consciousness of any presence lower than
Truscomb's; and Amherst's first thought was that, in the manager's
enforced absence, he was to be called to account by the head of the
firm. But he was affably welcomed by Mr. Gaines, who made it clear that
his ostensible purpose in coming was to hear Amherst's views as to the
proposed night-schools and nursery. These were pointedly alluded to as
Mrs. Westmore's projects, and the young man was made to feel that he was
merely called in as a temporary adviser in Truscomb's absence. This was,
in fact, the position Amherst preferred to take, and he scrupulously
restricted himself to the answering of questions, letting Mrs. Westmore
unfold his plans as though they had been her own. "It is much better,"
he reflected, "that they should all think so, and she too, for Truscomb
will be on his legs again in a day or two, and then my hours will be
numbered."
Meanwhile he was surprised to find Mr. Gaines oddly amenable to the
proposed innovations, which he appeared to regard as new fashions in
mill-management, to be adopted for the same cogent reasons as a new cut
in coat-tails.
"Of course we want to be up-to-date--there's no reason why the Westmore
mills shouldn't do as well by their people as any mills in the country,"
he affirmed, in the tone of the entertainer accustomed to say: "I want
the thing done handsomely." But he seemed even less conscious than Mrs.
Westmore that each particular wrong could be traced back to a radical
vice in the system. He appeared to think that every murmur of assent to
her proposals passed the sponge, once for all, over the difficulty
propounded: as though a problem in algebra should be solved by wiping it
off the blackboard.
"My dear Bessy, we all owe you a debt of gratitude for coming here, and
bringing, so to speak, a fresh eye to bear on the subject. If I've been,
perhaps, a little too exclusively absorbed in making the mills
profitable, my friend Langhope will, I believe, not be the first
to--er--cast a stone at me." Mr. Gaines, who was the soul of delicacy,
stumbled a little over the awkward associations connected with this
figure, but, picking himself up, hastened on to affirm: "And in that
respect, I think we can challenge comparison with any industry in the
state; but I am the first to admit that there may be another side, a
side that it takes a woman--a mother--to see. For instance," he threw in
jocosely, "I flatter myself that I know how to order a good dinner; but
I always leave the flowers to my wife. And if you'll permit me to say
so," he went on, encouraged by the felicity of his image, "I believe it
will produce a most pleasing effect--not only on the operatives
themselves, but on the whole of Hanaford--on our own set of people
especially--to have you come here and interest yourself in
the--er--philanthropic side of the work."
Bessy coloured a little. She blushed easily, and was perhaps not
over-discriminating as to the quality of praise received; but under her
ripple of pleasure a stronger feeling stirred, and she said hastily: "I
am afraid I never should have thought of these things if Mr. Amherst had
not pointed them out to me."
Mr. Gaines met this blandly. "Very gratifying to Mr. Amherst to have you
put it in that way; and I am sure we all appreciate his valuable hints.
Truscomb himself could not have been more helpful, though his larger
experience will no doubt be useful later on, in developing
and--er--modifying your plans."
It was difficult to reconcile this large view of the moral issue with
the existence of abuses which made the management of the Westmore mills
as unpleasantly notorious in one section of the community as it was
agreeably notable in another. But Amherst was impartial enough to see
that Mr. Gaines was unconscious of the incongruities of the situation.
He left the reconciling of incompatibles to Truscomb with the simple
faith of the believer committing a like task to his maker: it was in the
manager's mind that the dark processes of adjustment took place. Mr.
Gaines cultivated the convenient and popular idea that by ignoring
wrongs one is not so much condoning as actually denying their existence;
and in pursuance of this belief he devoutly abstained from studying the
conditions at Westmore.
A farther surprise awaited Amherst when Truscomb reappeared in the
office. The manager was always a man of few words; and for the first
days his intercourse with his assistant was restricted to asking
questions and issuing orders. Soon afterward, it became known that
Dillon's arm was to be amputated, and that afternoon Truscomb was
summoned to see Mrs. Westmore. When he returned he sent for Amherst; and
the young man felt sure that his hour had come.
He was at dinner when the message reached him, and he knew from the
tightening of his mother's lips that she too interpreted it in the same
way. He was glad that Duplain's presence kept her from speaking her
fears; and he thanked her inwardly for the smile with which she watched
him go.
That evening, when he returned, the smile was still at its post; but it
dropped away wearily as he said, with his hands on her shoulders: "Don't
worry, mother; I don't know exactly what's happening, but we're not
blacklisted yet."
Mrs. Amherst had immediately taken up her work, letting her nervous
tension find its usual escape through her finger-tips. Her needles
flagged as she lifted her eyes to his.
"Something _is_ happening, then?" she murmured.
"Oh, a number of things, evidently--but though I'm in the heart of them,
I can't yet make out how they are going to affect me."
His mother's glance twinkled in time with the flash of her needles.
"There's always a safe place in the heart of a storm," she said
shrewdly; and Amherst rejoined with a laugh: "Well, if it's Truscomb's
heart, I don't know that it's particularly safe for me."
"Tell me just what he said, John," she begged, making no attempt to
carry the pleasantry farther, though its possibilities still seemed to
flicker about her lip; and Amherst proceeded to recount his talk with
the manager.
Truscomb, it appeared, had made no allusion to Dillon; his avowed
purpose in summoning his assistant had been to discuss with the latter
the question of the proposed nursery and schools. Mrs. Westmore, at
Amherst's suggestion, had presented these projects as her own; but the
question of a site having come up, she had mentioned to Truscomb his
assistant's proposal that the company should buy for the purpose the
notorious Eldorado. The road-house in question had always been one of
the most destructive influences in the mill-colony, and Amherst had made
one or two indirect attempts to have the building converted to other
uses; but the persistent opposition he encountered gave colour to the
popular report that the manager took a high toll from the landlord.
It therefore at once occurred to Amherst to suggest the purchase of the
property to Mrs. Westmore; and he was not surprised to find that
Truscomb's opposition to the scheme centred in the choice of the
building. But even at this point the manager betrayed no open
resistance; he seemed tacitly to admit Amherst's right to discuss the
proposed plans, and even to be consulted concerning the choice of a
site. He was ready with a dozen good reasons against the purchase of the
road-house; but here also he proceeded with a discretion unexampled in
his dealings with his subordinates. He acknowledged the harm done by the
dance-hall, but objected that he could not conscientiously advise the
company to pay the extortionate price at which it was held, and reminded
Amherst that, if that particular source of offense were removed, others
would inevitably spring up to replace it; marshalling the usual
temporizing arguments of tolerance and expediency, with no marked change
from his usual tone, till, just as the interview was ending, he asked,
with a sudden drop to conciliation, if the assistant manager had
anything to complain of in the treatment he received.
This came as such a surprise to Amherst that before he had collected
himself he found Truscomb ambiguously but unmistakably offering
him--with the practised indirection of the man accustomed to cover his
share in such transactions--a substantial "consideration" for dropping
the matter of the road-house. It was incredible, yet it had really
happened: the all-powerful Truscomb, who held Westmore in the hollow of
his hand, had stooped to bribing his assistant because he was afraid to
deal with him in a more summary manner. Amherst's leap of anger at the
offer was curbed by the instant perception of its cause. He had no time
to search for a reason; he could only rally himself to meet the
unintelligible with a composure as abysmal as Truscomb's; and his voice
still rang with the wonder of the incident as he retailed it to his
mother.
"Think of what it means, mother, for a young woman like Mrs. Westmore,
without any experience or any habit of authority, to come here, and at
the first glimpse of injustice, to be so revolted that she finds the
courage and cleverness to put her little hand to the machine and
reverse the engines--for it's nothing less that she's done! Oh, I know
there'll be a reaction--the pendulum's sure to swing back: but you'll
see it won't swing _as far_. Of course I shall go in the end--but
Truscomb may go too: Jove, if I could pull him down on me, like
what's-his-name and the pillars of the temple!"
He had risen and was measuring the little sitting-room with his long
strides, his head flung back and his eyes dark with the inward look his
mother had not always cared to see there. But now her own glance seemed
to have caught a ray from his, and the knitting flowed from her hands
like the thread of fate, as she sat silent, letting him exhale his hopes
and his wonder, and murmuring only, when he dropped again to the chair
at her side: "You won't go, Johnny--you won't go."
* * * * *
Mrs. Westmore lingered on for over two weeks, and during that time
Amherst was able, in various directions, to develop her interest in the
mill-workers. His own schemes involved a complete readjustment of the
relation between the company and the hands: the suppression of the
obsolete company "store" and tenements, which had so long sapped the
thrift and ambition of the workers; the transformation of the Hopewood
grounds into a park and athletic field, and the division of its
remaining acres into building lots for the mill-hands; the establishing
of a library, a dispensary and emergency hospital, and various other
centres of humanizing influence; but he refrained from letting her see
that his present suggestion was only a part of this larger plan, lest
her growing sympathy should be checked. He had in his mother an example
of the mind accessible only to concrete impressions: the mind which
could die for the particular instance, yet remain serenely indifferent
to its causes. To Mrs. Amherst, her son's work had been interesting
simply because it _was_ his work: remove his presence from Westmore, and
the whole industrial problem became to her as non-existent as star-dust
to the naked eye. And in Bessy Westmore he divined a nature of the same
quality--divined, but no longer criticized it. Was not that
concentration on the personal issue just the compensating grace of her
sex? Did it not offer a warm tint of human inconsistency to eyes chilled
by contemplating life in the mass? It pleased Amherst for the moment to
class himself with the impersonal student of social problems, though in
truth his interest in them had its source in an imagination as open as
Bessy's to the pathos of the personal appeal. But if he had the same
sensitiveness, how inferior were his means of expressing it! Again and
again, during their talks, he had the feeling which had come to him when
she bent over Dillon's bed--that her exquisite lines were, in some
mystical sense, the visible flowering of her nature, that they had taken
shape in response to the inward motions of the heart.
To a young man ruled by high enthusiasms there can be no more dazzling
adventure than to work this miracle in the tender creature who yields
her mind to his--to see, as it were, the blossoming of the spiritual
seed in forms of heightened loveliness, the bluer beam of the eye, the
richer curve of the lip, all the physical currents of life quickening
under the breath of a kindled thought. It did not occur to him that any
other emotion had effected the change he perceived. Bessy Westmore had
in full measure that gift of unconscious hypocrisy which enables a woman
to make the man in whom she is interested believe that she enters into
all his thoughts. She had--more than this--the gift of self-deception,
supreme happiness of the unreflecting nature, whereby she was able to
believe herself solely engrossed in the subjects they discussed, to
regard him as the mere spokesman of important ideas, thus saving their
intercourse from present constraint, and from the awkward contemplation
of future contingencies. So, in obedience to the ancient sorcery of
life, these two groped for and found each other in regions seemingly so
remote from the accredited domain of romance that it would have been as
a great surprise to them to learn whither they had strayed as to see
the arid streets of Westmore suddenly bursting into leaf.
With Mrs. Westmore's departure Amherst, for the first time, became aware
of a certain flatness in his life. His daily task seemed dull and
purposeless, and he was galled by Truscomb's studied forbearance, under
which he suspected a quickly accumulating store of animosity. He almost
longed for some collision which would release the manager's pent-up
resentment; yet he dreaded increasingly any accident that might make his
stay at Westmore impossible.
It was on Sundays, when he was freed from his weekly task, that he was
most at the mercy of these opposing feelings. They drove him forth on
long solitary walks beyond the town, walks ending most often in the
deserted grounds of Hopewood, beautiful now in the ruined gold of
October. As he sat under the beech-limbs above the river, watching its
brown current sweep the willow-roots of the banks, he thought how this
same current, within its next short reach, passed from wooded seclusion
to the noise and pollution of the mills. So his own life seemed to have
passed once more from the tranced flow of the last weeks into its old
channel of unillumined labour. But other thoughts came to him too: the
vision of converting that melancholy pleasure-ground into an outlet for
the cramped lives of the mill-workers; and he pictured the weed-grown
lawns and paths thronged with holiday-makers, and the slopes nearer the
factories dotted with houses and gardens.
An unexpected event revived these hopes. A few days before Christmas it
became known to Hanaford that Mrs. Westmore would return for the
holidays. Cicely was drooping in town air, and Bessy had persuaded Mr.
Langhope that the bracing cold of Hanaford would be better for the child
than the milder atmosphere of Long Island. They reappeared, and brought
with them a breath of holiday cheerfulness such as Westmore had never
known. It had always been the rule at the mills to let the operatives
take their pleasure as they saw fit, and the Eldorado and the Hanaford
saloons throve on this policy. But Mrs. Westmore arrived full of festal
projects. There was to be a giant Christmas tree for the mill-children,
a supper on the same scale for the operatives, and a bout of skating and
coasting at Hopewood for the older lads--the "band" and "bobbin" boys in
whom Amherst had always felt a special interest. The Gaines ladies,
resolved to show themselves at home in the latest philanthropic
fashions, actively seconded Bessy's endeavours, and for a week Westmore
basked under a sudden heat-wave of beneficence.
The time had passed when Amherst might have made light of such efforts.
With Bessy Westmore smiling up, holly-laden, from the foot of the ladder
on which she kept him perched, how could he question the efficacy of
hanging the opening-room with Christmas wreaths, or the ultimate benefit
of gorging the operatives with turkey and sheathing their offspring in
red mittens? It was just like the end of a story-book with a pretty
moral, and Amherst was in the mood to be as much taken by the tinsel as
the youngest mill-baby held up to gape at the tree.
At the New Year, when Mrs. Westmore left, the negotiations for the
purchase of the Eldorado were well advanced, and it was understood that
on their completion she was to return for the opening of the
night-school and nursery. Suddenly, however, it became known that the
proprietor of the road-house had decided not to sell. Amherst heard of
the decision from Duplain, and at once foresaw the inevitable
result--that Mrs. Westmore's plan would be given up owing to the
difficulty of finding another site. Mr. Gaines and Truscomb had both
discountenanced the erection of a special building for what was, after
all, only a tentative enterprise. Among the purchasable houses in
Westmore no other was suited to the purpose, and they had, therefore, a
good excuse for advising Bessy to defer her experiment.
Almost at the same time, however, another piece of news changed the
aspect of affairs. A scandalous occurrence at the Eldorado, witnesses to
which were unexpectedly forthcoming, put it in Amherst's power to
threaten the landlord with exposure unless he should at once accept the
company's offer and withdraw from Westmore. Amherst had no long time to
consider the best means of putting this threat into effect. He knew it
was not only idle to appeal to Truscomb, but essential to keep the facts
from him till the deed was done; yet how obtain the authority to act
without him? The seemingly insuperable difficulties of the situation
whetted Amherst's craving for a struggle. He thought first of writing to
Mrs. Westmore;, but now that the spell of her presence was withdrawn he
felt how hard it would be to make her understand the need of prompt and
secret action; and besides, was it likely that, at such short notice,
she could command the needful funds? Prudence opposed the attempt, and
on reflection he decided to appeal to Mr. Gaines, hoping that the
flagrancy of the case would rouse the President from his usual attitude
of indifference.
Mr. Gaines was roused to the extent of showing a profound resentment
against the cause of his disturbance. He relieved his sense of
responsibility by some didactic remarks on the vicious tendencies of the
working-classes, and concluded with the reflection that the more you did
for them the less thanks you got. But when Amherst showed an
unwillingness to let the matter rest on this time-honoured aphorism, the
President retrenched himself behind ambiguities, suggestions that they
should await Mrs. Westmore's return, and general considerations of a
pessimistic nature, tapering off into a gloomy view of the weather.
"By God, I'll write to her!" Amherst exclaimed, as the Gaines portals
closed on him; and all the way back to Westmore he was busy marshalling
his arguments and entreaties.
He wrote the letter that night, but did not post it. Some unavowed
distrust of her restrained him--a distrust not of her heart but of her
intelligence. He felt that the whole future of Westmore was at stake,
and decided to await the development of the next twenty-four hours. The
letter was still in his pocket when, after dinner, he was summoned to
the office by Truscomb.
That evening, when he returned home, he entered the little sitting-room
without speaking. His mother sat there alone, in her usual place--how
many nights he had seen the lamplight slant at that particular angle
across her fresh cheek and the fine wrinkles about her eyes! He was
going to add another wrinkle to the number now--soon they would creep
down and encroach upon the smoothness of the cheek.
She looked up and saw that his glance was turned to the crowded
bookshelves behind her.
"There must be nearly a thousand of them," he said as their eyes met.
"Books? Yes--with your father's. Why--were you thinking...?" She started
up suddenly and crossed over to him.
"Too many for wanderers," he continued, drawing her hands to his breast;
then, as she clung to him, weeping and trembling a little: "It had to
be, mother," he said, kissing her penitently where the fine wrinkles
died into the cheek.
VIII
AMHERST'S dismissal was not to take effect for a month; and in the
interval he addressed himself steadily to his task.
He went through the routine of the work numbly; but his intercourse with
the hands tugged at deep fibres of feelings. He had always shared, as
far as his duties allowed, in the cares and interests of their few free
hours: the hours when the automatic appendages of the giant machine
became men and women again, with desires and passions of their own.
Under Amherst's influence the mixed elements of the mill-community had
begun to crystallize into social groups: his books had served as an
improvised lending-library, he had organized a club, a rudimentary
orchestra, and various other means of binding together the better
spirits of the community. With the older men, the attractions of the
Eldorado, and kindred inducements, often worked against him; but among
the younger hands, and especially the boys, he had gained a personal
ascendency that it was bitter to relinquish.
It was the severing of this tie that cost him most pain in the final
days at Westmore; and after he had done what he could to console his
mother, and to put himself in the way of getting work elsewhere, he
tried to see what might be saved out of the ruins of the little polity
he had built up. He hoped his influence might at least persist in the
form of an awakened instinct of fellowship; and he gave every spare hour
to strengthening the links he had tried to form. The boys, at any rate,
would be honestly sorry to have him go: not, indeed, from the profounder
reasons that affected him, but because he had not only stood
persistently between the overseers and themselves, but had recognized
their right to fun after work-hours as well as their right to protection
while they worked.
In the glow of Mrs. Westmore's Christmas visitation an athletic club had
been formed, and leave obtained to use the Hopewood grounds for Saturday
afternoon sports; and thither Amherst continued to conduct the boys
after the mills closed at the week-end. His last Saturday had now come:
a shining afternoon of late February, with a red sunset bending above
frozen river and slopes of unruffled snow. For an hour or more he had
led the usual sports, coasting down the steep descent from the house to
the edge of the woods, and skating and playing hockey on the rough
river-ice which eager hands kept clear after every snow-storm. He always
felt the contagion of these sports: the glow of movement, the tumult of
young voices, the sting of the winter air, roused all the boyhood in his
blood. But today he had to force himself through his part in the
performance. To the very last, as he now saw, he had hoped for a sign in
the heavens: not the reversal of his own sentence--for, merely on
disciplinary grounds, he perceived that to be impossible--but something
pointing to a change in the management of the mills, some proof that
Mrs. Westmore's intervention had betokened more than a passing impulse
of compassion. Surely she would not accept without question the
abandonment of her favourite scheme; and if she came back to put the
question, the answer would lay bare the whole situation.... So Amherst's
hopes had persuaded him; but the day before he had heard that she was to
sail for Europe. The report, first announced in the papers, had been
confirmed by his mother, who brought back from a visit to Hanaford the
news that Mrs. Westmore was leaving at once for an indefinite period,
and that the Hanaford house was to be closed. Irony would have been the
readiest caustic for the wound inflicted; but Amherst, for that very
reason, disdained it. He would not taint his disappointment with
mockery, but would leave it among the unspoiled sadnesses of life....
He flung himself into the boys' sports with his usual energy, meaning
that their last Saturday with him should be their merriest; but he went
through his part mechanically, and was glad when the sun began to dip
toward the rim of the woods.
He was standing on the ice, where the river widened just below the
house, when a jingle of bells broke on the still air, and he saw a
sleigh driven rapidly up the avenue. Amherst watched it in surprise.
Who, at that hour, could be invading the winter solitude of Hopewood?
The sleigh halted near the closed house, and a muffled figure, alighting
alone, began to move down the snowy slope toward the skaters.
In an instant he had torn off his skates and was bounding up the bank.
He would have known the figure anywhere--known that lovely poise of the
head, the mixture of hesitancy and quickness in the light tread which
even the snow could not impede. Half-way up the slope to the house they
met, and Mrs. Westmore held out her hand. Face and lips, as she stood
above him, glowed with her swift passage through the evening air, and in
the blaze of the sunset she seemed saturated with heavenly fires.
"I drove out to find you--they told me you were here--I arrived this
morning, quite suddenly...."
She broke off, as though the encounter had checked her ardour instead of
kindling it; but he drew no discouragement from her tone.
"I hoped you would come before I left--I knew you would!" he exclaimed;
and at his last words her face clouded anxiously.
"I didn't know you were leaving Westmore till yesterday--the day
before--I got a letter...." Again she wavered, perceptibly trusting her
difficulty to him, in the sweet way he had been trying to forget; and he
answered with recovered energy: "The great thing is that you should be
here."
She shook her head at his optimism. "What can I do if you go?"
"You can give me a chance, before I go, to tell you a little about some
of the loose ends I am leaving."
"But why are you leaving them? I don't understand. Is it inevitable?"
"Inevitable," he returned, with an odd glow of satisfaction in the word;
and as her eyes besought him, he added, smiling: "I've been dismissed,
you see; and from the manager's standpoint I think I deserved it. But
the best part of my work needn't go with me--and that is what I should
like to speak to you about. As assistant manager I can easily be
replaced--have been, I understand, already; but among these boys here I
should like to think that a little of me stayed--and it will, if
you'll let me tell you what I've been doing."
[Illustration: Half-way up the slope to the house they met.]
She glanced away from him at the busy throng on the ice and at the other
black cluster above the coasting-slide.
"How they're enjoying it!" she murmured. "What a pity it was never done
before! And who will keep it up when you're gone?"
"You," he answered, meeting her eyes again; and as she coloured a little
under his look he went on quickly: "Will you come over and look at the
coasting? The time is almost up. One more slide and they'll be packing
off to supper."
She nodded "yes," and they walked in silence over the white lawn,
criss-crossed with tramplings of happy feet, to the ridge from which the
coasters started on their run. Amherst's object in turning the talk had
been to gain a moment's respite. He could not bear to waste his perfect
hour in futile explanations: he wanted to keep it undisturbed by any
thought of the future. And the same feeling seemed to possess his
companion, for she did not speak again till they reached the knoll where
the boys were gathered.
A sled packed with them hung on the brink: with a last shout it was off,
dipping down the incline with the long curved flight of a swallow,
flashing across the wide meadow at the base of the hill, and tossed
upward again by its own impetus, till it vanished in the dark rim of
wood on the opposite height. The lads waiting on the knoll sang out for
joy, and Bessy clapped her hands and joined with them.
"What fun! I wish I'd brought Cicely! I've not coasted for years," she
laughed out, as the second detachment of boys heaped themselves on
another sled and shot down. Amherst looked at her with a smile. He saw
that every other feeling had vanished in the exhilaration of watching
the flight of the sleds. She had forgotten why she had come--forgotten
her distress at his dismissal--forgotten everything but the spell of the
long white slope, and the tingle of cold in her veins.
"Shall we go down? Should you like it?" he asked, feeling no resentment
under the heightened glow of his pulses.
"Oh, do take me--I shall love it!" Her eyes shone like a child's--she
might have been a lovelier embodiment of the shouting boyhood about
them.
The first band of coasters, sled at heels, had by this time already
covered a third of the homeward stretch; but Amherst was too impatient
to wait. Plunging down to the meadow he caught up the sled-rope, and
raced back with the pack of rejoicing youth in his wake. The sharp climb
up the hill seemed to fill his lungs with flame: his whole body burned
with a strange intensity of life. As he reached the top, a distant bell
rang across the fields from Westmore, and the boys began to snatch up
their coats and mufflers.
"Be off with you--I'll look after the sleds," Amherst called to them as
they dispersed; then he turned for a moment to see that the skaters
below were also heeding the summons.
A cold pallor lay on the river-banks and on the low meadow beneath the
knoll; but the woodland opposite stood black against scarlet vapours
that ravelled off in sheer light toward a sky hung with an icy moon.
Amherst drew up the sled and held it steady while Bessy, seating
herself, tucked her furs close with little breaks of laughter; then he
placed himself in front.
"Ready?" he cried over his shoulder, and "Ready!" she called back.
Their craft quivered under them, hanging an instant over the long
stretch of whiteness below; the level sun dazzled their eyes, and the
first plunge seemed to dash them down into darkness. Amherst heard a cry
of glee behind him; then all sounds were lost in the whistle of air
humming by like the flight of a million arrows. They had dropped below
the sunset and were tearing through the clear nether twilight of the
descent; then, with a bound, the sled met the level, and shot away
across the meadow toward the opposite height. It seemed to Amherst as
though his body had been left behind, and only the spirit in him rode
the wild blue currents of galloping air; but as the sled's rush began to
slacken with the strain of the last ascent he was recalled to himself by
the touch of the breathing warmth at his back. Bessy had put out a hand
to steady herself, and as she leaned forward, gripping his arm, a flying
end of her furs swept his face. There was a delicious pang in being thus
caught back to life; and as the sled stopped, and he sprang to his feet,
he still glowed with the sensation. Bessy too was under the spell. In
the dusk of the beech-grove where they had landed, he could barely
distinguish her features; but her eyes shone on him, and he heard her
quick breathing as he stooped to help her to her feet.
"Oh, how beautiful--it's the only thing better than a good gallop!"
She leaned against a tree-bole, panting a little, and loosening her
furs.
"What a pity it's too dark to begin again!" she sighed, looking about
her through the dim weaving of leafless boughs.
"It's not so dark in the open--we might have one more," he proposed; but
she shook her head, seized by a new whim.
"It's so still and delicious in here--did you hear the snow fall when
that squirrel jumped across to the pine?" She tilted her head, narrowing
her lids as she peered upward. "There he is! One gets used to the
light.... Look! See his little eyes shining down at us!"
As Amherst looked where she pointed, the squirrel leapt to another tree,
and they stole on after him through the hushed wood, guided by his grey
flashes in the dimness. Here and there, in a break of the snow, they
trod on a bed of wet leaves that gave out a breath of hidden life, or a
hemlock twig dashed its spicy scent into their faces. As they grew used
to the twilight their eyes began to distinguish countless delicate
gradations of tint: cold mottlings of grey-black boles against the snow,
wet russets of drifted beech-leaves, a distant network of mauve twigs
melting into the woodland haze. And in the silence just such fine
gradations of sound became audible: the soft drop of loosened
snow-lumps, a stir of startled wings, the creak of a dead branch,
somewhere far off in darkness.
They walked on, still in silence, as though they had entered the glade
of an enchanted forest and were powerless to turn back or to break the
hush with a word. They made no pretense of following the squirrel any
longer; he had flashed away to a high tree-top, from which his ironical
chatter pattered down on their unheeding ears. Amherst's sensations were
not of that highest order of happiness where mind and heart mingle their
elements in the strong draught of life: it was a languid fume that stole
through him from the cup at his lips. But after the sense of defeat and
failure which the last weeks had brought, the reaction was too exquisite
to be analyzed. All he asked of the moment was its immediate
sweetness....
They had reached the brink of a rocky glen where a little brook still
sent its thread of sound through mufflings of ice and huddled branches.
Bessy stood still a moment, bending her head to the sweet cold tinkle;
then she moved away and said slowly: "We must go back."
As they turned to retrace their steps a yellow line of light through the
tree-trunks showed them that they had not, after all, gone very deep
into the wood. A few minutes' walk would restore them to the lingering
daylight, and on the farther side of the meadow stood the sleigh which
was to carry Bessy back to Hanaford. A sudden sense of the evanescence
of the moment roused Amherst from his absorption. Before the next change
in the fading light he would be back again among the ugly realities of
life. Did she, too, hate to return to them? Or why else did she walk so
slowly--why did she seem as much afraid as himself to break the silence
that held them in its magic circle?
A dead pine-branch caught in the edge of her skirt, and she stood still
while Amherst bent down to release her. As she turned to help him he
looked up with a smile.
"The wood doesn't want to let you go," he said.
She made no reply, and he added, rising: "But you'll come back to
it--you'll come back often, I hope."
He could not see her face in the dimness, but her voice trembled a
little as she answered: "I will do what you tell me--but I shall be
alone--against all the others: they don't understand."
The simplicity, the helplessness, of the avowal, appealed to him not as
a weakness but as a grace. He understood what she was really saying:
"How can you desert me? How can you put this great responsibility on me,
and then leave me to bear it alone?" and in the light of her unuttered
appeal his action seemed almost like cruelty. Why had he opened her eyes
to wrongs she had no strength to redress without his aid?
He could only answer, as he walked beside her toward the edge of the
wood: "You will not be alone--in time you will make the others
understand; in time they will be with you."
"Ah, you don't believe that!" she exclaimed, pausing suddenly, and
speaking with an intensity of reproach that amazed him.
"I hope it, at any rate," he rejoined, pausing also. "And I'm sure that
if you will come here oftener--if you'll really live among your
people----"
"How can you say that, when you're deserting them?" she broke in, with a
feminine excess of inconsequence that fairly dashed the words from his
lips.
"Deserting them? Don't you understand----?"
"I understand that you've made Mr. Gaines and Truscomb angry--yes; but
if I should insist on your staying----"
Amherst felt the blood rush to his forehead. "No--no, it's not
possible!" he exclaimed, with a vehemence addressed more to himself than
to her.
"Then what will happen at the mills?"
"Oh, some one else will be found--the new ideas are stirring everywhere.
And if you'll only come back here, and help my successor----"
"Do you think they are likely to choose any one else with your ideas?"
she interposed with unexpected acuteness; and after a short silence he
answered: "Not immediately, perhaps; but in time--in time there will be
improvements."
"As if the poor people could wait! Oh, it's cruel, cruel of you to go!"
Her voice broke in a throb of entreaty that went to his inmost fibres.
"You don't understand. It's impossible in the present state of things
that I should do any good by staying."
"Then you refuse? Even if I were to insist on their asking you to stay,
you would still refuse?" she persisted.
"Yes--I should still refuse."
She made no answer, but moved a few steps nearer to the edge of the
wood. The meadow was just below them now, and the sleigh in plain sight
on the height beyond. Their steps made no sound on the sodden drifts
underfoot, and in the silence he thought he heard a catch in her
breathing. It was enough to make the brimming moment overflow. He stood
still before her and bent his head to hers.
"Bessy!" he said, with sudden vehemence.
She did not speak or move, but in the quickened state of his perceptions
he became aware that she was silently weeping. The gathering darkness
under the trees enveloped them. It absorbed her outline into the shadowy
background of the wood, from which her face emerged in a faint spot of
pallor; and the same obscurity seemed to envelop his faculties, merging
the hard facts of life in a blur of feeling in which the distinctest
impression was the sweet sense of her tears.
"Bessy!" he exclaimed again; and as he drew a step nearer he felt her
yield to him, and bury her sobs against his arm.
BOOK II
IX
"BUT, Justine----"
Mrs. Harry Dressel, seated in the June freshness of her Oak Street
drawing-room, and harmonizing by her high lights and hard edges with the
white-and-gold angularities of the best furniture, cast a rebuking eye
on her friend Miss Brent, who stood arranging in a glass bowl the
handful of roses she had just brought in from the garden.
Mrs. Dressel's intonation made it clear that the entrance of Miss Brent
had been the signal for renewing an argument which the latter had
perhaps left the room to escape.
"When you were here three years ago, Justine, I could understand your
not wanting to go out, because you were in mourning for your mother--and
besides, you'd volunteered for that bad surgical case in the Hope
Hospital. But now that you've come back for a rest and a change I can't
imagine why you persist in shutting yourself up--unless, of course," she
concluded, in a higher key of reproach, "it's because you think so
little of Hanaford society----"
Justine Brent, putting the last rose in place, turned from her task with
a protesting gesture.
"My dear Effie, who am I to think little of any society, when I belong
to none?" She passed a last light touch over the flowers, and crossing
the room, brushed her friend's hand with the same caressing gesture.
Mrs. Dressel met it with an unrelenting turn of her plump shoulder,
murmuring: "Oh, if you take _that_ tone!" And on Miss Brent's gaily
rejoining: "Isn't it better than to have other people take it for me?"
she replied, with an air of affront that expressed itself in a ruffling
of her whole pretty person: "If you'll excuse my saying so, Justine, the
fact that you are staying with _me_ would be enough to make you welcome
anywhere in Hanaford!"
"I'm sure of it, dear; so sure that my horrid pride rather resents being
floated in on the high tide of such overwhelming credentials."
Mrs. Dressel glanced up doubtfully at the dark face laughing down on
her. Though she was president of the Maplewood Avenue Book-club, and
habitually figured in the society column of the "Banner" as one of the
intellectual leaders of Hanaford, there were moments when her
self-confidence trembled before Justine's light sallies. It was absurd,
of course, given the relative situations of the two; and Mrs. Dressel,
behind her friend's back, was quickly reassured by the thought that
Justine was only a hospital nurse, who had to work for her living, and
had really never "been anywhere"; but when Miss Brent's verbal arrows
were flying, it seemed somehow of more immediate consequence that she
was fairly well-connected, and lived in New York. No one placed a higher
value on the abstract qualities of wit and irony than Mrs. Dressel; the
difficulty was that she never quite knew when Justine's retorts were
loaded, or when her own susceptibilities were the target aimed at; and
between her desire to appear to take the joke, and the fear of being
ridiculed without knowing it, her pretty face often presented an
interesting study in perplexity. As usual, she now took refuge in
bringing the talk back to a personal issue.
"I can't imagine," she said, "why you won't go to the Gaines's
garden-party. It's always the most brilliant affair of the season; and
this year, with the John Amhersts here, and all their party--that
fascinating Mrs. Eustace Ansell, and Mrs. Amherst's father, old Mr.
Langhope, who is quite as quick and clever as _you_ are--you certainly
can't accuse us of being dull and provincial!"
Miss Brent smiled. "As far as I can remember, Effie, it is always you
who accuse others of bringing that charge against Hanaford. For my part,
I know too little of it to have formed any opinion; but whatever it may
have to offer me, I am painfully conscious of having, at present,
nothing but your kind commendation to give in return."
Mrs. Dressel rose impatiently. "How absurdly you talk! You're a little
thinner than usual, and I don't like those dark lines under your eyes;
but Westy Gaines told me yesterday that he thought you handsomer than
ever, and that it was intensely becoming to some women to look
over-tired."
"It's lucky I'm one of that kind," Miss Brent rejoined, between a sigh
and a laugh, "and there's every promise of my getting handsomer every
day if somebody doesn't soon arrest the geometrical progression of my
good looks by giving me the chance to take a year's rest!"
As she spoke, she stretched her arms above her head, with a gesture
revealing the suppleness of her slim young frame, but also its tenuity
of structure--the frailness of throat and shoulders, and the play of
bones in the delicate neck. Justine Brent had one of those imponderable
bodies that seem a mere pinch of matter shot through with light and
colour. Though she did not flush easily, auroral lights ran under her
clear skin, were lost in the shadows of her hair, and broke again in her
eyes; and her voice seemed to shoot light too, as though her smile
flashed back from her words as they fell--all her features being so
fluid and changeful that the one solid thing about her was the massing
of dense black hair which clasped her face like the noble metal of some
antique bust.
Mrs. Dressel's face softened at the note of weariness in the girl's
voice. "Are you very tired, dear?" she asked drawing her down to a seat
on the sofa.
"Yes, and no--not so much bodily, perhaps, as in spirit." Justine Brent
drew her brows together, and stared moodily at the thin brown hands
interwoven between Mrs. Dressel's plump fingers. Seated thus, with
hollowed shoulders and brooding head, she might have figured a young
sibyl bowed above some mystery of fate; but the next moment her face,
inclining toward her friend's, cast off its shadows and resumed the look
of a plaintive child.
"The worst of it is that I don't look forward with any interest to
taking up the old drudgery again. Of course that loss of interest may be
merely physical--I should call it so in a nervous patient, no doubt. But
in myself it seems different--it seems to go to the roots of the world.
You know it was always the imaginative side of my work that helped me
over the ugly details--the pity and beauty that disinfected the physical
horror; but now that feeling is lost, and only the mortal disgust
remains. Oh, Effie, I don't want to be a ministering angel any more--I
want to be uncertain, coy and hard to please. I want something dazzling
and unaccountable to happen to me--something new and unlived and
indescribable!"
She snatched herself with a laugh from the bewildered Effie, and
flinging up her arms again, spun on a light heel across the polished
floor.
"Well, then," murmured Mrs. Dressel with gentle obstinacy, "I can't see
why in the world you won't go to the Gaines's garden-party!" And caught
in the whirlwind of her friend's incomprehensible mirth, she still
persisted, as she ducked her blonde head to it: "If you'll only let me
lend you my dress with the Irish lace, you'll look smarter than anybody
there...."
* * * * *
Before her toilet mirror, an hour later, Justine Brent seemed in a way
to fulfill Mrs. Dressel's prediction. So mirror-like herself, she could
no more help reflecting the happy effect of a bow or a feather than the
subtler influence of word and look; and her face and figure were so new
to the advantages of dress that, at four-and-twenty, she still produced
the effect of a young girl in her first "good" frock. In Mrs. Dressel's
festal raiment, which her dark tints subdued to a quiet elegance, she
was like the golden core of a pale rose illuminating and scenting its
petals.
Three years of solitary life, following on a youth of confidential
intimacy with the mother she had lost, had produced in her the quaint
habit of half-loud soliloquy. "Fine feathers, Justine!" she laughed back
at her laughing image. "You look like a phoenix risen from your ashes.
But slip back into your own plumage, and you'll be no more than a little
brown bird without a song!"
The luxurious suggestions of her dress, and the way her warm youth
became it, drew her back to memories of a childhood nestled in beauty
and gentle ways, before her handsome prodigal father had died, and her
mother's face had grown pinched in the long struggle with poverty. But
those memories were after all less dear to Justine than the grey years
following, when, growing up, she had helped to clear a space in the
wilderness for their tiny hearth-fire, when her own efforts had fed the
flame and roofed it in from the weather. A great heat, kindled at that
hearth, had burned in her veins, making her devour her work, lighting
and warming the long cold days, and reddening the horizon through dark
passages of revolt and failure; and she felt all the more deeply the
chill of reaction that set in with her mother's death.
She thought she had chosen her work as a nurse in a spirit of high
disinterestedness; but in the first hours of her bereavement it seemed
as though only the personal aim had sustained her. For a while, after
this, her sick people became to her mere bundles of disintegrating
matter, and she shrank from physical pain with a distaste the deeper
because, mechanically, she could not help working on to relieve it.
Gradually her sound nature passed out of this morbid phase, and she took
up her task with deeper pity if less exalted ardour; glad to do her part
in the vast impersonal labour of easing the world's misery, but longing
with all the warm instincts of youth for a special load to lift, a
single hand to clasp.
Ah, it was cruel to be alive, to be young, to bubble with springs of
mirth and tenderness and folly, and to live in perpetual contact with
decay and pain--to look persistently into the grey face of death without
having lifted even a corner of life's veil! Now and then, when she felt
her youth flame through the sheath of dullness which was gradually
enclosing it, she rebelled at the conditions that tied a spirit like
hers to its monotonous task, while others, without a quiver of wings on
their dull shoulders, or a note of music in their hearts, had the whole
wide world to range through, and saw in it no more than a frightful
emptiness to be shut out with tight walls of habit....
* * * * *
A tap on the door announced Mrs. Dressel, garbed for conquest, and
bestowing on her brilliant person the last anxious touches of the artist
reluctant to part from a masterpiece.
"My dear, how well you look! I _knew_ that dress would be becoming!" she
exclaimed, generously transferring her self-approval to Justine; and
adding, as the latter moved toward her: "I wish Westy Gaines could see
you now!"
"Well, he will presently," Miss Brent rejoined, ignoring the slight
stress on the name.
Mrs. Dressel continued to brood on her maternally. "Justine--I wish
you'd tell me! You say you hate the life you're leading now--but isn't
there somebody who might----?"
"Give me another, with lace dresses in it?" Justine's slight shrug might
have seemed theatrical, had it not been a part of the ceaseless dramatic
play of her flexible person. "There might be, perhaps...only I'm not
sure--" She broke off whimsically.
"Not sure of what?"
"That this kind of dress might not always be a little tight on the
shoulders."
"Tight on the shoulders? What do you mean, Justine? My clothes simply
_hang_ on you!"
"Oh, Effie dear, don't you remember the fable of the wings under the
skin, that sprout when one meets a pair of kindred shoulders?" And, as
Mrs. Dressel bent on her a brow of unenlightenment--"Well, it doesn't
matter: I only meant that I've always been afraid good clothes might
keep my wings from sprouting!" She turned back to the glass, giving
herself a last light touch such as she had bestowed on the roses.
"And that reminds me," she continued--"how about Mr. Amherst's wings?"
"John Amherst?" Mrs. Dressel brightened into immediate attention. "Why,
do you know him?"
"Not as the owner of the Westmore Mills; but I came across him as their
assistant manager three years ago, at the Hope Hospital, and he was
starting a very promising pair then. I wonder if they're doing as well
under his new coat."
"I'm not sure that I understand you when you talk poetry," said Mrs.
Dressel with less interest; "but personally I can't say I like John
Amherst--and he is certainly not worthy of such a lovely woman as Mrs.
Westmore. Of course she would never let any one see that she's not
perfectly happy; but I'm told he has given them all a great deal of
trouble by interfering in the management of the mills, and his manner is
so cold and sarcastic--the truth is, I suppose he's never quite at ease
in society. _Her_ family have never been really reconciled to the
marriage; and Westy Gaines says----"
"Ah, Westy Gaines _would_," Justine interposed lightly. "But if Mrs.
Amherst is really the Bessy Langhope I used to know it must be rather a
struggle for the wings!"
Mrs. Dressel's flagging interest settled on the one glimpse of fact in
this statement. "It's such a coincidence that you should have known her
too! Was she always so perfectly fascinating? I wish I knew how she
gives that look to her hair!"
Justine gathered up the lace sunshade and long gloves which her friend
had lent her. "There was not much more that was genuine about her
character--that was her very own, I mean--than there is about my
appearance at this moment. She was always the dearest little chameleon
in the world, taking everybody's colour in the most flattering way, and
giving back, I must say, a most charming reflection--if you'll excuse
the mixed metaphor; but when one got her by herself, with no reflections
to catch, one found she hadn't any particular colour of her own. One of
the girls used to say she ought to wear a tag, because she was so easily
mislaid---- Now then, I'm ready!"
Justine advanced to the door, and Mrs. Dressel followed her downstairs,
reflecting with pardonable complacency that one of the disadvantages of
being clever was that it tempted one to say sarcastic things of other
women--than which she could imagine no more crying social error.
During the drive to the garden-party, Justine's thoughts, drawn to the
past by the mention of Bessy Langhope's name, reverted to the comic
inconsequences of her own lot--to that persistent irrelevance of
incident that had once made her compare herself to an actor always
playing his part before the wrong stage-setting. Was there not, for
instance, a mocking incongruity in the fact that a creature so leaping
with life should have, for chief outlet, the narrow mental channel of
the excellent couple between whom she was now being borne to the Gaines
garden-party? All her friendships were the result of propinquity or of
early association, and fate had held her imprisoned in a circle of
well-to-do mediocrity, peopled by just such figures as those of the
kindly and prosperous Dressels. Effie Dressel, the daughter of a cousin
of Mrs. Brent's, had obscurely but safely allied herself with the heavy
blond young man who was to succeed his father as President of the Union
Bank, and who was already regarded by the "solid business interests" of
Hanaford as possessing talents likely to carry him far in the
development of the paternal fortunes. Harry Dressel's honest countenance
gave no evidence of peculiar astuteness, and he was in fact rather the
product of special conditions than of an irresistible bent. He had the
sound Saxon love of games, and the most interesting game he had ever
been taught was "business." He was a simple domestic being, and
according to Hanaford standards the most obvious obligation of the
husband and father was to make his family richer. If Harry Dressel had
ever formulated his aims, he might have said that he wanted to be the
man whom Hanaford most respected, and that was only another way of
saying, the richest man in Hanaford. Effie embraced his creed with a
zeal facilitated by such evidence of its soundness as a growing income
and the early prospects of a carriage. Her mother-in-law, a kind old
lady with a simple unquestioning love of money, had told her on her
wedding day that Harry's one object would always be to make his family
proud of him; and the recent purchase of the victoria in which Justine
and the Dressels were now seated was regarded by the family as a
striking fulfillment of this prophecy.
In the course of her hospital work Justine had of necessity run across
far different types; but from the connections thus offered she was often
held back by the subtler shades of taste that civilize human
intercourse. Her world, in short, had been chiefly peopled by the dull
or the crude, and, hemmed in between the two, she had created for
herself an inner kingdom where the fastidiousness she had to set aside
in her outward relations recovered its full sway. There must be actual
beings worthy of admission to this secret precinct, but hitherto they
had not come her way; and the sense that they were somewhere just out of
reach still gave an edge of youthful curiosity to each encounter with a
new group of people.
Certainly, Mrs. Gaines's garden-party seemed an unlikely field for the
exercise of such curiosity: Justine's few glimpses of Hanaford society
had revealed it as rather a dull thick body, with a surface stimulated
only by ill-advised references to the life of larger capitals; and the
concentrated essence of social Hanaford was of course to be found at the
Gaines entertainments. It presented itself, however, in the rich June
afternoon, on the long shadows of the well-kept lawn, and among the
paths of the rose-garden, in its most amiable aspect; and to Justine,
wearied by habitual contact with ugliness and suffering, there was pure
delight in the verdant setting of the picture, and in the light
harmonious tints of the figures peopling it. If the company was dull, it
was at least decorative; and poverty, misery and dirt were shut out by
the placid unconsciousness of the guests as securely as by the leafy
barriers of the garden.
X
"AH, Mrs. Dressel, we were on the lookout for you--waiting for the
curtain to rise. Your friend Miss Brent? Juliana, Mrs. Dressel's friend
Miss Brent----"
Near the brilliantly-striped marquee that formed the axis of the Gaines
garden-parties, Mr. Halford Gaines, a few paces from his wife and
daughters, stood radiating a royal welcome on the stream of visitors
pouring across the lawn. It was only to eyes perverted by a different
social perspective that there could be any doubt as to the importance
of the Gaines entertainments. To Hanaford itself they were epoch-making;
and if any rebellious spirit had cherished a doubt of the fact, it would
have been quelled by the official majesty of Mr. Gaines's frock-coat and
the comprehensive cordiality of his manner.
There were moments when New York hung like a disquieting cloud on the
social horizon of Mrs. Gaines and her daughters; but to Halford Gaines
Hanaford was all in all. As an exponent of the popular and patriotic
"good-enough-for-me" theory he stood in high favour at the Hanaford
Club, where a too-keen consciousness of the metropolis was alternately
combated by easy allusion and studied omission, and where the unsettled
fancies of youth were chastened and steadied by the reflection that, if
Hanaford was good enough for Halford Gaines, it must offer opportunities
commensurate with the largest ideas of life.
Never did Mr. Gaines's manner bear richer witness to what could be
extracted from Hanaford than when he was in the act of applying to it
the powerful pressure of his hospitality. The resultant essence was so
bubbling with social exhilaration that, to its producer at any rate, its
somewhat mixed ingredients were lost in one highly flavoured draught.
Under ordinary circumstances no one discriminated more keenly than Mr.
Gaines between different shades of social importance; but any one who
was entertained by him was momentarily ennobled by the fact, and not all
the anxious telegraphy of his wife and daughters could, for instance,
recall to him that the striking young woman in Mrs. Dressel's wake was
only some obscure protégée, whom it was odd of Effie to have brought,
and whose presence was quite unnecessary to emphasize.
"Juliana, Miss Brent tells me she has never seen our roses. Oh, there
are other roses in Hanaford, Miss Brent; I don't mean to imply that no
one else attempts them; but unless you can afford to give _carte
blanche_ to your man--and mine happens to be something of a
specialist...well, if you'll come with me, I'll let them speak for
themselves. I always say that if people want to know what we can do they
must come and see--they'll never find out from _me_!"
A more emphatic signal from his wife arrested Mr. Gaines as he was in
the act of leading Miss Brent away.
"Eh?--What? The Amhersts and Mrs. Ansell? You must excuse me then, I'm
afraid--but Westy shall take you. Westy, my boy, it's an ill-wind.... I
want you to show this young lady our roses." And Mr. Gaines, with
mingled reluctance and satisfaction, turned away to receive the most
important guests of the day.
It had not needed his father's summons to draw the expert Westy to Miss
Brent: he was already gravitating toward her, with the nonchalance bred
of cosmopolitan successes, but with a directness of aim due also to his
larger opportunities of comparison.
"The roses will do," he explained, as he guided her through the
increasing circle of guests about his mother; and in answer to Justine's
glance of enquiry: "To get you away, I mean. They're not much in
themselves, you know; but everything of the governor's always begins
with a capital letter."
"Oh, but these roses deserve to," Justine exclaimed, as they paused
under the evergreen archway at the farther end of the lawn.
"I don't know--not if you've been in England," Westy murmured, watching
furtively for the impression produced, on one who had presumably not, by
the great blush of colour massed against its dusky background of clipped
evergreens.
Justine smiled. "I _have_ been--but I've been in the slums since; in
horrible places that the least of those flowers would have lighted up
like a lamp."
Westy's guarded glance imprudently softened. "It's the beastliest kind
of a shame, your ever having had to do such work----"
"Oh, _had_ to?" she flashed back at him disconcertingly. "It was my
choice, you know: there was a time when I couldn't live without it.
Philanthropy is one of the subtlest forms of self-indulgence."
Westy met this with a vague laugh. If a chap who was as knowing as the
devil _did_, once in a way, indulge himself in the luxury of talking
recklessly to a girl with exceptional eyes, it was rather upsetting to
discover in those eyes no consciousness of the risk he had taken!
"But I _am_ rather tired of it now," she continued, and his look grew
guarded again. After all, they were all the same--except in that
particular matter of the eyes. At the thought, he risked another look,
hung on the sharp edge of betrayal, and was snatched back, not by the
manly instinct of self-preservation, but by some imp of mockery lurking
in the depths that lured him.
He recovered his balance and took refuge in a tone of worldly ease. "I
saw a chap the other day who said he knew you when you were at Saint
Elizabeth's--wasn't that the name of your hospital?"
Justine assented. "One of the doctors, I suppose. Where did you meet
him?"
Ah, _now_ she should see! He summoned his utmost carelessness of tone.
"Down on Long Island last week--I was spending Sunday with the
Amhersts." He held up the glittering fact to her, and watched for the
least little blink of awe; but her lids never trembled. It was a
confession of social blindness which painfully negatived Mrs. Dressel's
hint that she knew the Amhersts; if she had even known _of_ them, she
could not so fatally have missed his point.
"Long Island?" She drew her brows together in puzzled retrospection. "I
wonder if it could have been Stephen Wyant? I heard he had taken over
his uncle's practice somewhere near New York."
"Wyant--that's the name. He's the doctor at Clifton, the nearest town to
the Amhersts' place. Little Cicely had a cold--Cicely Westmore, you
know--a small cousin of mine, by the way--" he switched a rose-branch
loftily out of her path, explaining, as she moved on, that Cicely was
the daughter of Mrs. Amherst's first marriage to Richard Westmore.
"That's the way I happened to see this Dr. Wyant. Bessy--Mrs.
Amherst--asked him to stop to luncheon, after he'd seen the kid. He
seems rather a discontented sort of a chap--grumbling at not having a
New York practice. I should have thought he had rather a snug berth,
down there at Lynbrook, with all those swells to dose."
Justine smiled. "Dr. Wyant is ambitious, and swells don't have as
interesting diseases as poor people. One gets tired of giving them bread
pills for imaginary ailments. But Dr. Wyant is not strong himself and I
fancy a country practice is better for him than hard work in town."
"You think him clever though, do you?" Westy enquired absently. He was
already bored with the subject of the Long Island doctor, and vexed at
the lack of perception that led his companion to show more concern in
the fortunes of a country practitioner than in the fact of his own visit
to the Amhersts; but the topic was a safe one, and it was agreeable to
see how her face kindled when she was interested.
Justine mused on his question. "I think he has very great promise--which
he is almost certain not to fulfill," she answered with a sigh which
seemed to Westy's anxious ear to betray a more than professional
interest in the person referred to.
"Oh, come now--why not? With the Amhersts to give him a start--I heard
my cousin recommending him to a lot of people the other day----"
"Oh, he may become a fashionable doctor," Justine assented
indifferently; to which her companion rejoined, with a puzzled stare:
"That's just what I mean--with Bessy backing him!"
"Has Mrs. Amherst become such a power, then?" Justine asked, taking up
the coveted theme just as he despaired of attracting her to it.
"My cousin?" he stretched the two syllables to the cracking-point.
"Well, she's awfully rich, you know; and there's nobody smarter. Don't
you think so?"
"I don't know; it's so long since I've seen her."
He brightened. "You _did_ know her, then?" But the discovery made her
obtuseness the more inexplicable!
"Oh, centuries ago: in another world."
"_Centuries_--I like that!" Westy gallantly protested, his ardour
kindling as she swam once more within his social ken. "And Amherst? You
know him too, I suppose? By Jove, here he is now----"
He signalled a tall figure strolling slowly toward them with bent head
and brooding gaze. Justine's eye had retained a vivid image of the man
with whom, scarcely three years earlier, she had lived through a moment
of such poignant intimacy, and she recognized at once his lean outline,
and the keen spring of his features, still veiled by the same look of
inward absorption. She noticed, as he raised his hat in response to
Westy Gaines's greeting, that the vertical lines between his brows had
deepened; and a moment later she was aware that this change was the
visible token of others which went deeper than the fact of his good
clothes and his general air of leisure and well-being--changes
perceptible to her only in the startled sense of how prosperity had aged
him.
"Hallo, Amherst--trying to get under cover?" Westy jovially accosted
him, with a significant gesture toward the crowded lawn from which the
new-comer had evidently fled. "I was just telling Miss Brent that this
is the safest place on these painful occasions--Oh, confound it, it's
not as safe as I thought! Here's one of my sisters making for me!"
There ensued a short conflict of words, before his feeble flutter of
resistance was borne down by a resolute Miss Gaines who, as she swept
him back to the marquee, cried out to Amherst that her mother was asking
for him too; and then Justine had time to observe that her remaining
companion had no intention of responding to his hostess's appeal.
Westy, in naming her, had laid just enough stress on the name to let it
serve as a reminder or an introduction, as circumstances might decide,
and she saw that Amherst, roused from his abstraction by the proffered
clue, was holding his hand out doubtfully.
"I think we haven't met for some years," he said.
Justine smiled. "I have a better reason than you for remembering the
exact date;" and in response to his look of surprise she added: "You
made me commit a professional breach of faith, and I've never known
since whether to be glad or sorry."
Amherst still bent on her the gaze which seemed to find in external
details an obstacle rather than a help to recognition; but suddenly his
face cleared. "It was you who told me the truth about poor Dillon! I
couldn't imagine why I seemed to see you in such a different
setting...."
"Oh, I'm disguised as a lady this afternoon," she said smiling. "But I'm
glad you saw through the disguise."
He smiled back at her. "Are you? Why?"
"It seems to make it--if it's so transparent--less of a sham, less of a
dishonesty," she began impulsively, and then paused again, a little
annoyed at the overemphasis of her words. Why was she explaining and
excusing herself to this stranger? Did she propose to tell him next that
she had borrowed her dress from Effie Dressel? To cover her confusion
she went on with a slight laugh: "But you haven't told me."
"What was I to tell you?"
"Whether to be glad or sorry that I broke my vow and told the truth
about Dillon."
They were standing face to face in the solitude of the garden-walk,
forgetful of everything but the sudden surprised sense of intimacy that
had marked their former brief communion. Justine had raised her eyes
half-laughingly to Amherst, but they dropped before the unexpected
seriousness of his.
"Why do you want to know?" he asked.
She made an effort to sustain the note of pleasantry.
"Well--it might, for instance, determine my future conduct. You see I'm
still a nurse, and such problems are always likely to present
themselves."
"Ah, then don't!"
"Don't?"
"I mean--" He hesitated a moment, reaching up to break a rose from the
branch that tapped his shoulder. "I was only thinking what risks we run
when we scramble into the chariot of the gods and try to do the driving.
Be passive--be passive, and you'll be happier!"
"Oh, as to that--!" She swept it aside with one of her airy motions.
"But Dillon, for instance--would _he_ have been happier if I'd been
passive?"
Amherst seemed to ponder. "There again--how can one tell?"
"And the risk's not worth taking?"
"No!"
She paused, and they looked at each other again. "Do you mean that
seriously, I wonder? Do you----"
"Act on it myself? God forbid! The gods drive so badly. There's poor
Dillon...he happened to be in their way...as we all are at times." He
pulled himself up, and went on in a matter-of-fact tone: "In Dillon's
case, however, my axioms don't apply. When my wife heard the truth she
was, of course, immensely kind to him; and if it hadn't been for you she
might never have known."
Justine smiled. "I think you would have found out--I was only the humble
instrument. But now--" she hesitated--"now you must be able to do so
much--"
Amherst lifted his head, and she saw the colour rise under his fair
skin. "Out at Westmore? You've never been there since? Yes--my wife has
made some changes; but it's all so problematic--and one would have to
live here...."
"You don't, then?"
He answered by an imperceptible shrug. "Of course I'm here often; and
she comes now and then. But the journey's tiresome, and it is not always
easy for her to get away." He checked himself, and Justine saw that he,
in turn, was suddenly conscious of the incongruity of explaining and
extenuating his personal situation to a stranger. "But then we're _not_
strangers!" a voice in her exulted, just as he added, with an
embarrassed attempt to efface and yet justify his moment of expansion:
"That reminds me--I think you know my wife. I heard her asking Mrs.
Dressel about you. She wants so much to see you."
The transition had been effected, at the expense of dramatic interest,
but to the obvious triumph of social observances; and to Justine, after
all, regaining at his side the group about the marquee, the interest was
not so much diminished as shifted to the no less suggestive problem of
studying the friend of her youth in the unexpected character of John
Amherst's wife.
Meanwhile, however, during the brief transit across the Gaines
greensward, her thoughts were still busy with Amherst. She had seen at
once that the peculiar sense of intimacy reawakened by their meeting had
been chilled and deflected by her first allusion to the topic which had
previously brought them together: Amherst had drawn back as soon as she
named the mills. What could be the cause of his reluctance? When they
had last met, the subject burned within him: her being in actual fact a
stranger had not, then, been an obstacle to his confidences. Now that he
was master at Westmore it was plain that another tone became him--that
his situation necessitated a greater reserve; but her enquiry did not
imply the least wish to overstep this restriction: it merely showed her
remembrance of his frankly-avowed interest in the operatives. Justine
was struck by the fact that so natural an allusion should put him on the
defensive. She did not for a moment believe that he had lost his
interest in the mills; and that his point of view should have shifted
with the fact of ownership she rejected as an equally superficial
reading of his character. The man with whom she had talked at Dillon's
bedside was one in whom the ruling purposes had already shaped
themselves, and to whom life, in whatever form it came, must henceforth
take their mould. As she reached this point in her analysis, it occurred
to her that his shrinking from the subject might well imply not
indifference, but a deeper preoccupation: a preoccupation for some
reason suppressed and almost disavowed, yet sustaining the more
intensely its painful hidden life. From this inference it was but a leap
of thought to the next--that the cause of the change must be sought
outside of himself, in some external influence strong enough to modify
the innate lines of his character. And where could such an influence be
more obviously sought than in the marriage which had transformed the
assistant manager of the Westmore Mills not, indeed, into their
owner--that would rather have tended to simplify the problem--but into
the husband of Mrs. Westmore? After all, the mills were Bessy's--and for
a farther understanding of the case it remained to find out what manner
of person Bessy had become.
Justine's first impression, as her friend's charming arms received
her--with an eagerness of welcome not lost on the suspended judgment of
feminine Hanaford--the immediate impression was of a gain of emphasis,
of individuality, as though the fluid creature she remembered had belied
her prediction, and run at last into a definite mould. Yes--Bessy had
acquired an outline: a graceful one, as became her early promise, though
with, perhaps, a little more sharpness of edge than her youthful texture
had promised. But the side she turned to her friend was still all
softness--had in it a hint of the old pliancy, the impulse to lean and
enlace, that at once woke in Justine the corresponding instinct of
guidance and protection, so that their first kiss, before a word was
spoken, carried the two back to the precise relation in which their
school-days had left them. So easy a reversion to the past left no room
for the sense of subsequent changes by which such reunions are sometimes
embarrassed. Justine's sympathies had, instinctively, and almost at
once, transferred themselves to Bessy's side--passing over at a leap
the pained recognition that there _were_ sides already--and Bessy had
gathered up Justine into the circle of gentle self-absorption which left
her very dimly aware of any distinctive characteristic in her friends
except that of their affection for herself--since she asked only, as she
appealingly put it, that they should all be "dreadfully fond" of her.
"And I've wanted you so often, Justine: you're the only clever person
I'm not afraid of, because your cleverness always used to make things
clear instead of confusing them. I've asked so many people about
you--but I never heard a word till just the other day--wasn't it
odd?--when our new doctor at Rushton happened to say that he knew you.
I've been rather unwell lately--nervous and tired, and sleeping
badly--and he told me I ought to keep perfectly quiet, and be under the
care of a nurse who could make me do as she chose: just such a nurse as
a wonderful Miss Brent he had known at St. Elizabeth's, whose patients
obeyed her as if she'd been the colonel of a regiment. His description
made me laugh, it reminded me so much of the way you used to make me do
what you wanted at the convent--and then it suddenly occurred to me that
I had heard of you having gone in for nursing, and we compared notes,
and I found it was really you! Wasn't it odd that we should discover
each other in that way? I daresay we might have passed in the street
and never known it--I'm sure I must be horribly changed...."
Thus Bessy discoursed, in the semi-isolation to which, under an
overarching beech-tree, the discretion of their hostess had allowed the
two friends to withdraw for the freer exchange of confidences. There
was, at first sight, nothing in her aspect to bear out Mrs. Amherst's
plaintive allusion to her health, but Justine, who knew that she had
lost a baby a few months previously, assumed that the effect of this
shock still lingered, though evidently mitigated by a reviving interest
in pretty clothes and the other ornamental accessories of life.
Certainly Bessy Amherst had grown into the full loveliness which her
childhood promised. She had the kind of finished prettiness that
declares itself early, holds its own through the awkward transitions of
girlhood, and resists the strain of all later vicissitudes, as though
miraculously preserved in some clear medium impenetrable to the wear and
tear of living.
"You absurd child! You've not changed a bit except to grow more so!"
Justine laughed, paying amused tribute to the childish craving for "a
compliment" that still betrayed itself in Bessy's eyes.
"Well, _you_ have, then, Justine--you've grown extraordinarily
handsome!"
"That _is_ extraordinary of me, certainly," the other acknowledged
gaily. "But then think what room for improvement there was--and how
much time I've had to improve in!"
"It is a long time, isn't it?" Bessy assented. "I feel so intimate,
still, with the old Justine of the convent, and I don't know the new one
a bit. Just think--I've a great girl of my own, almost as old as we were
when we went to the Sacred Heart: But perhaps you don't know anything
about me either. You see, I married again two years ago, and my poor
baby died last March...so I have only Cicely. It was such a
disappointment--I wanted a boy dreadfully, and I understand little
babies so much better than a big girl like Cicely.... Oh, dear, here is
Juliana Gaines bringing up some more tiresome people! It's such a bore,
but John says I must know them all. Well, thank goodness we've only one
more day in this dreadful place--and of course I shall see you, dear,
before we go...."
XI
AFTER conducting Miss Brent to his wife, John Amherst, by the exercise
of considerable strategic skill, had once more contrived to detach
himself from the throng on the lawn, and, regaining a path in the
shrubbery, had taken refuge on the verandah of the house.
Here, under the shade of the awning, two ladies were seated in a
seclusion agreeably tempered by the distant strains of the Hanaford
band, and by the shifting prospect of the groups below them.
"Ah, here he is now!" the younger of the two exclaimed, turning on
Amherst the smile of intelligence that Mrs. Eustace Ansell was in the
habit of substituting for the idle preliminaries of conversation. "We
were not talking of you, though," she added as Amherst took the seat to
which his mother beckoned him, "but of Bessy--which, I suppose, is
almost as indiscreet."
She added the last phrase after an imperceptible pause, and as if in
deprecation of the hardly more perceptible frown which, at the mention
of his wife's name, had deepened the lines between Amherst's brows.
"Indiscreet of his own mother and his wife's friend?" Mrs. Amherst
protested, laying her trimly-gloved hand on her son's arm; while the
latter, with his eyes on her companion, said slowly: "Mrs. Ansell knows
that indiscretion is the last fault of which her friends are likely to
accuse her."
"_Raison de plus_, you mean?" she laughed, meeting squarely the
challenge that passed between them under Mrs. Amherst's puzzled gaze.
"Well, if I take advantage of my reputation for discretion to meddle a
little now and then, at least I do so in a good cause. I was just saying
how much I wish that you would take Bessy to Europe; and I am so sure
of my cause, in this case, that I am going to leave it to your mother to
give you my reasons."
She rose as she spoke, not with any sign of haste or embarrassment, but
as if gracefully recognizing the desire of mother and son to be alone
together; but Amherst, rising also, made a motion to detain her.
"No one else will be able to put your reasons half so convincingly," he
said with a slight smile, "and I am sure my mother would much rather be
spared the attempt."
Mrs. Ansell met the smile as freely as she had met the challenge. "My
dear Lucy," she rejoined, laying, as she reseated herself, a light
caress on Mrs. Amherst's hand, "I'm sorry to be flattered at your
expense, but it's not in human nature to resist such an appeal. You
see," she added, raising her eyes to Amherst, "how sure I am of
myself--and of _you_, when you've heard me."
"Oh, John is always ready to hear one," his mother murmured innocently.
"Well, I don't know that I shall even ask him to do as much as that--I'm
so sure, after all, that my suggestion carries its explanation with it."
There was a moment's pause, during which Amherst let his eyes wander
absently over the dissolving groups on the lawn.
"The suggestion that I should take Bessy to Europe?" He paused again.
"When--next autumn?"
"No: now--at once. On a long honeymoon."
He frowned slightly at the last word, passing it by to revert to the
direct answer to his question.
"At once? No--I can't see that the suggestion carries its explanation
with it."
Mrs. Ansell looked at him hesitatingly. She was conscious of the
ill-chosen word that still reverberated between them, and the unwonted
sense of having blundered made her, for the moment, less completely
mistress of herself.
"Ah, you'll see farther presently--" She rose again, unfurling her lace
sunshade, as if to give a touch of definiteness to her action. "It's
not, after all," she added, with a sweet frankness, "a case for
argument, and still less for persuasion. My reasons are excellent--I
should insist on putting them to you myself if they were not! But
they're so good that I can leave you to find them out--and to back them
up with your own, which will probably be a great deal better."
She summed up with a light nod, which included both Amherst and his
mother, and turning to descend the verandah steps, waved a signal to Mr.
Langhope, who was limping disconsolately toward the house.
"What has she been saying to you, mother?" Amherst asked, returning to
his seat beside his mother.
Mrs. Amherst replied by a shake of her head and a raised forefinger of
reproval. "Now, Johnny, I won't answer a single question till you smooth
out those lines between your eyes."
Her son relaxed his frown to smile back at her. "Well, dear, there have
to be some wrinkles in every family, and as you absolutely refuse to
take your share--" His eyes rested affectionately on the frosty sparkle
of her charming old face, which had, in its setting of recovered
prosperity, the freshness of a sunny winter morning, when the very snow
gives out a suggestion of warmth.
He remembered how, on the evening of his dismissal from the mills, he
had paused on the threshold of their sitting-room to watch her a moment
in the lamplight, and had thought with bitter compunction of the fresh
wrinkle he was about to add to the lines about her eyes. The three years
which followed had effaced that wrinkle and veiled the others in a tardy
bloom of well-being. From the moment of turning her back on Westmore,
and establishing herself in the pretty little house at Hanaford which
her son's wife had placed at her disposal, Mrs. Amherst had shed all
traces of the difficult years; and the fact that his marriage had
enabled him to set free, before it was too late, the pent-up springs of
her youthfulness, sometimes seemed to Amherst the clearest gain in his
life's confused total of profit and loss. It was, at any rate, the sense
of Bessy's share in the change that softened his voice when he spoke of
her to his mother.
"Now, then, if I present a sufficiently unruffled surface, let us go
back to Mrs. Ansell--for I confess that her mysterious reasons are not
yet apparent to me."
Mrs. Amherst looked deprecatingly at her son. "Maria Ansell is devoted
to you too, John----"
"Of course she is! It's her _rôle_ to be devoted to
everybody--especially to her enemies."
"Her enemies?"
"Oh, I didn't intend any personal application. But why does she want me
to take Bessy abroad?"
"She and Mr. Langhope think that Bessy is not looking well."
Amherst paused, and the frown showed itself for a moment. "What do _you_
think, mother?"
"I hadn't noticed it myself: Bessy seems to me prettier than ever. But
perhaps she has less colour--and she complains of not sleeping. Maria
thinks she still frets over the baby."
Amherst made an impatient gesture. "Is Europe the only panacea?"
"You should consider, John, that Bessy is used to change and amusement.
I think you sometimes forget that other people haven't your faculty of
absorbing themselves in a single interest. And Maria says that the new
doctor at Clifton, whom they seem to think so clever, is very anxious
that Bessy should go to Europe this summer."
"No doubt; and so is every one else: I mean her father and old
Tredegar--and your friend Mrs. Ansell not least."
Mrs. Amherst lifted her bright black eyes to his. "Well, then--if they
all think she needs it----"
"Good heavens, if travel were what she needed!--Why, we've never stopped
travelling since we married. We've been everywhere on the globe except
at Hanaford--this is her second visit here in three years!" He rose and
took a rapid turn across the deserted verandah. "It's not because her
health requires it--it's to get me away from Westmore, to prevent things
being done there that ought to be done!" he broke out vehemently,
halting again before his mother.
The aged pink faded from Mrs. Amherst's face, but her eyes retained
their lively glitter. "To prevent things being done? What a strange
thing to say!"
"I shouldn't have said it if I hadn't seen you falling under Mrs.
Ansell's spell."
His mother had a gesture which showed from whom he had inherited his
impulsive movements. "Really, my son--!" She folded her hands, and added
after a pause of self-recovery: "If you mean that I have ever attempted
to interfere----"
"No, no: but when they pervert things so damnably----"
"John!"
He dropped into his chair again, and pushed the hair from his forehead
with a groan.
"Well, then--put it that they have as much right to their view as I
have: I only want you to see what it is. Whenever I try to do anything
at Westmore--to give a real start to the work that Bessy and I planned
together--some pretext is found to stop it: to pack us off to the ends
of the earth, to cry out against reducing her income, to encourage her
in some new extravagance to which the work at the mills must be
sacrificed!"
Mrs. Amherst, growing pale under this outbreak, assured herself by a
nervous backward glance that their privacy was still uninvaded; then her
eyes returned to her son's face.
"John--are you sure you're not sacrificing your wife to the mills?"
He grew pale in turn, and they looked at each other for a moment without
speaking.
"You see it as they do, then?" he rejoined with a discouraged sigh.
"I see it as any old woman would, who had my experiences to look back
to."
"Mother!" he exclaimed.
She smiled composedly. "Do you think I mean that as a reproach? That's
because men will never understand women--least of all, sons their
mothers. No real mother wants to come first; she puts her son's career
ahead of everything. But it's different with a wife--and a wife as much
in love as Bessy."
Amherst looked away. "I should have thought that was a reason----"
"That would reconcile her to being set aside, to counting only second in
your plans?"
"They were _her_ plans when we married!"
"Ah, my dear--!" She paused on that, letting her shrewd old glance, and
all the delicate lines of experience in her face, supply what farther
comment the ineptitude of his argument invited.
He took the full measure of her meaning, receiving it in a baffled
silence that continued as she rose and gathered her lace mantle about
her, as if to signify that their confidences could not, on such an
occasion, be farther prolonged without singularity. Then he stood up
also and joined her, resting his hand on hers while she leaned on the
verandah rail.
"Poor mother! And I've kept you to myself all this time, and spoiled
your good afternoon."
"No, dear; I was a little tired, and had slipped away to be quiet." She
paused, and then went on, persuasively giving back his pressure: "I know
how you feel about doing your duty, John; but now that things are so
comfortably settled, isn't it a pity to unsettle them?"
* * * * *
Amherst had intended, on leaving his mother, to rejoin Bessy, whom he
could still discern, on the lawn, in absorbed communion with Miss Brent;
but after what had passed it seemed impossible, for the moment, to
recover the garden-party tone, and he made his escape through the house
while a trio of Cuban singers, who formed the crowning number of the
entertainment, gathered the company in a denser circle about their
guitars.
As he walked on aimlessly under the deep June shadows of Maplewood
Avenue his mother's last words formed an ironical accompaniment to his
thoughts. "Now that things are comfortably settled--" he knew so well
what that elastic epithet covered! Himself, for instance, ensconced in
the impenetrable prosperity of his wonderful marriage; herself too
(unconsciously, dear soul!), so happily tucked away in a cranny of that
new and spacious life, and no more able to conceive why existing
conditions should be disturbed than the bird in the eaves understands
why the house should be torn down. Well--he had learned at last what his
experience with his poor, valiant, puzzled mother might have taught him:
that one must never ask from women any view but the personal one, any
measure of conduct but that of their own pains and pleasures. She,
indeed, had borne undauntedly enough the brunt of their earlier trials;
but that was merely because, as she said, the mother's instinct bade her
heap all her private hopes on the great devouring altar of her son's
ambition; it was not because she had ever, in the very least, understood
or sympathized with his aims.
And Bessy--? Perhaps if their little son had lived she might in turn
have obeyed the world-old instinct of self-effacement--but now! He
remembered with an intenser self-derision that, not even in the first
surprise of his passion, had he deluded himself with the idea that Bessy
Westmore was an exception to her sex. He had argued rather that, being
only a lovelier product of the common mould, she would abound in the
adaptabilities and pliancies which the lords of the earth have seen fit
to cultivate in their companions. She would care for his aims because
they were his. During their precipitate wooing, and through the first
brief months of marriage, this profound and original theory had been
gratifyingly confirmed; then its perfect surface had begun to show a
flaw. Amherst had always conveniently supposed that the poet's line
summed up the good woman's rule of ethics: _He for God only, she for God
in him._ It was for the god in him, surely, that she had loved him: for
that first glimpse of an "ampler ether, a diviner air" that he had
brought into her cramped and curtained life. He could never, now, evoke
that earlier delusion without feeling on its still-tender surface the
keen edge of Mrs. Ansell's smile. She, no doubt, could have told him at
any time why Bessy had married him: it was for his _beaux yeux_, as Mrs.
Ansell would have put it--because he was young, handsome, persecuted, an
ardent lover if not a subtle one--because Bessy had met him at the fatal
moment, because her family had opposed the marriage--because, in brief,
the gods, that day, may have been a little short of amusement. Well,
they were having their laugh out now--there were moments when high
heaven seemed to ring with it....
With these thoughts at his heels Amherst strode on, overtaken now and
again by the wheels of departing guests from the garden-party, and
knowing, as they passed him, what was in their minds--envy of his
success, admiration of his cleverness in achieving it, and a little
half-contemptuous pity for his wife, who, with her wealth and looks,
might have done so much better. Certainly, if the case could have been
put to Hanaford--the Hanaford of the Gaines garden-party--it would have
sided with Bessy to a voice. And how much justice was there in what he
felt would have been the unanimous verdict of her class? Was his mother
right in hinting that he was sacrificing Bessy to the mills? But the
mills _were_ Bessy--at least he had thought so when he married her!
They were her particular form of contact with life, the expression of
her relation to her fellow-men, her pretext, her opportunity--unless
they were merely a vast purse in which to plunge for her pin-money! He
had fancied it would rest with him to determine from which of these
stand-points she should view Westmore; and at the outset she had
enthusiastically viewed it from his. In her eager adoption of his ideas
she had made a pet of the mills, organizing the Mothers' Club, laying
out a recreation-ground on the Hopewood property, and playing with
pretty plans in water-colour for the Emergency Hospital and the building
which was to contain the night-schools, library and gymnasium; but even
these minor projects--which he had urged her to take up as a means of
learning their essential dependence on his larger scheme--were soon to
be set aside by obstacles of a material order. Bessy always wanted
money--not a great deal, but, as she reasonably put it, "enough"--and
who was to blame if her father and Mr. Tredegar, each in his different
capacity, felt obliged to point out that every philanthropic outlay at
Westmore must entail a corresponding reduction in her income? Perhaps if
she could have been oftener at Hanaford these arguments would have been
counteracted, for she was tender-hearted, and prompt to relieve such
suffering as she saw about her; but her imagination was not active, and
it was easy for her to forget painful sights when they were not under
her eye. This was perhaps--half-consciously--one of the reasons why she
avoided Hanaford; why, as Amherst exclaimed, they had been everywhere
since their marriage but to the place where their obligations called
them. There had, at any rate, always been some good excuse for not
returning there, and consequently for postponing the work of improvement
which, it was generally felt, her husband could not fitly begin till she
_had_ returned and gone over the ground with him. After their marriage,
and especially in view of the comment excited by that romantic incident,
it was impossible not to yield to her wish that they should go abroad
for a few months; then, before her confinement, the doctors had exacted
that she should be spared all fatigue and worry; and after the baby's
death Amherst had felt with her too tenderly to venture an immediate
return to unwelcome questions.
For by this time it had become clear to him that such questions were,
and always would be, unwelcome to her. As the easiest means of escaping
them, she had once more dismissed the whole problem to the vague and
tiresome sphere of "business," whence he had succeeded in detaching it
for a moment in the early days of their union. Her first husband--poor
unappreciated Westmore!--had always spared her the boredom of
"business," and Halford Gaines and Mr. Tredegar were ready to show her
the same consideration; it was part of the modern code of chivalry that
lovely woman should not be bothered about ways and means. But Bessy was
too much the wife--and the wife in love--to consent that her husband's
views on the management of the mills should be totally disregarded.
Precisely because her advisers looked unfavourably on his intervention,
she felt bound--if only in defense of her illusions--to maintain and
emphasize it. The mills were, in fact, the official "platform" on which
she had married: Amherst's devoted _rôle_ at Westmore had justified the
unconventionality of the step. And so she was committed--the more
helplessly for her dense misintelligence of both sides of the
question--to the policy of conciliating the opposing influences which
had so uncomfortably chosen to fight out their case on the field of her
poor little existence: theoretically siding with her husband, but
surreptitiously, as he well knew, giving aid and comfort to the enemy,
who were really defending her own cause.
All this Amherst saw with that cruel insight which had replaced his
former blindness. He was, in truth, more ashamed of the insight than of
the blindness: it seemed to him horribly cold-blooded to be thus
analyzing, after two years of marriage, the source of his wife's
inconsistencies. And, partly for this reason, he had put off from month
to month the final question of the future management of the mills, and
of the radical changes to be made there if his system were to prevail.
But the time had come when, if Bessy had to turn to Westmore for the
justification of her marriage, he had even more need of calling upon it
for the same service. He had not, assuredly, married her because of
Westmore; but he would scarcely have contemplated marriage with a rich
woman unless the source of her wealth had offered him some such
opportunity as Westmore presented. His special training, and the natural
bent of his mind, qualified him, in what had once seemed a predestined
manner, to help Bessy to use her power nobly, for her own uplifting as
well as for that of Westmore; and so the mills became, incongruously
enough, the plank of safety to which both clung in their sense of
impending disaster.
It was not that Amherst feared the temptation to idleness if this outlet
for his activity were cut off. He had long since found that the luxury
with which his wife surrounded him merely quickened his natural bent for
hard work and hard fare. He recalled with a touch of bitterness how he
had once regretted having separated himself from his mother's class, and
how seductive for a moment, to both mind and senses, that other life had
appeared. Well--he knew it now, and it had neither charm nor peril for
him. Capua must have been a dull place to one who had once drunk the joy
of battle. What he dreaded was not that he should learn to love the
life of ease, but that he should grow to loathe it uncontrollably, as
the symbol of his mental and spiritual bondage. And Westmore was his
safety-valve, his refuge--if he were cut off from Westmore what remained
to him? It was not only the work he had found to his hand, but the one
work for which his hand was fitted. It was his life that he was fighting
for in insisting that now at last, before the close of this
long-deferred visit to Hanaford, the question of the mills should be
faced and settled. He had made that clear to Bessy, in a scene he still
shrank from recalling; for it was of the essence of his somewhat
unbending integrity that he would not trick her into a confused
surrender to the personal influence he still possessed over her, but
must seek to convince her by the tedious process of argument and
exposition, against which she knew no defense but tears and petulance.
But he had, at any rate, gained her consent to his setting forth his
views at the meeting of directors the next morning; and meanwhile he had
meant to be extraordinarily patient and reasonable with her, till the
hint of Mrs. Ansell's stratagem produced in him a fresh reaction of
distrust.
XII
THAT evening when dinner ended, Mrs. Ansell, with a glance through the
tall dining-room windows, had suggested to Bessy that it would be
pleasanter to take coffee on the verandah; but Amherst detained his wife
with a glance.
"I should like Bessy to stay," he said.
The dining-room being on the cool side the house, with a refreshing
outlook on the garden, the men preferred to smoke there rather than in
the stuffily-draped Oriental apartment destined to such rites; and Bessy
Amherst, with a faint sigh, sank back into her seat, while Mrs. Ansell
drifted out through one of the open windows.
The men surrounding Richard Westmore's table were the same who nearly
three years earlier had gathered in his house for the same purpose: the
discussion of conditions at the mills. The only perceptible change in
the relation to each other of the persons composing this group was that
John Amherst was now the host of the other two, instead of being a
subordinate called in for cross-examination; but he was so indifferent,
or at least so heedless, a host--so forgetful, for instance, of Mr.
Tredegar's preference for a "light" cigar, and of Mr. Langhope's
feelings on the duty of making the Westmore madeira circulate with the
sun--that the change was manifest only in his evening-dress, and in the
fact of his sitting at the foot of the table.
If Amherst was conscious of the contrast thus implied, it was only as a
restriction on his freedom. As far as the welfare of Westmore was
concerned he would rather have stood before his companions as the
assistant manager of the mills than as the husband of their owner; and
it seemed to him, as he looked back, that he had done very little with
the opportunity which looked so great in the light of his present
restrictions. What he _had_ done with it--the use to which, as
unfriendly critics might insinuate, he had so adroitly put it--had
landed him, ironically enough, in the ugly _impasse_ of a situation from
which no issue seemed possible without some wasteful sacrifice of
feeling.
His wife's feelings, for example, were already revealing themselves in
an impatient play of her fan that made her father presently lean forward
to suggest: "If we men are to talk shop, is it necessary to keep Bessy
in this hot room?"
Amherst rose and opened the window behind his wife's chair.
"There's a breeze from the west--the room will be cooler now," he said,
returning to his seat.
"Oh, I don't mind--" Bessy murmured, in a tone intended to give her
companions the full measure of what she was being called on to endure.
Mr. Tredegar coughed slightly. "May I trouble you for that other box of
cigars, Amherst? No, _not_ the Cabañas." Bessy rose and handed him the
box on which his glance significantly rested. "Ah, thank you, my dear. I
was about to ask," he continued, looking about for the cigar-lighter,
which flamed unheeded at Amherst's elbow, "what special purpose will be
served by a preliminary review of the questions to be discussed
tomorrow."
"Ah--exactly," murmured Mr. Langhope. "The madeira, my dear John?
No--ah--_please_--to the left!"
Amherst impatiently reversed the direction in which he had set the
precious vessel moving, and turned to Mr. Tredegar, who was
conspicuously lighting his cigar with a match extracted from his
waist-coat pocket.
"The purpose is to define my position in the matter; and I prefer that
Bessy should do this with your help rather than with mine."
Mr. Tredegar surveyed his cigar through drooping lids, as though the
question propounded by Amherst were perched on its tip.
"Is not your position naturally involved in and defined by hers? You
will excuse my saying that--technically speaking, of course--I cannot
distinctly conceive of it as having any separate existence."
Mr. Tredegar spoke with the deliberate mildness that was regarded as his
most effective weapon at the bar, since it was likely to abash those
who were too intelligent to be propitiated by it.
"Certainly it is involved in hers," Amherst agreed; "but how far that
defines it is just what I have waited till now to find out."
Bessy at this point recalled her presence by a restless turn of her
graceful person, and her father, with an affectionate glance at her,
interposed amicably: "But surely--according to old-fashioned ideas--it
implies identity of interests?"
"Yes; but whose interests?" Amherst asked.
"Why--your wife's, man! She owns the mills."
Amherst hesitated. "I would rather talk of my wife's interest in the
mills than of her interests there; but we'll keep to the plural if you
prefer it. Personally, I believe the terms should be interchangeable in
the conduct of such a business."
"Ah--I'm glad to hear that," said Mr. Tredegar quickly, "since it's
precisely the view we all take."
Amherst's colour rose. "Definitions are ambiguous," he said. "Before you
adopt mine, perhaps I had better develop it a little farther. What I
mean is, that Bessy's interests in Westmore should be regulated by her
interest in it--in its welfare as a social body, aside from its success
as a commercial enterprise. If we agree on this definition, we are at
one as to the other: namely that my relation to the matter is defined by
hers."
He paused a moment, as if to give his wife time to contribute some sign
of assent and encouragement; but she maintained a puzzled silence and he
went on: "There is nothing new in this. I have tried to make Bessy
understand from the beginning what obligations I thought the ownership
of Westmore entailed, and how I hoped to help her fulfill them; but ever
since our marriage all definite discussion of the subject has been put
off for one cause or another, and that is my reason for urging that it
should be brought up at the directors' meeting tomorrow."
There was another pause, during which Bessy glanced tentatively at Mr.
Tredegar, and then said, with a lovely rise of colour: "But, John, I
sometimes think you forget how much has been done at Westmore--the
Mothers' Club, and the play-ground, and all--in the way of carrying out
your ideas."
Mr. Tredegar discreetly dropped his glance to his cigar, and Mr.
Langhope sounded an irrepressible note of approval and encouragement.
Amherst smiled. "No, I have not forgotten; and I am grateful to you for
giving my ideas a trial. But what has been done hitherto is purely
superficial." Bessy's eyes clouded, and he added hastily: "Don't think I
undervalue it for that reason--heaven knows the surface of life needs
improving! But it's like picking flowers and sticking them in the ground
to make a garden--unless you transplant the flower with its roots, and
prepare the soil to receive it, your garden will be faded tomorrow. No
radical changes have yet been made at Westmore; and it is of radical
changes that I want to speak."
Bessy's look grew more pained, and Mr. Langhope exclaimed with unwonted
irascibility: "Upon my soul, Amherst, the tone you take about what your
wife has done doesn't strike me as the likeliest way of encouraging her
to do more!"
"I don't want to encourage her to do more on such a basis--the sooner
she sees the futility of it the better for Westmore!"
"The futility--?" Bessy broke out, with a flutter of tears in her voice;
but before her father could intervene Mr. Tredegar had raised his hand
with the gesture of one accustomed to wield the gavel.
"My dear child, I see Amherst's point, and it is best, as he says, that
you should see it too. What he desires, as I understand it, is the
complete reconstruction of the present state of things at Westmore; and
he is right in saying that all your good works there--night-schools, and
nursery, and so forth--leave that issue untouched."
A smile quivered under Mr. Langhope's moustache. He and Amherst both
knew that Mr. Tredegar's feint of recognizing the justice of his
adversary's claim was merely the first step to annihilating it; but
Bessy could never be made to understand this, and always felt herself
deserted and betrayed when any side but her own was given a hearing.
"I'm sorry if all I have tried to do at Westmore is useless--but I
suppose I shall never understand business," she murmured, vainly seeking
consolation in her father's eye.
"This is not business," Amherst broke in. "It's the question of your
personal relation to the people there--the last thing that business
considers."
Mr. Langhope uttered an impatient exclamation. "I wish to heaven the
owner of the mills had made it clear just what that relation was to be!"
"I think he did, sir," Amherst answered steadily, "in leaving his wife
the unrestricted control of the property."
He had reddened under Mr. Langhope's thrust, but his voice betrayed no
irritation, and Bessy rewarded him with an unexpected beam of sympathy:
she was always up in arms at the least sign of his being treated as an
intruder.
"I am sure, papa," she said, a little tremulously, "that poor Richard,
though he knew I was not clever, felt he could trust me to take the best
advice----"
"Ah, that's all we ask of you, my child!" her father sighed, while Mr.
Tredegar drily interposed: "We are merely losing time by this
digression. Let me suggest that Amherst should give us an idea of the
changes he wishes to make at Westmore."
Amherst, as he turned to answer, remembered with what ardent faith in
his powers of persuasion he had responded to the same appeal three years
earlier. He had thought then that all his cause needed was a hearing;
now he knew that the practical man's readiness to let the idealist talk
corresponds with the busy parent's permission to destructive infancy to
"run out and play." They would let him state his case to the four
corners of the earth--if only he did not expect them to act on it! It
was their policy to let him exhaust himself in argument and exhortation,
to listen to him so politely and patiently that if he failed to enforce
his ideas it should not be for lack of opportunity to expound them....
And the alternative struck him as hardly less to be feared. Supposing
that the incredible happened, that his reasons prevailed with his wife,
and, through her, with the others--at what cost would the victory be
won? Would Bessy ever forgive him for winning it? And what would his
situation be, if it left him in control of Westmore but estranged from
his wife?
He recalled suddenly a phrase he had used that afternoon to the
dark-eyed girl at the garden-party: "What risks we run when we scramble
into the chariot of the gods!" And at the same instant he heard her
retort, and saw her fine gesture of defiance. How could he ever have
doubted that the thing was worth doing at whatever cost? Something in
him--some secret lurking element of weakness and evasion--shrank out of
sight in the light of her question: "Do _you_ act on that?" and the "God
forbid!" he had instantly flashed back to her. He turned to Mr. Tredegar
with his answer.
Amherst knew that any large theoretical exposition of the case would be
as much wasted on the two men as on his wife. To gain his point he must
take only one step at a time, and it seemed to him that the first thing
needed at Westmore was that the hands should work and live under
healthier conditions. To attain this, two important changes were
necessary: the floor-space of the mills must be enlarged, and the
company must cease to rent out tenements, and give the operatives the
opportunity to buy land for themselves. Both these changes involved the
upheaval of the existing order. Whenever the Westmore mills had been
enlarged, it had been for the sole purpose of increasing the revenues of
the company; and now Amherst asked that these revenues should be
materially and permanently reduced. As to the suppression of the company
tenement, such a measure struck at the roots of the baneful paternalism
which was choking out every germ of initiative in the workman. Once the
operatives had room to work in, and the hope of homes of their own to
go to when work was over, Amherst was willing to trust to time for the
satisfaction of their other needs. He believed that a sounder
understanding of these needs would develop on both sides the moment the
employers proved their good faith by the deliberate and permanent
sacrifice of excessive gain to the well-being of the employed; and once
the two had learned to regard each other not as antagonists but as
collaborators, a long step would have been taken toward a readjustment
of the whole industrial relation. In regard to general and distant
results, Amherst tried not to be too sanguine, even in his own thoughts.
His aim was to remedy the abuse nearest at hand, in the hope of thus
getting gradually closer to the central evil; and, had his action been
unhampered, he would still have preferred the longer and more circuitous
path of practical experiment to the sweeping adoption of a new
industrial system.
But his demands, moderate as they were, assumed in his hearers the
consciousness of a moral claim superior to the obligation of making
one's business "pay"; and it was the futility of this assumption that
chilled the arguments on his lips, since in the orthodox creed of the
business world it was a weakness and not a strength to be content with
five per cent where ten was obtainable. Business was one thing,
philanthropy another; and the enthusiasts who tried combining them were
usually reduced, after a brief flight, to paying fifty cents on the
dollar, and handing over their stock to a promoter presumably unhampered
by humanitarian ideals.
Amherst knew that this was the answer with which his plea would be met;
knew, moreover, that the plea was given a hearing simply because his
judges deemed it so pitiably easy to refute. But the knowledge, once he
had begun to speak, fanned his argument to a white heat of pleading,
since, with failure so plainly ahead, small concessions and compromises
were not worth making. Reason would be wasted on all; but eloquence
might at least prevail with Bessy....
* * * * *
When, late that night, he went upstairs after long pacings of the
garden, he was surprised to see a light in her room. She was not given
to midnight study, and fearing that she might be ill he knocked at her
door. There was no answer, and after a short pause he turned the handle
and entered.
In the great canopied Westmore couch, her arms flung upward and her
hands clasped beneath her head, she lay staring fretfully at the globe
of electric light which hung from the centre of the embossed and gilded
ceiling. Seen thus, with the soft curves of throat and arms revealed,
and her face childishly set in a cloud of loosened hair, she looked no
older than Cicely--and, like Cicely, inaccessible to grown-up arguments
and the stronger logic of experience.
It was a trick of hers, in such moods, to ignore any attempt to attract
her notice; and Amherst was prepared for her remaining motionless as he
paused on the threshold and then advanced toward the middle of the room.
There had been a time when he would have been exasperated by her
pretense of not seeing him, but a deep weariness of spirit now dulled
him to these surface pricks.
"I was afraid you were not well when I saw the light burning," he began.
"Thank you--I am quite well," she answered in a colourless voice,
without turning her head.
"Shall I put it out, then? You can't sleep with such a glare in your
eyes."
"I should not sleep at any rate; and I hate to lie awake in the dark."
"Why shouldn't you sleep?" He moved nearer, looking down compassionately
on her perturbed face and struggling lips.
She lay silent a moment; then she faltered out: "B--because I'm so
unhappy!"
The pretense of indifference was swept away by a gush of childish sobs
as she flung over on her side and buried her face in the embroidered
pillows.
Amherst, bending down, laid a quieting hand on her shoulder. "Bessy----"
She sobbed on.
He seated himself silently in the arm-chair beside the bed, and kept his
soothing hold on her shoulder. The time had come when he went through
all these accustomed acts of pacification as mechanically as a nurse
soothing a fretful child. And once he had thought her weeping eloquent!
He looked about him at the spacious room, with its heavy hangings of
damask and the thick velvet carpet which stifled his steps. Everywhere
were the graceful tokens of her presence--the vast lace-draped
toilet-table strewn with silver and crystal, the embroidered muslin
cushions heaped on the lounge, the little rose-lined slippers she had
just put off, the lace wrapper, with a scent of violets in its folds,
which he had pushed aside when he sat down beside her; and he remembered
how full of a mysterious and intimate charm these things had once
appeared to him. It was characteristic that the remembrance made him
more patient with her now. Perhaps, after all, it was his failure that
she was crying over....
"Don't be unhappy. You decided as seemed best to you," he said.
She pressed her handkerchief against her lips, still keeping her head
averted. "But I hate all these arguments and disputes. Why should you
unsettle everything?" she murmured.
His mother's words! Involuntarily he removed his hand from her
shoulder, though he still remained seated by the bed.
"You are right. I see the uselessness of it," he assented, with an
uncontrollable note of irony.
She turned her head at the tone, and fixed her plaintive brimming eyes
on him. "You _are_ angry with me!"
"Was that troubling you?" He leaned forward again, with compassion in
his face. _Sancta simplicitas!_ was the thought within him.
"I am not angry," he went on; "be reasonable and try to sleep."
She started upright, the light masses of her hair floating about her
like silken sea-weed lifted on an invisible tide. "Don't talk like that!
I can't endure to be humoured like a baby. I am unhappy because I can't
see why all these wretched questions should be dragged into our life. I
hate to have you always disagreeing with Mr. Tredegar, who is so clever
and has so much experience; and yet I hate to see you give way to him,
because that makes it appear as if...as if...."
"He didn't care a straw for my ideas?" Amherst smiled. "Well, he
doesn't--and I never dreamed of making him. So don't worry about that
either."
"You never dreamed of making him care for your ideas? But then why do
you----"
"Why do I go on setting them forth at such great length?" Amherst smiled
again. "To convince you--that's my only ambition."
She stared at him, shaking her head back to toss a loose lock from her
puzzled eyes. A tear still shone on her lashes, but with the motion it
fell and trembled down her cheek.
"To convince _me_? But you know I am so ignorant of such things."
"Most women are."
"I never pretended to understand anything about--economics, or whatever
you call it."
"No."
"Then how----"
He turned and looked at her gently. "I thought you might have begun to
understand something about _me_."
"About you?" The colour flowered softly under her clear skin.
"About what my ideas on such subjects were likely to be worth--judging
from what you know of me in other respects." He paused and glanced away
from her. "Well," he concluded deliberately, "I suppose I've had my
answer tonight."
"Oh, John----!"
He rose and wandered across the room, pausing a moment to finger
absently the trinkets on the dressing-table. The act recalled with a
curious vividness certain dulled sensations of their first days
together, when to handle and examine these frail little accessories of
her toilet had been part of the wonder and amusement of his new
existence. He could still hear her laugh as she leaned over him,
watching his mystified look in the glass, till their reflected eyes met
there and drew down her lips to his. He laid down the fragrant
powder-puff he had been turning slowly between his fingers, and moved
back toward the bed. In the interval he had reached a decision.
"Well--isn't it natural that I should think so?" he began again, as he
stood beside her. "When we married I never expected you to care or know
much about economics. It isn't a quality a man usually chooses his wife
for. But I had a fancy--perhaps it shows my conceit--that when we had
lived together a year or two, and you'd found out what kind of a fellow
I was in other ways--ways any woman can judge of--I had a fancy that you
might take my opinions on faith when it came to my own special
business--the thing I'm generally supposed to know about."
He knew that he was touching a sensitive chord, for Bessy had to the
full her sex's pride of possessorship. He was human and faulty till
others criticized him--then he became a god. But in this case a
conflicting influence restrained her from complete response to his
appeal.
"I _do_ feel sure you know--about the treatment of the hands and all
that; but you said yourself once--the first time we ever talked about
Westmore--that the business part was different----"
Here it was again, the ancient ineradicable belief in the separable body
and soul! Even an industrial organization was supposed to be subject to
the old theological distinction, and Bessy was ready to co-operate with
her husband in the emancipation of Westmore's spiritual part if only its
body remained under the law.
Amherst controlled his impatience, as it was always easy for him to do
when he had fixed on a definite line of conduct.
"It was my situation that was different; not what you call the business
part. That is inextricably bound up with the treatment of the hands. If
I am to have anything to do with the mills now I can deal with them only
as your representative; and as such I am bound to take in the whole
question."
Bessy's face clouded: was he going into it all again? But he read her
look and went on reassuringly: "That was what I meant by saying that I
hoped you would take me on faith. If I want the welfare of Westmore it's
above all, I believe, because I want Westmore to see you as _I_ do--as
the dispenser of happiness, who could not endure to benefit by any wrong
or injustice to others."
"Of course, of course I don't want to do them injustice!"
"Well, then----"
He had seated himself beside her again, clasping in his the hand with
which she was fretting the lace-edged sheet. He felt her restless
fingers surrender slowly, and her eyes turned to him in appeal.
"But I care for what people say of you too! And you know--it's horrid,
but one must consider it--if they say you're spending my money
imprudently...." The blood rose to her neck and face. "I don't mind for
myself...even if I have to give up as many things as papa and Mr.
Tredegar think...but there is Cicely...and if people said...."
"If people said I was spending Cicely's money on improving the condition
of the people to whose work she will some day owe all her wealth--"
Amherst paused: "Well, I would rather hear that said of me than any
other thing I can think of, except one."
"Except what?"
"That I was doing it with her mother's help and approval."
She drew a long tremulous sigh: he knew it was always a relief to her to
have him assert himself strongly. But a residue of resistance still
clouded her mind.
"I should always want to help you, of course; but if Mr. Tredegar and
Halford Gaines think your plan unbusinesslike----"
"Mr. Tredegar and Halford Gaines are certain to think it so. And that is
why I said, just now, that it comes, in the end, to your choosing
between us; taking them on experience or taking me on faith."
She looked at him wistfully. "Of course I should expect to give up
things.... You wouldn't want me to live here?"
"I should not ask you to," he said, half-smiling.
"I suppose there would be a good many things we couldn't do----"
"You would certainly have less money for a number of years; after that,
I believe you would have more rather than less; but I should not want
you to think that, beyond a reasonable point, the prosperity of the
mills was ever to be measured by your dividends."
"No." She leaned back wearily among the pillows. "I suppose, for
instance, we should have to give up Europe this summer----?"
Here at last was the bottom of her thought! It was always on the
immediate pleasure that her soul hung: she had not enough imagination to
look beyond, even in the projecting of her own desires. And it was on
his knowledge of this limitation that Amherst had deliberately built.
"I don't see how you could go to Europe," he said.
"The doctor thinks I need it," she faltered.
"In that case, of course--" He stood up, not abruptly, or with any show
of irritation, but as if accepting this as her final answer. "What you
need most, in the meantime, is a little sleep," he said. "I will tell
your maid not to disturb you in the morning." He had returned to his
soothing way of speech, as though definitely resigned to the inutility
of farther argument. "And I will say goodbye now," he continued,
"because I shall probably take an early train, before you wake----"
She sat up with a start. "An early train? Why, where are you going?"
"I must go to Chicago some time this month, and as I shall not be wanted
here tomorrow I might as well run out there at once, and join you next
week at Lynbrook."
Bessy had grown pale. "But I don't understand----"
Their eyes met. "Can't you understand that I am human enough to prefer,
under the circumstances, not being present at tomorrow's meeting?" he
said with a dry laugh.
She sank back with a moan of discouragement, turning her face away as he
began to move toward his room.
"Shall I put the light out?" he asked, pausing with his hand on the
electric button.
"Yes, please."
He pushed in the button and walked on, guided through the obscurity by
the line of light under his door. As he reached the threshold he heard a
little choking cry.
"John--oh, John!"
He paused.
"I can't _bear_ it!" The sobs increased.
"Bear what?"
"That you should hate me----"
"Don't be foolish," he said, groping for his door-handle.
"But you do hate me--and I deserve it!"
"Nonsense, dear. Try to sleep."
"I can't sleep till you've forgiven me. Say you don't hate me! I'll do
anything...only say you don't hate me!"
He stood still a moment, thinking; then he turned back, and made his way
across the room to her side. As he sat down beside her, he felt her arms
reach for his neck and her wet face press itself against his cheek.
"I'll do anything..." she sobbed; and in the darkness he held her to him
and hated his victory.
XIII
MRS. ANSELL was engaged in what she called picking up threads. She had
been abroad for the summer--had, in, fact, transferred herself but a few
hours earlier from her returning steamer to the little station at
Lynbrook--and was now, in the bright September afternoon, which left her
in sole possession of the terrace of Lynbrook House, using that pleasant
eminence as a point of observation from which to gather up some of the
loose ends of history dropped at her departure.
It might have been thought that the actual scene out-spread below
her--the descending gardens, the tennis-courts, the farm-lands sloping
away to the blue sea-like shimmer of the Hempstead plains--offered, at
the moment, little material for her purpose; but that was to view them
with a superficial eye. Mrs. Ansell's trained gaze was, for example,
greatly enlightened by the fact that the tennis-courts were fringed by a
group of people indolently watchful of the figures agitating themselves
about the nets; and that, as she turned her head toward the entrance
avenue, the receding view of a station omnibus, followed by a
luggage-cart, announced that more guests were to be added to those who
had almost taxed to its limits the expansibility of the luncheon-table.
All this, to the initiated eye, was full of suggestion; but its
significance was as nothing to that presented by the approach of two
figures which, as Mrs. Ansell watched, detached themselves from the
cluster about the tennis-ground and struck, obliquely and at a desultory
pace, across the lawn toward the terrace. The figures--those of a slight
young man with stooping shoulders, and of a lady equally youthful but
slenderly erect--moved forward in absorbed communion, as if unconscious
of their surroundings and indefinite as to their direction, till, on the
brink of the wide grass terrace just below their observer's parapet,
they paused a moment and faced each other in closer speech. This
interchange of words, though brief in measure of time, lasted long
enough to add a vivid strand to Mrs. Ansell's thickening skein; then, on
a gesture of the lady's, and without signs of formal leave-taking, the
young man struck into a path which regained the entrance avenue, while
his companion, quickening her pace, crossed the grass terrace and
mounted the wide stone steps sweeping up to the house.
These brought her out on the upper terrace a few yards from Mrs.
Ansell's post, and exposed her, unprepared, to the full beam of welcome
which that lady's rapid advance threw like a searchlight across her
path.
"Dear Miss Brent! I was just wondering how it was that I hadn't seen you
before." Mrs. Ansell, as she spoke, drew the girl's hand into a long
soft clasp which served to keep them confronted while she delicately
groped for whatever thread the encounter seemed to proffer.
Justine made no attempt to evade the scrutiny to which she found herself
exposed; she merely released her hand by a movement instinctively
evasive of the mechanical endearment, explaining, with a smile that
softened the gesture: "I was out with Cicely when you arrived. We've
just come in."
"The dear child! I haven't seen her either." Mrs. Ansell continued to
bestow upon the speaker's clear dark face an intensity of attention in
which, for the moment, Cicely had no perceptible share. "I hear you are
teaching her botany, and all kinds of wonderful things."
Justine smiled again. "I am trying to teach her to wonder: that is the
hardest faculty to cultivate in the modern child."
"Yes--I suppose so; in myself," Mrs. Ansell admitted with a responsive
brightness, "I find it develops with age. The world is a remarkable
place." She threw this off absently, as though leaving Miss Brent to
apply it either to the inorganic phenomena with which Cicely was
supposed to be occupied, or to those subtler manifestations that engaged
her own attention.
"It's a great thing," she continued, "for Bessy to have had your
help--for Cicely, and for herself too. There is so much that I want you
to tell me about her. As an old friend I want the benefit of your
fresher eye."
"About Bessy?" Justine hesitated, letting her glance drift to the
distant group still anchored about the tennis-nets. "Don't you find her
looking better?"
"Than when I left? So much so that I was unduly disturbed, just now, by
seeing that clever little doctor--it _was_ he, wasn't it, who came up
the lawn with you?"
"Dr. Wyant? Yes." Miss Brent hesitated again. "But he merely
called--with a message."
"Not professionally? _Tant mieux!_ The truth is, I was anxious about
Bessy when I left--I thought she ought to have gone abroad for a change.
But, as it turns out, her little excursion with you did as well."
"I think she only needed rest. Perhaps her six weeks in the Adirondacks
were better than Europe."
"Ah, under _your_ care--that made them better!" Mrs. Ansell in turn
hesitated, the lines of her face melting and changing as if a rapid
stage-hand had shifted them. When she spoke again they were as open as a
public square, but also as destitute of personal significance, as flat
and smooth as the painted drop before the real scene it hides.
"I have always thought that Bessy, for all her health and activity,
needs as much care as Cicely--the kind of care a clever friend can give.
She is so wasteful of her strength and her nerves, and so unwilling to
listen to reason. Poor Dick Westmore watched over her as if she were a
baby; but perhaps Mr. Amherst, who must have been used to such a
different type of woman, doesn't realize...and then he's so little
here...." The drop was lit up by a smile that seemed to make it more
impenetrable. "As an old friend I can't help telling you how much I hope
she is to have you with her for a long time--a long, long time."
Miss Brent bent her head in slight acknowledgment of the tribute. "Oh,
soon she will not need any care----"
"My dear Miss Brent, she will always need it!" Mrs. Ansell made a
movement inviting the young girl to share the bench from which, at the
latter's approach, she had risen. "But perhaps there is not enough in
such a life to satisfy your professional energies."
She seated herself, and after an imperceptible pause Justine sank into
the seat beside her. "I am very glad, just now, to give my energies a
holiday," she said, leaning back with a little sigh of retrospective
weariness.
"You are tired too? Bessy wrote me you had been quite used up by a
trying case after we saw you at Hanaford."
Miss Brent smiled. "When a nurse is fit for work she calls a trying case
a 'beautiful' one."
"But meanwhile--?" Mrs. Ansell shone on her with elder-sisterly
solicitude. "Meanwhile, why not stay on with Cicely--above all, with
Bessy? Surely she's a 'beautiful' case too."
"Isn't she?" Justine laughingly agreed.
"And if you want to be tried--" Mrs. Ansell swept the scene with a
slight lift of her philosophic shoulders--"you'll find there are trials
enough everywhere."
Her companion started up with a glance at the small watch on her breast.
"One of them is that it's already after four, and that I must see that
tea is sent down to the tennis-ground, and the new arrivals looked
after."
"I saw the omnibus on its way to the station. Are many more people
coming?"
"Five or six, I believe. The house is usually full for Sunday."
Mrs. Ansell made a slight motion to detain her. "And when is Mr. Amherst
expected?"
Miss Brent's pale cheek seemed to take on a darker tone of ivory, and
her glance dropped from her companion's face to the vivid stretch of
gardens at their feet. "Bessy has not told me," she said.
"Ah--" the older woman rejoined, looking also toward the gardens, as if
to intercept Miss Brent's glance in its flight. The latter stood still a
moment, with the appearance of not wishing to evade whatever else her
companion might have to say; then she moved away, entering the house by
one window just as Mr. Langhope emerged from it by another.
The sound of his stick tapping across the bricks roused Mrs. Ansell from
her musings, but she showed her sense of his presence simply by
returning to the bench she had just left; and accepting this mute
invitation, Mr. Langhope crossed the terrace and seated himself at her
side.
When he had done so they continued to look at each other without
speaking, after the manner of old friends possessed of occult means of
communication; and as the result of this inward colloquy Mr. Langhope at
length said: "Well, what do you make of it?"
"What do _you_?" she rejoined, turning full upon him a face so released
from its usual defences and disguises that it looked at once older and
more simple than the countenance she presented to the world.
Mr. Langhope waved a deprecating hand. "I want your fresher
impressions."
"That's what I just now said to Miss Brent."
"You've been talking to Miss Brent?"
"Only a flying word--she had to go and look after the new arrivals."
Mr. Langhope's attention deepened. "Well, what did you say to her?"
"Wouldn't you rather hear what she said to _me_?"
He smiled. "A good cross-examiner always gets the answers he wants. Let
me hear your side, and I shall know hers."
"I should say that applied only to stupid cross-examiners; or to those
who have stupid subjects to deal with. And Miss Brent is not stupid, you
know."
"Far from it! What else do you make out?"
"I make out that she's in possession."
"Here?"
"Don't look startled. Do you dislike her?"
"Heaven forbid--with those eyes! She has a wit of her own, too--and she
certainly makes things easier for Bessy."
"She guards her carefully, at any rate. I could find out nothing."
"About Bessy?"
"About the general situation."
"Including Miss Brent?"
Mrs. Ansell smiled faintly. "I made one little discovery about her."
"Well?"
"She's intimate with the new doctor."
"Wyant?" Mr. Langhope's interest dropped. "What of that? I believe she
knew him before."
"I daresay. It's of no special importance, except as giving us a
possible clue to her character. She strikes me as interesting and
mysterious."
Mr. Langhope smiled. "The things your imagination does for you!"
"It helps me to see that we may find Miss Brent useful as a friend."
"A friend?"
"An ally." She paused, as if searching for a word. "She may restore the
equilibrium."
Mr. Langhope's handsome face darkened. "Open Bessy's eyes to Amherst?
Damn him!" he said quietly.
Mrs. Ansell let the imprecation pass. "When was he last here?" she
asked.
"Five or six weeks ago--for one night. His only visit since she came
back from the Adirondacks."
"What do you think his motive is? He must know what he risks in losing
his hold on Bessy."
"His motive? With your eye for them, can you ask? A devouring ambition,
that's all! Haven't you noticed that, in all except the biggest minds,
ambition takes the form of wanting to command where one has had to obey?
Amherst has been made to toe the line at Westmore, and now he wants
Truscomb--yes, and Halford Gaines, too!--to do the same. That's the
secret of his servant-of-the-people pose--gad, I believe it's the whole
secret of his marriage! He's devouring my daughter's substance to pay
off an old score against the mills. He'll never rest till he has
Truscomb out, and some creature of his own in command--and then, _vogue
la galère_! If it were women, now," Mr. Langhope summed up impatiently,
"one could understand it, at his age, and with that damned romantic
head--but to be put aside for a lot of low mongrelly socialist
mill-hands--ah, my poor girl--my poor girl!"
Mrs. Ansell mused. "You didn't write me that things were so bad. There's
been no actual quarrel?" she asked.
"How can there be, when the poor child does all he wants? He's simply
too busy to come and thank her!"
"Too busy at Hanaford?"
"So he says. Introducing the golden age at Westmore--it's likely to be
the age of copper at Lynbrook."
Mrs. Ansell drew a meditative breath. "I was thinking of that. I
understood that Bessy would have to retrench while the changes at
Westmore were going on."
"Well--didn't she give up Europe, and cable over to countermand her new
motor?"
"But the life here! This mob of people! Miss Brent tells me the house is
full for every week-end."
"Would you have my daughter cut off from all her friends?"
Mrs. Ansell met this promptly. "From some of the new ones, at any rate!
Have you heard who has just arrived?"
Mr. Langhope's hesitation showed a tinge of embarrassment. "I'm not
sure--some one has always just arrived."
"Well, the Fenton Carburys, then!" Mrs. Ansell left it to her tone to
annotate the announcement.
Mr. Langhope raised his eyebrows slightly. "Are they likely to be an
exceptionally costly pleasure?"
"If you're trying to prove that I haven't kept to the point--I can
assure you that I'm well within it!"
"But since the good Blanche has got her divorce and married Carbury,
wherein do they differ from other week-end automata?"
"Because most divorced women marry again to be respectable."
Mr. Langhope smiled faintly. "Yes--that's their punishment. But it would
be too dull for Blanche."
"Precisely. _She_ married again to see Ned Bowfort!"
"Ah--that may yet be hers!"
Mrs. Ansell sighed at his perversity. "Meanwhile, she's brought him
here, and it is unnatural to see Bessy lending herself to such
combinations."
"You're corrupted by a glimpse of the old societies. Here Bowfort and
Carbury are simply hands at bridge."
"Old hands at it--yes! And the bridge is another point: Bessy never used
to play for money."
"Well, she may make something, and offset her husband's prodigalities."
"There again--with this _train de vie_, how on earth are both ends to
meet?"
Mr. Langhope grown suddenly grave, struck his cane resoundingly on the
terrace. "Westmore and Lynbrook? I don't want them to--I want them to
get farther and farther apart!"
She cast on him a look of startled divination. "You want Bessy to go on
spending too much money?"
"How can I help it if it costs?"
"If what costs--?" She stopped, her eyes still wide; then their glances
crossed, and she exclaimed: "If your scheme costs? It _is_ your scheme,
then?"
He shrugged his shoulders again. "It's a passive attitude----"
"Ah, the deepest plans are that!" Mr. Langhope uttered no protest, and
she continued to piece her conjectures together. "But you expect it to
lead up to something active. Do you want a rupture?"
"I want him brought back to his senses."
"Do you think that will bring him back to _her_?"
"Where the devil else will he have to go?"
Mrs. Ansell's eyes dropped toward the gardens, across which desultory
knots of people were straggling back from the ended tennis-match. "Ah,
here they all come," she said, rising with a half-sigh; and as she stood
watching the advance of the brightly-tinted groups she added slowly:
"It's ingenious--but you don't understand him."
Mr. Langhope stroked his moustache. "Perhaps not," he assented
thoughtfully. "But suppose we go in before they join us? I want to show
you a set of Ming I picked up the other day for Bessy. I flatter myself
I _do_ understand Ming."
XIV
JUSTINE BRENT, her household duties discharged, had gone upstairs to her
room, a little turret chamber projecting above the wide terrace below,
from which the sounds of lively intercourse now rose increasingly to her
window.
Bessy, she knew, would have preferred to have her remain with the party
from whom these evidences of gaiety proceeded. Mrs. Amherst had grown to
depend on her friend's nearness. She liked to feel that Justine's quick
hand and eye were always in waiting on her impulses, prompt to interpret
and execute them without any exertion of her own. Bessy combined great
zeal in the pursuit of sport--a tireless passion for the saddle, the
golf-course, the tennis-court--with an almost oriental inertia within
doors, an indolence of body and brain that made her shrink from the
active obligations of hospitality, though she had grown to depend more
and more on the distractions of a crowded house.
But Justine, though grateful, and anxious to show her gratitude, was
unwilling to add to her other duties that of joining in the amusements
of the house-party. She made no pretense of effacing herself when she
thought her presence might be useful--but, even if she had cared for the
diversions in favour at Lynbrook, a certain unavowed pride would have
kept her from participating in them on the same footing with Bessy's
guests. She was not in the least ashamed of her position in the
household, but she chose that every one else should be aware of it, that
she should not for an instant be taken for one of the nomadic damsels
who form the camp-followers of the great army of pleasure. Yet even on
this point her sensitiveness was not exaggerated. Adversity has a deft
hand at gathering loose strands of impulse into character, and Justine's
early contact with different phases of experience had given her a fairly
clear view of life in the round, what might be called a sound working
topography of its relative heights and depths. She was not seriously
afraid of being taken for anything but what she really was, and still
less did she fear to become, by force of propinquity and suggestion, the
kind of being for whom she might be temporarily taken.
When, at Bessy's summons, she had joined the latter at her camp in the
Adirondacks, the transition from a fatiguing "case" at Hanaford to a
life in which sylvan freedom was artfully blent with the most studied
personal luxury, had come as a delicious refreshment to body and brain.
She was weary, for the moment, of ugliness, pain and hard work, and life
seemed to recover its meaning under the aspect of a graceful leisure.
Lynbrook also, whither she had been persuaded to go with Bessy at the
end of their woodland cure, had at first amused and interested her. The
big house on its spreading terraces, with windows looking over bright
gardens to the hazy distances of the plains, seemed a haven of harmless
ease and gaiety. Justine was sensitive to the finer graces of luxurious
living, to the warm lights on old pictures and bronzes, the soft
mingling of tints in faded rugs and panellings of time-warmed oak. And
the existence to which this background formed a setting seemed at first
to have the same decorative qualities. It was pleasant, for once, to be
among people whose chief business was to look well and take life
lightly, and Justine's own buoyancy of nature won her immediate access
among the amiable persons who peopled Bessy's week-end parties. If they
had only abounded a little more in their own line she might have
succumbed to their spell. But it seemed to her that they missed the
poetry of their situation, transacting their pleasures with the dreary
method and shortness of view of a race tethered to the ledger. Even the
verbal flexibility which had made her feel that she was in a world of
freer ideas, soon revealed itself as a form of flight from them, in
which the race was distinctly to the swift; and Justine's phase of
passive enjoyment passed with the return of her physical and mental
activity. She was a creature tingling with energy, a little fleeting
particle of the power that moves the sun and the other stars, and the
deadening influences of the life at Lynbrook roused these tendencies to
greater intensity, as a suffocated person will suddenly develop abnormal
strength in the struggle for air.
She did not, indeed, regret having come. She was glad to be with Bessy,
partly because of the childish friendship which had left such deep
traces in her lonely heart, and partly because what she had seen of her
friend's situation stirred in her all the impulses of sympathy and
service; but the idea of continuing in such a life, of sinking into any
of the positions of semi-dependence that an adroit and handsome girl may
create for herself in a fashionable woman's train--this possibility
never presented itself to Justine till Mrs. Ansell, that afternoon, had
put it into words. And to hear it was to revolt from it with all the
strength of her inmost nature. The thought of the future troubled her,
not so much materially--for she had a light bird-like trust in the
morrow's fare--but because her own tendencies seemed to have grown less
clear, because she could not rest in them for guidance as she had once
done. The renewal of bodily activity had not brought back her faith in
her calling: her work had lost the light of consecration. She no longer
felt herself predestined to nurse the sick for the rest of her life, and
in her inexperience she reproached herself with this instability. Youth
and womanhood were in fact crying out in her for their individual
satisfaction; but instincts as deep-seated protected her from even a
momentary illusion as to the nature of this demand. She wanted
happiness, and a life of her own, as passionately as young
flesh-and-blood had ever wanted them; but they must come bathed in the
light of imagination and penetrated by the sense of larger affinities.
She could not conceive of shutting herself into a little citadel of
personal well-being while the great tides of existence rolled on
unheeded outside. Whether they swept treasure to her feet, or strewed
her life with wreckage, she felt, even now; that her place was there, on
the banks, in sound and sight of the great current; and just in
proportion as the scheme of life at Lynbrook succeeded in shutting out
all sense of that vaster human consciousness, so did its voice speak
more thrillingly within her.
Somewhere, she felt--but, alas! still out of reach--was the life she
longed for, a life in which high chances of doing should be mated with
the finer forms of enjoying. But what title had she to a share in such
an existence? Why, none but her sense of what it was worth--and what did
that count for, in a world which used all its resources to barricade
itself against all its opportunities? She knew there were girls who
sought, by what is called a "good" marriage, an escape into the outer
world, of doing and thinking--utilizing an empty brain and full pocket
as the key to these envied fields. Some such chance the life at Lynbrook
seemed likely enough to offer--one is not, at Justine's age and with her
penetration, any more blind to the poise of one's head than to the turn
of one's ideas; but here the subtler obstacles of taste and pride
intervened. Not even Bessy's transparent manœuvrings, her tender
solicitude for her friend's happiness, could for a moment weaken
Justine's resistance. If she must marry without love--and this was
growing conceivable to her--she must at least merge her craving for
personal happiness in some view of life in harmony with hers.
A tap on her door interrupted these musings, to one aspect of which
Bessy Amherst's entrance seemed suddenly to give visible expression.
"Why did you run off, Justine? You promised to be down-stairs when I
came back from tennis."
"_Till_ you came back--wasn't it, dear?" Justine corrected with a smile,
pushing her arm-chair forward as Bessy continued to linger irresolutely
in the doorway. "I saw that there was a fresh supply of tea in the
drawing-room, and I knew you would be there before the omnibus came from
the station."
"Oh, I was there--but everybody was asking for you----"
"Everybody?" Justine gave a mocking lift to her dark eyebrows.
"Well--Westy Gaines, at any rate; the moment he set foot in the house!"
Bessy declared with a laugh as she dropped into the arm-chair.
Justine echoed the laugh, but offered no comment on the statement which
accompanied it, and for a moment both women were silent, Bessy tilting
her pretty discontented head against the back of the chair, so that her
eyes were on a level with those of her friend, who leaned near her in
the embrasure of the window.
"I can't understand you, Justine. You know well enough what he's come
back for."
"In order to dazzle Hanaford with the fact that he has been staying at
Lynbrook!"
"Nonsense--the novelty of that has worn off. He's been here three times
since we came back."
"You are admirably hospitable to your family----"
Bessy let her pretty ringed hands fall with a discouraged gesture. "Why
do you find him so much worse than--than other people?"
Justine's eye-brows rose again. "In the same capacity? You speak as if I
had boundless opportunities of comparison."
"Well, you've Dr. Wyant!" Mrs. Amherst suddenly flung back at her.
Justine coloured under the unexpected thrust, but met her friend's eyes
steadily. "As an alternative to Westy? Well, if I were on a desert
island--but I'm not!" she concluded with a careless laugh.
Bessy frowned and sighed. "You can't mean that, of the two--?" She
paused and then went on doubtfully: "It's because he's cleverer?"
"Dr. Wyant?" Justine smiled. "It's not making an enormous claim for
him!"
"Oh, I know Westy's not brilliant; but stupid men are not always the
hardest to live with." She sighed again, and turned on Justine a glance
charged with conjugal experience.
Justine had sunk into the window-seat, her thin hands clasping her knee,
in the attitude habitual to her meditative moments. "Perhaps not," she
assented; "but I don't know that I should care for a man who made life
easy; I should want some one who made it interesting."
Bessy met this with a pitying exclamation. "Don't imagine you invented
that! Every girl thinks it. Afterwards she finds out that it's much
pleasanter to be thought interesting herself."
She spoke with a bitterness that issued strangely from her lips. It was
this bitterness which gave her soft personality the sharp edge that
Justine had felt in it on the day of their meeting at Hanaford.
The girl, at first, had tried to defend herself from these
scarcely-veiled confidences, distasteful enough in themselves, and
placing her, if she listened, in an attitude of implied disloyalty to
the man under whose roof they were spoken. But a precocious experience
of life had taught her that emotions too strong for the nature
containing them turn, by some law of spiritual chemistry, into a
rankling poison; and she had therefore resigned herself to serving as a
kind of outlet for Bessy's pent-up discontent. It was not that her
friend's grievance appealed to her personal sympathies; she had learned
enough of the situation to give her moral assent unreservedly to the
other side. But it was characteristic of Justine that where she
sympathized least she sometimes pitied most. Like all quick spirits she
was often intolerant of dulness; yet when the intolerance passed it left
a residue of compassion for the very incapacity at which she chafed. It
seemed to her that the tragic crises in wedded life usually turned on
the stupidity of one of the two concerned; and of the two victims of
such a catastrophe she felt most for the one whose limitations had
probably brought it about. After all, there could be no imprisonment as
cruel as that of being bounded by a hard small nature. Not to be
penetrable at all points to the shifting lights, the wandering music of
the world--she could imagine no physical disability as cramping as that.
How the little parched soul, in solitary confinement for life, must pine
and dwindle in its blind cranny of self-love!
To be one's self wide open to the currents of life does not always
contribute to an understanding of narrower natures; but in Justine the
personal emotions were enriched and deepened by a sense of participation
in all that the world about her was doing, suffering and enjoying; and
this sense found expression in the instinct of ministry and solace. She
was by nature a redresser, a restorer; and in her work, as she had once
told Amherst, the longing to help and direct, to hasten on by personal
intervention time's slow and clumsy processes, had often been in
conflict with the restrictions imposed by her profession. But she had no
idle desire to probe the depths of other lives; and where there seemed
no hope of serving she shrank from fruitless confidences. She was
beginning to feel this to be the case with Bessy Amherst. To touch the
rock was not enough, if there were but a few drops within it; yet in
this barrenness lay the pathos of the situation--and after all, may not
the scanty spring be fed from a fuller current?
"I'm not sure about that," she said, answering her friend's last words
after a deep pause of deliberation. "I mean about its being so pleasant
to be found interesting. I'm sure the passive part is always the dull
one: life has been a great deal more thrilling since we found out that
we revolved about the sun, instead of sitting still and fancying that
all the planets were dancing attendance on us. After all, they were
_not_; and it's rather humiliating to think how the morning stars must
have laughed together about it!"
There was no self-complacency in Justine's eagerness to help. It was far
easier for her to express it in action than in counsel, to grope for the
path with her friend than to point the way to it; and when she had to
speak she took refuge in figures to escape the pedantry of appearing to
advise. But it was not only to Mrs. Dressel that her parables were dark,
and the blank look in Bessy's eyes soon snatched her down from the
height of metaphor.
"I mean," she continued with a smile, "that, as human nature is
constituted, it has got to find its real self--the self to be interested
in--outside of what we conventionally call 'self': the particular
Justine or Bessy who is clamouring for her particular morsel of life.
You see, self isn't a thing one can keep in a box--bits of it keep
escaping, and flying off to lodge in all sorts of unexpected crannies;
we come across scraps of ourselves in the most unlikely places--as I
believe you would in Westmore, if you'd only go back there and look for
them!"
Bessy's lip trembled and the colour sprang to her face; but she answered
with a flash of irritation: "Why doesn't _he_ look for me there,
then--if he still wants to find me?"
"Ah--it's for him to look here--to find himself _here_," Justine
murmured.
"Well, he never comes here! That's his answer."
"He will--he will! Only, when he does, let him find you."
"Find me? I don't understand. How can he, when he never sees me? I'm no
more to him than the carpet on the floor!"
Justine smiled again. "Well--be that then! The thing is to _be_."
"Under his feet? Thank you! Is that what you mean to marry for? It's not
what husbands admire in one, you know!"
"No." Justine stood up with a sense of stealing discouragement. "But I
don't think I want to be admired----"
"Ah, that's because you know you are!" broke from the depths of the
other's bitterness.
The tone smote Justine, and she dropped into the seat at her friend's
side, silently laying a hand on Bessy's feverishly-clasped fingers.
"Oh, don't let us talk about me," complained the latter, from whose lips
the subject was never long absent. "And you mustn't think I _want_ you
to marry, Justine; not for myself, I mean--I'd so much rather keep you
here. I feel much less lonely when you're with me. But you say you won't
stay--and it's too dreadful to think of your going back to that dreary
hospital."
"But you know the hospital's not dreary to me," Justine interposed;
"it's the most interesting place I've ever known."
Mrs. Amherst smiled indulgently on this extravagance. "A great many
people go through the craze for philanthropy--" she began in the tone of
mature experience; but Justine interrupted her with a laugh.
"Philanthropy? I'm not philanthropic. I don't think I ever felt inclined
to do good in the abstract--any more than to do ill! I can't remember
that I ever planned out a course of conduct in my life. It's only," she
went on, with a puzzled frown, as if honestly trying to analyze her
motives, "it's only that I'm so fatally interested in people that before
I know it I've slipped into their skins; and then, of course, if
anything goes wrong with them, it's just as if it had gone wrong with
me; and I can't help trying to rescue myself from _their_ troubles! I
suppose it's what you'd call meddling--and so should I, if I could only
remember that the other people were not myself!"
Bessy received this with the mild tolerance of superior wisdom. Once
safe on the tried ground of traditional authority, she always felt
herself Justine's superior. "That's all very well now--you see the
romantic side of it," she said, as if humouring her friend's vagaries.
"But in time you'll want something else; you'll want a husband and
children--a life of your own. And then you'll have to be more practical.
It's ridiculous to pretend that comfort and money don't make a
difference. And if you married a rich man, just think what a lot of good
you could do! Westy will be very well off--and I'm sure he'd let you
endow hospitals and things. Think how interesting it would be to build a
ward in the very hospital where you'd been a nurse! I read something
like that in a novel the other day--it was beautifully described. All
the nurses and doctors that the heroine had worked with were there to
receive her...and her little boy went about and gave toys to the
crippled children...."
If the speaker's concluding instance hardly produced the effect she had
intended, it was perhaps only because Justine's attention had been
arrested by the earlier part of the argument. It was strange to have
marriage urged on her by a woman who had twice failed to find happiness
in it--strange, and yet how vivid a sign that, even to a nature absorbed
in its personal demands, not happiness but completeness is the inmost
craving! "A life of your own"--that was what even Bessy, in her obscure
way, felt to be best worth suffering for. And how was a spirit like
Justine's, thrilling with youth and sympathy, to conceive of an isolated
existence as the final answer to that craving? A life circumscribed by
one's own poor personal consciousness would not be life at all--far
better the "adventure of the diver" than the shivering alone on the
bank! Bessy, reading encouragement in her silence, returned her
hand-clasp with an affectionate pressure.
"You _would_ like that, Justine?" she said, secretly proud of having hit
on the convincing argument.
"To endow hospitals with your cousin's money? No; I should want
something much more exciting!"
Bessy's face kindled. "You mean travelling abroad--and I suppose New
York in winter?"
Justine broke into a laugh. "I was thinking of your cousin himself when
I spoke." And to Bessy's disappointed cry--"Then it _is_ Dr. Wyant,
after all?" she answered lightly, and without resenting the challenge:
"I don't know. Suppose we leave it to the oracle."
"The oracle?"
"Time. His question-and-answer department is generally the most reliable
in the long run." She started up, gently drawing Bessy to her feet. "And
just at present he reminds me that it's nearly six, and that you
promised Cicely to go and see her before you dress for dinner."
Bessy rose obediently. "Does he remind you of _your_ promises too? You
said you'd come down to dinner tonight."
"Did I?" Justine hesitated. "Well, I'm coming," she said, smiling and
kissing her friend.
XV
WHEN the door closed on Mrs. Amherst a resolve which had taken shape in
Justine's mind during their talk together made her seat herself at her
writing-table, where, after a moment's musing over her suspended pen,
she wrote and addressed a hurried note. This business despatched, she
put on her hat and jacket, and letter in hand passed down the corridor
from her room, and descended to the entrance-hall below. She might have
consigned her missive to the post-box which conspicuously tendered its
services from a table near the door; but to do so would delay the
letter's despatch till morning, and she felt a sudden impatience to see
it start.
The tumult on the terrace had transferred itself within doors, and as
Justine went down the stairs she heard the click of cues from the
billiard-room, the talk and laughter of belated bridge-players, the
movement of servants gathering up tea-cups and mending fires. She had
hoped to find the hall empty, but the sight of Westy Gaines's figure
looming watchfully on the threshold of the smoking-room gave her, at the
last bend of the stairs, a little start of annoyance. He would want to
know where she was going, he would offer to go with her, and it would
take some time and not a little emphasis to make him understand that his
society was not desired.
This was the thought that flashed through Justine's mind as she reached
the landing; but the next moment it gave way to a contradictory feeling.
Westy Gaines was not alone in the hall. From under the stairway rose the
voices of a group ensconced in that popular retreat about a chess-board;
and as Justine reached the last turn of the stairs she perceived that
Mason Winch, an earnest youth with advanced views on political economy,
was engaged, to the diversion of a circle of spectators, in teaching the
Telfer girls chess. The futility of trying to fix the spasmodic
attention of this effervescent couple, and their instructor's grave
unconsciousness of the fact, constituted, for the lookers-on, the
peculiar diversion of the scene. It was of course inevitable that young
Winch, on his arrival at Lynbrook, should have succumbed at once to the
tumultuous charms of the Telfer manner, which was equally attractive to
inarticulate youth and to tired and talked-out middle-age; but that he
should have perceived no resistance in their minds to the deliberative
processes of the game of chess, was, even to the Telfers themselves, a
source of unmitigated gaiety. Nothing seemed to them funnier than that
any one should credit them with any mental capacity; and they had
inexhaustibly amusing ways of drawing out and showing off each other's
ignorance.
It was on this scene that Westy's appreciative eyes had been fixed till
Justine's appearance drew them to herself. He pronounced her name
joyfully, and moved forward to greet her; but as their hands met she
understood that he did not mean to press his company upon her. Under the
eye of the Lynbrook circle he was chary of marked demonstrations, and
even Mrs. Amherst's approval could not, at such moments, bridge over the
gap between himself and the object of his attentions. A Gaines was a
Gaines in the last analysis, and apart from any pleasing accident of
personality; but what was Miss Brent but the transient vehicle of those
graces which Providence has provided for the delectation of the
privileged sex?
These influences were visible in the temperate warmth of Westy's manner,
and in his way of keeping a backward eye on the mute interchange of
comment about the chess-board. At another time his embarrassment would
have amused Justine; but the feelings stirred by her talk with Bessy had
not subsided, and she recognized with a sting of mortification the
resemblance between her view of the Lynbrook set and its estimate of
herself. If Bessy's friends were negligible to her she was almost
non-existent to them; and, as against herself, they were overwhelmingly
provided with tangible means of proving their case.
Such considerations, at a given moment, may prevail decisively even with
a nature armed against them by insight and irony; and the mere fact that
Westy Gaines did not mean to join her, and that he was withheld from
doing so by the invisible pressure of the Lynbrook standards, had the
effect of precipitating Justine's floating intentions.
If anything farther had been needed to hasten this result, it would have
been accomplished by the sound of footsteps which, over-taking her a
dozen yards from the house, announced her admirer's impetuous if tardy
pursuit. The act of dismissing him, though it took but a word and was
effected with a laugh, left her pride quivering with a hurt the more
painful because she would not acknowledge it. That she should waste a
moment's resentment on the conduct of a person so unimportant as poor
Westy, showed her in a flash the intrinsic falseness of her position at
Lynbrook. She saw that to disdain the life about her had not kept her
intact from it; and the knowledge made her feel anew the need of some
strong decentralizing influence, some purifying influx of emotion and
activity.
She had walked on quickly through the clear October twilight, which was
still saturated with the after-glow of a vivid sunset; and a few minutes
brought her to the village stretching along the turnpike beyond the
Lynbrook gates. The new post-office dominated the row of shabby houses
and "stores" set disjointedly under reddening maples, and its arched
doorway formed the centre of Lynbrook's evening intercourse.
Justine, hastening toward the knot of loungers on the threshold, had no
consciousness of anything outside of her own thoughts; and as she
mounted the steps she was surprised to see Dr. Wyant detach himself from
the group and advance to meet her.
"May I post your letter?" he asked, lifting his hat.
His gesture uncovered the close-curling hair of a small
delicately-finished head just saved from effeminacy by the vigorous jut
of heavy eye-brows meeting above full grey eyes. The eyes again, at
first sight, might have struck one as too expressive, or as expressing
things too purely decorative for the purposes of a young country doctor
with a growing practice; but this estimate was corrected by an
unexpected abruptness in their owner's voice and manner. Perhaps the
final impression produced on a close observer by Dr. Stephen Wyant would
have been that the contradictory qualities of which he was compounded
had not yet been brought into equilibrium by the hand of time.
Justine, in reply to his question, had drawn back a step, slipping her
letter into the breast of her jacket.
"That is hardly worth while, since it was addressed to you," she
answered with a slight smile as she turned to descend the post-office
steps.
Wyant, still carrying his hat, and walking with quick uneven steps,
followed her in silence till they had passed beyond earshot of the
loiterers on the threshold; then, in the shade of the maple boughs, he
pulled up and faced her.
"You've written to say that I may come tomorrow?"
Justine hesitated. "Yes," she said at length.
"Good God! You give royally!" he broke out, pushing his hand with a
nervous gesture through the thin dark curls on his forehead.
Justine laughed, with a trace of nervousness in her own tone. "And you
talk--well, imperially! Aren't you afraid to bankrupt the language?"
"What do you mean?" he said, staring.
"What do _you_ mean? I have merely said that I would see you
tomorrow----"
"Well," he retorted, "that's enough for my happiness!"
She sounded her light laugh again. "I'm glad to know you're so easily
pleased."
"I'm not! But you couldn't have done a cruel thing without a struggle;
and since you're ready to give me my answer tomorrow, I know it can't
be a cruel one."
They had begun to walk onward as they talked, but at this she halted.
"Please don't take that tone. I dislike sentimentality!" she exclaimed,
with a tinge of imperiousness that was a surprise to her own ears.
It was not the first time in the course of her friendship with Stephen
Wyant that she had been startled by this intervention of something
within her that resisted and almost resented his homage. When they were
apart, she was conscious only of the community of interests and
sympathies that had first drawn them together. Why was it then--since
his looks were of the kind generally thought to stand a suitor in good
stead--that whenever they had met of late she had been subject to these
rushes of obscure hostility, the half-physical, half-moral shrinking
from some indefinable element in his nature against which she was
constrained to defend herself by perpetual pleasantry and evasion?
To Wyant, at any rate, the answer was not far to seek. His pale face
reflected the disdain in hers as he returned ironically: "A thousand
pardons; I know I'm not always in the key."
"The key?"
"I haven't yet acquired the Lynbrook tone. You must make allowances for
my lack of opportunity."
The retort on Justine's lips dropped to silence, as though his words
had in fact brought an answer to her inward questioning. Could it be
that he was right--that her shrinking from him was the result of an
increased sensitiveness to faults of taste that she would once have
despised herself for noticing? When she had first known him, in her work
at St. Elizabeth's some three years earlier, his excesses of manner had
seemed to her merely the boyish tokens of a richness of nature not yet
controlled by experience. Though Wyant was somewhat older than herself
there had always been an element of protection in her feeling for him,
and it was perhaps this element which formed the real ground of her
liking. It was, at any rate, uppermost as she returned, with a softened
gleam of mockery: "Since you are so sure of my answer I hardly know why
I should see you tomorrow."
"You mean me to take it now?" he exclaimed.
"I don't mean you to take it at all till it's given--above all not to
take it for granted!"
His jutting brows drew together again. "Ah, I can't split hairs with
you. Won't you put me out of my misery?"
She smiled, but not unkindly. "Do you want an anæsthetic?"
"No--a clean cut with the knife!"
"You forget that we're not allowed to despatch hopeless cases--more's
the pity!"
He flushed to the roots of his thin hair. "Hopeless cases? That's it,
then--that's my answer?"
They had reached the point where, at the farther edge of the straggling
settlement, the tiled roof of the railway-station fronted the
post-office cupola; and the shriek of a whistle now reminded Justine
that the spot was not propitious to private talk. She halted a moment
before speaking.
"I have no answer to give you now but the one in my note--that I'll see
you tomorrow."
"But if you're sure of knowing tomorrow you must know now!"
Their eyes met, his eloquently pleading, hers kind but still
impenetrable. "If I knew now, you should know too. Please be content
with that," she rejoined.
"How can I be, when a day may make such a difference? When I know that
every influence about you is fighting against me?"
The words flashed a refracted light far down into the causes of her own
uncertainty.
"Ah," she said, drawing a little away from him, "I'm not so sure that I
don't like a fight!"
"Is that why you won't give in?" He moved toward her with a despairing
gesture. "If I let you go now, you're lost to me!"
She stood her ground, facing him with a quick lift of the head. "If you
don't let me go I certainly am," she said; and he drew back, as if
conscious of the uselessness of the struggle. His submission, as usual,
had a disarming effect on her irritation, and she held out her hand.
"Come tomorrow at three," she said, her voice and manner suddenly
seeming to give back the hope she had withheld from him.
He seized on her hand with an inarticulate murmur; but at the same
moment a louder whistle and the thunder of an approaching train reminded
her of the impossibility of prolonging the scene. She was ordinarily
careless of appearances, but while she was Mrs. Amherst's guest she did
not care to be seen romantically loitering through the twilight with
Stephen Wyant; and she freed herself with a quick goodbye.
He gave her a last look, hesitating and imploring; then, in obedience to
her gesture, he turned away and strode off in the opposite direction.
As soon as he had left her she began to retrace her steps toward
Lynbrook House; but instead of traversing the whole length of the
village she passed through a turnstile in the park fencing, taking a
more circuitous but quieter way home.
She walked on slowly through the dusk, wishing to give herself time to
think over her conversation with Wyant. Now that she was alone again, it
seemed to her that the part she had played had been both inconsistent
and undignified. When she had written to Wyant that she would see him on
the morrow she had done so with the clear understanding that she was to
give, at that meeting, a definite answer to his offer of marriage; and
during her talk with Bessy she had suddenly, and, as it seemed to her,
irrevocably, decided that the answer should be favourable. From the
first days of her acquaintance with Wyant she had appreciated his
intelligence and had been stimulated by his zeal for his work. He had
remained only six months at Saint Elizabeth's, and though his feeling
for her had even then been manifest, it had been kept from expression by
the restraint of their professional relation, and by her absorption in
her duties. It was only when they had met again at Lynbrook that she had
begun to feel a personal interest in him. His youthful promise seemed
nearer fulfillment than she had once thought possible, and the contrast
he presented to the young men in Bessy's train was really all in his
favour. He had gained in strength and steadiness without losing his high
flashes of enthusiasm; and though, even now, she was not in love with
him, she began to feel that the union of their common interests might
create a life full and useful enough to preclude the possibility of
vague repinings. It would, at any rate, take her out of the stagnant
circle of her present existence, and restore her to contact with the
fruitful energies of life.
All this had seemed quite clear when she wrote her letter; why, then,
had she not made use of their chance encounter to give her answer,
instead of capriciously postponing it? The act might have been that of a
self-conscious girl in her teens; but neither inexperience nor coquetry
had prompted it. She had merely yielded to the spirit of resistance that
Wyant's presence had of late aroused in her; and the possibility that
this resistance might be due to some sense of his social defects, his
lack of measure and facility, was so humiliating that for a moment she
stood still in the path, half-meaning to turn back and overtake him----
As she paused she was surprised to hear a man's step behind her; and the
thought that it might be Wyant's brought about another revulsion of
feeling. What right had he to pursue her in this way, to dog her steps
even into the Lynbrook grounds? She was sure that his persistent
attentions had already attracted the notice of Bessy's visitors; and
that he should thus force himself on her after her dismissal seemed
suddenly to make their whole relation ridiculous.
She turned about to rebuke him, and found herself face to face with John
Amherst.
XVI
AMHERST, on leaving the train at Lynbrook, had paused in doubt on the
empty platform. His return was unexpected, and no carriage awaited him;
but he caught the signal of the village cab-driver's ready whip.
Amherst, however, felt a sudden desire to postpone the moment of
arrival, and consigning his luggage to the cab he walked away toward the
turnstile through which Justine had passed. In thus taking the longest
way home he was yielding another point to his reluctance. He knew that
at that hour his wife's visitors might still be assembled in the
drawing-room, and he wished to avoid making his unannounced entrance
among them.
It was not till now that he felt the embarrassment of such an arrival.
For some time past he had known that he ought to go back to Lynbrook,
but he had not known how to tell Bessy that he was coming. Lack of habit
made him inexpert in the art of easy transitions, and his inability to
bridge over awkward gaps had often put him at a disadvantage with his
wife and her friends. He had not yet learned the importance of observing
the forms which made up the daily ceremonial of their lives, and at
present there was just enough soreness between himself and Bessy to make
such observances more difficult than usual.
There had been no open estrangement, but peace had been preserved at the
cost of a slowly accumulated tale of grievances on both sides. Since
Amherst had won his point about the mills, the danger he had foreseen
had been realized: his victory at Westmore had been a defeat at
Lynbrook. It would be too crude to say that his wife had made him pay
for her public concession by the private disregard of his wishes; and if
something of this sort had actually resulted, his sense of fairness told
him that it was merely the natural reaction of a soft nature against the
momentary strain of self-denial. At first he had been hardly aware of
this consequence of his triumph. The joy of being able to work his will
at Westmore obscured all lesser emotions; and his sentiment for Bessy
had long since shrunk into one of those shallow pools of feeling which a
sudden tide might fill, but which could never again be the deep
perennial spring from which his life was fed.
The need of remaining continuously at Hanaford while the first changes
were making had increased the strain of the situation. He had never
expected that Bessy would stay there with him--had perhaps, at heart,
hardly wished it--and her plan of going to the Adirondacks with Miss
Brent seemed to him a satisfactory alternative to the European trip she
had renounced. He felt as relieved as though some one had taken off his
hands the task of amusing a restless child, and he let his wife go
without suspecting that the moment might be a decisive one between them.
But it had not occurred to Bessy that any one could regard six weeks in
the Adirondacks as an adequate substitute for a summer abroad. She felt
that her sacrifice deserved recognition, and personal devotion was the
only form of recognition which could satisfy her. She had expected
Amherst to join her at the camp, but he did not come; and when she went
back to Long Island she did not stop to see him, though Hanaford lay in
her way. At the moment of her return the work at the mills made it
impossible for him to go to Lynbrook; and thus the weeks drifted on
without their meeting.
At last, urged by his mother, he had gone down to Long Island for a
night; but though, on that occasion, he had announced his coming, he
found the house full, and the whole party except Mr. Langhope in the act
of starting off to a dinner in the neighbourhood. He was of course
expected to go too, and Bessy appeared hurt when he declared that he was
too tired and preferred to remain with Mr. Langhope; but she did not
suggest staying at home herself, and drove off in a mood of exuberant
gaiety. Amherst had been too busy all his life to know what intricacies
of perversion a sentimental grievance may develop in an unoccupied mind,
and he saw in Bessy's act only a sign of indifference. The next day she
complained to him of money difficulties, as though surprised that her
income had been suddenly cut down; and when he reminded her that she had
consented of her own will to this temporary reduction, she burst into
tears and accused him of caring only for Westmore.
He went away exasperated by her inconsequence, and bills from Lynbrook
continued to pour in on him. In the first days of their marriage, Bessy
had put him in charge of her exchequer, and she was too indolent--and at
heart perhaps too sensitive--to ask him to renounce the charge. It was
clear to him, therefore, how little she was observing the spirit of
their compact, and his mind was tormented by the anticipation of
financial embarrassments. He wrote her a letter of gentle expostulation,
but in her answer she ignored his remonstrance; and after that silence
fell between them.
The only way to break this silence was to return to Lynbrook; but now
that he had come back, he did not know what step to take next. Something
in the atmosphere of his wife's existence seemed to paralyze his
will-power. When all about her spoke a language so different from his
own, how could he hope to make himself heard? He knew that her family
and her immediate friends--Mr. Langhope, the Gaineses, Mrs. Ansell and
Mr. Tredegar--far from being means of communication, were so many
sentinels ready to raise the drawbridge and drop the portcullis at his
approach. They were all in league to stifle the incipient feelings he
had roused in Bessy, to push her back into the deadening routine of her
former life, and the only voice that might conceivably speak for him was
Miss Brent's.
The "case" which, unexpectedly presented to her by one of the Hope
Hospital physicians, had detained Justine at Hanaford during the month
of June, was the means of establishing a friendship between herself and
Amherst. They did not meet often, or get to know each other very well;
but he saw her occasionally at his mother's and at Mrs. Dressel's, and
once he took her out to Westmore, to consult her about the emergency
hospital which was to be included among the first improvements there.
The expedition had been memorable to both; and when, some two weeks
later, Bessy wrote suggesting that she should take Miss Brent to the
Adirondacks, it seemed to Amherst that there was no one whom he would
rather have his wife choose as her companion.
He was much too busy at the time to cultivate or analyze his feeling for
Miss Brent; he rested vaguely in the thought of her, as of the "nicest"
girl he had ever met, and was frankly pleased when accident brought them
together; but the seeds left in both their minds by these chance
encounters had not yet begun to germinate.
So unperceived had been their gradual growth in intimacy that it was a
surprise to Amherst to find himself suddenly thinking of her as a means
of communication with his wife; but the thought gave him such
encouragement that, when he saw Justine in the path before him he went
toward her with unusual eagerness.
Justine, on her part, felt an equal pleasure. She knew that Bessy did
not expect her husband, and that his prolonged absence had already been
the cause of malicious comment at Lynbrook; and she caught at the hope
that this sudden return might betoken a more favourable turn of affairs.
"Oh, I am so glad to see you!" she exclaimed; and her tone had the
effect of completing his reassurance, his happy sense that she would
understand and help him.
"I wanted to see you too," he began confusedly; then, conscious of the
intimacy of the phrase, he added with a slight laugh: "The fact is, I'm
a culprit looking for a peace-maker."
"A culprit?"
"I've been so tied down at the mills that I didn't know, till yesterday,
just when I could break away; and in the hurry of leaving--" He paused
again, checked by the impossibility of uttering, to the girl before him,
the little conventional falsehoods which formed the small currency of
Bessy's circle. Not that any scruple of probity restrained him: in
trifling matters he recognized the usefulness of such counters in the
social game; but when he was with Justine he always felt the obscure
need of letting his real self be seen.
"I was stupid enough not to telegraph," he said, "and I am afraid my
wife will think me negligent: she often has to reproach me for my sins
of omission, and this time I know they are many."
The girl received this in silence, less from embarrassment than from
surprise; for she had already guessed that it was as difficult for
Amherst to touch, even lightly, on his private affairs, as it was
instinctive with his wife to pour her grievances into any willing ear.
Justine's first thought was one of gratification that he should have
spoken, and of eagerness to facilitate the saying of whatever he wished
to say; but before she could answer he went on hastily: "The fact is,
Bessy does not know how complicated the work at Westmore is; and when I
caught sight of you just now I was thinking that you are the only one of
her friends who has any technical understanding of what I am trying to
do, and who might consequently help her to see how hard it is for me to
take my hand from the plough."
Justine listened gravely, longing to cry out her comprehension and
sympathy, but restrained by the sense that the moment was a critical
one, where impulse must not be trusted too far. It was quite possible
that a reaction of pride might cause Amherst to repent even so guarded
an avowal; and if that happened, he might never forgive her for having
encouraged him to speak. She looked up at him with a smile.
"Why not tell Bessy yourself? Your understanding of the case is a good
deal clearer than mine or any one else's."
"Oh, Bessy is tired of hearing about it from me; and besides--" She
detected a shade of disappointment in his tone, and was sorry she had
said anything which might seem meant to discourage his confidence. It
occurred to her also that she had been insincere in not telling him at
once that she had already been let into the secret of his domestic
differences: she felt the same craving as Amherst for absolute openness
between them.
"I know," she said, almost timidly, "that Bessy has not been quite
content of late to have you give so much time to Westmore, and perhaps
she herself thinks it is because the work there does not interest her;
but I believe it is for a different reason."
"What reason?" he asked with a look of surprise.
"Because Westmore takes you from her; because she thinks you are happier
there than at Lynbrook."
The day had faded so rapidly that it was no longer possible for the
speakers to see each other's faces, and it was easier for both to
communicate through the veil of deepening obscurity.
"But, good heavens, she might be there with me--she's as much needed
there as I am!" Amherst exclaimed.
"Yes; but you must remember that it's against all her habits--and
against the point of view of every one about her--that she should lead
that kind of life; and meanwhile----"
"Well?"
"Meanwhile, isn't it expedient that you should, a little more, lead
hers?"
Always the same answer to his restless questioning! His mother's answer,
the answer of Bessy and her friends. He had somehow hoped that the girl
at his side would find a different solution to the problem, and his
disappointment escaped in a bitter exclamation.
"But Westmore is my life--hers too, if she knew it! I can't desert it
now without being as false to her as to myself!"
As he spoke, he was overcome once more by the hopelessness of trying to
put his case clearly. How could Justine, for all her quickness and
sympathy, understand a situation of which the deeper elements were
necessarily unknown to her? The advice she gave him was natural enough,
and on her lips it seemed not the counsel of a shallow expediency, but
the plea of compassion and understanding. But she knew nothing of the
long struggle for mutual adjustment which had culminated in this crisis
between himself and his wife, and she could therefore not see that, if
he yielded his point, and gave up his work at Westmore, the concession
would mean not renewal but destruction. He felt that he should hate
Bessy if he won her back at that price; and the violence of his feeling
frightened him. It was, in truth, as he had said, his own life that he
was fighting for. If he gave up Westmore he could not fall back on the
futile activities of Lynbrook, and fate might yet have some lower
alternative to offer. He could trust to his own strength and
self-command while his energies had a normal outlet; but idleness and
self-indulgence might work in him like a dangerous drug.
Justine kept steadily to her point. "Westmore must be foremost to both
of you in time; I don't see how either of you can escape that. But the
realization of it must come to Bessy through _you_, and for that reason
I think that you ought to be more patient--that you ought even to put
the question aside for a time and enter a little more into her life
while she is learning to understand yours." As she ended, it seemed to
her that what she had said was trite and ineffectual, and yet that it
might have passed the measure of discretion; and, torn between two
doubts, she added hastily: "But you have done just that in coming back
now--that is the real solution of the problem."
While she spoke they passed out of the wood-path they had been
following, and rounding a mass of shrubbery emerged on the lawn below
the terraces. The long bulk of the house lay above them, dark against
the lingering gleam of the west, with brightly-lit windows marking its
irregular outline; and the sight produced in Amherst and Justine a vague
sense of helplessness and constraint. It was impossible to speak with
the same freedom, confronted by that substantial symbol of the accepted
order, which seemed to glare down on them in massive disdain of their
puny efforts to deflect the course of events: and Amherst, without
reverting to her last words, asked after a moment if his wife had many
guests.
He listened in silence while Justine ran over the list of names--the
Telfer girls and their brother, Mason Winch and Westy Gaines, a cluster
of young bridge-playing couples, and, among the last arrivals, the
Fenton Carburys and Ned Bowfort. The names were all familiar to
Amherst--he knew they represented the flower of week-end fashion; but he
did not remember having seen the Carburys among his wife's guests, and
his mind paused on the name, seeking to regain some lost impression
connected with it. But it evoked, like the others, merely the confused
sense of stridency and unrest which he had brought away from his last
Lynbrook visit; and this reminiscence made him ask Miss Brent, when her
list was ended, if she did not think that so continuous a succession of
visitors was too tiring for Bessy.
"I sometimes think it tires her more than she knows; but I hope she can
be persuaded to take better care of herself now that Mrs. Ansell has
come back."
Amherst halted abruptly. "Is Mrs. Ansell here?"
"She arrived from Europe today."
"And Mr. Langhope too, I suppose?"
"Yes. He came from Newport about ten days ago."
Amherst checked himself, conscious that his questions betrayed the fact
that he and his wife no longer wrote to each other. The same thought
appeared to strike Justine, and they walked across the lawn in silence,
hastening their steps involuntarily, as though to escape the oppressive
weight of the words which had passed between them. But Justine was
unwilling that this fruitless sense of oppression should be the final
outcome of their talk; and when they reached the upper terrace she
paused and turned impulsively to Amherst. As she did so, the light from
an uncurtained window fell on her face, which glowed with the inner
brightness kindled in it by moments of strong feeling.
"I am sure of one thing--Bessy will be very, very glad that you have
come," she exclaimed.
"Thank you," he answered.
Their hands met mechanically, and she turned away and entered the house.
XVII
BESSY had not seen her little girl that day, and filled with compunction
by Justine's reminder, she hastened directly to the school-room.
Of late, in certain moods, her maternal tenderness had been clouded by a
sense of uneasiness in the child's presence, for Cicely was the argument
most effectually used by Mr. Langhope and Mr. Tredegar in their efforts
to check the triumph of Amherst's ideas. Bessy, still unable to form an
independent opinion on the harassing question of the mills, continued to
oscillate between the views of the contending parties, now regarding
Cicely as an innocent victim and herself as an unnatural mother,
sacrificing her child's prospects to further Amherst's enterprise, and
now conscious of a vague animosity against the little girl, as the chief
cause of the dissensions which had so soon clouded the skies of her
second marriage. Then again, there were moments when Cicely's rosy bloom
reminded her bitterly of the child she had lost--the son on whom her
ambitions had been fixed. It seemed to her now that if their boy had
lived she might have kept Amherst's love and have played a more
important part in his life; and brooding on the tragedy of the child's
sickly existence she resented the contrast of Cicely's brightness and
vigour. The result was that in her treatment of her daughter she
alternated between moments of exaggerated devotion and days of neglect,
never long happy away from the little girl, yet restless and
self-tormenting in her presence.
After her talk with Justine she felt more than usually disturbed, as she
always did when her unprofitable impulses of self-exposure had subsided.
Bessy's mind was not made for introspection, and chance had burdened it
with unintelligible problems. She felt herself the victim of
circumstances to which her imagination attributed the deliberate malice
that children ascribe to the furniture they run against in playing. This
helped her to cultivate a sense of helpless injury and to disdain in
advance the advice she was perpetually seeking. How absurd it was, for
instance, to suppose that a girl could understand the feelings of a
married woman! Justine's suggestion that she should humble herself still
farther to Amherst merely left in Bessy's mind a rankling sense of being
misunderstood and undervalued by those to whom she turned in her
extremity, and she said to herself, in a phrase that sounded well in her
own ears, that sooner or later every woman must learn to fight her
battles alone.
In this mood she entered the room where Cicely was at supper with her
governess, and enveloped the child in a whirl of passionate caresses.
But Cicely had inherited the soberer Westmore temper, and her mother's
spasmodic endearments always had a repressive effect on her. She
dutifully returned a small fraction of Bessy's kisses, and then, with an
air of relief, addressed herself once more to her bread and marmalade.
"You don't seem a bit glad to see me!" Bessy exclaimed, while the little
governess made a nervous pretence of being greatly amused at this
prodigious paradox, and Cicely, setting down her silver mug, asked
judicially: "Why should I be gladder than other days? It isn't a
birthday."
This Cordelia-like answer cut Bessy to the quick. "You horrid child to
say such a cruel thing when you know I love you better and better every
minute! But you don't care for me any longer because Justine has taken
you away from me!"
This last charge had sprung into her mind in the act of uttering it, but
now that it was spoken it instantly assumed the proportions of a fact,
and seemed to furnish another justification for her wretchedness. Bessy
was not naturally jealous, but her imagination was thrall to the spoken
word, and it gave her a sudden incomprehensible relief to associate
Justine with the obscure causes of her suffering.
"I know she's cleverer than I am, and more amusing, and can tell you
about plants and animals and things...and I daresay she tells you how
tiresome and stupid I am...."
She sprang up suddenly, abashed by Cicely's astonished gaze, and by the
governess's tremulous attempt to continue to treat the scene as one of
"Mamma's" most successful pleasantries.
"Don't mind me--my head aches horribly. I think I'll rush off for a
gallop on Impulse before dinner. Miss Dill, Cicely's nails are a
sight--I suppose that comes of grubbing up wild-flowers."
And with this parting shot at Justine's pursuits she swept out of the
school-room, leaving pupil and teacher plunged in a stricken silence
from which Cicely at length emerged to say, with the candour that Miss
Dill dreaded more than any punishable offense: "Mother's prettiest--but
I do like Justine the best."
* * * * *
It was nearly dark when Bessy mounted the horse which had been hastily
saddled in response to her order; but it was her habit to ride out alone
at all hours, and of late nothing but a hard gallop had availed to quiet
her nerves. Her craving for occupation had increased as her life became
more dispersed and agitated, and the need to fill every hour drove her
to excesses of bodily exertion, since other forms of activity were
unknown to her.
As she cantered along under the twilight sky, with a strong sea-breeze
in her face, the rush of air and the effort of steadying her nervous
thoroughbred filled her with a glow of bodily energy from which her
thoughts emerged somewhat cleansed of their bitterness.
She had been odious to poor little Cicely, for whom she now felt a
sudden remorseful yearning which almost made her turn her horse's head
homeward, that she might dash upstairs and do penance beside the child's
bed. And that she should have accused Justine of taking Cicely from her!
It frightened her to find herself thinking evil of Justine. Bessy, whose
perceptions were keen enough in certain directions, knew that her second
marriage had changed her relation to all her former circle of friends.
Though they still rallied about her, keeping up the convenient habit of
familiar intercourse, she had begun to be aware that their view of her
had in it an element of criticism and compassion. She had once fancied
that Amherst's good looks, and the other qualities she had seen in him,
would immediately make him free of the charmed circle in which she
moved; but she was discouraged by his disregard of his opportunities,
and above all by the fundamental differences in his view of life. He was
never common or ridiculous, but she saw that he would never acquire the
small social facilities. He was fond of exercise, but it bored him to
talk of it. The men's smoking-room anecdotes did not amuse him, he was
unmoved by the fluctuations of the stock-market, he could not tell one
card from another, and his perfunctory attempts at billiards had once
caused Mr. Langhope to murmur, in his daughter's hearing: "Ah, that's
the test--I always said so!"
Thus debarred from what seemed to Bessy the chief points of contact with
life, how could Amherst hope to impose himself on minds versed in these
larger relations? As the sense of his social insufficiency grew on her,
Bessy became more sensitive to that latent criticism of her marriage
which--intolerable thought!--involved a judgment on herself. She was
increasingly eager for the approval and applause of her little audience,
yet increasingly distrustful of their sincerity, and more miserably
persuaded that she and her husband were the butt of some of their most
effective stories. She knew also that rumours of the disagreement about
Westmore were abroad, and the suspicion that Amherst's conduct was the
subject of unfriendly comment provoked in her a reaction of loyalty to
his ideas....
From this turmoil of conflicting influences only her friendship with
Justine Brent remained secure. Though Justine's adaptability made it
easy for her to fit into the Lynbrook life, Bessy knew that she stood as
much outside of it as Amherst. She could never, for instance, be
influenced by what Maria Ansell and the Gaineses and the Telfers
thought. She had her own criteria of conduct, unintelligible to Bessy,
but giving her an independence of mind on which her friend leaned in a
kind of blind security. And that even her faith in Justine should
suddenly be poisoned by a jealous thought seemed to prove that the
consequences of her marriage were gradually infecting her whole life.
Bessy could conceive of masculine devotion only as subservient to its
divinity's least wish, and she argued that if Amherst had really loved
her he could not so lightly have disturbed the foundations of her world.
And so her tormented thoughts, perpetually circling on themselves,
reverted once more to their central grievance--the failure of her
marriage. If her own love had died out it would have been much
simpler--she was surrounded by examples of the mutual evasion of a
troublesome tie. There was Blanche Carbury, for instance, with whom she
had lately struck up an absorbing friendship...it was perfectly clear
that Blanche Carbury wondered how much more she was going to stand! But
it was the torment of Bessy's situation that it involved a radical
contradiction, that she still loved Amherst though she could not forgive
him for having married her.
Perhaps what she most suffered from was his too-prompt acceptance of the
semi-estrangement between them. After nearly three years of marriage she
had still to learn that it was Amherst's way to wrestle with the angel
till dawn, and then to go about his other business. Her own mind could
revolve in the same grievance as interminably as a squirrel in its
wheel, and her husband's habit of casting off the accepted fact seemed
to betoken poverty of feeling. If only he had striven a little harder to
keep her--if, even now, he would come back to her, and make her feel
that she was more to him than those wretched mills!
When she turned her mare toward Lynbrook, the longing to see Amherst was
again uppermost. He had not written for weeks--she had been obliged to
tell Maria Ansell that she knew nothing of his plans, and it mortified
her to think that every one was aware of his neglect. Yet, even now, if
on reaching the house she should find a telegram to say that he was
coming, the weight of loneliness would be lifted, and everything in life
would seem different....
Her high-strung mare, scenting the homeward road, and excited by the
fantastic play of wayside lights and shadows, swept her along at a wild
gallop with which the fevered rush of her thoughts kept pace, and when
she reached the house she dropped from the saddle with aching wrists and
brain benumbed.
She entered by a side door, to avoid meeting any one, and ran upstairs
at once, knowing that she had barely time to dress for dinner. As she
opened the door of her sitting-room some one rose from the chair by the
fire, and she stood still, facing her husband....
It was the moment both had desired, yet when it came it found them
tongue-tied and helpless.
Bessy was the first to speak. "When did you get here? You never wrote me
you were coming!"
Amherst advanced toward her, holding out his hand. "No; you must forgive
me. I have been very busy," he said.
Always the same excuse! The same thrusting at her of the hateful fact
that Westmore came first, and that she must put up with whatever was
left of his time and thoughts!
"You are always too busy to let me hear from you," she said coldly, and
the hand which had sprung toward his fell back to her side.
Even then, if he had only said frankly: "It was too difficult--I didn't
know how," the note of truth would have reached and moved her; but he
had striven for the tone of ease and self-restraint that was habitual
among her friends, and as usual his attempt had been a failure.
"I am sorry--I'm a bad hand at writing," he rejoined; and his evil
genius prompted him to add: "I hope my coming is not inconvenient?"
The colour rose to Bessy's face. "Of course not. But it must seem rather
odd to our visitors that I should know so little of your plans."
At this he humbled himself still farther. "I know I don't think enough
about appearances--I'll try to do better the next time."
Appearances! He spoke as if she had been reproaching him for a breach of
etiquette...it never occurred to him that the cry came from her
humiliated heart! The tide of warmth that always enveloped her in his
presence was receding, and in its place a chill fluid seemed to creep up
slowly to her throat and lips.
In Amherst, meanwhile, the opposite process was taking place. His wife
was still to him the most beautiful woman in the world, or rather,
perhaps, the only woman to whose beauty his eyes had been opened. That
beauty could never again penetrate to his heart, but it still touched
his senses, not with passion but with a caressing kindliness, such as
one might feel for the bright movements of a bird or a kitten. It seemed
to plead with him not to ask of her more than she could give--to be
content with the outward grace and not seek in it an inner meaning. He
moved toward her again, and took her passive hands in his.
"You look tired. Why do you ride so late?"
"Oh, I just wanted to give Impulse a gallop. I hadn't time to take her
out earlier, and if I let the grooms exercise her they'll spoil her
mouth."
Amherst frowned. "You ought not to ride that mare alone at night. She
shies at everything after dark."
"She's the only horse I care for--the others are all cows," she
murmured, releasing her hands impatiently.
"Well, you must take me with you the next time you ride her."
She softened a little, in spite of herself. Riding was the only
amusement he cared to share with her, and the thought of a long gallop
across the plains at his side brought back the warmth to her veins.
"Yes, we'll go tomorrow. How long do you mean to stay?" she asked,
looking up at him eagerly.
He was pleased that she should wish to know, yet the question
embarrassed him, for it was necessary that he should be back at Westmore
within three days, and he could not put her off with an evasion.
Bessy saw his hesitation, and her colour rose again. "I only asked," she
explained, "because there is to be a fancy ball at the Hunt Club on the
twentieth, and I thought of giving a big dinner here first."
Amherst did not understand that she too had her inarticulate moments,
and that the allusion to the fancy ball was improvised to hide an
eagerness to which he had been too slow in responding. He thought she
had enquired about his plans only that he might not again interfere with
the arrangements of her dinner-table. If that was all she cared about,
it became suddenly easy to tell her that he could not stay, and he
answered lightly: "Fancy balls are a little out of my line; but at any
rate I shall have to be back at the mills the day after tomorrow."
The disappointment brought a rush of bitterness to her lips. "The day
after tomorrow? It seems hardly worth while to have come so far for two
days!"
"Oh, I don't mind the journey--and there are one or two matters I must
consult you about."
There could hardly have been a more ill-advised answer, but Amherst was
reckless now. If she cared for his coming only that he might fill a
place at a fancy-dress dinner, he would let her see that he had come
only because he had to go through the form of submitting to her certain
measures to be taken at Westmore.
Bessy was beginning to feel the physical reaction of her struggle with
the mare. The fatigue which at first had deadened her nerves now woke
them to acuter sensibility, and an appealing word from her husband would
have drawn her to his arms. But his answer seemed to drive all the blood
back to her heart.
"I don't see why you still go through the form of consulting me about
Westmore, when you have always done just as you pleased there, without
regard to me or Cicely."
Amherst made no answer, silenced by the discouragement of hearing the
same old grievance on her lips; and she too seemed struck, after she had
spoken, by the unprofitableness of such retorts.
"It doesn't matter--of course I'll do whatever you wish," she went on
listlessly. "But I could have sent my signature, if that is all you came
for----"
"Thanks," said Amherst coldly. "I shall remember that the next time."
They stood silent for a moment, he with his eyes fixed on her, she with
averted head, twisting her riding-whip between her fingers; then she
said suddenly: "We shall be late for dinner," and passing into her
dressing-room she closed the door.
Amherst roused himself as she disappeared.
"Bessy!" he exclaimed, moving toward her; but as he approached the door
he heard her maid's voice within, and turning away he went to his own
room.
* * * * *
Bessy came down late to dinner, with vivid cheeks and an air of
improvised ease; and the manner of her entrance, combined with her
husband's unannounced arrival, produced in their observant guests the
sense of latent complications. Mr. Langhope, though evidently unaware of
his son-in-law's return till they greeted each other in the
drawing-room, was too good a card-player to betray surprise, and Mrs.
Ansell outdid herself in the delicate art of taking everything for
granted; but these very dissimulations sharpened the perception of the
other guests, whom long practice had rendered expert in interpreting
such signs.
Of all this Justine Brent was aware; and conscious also that, by every
one but herself, the suspected estrangement between the Amhersts was
regarded as turning merely on the question of money. To the greater
number of persons present there was, in fact, no other conceivable
source of conjugal discord, since every known complication could be
adjusted by means of the universal lubricant. It was this unanimity of
view which bound together in the compactness of a new feudalism the
members of Bessy Amherst's world; which supplied them with their
pass-words and social tests, and defended them securely against the
insidious attack of ideas.
* * * * *
The Genius of History, capriciously directing the antics of its
marionettes, sometimes lets the drama languish through a series of
unrelated episodes, and then, suddenly quickening the pace, packs into
one scene the stuff of a dozen. The chance meeting of Amherst and
Justine, seemingly of no significance to either, contained the germ of
developments of which both had begun to be aware before the evening was
over. Their short talk--the first really intimate exchange of words
between them--had the effect of creating a sense of solidarity that grew
apace in the atmosphere of the Lynbrook dinner-table.
Justine was always reluctant to take part in Bessy's week-end dinners,
but as she descended the stairs that evening she did not regret having
promised to be present. She frankly wanted to see Amherst again--his
tone, his view of life, reinforced her own convictions, restored her
faith in the reality and importance of all that Lynbrook ignored and
excluded. Her extreme sensitiveness to surrounding vibrations of thought
and feeling told her, as she glanced at him between the flowers and
candles of the long dinner-table, that he too was obscurely aware of the
same effect; and it flashed across her that they were unconsciously
drawn together by the fact that they were the only two strangers in the
room. Every one else had the same standpoint, spoke the same language,
drew on the same stock of allusions, used the same weights and measures
in estimating persons and actions. Between Mr. Langhope's indolent
acuteness of mind and the rudimentary processes of the rosy Telfers
there was a difference of degree but not of kind. If Mr. Langhope viewed
the spectacle more objectively, it was not because he had outlived the
sense of its importance, but because years of experience had
familiarized him with its minutest details; and this familiarity with
the world he lived in had bred a profound contempt for any other.
In no way could the points of contact between Amherst and Justine Brent
have been more vividly brought out than by their tacit exclusion from
the currents of opinion about them. Amherst, seated in unsmiling
endurance at the foot of the table, between Mrs. Ansell, with her
carefully-distributed affabilities, and Blanche Carbury, with her
reckless hurling of conversational pebbles, seemed to Justine as much of
a stranger as herself among the people to whom his marriage had
introduced him. So strongly did she feel the sense of their common
isolation that it was no surprise to her, when the men reappeared in the
drawing-room after dinner, to have her host thread his way, between the
unfolding bridge-tables, straight to the corner where she sat. Amherst's
methods in the drawing-room were still as direct as in the cotton-mill.
He always went up at once to the person he sought, without preliminary
waste of tactics; and on this occasion Justine, without knowing what had
passed between himself and Bessy, suspected from the appearance of both
that their talk had resulted in increasing Amherst's desire to be with
some one to whom he could speak freely and naturally on the subject
nearest his heart.
She began at once to question him about Westmore, and the change in his
face showed that his work was still a refuge from all that made life
disheartening and unintelligible. Whatever convictions had been thwarted
or impaired in him, his faith in the importance of his task remained
unshaken; and the firmness with which he held to it filled Justine with
a sense of his strength. The feeling kindled her own desire to escape
again into the world of deeds, yet by a sudden reaction it checked the
growing inclination for Stephen Wyant that had resulted from her revolt
against Lynbrook. Here was a man as careless as Wyant of the minor
forms, yet her appreciation of him was not affected by the lack of
adaptability that she accused herself of criticizing in her suitor. She
began to see that it was not the sense of Wyant's social deficiencies
that had held her back; and the discovery at once set free her judgment
of him, enabling her to penetrate to the real causes of her reluctance.
She understood now that the flaw she felt was far deeper than any defect
of manner. It was the sense in him of something unstable and
incalculable, something at once weak and violent, that was brought to
light by the contrast of Amherst's quiet resolution. Here was a man whom
no gusts of chance could deflect from his purpose; while she felt that
the career to which Wyant had so ardently given himself would always be
at the mercy of his passing emotions.
As the distinction grew clearer, Justine trembled to think that she had
so nearly pledged herself, without the excuse of love, to a man whose
failings she could judge so lucidly.... But had she ever really thought
of marrying Wyant? While she continued to talk with Amherst such a
possibility became more and more remote, till she began to feel it was
no more than a haunting dream. But her promise to see Wyant the next
day reminded her of the nearness of her peril. How could she have played
with her fate so lightly--she, who held her life so dear because she
felt in it such untried powers of action and emotion? She continued to
listen to Amherst's account of his work, with enough outward
self-possession to place the right comment and put the right question,
yet conscious only of the quiet strength she was absorbing from his
presence, of the way in which his words, his voice, his mere nearness
were slowly steadying and clarifying her will.
In the smoking-room, after the ladies had gone upstairs, Amherst
continued to acquit himself mechanically of his duties, against the
incongruous back-ground of his predecessor's remarkable
sporting-prints--for it was characteristic of his relation to Lynbrook
that his life there was carried on in the setting of foils and
boxing-gloves, firearms and racing-trophies, which had expressed Dick
Westmore's ideals. Never very keenly alive to his material surroundings,
and quite unconscious of the irony of this proximity, Amherst had come
to accept his wife's guests as unquestioningly as their background, and
with the same sense of their being an inevitable part of his new life.
Their talk was no more intelligible to him than the red and yellow
hieroglyphics of the racing-prints, and he smoked in silence while Mr.
Langhope discoursed to Westy Gaines on the recent sale of Chinese
porcelains at which he had been lucky enough to pick up the set of Ming
for his daughter, and Mason Winch expounded to a group of languid
listeners the essential dependence of the labouring-man on the
prosperity of Wall Street. In a retired corner, Ned Bowfort was
imparting facts of a more personal nature to a chosen following who
hailed with suppressed enjoyment the murmured mention of proper names;
and now and then Amherst found himself obliged to say to Fenton Carbury,
who with one accord had been left on his hands, "Yes, I understand the
flat-tread tire is best," or, "There's a good deal to be said for the
low tension magneto----"
But all the while his conscious thoughts were absorbed in the
remembrance of his talk with Justine Brent. He had left his wife's
presence in that state of moral lassitude when the strongest hopes droop
under the infection of indifference and hostility, and the effort of
attainment seems out of all proportion to the end in view; but as he
listened to Justine all his energies sprang to life again. Here at last
was some one who felt the urgency of his task: her every word and look
confirmed her comment of the afternoon: "Westmore must be foremost to
you both in time--I don't see how either of you can escape it."
She saw it, as he did, to be the special outlet offered for the
expression of what he was worth to the world; and with the knowledge
that one other person recognized his call, it sounded again loudly in
his heart. Yes, he would go on, patiently and persistently, conquering
obstacles, suffering delay, enduring criticism--hardest of all, bearing
with his wife's deepening indifference and distrust. Justine had said
"Westmore must be foremost to you both," and he would prove that she was
right--spite of the powers leagued against him he would win over Bessy
in the end!
Those observers who had been struck by the length and animation of Miss
Brent's talk with her host--and among whom Mrs. Ansell and Westy Gaines
were foremost--would hardly have believed how small a part her personal
charms had played in attracting him. Amherst was still under the power
of the other kind of beauty--the soft graces personifying the first
triumph of sex in his heart--and Justine's dark slenderness could not at
once dispel the milder image. He watched her with pleasure while she
talked, but her face interested him only as the vehicle of her
ideas--she looked as a girl must look who felt and thought as she did.
He was aware that everything about her was quick and fine and supple,
and that the muscles of character lay close to the surface of feeling;
but the interpenetration of spirit and flesh that made her body seem
like the bright projection of her mind left him unconscious of anything
but the oneness of their thoughts.
So these two, in their hour of doubt, poured strength into each other's
hearts, each unconscious of what they gave, and of its hidden power of
renewing their own purposes.
XVIII
IF Mr. Langhope had ever stooped to such facile triumphs as that summed
up in the convenient "I told you so," he would have loosed the phrase on
Mrs. Ansell in the course of a colloquy which these two, the next
afternoon, were at some pains to defend from the incursions of the
Lynbrook house-party.
Mrs. Ansell was the kind of woman who could encircle herself with
privacy on an excursion-boat and create a nook in an hotel drawing-room,
but it taxed even her ingenuity to segregate herself from the Telfers.
When the feat was accomplished, and it became evident that Mr. Langhope
could yield himself securely to the joys of confidential discourse, he
paused on the brink of disclosure to say: "It's as well I saved that
Ming from the ruins."
"What ruins?" she exclaimed, her startled look giving him the full
benefit of the effect he was seeking to produce.
He addressed himself deliberately to the selecting and lighting of a
cigarette. "Truscomb is down and out--resigned, 'the wise it call.' And
the alterations at Westmore are going to cost a great deal more than my
experienced son-in-law expected. This is Westy's morning budget--he and
Amherst had it out last night. I tell my poor girl that at least she'll
lose nothing when the _bibelots_ I've bought for her go up the spout."
Mrs. Ansell received this with a troubled countenance. "What has become
of Bessy? I've not seen her since luncheon."
"No. She and Blanche Carbury have motored over to dine with the Nick
Ledgers at Islip."
"Did you see her before she left?"
"For a moment, but she said very little. Westy tells me that Amherst
hints at leasing the New York house. One can understand that she's left
speechless."
Mrs. Ansell, at this, sat bolt upright. "The New York house?" But she
broke off to add, with seeming irrelevance: "If you knew how I detest
Blanche Carbury!"
Mr. Langhope made a gesture of semi-acquiescence. "She is not the friend
I should have chosen for Bessy--but we know that Providence makes use of
strange instruments."
"Providence and Blanche Carbury?" She stared at him. "Ah, you are
profoundly corrupt!"
"I have the coarse masculine habit of looking facts in the face.
Woman-like, you prefer to make use of them privately, and cut them when
you meet in public."
"Blanche is not the kind of fact I should care to make use of under any
circumstances whatever!"
"No one asks you to. Simply regard her as a force of nature--let her
alone, and don't put up too many lightning-rods."
She raised her eyes to his face. "Do you really mean that you want Bessy
to get a divorce?"
"Your style is elliptical, dear Maria; but divorce does not frighten me
very much. It has grown almost as painless as modern dentistry."
"It's our odious insensibility that makes it so!"
Mr. Langhope received this with the mildness of suspended judgment. "How
else, then, do you propose that Bessy shall save what is left of her
money?"
"I would rather see her save what is left of her happiness. Bessy will
never be happy in the new way."
"What do you call the new way?"
"Launching one's boat over a human body--or several, as the case may
be!"
"But don't you see that, as an expedient to bring this madman to
reason----"
"I've told you that you don't understand him!"
Mr. Langhope turned on her with what would have been a show of temper in
any one less provided with shades of manner. "Well, then, explain him,
for God's sake!"
"I might explain him by saying that she's still in love with him."
"Ah, if you're still imprisoned in the old formulas!"
Mrs. Ansell confronted him with a grave face. "Isn't that precisely what
Bessy is? Isn't she one of the most harrowing victims of the plan of
bringing up our girls in the double bondage of expediency and unreality,
corrupting their bodies with luxury and their brains with sentiment, and
leaving them to reconcile the two as best they can, or lose their souls
in the attempt?"
Mr. Langhope smiled. "I may observe that, with my poor child so early
left alone to me, I supposed I was doing my best in committing her
guidance to some of the most admirable women I know."
"Of whom I was one--and not the least lamentable example of the system!
Of course the only thing that saves us from their vengeance," Mrs.
Ansell added, "is that so few of them ever stop to think...."
"And yet, as I make out, it's precisely what you would have Bessy do!"
"It's what neither you nor I can help her doing. You've given her just
acuteness enough to question, without consecutiveness enough to explain.
But if she must perish in the struggle--and I see no hope for her--"
cried Mrs. Ansell, starting suddenly and dramatically to her feet, "at
least let her perish defending her ideals and not denying them--even if
she has to sell the New York house and all your china pots into the
bargain!"
Mr. Langhope, rising also, deprecatingly lifted his hands, "If that's
what you call saving me from her vengeance--sending the crockery
crashing round my ears!" And, as she turned away without any pretense of
capping his pleasantry, he added, with a gleam of friendly malice: "I
suppose you're going to the Hunt ball as Cassandra?"
* * * * *
Amherst, that morning, had sought out his wife with the definite resolve
to efface the unhappy impression of their previous talk. He blamed
himself for having been too easily repelled by her impatience. As the
stronger of the two, with the power of a fixed purpose to sustain him,
he should have allowed for the instability of her impulses, and above
all for the automatic influences of habit.
Knowing that she did not keep early hours he delayed till ten o'clock to
present himself at her sitting-room door, but the maid who answered his
knock informed him that Mrs. Amherst was not yet up.
His reply that he would wait did not appear to hasten the leisurely
process of her toilet, and he had the room to himself for a full
half-hour. Many months had passed since he had spent so long a time in
it, and though habitually unobservant of external details, he now found
an outlet for his restlessness in mechanically noting the intimate
appurtenances of Bessy's life. He was at first merely conscious of a
soothing harmony of line and colour, extending from the blurred tints of
the rug to the subdued gleam of light on old picture-frames and on the
slender flanks of porcelain vases; but gradually he began to notice how
every chair and screen and cushion, and even every trifling utensil on
the inlaid writing-desk, had been chosen with reference to the whole
composition, and to the minutest requirements of a fastidious leisure. A
few months ago this studied setting, if he had thought of it at all,
would have justified itself as expressing the pretty woman's natural
affinity with pretty toys; but now it was the cost of it that struck
him. He was beginning to learn from Bessy's bills that no commodity is
taxed as high as beauty, and the beauty about him filled him with sudden
repugnance, as the disguise of the evil influences that were separating
his wife's life from his.
But with her entrance he dismissed the thought, and tried to meet her as
if nothing stood in the way of their full communion. Her hair, still wet
from the bath, broke from its dryad-like knot in dusky rings and spirals
threaded with gold, and from her loose flexible draperies, and her whole
person as she moved, there came a scent of youth and morning freshness.
Her beauty touched him, and made it easier for him to humble himself.
"I was stupid and disagreeable last night. I can never say what I want
when I have to count the minutes, and I've come back now for a quiet
talk," he began.
A shade of distrust passed over Bessy's face. "About business?" she
asked, pausing a few feet away from him.
"Don't let us give it that name!" He went up to her and drew her two
hands into his. "You used to call it our work--won't you go back to that
way of looking at it?"
Her hands resisted his pressure. "I didn't know, then, that it was going
to be the only thing you cared for----"
But for her own sake he would not let her go on. "Some day I shall make
you see how much my caring for it means my caring for you. But
meanwhile," he urged, "won't you overcome your aversion to the subject,
and bear with it as my work, if you no longer care to think of it as
yours?"
Bessy, freeing herself, sat down on the edge of the straight-backed
chair near the desk, as though to mark the parenthetical nature of the
interview.
"I know you think me stupid--but wives are not usually expected to go
into all the details of their husband's business. I have told you to do
whatever you wish at Westmore, and I can't see why that is not enough."
Amherst looked at her in surprise. Something in her quick mechanical
utterance suggested that not only the thought but the actual words she
spoke had been inspired, and he fancied he heard in them an echo of
Blanche Carbury's tones. Though Bessy's intimacy with Mrs. Carbury was
of such recent date, fragments of unheeded smoking-room gossip now
recurred to confirm the vague antipathy which Amherst had felt for her
the previous evening.
"I know that, among your friends, wives are not expected to interest
themselves in their husbands' work, and if the mills were mine I should
try to conform to the custom, though I should always think it a pity
that the questions that fill a man's thoughts should be ruled out of his
talk with his wife; but as it is, I am only your representative at
Westmore, and I don't see how we can help having the subject come up
between us."
Bessy remained silent, not as if acquiescing in his plea, but as though
her own small stock of arguments had temporarily failed her; and he went
on, enlarging on his theme with a careful avoidance of technical terms,
and with the constant effort to keep the human and personal side of the
question before her.
She listened without comment, her eyes fixed on a little jewelled
letter-opener which she had picked up from the writing-table, and which
she continued to turn in her fingers while he spoke.
The full development of Amherst's plans at Westmore, besides resulting,
as he had foreseen, in Truscomb's resignation, and in Halford Gaines's
outspoken resistance to the new policy, had necessitated a larger
immediate outlay of capital than the first estimates demanded, and
Amherst, in putting his case to Bessy, was prepared to have her meet it
on the old ground of the disapproval of all her advisers. But when he
had ended she merely said, without looking up from the toy in her hand:
"I always expected that you would need a great deal more money than you
thought."
The comment touched him at his most vulnerable point. "But you see why?
You understand how the work has gone on growing--?"
His wife lifted her head to glance at him for a moment. "I am not sure
that I understand," she said indifferently; "but if another loan is
necessary, of course I will sign the note for it."
The words checked his reply by bringing up, before he was prepared to
deal with it, the other and more embarrassing aspect of the question. He
had hoped to reawaken in Bessy some feeling for the urgency of his task
before having to take up the subject of its cost; but her cold
anticipation of his demands as part of a disagreeable business to be
despatched and put out of mind, doubled the difficulty of what he had
left to say; and it occurred to him that she had perhaps foreseen and
reckoned on this result.
He met her eyes gravely. "Another loan _is_ necessary; but if any proper
provision is to be made for paying it back, your expenses will have to
be cut down a good deal for the next few months."
The blood leapt to Bessy's face. "My expenses? You seem to forget how
much I've had to cut them down already."
"The household bills certainly don't show it. They are increasing
steadily, and there have been some very heavy incidental payments
lately."
"What do you mean by incidental payments?"
"Well, there was the pair of cobs you bought last month----"
She returned to a resigned contemplation of the letter-opener. "With
only one motor, one must have more horses, of course."
"The stables seemed to me fairly full before. But if you required more
horses, I don't see why, at this particular moment, it was also
necessary to buy a set of Chinese vases for twenty-five hundred
dollars."
Bessy, at this, lifted her head with an air of decision that surprised
him. Her blush had faded as quickly as it came, and he noticed that she
was pale to the lips.
"I know you don't care about such things; but I had an exceptional
chance of securing the vases at a low price--they are really worth
twice as much--and Dick always wanted a set of Ming for the drawing-room
mantelpiece."
Richard Westmore's name was always tacitly avoided between them, for in
Amherst's case the disagreeable sense of dependence on a dead man's
bounty increased that feeling of obscure constraint and repugnance which
any reminder of the first husband's existence is wont to produce in his
successor.
He reddened at the reply, and Bessy, profiting by an embarrassment which
she had perhaps consciously provoked, went on hastily, and as if by
rote: "I have left you perfectly free to do as you think best at the
mills, but this perpetual discussion of my personal expenses is very
unpleasant to me, as I am sure it must be to you, and in future I think
it would be much better for us to have separate accounts."
"Separate accounts?" Amherst echoed in genuine astonishment.
"I should like my personal expenses to be under my own control again--I
have never been used to accounting for every penny I spend."
The vertical lines deepened between Amherst's brows. "You are of course
free to spend your money as you like--and I thought you were doing so
when you authorized me, last spring, to begin the changes at Westmore."
Her lip trembled. "Do you reproach me for that? I didn't
understand...you took advantage...."
"Oh!" he exclaimed.
At his tone the blood rushed back to her face. "It was my fault, of
course--I only wanted to please you----"
Amherst was silent, confronted by the sudden sense of his own
responsibility. What she said was true--he had known, when he exacted
the sacrifice, that she made it only to please him, on an impulse of
reawakened feeling, and not from any real recognition of a larger duty.
The perception of this made him answer gently: "I am willing to take any
blame you think I deserve; but it won't help us now to go back to the
past. It is more important that we should come to an understanding about
the future. If by keeping your personal account separate, you mean that
you wish to resume control of your whole income, then you ought to
understand that the improvements at the mills will have to be dropped at
once, and things there go back to their old state."
She started up with an impatient gesture. "Oh, I should like never to
hear of the mills again!"
He looked at her a moment in silence. "Am I to take that as your
answer?"
She walked toward her door without returning his look. "Of course," she
murmured, "you will end by doing as you please."
The retort moved him, for he heard in it the cry of her wounded pride.
He longed to be able to cry out in return that Westmore was nothing to
him, that all he asked was to see her happy.... But it was not true, and
his manhood revolted from the deception. Besides, its effect would be
only temporary--would wear no better than her vain efforts to simulate
an interest in his work. Between them, forever, were the insurmountable
barriers of character, of education, of habit--and yet it was not in him
to believe that any barrier was insurmountable.
"Bessy," he exclaimed, following her, "don't let us part in this
way----"
She paused with her hand on her dressing-room door. "It is time to dress
for church," she objected, turning to glance at the little gilt clock on
the chimney-piece.
"For church?" Amherst stared, wondering that at such a crisis she should
have remained detached enough to take note of the hour.
"You forget," she replied, with an air of gentle reproof, "that before
we married I was in the habit of going to church every Sunday."
"Yes--to be sure. Would you not like me to go with you?" he rejoined
gently, as if roused to the consciousness of another omission in the
long list of his social shortcomings; for church-going, at Lynbrook, had
always struck him as a purely social observance.
But Bessy had opened the door of her dressing-room. "I much prefer that
you should do what you like," she said as she passed from the room.
Amherst made no farther attempt to detain her, and the door closed on
her as though it were closing on a chapter in their lives.
"That's the end of it!" he murmured, picking up the letter-opener she
had been playing with, and twirling it absently in his fingers. But
nothing in life ever ends, and the next moment a new question confronted
him--how was the next chapter to open?
BOOK III
XIX
IT was late in October when Amherst returned to Lynbrook.
He had begun to learn, in the interval, the lesson most difficult to his
direct and trenchant nature: that compromise is the law of married life.
On the afternoon of his talk with his wife he had sought her out,
determined to make a final effort to clear up the situation between
them; but he learned that, immediately after luncheon, she had gone off
in the motor with Mrs. Carbury and two men of the party, leaving word
that they would probably not be back till evening. It cost Amherst a
struggle, when he had humbled himself to receive this information from
the butler, not to pack his portmanteau and take the first train for
Hanaford; but he was still under the influence of Justine Brent's words,
and also of his own feeling that, at this juncture, a break between
himself and Bessy would be final.
He stayed on accordingly, enduring as best he might the mute observation
of the household, and the gentle irony of Mr. Langhope's attentions; and
before he left Lynbrook, two days later, a provisional understanding had
been reached.
His wife proved more firm than he had foreseen in her resolve to regain
control of her income, and the talk between them ended in reciprocal
concessions, Bessy consenting to let the town house for the winter and
remain at Lynbrook, while Amherst agreed to restrict his improvements at
Westmore to such alterations as had already been begun, and to reduce
the expenditure on these as much as possible. It was virtually the
defeat of his policy, and he had to suffer the decent triumph of the
Gaineses, as well as the bitterer pang of his foiled aspirations. In
spite of the opposition of the directors, he had taken advantage of
Truscomb's resignation to put Duplain at the head of the mills; but the
new manager's outspoken disgust at the company's change of plan made it
clear that he would not remain long at Westmore, and it was one of the
miseries of Amherst's situation that he could not give the reasons for
his defection, but must bear to figure in Duplain's terse vocabulary as
a "quitter." The difficulty of finding a new manager expert enough to
satisfy the directors, yet in sympathy with his own social theories,
made Amherst fear that Duplain's withdrawal would open the way for
Truscomb's reinstatement, an outcome on which he suspected Halford
Gaines had always counted; and this possibility loomed before him as the
final defeat of his hopes.
Meanwhile the issues ahead had at least the merit of keeping him busy.
The task of modifying and retrenching his plans contrasted drearily with
the hopeful activity of the past months, but he had an iron capacity for
hard work under adverse conditions, and the fact of being too busy for
thought helped him to wear through the days. This pressure of work
relieved him, at first, from too close consideration of his relation to
Bessy. He had yielded up his dearest hopes at her wish, and for the
moment his renunciation had set a chasm between them; but gradually he
saw that, as he was patching together the ruins of his Westmore plans,
so he must presently apply himself to the reconstruction of his married
life.
Before leaving Lynbrook he had had a last word with Miss Brent; not a
word of confidence--for the same sense of reserve kept both from any
explicit renewal of their moment's intimacy--but one of those exchanges
of commonplace phrase that circumstances may be left to charge with
special meaning. Justine had merely asked if he were really leaving and,
on his assenting, had exclaimed quickly: "But you will come back soon?"
"I shall certainly come back," he answered; and after a pause he added:
"I shall find you here? You will remain at Lynbrook?"
On her part also there was a shade of hesitation; then she said with a
smile: "Yes, I shall stay."
His look brightened. "And you'll write me if anything--if Bessy should
not be well?"
"I will write you," she promised; and a few weeks after his return to
Hanaford he had, in fact, received a short note from her. Its ostensible
purpose was to reassure him as to Bessy's health, which had certainly
grown stronger since Dr. Wyant had persuaded her, at the close of the
last house-party, to accord herself a period of quiet; but (the writer
added) now that Mr. Langhope and Mrs. Ansell had also left, the quiet
was perhaps too complete, and Bessy's nerves were beginning to suffer
from the reaction.
Amherst had no difficulty in interpreting this brief communication. "I
have succeeded in dispersing the people who are always keeping you and
your wife apart; now is your chance: come and take it." That was what
Miss Brent's letter meant; and his answer was a telegram to Bessy,
announcing his return to Long Island.
The step was not an easy one; but decisive action, however hard, was
always easier to Amherst than the ensuing interval of readjustment. To
come to Lynbrook had required a strong effort of will; but the effort of
remaining there called into play less disciplined faculties.
Amherst had always been used to doing things; now he had to resign
himself to enduring a state of things. The material facilities of the
life about him, the way in which the machinery of the great empty house
ran on like some complex apparatus working in the void, increased the
exasperation of his nerves. Dr. Wyant's suggestion--which Amherst
suspected Justine of having prompted--that Mrs. Amherst should cancel
her autumn engagements, and give herself up to a quiet outdoor life with
her husband, seemed to present the very opportunity these two distracted
spirits needed to find and repossess each other. But, though Amherst was
grateful to Bessy for having dismissed her visitors--partly to please
him, as he guessed--yet he found the routine of the establishment more
oppressive than when the house was full. If he could have been alone
with her in a quiet corner--the despised cottage at Westmore, even!--he
fancied they might still have been brought together by restricted space
and the familiar exigencies of life. All the primitive necessities which
bind together, through their recurring daily wants, natures fated to
find no higher point of union, had been carefully eliminated from the
life at Lynbrook, where material needs were not only provided for but
anticipated by a hidden mechanism that filled the house with the
perpetual sense of invisible attendance. Though Amherst knew that he and
Bessy could never meet in the region of great issues, he thought he
might have regained the way to her heart, and found relief from his own
inaction, in the small ministrations of daily life; but the next moment
he smiled to picture Bessy in surroundings where the clocks were not
wound of themselves and the doors did not fly open at her approach.
Those thick-crowding cares and drudgeries which serve as merciful
screens between so many discordant natures would have been as
intolerable to her as was to Amherst the great glare of leisure in which
he and she were now confronted.
He saw that Bessy was in the state of propitiatory eagerness which
always followed on her gaining a point in their long duel; and he could
guess that she was tremulously anxious not only to make up to him, by
all the arts she knew, for the sacrifice she had exacted, but also to
conceal from every one the fact that, as Mr. Langhope bluntly put it, he
had been "brought to terms." Amherst was touched by her efforts, and
half-ashamed of his own inability to respond to them. But his mind,
released from its normal preoccupations, had become a dangerous
instrument of analysis and disintegration, and conditions which, a few
months before, he might have accepted with the wholesome tolerance of
the busy man, now pressed on him unendurably. He saw that he and his
wife were really face to face for the first time since their marriage.
Hitherto something had always intervened between them--first the spell
of her grace and beauty, and the brief joy of her participation in his
work; then the sorrow of their child's death, and after that the
temporary exhilaration of carrying out his ideas at Westmore--but now
that the last of these veils had been torn away they faced each other as
strangers.
* * * * *
The habit of keeping factory hours always drove Amherst forth long
before his wife's day began, and in the course of one of his early
tramps he met Miss Brent and Cicely setting out for a distant swamp
where rumour had it that a rare native orchid might be found. Justine's
sylvan tastes had developed in the little girl a passion for such
pillaging expeditions, and Cicely, who had discovered that her
step-father knew almost as much about birds and squirrels as Miss Brent
did about flowers, was not to be appeased till Amherst had scrambled
into the pony-cart, wedging his long legs between a fern-box and a
lunch-basket, and balancing a Scotch terrier's telescopic body across
his knees.
The season was so mild that only one or two light windless frosts had
singed the foliage of oaks and beeches, and gilded the roadsides with a
smooth carpeting of maple leaves. The morning haze rose like smoke from
burnt-out pyres of sumach and sugar-maple; a silver bloom lay on the
furrows of the ploughed fields; and now and then, as they drove on, the
wooded road showed at its end a tarnished disk of light, where sea and
sky were merged.
At length they left the road for a winding track through scrub-oaks and
glossy thickets of mountain-laurel; the track died out at the foot of a
wooded knoll, and clambering along its base they came upon the swamp.
There it lay in charmed solitude, shut in by a tawny growth of larch and
swamp-maple, its edges burnt out to smouldering shades of russet,
ember-red and ashen-grey, while the quaking centre still preserved a
jewel-like green, where hidden lanes of moisture wound between islets
tufted with swamp-cranberry and with the charred browns of fern and wild
rose and bay. Sodden earth and decaying branches gave forth a strange
sweet odour, as of the aromatic essences embalming a dead summer; and
the air charged with this scent was so still that the snapping of
witch-hazel pods, the drop of a nut, the leap of a startled frog,
pricked the silence with separate points of sound.
The pony made fast, the terrier released, and fern-box and lunch-basket
slung over Amherst's shoulder, the three explorers set forth on their
journey. Amherst, as became his sex, went first; but after a few
absent-minded plunges into the sedgy depths between the islets, he was
ordered to relinquish his command and fall to the rear, where he might
perform the humbler service of occasionally lifting Cicely over
unspannable gulfs of moisture.
Justine, leading the way, guided them across the treacherous surface as
fearlessly as a king-fisher, lighting instinctively on every
grass-tussock and submerged tree-stump of the uncertain path. Now and
then she paused, her feet drawn close on their narrow perch, and her
slender body swaying over as she reached down for some rare growth
detected among the withered reeds and grasses; then she would right
herself again by a backward movement as natural as the upward spring of
a branch--so free and flexible in all her motions that she seemed akin
to the swaying reeds and curving brambles which caught at her as she
passed.
At length the explorers reached the mossy corner where the orchids grew,
and Cicely, securely balanced on a fallen tree-trunk, was allowed to dig
the coveted roots. When they had been packed away, it was felt that this
culminating moment must be celebrated with immediate libations of jam
and milk; and having climbed to a dry slope among the pepper-bushes, the
party fell on the contents of the lunch-basket. It was just the hour
when Bessy's maid was carrying her breakfast-tray, with its delicate
service of old silver and porcelain, into the darkened bed-room at
Lynbrook; but early rising and hard scrambling had whetted the appetites
of the naturalists, and the nursery fare which Cicely spread before
them seemed a sumptuous reward for their toil.
"I do like this kind of picnic much better than the ones where mother
takes all the footmen, and the mayonnaise has to be scraped off things
before I can eat them," Cicely declared, lifting her foaming mouth from
a beaker of milk.
Amherst, lighting his pipe, stretched himself contentedly among the
pepper-bushes, steeped in that unreflecting peace which is shed into
some hearts by communion with trees and sky. He too was glad to get away
from the footmen and the mayonnaise, and he imagined that his
stepdaughter's exclamation summed up all the reasons for his happiness.
The boyish wood-craft which he had cultivated in order to encourage the
same taste in his factory lads came to life in this sudden return to
nature, and he redeemed his clumsiness in crossing the swamp by spying a
marsh-wren's nest that had escaped Justine, and detecting in a
swiftly-flitting olive-brown bird a belated tanager in autumn incognito.
Cicely sat rapt while he pictured the bird's winter pilgrimage, with
glimpses of the seas and islands that fled beneath him till his long
southern flight ended in the dim glades of the equatorial forests.
"Oh, what a good life--how I should like to be a wander-bird, and look
down people's chimneys twice a year!" Justine laughed, tilting her head
back to catch a last glimpse of the tanager.
The sun beamed full on their ledge from a sky of misty blue, and she had
thrown aside her hat, uncovering her thick waves of hair, blue-black in
the hollows, with warm rusty edges where they took the light. Cicely
dragged down a plumy spray of traveller's joy and wound it above her
friend's forehead; and thus wreathed, with her bright pallour relieved
against the dusky autumn tints, Justine looked like a wood-spirit who
had absorbed into herself the last golden juices of the year.
She leaned back laughing against a tree-trunk, pelting Cicely with
witch-hazel pods, making the terrier waltz for scraps of ginger-bread,
and breaking off now and then to imitate, with her clear full notes, the
call of some hidden marsh-bird, or the scolding chatter of a squirrel in
the scrub-oaks.
"Is that what you'd like most about the journey--looking down the
chimneys?" Amherst asked with a smile.
"Oh, I don't know--I should love it all! Think of the joy of skimming
over half the earth--seeing it born again out of darkness every morning!
Sometimes, when I've been up all night with a patient, and have seen the
world _come back to me_ like that, I've been almost mad with its beauty;
and then the thought that I've never seen more than a little corner of
it makes me feel as if I were chained. But I think if I had wings I
should choose to be a house-swallow; and then, after I'd had my fill of
wonders, I should come back to my familiar corner, and my house full of
busy humdrum people, and fly low to warn them of rain, and wheel up high
to show them it was good haying weather, and know what was going on in
every room in the house, and every house in the village; and all the
while I should be hugging my wonderful big secret--the secret of
snow-plains and burning deserts, and coral islands and buried
cities--and should put it all into my chatter under the eaves, that the
people in the house were always too busy to stop and listen to--and when
winter came I'm sure I should hate to leave them, even to go back to my
great Brazilian forests full of orchids and monkeys!"
"But, Justine, in winter you could take care of the monkeys," the
practical Cicely suggested.
"Yes--and that would remind me of home!" Justine cried, swinging about
to pinch the little girl's chin.
She was in one of the buoyant moods when the spirit of life caught her
in its grip, and shook and tossed her on its mighty waves as a sea-bird
is tossed through the spray of flying rollers. At such moments all the
light and music of the world seemed distilled into her veins, and forced
up in bubbles of laughter to her lips and eyes. Amherst had never seen
her thus, and he watched her with the sense of relaxation which the
contact of limpid gaiety brings to a mind obscured by failure and
self-distrust. The world was not so dark a place after all, if such
springs of merriment could well up in a heart as sensitive as hers to
the burden and toil of existence.
"Isn't it strange," she went on with a sudden drop to gravity, "that the
bird whose wings carry him farthest and show him the most wonderful
things, is the one who always comes back to the eaves, and is happiest
in the thick of everyday life?"
Her eyes met Amherst's. "It seems to me," he said, "that you're like
that yourself--loving long flights, yet happiest in the thick of life."
She raised her dark brows laughingly. "So I imagine--but then you see
I've never had the long flight!"
Amherst smiled. "Ah, there it is--one never knows--one never says, _This
is the moment_! because, however good it is, it always seems the door to
a better one beyond. Faust never said it till the end, when he'd nothing
left of all he began by thinking worth while; and then, with what a
difference it was said!"
She pondered. "Yes--but it _was_ the best, after all--the moment in
which he had nothing left...."
"Oh," Cicely broke in suddenly, "do look at the squirrel up there! See,
father--he's off! Let's follow him!"
As she crouched there, with head thrown back, and sparkling lips and
eyes, her fair hair--of her mother's very hue--making a shining haze
about her face, Amherst recalled the winter evening at Hopewood, when he
and Bessy had tracked the grey squirrel under the snowy beeches.
Scarcely three years ago--and how bitter memory had turned! A chilly
cloud spread over his spirit, reducing everything once more to the
leaden hue of reality....
"It's too late for any more adventures--we must be going," he said.
XX
AMHERST'S morning excursions with his step-daughter and Miss Brent
renewed themselves more than once. He welcomed any pretext for escaping
from the unprofitable round of his thoughts, and these woodland
explorations, with their gay rivalry of search for some rare plant or
elusive bird, and the contact with the child's happy wonder, and with
the morning brightness of Justine's mood, gave him his only moments of
self-forgetfulness.
But the first time that Cicely's chatter carried home an echo of their
adventures, Amherst saw a cloud on his wife's face. Her resentment of
Justine's influence over the child had long since subsided, and in the
temporary absence of the governess she was glad to have Cicely amused;
but she was never quite satisfied that those about her should have
pursuits and diversions in which she did not share. Her jealousy did not
concentrate itself on her husband and Miss Brent: Amherst had never
shown any inclination for the society of other women, and if the
possibility had been suggested to her, she would probably have said that
Justine was not "in his style"--so unconscious is a pretty woman apt to
be of the versatility of masculine tastes. But Amherst saw that she felt
herself excluded from amusements in which she had no desire to join, and
of which she consequently failed to see the purpose; and he gave up
accompanying his stepdaughter.
Bessy, as if in acknowledgment of his renunciation, rose earlier in
order to prolong their rides together. Dr. Wyant had counselled her
against the fatigue of following the hounds, and she instinctively
turned their horses away from the course the hunt was likely to take;
but now and then the cry of the pack, or the flash of red on a distant
slope, sent the blood to her face and made her press her mare to a
gallop. When they escaped such encounters she showed no great zest in
the exercise, and their rides resolved themselves into a spiritless
middle-aged jog along the autumn lanes. In the early days of their
marriage the joy of a canter side by side had merged them in a community
of sensation beyond need of speech; but now that the physical spell had
passed they felt the burden of a silence that neither knew how to break.
Once only, a moment's friction galvanized these lifeless rides. It was
one morning when Bessy's wild mare Impulse, under-exercised and
over-fed, suddenly broke from her control, and would have unseated her
but for Amherst's grasp on the bridle.
"The horse is not fit for you to ride," he exclaimed, as the hot
creature, with shudders of defiance rippling her flanks, lapsed into
sullen subjection.
"It's only because I don't ride her enough," Bessy panted. "That new
groom is ruining her mouth."
"You must not ride her alone, then."
"I shall not let that man ride her."
"I say you must not ride her alone."
"It's ridiculous to have a groom at one's heels!"
"Nevertheless you must, if you ride Impulse."
Their eyes met, and she quivered and yielded like the horse. "Oh, if you
say so--" She always hugged his brief flashes of authority.
"I do say so. You promise me?"
"If you like----"
* * * * *
Amherst had made an attempt to occupy himself with the condition of
Lynbrook, one of those slovenly villages, without individual character
or the tradition of self-respect, which spring up in America on the
skirts of the rich summer colonies. But Bessy had never given Lynbrook a
thought, and he realized the futility of hoping to interest her in its
mongrel population of day-labourers and publicans so soon after his
glaring failure at Westmore. The sight of the village irritated him
whenever he passed through the Lynbrook gates, but having perforce
accepted the situation of prince consort, without voice in the
government, he tried to put himself out of relation with all the
questions which had hitherto engrossed him, and to see life simply as a
spectator. He could even conceive that, under certain conditions, there
might be compensations in the passive attitude; but unfortunately these
conditions were not such as the life at Lynbrook presented.
The temporary cessation of Bessy's week-end parties had naturally not
closed her doors to occasional visitors, and glimpses of the autumnal
animation of Long Island passed now and then across the Amhersts'
horizon. Blanche Carbury had installed herself at Mapleside, a
fashionable colony half-way between Lynbrook and Clifton, and even
Amherst, unused as he was to noting the seemingly inconsecutive
movements of idle people, could not but remark that her visits to his
wife almost invariably coincided with Ned Bowfort's cantering over
unannounced from the Hunt Club, where he had taken up his autumn
quarters.
There was something very likeable about Bowfort, to whom Amherst was
attracted by the fact that he was one of the few men of Bessy's circle
who knew what was going on in the outer world. Throughout an existence
which one divined to have been both dependent and desultory, he had
preserved a sense of wider relations and acquired a smattering of
information to which he applied his only independent faculty, that of
clear thought. He could talk intelligently and not too inaccurately of
the larger questions which Lynbrook ignored, and a gay indifference to
the importance of money seemed the crowning grace of his nature, till
Amherst suddenly learned that this attitude of detachment was generally
ascribed to the liberality of Mrs. Fenton Carbury. "Everybody knows she
married Fenton to provide for Ned," some one let fall in the course of
one of the smoking-room dissertations on which the host of Lynbrook had
such difficulty in fixing his attention; and the speaker's
matter-of-course tone, and the careless acquiescence of his hearers,
were more offensive to Amherst than the fact itself. In the first flush
of his disgust he classed the story as one of the lies bred in the
malarious air of after-dinner gossip; but gradually he saw that, whether
true or not, it had sufficient circulation to cast a shade of ambiguity
on the persons concerned. Bessy alone seemed deaf to the rumours about
her friend. There was something captivating to her in Mrs. Carbury's
slang and noise, in her defiance of decorum and contempt of criticism.
"I like Blanche because she doesn't pretend," was Bessy's vague
justification of the lady; but in reality she was under the mysterious
spell which such natures cast over the less venturesome imaginations of
their own sex.
Amherst at first tried to deaden himself to the situation, as part of
the larger coil of miseries in which he found himself; but all his
traditions were against such tolerance, and they were roused to revolt
by the receipt of a newspaper clipping, sent by an anonymous hand,
enlarging on the fact that the clandestine meetings of a fashionable
couple were being facilitated by the connivance of a Long Island
_châtelaine_. Amherst, hot from the perusal of this paragraph, sprang
into the first train, and laid the clipping before his father-in-law,
who chanced to be passing through town on his way from the Hudson to the
Hot Springs.
Mr. Langhope, ensconced in the cushioned privacy of the reading-room at
the Amsterdam Club, where he had invited his son-in-law to meet him,
perused the article with the cool eye of the collector to whom a new
curiosity is offered.
"I suppose," he mused, "that in the time of the Pharaohs the Morning
Papyrus used to serve up this kind of thing"--and then, as the nervous
tension of his hearer expressed itself in an abrupt movement, he added,
handing back the clipping with a smile: "What do you propose to do? Kill
the editor, and forbid Blanche and Bowfort the house?"
"I mean to do something," Amherst began, suddenly chilled by the
realization that his wrath had not yet shaped itself into a definite
plan of action.
"Well, it must be that or nothing," said Mr. Langhope, drawing his stick
meditatively across his knee. "And, of course, if it's _that_, you'll
land Bessy in a devil of a mess."
Without giving his son-in-law time to protest, he touched rapidly but
vividly on the inutility and embarrassment of libel suits, and on the
devices whereby the legal means of vindication from such attacks may be
turned against those who have recourse to them; and Amherst listened
with a sickened sense of the incompatibility between abstract standards
of honour and their practical application.
"What should you do, then?" he murmured, as Mr. Langhope ended with his
light shrug and a "See Tredegar, if you don't believe me"--; and his
father-in-law replied with an evasive gesture: "Why, leave the
responsibility where it belongs!"
"Where it belongs?"
"To Fenton Carbury, of course. Luckily it's nobody's business but his,
and if he doesn't mind what is said about his wife I don't see how you
can take up the cudgels for her without casting another shade on her
somewhat chequered reputation."
Amherst stared. "His wife? What do I care what's said of her? I'm
thinking of mine!"
"Well, if Carbury has no objection to his wife's meeting Bowfort, I
don't see how you can object to her meeting him at your house. In such
matters, as you know, it has mercifully been decided that the husband's
attitude shall determine other people's; otherwise we should be deprived
of the legitimate pleasure of slandering our neighbours." Mr. Langhope
was always careful to temper his explanations with an "as you know": he
would have thought it ill-bred to omit this parenthesis in elucidating
the social code to his son-in-law.
"Then you mean that I can do nothing?" Amherst exclaimed.
Mr. Langhope smiled. "What applies to Carbury applies to you--by doing
nothing you establish the fact that there's nothing to do; just as you
create the difficulty by recognizing it." And he added, as Amherst sat
silent: "Take Bessy away, and they'll have to see each other elsewhere."
* * * * *
Amherst returned to Lynbrook with the echoes of this casuistry in his
brain. It seemed to him but a part of the ingenious system of evasion
whereby a society bent on the undisturbed pursuit of amusement had
contrived to protect itself from the intrusion of the disagreeable: a
policy summed up in Mr. Langhope's concluding advice that Amherst should
take his wife away. Yes--that was wealth's contemptuous answer to every
challenge of responsibility: duty, sorrow and disgrace were equally to
be evaded by a change of residence, and nothing in life need be faced
and fought out while one could pay for a passage to Europe!
In a calmer mood Amherst's sense of humour would have preserved him from
such a view of his father-in-law's advice; but just then it fell like a
spark on his smouldering prejudices. He was clear-sighted enough to
recognize the obstacles to legal retaliation; but this only made him the
more resolved to assert his will in his own house. He no longer paused
to consider the possible effect of such a course on his already strained
relations with his wife: the man's will rose in him and spoke.
The scene between Bessy and himself was short and sharp; and it ended in
a way that left him more than ever perplexed at the ways of her sex.
Impatient of preamble, he had opened the attack with his ultimatum: the
suspected couple were to be denied the house. Bessy flamed into
immediate defence of her friend; but to Amherst's surprise she no
longer sounded the note of her own rights. Husband and wife were
animated by emotions deeper-seated and more instinctive than had ever
before confronted them; yet while Amherst's resistance was gathering
strength from the conflict, Bessy unexpectedly collapsed in tears and
submission. She would do as he wished, of course--give up seeing
Blanche, dismiss Bowfort, wash her hands, in short, of the imprudent
pair--in such matters a woman needed a man's guidance, a wife must of
necessity see with her husband's eyes; and she looked up into his
through a mist of penitence and admiration....
XXI
IN the first reaction from her brief delusion about Stephen Wyant,
Justine accepted with a good grace the necessity of staying on at
Lynbrook. Though she was now well enough to return to her regular work,
her talk with Amherst had made her feel that, for the present, she could
be of more use by remaining with Bessy; and she was not sorry to have a
farther period of delay and reflection before taking the next step in
her life. These at least were the reasons she gave herself for deciding
not to leave; and if any less ostensible lurked beneath, they were not
as yet visible even to her searching self-scrutiny.
At first she was embarrassed by the obligation of meeting Dr. Wyant, on
whom her definite refusal had produced an effect for which she could not
hold herself blameless. She had not kept her promise of seeing him on
the day after their encounter at the post-office, but had written,
instead, in terms which obviously made such a meeting unnecessary. But
all her efforts to soften the abruptness of her answer could not
conceal, from either herself or her suitor, that it was not the one she
had led him to expect; and she foresaw that if she remained at Lynbrook
she could not escape a scene of recrimination.
When the scene took place, Wyant's part in it went far toward justifying
her decision; yet his vehement reproaches contained a sufficient core of
truth to humble her pride. It was lucky for her somewhat exaggerated
sense of fairness that he overshot the mark by charging her with a
coquetry of which she knew herself innocent, and laying on her the
responsibility for any follies to which her rejection might drive him.
Such threats, as a rule, no longer move the feminine imagination; yet
Justine's pity for all forms of weakness made her recognize, in the very
heat of her contempt for Wyant, that his reproaches were not the mere
cry of wounded vanity but the appeal of a nature conscious of its lack
of recuperative power. It seemed to her as though she had done him
irreparable harm, and the feeling might have betrayed her into too
great a show of compassion had she not been restrained by a salutary
fear of the result.
The state of Bessy's nerves necessitated frequent visits from her
physician, but Justine, on these occasions, could usually shelter
herself behind the professional reserve which kept even Wyant from any
open expression of feeling. One day, however, they chanced to find
themselves alone before Bessy's return from her ride. The servant had
ushered Wyant into the library where Justine was writing, and when she
had replied to his enquiries about his patient they found themselves
face to face with an awkward period of waiting. Justine was too proud to
cut it short by leaving the room; but Wyant answered her commonplaces at
random, stirring uneasily to and fro between window and fireside, and at
length halting behind the table at which she sat.
"May I ask how much longer you mean to stay here?" he said in a low
voice, his eyes darkening under the sullen jut of the brows.
As she glanced up in surprise she noticed for the first time an odd
contraction of his pupils, and the discovery, familiar enough in her
professional experience, made her disregard the abruptness of his
question and softened the tone in which she answered. "I hardly know--I
suppose as long as I am needed."
Wyant laughed. "Needed by whom? By John Amherst?"
A moment passed before Justine took in the full significance of the
retort; then the blood rushed to her face. "Yes--I believe both Mr. and
Mrs. Amherst need me," she answered, keeping her eyes on his; and Wyant
laughed again.
"You didn't think so till Amherst came back from Hanaford. His return
seems to have changed your plans in several respects."
She looked away from him, for even now his eyes moved her to pity and
self-reproach. "Dr. Wyant, you are not well; why do you wait to see Mrs.
Amherst?" she said.
He stared at her and then his glance fell. "I'm much obliged--I'm as
well as usual," he muttered, pushing the hair from his forehead with a
shaking hand; and at that moment the sound of Bessy's voice gave Justine
a pretext for escape.
In her own room she sank for a moment under a rush of self-disgust; but
it soon receded before the saner forces of her nature, leaving only a
residue of pity for the poor creature whose secret she had surprised.
She had never before suspected Wyant of taking a drug, nor did she now
suppose that he did so habitually; but to see him even momentarily under
such an influence explained her instinctive sense of his weakness. She
felt now that what would have been an insult on other lips was only a
cry of distress from his; and once more she blamed herself and forgave
him.
But if she had been inclined to any morbidness of self-reproach she
would have been saved from it by other cares. For the moment she was
more concerned with Bessy's fate than with her own--her poor friend
seemed to have so much more at stake, and so much less strength to bring
to the defence of her happiness. Justine was always saved from any
excess of self-compassion by the sense, within herself, of abounding
forces of growth and self-renewal, as though from every lopped
aspiration a fresh shoot of energy must spring; but she felt that Bessy
had no such sources of renovation, and that every disappointment left an
arid spot in her soul.
Even without her friend's confidences, Justine would have had no
difficulty in following the successive stages of the Amhersts' inner
history. She knew that Amherst had virtually resigned his rule at
Westmore, and that his wife, in return for the sacrifice, was trying to
conform to the way of life she thought he preferred; and the futility of
both attempts was more visible to Justine than to either of the two
concerned. She saw that the failure of the Amhersts' marriage lay not in
any accident of outward circumstances but in the lack of all natural
points of contact. As she put it to herself, they met neither underfoot
nor overhead: practical necessities united them no more than imaginative
joys.
There were moments when Justine thought Amherst hard to Bessy, as she
suspected that he had once been hard to his mother--as the leader of men
must perhaps always be hard to the hampering sex. Yet she did justice to
his efforts to accept the irretrievable, and to waken in his wife some
capacity for sharing in his minor interests, since she had none of her
own with which to fill their days.
Amherst had always been a reader; not, like Justine herself, a
flame-like devourer of the page, but a slow absorber of its essence; and
in the early days of his marriage he had fancied it would be easy to
make Bessy share this taste. Though his mother was not a bookish woman,
he had breathed at her side an air rich in allusion and filled with the
bright presences of romance; and he had always regarded this commerce of
the imagination as one of the normal conditions of life. The discovery
that there were no books at Lynbrook save a few morocco "sets"
imprisoned behind the brass trellisings of the library had been one of
the many surprises of his new state. But in his first months with Bessy
there was no room for books, and if he thought of the matter it was only
in a glancing vision of future evenings, when he and she, in the calm
afterglow of happiness, should lean together over some cherished page.
Her lack of response to any reference outside the small circle of daily
facts had long since dispelled that vision; but now that his own mind
felt the need of inner sustenance he began to ask himself whether he
might not have done more to rouse her imagination. During the long
evenings over the library fire he tried to lead the talk to books, with
a parenthesis, now and again, from the page beneath his eye; and Bessy
met the experiment with conciliatory eagerness. She showed, in especial,
a hopeful but misleading preference for poetry, leaning back with
dreaming lids and lovely parted lips while he rolled out the immortal
measures; but her outward signs of attention never ripened into any
expression of opinion, or any after-allusion to what she heard, and
before long he discovered that Justine Brent was his only listener. It
was to her that the words he read began to be unconsciously addressed;
her comments directed him in his choice of subjects, and the ensuing
discussions restored him to some semblance of mental activity.
Bessy, true to her new rôle of acquiescence, shone silently on this
interchange of ideas; Amherst even detected in her a vague admiration
for his power of conversing on subjects which she regarded as abstruse;
and this childlike approval, combined with her submission to his will,
deluded him with a sense of recovered power over her. He could not but
note that the new phase in their relations had coincided with his first
assertion of mastery; and he rashly concluded that, with the removal of
the influences tending to separate them, his wife might gradually be won
back to her earlier sympathy with his views.
To accept this theory was to apply it; for nothing could long divert
Amherst from his main purpose, and all the thwarted strength of his will
was only gathering to itself fresh stores of energy. He had never been a
skilful lover, for no woman had as yet stirred in him those feelings
which call the finer perceptions into play; and there was no instinct to
tell him that Bessy's sudden conformity to his wishes was as unreasoning
as her surrender to his first kiss. He fancied that he and she were at
length reaching some semblance of that moral harmony which should grow
out of the physical accord, and that, poor and incomplete as the
understanding was, it must lift and strengthen their relation.
He waited till early winter had brought solitude to Lynbrook, dispersing
the hunting colony to various points of the compass, and sending Mr.
Langhope to Egypt and the Riviera, while Mrs. Ansell, as usual, took up
her annual tour of a social circuit whose extreme points were marked by
Boston and Baltimore--and then he made his final appeal to his wife.
His pretext for speaking was a letter from Duplain, definitely
announcing his resolve not to remain at Westmore. A year earlier
Amherst, deeply moved by the letter, would have given it to his wife in
the hope of its producing the same effect on her. He knew better now--he
had learned her instinct for detecting "business" under every serious
call on her attention. His only hope, as always, was to reach her
through the personal appeal; and he put before her the fact of Duplain's
withdrawal as the open victory of his antagonists. But he saw at once
that even this could not infuse new life into the question.
"If I go back he'll stay--I can hold him, can gain time till things take
a turn," he urged.
"Another? I thought they were definitely settled," she objected
languidly.
"No--they're not; they can't be, on such a basis," Amherst broke out
with sudden emphasis. He walked across the room, and came back to her
side with a determined face. "It's a delusion, a deception," he
exclaimed, "to think I can stand by any longer and see things going to
ruin at Westmore! If I've made you think so, I've unconsciously deceived
us both. As long as you're my wife we've only one honour between us, and
that honour is mine to take care of."
"Honour? What an odd expression!" she said with a forced laugh, and a
little tinge of pink in her cheek. "You speak as if I had--had made
myself talked about --when you know I've never even looked at another
man!"
"Another man?" Amherst looked at her in wonder. "Good God! Can't you
conceive of any vow to be kept between husband and wife but the
primitive one of bodily fidelity? Heaven knows I've never looked at
another woman--but, by my reading of our compact, I shouldn't be keeping
faith with you if I didn't help you to keep faith with better things.
And you owe me the same help--the same chance to rise through you, and
not sink by you--else we've betrayed each other more deeply than any
adultery could make us!"
She had drawn back, turning pale again, and shrinking a little at the
sound of words which, except when heard in church, she vaguely
associated with oaths, slammed doors, and other evidences of
ill-breeding; but Amherst had been swept too far on the flood of his
indignation to be checked by such small signs of disapproval.
"You'll say that what I'm asking you is to give me back the free use of
your money. Well! Why not? Is it so much for a wife to give? I know you
all think that a man who marries a rich woman forfeits his self-respect
if he spends a penny without her approval. But that's because money is
so sacred to you all! It seems to me the least important thing that a
woman entrusts to her husband. What of her dreams and her hopes, her
belief in justice and goodness and decency? If he takes those and
destroys them, he'd better have had a mill-stone about his neck. But
nobody has a word to say till he touches her dividends--then he's a
calculating brute who has married her for her fortune!"
He had come close again, facing her with outstretched hands,
half-commanding, half in appeal. "Don't you see that I can't go on in
this way--that I've _no right_ to let you keep me from Westmore?"
Bessy was looking at him coldly, under the half-dropped lids of
indifference. "I hardly know what you mean--you use such peculiar words;
but I don't see why you should expect me to give up all the ideas I was
brought up in. Our standards _are_ different--but why should yours
always be right?"
"You believed they were right when you married me--have they changed
since then?"
"No; but----" Her face seemed to harden and contract into a small
expressionless mask, in which he could no longer read anything but blank
opposition to his will.
"You trusted my judgment not long ago," he went on, "when I asked you to
give up seeing Mrs. Carbury----"
She flushed, but with anger, not compunction. "It seems to me that
should be a reason for your not asking me to make other sacrifices! When
I gave up Blanche I thought you would see that I wanted to please
you--and that you would do something for me in return...."
Amherst interrupted her with a laugh. "Thank you for telling me your
real reasons. I was fool enough to think you acted from conviction--not
that you were simply striking a bargain----"
He broke off, and they looked at each other with a kind of fear, each
hearing between them the echo of irreparable words. Amherst's only clear
feeling was that he must not speak again till he had beaten down the
horrible sensation in his breast--the rage of hate which had him in its
grip, and which made him almost afraid, while it lasted, to let his eyes
rest on the fair weak creature before him. Bessy, too, was in the clutch
of a mute anger which slowly poured its benumbing current around her
heart. Strong waves of passion did not quicken her vitality: she grew
inert and cold under their shock. Only one little pulse of self-pity
continued to beat in her, trembling out at last on the cry: "Ah, I know
it's not because you care so much for Westmore--it's only because you
want to get away from me!"
Amherst stared as if her words had flashed a light into the darkest
windings of his misery. "Yes--I want to get away..." he said; and he
turned and walked out of the room.
He went down to the smoking-room, and ringing for a servant, ordered
his horse to be saddled. The foot-man who answered his summons brought
the afternoon's mail, and Amherst, throwing himself down on the sofa,
began to tear open his letters while he waited.
He ran through the first few without knowing what he read; but presently
his attention was arrested by the hand-writing of a man he had known well
in college, and who had lately come into possession of a large cotton-mill
in the South. He wrote now to ask if Amherst could recommend a good
manager--"not one of your old routine men, but a young fellow with the new
ideas. Things have been in pretty bad shape down here," the writer added,
"and now that I'm in possession I want to see what can be done to civilize
the place"; and he went on to urge that Amherst should come down himself
to inspect the mills, and propose such improvements as his experience
suggested. "We've all heard of the great things you're doing at Westmore,"
the letter ended; and Amherst cast it from him with a groan....
It was Duplain's chance, of course...that was his first thought. He took
up the letter and read it over. He knew the man who wrote--no
sentimentalist seeking emotional variety from vague philanthropic
experiments, but a serious student of social conditions, now
unexpectedly provided with the opportunity to apply his ideas. Yes, it
was Duplain's chance--if indeed it might not be his own!... Amherst sat
upright, dazzled by the thought. Why Duplain--why not himself? Bessy had
spoken the illuminating word--what he wanted was to get away--to get
away at any cost! Escape had become his one thought: escape from the
bondage of Lynbrook, from the bitter memory of his failure at Westmore;
and here was the chance to escape back into life--into independence,
activity and usefulness! Every atrophied faculty in him suddenly started
from its torpor, and his brain throbbed with the pain of the
awakening.... The servant came to tell him that his horse waited, and he
sprang up, took his riding-whip from the rack, stared a moment,
absently, after the man's retreating back, and then dropped down again
on the sofa....
What was there to keep him from accepting? His wife's affection was
dead--if her sentimental fancy for him had ever deserved the name! And
his passing mastery over her was gone too--he smiled to remember that,
hardly two hours earlier, he had been fatuous enough to think he could
still regain it! Now he said to himself that she would sooner desert a
friend to please him than sacrifice a fraction of her income; and the
discovery cast a stain of sordidness on their whole relation. He could
still imagine struggling to win her back from another man, or even to
save her from some folly into which mistaken judgment or perverted
enthusiasm might have hurried her; but to go on battling against the
dull unimaginative subservience to personal luxury--the slavery to
houses and servants and clothes--ah, no, while he had any fight left in
him it was worth spending in a better cause than that!
Through the open window he could hear, in the mild December stillness,
his horse's feet coming and going on the gravel. _Her_ horse, led up and
down by _her_ servant, at the door of _her_ house!... The sound
symbolized his whole future...the situation his marriage had made for
him, and to which he must henceforth bend, unless he broke with it then
and there.... He tried to look ahead, to follow up, one by one, the
consequences of such a break. That it would be final he had no doubt.
There are natures which seem to be drawn closer by dissension, to
depend, for the renewal of understanding, on the spark of generosity and
compunction that anger strikes out of both; but Amherst knew that
between himself and his wife no such clearing of the moral atmosphere
was possible. The indignation which left him with tingling nerves and a
burning need of some immediate escape into action, crystallized in Bessy
into a hard kernel of obstinacy, into which, after each fresh collision,
he felt that a little more of herself had been absorbed.... No, the
break between them would be final--if he went now he would not come
back. And it flashed across him that this solution might have been
foreseen by his wife--might even have been deliberately planned and led
up to by those about her. His father-in-law had never liked him--the
disturbing waves of his activity had rippled even the sheltered surface
of Mr. Langhope's existence. He must have been horribly in their way!
Well--it was not too late to take himself out of it. In Bessy's circle
the severing of such ties was regarded as an expensive but unhazardous
piece of surgery--nobody bled to death of the wound.... The footman came
back to remind him that his horse was waiting, and Amherst rose to his
feet.
"Send him back to the stable," he said with a glance at his watch, "and
order a trap to take me to the next train."
XXII
WHEN Amherst woke, the next morning, in the hotel to which he had gone
up from Lynbrook, he was oppressed by the sense that the hardest step he
had to take still lay before him. It had been almost easy to decide that
the moment of separation had come, for circumstances seemed to have
closed every other issue from his unhappy situation; but how tell his
wife of his decision? Amherst, to whom action was the first necessity of
being, became a weak procrastinator when he was confronted by the need
of writing instead of speaking.
To account for his abrupt departure from Lynbrook he had left word that
he was called to town on business; but, since he did not mean to return,
some farther explanation was now necessary, and he was paralyzed by the
difficulty of writing. He had already telegraphed to his friend that he
would be at the mills the next day; but the southern express did not
leave till the afternoon, and he still had several hours in which to
consider what he should say to his wife. To postpone the dreaded task,
he invented the pretext of some business to be despatched, and taking
the Subway to Wall Street consumed the morning in futile activities. But
since the renunciation of his work at Westmore he had no active concern
with the financial world, and by twelve o'clock he had exhausted his
imaginary affairs and was journeying up town again. He left the train at
Union Square, and walked along Fourth Avenue, now definitely resolved to
go back to the hotel and write his letter before lunching.
At Twenty-sixth Street he had struck into Madison Avenue, and was
striding onward with the fixed eye and aimless haste of the man who has
empty hours to fill, when a hansom drew up ahead of him and Justine
Brent sprang out. She was trimly dressed, as if for travel, with a small
bag in her hand; but at sight of him she paused with a cry of pleasure.
"Oh, Mr. Amherst, I'm so glad! I was afraid I might not see you for
goodbye."
"For goodbye?" Amherst paused, embarrassed. How had she guessed that he
did not mean to return to Lynbrook?
"You know," she reminded him, "I'm going to some friends near
Philadelphia for ten days"--and he remembered confusedly that a long
time ago--probably yesterday morning--he had heard her speak of her
projected visit.
"I had no idea," she continued, "that you were coming up to town
yesterday, or I should have tried to see you before you left. I wanted
to ask you to send me a line if Bessy needs me--I'll come back at once
if she does." Amherst continued to listen blankly, as if making a
painful effort to regain some consciousness of what was being said to
him, and she went on: "She seemed so nervous and poorly yesterday
evening that I was sorry I had decided to go----"
Her intent gaze reminded him that the emotions of the last twenty-four
hours must still be visible in his face; and the thought of what she
might detect helped to restore his self-possession. "You must not think
of giving up your visit," he began hurriedly--he had meant to add "on
account of Bessy," but he found himself unable to utter his wife's name.
Justine was still looking at him. "Oh, I'm sure everything will be all
right," she rejoined. "You go back this afternoon, I suppose? I've left
you a little note, with my address, and I want you to promise----"
She paused, for Amherst had made a motion as though to interrupt her.
The old confused sense that there must always be truth between them was
struggling in him with the strong restraints of habit and character; and
suddenly, before he was conscious of having decided to speak, he heard
himself say: "I ought to tell you that I am not going back."
"Not going back?" A flash of apprehension crossed Justine's face. "Not
till tomorrow, you mean?" she added, recovering herself.
Amherst hesitated, glancing vaguely up and down the street. At that
noonday hour it was nearly deserted, and Justine's driver dozed on his
perch above the hansom. They could speak almost as openly as if they had
been in one of the wood-paths at Lynbrook.
"Nor tomorrow," Amherst said in a low voice. There was another pause
before he added: "It may be some time before--" He broke off, and then
continued with an effort: "The fact is, I am thinking of going back to
my old work."
She caught him up with an exclamation of surprise and sympathy. "Your
old work? You mean at----"
She was checked by the quick contraction of pain in his face. "Not that!
I mean that I'm thinking of taking a new job--as manager of a Georgia
mill.... It's the only thing I know how to do, and I've got to do
something--" He forced a laugh. "The habit of work is incurable!"
Justine's face had grown as grave as his. She hesitated a moment,
looking down the street toward the angle of Madison Square, which was
visible from the corner where they stood.
"Will you walk back to the square with me? Then we can sit down a
moment."
She began to move as she spoke, and he walked beside her in silence till
they had gained the seat she pointed out. Her hansom trailed after them,
drawing up at the corner.
As Amherst sat down beside her, Justine turned to him with an air of
quiet resolution. "Mr. Amherst--will you let me ask you something? Is
this a sudden decision?"
"Yes. I decided yesterday."
"And Bessy----?"
His glance dropped for the first time, but Justine pressed her point.
"Bessy approves?"
"She--she will, I think--when she knows----"
"When she knows?" Her emotion sprang into her face. "When she knows?
Then she does not--yet?"
"No. The offer came suddenly. I must go at once."
"Without seeing her?" She cut him short with a quick commanding gesture.
"Mr. Amherst, you can't do this--you won't do it! You will not go away
without seeing Bessy!" she said.
Her eyes sought his and drew them upward, constraining them to meet the
full beam of her rebuking gaze.
"I must do what seems best under the circumstances," he answered
hesitatingly. "She will hear from me, of course; I shall write
today--and later----"
"Not later! _Now_--you will go back now to Lynbrook! Such things can't
be told in writing--if they must be said at all, they must be spoken.
Don't tell me that I don't understand--or that I'm meddling in what
doesn't concern me. I don't care a fig for that! I've always meddled in
what didn't concern me--I always shall, I suppose, till I die! And I
understand enough to know that Bessy is very unhappy--and that you're
the wiser and stronger of the two. I know what it's been to you to give
up your work--to feel yourself useless," she interrupted herself, with
softening eyes, "and I know how you've tried...I've watched you...but
Bessy has tried too; and even if you've both failed--if you've come to
the end of your resources--it's for you to face the fact, and help her
face it--not to run away from it like this!"
Amherst sat silent under the assault of her eloquence. He was conscious
of no instinctive resentment, no sense that she was, as she confessed,
meddling in matters which did not concern her. His ebbing spirit was
revived by the shock of an ardour like his own. She had not shrunk from
calling him a coward--and it did him good to hear her call him so! Her
words put life back into its true perspective, restored their meaning to
obsolete terms: to truth and manliness and courage. He had lived so long
among equivocations that he had forgotten how to look a fact in the
face; but here was a woman who judged life by his own standards--and by
those standards she had found him wanting!
Still, he could not forget the last bitter hours, or change his opinion
as to the futility of attempting to remain at Lynbrook. He felt as
strongly as ever the need of moral and mental liberation--the right to
begin life again on his own terms. But Justine Brent had made him see
that his first step toward self-assertion had been the inconsistent one
of trying to evade its results.
"You are right--I will go back," he said.
She thanked him with her eyes, as she had thanked him on the terrace at
Lynbrook, on the autumn evening which had witnessed their first broken
exchange of confidences; and he was struck once more with the change
that feeling produced in her. Emotions flashed across her face like the
sweep of sun-rent clouds over a quiet landscape, bringing out the gleam
of hidden waters, the fervour of smouldering colours, all the subtle
delicacies of modelling that are lost under the light of an open sky.
And it was extraordinary how she could infuse into a principle the
warmth and colour of a passion! If conduct, to most people, seemed a
cold matter of social prudence or inherited habit, to her it was always
the newly-discovered question of her own relation to life--as most women
see the great issues only through their own wants and prejudices, so she
seemed always to see her personal desires in the light of the larger
claims.
"But I don't think," Amherst went on, "that anything can be said to
convince me that I ought to alter my decision. These months of idleness
have shown me that I'm one of the members of society who are a danger to
the community if their noses are not kept to the grindstone----"
Justine lowered her eyes musingly, and he saw she was undergoing the
reaction of constraint which always followed on her bursts of
unpremeditated frankness.
"That is not for me to judge," she answered after a moment. "But if you
decide to go away for a time--surely it ought to be in such a way that
your going does not seem to cast any reflection on Bessy, or subject her
to any unkind criticism."
Amherst, reddening slightly, glanced at her in surprise. "I don't think
you need fear that--I shall be the only one criticized," he said drily.
"Are you sure--if you take such a position as you spoke of? So few
people understand the love of hard work for its own sake. They will say
that your quarrel with your wife has driven you to support yourself--and
that will be cruel to Bessy."
Amherst shrugged his shoulders. "They'll be more likely to say I tried
to play the gentleman and failed, and wasn't happy till I got back to my
own place in life--which is true enough," he added with a touch of
irony.
"They may say that too; but they will make Bessy suffer first--and it
will be your fault if she is humiliated in that way. If you decide to
take up your factory work for a time, can't you do so without--without
accepting a salary? Oh, you see I stick at nothing," she broke in upon
herself with a laugh, "and Bessy has said things which make me see that
she would suffer horribly if--if you put such a slight on her." He
remained silent, and she went on urgently: "From Bessy's standpoint it
would mean a decisive break--the repudiating of your whole past. And it
is a question on which you can afford to be generous, because I know...I
think...it's less important in your eyes than hers...."
Amherst glanced at her quickly. "That particular form of indebtedness,
you mean?"
She smiled. "The easiest to cancel, and therefore the least galling;
isn't that the way you regard it?"
"I used to--yes; but--" He was about to add: "No one at Lynbrook does,"
but the flash of intelligence in her eyes restrained him, while at the
same time it seemed to answer: "There's my point! To see their
limitation is to allow for it, since every enlightenment brings a
corresponding obligation."
She made no attempt to put into words the argument her look conveyed,
but rose from her seat with a rapid glance at her watch.
"And now I must go, or I shall miss my train." She held out her hand,
and as Amherst's met it, he said in a low tone, as if in reply to her
unspoken appeal: "I shall remember all you have said."
* * * * *
It was a new experience for Amherst to be acting under the pressure of
another will; but during his return journey to Lynbrook that afternoon
it was pure relief to surrender himself to this pressure, and the
surrender brought not a sense of weakness but of recovered energy. It
was not in his nature to analyze his motives, or spend his strength in
weighing closely balanced alternatives of conduct; and though, during
the last purposeless months, he had grown to brood over every spring of
action in himself and others, this tendency disappeared at once in
contact with the deed to be done. It was as though a tributary stream,
gathering its crystal speed among the hills, had been suddenly poured
into the stagnant waters of his will; and he saw now how thick and
turbid those waters had become--how full of the slime-bred life that
chokes the springs of courage.
His whole desire now was to be generous to his wife: to bear the full
brunt of whatever pain their parting brought. Justine had said that
Bessy seemed nervous and unhappy: it was clear, therefore, that she also
had suffered from the wounds they had dealt each other, though she kept
her unmoved front to the last. Poor child! Perhaps that insensible
exterior was the only way she knew of expressing courage! It seemed to
Amherst that all means of manifesting the finer impulses must slowly
wither in the Lynbrook air. As he approached his destination, his
thoughts of her were all pitiful: nothing remained of the personal
resentment which had debased their parting. He had telephoned from town
to announce the hour of his return, and when he emerged from the station
he half-expected to find her seated in the brougham whose lamps
signalled him through the early dusk. It would be like her to undergo
such a reaction of feeling, and to express it, not in words, but by
taking up their relation as if there had been no break in it. He had
once condemned this facility of renewal as a sign of lightness, a
result of that continual evasion of serious issues which made the life
of Bessy's world a thin crust of custom above a void of thought. But he
now saw that, if she was the product of her environment, that
constituted but another claim on his charity, and made the more precious
any impulses of natural feeling that had survived the unifying pressure
of her life. As he approached the brougham, he murmured mentally: "What
if I were to try once more?"
Bessy had not come to meet him; but he said to himself that he should
find her alone at the house, and that he would make his confession at
once. As the carriage passed between the lights on the tall stone
gate-posts, and rolled through the bare shrubberies of the avenue, he
felt a momentary tightening of the heart--a sense of stepping back into
the trap from which he had just wrenched himself free--a premonition of
the way in which the smooth systematized routine of his wife's existence
might draw him back into its revolutions as he had once seen a careless
factory hand seized and dragged into a flying belt....
But it was only for a moment; then his thoughts reverted to Bessy. It
was she who was to be considered--this time he must be strong enough for
both.
The butler met him on the threshold, flanked by the usual array of
footmen; and as he saw his portmanteau ceremoniously passed from hand
to hand, Amherst once more felt the steel of the springe on his neck.
"Is Mrs. Amherst in the drawing-room, Knowles?" he asked.
"No, sir," said Knowles, who had too high a sense of fitness to
volunteer any information beyond the immediate fact required of him.
"She has gone up to her sitting-room, then?" Amherst continued, turning
toward the broad sweep of the stairway.
"No, sir," said the butler slowly; "Mrs. Amherst has gone away."
"Gone away?" Amherst stopped short, staring blankly at the man's smooth
official mask.
"This afternoon, sir; to Mapleside."
"To Mapleside?"
"Yes, sir, by motor--to stay with Mrs. Carbury."
There was a moment's silence. It had all happened so quickly that
Amherst, with the dual vision which comes at such moments, noticed that
the third footman--or was it the fourth?--was just passing his
portmanteau on to a shirt-sleeved arm behind the door which led to the
servant's wing....
He roused himself to look at the tall clock. It was just six. He had
telephoned from town at two.
"At what time did Mrs. Amherst leave?"
The butler meditated. "Sharp at four, sir. The maid took the three-forty
with the luggage."
With the luggage! So it was not a mere one-night visit. The blood rose
slowly to Amherst's face. The footmen had disappeared, but presently the
door at the back of the hall reopened, and one of them came out,
carrying an elaborately-appointed tea-tray toward the smoking-room. The
routine of the house was going on as if nothing had happened.... The
butler looked at Amherst with respectful--too respectful--interrogation,
and he was suddenly conscious that he was standing motionless in the
middle of the hall, with one last intolerable question on his lips.
Well--it had to be spoken! "Did Mrs. Amherst receive my telephone
message?"
"Yes, sir. I gave it to her myself."
It occurred confusedly to Amherst that a well-bred man--as Lynbrook
understood the phrase--would, at this point, have made some tardy feint
of being in his wife's confidence, of having, on second thoughts, no
reason to be surprised at her departure. It was humiliating, he
supposed, to be thus laying bare his discomfiture to his dependents--he
could see that even Knowles was affected by the manifest impropriety of
the situation--but no pretext presented itself to his mind, and after
another interval of silence he turned slowly toward the door of the
smoking-room.
"My letters are here, I suppose?" he paused on the threshold to enquire;
and on the butler's answering in the affirmative, he said to himself,
with a last effort to suspend his judgment: "She has left a line--there
will be some explanation----"
But there was nothing--neither word nor message; nothing but the
reverberating retort of her departure in the face of his return--her
flight to Blanche Carbury as the final answer to his final appeal.
XXIII
JUSTINE was coming back to Lynbrook. She had been, after all, unable to
stay out the ten days of her visit: the undefinable sense of being
needed, so often the determining motive of her actions, drew her back to
Long Island at the end of the week. She had received no word from
Amherst or Bessy; only Cicely had told her, in a big round hand, that
mother had been away three days, and that it had been very lonely, and
that the housekeeper's cat had kittens, and she was to have one; and
were kittens christened, or how did they get their names?--because she
wanted to call hers Justine; and she had found in her book a bird like
the one father had shown them in the swamp; and they were not alone now,
because the Telfers were there, and they had all been out sleighing;
but it would be much nicer when Justine came back....
It was as difficult to extract any sequence of facts from Cicely's
letter as from an early chronicle. She made no reference to Amherst's
return, which was odd, since she was fond of her step-father, yet not
significant, since the fact of his arrival might have been crowded out
by the birth of the kittens, or some incident equally prominent in her
perspectiveless grouping of events; nor did she name the date of her
mother's departure, so that Justine could not guess whether it had been
contingent on Amherst's return, or wholly unconnected with it. What
puzzled her most was Bessy's own silence--yet that too, in a sense, was
reassuring, for Bessy thought of others chiefly when it was painful to
think of herself, and her not writing implied that she had felt no
present need of her friend's sympathy.
Justine did not expect to find Amherst at Lynbrook. She had felt
convinced, when they parted, that he would persist in his plan of going
south; and the fact that the Telfer girls were again in possession made
it seem probable that he had already left. Under the circumstances,
Justine thought the separation advisable; but she was eager to be
assured that it had been effected amicably, and without open affront to
Bessy's pride.
She arrived on a Saturday afternoon, and when she entered the house the
sound of voices from the drawing-room, and the prevailing sense of
bustle and movement amid which her own coming was evidently an
unconsidered detail, showed that the normal life of Lynbrook had resumed
its course. The Telfers, as usual, had brought a lively throng in their
train; and amid the bursts of merriment about the drawing-room tea-table
she caught Westy Gaines's impressive accents, and the screaming laughter
of Blanche Carbury....
So Blanche Carbury was back at Lynbrook! The discovery gave Justine
fresh cause for conjecture. Whatever reciprocal concessions might have
resulted from Amherst's return to his wife, it seemed hardly probable
that they included a renewal of relations with Mrs. Carbury. Had his
mission failed then--had he and Bessy parted in anger, and was Mrs.
Carbury's presence at Lynbrook Bessy's retort to his assertion of
independence?
In the school-room, where Justine was received with the eager outpouring
of Cicely's minutest experiences, she dared not put the question that
would have solved these doubts; and she left to dress for dinner without
knowing whether Amherst had returned to Lynbrook. Yet in her heart she
never questioned that he had done so; all her fears revolved about what
had since taken place.
She saw Bessy first in the drawing-room, surrounded by her guests; and
their brief embrace told her nothing, except that she had never beheld
her friend more brilliant, more triumphantly in possession of recovered
spirits and health.
That Amherst was absent was now made evident by Bessy's requesting Westy
Gaines to lead the way to the dining-room with Mrs. Ansell, who was one
of the reassembled visitors; and the only one, as Justine presently
observed, not in key with the prevailing gaiety. Mrs. Ansell, usually so
tinged with the colours of her environment, preserved on this occasion a
grey neutrality of tone which was the only break in the general
brightness. It was not in her graceful person to express anything as
gross as disapproval, yet that sentiment was manifest, to the nice
observer, in a delicate aloofness which made the waves of laughter fall
back from her, and spread a circle of cloudy calm about her end of the
table. Justine had never been greatly drawn to Mrs. Ansell. Her own
adaptability was not in the least akin to the older woman's studied
self-effacement; and the independence of judgment which Justine
preserved in spite of her perception of divergent standpoints made her a
little contemptuous of an excess of charity that seemed to have been
acquired at the cost of all individual convictions. To-night for the
first time she felt in Mrs. Ansell a secret sympathy with her own
fears; and a sense of this tacit understanding made her examine with
sudden interest the face of her unexpected ally.... After all, what did
she know of Mrs. Ansell's history--of the hidden processes which had
gradually subdued her own passions and desires, making of her, as it
were, a mere decorative background, a connecting link between other
personalities? Perhaps, for a woman alone in the world, without the
power and opportunity that money gives, there was no alternative between
letting one's individuality harden into a small dry nucleus of egoism,
or diffuse itself thus in the interstices of other lives--and there fell
upon Justine the chill thought that just such a future might await her
if she missed the liberating gift of personal happiness....
* * * * *
Neither that night nor the next day had she a private word with
Bessy--and it became evident, as the hours passed, that Mrs. Amherst was
deliberately postponing the moment when they should find themselves
alone. But the Lynbrook party was to disperse on the Monday; and Bessy,
who hated early rising, and all the details of housekeeping, tapped at
Justine's door late on Sunday night to ask her to speed the departing
visitors.
She pleaded this necessity as an excuse for her intrusion, and the
playful haste of her manner showed a nervous shrinking from any renewal
of confidence; but as she leaned in the doorway, fingering the diamond
chain about her neck, while one satin-tipped foot emerged restlessly
from the edge of her lace gown, her face lost the bloom of animation
which talk and laughter always produced in it, and she looked so pale
and weary that Justine needed no better pretext for drawing her into the
room.
It was not in Bessy to resist a soothing touch in her moments of nervous
reaction. She sank into the chair by the fire and let her head rest
wearily against the cushion which Justine slipped behind it.
Justine dropped into the low seat beside her, and laid a hand on hers.
"You don't look as well as when I went away, Bessy. Are you sure you've
done wisely in beginning your house-parties so soon?"
It always alarmed Bessy to be told that she was not looking her best,
and she sat upright, a wave of pink rising under her sensitive skin.
"I am quite well, on the contrary; but I was dying of inanition in this
big empty house, and I suppose I haven't got the boredom out of my
system yet!"
Justine recognized the echo of Mrs. Carbury's manner.
"Even if you _were_ bored," she rejoined, "the inanition was probably
good for you. What does Dr. Wyant say to your breaking away from his
régime?" She named Wyant purposely, knowing that Bessy had that respect
for the medical verdict which is the last trace of reverence for
authority in the mind of the modern woman. But Mrs. Amherst laughed with
gentle malice.
"Oh, I haven't seen Dr. Wyant lately. His interest in me died out the
day you left."
Justine forced a laugh to hide her annoyance. She had not yet recovered
from the shrinking disgust of her last scene with Wyant.
"Don't be a goose, Bessy. If he hasn't come, it must be because you've
told him not to--because you're afraid of letting him see that you're
disobeying him."
Bessy laughed again. "My dear, I'm afraid of nothing--nothing! Not even
of your big eyes when they glare at me like coals. I suppose you must
have looked at poor Wyant like that to frighten him away! And yet the
last time we talked of him you seemed to like him--you even hinted that
it was because of him that Westy had no chance."
Justine uttered an impatient exclamation. "If neither of them existed it
wouldn't affect the other's chances in the least. Their only merit is
that they both enhance the charms of celibacy!"
Bessy's smile dropped, and she turned a grave glance on her friend. "Ah,
most men do that--you're so clever to have found it out!"
It was Justine's turn to smile. "Oh, but I haven't--as a
generalization. I mean to marry as soon as I get the chance!"
"The chance----?"
"To meet the right man. I'm gambler enough to believe in my luck yet!"
Mrs. Amherst sighed compassionately. "There _is_ no right man! As
Blanche says, matrimony's as uncomfortable as a ready-made shoe. How can
one and the same institution fit every individual case? And why should
we all have to go lame because marriage was once invented to suit an
imaginary case?"
Justine gave a slight shrug. "You talk of walking lame--how else do we
all walk? It seems to me that life's the tight boot, and marriage the
crutch that may help one to hobble along!" She drew Bessy's hand into
hers with a caressing pressure. "When you philosophize I always know
you're tired. No one who feels well stops to generalize about symptoms.
If you won't let your doctor prescribe for you, your nurse is going to
carry out his orders. What you want is quiet. Be reasonable and send
away everybody before Mr. Amherst comes back!"
She dropped the last phrase carelessly, glancing away as she spoke; but
the stiffening of the fingers in her clasp sent a little tremor through
her hand.
"Thanks for your advice. It would be excellent but for one thing--my
husband is not coming back!"
The mockery in Bessy's voice seemed to pass into her features, hardening
and contracting them as frost shrivels a flower. Justine's face, on the
contrary, was suddenly illuminated by compassion, as though a light had
struck up into it from the cold glitter of her friend's unhappiness.
"Bessy! What do you mean by not coming back?"
"I mean he's had the tact to see that we shall be more comfortable
apart--without putting me to the unpleasant necessity of telling him
so."
Again the piteous echo of Blanche Carbury's phrases! The laboured
mimicry of her ideas!
Justine looked anxiously at her friend. It seemed horribly false not to
mention her own talk with Amherst, yet she felt it wiser to feign
ignorance, since Bessy could never be trusted to interpret rightly any
departure from the conventional.
"Please tell me what has happened," she said at length.
Bessy, with a smile, released her hand. "John has gone back to the life
he prefers--which I take to be a hint to me to do the same."
Justine hesitated again; then the pressure of truth overcame every
barrier of expediency. "Bessy--I ought to tell you that I saw Mr.
Amherst in town the day I went to Philadelphia. He spoke of going away
for a time...he seemed unhappy...but he told me he was coming back to
see you first--" She broke off, her clear eyes on her friend's; and she
saw at once that Bessy was too self-engrossed to feel any surprise at
her avowal. "Surely he came back?" she went on.
"Oh, yes--he came back!" Bessy sank into the cushions, watching the
firelight play on her diamond chain as she repeated the restless gesture
of lifting it up and letting it slip through her fingers.
"Well--and then?"
"Then--nothing! I was not here when he came."
"You were not here? What had happened?"
"I had gone over to Blanche Carbury's for a day or two. I was just
leaving when I heard he was coming back, and I couldn't throw her over
at the last moment."
Justine tried to catch the glance that fluttered evasively under Bessy's
lashes. "You knew he was coming--and you chose that time to go to Mrs.
Carbury's?"
"I didn't choose, my dear--it just happened! And it really happened for
the best. I suppose he was annoyed at my going--you know he has a
ridiculous prejudice against Blanche--and so the next morning he rushed
off to his cotton mill."
There was a pause, while the diamonds continued to flow in threads of
fire through Mrs. Amherst's fingers.
At length Justine said: "Did Mr. Amherst know that you knew he was
coming back before you left for Mrs. Carbury's?"
Bessy feigned to meditate the question. "Did he know that I knew that he
knew?" she mocked. "Yes--I suppose so--he must have known." She stifled
a slight yawn as she drew herself languidly to her feet.
"Then he took that as your answer?"
"My answer----?"
"To his coming back----"
"So it appears. I told you he had shown unusual tact." Bessy stretched
her softly tapering arms above her head and then dropped them along her
sides with another yawn. "But it's almost morning--it's wicked of me to
have kept you so late, when you must be up to look after all those
people!"
She flung her arms with a light gesture about Justine's shoulders, and
laid a dry kiss on her cheek.
"Don't look at me with those big eyes--they've eaten up the whole of
your face! And you needn't think I'm sorry for what I've done," she
declared. "I'm _not_--the--least--little--atom--of a bit!"
XXIV
JUSTINE was pacing the long library at Lynbrook, between the caged sets
of standard authors.
She felt as much caged as they: as much a part of a conventional
stage-setting totally unrelated to the action going on before it. Two
weeks had passed since her return from Philadelphia; and during that
time she had learned that her usefulness at Lynbrook was over. Though
not unwelcome, she might almost call herself unwanted; life swept by,
leaving her tethered to the stake of inaction; a bitter lot for one who
chose to measure existence by deeds instead of days. She had found Bessy
ostensibly busy with a succession of guests; no one in the house needed
her but Cicely, and even Cicely, at times, was caught up into the whirl
of her mother's life, swept off on sleighing parties and motor-trips, or
carried to town for a dancing-class or an opera matinée.
Mrs. Fenton Carbury was not among the visitors who left Lynbrook on the
Monday after Justine's return.
Mr. Carbury, with the other bread-winners of the party, had hastened
back to his treadmill in Wall Street after a Sunday spent in silently
studying the files of the Financial Record; but his wife stayed on,
somewhat aggressively in possession, criticizing and rearranging the
furniture, ringing for the servants, making sudden demands on the
stable, telegraphing, telephoning, ordering fires lighted or windows
opened, and leaving everywhere in her wake a trail of cigarette ashes
and cocktail glasses.
Ned Bowfort had not been included in the house-party; but on the day of
its dispersal he rode over unannounced for luncheon, put up his horse in
the stable, threaded his way familiarly among the dozing dogs in the
hall, greeted Mrs. Ansell and Justine with just the right shade of quiet
deference, produced from his pocket a new puzzle-game for Cicely, and
sat down beside her mother with the quiet urbanity of the family friend
who knows his privileges but is too discreet to abuse them.
After that he came every day, sometimes riding home late to the Hunt
Club, sometimes accompanying Bessy and Mrs. Carbury to town for dinner
and the theatre; but always with his deprecating air of having dropped
in by accident, and modestly hoping that his intrusion was not
unwelcome.
The following Sunday brought another influx of visitors, and Bessy
seemed to fling herself with renewed enthusiasm into the cares of
hospitality. She had avoided Justine since their midnight talk,
contriving to see her in Cicely's presence, or pleading haste when they
found themselves alone. The winter was unusually open, and she spent
long hours in the saddle when her time was not taken up with her
visitors. For a while she took Cicely on her daily rides; but she soon
wearied of adapting her hunter's stride to the pace of the little girl's
pony, and Cicely was once more given over to the coachman's care.
Then came snow and a long frost, and Bessy grew restless at her
imprisonment, and grumbled that there was no way of keeping well in a
winter climate which made regular exercise impossible.
"Why not build a squash-court?" Blanche Carbury proposed; and the two
fell instantly to making plans under the guidance of Ned Bowfort and
Westy Gaines. As the scheme developed, various advisers suggested that
it was a pity not to add a bowling-alley, a swimming-tank and a
gymnasium; a fashionable architect was summoned from town, measurements
were taken, sites discussed, sketches compared, and engineers consulted
as to the cost of artesian wells and the best system for heating the
tank.
Bessy seemed filled with a feverish desire to carry out the plan as
quickly as possible, and on as large a scale as even the architect's
invention soared to; but it was finally decided that, before signing the
contracts, she should run over to New Jersey to see a building of the
same kind on which a sporting friend of Mrs. Carbury's had recently
lavished a fortune.
It was on this errand that the two ladies, in company with Westy Gaines
and Bowfort, had departed on the day which found Justine restlessly
measuring the length of the library. She and Mrs. Ansell had the house
to themselves; and it was hardly a surprise to her when, in the course
of the afternoon, Mrs. Ansell, after a discreet pause on the threshold,
advanced toward her down the long room.
Since the night of her return Justine had felt sure that Mrs. Ansell
would speak; but the elder lady was given to hawk-like circlings about
her subject, to hanging over it and contemplating it before her wings
dropped for the descent.
Now, however, it was plain that she had resolved to strike; and Justine
had a sense of relief at the thought. She had been too long isolated in
her anxiety, her powerlessness to help; and she had a vague hope that
Mrs. Ansell's worldly wisdom might accomplish what her inexperience had
failed to achieve.
"Shall we sit by the fire? I am glad to find you alone," Mrs. Ansell
began, with the pleasant abruptness that was one of the subtlest
instruments of her indirection; and as Justine acquiesced, she added,
yielding her slight lines to the luxurious depths of an arm-chair: "I
have been rather suddenly asked by an invalid cousin to go to Europe
with her next week, and I can't go contentedly without being at peace
about our friends."
She paused, but Justine made no answer. In spite of her growing sympathy
for Mrs. Ansell she could not overcome an inherent distrust, not of her
methods, but of her ultimate object. What, for instance, was her
conception of being at peace about the Amhersts? Justine's own
conviction was that, as far as their final welfare was concerned, any
terms were better between them than the external harmony which had
prevailed during Amherst's stay at Lynbrook.
The subtle emanation of her distrust may have been felt by Mrs. Ansell;
for the latter presently continued, with a certain nobleness: "I am the
more concerned because I believe I must hold myself, in a small degree,
responsible for Bessy's marriage--" and, as Justine looked at her in
surprise, she added: "I thought she could never be happy unless her
affections were satisfied--and even now I believe so."
"I believe so too," Justine said, surprised into assent by the
simplicity of Mrs. Ansell's declaration.
"Well, then--since we are agreed in our diagnosis," the older woman went
on, smiling, "what remedy do you suggest? Or rather, how can we
administer it?"
"What remedy?" Justine hesitated.
"Oh, I believe we are agreed on that too. Mr. Amherst must be brought
back--but how to bring him?" She paused, and then added, with a singular
effect of appealing frankness: "I ask you, because I believe you to be
the only one of Bessy's friends who is in the least in her husband's
confidence."
Justine's embarrassment increased. Would it not be disloyal both to
Bessy and Amherst to acknowledge to a third person a fact of which Bessy
herself was unaware? Yet to betray embarrassment under Mrs. Ansell's
eyes was to risk giving it a dangerous significance.
"Bessy has spoken to me once or twice--but I know very little of Mr.
Amherst's point of view; except," Justine added, after another moment's
weighing of alternatives, "that I believe he suffers most from being cut
off from his work at Westmore."
"Yes--so I think; but that is a difficulty that time and expediency must
adjust. All _we_ can do--their friends, I mean--is to get them together
again before the breach is too wide."
Justine pondered. She was perhaps more ignorant of the situation than
Mrs. Ansell imagined, for since her talk with Bessy the latter had not
again alluded to Amherst's absence, and Justine could merely conjecture
that he had carried out his plan of taking the management of the mill he
had spoken of. What she most wished to know was whether he had listened
to her entreaty, and taken the position temporarily, without binding
himself by the acceptance of a salary; or whether, wounded by the
outrage of Bessy's flight, he had freed himself from financial
dependence by engaging himself definitely as manager.
"I really know very little of the present situation," Justine said,
looking at Mrs. Ansell. "Bessy merely told me that Mr. Amherst had taken
up his old work in a cotton mill in the south."
As her eyes met Mrs. Ansell's it flashed across her that the latter did
not believe what she said, and the perception made her instantly shrink
back into herself. But there was nothing in Mrs. Ansell's tone to
confirm the doubt which her look betrayed.
"Ah--I hoped you knew more," she said simply; "for, like you, I have
only heard from Bessy that her husband went away suddenly to help a
friend who is reorganizing some mills in Georgia. Of course, under the
circumstances, such a temporary break is natural enough--perhaps
inevitable--only he must not stay away too long."
Justine was silent. Mrs. Ansell's momentary self-betrayal had checked
all farther possibility of frank communion, and the discerning lady had
seen her error too late to remedy it.
But her hearer's heart gave a leap of joy. It was clear from what Mrs.
Ansell said that Amherst had not bound himself definitely, since he
would not have done so without informing his wife. And with a secret
thrill of happiness Justine recalled his last word to her: "I will
remember all you have said."
He had kept that word and acted on it; in spite of Bessy's last assault
on his pride he had borne with her, and deferred the day of final
rupture; and the sense that she had had a part in his decision filled
Justine with a glow of hope. The consciousness of Mrs. Ansell's
suspicions faded to insignificance--Mrs. Ansell and her kind might think
what they chose, since all that mattered now was that she herself
should act bravely and circumspectly in her last attempt to save her
friends.
"I am not sure," Mrs. Ansell continued, gently scrutinizing her
companion, "that I think it unwise of him to have gone; but if he stays
too long Bessy may listen to bad advice--advice disastrous to her
happiness." She paused, and turned her eyes meditatively toward the
fire. "As far as I know," she said, with the same air of serious
candour, "you are the only person who can tell him this."
"I?" exclaimed Justine, with a leap of colour to her pale cheeks.
Mrs. Ansell's eyes continued to avoid her. "My dear Miss Brent, Bessy
has told me something of the wise counsels you have given her. Mr.
Amherst is also your friend. As I said just now, you are the only person
who might act as a link between them--surely you will not renounce the
rôle."
Justine controlled herself. "My only rôle, as you call it, has been to
urge Bessy to--to try to allow for her husband's views----"
"And have you not given the same advice to Mr. Amherst?"
The eyes of the two women met. "Yes," said Justine, after a moment.
"Then why refuse your help now? The moment is crucial."
Justine's thoughts had flown beyond the stage of resenting Mrs. Ansell's
gentle pertinacity. All her faculties were absorbed in the question as
to how she could most effectually use whatever influence she possessed.
"I put it to you as one old friend to another--will you write to Mr.
Amherst to come back?" Mrs. Ansell urged her.
Justine was past considering even the strangeness of this request, and
its oblique reflection on the kind of power ascribed to her. Through the
confused beatings of her heart she merely struggled for a clearer sense
of guidance.
"No," she said slowly. "I cannot."
"You cannot? With a friend's happiness in extremity?" Mrs. Ansell paused
a moment before she added. "Unless you believe that Bessy would be
happier divorced?"
"Divorced--? Oh, no," Justine shuddered.
"That is what it will come to."
"No, no! In time----"
"Time is what I am most afraid of, when Blanche Carbury disposes of it."
Justine breathed a deep sigh.
"You'll write?" Mrs. Ansell murmured, laying a soft touch on her hand.
"I have not the influence you think----"
"Can you do any harm by trying?"
"I might--" Justine faltered, losing her exact sense of the words she
used.
"Ah," the other flashed back, "then you _have_ influence! Why will you
not use it?"
Justine waited a moment; then her resolve gathered itself into words.
"If I have any influence, I am not sure it would be well to use it as
you suggest."
"Not to urge Mr. Amherst's return?"
"No--not now."
She caught the same veiled gleam of incredulity under Mrs. Ansell's
lids--caught and disregarded it.
"It must be now or never," Mrs. Ansell insisted.
"I can't think so," Justine held out.
"Nevertheless--will you try?"
"No--no! It might be fatal."
"To whom?"
"To both." She considered. "If he came back now I know he would not
stay."
Mrs. Ansell was upon her abruptly. "You _know_? Then you speak with
authority?"
"No--what authority? I speak as I feel," Justine faltered.
The older woman drew herself to her feet. "Ah--then you shoulder a great
responsibility!" She moved nearer to Justine, and once more laid a
fugitive touch upon her. "You won't write to him?"
"No--no," the girl flung back; and the voices of the returning party in
the hall made Mrs. Ansell, with an almost imperceptible gesture of
warning, turn musingly away toward the fire.
* * * * *
Bessy came back brimming with the wonders she had seen. A glazed
"sun-room," mosaic pavements, a marble fountain to feed the marble
tank--and outside a water-garden, descending in successive terraces, to
take up and utilize--one could see how practically!--the overflow from
the tank. If one did the thing at all, why not do it decently? She had
given up her new motor, had let her town house, had pinched and stinted
herself in a hundred ways--if ever woman was entitled to a little
compensating pleasure, surely she was that woman!
The days were crowded with consultations. Architect, contractors,
engineers, a landscape gardener, and a dozen minor craftsmen, came and
went, unrolled plans, moistened pencils, sketched, figured, argued,
persuaded, and filled Bessy with the dread of appearing, under Blanche
Carbury's eyes, subject to any restraining influences of economy. What!
She was a young woman, with an independent fortune, and she was always
wavering, considering, secretly referring back to the mute criticism of
an invisible judge--of the husband who had been first to shake himself
free of any mutual subjection? The accomplished Blanche did not have to
say this--she conveyed it by the raising of painted brows, by a smile of
mocking interrogation, a judiciously placed silence or a resigned glance
at the architect. So the estimates poured in, were studied,
resisted--then yielded to and signed; then the hour of advance payments
struck, and an imperious appeal was despatched to Mr. Tredegar, to whom
the management of Bessy's affairs had been transferred.
Mr. Tredegar, to his client's surprise, answered the appeal in person.
He had not been lately to Lynbrook, dreading the cold and damp of the
country in winter; and his sudden arrival had therefore an ominous
significance.
He came for an evening in mid-week, when even Blanche Carbury was
absent, and Bessy and Justine had the house to themselves. Mrs. Ansell
had sailed the week before with her invalid cousin. No farther words had
passed between herself and Justine--but the latter was conscious that
their talk had increased instead of lessened the distance between them.
Justine herself meant to leave soon. Her hope of regaining Bessy's
confidence had been deceived, and seeing herself definitely superseded,
she chafed anew at her purposeless inactivity. She had already written
to one or two doctors in New York, and to the matron of Saint
Elizabeth's. She had made herself a name in surgical cases, and it could
not be long before a summons came....
Meanwhile Mr. Tredegar arrived, and the three dined together, the two
women bending meekly to his discourse, which was never more oracular and
authoritative than when delivered to the gentler sex alone. Amherst's
absence, in particular, seemed to loose the thin current of Mr.
Tredegar's eloquence. He was never quite at ease in the presence of an
independent mind, and Justine often reflected that, even had the two men
known nothing of each other's views, there would have been between them
an instinctive and irreducible hostility--they would have disliked each
other if they had merely jostled elbows in the street.
Yet even freed from Amherst's presence Mr. Tredegar showed a darkling
brow, and as Justine slipped away after dinner she felt that she left
Bessy to something more serious than the usual business conference.
How serious, she was to learn that very night, when, in the small hours,
her friend burst in on her tearfully. Bessy was ruined--ruined--that was
what Mr. Tredegar had come to tell her! She might have known he would
not have travelled to Lynbrook for a trifle.... She had expected to find
herself cramped, restricted--to be warned that she must "manage,"
hateful word!... But this! This was incredible! Unendurable! There was
no money to build the gymnasium--none at all! And all because it had
been swallowed up at Westmore--because the ridiculous changes there,
the changes that nobody wanted, nobody approved of--that Truscomb and
all the other experts had opposed and derided from the first--these
changes, even modified and arrested, had already involved so much of her
income, that it might be years--yes, he said _years_!--before she would
feel herself free again--free of her own fortune, of Cicely's
fortune...of the money poor Dick Westmore had meant his wife and child
to enjoy!
Justine listened anxiously to this confused outpouring of resentments.
Bessy's born incapacity for figures made it indeed possible that the
facts came on her as a surprise--that she had quite forgotten the
temporary reduction of her income, and had begun to imagine that what
she had saved in one direction was hers to spend in another. All this
was conceivable. But why had Mr. Tredegar drawn so dark a picture of the
future? Or was it only that, thwarted of her immediate desire, Bessy's
disappointment blackened the farthest verge of her horizon? Justine,
though aware of her friend's lack of perspective, suspected that a
conniving hand had helped to throw the prospect out of drawing....
Could it be possible, then, that Mr. Tredegar was among those who
desired a divorce? That the influences at which Mrs. Ansell had hinted
proceeded not only from Blanche Carbury and her group? Helpless amid
this rush of forebodings, Justine could do no more than soothe and
restrain--to reason would have been idle. She had never till now
realized how completely she had lost ground with Bessy.
"The humiliation--before my friends! Oh, I was warned...my father, every
one...for Cicely's sake I was warned...but I wouldn't listen--and _now_!
From the first it was all he cared for--in Europe, even, he was always
dragging me to factories. _Me?_--I was only the owner of Westmore! He
wanted power--power, that's all--when he lost it he left me...oh, I'm
glad now my baby is dead! Glad there's nothing between us--nothing,
nothing in the world to tie us together any longer!"
The disproportion between this violent grief and its trivial cause would
have struck Justine as simply grotesque, had she not understood that the
incident of the gymnasium, which followed with cumulative pressure on a
series of similar episodes, seemed to Bessy like the reaching out of a
retaliatory hand--a mocking reminder that she was still imprisoned in
the consequences of her unhappy marriage.
Such folly seemed past weeping for--it froze Justine's compassion into
disdain, till she remembered that the sources of our sorrow are
sometimes nobler than their means of expression, and that a baffled
unappeased love was perhaps the real cause of Bessy's anger against her
husband.
At any rate, the moment was a critical one, and Justine remembered with
a pang that Mrs. Ansell had foreseen such a contingency, and implored
her to take measures against it. She had refused, from a sincere dread
of precipitating a definite estrangement--but had she been right in
judging the situation so logically? With a creature of Bessy's emotional
uncertainties the result of contending influences was really
incalculable--it might still be that, at this juncture, Amherst's return
would bring about a reaction of better feelings....
Justine sat and mused on these things after leaving her friend exhausted
upon a tearful pillow. She felt that she had perhaps taken too large a
survey of the situation--that the question whether there could ever be
happiness between this tormented pair was not one to concern those who
struggled for their welfare. Most marriages are a patch-work of jarring
tastes and ill-assorted ambitions--if here and there, for a moment, two
colours blend, two textures are the same, so much the better for the
pattern! Justine, certainly, could foresee in reunion no positive
happiness for either of her friends; but she saw positive disaster for
Bessy in separation from her husband....
Suddenly she rose from her chair by the falling fire, and crossed over
to the writing-table. She would write to Amherst herself--she would tell
him to come. The decision once reached, hope flowed back to her
heart--the joy of action so often deceived her into immediate faith in
its results!
"Dear Mr. Amherst," she wrote, "the last time I saw you, you told me you
would remember what I said. I ask you to do so now--to remember that I
urged you not to be away too long. I believe you ought to come back now,
though I know Bessy will not ask you to. I am writing without her
knowledge, but with the conviction that she needs you, though perhaps
without knowing it herself...."
She paused, and laid down her pen. Why did it make her so happy to write
to him? Was it merely the sense of recovered helpfulness, or something
warmer, more personal, that made it a joy to trace his name, and to
remind him of their last intimate exchange of words? Well--perhaps it
was that too. There were moments when she was so mortally lonely that
any sympathetic contact with another life sent a glow into her
veins--that she was thankful to warm herself at any fire.
XXV
BESSY, languidly glancing through her midday mail some five days later,
uttered a slight exclamation as she withdrew her finger-tip from the
flap of the envelope she had begun to open.
It was a black sleety day, with an east wind bowing the trees beyond the
drenched window-panes, and the two friends, after luncheon, had
withdrawn to the library, where Justine sat writing notes for Bessy,
while the latter lay back in her arm-chair, in the state of dreamy
listlessness into which she always sank when not under the stimulus of
amusement or exercise.
She sat suddenly upright as her eyes fell on the letter.
"I beg your pardon! I thought it was for me," she said, holding it out
to Justine.
The latter reddened as she glanced at the superscription. It had not
occurred to her that Amherst would reply to her appeal: she had pictured
him springing on the first north-bound train, perhaps not even pausing
to announce his return to his wife.... And to receive his letter under
Bessy's eye was undeniably embarrassing, since Justine felt the
necessity of keeping her intervention secret.
But under Bessy's eye she certainly was--it continued to rest on her
curiously, speculatively, with an under-gleam of malicious significance.
"So stupid of me--I can't imagine why I should have expected my husband
to write to me!" Bessy went on, leaning back in lazy contemplation of
her other letters, but still obliquely including Justine in her angle of
vision.
The latter, after a moment's pause, broke the seal and read.
"Millfield, Georgia.
"My dear Miss Brent,
"Your letter reached me yesterday and I have thought it over
carefully. I appreciate the feeling that prompted it--but I don't
know that any friend, however kind and discerning, can give the
final advice in such matters. You tell me you are sure my wife will
not ask me to return--well, under present conditions that seems to
me a sufficient reason for staying away.
"Meanwhile, I assure you that I have remembered all you said to me
that day. I have made no binding arrangement here--nothing to
involve my future action--and I have done this solely because you
asked it. This will tell you better than words how much I value
your advice, and what strong reasons I must have for not following
it now.
"I suppose there are no more exploring parties in this weather. I
wish I could show Cicely some of the birds down here.
"Yours faithfully,
"John Amherst.
"Please don't let my wife ride Impulse."
Latent under Justine's acute consciousness of what this letter meant,
was the sense of Bessy's inferences and conjectures. She could feel them
actually piercing the page in her hand like some hypersensitive visual
organ to which matter offers no obstruction. Or rather, baffled in their
endeavour, they were evoking out of the unseen, heaven knew what
fantastic structure of intrigue--scrawling over the innocent page with
burning evidences of perfidy and collusion....
One thing became instantly clear to her: she must show the letter to
Bessy. She ran her eyes over it again, trying to disentangle the
consequences. There was the allusion to their talk in town--well, she
had told Bessy of that! But the careless reference to their woodland
excursions--what might not Bessy, in her present mood, make of it?
Justine's uppermost thought was of distress at the failure of her plan.
Perhaps she might still have induced Amherst to come back, had it not
been for this accident; but now that hope was destroyed.
She raised her eyes and met Bessy's. "Will you read it?" she said,
holding out the letter.
Bessy received it with lifted brows, and a protesting murmur--but as she
read, Justine saw the blood mount under her clear skin, invade the
temples, the nape, even the little flower-like ears; then it receded as
suddenly, ebbing at last from the very lips, so that the smile with
which she looked up from her reading was as white as if she had been
under the stress of physical pain.
"So you have written my husband to come back?"
"As you see."
Bessy looked her straight in the eyes. "I am very much obliged to
you--extremely obliged!"
Justine met the look quietly. "Which means that you resent my
interference----"
"Oh, I leave you to call it that!" Bessy mocked, tossing the letter down
on the table at her side.
"Bessy! Don't take it in that way. If I made a mistake I did so with the
hope of helping you. How can I stand by, after all these months
together, and see you deliberately destroying your life without trying
to stop you?"
The smile withered on Bessy's lips. "It is very dear and good of you--I
know you're never happy unless you're helping people--but in this case I
can only repeat what my husband says. He and I don't often look at
things in the same light--but I quite agree with him that the management
of such matters is best left to--to the persons concerned."
Justine hesitated. "I might answer that, if you take that view, it was
inconsistent of you to talk with me so openly. You've certainly made me
feel that you wanted help--you've turned to me for it. But perhaps that
does not justify my writing to Mr. Amherst without your knowing it."
Bessy laughed. "Ah, my dear, you knew that if you asked me the letter
would never be sent!"
"Perhaps I did," said Justine simply. "I was trying to help you against
your will."
"Well, you see the result." Bessy laid a derisive touch on the letter.
"Do you understand now whose fault it is if I am alone?"
Justine faced her steadily. "There is nothing in Mr. Amherst's letter to
make me change my opinion. I still think it lies with you to bring him
back."
Bessy raised a glittering face to her--all hardness and laughter. "Such
modesty, my dear! As if I had a chance of succeeding where you failed!"
She sprang up, brushing the curls from her temples with a petulant
gesture. "Don't mind me if I'm cross--but I've had a dose of preaching
from Maria Ansell, and I don't know why my friends should treat me like
a puppet without any preferences of my own, and press me upon a man who
has done his best to show that he doesn't want me. As a matter of fact,
he and I are luckily agreed on that point too--and I'm afraid all the
good advice in the world won't persuade us to change our opinion!"
Justine held her ground. "If I believed that of either of you, I
shouldn't have written--I should not be pleading with you now--And Mr.
Amherst doesn't believe it either," she added, after a pause, conscious
of the risk she was taking, but thinking the words might act like a blow
in the face of a person sinking under a deadly narcotic.
Bessy's smile deepened to a sneer. "I see you've talked me over
thoroughly--and on _his_ views I ought perhaps not to have risked an
opinion----"
"We have not talked you over," Justine exclaimed. "Mr. Amherst could
never talk of you...in the way you think...." And under the light
staccato of Bessy's laugh she found resolution to add: "It is not in
that way that I know what he feels."
"Ah? I should be curious to hear, then----"
Justine turned to the letter, which still lay between them. "Will you
read the last sentence again? The postscript, I mean."
Bessy, after a surprised glance at her, took the letter up with the
deprecating murmur of one who acts under compulsion rather than dispute
about a trifle.
"The postscript? Let me see...'Don't let my wife ride Impulse.'--_Et
puis?_" she murmured, dropping the page again.
"Well, does it tell you nothing? It's a cold letter--at first I thought
so--the letter of a man who believes himself deeply hurt--so deeply that
he will make no advance, no sign of relenting. That's what I thought
when I first read it...but the postscript undoes it all."
Justine, as she spoke, had drawn near Bessy, laying a hand on her arm,
and shedding on her the radiance of a face all charity and sweet
compassion. It was her rare gift, at such moments, to forget her own
relation to the person for whose fate she was concerned, to cast aside
all consciousness of criticism and distrust in the heart she strove to
reach, as pitiful people forget their physical timidity in the attempt
to help a wounded animal.
For a moment Bessy seemed to waver. The colour flickered faintly up her
cheek, her long lashes drooped--she had the tenderest lids!--and all her
face seemed melting under the beams of Justine's ardour. But the letter
was still in her hand--her eyes, in sinking, fell upon it, and she
sounded beneath her breath the fatal phrase: "'I have done this solely
because you asked it.'
"After such a tribute to your influence I don't wonder you feel
competent to set everybody's affairs in order! But take my advice, my
dear--_don't_ ask me not to ride Impulse!"
The pity froze on Justine's lip: she shrank back cut to the quick. For a
moment the silence between the two women rang with the flight of arrowy,
wounding thoughts; then Bessy's anger flagged, she gave one of her
embarrassed half-laughs, and turning back, laid a deprecating touch on
her friend's arm.
"I didn't mean that, Justine...but let us not talk now--I can't!"
Justine did not move: the reaction could not come as quickly in her
case. But she turned on Bessy two eyes full of pardon, full of
speechless pity...and Bessy received the look silently before she moved
to the door and went out.
"Oh, poor thing--poor thing!" Justine gasped as the door closed.
She had already forgotten her own hurt--she was alone again with Bessy's
sterile pain. She stood staring before her for a moment--then her eyes
fell on Amherst's letter, which had fluttered to the floor between them.
The fatal letter! If it had not come at that unlucky moment perhaps she
might still have gained her end.... She picked it up and re-read it.
Yes--there were phrases in it that a wounded suspicious heart might
misconstrue.... Yet Bessy's last words had absolved her.... Why had she
not answered them? Why had she stood there dumb? The blow to her pride
had been too deep, had been dealt too unexpectedly--for one miserable
moment she had thought first of herself! Ah, that importunate,
irrepressible self--the _moi haïssable_ of the Christian--if only one
could tear it from one's breast! She had missed an opportunity--her last
opportunity perhaps! By this time, even, a hundred hostile influences,
cold whispers of vanity, of selfishness, of worldly pride, might have
drawn their freezing ring about Bessy's heart....
Justine started up to follow her...then paused, recalling her last
words. "Let us not talk now--I can't!" She had no right to intrude on
that bleeding privacy--if the chance had been hers she had lost it. She
dropped back into her seat at the desk, hiding her face in her hands.
Presently she heard the clock strike, and true to her tireless instinct
of activity, she lifted her head, took up her pen, and went on with the
correspondence she had dropped.... It was hard at first to collect her
thoughts, or even to summon to her pen the conventional phrases that
sufficed for most of the notes. Groping for a word, she pushed aside her
writing and stared out at the sallow frozen landscape framed by the
window at which she sat. The sleet had ceased, and hollows of sunless
blue showed through the driving wind-clouds. A hard sky and a hard
ground--frost-bound ringing earth under rigid ice-mailed trees.
As Justine looked out, shivering a little, she saw a woman's figure
riding down the avenue toward the gate. The figure disappeared behind a
clump of evergreens--showed again farther down, through the boughs of a
skeleton beech--and revealed itself in the next open space as
Bessy--Bessy in the saddle on a day of glaring frost, when no horse
could keep his footing out of a walk!
Justine went to the window and strained her eyes for a confirming
glimpse. Yes--it was Bessy! There was no mistaking that light flexible
figure, every line swaying true to the beat of the horse's stride. But
Justine remembered that Bessy had not meant to ride--had countermanded
her horse because of the bad going.... Well, she was a perfect
horsewoman and had no doubt chosen her surest-footed mount...probably
the brown cob, Tony Lumpkin.
But when did Tony's sides shine so bright through the leafless branches?
And when did he sweep his rider on with such long free play of the
hind-quarters? Horse and rider shot into sight again, rounding the curve
of the avenue near the gates, and in a break of sunlight Justine saw the
glitter of chestnut flanks--and remembered that Impulse was the only
chestnut in the stables....
* * * * *
She went back to her seat and continued writing. Bessy had left a
formidable heap of bills and letters; and when this was demolished,
Justine had her own correspondence to despatch. She had heard that
morning from the matron of Saint Elizabeth's: an interesting "case" was
offered her, but she must come within two days. For the first few hours
she had wavered, loath to leave Lynbrook without some definite light on
her friend's future; but now Amherst's letter had shed that light--or
rather, had deepened the obscurity--and she had no pretext for lingering
on where her uselessness had been so amply demonstrated.
She wrote to the matron accepting the engagement; and the acceptance
involved the writing of other letters, the general reorganizing of that
minute polity, the life of Justine Brent. She smiled a little to think
how easily she could be displaced and transplanted--how slender were her
material impedimenta, how few her invisible bonds! She was as light and
detachable as a dead leaf on the autumn breeze--yet she was in the
season of sap and flower, when there is life and song in the trees!
But she did not think long of herself, for an undefinable anxiety ran
through her thoughts like a black thread. It found expression, now and
then, in the long glances she threw through the window--in her rising to
consult the clock and compare her watch with it--in a nervous snatch of
humming as she paced the room once or twice before going back to her
desk....
Why was Bessy so late? Dusk was falling already--the early end of the
cold slate-hued day. But Bessy always rode late--there was always a
rational answer to Justine's irrational conjectures.... It was the sight
of those chestnut flanks that tormented her--she knew of Bessy's
previous struggles with the mare. But the indulging of idle
apprehensions was not in her nature, and when the tea-tray came, and
with it Cicely, sparkling from a gusty walk, and coral-pink in her cloud
of crinkled hair, Justine sprang up and cast off her cares.
It cost her a pang, again, to see the lamps lit and the curtains
drawn--shutting in the warmth and brightness of the house from that
wind-swept frozen twilight through which Bessy rode alone. But the icy
touch of the thought slipped from Justine's mind as she bent above the
tea-tray, gravely measuring Cicely's milk into a "grown-up" teacup,
hearing the confidential details of the child's day, and capping them
with banter and fantastic narrative.
She was not sorry to go--ah, no! The house had become a prison to her,
with ghosts walking its dreary floors. But to lose Cicely would be
bitter--she had not felt how bitter till the child pressed against her
in the firelight, insisting raptly, with little sharp elbows stabbing
her knee: "And _then_ what happened, Justine?"
The door opened, and some one came in to look at the fire. Justine,
through the mazes of her fairy-tale, was dimly conscious that it was
Knowles, and not one of the footmen...the proud Knowles, who never
mended the fires himself.... As he passed out again, hovering slowly
down the long room, she rose, leaving Cicely on the hearth-rug, and
followed him to the door.
"Has Mrs. Amherst not come in?" she asked, not knowing why she wished to
ask it out of the child's hearing.
"No, miss. I looked in myself to see--thinking she might have come by
the side-door."
"She may have gone to her sitting-room."
"She's not upstairs."
They both paused. Then Justine said: "What horse was she riding?"
"Impulse, Miss." The butler looked at his large responsible watch. "It's
not late--" he said, more to himself than to her.
"No. Has she been riding Impulse lately?"
"No, Miss. Not since that day the mare nearly had her off. I understood
Mr. Amherst did not wish it."
Justine went back to Cicely and the fairy-tale.--As she took up the
thread of the Princess's adventures, she asked herself why she had ever
had any hope of helping Bessy. The seeds of disaster were in the poor
creature's soul.... Even when she appeared to be moved, lifted out of
herself, her escaping impulses were always dragged back to the magnetic
centre of hard distrust and resistance that sometimes forms the core of
soft-fibred natures. As she had answered her husband's previous appeal
by her flight to the woman he disliked, so she answered this one by
riding the horse he feared.... Justine's last illusions crumbled. The
distance between two such natures was unspannable. Amherst had done well
to remain away...and with a tidal rush her sympathies swept back to his
side....
* * * * *
The governess came to claim Cicely. One of the footmen came to put
another log on the fire. Then the rite of removing the tea-table was
majestically performed--the ceremonial that had so often jarred on
Amherst's nerves. As she watched it, Justine had a vague sense of the
immutability of the household routine--a queer awed feeling that,
whatever happened, a machine so perfectly adjusted would work on
inexorably, like a natural law....
She rose to look out of the window, staring vainly into blackness
between the parted curtains. As she turned back, passing the
writing-table, she noticed that Cicely's irruption had made her forget
to post her letters--an unusual oversight. A glance at the clock told
her that she was not too late for the mail--reminding her, at the same
time, that it was scarcely three hours since Bessy had started on her
ride.... She saw the foolishness of her fears. Even in winter, Bessy
often rode for more than three hours; and now that the days were growing
longer----
Suddenly reassured, Justine went out into the hall, intending to carry
her batch of letters to the red pillar-box by the door. As she did so, a
cold blast struck her. Could it be that for once the faultless routine
of the house had been relaxed, that one of the servants had left the
outer door ajar? She walked over to the vestibule--yes, both doors were
wide. The night rushed in on a vicious wind. As she pushed the vestibule
door shut, she heard the dogs sniffing and whining on the threshold. She
crossed the vestibule, and heard voices and the tramping of feet in the
darkness--then saw a lantern gleam. Suddenly Knowles shot out of the
night--the lantern struck on his bleached face.
Justine, stepping back, pressed the electric button in the wall, and the
wide door-step was abruptly illuminated, with its huddled, pushing,
heavily-breathing group...black figures writhing out of darkness,
strange faces distorted in the glare.
"Bessy!" she cried, and sprang forward; but suddenly Wyant was before
her, his hand on her arm; and as the dreadful group struggled by into
the hall, he froze her to him with a whisper: "The spine----"
XXVI
WITHIN Justine there was a moment's darkness; then, like terror-struck
workers rallying to their tasks, every faculty was again at its post,
receiving and transmitting signals, taking observations, anticipating
orders, making her brain ring with the hum of a controlled activity.
She had known the sensation before--the transmuting of terror and pity
into this miraculous lucidity of thought and action; but never had it
snatched her from such depths. Oh, thank heaven for her knowledge
now--for the trained mind that could take command of her senses and bend
them firmly to its service!
Wyant seconded her well, after a moment's ague-fit of fear. She pitied
and pardoned the moment, aware of its cause, and respecting him for the
way in which he rose above it into the clear air of professional
self-command. Through the first hours they worked shoulder to shoulder,
conscious of each other only as of kindred will-powers, stretched to the
utmost tension of discernment and activity, and hardly needing speech or
look to further their swift co-operation. It was thus that she had known
him in the hospital, in the heat of his youthful zeal: the doctor she
liked best to work with, because no other so tempered ardour with
judgment.
The great surgeon, arriving from town at midnight, confirmed his
diagnosis: there was undoubted injury to the spine. Other consultants
were summoned in haste, and in the winter dawn the verdict was
pronounced--a fractured vertebra, and possibly lesion of the cord....
Justine got a moment alone when the surgeons returned to the sick-room.
Other nurses were there now, capped, aproned, quickly and silently
unpacking their appliances.... She must call a halt, clear her brain
again, decide rapidly what was to be done next.... Oh, if only the
crawling hours could bring Amherst! It was strange that there was no
telegram yet--no, not strange, after all, since it was barely six in the
morning, and her message had not been despatched till seven the night
before. It was not unlikely that, in that little southern settlement,
the telegraph office closed at six.
She stood in Bessy's sitting-room, her forehead pressed to the
window-pane, her eyes straining out into the thin February darkness,
through which the morning star swam white. As soon as she had yielded
her place to the other nurses her nervous tension relaxed, and she hung
again above the deeps of anguish, terrified and weak. In a moment the
necessity for action would snatch her back to a firm footing--her
thoughts would clear, her will affirm itself, all the wheels of the
complex machine resume their functions. But now she felt only the
horror....
She knew so well what was going on in the next room. Dr. Garford, the
great surgeon, who had known her at Saint Elizabeth's, had evidently
expected her to take command of the nurses he had brought from town;
but there were enough without her, and there were other cares which, for
the moment, she only could assume--the despatching of messages to the
scattered family, the incessant telephoning and telegraphing to town,
the general guidance of the household swinging rudderless in the tide of
disaster. Cicely, above all, must be watched over and guarded from
alarm. The little governess, reduced to a twittering heap of fears, had
been quarantined in a distant room till reason returned to her; and the
child, meanwhile, slept quietly in the old nurse's care.
Cicely would wake presently, and Justine must go up to her with a bright
face; other duties would press thick on the heels of this; their feet
were already on the threshold. But meanwhile she could only follow in
imagination what was going on in the other room....
She had often thought with dread of such a contingency. She always
sympathized too much with her patients--she knew it was the joint in her
armour. Her quick-gushing pity lay too near that professional exterior
which she had managed to endue with such a bright glaze of insensibility
that some sentimental patients--without much the matter--had been known
to call her "a little hard." How, then, should she steel herself if it
fell to her lot to witness a cruel accident to some one she loved, and
to have to perform a nurse's duties, steadily, expertly, unflinchingly,
while every fibre was torn with inward anguish?
She knew the horror of it now--and she knew also that her self-enforced
exile from the sick-room was a hundred times worse. To stand there,
knowing, with each tick of the clock, what was being said and done
within--how the great luxurious room, with its pale draperies and
scented cushions, and the hundred pretty trifles strewing the lace
toilet-table and the delicate old furniture, was being swept bare,
cleared for action like a ship's deck, drearily garnished with rows of
instruments, rolls of medicated cotton, oiled silk, bottles, bandages,
water-pillows--all the grim paraphernalia of the awful rites of pain: to
know this, and to be able to call up with torturing vividness that poor
pale face on the pillows, vague-eyed, expressionless, perhaps, as she
had last seen it, or--worse yet--stirred already with the first creeping
pangs of consciousness: to have these images slowly, deliberately burn
themselves into her brain, and to be aware, at the same time, of that
underlying moral disaster, of which the accident seemed the monstrous
outward symbol--ah, this was worse than anything she had ever dreamed!
She knew that the final verdict could not be pronounced till the
operation which was about to take place should reveal the extent of
injury to the spine. Bessy, in falling, must have struck on the back of
her head and shoulders, and it was but too probable that the fractured
vertebra had caused a bruise if not a lesion of the spinal cord. In that
case paralysis was certain--and a slow crawling death the almost
inevitable outcome. There had been cases, of course--Justine's
professional memory evoked them--cases of so-called "recovery," where
actual death was kept at bay, a semblance of life preserved for years in
the poor petrified body.... But the mind shrank from such a fate for
Bessy. And it might still be that the injury to the spine was not
grave--though, here again, the fracturing of the fourth vertebra was
ominous.
The door opened and some one came from the inner room--Wyant, in search
of an instrument-case. Justine turned and they looked at each other.
"It will be now?"
"Yes. Dr. Garford asked if there was no one you could send for."
"No one but Mr. Tredegar and the Halford Gaineses. They'll be here this
evening, I suppose."
They exchanged a discouraged glance, knowing how little difference the
presence of the Halford Gaineses would make.
"He wanted to know if there was no telegram from Amherst."
"No."
"Then they mean to begin."
A nursemaid appeared in the doorway. "Miss Cicely--" she said; and
Justine bounded upstairs.
The day's work had begun. From Cicely to the governess--from the
governess to the housekeeper--from the telephone to the
writing-table--Justine vibrated back and forth, quick, noiseless,
self-possessed--sobering, guiding, controlling her confused and
panic-stricken world. It seemed to her that half the day had elapsed
before the telegraph office at Lynbrook opened--she was at the telephone
at the stroke of the hour. No telegram? Only one--a message from Halford
Gaines--"Arrive at eight tonight." Amherst was still silent! Was there a
difference of time to be allowed for? She tried to remember, to
calculate, but her brain was too crowded with other thoughts.... She
turned away from the instrument discouraged.
Whenever she had time to think, she was overwhelmed by the weight of her
solitude. Mr. Langhope was in Egypt, accessible only through a London
banker--Mrs. Ansell presumably wandering on the continent. Her cables
might not reach them for days. And among the throng of Lynbrook
habitués, she knew not to whom to turn. To loose the Telfer tribe and
Mrs. Carbury upon that stricken house--her thought revolted from it, and
she was thankful to know that February had dispersed their migratory
flock to southern shores. But if only Amherst would come!
Cicely and the tranquillized governess had been despatched on a walk
with the dogs, and Justine was returning upstairs when she met one of
the servants with a telegram. She tore it open with a great throb of
relief. It was her own message to Amherst--_address unknown_....
Had she misdirected it, then? In that first blinding moment her mind
might so easily have failed her. But no--there was the name of the town
before her...Millfield, Georgia...the same name as in his letter.... She
had made no mistake, but he was gone! Gone--and without leaving an
address.... For a moment her tired mind refused to work; then she roused
herself, ran down the stairs again, and rang up the telegraph-office.
The thing to do, of course, was to telegraph to the owner of the
mills--of whose very name she was ignorant!--enquiring where Amherst
was, and asking him to forward the message. Precious hours must be lost
meanwhile--but, after all, they were waiting for no one upstairs.
* * * * *
The verdict had been pronounced: dislocation and fracture of the fourth
vertebra, with consequent injury to the spinal cord. Dr. Garford and
Wyant came out alone to tell her. The surgeon ran over the technical
details, her brain instantly at attention as he developed his diagnosis
and issued his orders. She asked no questions as to the future--she
knew it was impossible to tell. But there were no immediate signs of a
fatal ending: the patient had rallied well, and the general conditions
were not unfavourable.
"You have heard from Mr. Amherst?" Dr. Garford concluded.
"Not yet...he may be travelling," Justine faltered, unwilling to say
that her telegram had been returned. As she spoke there was a tap on the
door, and a folded paper was handed in--a telegram telephoned from the
village.
"Amherst gone South America to study possibilities cotton growing have
cabled our correspondent Buenos Ayres."
Concealment was no longer possible. Justine handed the message to the
surgeon.
"Ah--and there would be no chance of finding his address among Mrs.
Amherst's papers?"
"I think not--no."
"Well--we must keep her alive, Wyant."
"Yes, sir."
* * * * *
At dusk, Justine sat in the library, waiting for Cicely to be brought to
her. A lull had descended on the house--a new order developed out of the
morning's chaos. With soundless steps, with lowered voices, the
machinery of life was carried on. And Justine, caught in one of the
pauses of inaction which she had fought off since morning, was reliving,
for the hundredth time, her few moments at Bessy's bedside....
She had been summoned in the course of the afternoon, and stealing into
the darkened room, had bent over the bed while the nurses noiselessly
withdrew. There lay the white face which had been burnt into her inward
vision--the motionless body, and the head stirring ceaselessly, as
though to release the agitation of the imprisoned limbs. Bessy's eyes
turned to her, drawing her down.
"Am I going to die, Justine?"
"No."
"The pain is...so awful...."
"It will pass...you will sleep...."
"Cicely----"
"She has gone for a walk. You'll see her presently."
The eyes faded, releasing Justine. She stole away, and the nurses came
back.
Bessy had spoken of Cicely--but not a word of her husband! Perhaps her
poor dazed mind groped for him, or perhaps it shrank from his name....
Justine was thankful for her silence. For the moment her heart was
bitter against Amherst. Why, so soon after her appeal and his answer,
had he been false to the spirit of their agreement? This unannounced,
unexplained departure was nothing less than a breach of his tacit
pledge--the pledge not to break definitely with Lynbrook. And why had he
gone to South America? She drew her aching brows together, trying to
retrace a vague memory of some allusion to the cotton-growing
capabilities of the region.... Yes, he had spoken of it once in talking
of the world's area of cotton production. But what impulse had sent him
off on such an exploration? Mere unrest, perhaps--the intolerable burden
of his useless life? The questions spun round and round in her head,
weary, profitless, yet persistent....
It was a relief when Cicely came--a relief to measure out the cambric
tea, to make the terrier beg for ginger-bread, even to take up the
thread of the interrupted fairy-tale--though through it all she was
wrung by the thought that, just twenty-four hours earlier, she and the
child had sat in the same place, listening for the trot of Bessy's
horse....
The day passed: the hands of the clocks moved, food was cooked and
served, blinds were drawn up or down, lamps lit and fires renewed...all
these tokens of the passage of time took place before her, while her
real consciousness seemed to hang in some dim central void, where
nothing happened, nothing would ever happen....
And now Cicely was in bed, the last "long-distance" call was answered,
the last orders to kitchen and stable had been despatched, Wyant had
stolen down to her with his hourly report--"no change"--and she was
waiting in the library for the Gaineses.
Carriage-wheels on the gravel: they were there at last. Justine started up
and went into the hall. As she passed out of the library the outer door
opened, and the gusty night swooped in--as, at the same hour the day
before, it had swooped in ahead of the dreadful procession--preceding now
the carriageful of Hanaford relations: Mr. Gaines, red-glazed, brief and
interrogatory; Westy, small, nervous, ill at ease with his grief; and Mrs.
Gaines, supreme in the possession of a consolatory yet funereal manner,
and sinking on Justine's breast with the solemn whisper: "Have you sent
for the clergyman?"
XXVII
THE house was empty again.
A week had passed since Bessy's accident, and friends and relations had
dispersed. The household had fallen into its routine, the routine of
sickness and silence, and once more the perfectly-adjusted machine was
working on steadily, inexorably, like a natural law....
So at least it seemed to Justine's nerves, intolerably stretched, at
times, on the rack of solitude, of suspense, of forebodings. She had
been thankful when the Gaineses left--doubly thankful when a telegram
from Bermuda declared Mrs. Carbury to be "in despair" at her inability
to fly to Bessy's side--thankful even that Mr. Tredegar's professional
engagements made it impossible for him to do more than come down, every
second or third day, for a few hours; yet, though in some ways it was a
relief to be again in sole command, there were moments when the weight
of responsibility, and the inability to cry out her fears and her
uncertainties, seemed almost unendurable.
Wyant was her chief reliance. He had risen so gallantly above his
weakness, become again so completely the indefatigable worker of former
days, that she accused herself of injustice in ascribing to physical
causes the vague eye and tremulous hand which might merely have
betokened a passing access of nervous sensibility. Now, at any rate, he
had his nerves so well under control, and had shown such a grasp of the
case, and such marked executive capacity, that on the third day after
the accident Dr. Garford, withdrawing his own assistant, had left him in
control at Lynbrook.
At the same time Justine had taken up her attendance in the sick-room,
replacing one of the subordinate nurses who had been suddenly called
away. She had done this the more willingly because Bessy, who was now
conscious for the greater part of the time, had asked for her once or
twice, and had seemed easier when she was in the room. But she still
gave only occasional aid, relieving the other nurses when they dined or
rested, but keeping herself partly free in order to have an eye on the
household, and give a few hours daily to Cicely.
All this had become part of a system that already seemed as old as
memory. She could hardly recall what life had been before the
accident--the seven dreadful days seemed as long as the days of
creation. Every morning she rose to the same report--"no change"--and
every day passed without a word from Amherst. Minor news, of course, had
come: poor Mr. Langhope, at length overtaken at Wady Halfa, was
hastening back as fast as ship and rail could carry him; Mrs. Ansell,
anchored at Algiers with her invalid, cabled anxious enquiries; but
still no word from Amherst. The correspondent at Buenos Ayres had simply
cabled "Not here. Will enquire"--and since then, silence.
Justine had taken to sitting in a small room beyond Amherst's bedroom,
near enough to Bessy to be within call, yet accessible to the rest of
the household. The walls were hung with old prints, and with two or
three photographs of early Italian pictures; and in a low bookcase
Amherst had put the books he had brought from Hanaford--the English
poets, the Greek dramatists, some text-books of biology and kindred
subjects, and a few stray well-worn volumes: Lecky's European Morals,
Carlyle's translation of Wilhelm Meister, Seneca, Epictetus, a German
grammar, a pocket Bacon.
It was unlike any other room at Lynbrook--even through her benumbing
misery, Justine felt the relief of escaping there from the rest of the
great soulless house. Sometimes she took up one of the books and read a
page or two, letting the beat of the verse lull her throbbing brain, or
the strong words of stoic wisdom sink into her heart. And even when
there was no time for these brief flights from reality, it soothed her
to feel herself in the presence of great thoughts--to know that in this
room, among these books, another restless baffled mind had sought escape
from the "dusty answer" of life. Her hours there made her think less
bitterly of Amherst--but also, alas, made her see more clearly the
irreconcilable difference between the two natures she had striven to
reunite. That which was the essence of life to one was a meaningless
shadow to the other; and the gulf between them was too wide for the
imagination of either to bridge.
As she sat there on the seventh afternoon there was a knock on the door
and Wyant entered. She had only time to notice that he was very
pale--she had been struck once or twice with his look of sudden
exhaustion, which passed as quickly as it came--then she saw that he
carried a telegram, and her mind flew back to its central anxiety. She
grew pale herself as she read the message.
"He has been found--at Corrientes. It will take him at least a month to
get here."
"A month--good God!"
"And it may take Mr. Langhope longer." Their eyes met. "It's too
long----?" she asked.
"I don't know--I don't know." He shivered slightly, turning away into
the window.
Justine sat down to dash off messages to Mr. Tredegar and the Gaineses:
Amherst's return must be made known at once. When she glanced up, Wyant
was standing near her. His air of intense weariness had passed, and he
looked calm and ready for action.
"Shall I take these down?"
"No. Ring, please. I want to ask you a few questions."
The servant who answered the bell brought in a tea-tray, and Justine,
having despatched the telegrams, seated herself and began to pour out
her tea. Food had been repugnant to her during the first anguished
unsettled days, but with the resumption of the nurse's systematic habits
the nurse's punctual appetite returned. Every drop of energy must be
husbanded now, and only sleep and nourishment could fill the empty
cisterns.
She held out a cup to Wyant, but he drew back with a gesture of
aversion.
"Thanks; I'm not hungry."
"You ought to eat more."
"No, no. I'm very well."
She lifted her head, revived by the warm draught. The mechanical act of
nourishment performed, her mind leapt back to the prospect of Amherst's
return. A whole month before he reached Lynbrook! He had instructed her
where news might find him on the way ... but a whole month to wait!
She looked at Wyant, and they read each other's thoughts.
"It's a long time," he said.
"Yes."
"But Garford can do wonders--and she's very strong."
Justine shuddered. Just so a skilled agent of the Inquisition might have
spoken, calculating how much longer the power of suffering might be
artificially preserved in a body broken on the wheel....
"How does she seem to you today?"
"The general conditions are about the same. The heart keeps up
wonderfully, but there is a little more oppression of the diaphragm."
"Yes--her breathing is harder. Last night she suffered horribly at
times."
"Oh--she'll suffer," Wyant murmured. "Of course the hypodermics can be
increased."
"Just what did Dr. Garford say this morning?"
"He is astonished at her strength."
"But there's no hope?--I don't know why I ask!"
"Hope?" Wyant looked at her. "You mean of what's called recovery--of
deferring death indefinitely?"
She nodded.
"How can Garford tell--or any one? We all know there have been cases
where such injury to the cord has not caused death. This may be one of
those cases; but the biggest man couldn't say now."
Justine hid her eyes. "What a fate!"
"Recovery? Yes. Keeping people alive in such cases is one of the
refinements of cruelty that it was left for Christianity to invent."
"And yet--?"
"And yet--it's got to be! Science herself says so--not for the patient,
of course; but for herself--for unborn generations, rather. Queer, isn't
it? The two creeds are at one."
Justine murmured through her clasped hands: "I wish she were not so
strong----"
"Yes; it's wonderful what those frail petted bodies can stand. The fight
is going to be a hard one."
She rose with a shiver. "I must go to Cicely----" The rector of Saint
Anne's had called again. Justine, in obedience to Mrs. Gaines's
suggestion, had summoned him from Clifton the day after the accident;
but, supported by the surgeons and Wyant, she had resisted his admission
to the sick-room. Bessy's religious practices had been purely
mechanical: her faith had never been associated with the graver moments
of her life, and the apparition of a clerical figure at her bedside
would portend not consolation but calamity. Since it was all-important
that her nervous strength should be sustained, and the gravity of the
situation kept from her, Mrs. Gaines yielded to the medical commands,
consoled by the ready acquiescence of the rector. But before she left
she extracted a promise that he would call frequently at Lynbrook, and
wait his opportunity to say an uplifting word to Mrs. Amherst.
The Reverend Ernest Lynde, who was a young man, with more zeal than
experience, deemed it his duty to obey this injunction to the letter;
but hitherto he had had to content himself with a talk with the
housekeeper, or a brief word on the doorstep from Wyant. Today, however,
he had asked somewhat insistently for Miss Brent; and Justine, who was
free at the moment, felt that she could not refuse to go down. She had
seen him only in the pulpit, when once or twice, in Bessy's absence, she
had taken Cicely to church: he struck her as a grave young man, with a
fine voice but halting speech. His sermons were earnest but ineffective.
As he rose to meet her, she felt that she should like him better out of
church. His glance was clear and honest, and there was sweetness in his
hesitating smile.
"I am sorry to seem persistent--but I heard you had news of Mr.
Langhope, and I was anxious to know the particulars," he explained.
Justine replied that her message had overtaken Mr. Langhope at Wady
Haifa, and that he hoped to reach Alexandria in time to catch a steamer
to Brindisi at the end of the week.
"Not till then? So it will be almost three weeks--?"
"As nearly as I can calculate, a month."
The rector hesitated. "And Mr. Amherst?"
"He is coming back too."
"Ah, you have heard? I'm glad of that. He will be here soon?"
"No. He is in South America--at Buenos Ayres. There will be no steamer
for some days, and he may not get here till after Mr. Langhope."
Mr. Lynde looked at her kindly, with grave eyes that proffered help.
"This is terrible for you, Miss Brent."
"Yes," Justine answered simply.
"And Mrs. Amherst's condition----?"
"It is about the same."
"The doctors are hopeful?"
"They have not lost hope."
"She seems to keep her strength wonderfully."
"Yes, wonderfully."
Mr. Lynde paused, looking downward, and awkwardly turning his soft
clerical hat in his large kind-looking hands. "One might almost see in
it a dispensation--_we_ should see one, Miss Brent."
"_We?_" She glanced up apologetically, not quite sure that her tired
mind had followed his meaning.
"We, I mean, who believe...that not one sparrow falls to the ground...."
He flushed, and went on in a more mundane tone: "I am glad you have the
hope of Mr. Langhope's arrival to keep you up. Modern science--thank
heaven!--can do such wonders in sustaining and prolonging life that,
even if there is little chance of recovery, the faint spark may be
nursed until...."
He paused again, conscious that the dusky-browed young woman, slenderly
erect in her dark blue linen and nurse's cap, was examining him with an
intentness which contrasted curiously with the absent-minded glance she
had dropped on him in entering.
"In such cases," she said in a low tone, "there is practically no chance
of recovery."
"So I understand."
"Even if there were, it would probably be death-in-life: complete
paralysis of the lower body."
He shuddered. "A dreadful fate! She was so gay and active----"
"Yes--and the struggle with death, for the next few weeks, must involve
incessant suffering...frightful suffering...perhaps vainly...."
"I feared so," he murmured, his kind face paling.
"Then why do you thank heaven that modern science has found such
wonderful ways of prolonging life?"
He raised his head with a start and their eyes met. He saw that the
nurse's face was pale and calm--almost judicial in its composure--and
his self-possession returned to him.
"As a Christian," he answered, with his slow smile, "I can hardly do
otherwise."
Justine continued to consider him thoughtfully. "The men of the older
generation--clergymen, I mean," she went on in a low controlled voice,
"would of course take that view--must take it. But the conditions are so
changed--so many undreamed-of means of prolonging life--prolonging
suffering--have been discovered and applied in the last few years, that
I wondered...in my profession one often wonders...."
"I understand," he rejoined sympathetically, forgetting his youth and
his inexperience in the simple desire to bring solace to a troubled
mind. "I understand your feeling--but you need have no doubt. Human
life is sacred, and the fact that, even in this materialistic age,
science is continually struggling to preserve and prolong it,
shows--very beautifully, I think--how all things work together to
fulfill the divine will."
"Then you believe that the divine will delights in mere pain--mere
meaningless animal suffering--for its own sake?"
"Surely not; but for the sake of the spiritual life that may be
mysteriously wrung out of it."
Justine bent her puzzled brows on him. "I could understand that view of
moral suffering--or even of physical pain moderate enough to leave the
mind clear, and to call forth qualities of endurance and renunciation.
But where the body has been crushed to a pulp, and the mind is no more
than a machine for the registering of sense-impressions of physical
anguish, of what use can such suffering be to its owner--or to the
divine will?"
The young rector looked at her sadly, almost severely. "There, Miss
Brent, we touch on inscrutable things, and human reason must leave the
answer to faith."
Justine pondered. "So that--one may say--Christianity recognizes no
exceptions--?"
"None--none," its authorized exponent pronounced emphatically.
"Then Christianity and science are agreed." She rose, and the young
rector, with visible reluctance, stood up also.
"That, again, is one of the most striking evidences--" he began; and
then, as the necessity of taking leave was forced upon him, he added
appealingly: "I understand your uncertainties, your questionings, and I
wish I could have made my point clearer----"
"Thank you; it is quite clear. The reasons, of course, are different;
but the result is exactly the same."
She held out her hand, smiling sadly on him, and with a sudden return of
youth and self-consciousness, he murmured shyly: "I feel for you"--the
man in him yearning over her loneliness, though the pastor dared not
press his help....
XXVIII
THAT evening, when Justine took her place at the bedside, and the other
two nurses had gone down to supper, Bessy turned her head slightly,
resting her eyes on her friend.
The rose-shaded lamp cast a tint of life on her face, and the dark
circles of pain made her eyes look deeper and brighter. Justine was
almost deceived by the delusive semblance of vitality, and a hope that
was half anguish stirred in her. She sat down by the bed, clasping the
hand on the sheet.
"You feel better tonight?"
"I breathe...better...." The words came brokenly, between long pauses,
but without the hard agonized gasps of the previous night.
"That's a good sign." Justine paused, and then, letting her fingers
glide once or twice over the back of Bessy's hand--"You know, dear, Mr.
Amherst is coming," she leaned down to say.
Bessy's eyes moved again, slowly, inscrutably. She had never asked for
her husband.
"Soon?" she whispered.
"He had started on a long journey--to out-of-the-way places--to study
something about cotton growing--my message has just overtaken him,"
Justine explained.
Bessy lay still, her breast straining for breath. She remained so long
without speaking that Justine began to think she was falling back into
the somnolent state that intervened between her moments of complete
consciousness. But at length she lifted her lids again, and her lips
stirred.
"He will be...long...coming?"
"Some days."
"How...many?"
"We can't tell yet."
Silence again. Bessy's features seemed to shrink into a kind of waxen
quietude--as though her face were seen under clear water, a long way
down. And then, as she lay thus, without sound or movement, two tears
forced themselves through her lashes and rolled down her cheeks.
Justine, bending close, wiped them away. "Bessy--"
The wet lashes were raised--an anguished look met her gaze.
"I--I can't bear it...."
"What, dear?"
"The pain.... Shan't I die...before?"
"You may get well, Bessy."
Justine felt her hand quiver. "Walk again...?"
"Perhaps...not that."
"_This?_ I can't bear it...." Her head drooped sideways, turning away
toward the wall.
Justine, that night, kept her vigil with an aching heart. The news of
Amherst's return had produced no sign of happiness in his wife--- the
tears had been forced from her merely by the dread of being kept alive
during the long days of pain before he came. The medical explanation
might have been that repeated crises of intense physical anguish, and
the deep lassitude succeeding them, had so overlaid all other feelings,
or at least so benumbed their expression, that it was impossible to
conjecture how Bessy's little half-smothered spark of soul had really
been affected by the news. But Justine did not believe in this argument.
Her experience among the sick had convinced her, on the contrary, that
the shafts of grief or joy will find a crack in the heaviest armour of
physical pain, that the tiniest gleam of hope will light up depths of
mental inanition, and somehow send a ray to the surface.... It was true
that Bessy had never known how to bear pain, and that her own sensations
had always formed the centre of her universe--yet, for that very reason,
if the thought of seeing Amherst had made her happier it would have
lifted, at least momentarily, the weight of death from her body.
Justine, at first, had almost feared the contrary effect--feared that
the moral depression might show itself in a lowering of physical
resistance. But the body kept up its obstinate struggle against death,
drawing strength from sources of vitality unsuspected in that frail
envelope. The surgeon's report the next day was more favourable, and
every day won from death pointed now to a faint chance of recovery.
Such at least was Wyant's view. Dr. Garford and the consulting surgeons
had not yet declared themselves; but the young doctor, strung to the
highest point of watchfulness, and constantly in attendance on the
patient, was tending toward a hopeful prognosis. The growing conviction
spurred him to fresh efforts; at Dr. Garford's request, he had
temporarily handed over his Clifton practice to a young New York doctor
in need of change, and having installed himself at Lynbrook he gave up
his days and nights to Mrs. Amherst's case.
"If any one can save her, Wyant will," Dr. Garford had declared to
Justine, when, on the tenth day after the accident, the surgeons held
their third consultation. Dr. Garford reserved his own judgment. He had
seen cases--they had all seen cases...but just at present the signs
might point either way.... Meanwhile Wyant's confidence was an
invaluable asset toward the patient's chances of recovery. Hopefulness
in the physician was almost as necessary as in the patient--contact with
such faith had been known to work miracles.
Justine listened in silence, wishing that she too could hope. But
whichever way the prognosis pointed, she felt only a dull despair. She
believed no more than Dr. Garford in the chance of recovery--that
conviction seemed to her a mirage of Wyant's imagination, of his boyish
ambition to achieve the impossible--and every hopeful symptom pointed,
in her mind, only to a longer period of useless suffering.
Her hours at Bessy's side deepened her revolt against the energy spent
in the fight with death. Since Bessy had learned that her husband was
returning she had never, by sign or word, reverted to the fact. Except
for a gleam of tenderness, now and then, when Cicely was brought to
her, she seemed to have sunk back into herself, as though her poor
little flicker of consciousness were wholly centred in the contemplation
of its pain. It was not that her mind was clouded--only that it was
immersed, absorbed, in that dread mystery of disproportionate anguish
which a capricious fate had laid on it.... And what if she recovered, as
they called it? If the flood-tide of pain should ebb, leaving her
stranded, a helpless wreck on the desert shores of inactivity? What
would life be to Bessy without movement? Thought would never set her
blood flowing--motion, in her, could only take the form of the physical
processes. Her love for Amherst was dead--even if it flickered into life
again, it could but put the spark to smouldering discords and
resentments; and would her one uncontaminated sentiment--her affection
for Cicely--suffice to reconcile her to the desolate half-life which was
the utmost that science could hold out?
Here again, Justine's experience answered no. She did not believe in
Bessy's powers of moral recuperation--her body seemed less near death
than her spirit. Life had been poured out to her in generous measure,
and she had spilled the precious draught--the few drops remaining in the
cup could no longer renew her strength.
Pity, not condemnation--profound illimitable pity--flowed from this
conclusion of Justine's. To a compassionate heart there could be no
sadder instance of the wastefulness of life than this struggle of the
small half-formed soul with a destiny too heavy for its strength. If
Bessy had had any moral hope to fight for, every pang of suffering would
have been worth enduring; but it was intolerable to witness the
spectacle of her useless pain.
Incessant commerce with such thoughts made Justine, as the days passed,
crave any escape from solitude, any contact with other ideas. Even the
reappearance of Westy Gaines, bringing a breath of common-place
conventional grief into the haunted silence of the house, was a respite
from her questionings. If it was hard to talk to him, to answer his
enquiries, to assent to his platitudes, it was harder, a thousand times,
to go on talking to herself....
Mr. Tredegar's coming was a distinct relief. His dryness was like
cautery to her wound. Mr. Tredegar undoubtedly grieved for Bessy; but
his grief struck inward, exuding only now and then, through the fissures
of his hard manner, in a touch of extra solemnity, the more laboured
rounding of a period. Yet, on the whole, it was to his feeling that
Justine felt her own to be most akin. If his stoic acceptance of the
inevitable proceeded from the resolve to spare himself pain, that at
least was a form of strength, an indication of character. She had never
cared for the fluencies of invertebrate sentiment.
Now, on the evening of the day after her talk with Bessy, it was more
than ever a solace to escape from the torment of her thoughts into the
rarefied air of Mr. Tredegar's presence. The day had been a bad one for
the patient, and Justine's distress had been increased by the receipt of
a cable from Mr. Langhope, announcing that, owing to delay in reaching
Brindisi, he had missed the fast steamer from Cherbourg, and would not
arrive till four or five days later than he had expected. Mr. Tredegar,
in response to her report, had announced his intention of coming down by
a late train, and now he and Justine and Dr. Wyant, after dining
together, were seated before the fire in the smoking-room.
"I take it, then," Mr. Tredegar said, turning to Wyant, "that the
chances of her living to see her father are very slight."
The young doctor raised his head eagerly. "Not in my opinion, sir.
Unless unforeseen complications arise, I can almost promise to keep her
alive for another month--I'm not afraid to call it six weeks!"
"H'm--Garford doesn't say so."
"No; Dr. Garford argues from precedent."
"And you?" Mr. Tredegar's thin lips were visited by the ghost of a
smile.
"Oh, I don't argue--I just feel my way," said Wyant imperturbably.
"And yet you don't hesitate to predict----"
"No, I don't, sir; because the case, as I see it, presents certain
definite indications." He began to enumerate them, cleverly avoiding the
use of technicalities and trying to make his point clear by the use of
simple illustration and analogy. It sickened Justine to listen to his
passionate exposition--she had heard it so often, she believed in it so
little.
Mr. Tredegar turned a probing glance on him as he ended. "Then, today
even, you believe not only in the possibility of prolonging life, but of
ultimate recovery?"
Wyant hesitated. "I won't call it recovery--today. Say--life
indefinitely prolonged."
"And the paralysis?"
"It might disappear--after a few months--or a few years."
"Such an outcome would be unusual?"
"Exceptional. But then there _are_ exceptions. And I'm straining every
nerve to make this one!"
"And the suffering--such as today's, for instance--is unavoidable?"
"Unhappily."
"And bound to increase?"
"Well--as the anæsthetics lose their effect...."
There was a tap on the door, and one of the nurses entered to report to
Wyant. He went out with her, and Justine was left with Mr. Tredegar.
He turned to her thoughtfully. "That young fellow seems sure of himself.
You believe in him?"
Justine hesitated. "Not in his expectation of recovery--no one does."
"But you think they can keep the poor child alive till Langhope and her
husband get back?"
There was a moment's pause; then Justine murmured: "It can be done...I
think...."
"Yes--it's horrible," said Mr. Tredegar suddenly, as if in answer to her
thought.
She looked up in surprise, and saw his eye resting on her with what
seemed like a mist of sympathy on its vitreous surface. Her lips
trembled, parting as if for speech--but she looked away without
answering.
"These new devices for keeping people alive," Mr. Tredegar continued;
"they increase the suffering besides prolonging it?"
"Yes--in some cases."
"In this case?"
"I am afraid so."
The lawyer drew out his fine cambric handkerchief, and furtively wiped a
slight dampness from his forehead. "I wish to God she had been killed!"
he said.
Justine lifted her head again, with an answering exclamation. "Oh, yes!"
"It's infernal--the time they can make it last."
"It's useless!" Justine broke out.
"Useless?" He turned his critical glance on her. "Well, that's beside
the point--since it's inevitable."
She wavered a moment--but his words had loosened the bonds about her
heart, and she could not check herself so suddenly. "Why inevitable?"
Mr. Tredegar looked at her in surprise, as though wondering at so
unprofessional an utterance from one who, under ordinary circumstances,
showed the absolute self-control and submission of the well-disciplined
nurse.
"Human life is sacred," he said sententiously.
"Ah, that must have been decreed by some one who had never suffered!"
Justine exclaimed.
Mr. Tredegar smiled compassionately: he evidently knew how to make
allowances for the fact that she was overwrought by the sight of her
friend's suffering: "Society decreed it--not one person," he corrected.
"Society--science--religion!" she murmured, as if to herself.
"Precisely. It's the universal consensus--the result of the world's
accumulated experience. Cruel in individual instances--necessary for the
general welfare. Of course your training has taught you all this; but I
can understand that at such a time...."
"Yes," she said, rising wearily as Wyant came in.
* * * * *
Her worst misery, now, was to have to discuss Bessy's condition with
Wyant. To the young physician Bessy was no longer a suffering,
agonizing creature: she was a case--a beautiful case. As the problem
developed new intricacies, becoming more and more of a challenge to his
faculties of observation and inference, Justine saw the abstract
scientific passion supersede his personal feeling of pity. Though his
professional skill made him exquisitely tender to the patient under his
hands, he seemed hardly conscious that she was a woman who had
befriended him, and whom he had so lately seen in the brightness of
health and enjoyment. This view was normal enough--it was, as Justine
knew, the ideal state of mind for the successful physician, in whom
sympathy for the patient as an individual must often impede swift choice
and unfaltering action. But what she shrank from was his resolve to save
Bessy's life--a resolve fortified to the point of exasperation by the
scepticism of the consulting surgeons, who saw in it only the
youngster's natural desire to distinguish himself by performing a feat
which his elders deemed impossible.
As the days dragged on, and Bessy's sufferings increased, Justine longed
for a protesting word from Dr. Garford or one of his colleagues. In her
hospital experience she had encountered cases where the useless agonies
of death were mercifully shortened by the physician; why was not this a
case for such treatment? The answer was simple enough--in the first
place, it was the duty of the surgeons to keep their patient alive till
her husband and her father could reach her; and secondly, there was that
faint illusive hope of so-called recovery, in which none of them
believed, yet which they could not ignore in their treatment. The
evening after Mr. Tredegar's departure Wyant was setting this forth at
great length to Justine. Bessy had had a bad morning: the bronchial
symptoms which had developed a day or two before had greatly increased
her distress, and there had been, at dawn, a moment of weakness when it
seemed that some pitiful power was about to defeat the relentless
efforts of science. But Wyant had fought off the peril. By the prompt
and audacious use of stimulants--by a rapid marshalling of resources, a
display of self-reliance and authority, which Justine could not but
admire as she mechanically seconded his efforts--the spark of life had
been revived, and Bessy won back for fresh suffering.
"Yes--I say it can be done: tonight I say it more than ever," Wyant
exclaimed, pushing the disordered hair from his forehead, and leaning
toward Justine across the table on which their brief evening meal had
been served. "I say the way the heart has rallied proves that we've got
more strength to draw on than any of them have been willing to admit.
The breathing's better too. If we can fight off the degenerative
processes--and, by George, I believe we can!" He looked up suddenly at
Justine. "With you to work with, I believe I could do anything. How you
do back a man up! You think with your hands--with every individual
finger!"
Justine turned her eyes away: she felt a shudder of repulsion steal over
her tired body. It was not that she detected any note of personal
admiration in his praise--he had commended her as the surgeon might
commend a fine instrument fashioned for his use. But that she should be
the instrument to serve such a purpose--that her skill, her promptness,
her gift of divining and interpreting the will she worked with, should
be at the service of this implacable scientific passion! Ah, no--she
could be silent no longer....
She looked up at Wyant, and their eyes met.
"Why do you do it?" she asked.
He stared, as if thinking that she referred to some special point in his
treatment. "Do what?"
"It's so useless...you all know she must die."
"I know nothing of the kind...and even the others are not so sure
today." He began to go over it all again--repeating his arguments,
developing new theories, trying to force into her reluctant mind his own
faith in the possibility of success.
* * * * *
Justine sat resting her chin on her clasped hands, her eyes gazing
straight before her under dark tormented brows. When he paused she
remained silent.
"Well--don't you believe me?" he broke out with sudden asperity.
"I don't know...I can't tell...."
"But as long as there's a doubt, even--a doubt my way--and I'll show you
there is, if you'll give me time----"
"How much time?" she murmured, without shifting her gaze.
"Ah--that depends on ourselves: on you and me chiefly. That's what
Garford admits. _They_ can't do much now--they've got to leave the game
to us. It's a question of incessant vigilance...of utilizing every hour,
every moment.... Time's all I ask, and _you_ can give it to me, if any
one can!"
Under the challenge of his tone Justine rose to her feet with a low
murmur of fear. "Ah, don't ask me!"
"Don't ask you----?"
"I can't--I can't."
Wyant stood up also, turning on her an astonished glance.
"You can't what--?"
Their eyes met, and she thought she read in his a sudden divination of
her inmost thoughts. The discovery electrified her flagging strength,
restoring her to immediate clearness of brain. She saw the gulf of
self-betrayal over which she had hung, and the nearness of the peril
nerved her to a last effort of dissimulation.
"I can't...talk of it...any longer," she faltered, letting her tears
flow, and turning on him a face of pure womanly weakness.
Wyant looked at her without answering. Did he distrust even these plain
physical evidences of exhaustion, or was he merely disappointed in her,
as in one whom he had believed to be above the emotional failings of her
sex?
"You're over-tired," he said coldly. "Take tonight to rest. Miss Mace
can replace you for the next few hours--and I may need you more
tomorrow."
XXIX
FOUR more days had passed. Bessy seldom spoke when Justine was with her.
She was wrapped in a thickening cloud of opiates--morphia by day,
bromides, sulphonal, chloral hydrate at night. When the cloud broke and
consciousness emerged, it was centred in the one acute point of bodily
anguish. Darting throes of neuralgia, agonized oppression of the breath,
the diffused misery of the whole helpless body--these were reducing
their victim to a mere instrument on which pain played its incessant
deadly variations. Once or twice she turned her dull eyes on Justine,
breathing out: "I want to die," as some inevitable lifting or
readjusting thrilled her body with fresh pangs; but there were no signs
of contact with the outer world--she had ceased even to ask for
Cicely....
And yet, according to the doctors, the patient held her own. Certain
alarming symptoms had diminished, and while others persisted, the
strength to fight them persisted too. With such strength to call on,
what fresh agonies were reserved for the poor body when the narcotics
had lost their power?
That was the question always before Justine. She never again betrayed
her fears to Wyant--she carried out his orders with morbid precision,
trembling lest any failure in efficiency should revive his suspicions.
She hardly knew what she feared his suspecting--she only had a confused
sense that they were enemies, and that she was the weaker of the two.
And then the anæsthetics began to fail. It was the sixteenth day since
the accident, and the resources of alleviation were almost exhausted. It
was not sure, even now, that Bessy was going to die--and she was
certainly going to suffer a long time. Wyant seemed hardly conscious of
the increase of pain--his whole mind was fixed on the prognosis. What
matter if the patient suffered, as long as he proved his case? That, of
course, was not his way of putting it. In reality, he did all he could
to allay the pain, surpassed himself in new devices and experiments. But
death confronted him implacably, claiming his due: so many hours robbed
from him, so much tribute to pay; and Wyant, setting his teeth, fought
on--and Bessy paid.
* * * * *
Justine had begun to notice that it was hard for her to get a word alone
with Dr. Garford. The other nurses were not in the way--it was Wyant who
always contrived to be there. Perhaps she was unreasonable in seeing a
special intention in his presence: it was natural enough that the two
persons in charge of the case should confer together with their chief.
But his persistence annoyed her, and she was glad when, one afternoon,
the surgeon asked him to telephone an important message to town.
As soon as the door had closed, Justine said to Dr. Garford: "She is
beginning to suffer terribly."
He answered with the large impersonal gesture of the man to whom
physical suffering has become a painful general fact of life, no longer
divisible into individual cases. "We are doing all we can."
"Yes." She paused, and then raised her eyes to his dry kind face. "Is
there any hope?"
Another gesture--the fatalistic sweep of the lifted palms. "The next ten
days will tell--the fight is on, as Wyant says. And if any one can do
it, that young fellow can. There's stuff in him--and infernal
ambition."
"Yes: but do _you_ believe she can live--?"
Dr. Garford smiled indulgently on such unprofessional insistence; but
she was past wondering what they must all think of her.
"My dear Miss Brent," he said, "I have reached the age when one always
leaves a door open to the unexpected."
As he spoke, a slight sound at her back made her turn. Wyant was behind
her--he must have entered as she put her question. And he certainly
could not have had time to descend the stairs, walk the length of the
house, ring up New York, and deliver Dr Garford's message.... The same
thought seemed to strike the surgeon. "Hello, Wyant?" he said.
"Line busy," said Wyant curtly.
* * * * *
About this time, Justine gave up her night vigils. She could no longer
face the struggle of the dawn hour, when life ebbs lowest; and since her
duties extended beyond the sick-room she could fairly plead that she was
more needed about the house by day. But Wyant protested: he wanted her
most at the difficult hour.
"You know you're taking a chance from her," he said, almost sternly.
"Oh, no----"
He looked at her searchingly. "You don't feel up to it?"
"No."
He turned away with a slight shrug; but she knew he resented her
defection.
The day watches were miserable enough. It was the nineteenth day now;
and Justine lay on the sofa in Amherst's sitting-room, trying to nerve
herself for the nurse's summons. A page torn out of the calendar lay
before her--she had been calculating again how many days must elapse
before Mr. Langhope could arrive. Ten days--ten days and ten nights! And
the length of the nights was double.... As for Amherst, it was
impossible to set a date for his coming, for his steamer from Buenos
Ayres called at various ports on the way northward, and the length of
her stay at each was dependent on the delivery of freight, and on the
dilatoriness of the South American official.
She threw down the calendar and leaned back, pressing her hands to her
temples. Oh, for a word with Amherst--he alone would have understood
what she was undergoing! Mr. Langhope's coming would make no
difference--or rather, it would only increase the difficulty of the
situation. Instinctively Justine felt that, though his heart would be
wrung by the sight of Bessy's pain, his cry would be the familiar one,
the traditional one: _Keep her alive!_ Under his surface originality,
his verbal audacities and ironies, Mr. Langhope was the creature of
accepted forms, inherited opinions: he had never really thought for
himself on any of the pressing problems of life.
But Amherst was different. Close contact with many forms of wretchedness
had freed him from the bondage of accepted opinion. He looked at life
through no eyes but his own; and what he saw, he confessed to seeing. He
never tried to evade the consequences of his discoveries.
Justine's remembrance flew back to their first meeting at Hanaford, when
his confidence in his own powers was still unshaken, his trust in others
unimpaired. And, gradually, she began to relive each detail of their
talk at Dillon's bedside--her first impression of him, as he walked down
the ward; the first sound of his voice; her surprised sense of his
authority; her almost involuntary submission to his will.... Then her
thoughts passed on to their walk home from the hospital--she recalled
his sober yet unsparing summary of the situation at Westmore, and the
note of insight with which he touched on the hardships of the
workers.... Then, word by word, their talk about Dillon came
back...Amherst's indignation and pity...his shudder of revolt at the
man's doom.
"_In your work, don't you ever feel tempted to set a poor devil free?_"
And then, after her conventional murmur of protest: "_To save what,
when all the good of life is gone?_"
To distract her thoughts she stretched her hand toward the book-case,
taking out the first volume in reach--the little copy of Bacon. She
leaned back, fluttering its pages aimlessly--so wrapped in her own
misery that the meaning of the words could not reach her. It was useless
to try to read: every perception of the outer world was lost in the hum
of inner activity that made her mind like a forge throbbing with heat
and noise. But suddenly her glance fell on some pencilled sentences on
the fly-leaf. They were in Amherst's hand, and the sight arrested her as
though she had heard him speak.
_La vraie morale se moque de la morale...._
_We perish because we follow other men's examples...._
_Socrates used to call the opinions of the many by the name of
Lamiæ--bugbears to frighten children...._
A rush of air seemed to have been let into her stifled mind. Were they
his own thoughts? No--her memory recalled some confused association with
great names. But at least they must represent his beliefs--must embody
deeply-felt convictions--or he would scarcely have taken the trouble to
record them.
She murmured over the last sentence once or twice: _The opinions of the
many--bugbears to frighten children...._ Yes, she had often heard him
speak of current judgments in that way...she had never known a mind so
free from the spell of the Lamiæ.
* * * * *
Some one knocked, and she put aside the book and rose to her feet. It
was a maid bringing a note from Wyant.
"There has been a motor accident beyond Clifton, and I have been sent
for. I think I can safely be away for two or three hours, but ring me up
at Clifton if you want me. Miss Mace has instructions, and Garford's
assistant will be down at seven."
She looked at the clock: it was just three, the hour at which she was to
relieve Miss Mace. She smoothed the hair from her forehead, straightened
her cap, tied on the apron she had laid aside....
As she entered Bessy's sitting-room the nurse came out, memoranda in
hand. The two moved to the window for a moment's conference, and as the
wintry light fell on Miss Mace's face, Justine saw that it was white
with fatigue.
"You're ill!" she exclaimed.
The nurse shook her head. "No--but it's awful...this afternoon...." Her
glance turned to the sick-room.
"Go and rest--I'll stay till bedtime," Justine said.
"Miss Safford's down with another headache."
"I know: it doesn't matter. I'm quite fresh."
"You _do_ look rested!" the other exclaimed, her eyes lingering
enviously on Justine's face.
She stole away, and Justine entered the room. It was true that she felt
fresh--a new spring of hope had welled up in her. She had her nerves in
hand again, she had regained her steady vision of life....
But in the room, as the nurse had said, it was awful. The time had come
when the effect of the anæsthetics must be carefully husbanded, when
long intervals of pain must purchase the diminishing moments of relief.
Yet from Wyant's standpoint it was a good day--things were looking well,
as he would have phrased it. And each day now was a fresh victory.
Justine went through her task mechanically. The glow of strength and
courage remained, steeling her to bear what had broken down Miss Mace's
professional fortitude. But when she sat down by the bed Bessy's moaning
began to wear on her. It was no longer the utterance of human pain, but
the monotonous whimper of an animal--the kind of sound that a
compassionate hand would instinctively crush into silence. But her hand
had other duties; she must keep watch on pulse and heart, must reinforce
their action with the tremendous stimulants which Wyant was now using,
and, having revived fresh sensibility to pain, must presently try to
allay it by the cautious use of narcotics.
It was all simple enough--but suppose she should not do it? Suppose she
left the stimulants untouched? Wyant was absent, one nurse exhausted
with fatigue, the other laid low by headache. Justine had the field to
herself. For three hours at least no one was likely to cross the
threshold of the sick-room.... Ah, if no more time were needed! But
there was too much life in Bessy--her youth was fighting too hard for
her! She would not sink out of life in three hours...and Justine could
not count on more than that.
She looked at the little travelling-clock on the dressing-table, and saw
that its hands marked four. An hour had passed already.... She rose and
administered the prescribed restorative; then she took the pulse, and
listened to the beat of the heart. Strong still--too strong!
As she lifted her head, the vague animal wailing ceased, and she heard
her name: "Justine----"
She bent down eagerly. "Yes?"
No answer: the wailing had begun again. But the one word showed her that
the mind still lived in its torture-house, that the poor powerless body
before her was not yet a mere bundle of senseless reflexes, but her
friend Bessy Amherst, dying, and feeling herself die....
Justine reseated herself, and the vigil began again. The second hour
ebbed slowly--ah, no, it was flying now! Her eyes were on the hands of
the clock and they seemed leagued against her to devour the precious
minutes. And now she could see by certain spasmodic symptoms that
another crisis of pain was approaching--one of the struggles that Wyant,
at times, had almost seemed to court and exult in.
Bessy's eyes turned on her again. "_Justine_----"
She knew what that meant: it was an appeal for the hypodermic needle.
The little instrument lay at hand, beside a newly-filled bottle of
morphia. But she must wait--must let the pain grow more severe. Yet she
could not turn her gaze from Bessy, and Bessy's eyes entreated her
again--_Justine_! There was really no word now--the whimperings were
uninterrupted. But Justine heard an inner voice, and its pleading shook
her heart. She rose and filled the syringe--and returning with it, bent
above the bed....
* * * * *
She lifted her head and looked at the clock. The second hour had passed.
As she looked, she heard a step in the sitting-room. Who could it be?
Not Dr. Garford's assistant--he was not due till seven. She listened
again.... One of the nurses? No, not a woman's step----
The door opened, and Wyant came in. Justine stood by the bed without
moving toward him. He paused also, as if surprised to see her there
motionless. In the intense silence she fancied for a moment that she
heard Bessy's violent agonized breathing. She tried to speak, to drown
the sound of the breathing; but her lips trembled too much, and she
remained silent.
Wyant seemed to hear nothing. He stood so still that she felt she must
move forward. As she did so, she picked up from the table by the bed the
memoranda that it was her duty to submit to him.
"Well?" he said, in the familiar sick-room whisper.
"She is dead."
He fell back a step, glaring at her, white and incredulous.
"_Dead?_--When----?"
"A few minutes ago...."
"_Dead--?_ It's not possible!"
He swept past her, shouldering her aside, pushing in an electric button
as he sprang to the bed. She perceived then that the room had been
almost in darkness. She recovered command of herself, and followed him.
He was going through the usual rapid examination--pulse, heart,
breath--hanging over the bed like some angry animal balked of its prey.
Then he lifted the lids and bent close above the eyes.
"Take the shade off that lamp!" he commanded.
Justine obeyed him.
He stooped down again to examine the eyes...he remained stooping a long
time. Suddenly he stood up and faced her.
"Had she been in great pain?"
"Yes."
"Worse than usual?"
"Yes."
"What had you done?"
"Nothing--there was no time."
"No time?" He broke off to sweep the room again with his excited
incredulous glance. "Where are the others? Why were you here alone?" he
demanded.
"It came suddenly. I was going to call----"
Their eyes met for a moment. Her face was perfectly calm--she could feel
that her lips no longer trembled. She was not in the least afraid of
Wyant's scrutiny.
As he continued to look at her, his expression slowly passed from
incredulous wrath to something softer--more human--she could not tell
what....
"This has been too much for you--go and send one of the others.... It's
all over," he said.
BOOK IV
XXX
ON a September day, somewhat more than a year and a half after Bessy
Amherst's death, her husband and his mother sat at luncheon in the
dining-room of the Westmore house at Hanaford.
The house was John Amherst's now, and shortly after the loss of his wife
he had established himself there with his mother. By a will made some
six months before her death, Bessy had divided her estate between her
husband and daughter, placing Cicely's share in trust, and appointing
Mr. Langhope and Amherst as her guardians. As the latter was also her
trustee, the whole management of the estate devolved on him, while his
control of the Westmore mills was ensured by his receiving a slightly
larger proportion of the stock than his step-daughter.
The will had come as a surprise, not only to Amherst himself, but to his
wife's family, and more especially to her legal adviser. Mr. Tredegar
had in fact had nothing to do with the drawing of the instrument; but as
it had been drawn in due form, and by a firm of excellent standing, he
was obliged, in spite of his private views, and Mr. Langhope's open
adjurations that he should "do something," to declare that there was no
pretext for questioning the validity of the document.
To Amherst the will was something more than a proof of his wife's
confidence: it came as a reconciling word from her grave. For the date
showed that it had been made at a moment when he supposed himself to
have lost all influence over her--on the morrow of the day when she had
stipulated that he should give up the management of the Westmore mills,
and yield the care of her property to Mr. Tredegar.
While she smote him with one hand, she sued for pardon with the other;
and the contradiction was so characteristic, it explained and excused in
so touching a way the inconsistencies of her impulsive heart and
hesitating mind, that he was filled with that tender compunction, that
searching sense of his own shortcomings, which generous natures feel
when they find they have underrated the generosity of others. But
Amherst's was not an introspective mind, and his sound moral sense told
him, when the first pang of self-reproach had subsided, that he had done
his best by his wife, and was in no way to blame if her recognition of
the fact had come too late. The self-reproach subsided; and, instead of
the bitterness of the past, it left a softened memory which made him
take up his task with the sense that he was now working with Bessy and
not against her.
Yet perhaps, after all, it was chiefly the work itself which had healed
old wounds, and quelled the tendency to vain regrets. Amherst was only
thirty-four; and in the prime of his energies the task he was made for
had been given back to him. To a sound nature, which finds its outlet in
fruitful action, nothing so simplifies the complexities of life, so
tends to a large acceptance of its vicissitudes and mysteries, as the
sense of doing something each day toward clearing one's own bit of the
wilderness. And this was the joy at last conceded to Amherst. The mills
were virtually his; and the fact that he ruled them not only in his own
right but as Cicely's representative, made him doubly eager to justify
his wife's trust in him.
Mrs. Amherst, looking up from a telegram which the parlour-maid had
handed her, smiled across the table at her son.
"From Maria Ansell--they are all coming tomorrow."
"Ah--that's good," Amherst rejoined. "I should have been sorry if Cicely
had not been here."
"Mr. Langhope is coming too," his mother continued. "I'm glad of that,
John."
"Yes," Amherst again assented.
The morrow was to be a great day at Westmore. The Emergency Hospital,
planned in the first months of his marriage, and abandoned in the
general reduction of expenditure at the mills, had now been completed on
a larger and more elaborate scale, as a memorial to Bessy. The strict
retrenchment of all personal expenses, and the leasing of Lynbrook and
the town house, had enabled Amherst, in eighteen months, to lay by
enough income to carry out this plan, which he was impatient to see
executed as a visible commemoration of his wife's generosity to
Westmore. For Amherst persisted in regarding the gift of her fortune as
a gift not to himself but to the mills: he looked on himself merely as
the agent of her beneficent intentions. He was anxious that Westmore and
Hanaford should take the same view; and the opening of the Westmore
Memorial Hospital was therefore to be performed with an unwonted degree
of ceremony.
"I am glad Mr. Langhope is coming," Mrs. Amherst repeated, as they rose
from the table. "It shows, dear--doesn't it?--that he's really
gratified--that he appreciates your motive...."
She raised a proud glance to her tall son, whose head seemed to tower
higher than ever above her small proportions. Renewed self-confidence,
and the habit of command, had in fact restored the erectness to
Amherst's shoulders and the clearness to his eyes. The cleft between the
brows was gone, and his veiled inward gaze had given place to a glance
almost as outward-looking and unspeculative as his mother's.
"It shows--well, yes--what you say!" he rejoined with a slight laugh,
and a tap on her shoulder as she passed.
He was under no illusions as to his father-in-law's attitude: he knew
that Mr. Langhope would willingly have broken the will which deprived
his grand-daughter of half her inheritance, and that his subsequent show
of friendliness was merely a concession to expediency. But in his
present mood Amherst almost believed that time and closer relations
might turn such sentiments into honest liking. He was very fond of his
little step-daughter, and deeply sensible of his obligations toward her;
and he hoped that, as Mr. Langhope came to recognize this, it might
bring about a better understanding between them.
His mother detained him. "You're going back to the mills at once? I
wanted to consult you about the rooms. Miss Brent had better be next to
Cicely?"
"I suppose so--yes. I'll see you before I go." He nodded affectionately
and passed on, his hands full of papers, into the Oriental smoking-room,
now dedicated to the unexpected uses of an office and study.
Mrs. Amherst, as she turned away, found the parlour-maid in the act of
opening the front door to the highly-tinted and well-dressed figure of
Mrs. Harry Dressel.
"I'm so delighted to hear that you're expecting Justine," began Mrs.
Dressel as the two ladies passed into the drawing-room.
"Ah, you've heard too?" Mrs. Amherst rejoined, enthroning her visitor in
one of the monumental plush armchairs beneath the threatening weight of
the Bay of Naples.
"I hadn't till this moment; in fact I flew in to ask for news, and on
the door-step there was such a striking-looking young man enquiring for
her, and I heard the parlour-maid say she was arriving tomorrow."
"A young man? Some one you didn't know?" Striking apparitions of the
male sex were of infrequent occurrence at Hanaford, and Mrs. Amherst's
unabated interest in the movement of life caused her to dwell on this
statement.
"Oh, no--I'm sure he was a stranger. Extremely slight and pale, with
remarkable eyes. He was so disappointed--he seemed sure of finding her."
"Well, no doubt he'll come back tomorrow.--You know we're expecting the
whole party," added Mrs. Amherst, to whom the imparting of good news was
always an irresistible temptation.
Mrs. Dressel's interest deepened at once. "Really? Mr. Langhope too?"
"Yes. It's a great pleasure to my son."
"It must be! I'm so glad. I suppose in a way it will be rather sad for
Mr. Langhope--seeing everything here so unchanged----"
Mrs. Amherst straightened herself a little. "I think he will prefer to
find it so," she said, with a barely perceptible change of tone.
"Oh, I don't know. They were never very fond of this house."
There was an added note of authority in Mrs. Dressel's accent. In the
last few months she had been to Europe and had had nervous prostration,
and these incontestable evidences of growing prosperity could not always
be kept out of her voice and bearing. At any rate, they justified her in
thinking that her opinion on almost any subject within the range of
human experience was a valuable addition to the sum-total of wisdom; and
unabashed by the silence with which her comment was received, she
continued her critical survey of the drawing-room.
"Dear Mrs. Amherst--you know I can't help saying what I think--and I've
so often wondered why you don't do this room over. With these high
ceilings you could do something lovely in Louis Seize."
A faint pink rose to Mrs. Amherst's cheeks. "I don't think my son would
ever care to make any changes here," she said.
"Oh, I understand his feeling; but when he begins to entertain--and you
know poor Bessy always _hated_ this furniture."
Mrs. Amherst smiled slightly. "Perhaps if he marries again--" she said,
seizing at random on a pretext for changing the subject.
Mrs. Dressel dropped the hands with which she was absent-mindedly
assuring herself of the continuance of unbroken relations between her
hat and her hair.
"_Marries again?_ Why--you don't mean--? He doesn't think of it?"
"Not in the least--I spoke figuratively," her hostess rejoined with a
laugh.
"Oh, of course--I see. He really _couldn't_ marry, could he? I mean, it
would be so wrong to Cicely--under the circumstances."
Mrs. Amherst's black eye-brows gathered in a slight frown. She had
already noticed, on the part of the Hanaford clan, a disposition to
regard Amherst as imprisoned in the conditions of his trust, and
committed to the obligation of handing on unimpaired to Cicely the
fortune his wife's caprice had bestowed on him; and this open expression
of the family view was singularly displeasing to her.
"I had not thought of it in that light--but it's really of no
consequence how one looks at a thing that is not going to happen," she
said carelessly.
"No--naturally; I see you were only joking. He's so devoted to Cicely,
isn't he?" Mrs. Dressel rejoined, with her bright obtuseness.
A step on the threshold announced Amherst's approach.
"I'm afraid I must be off, mother--" he began, halting in the doorway
with the instinctive masculine recoil from the afternoon caller.
"Oh, Mr. Amherst, how d'you do? I suppose you're very busy about
tomorrow? I just flew in to find out if Justine was really coming," Mrs.
Dressel explained, a little fluttered by the effort of recalling what
she had been saying when he entered.
"I believe my mother expects the whole party," Amherst replied, shaking
hands with the false _bonhomie_ of the man entrapped.
"How delightful! And it's so nice to think that Mr. Langhope's
arrangement with Justine still works so well," Mrs. Dressel hastened on,
nervously hoping that her volubility would smother any recollection of
what he had chanced to overhear.
"Mr. Langhope is lucky in having persuaded Miss Brent to take charge of
Cicely," Mrs. Amherst quietly interposed.
"Yes--and it was so lucky for Justine too! When she came back from
Europe with us last autumn, I could see she simply hated the idea of
taking up her nursing again."
Amherst's face darkened at the allusion, and his mother said hurriedly:
"Ah, she was tired, poor child; but I'm only afraid that, after the
summer's rest, she may want some more active occupation than looking
after a little girl."
"Oh, I think not--she's so fond of Cicely. And of course it's everything
to her to have a comfortable home."
Mrs. Amherst smiled. "At her age, it's not always everything."
Mrs. Dressel stared slightly. "Oh, Justine's twenty-seven, you know;
she's not likely to marry now," she said, with the mild finality of the
early-wedded.
She rose as she spoke, extending cordial hands of farewell. "You must be
so busy preparing for the great day...if only it doesn't rain!... No,
_please_, Mr. Amherst!... It's a mere step--I'm walking...."
* * * * *
That afternoon, as Amherst walked out toward Westmore for a survey of
the final preparations, he found that, among the pleasant thoughts
accompanying him, one of the pleasantest was the anticipation of seeing
Justine Brent.
Among the little group who were to surround him on the morrow, she was
the only one discerning enough to understand what the day meant to him,
or with sufficient knowledge to judge of the use he had made of his
great opportunity. Even now that the opportunity had come, and all
obstacles were levelled, sympathy with his work was as much lacking as
ever; and only Duplain, at length reinstated as manager, really
understood and shared in his aims. But Justine Brent's sympathy was of a
different kind from the manager's. If less logical, it was warmer, more
penetrating--like some fine imponderable fluid, so subtle that it could
always find a way through the clumsy processes of human intercourse.
Amherst had thought very often of this quality in her during the weeks
which followed his abrupt departure for Georgia; and in trying to define
it he had said to himself that she felt with her brain.
And now, aside from the instinctive understanding between them, she was
set apart in his thoughts by her association with his wife's last days.
On his arrival from the south he had gathered on all sides evidences of
her tender devotion to Bessy: even Mr. Tredegar's chary praise swelled
the general commendation. From the surgeons he heard how her unwearied
skill had helped them in their fruitless efforts; poor Cicely, awed by
her loss, clung to her mother's friend with childish tenacity; and the
young rector of Saint Anne's, shyly acquitting himself of his visit of
condolence, dwelt chiefly on the consolatory thought of Miss Brent's
presence at the death-bed.
The knowledge that Justine had been with his wife till the end had, in
fact, done more than anything else to soften Amherst's regrets; and he
had tried to express something of this in the course of his first talk
with her. Justine had given him a clear and self-possessed report of the
dreadful weeks at Lynbrook; but at his first allusion to her own part in
them, she shrank into a state of distress which seemed to plead with him
to refrain from even the tenderest touch on her feelings. It was a
peculiarity of their friendship that silence and absence had always
mysteriously fostered its growth; and he now felt that her reticence
deepened the understanding between them as the freest confidences might
not have done.
Soon afterward, an opportune attack of nervous prostration had sent Mrs.
Harry Dressel abroad; and Justine was selected as her companion. They
remained in Europe for six months; and on their return Amherst learned
with pleasure that Mr. Langhope had asked Miss Brent to take charge of
Cicely.
Mr. Langhope's sorrow for his daughter had been aggravated by futile
wrath at her unaccountable will; and the mixed sentiment thus engendered
had found expression in a jealous outpouring of affection toward Cicely.
He took immediate possession of the child, and in the first stages of
his affliction her companionship had been really consoling. But as time
passed, and the pleasant habits of years reasserted themselves, her
presence became, in small unacknowledged ways, a source of domestic
irritation. Nursery hours disturbed the easy routine of his household;
the elderly parlour-maid who had long ruled it resented the intervention
of Cicely's nurse; the little governess, involved in the dispute, broke
down and had to be shipped home to Germany; a successor was hard to
find, and in the interval Mr. Langhope's privacy was invaded by a stream
of visiting teachers, who were always wanting to consult him about
Cicely's lessons, and lay before him their tiresome complaints and
perplexities. Poor Mr. Langhope found himself in the position of the
mourner who, in the first fervour of bereavement, has undertaken the
construction of an imposing monument without having counted the cost. He
had meant that his devotion to Cicely should be a monument to his
paternal grief; but the foundations were scarcely laid when he found
that the funds of time and patience were almost exhausted.
Pride forbade his consigning Cicely to her step-father, though Mrs.
Amherst would gladly have undertaken her care; Mrs. Ansell's migratory
habits made it impossible for her to do more than intermittently hover
and advise; and a new hope rose before Mr. Langhope when it occurred to
him to appeal to Miss Brent.
The experiment had proved a success, and when Amherst met Justine again
she had been for some months in charge of the little girl, and change
and congenial occupation had restored her to a normal view of life.
There was no trace in her now of the dumb misery which had haunted him
at their parting; she was again the vivid creature who seemed more
charged with life than any one he had ever known. The crisis through
which she had passed showed itself only in a smoothing of the brow and
deepening of the eyes, as though a bloom of experience had veiled
without deadening the first brilliancy of youth.
As he lingered on the image thus evoked, he recalled Mrs. Dressel's
words: "Justine is twenty-seven--she's not likely to marry now."
Oddly enough, he had never thought of her marrying--but now that he
heard the possibility questioned, he felt a disagreeable conviction of
its inevitableness. Mrs. Dressel's view was of course absurd. In spite
of Justine's feminine graces, he had formerly felt in her a kind of
elfin immaturity, as of a flitting Ariel with untouched heart and
senses: it was only of late that she had developed the subtle quality
which calls up thoughts of love. Not marry? Why, the vagrant fire had
just lighted on her--and the fact that she was poor and unattached, with
her own way to make, and no setting of pleasure and elegance to
embellish her--these disadvantages seemed as nothing to Amherst against
the warmth of personality in which she moved. And besides, she would
never be drawn to the kind of man who needed fine clothes and luxury to
point him to the charm of sex. She was always finished and graceful in
appearance, with the pretty woman's art of wearing her few plain dresses
as if they were many and varied; yet no one could think of her as
attaching much importance to the upholstery of life.... No, the man who
won her would be of a different type, have other inducements to
offer...and Amherst found himself wondering just what those inducements
would be.
Suddenly he remembered something his mother had said as he left the
house--something about a distinguished-looking young man who had called
to ask for Miss Brent. Mrs. Amherst, innocently inquisitive in small
matters, had followed her son into the hall to ask the parlour-maid if
the gentleman had left his name; and the parlour-maid had answered in
the negative. The young man was evidently not indigenous: all the social
units of Hanaford were intimately known to each other. He was a
stranger, therefore, presumably drawn there by the hope of seeing Miss
Brent. But if he knew that she was coming he must be intimately
acquainted with her movements.... The thought came to Amherst as an
unpleasant surprise. It showed him for the first time how little he knew
of Justine's personal life, of the ties she might have formed outside
the Lynbrook circle. After all, he had seen her chiefly not among her
own friends but among his wife's. Was it reasonable to suppose that a
creature of her keen individuality would be content to subsist on the
fringe of other existences? Somewhere, of course, she must have a centre
of her own, must be subject to influences of which he was wholly
ignorant. And since her departure from Lynbrook he had known even less
of her life. She had spent the previous winter with Mr. Langhope in New
York, where Amherst had seen her only on his rare visits to Cicely; and
Mr. Langhope, on going abroad for the summer, had established his
grand-daughter in a Bar Harbour cottage, where, save for two flying
visits from Mrs. Ansell, Miss Brent had reigned alone till his return in
September.
Very likely, Amherst reflected, the mysterious visitor was a Bar Harbour
acquaintance--no, more than an acquaintance: a friend. And as Mr.
Langhope's party had left Mount Desert but three days previously, the
arrival of the unknown at Hanaford showed a singular impatience to
rejoin Miss Brent.
As he reached this point in his meditations, Amherst found himself at
the street-corner where it was his habit to pick up the Westmore
trolley. Just as it bore down on him, and he sprang to the platform,
another car, coming in from the mills, stopped to discharge its
passengers. Among them Amherst noticed a slender undersized man in
shabby clothes, about whose retreating back, as he crossed the street to
signal a Station Avenue car, there was something dimly familiar, and
suggestive of troubled memories. Amherst leaned out and looked again:
yes, the back was certainly like Dr. Wyant's--but what could Wyant be
doing at Hanaford, and in a Westmore car?
Amherst's first impulse was to spring out and overtake him. He knew how
admirably the young physician had borne himself at Lynbrook; he even
recalled Dr. Garford's saying, with his kindly sceptical smile: "Poor
Wyant believed to the end that we could save her"--and felt again his
own inward movement of thankfulness that the cruel miracle had not been
worked.
He owed a great deal to Wyant, and had tried to express his sense of the
fact by warm words and a liberal fee; but since Bessy's death he had
never returned to Lynbrook, and had consequently lost sight of the young
doctor.
Now he felt that he ought to try to rejoin him, to find out why he was
at Hanaford, and make some proffer of hospitality; but if the stranger
were really Wyant, his choice of the Station Avenue car made it appear
that he was on his way to catch the New York express; and in any case
Amherst's engagements at Westmore made immediate pursuit impossible.
He consoled himself with the thought that if the physician was not
leaving Hanaford he would be certain to call at the house; and then his
mind flew back to Justine Brent. But the pleasure of looking forward to
her arrival was disturbed by new feelings. A sense of reserve and
embarrassment had sprung up in his mind, checking that free mental
communion which, as he now perceived, had been one of the unconscious
promoters of their friendship. It was as though his thoughts faced a
stranger instead of the familiar presence which had so long dwelt in
them; and he began to see that the feeling of intelligence existing
between Justine and himself was not the result of actual intimacy, but
merely of the charm she knew how to throw over casual intercourse.
When he had left his house, his mind was like a summer sky, all open
blue and sunlit rolling clouds; but gradually the clouds had darkened
and massed themselves, till they drew an impenetrable veil over the
upper light and stretched threateningly across his whole horizon.
XXXI
THE celebrations at Westmore were over. Hanaford society, mustering for
the event, had streamed through the hospital, inspected the clinic,
complimented Amherst, recalled itself to Mr. Langhope and Mrs. Ansell,
and streamed out again to regain its carriages and motors.
The chief actors in the ceremony were also taking leave. Mr. Langhope,
somewhat pale and nervous after the ordeal, had been helped into the
Gaines landau with Mrs. Ansell and Cicely; Mrs. Amherst had accepted a
seat in the Dressel victoria; and Westy Gaines, with an _empressement_
slightly tinged by condescension, was in the act of placing his electric
phaeton at Miss Brent's disposal.
She stood in the pretty white porch of the hospital, looking out across
its squares of flower-edged turf at the long street of Westmore. In the
warm gold-powdered light of September the factory town still seemed a
blot on the face of nature; yet here and there, on all sides, Justine's
eye saw signs of humanizing change. The rough banks along the street had
been levelled and sodded; young maples, set in rows, already made a long
festoon of gold against the dingy house-fronts; and the houses
themselves--once so irreclaimably outlawed and degraded--showed, in
their white-curtained windows, their flowery white-railed yards, a
growing approach to civilized human dwellings.
Glancing the other way, one still met the grim pile of factories cutting
the sky with their harsh roof-lines and blackened chimneys; but here
also were signs of improvement. One of the mills had already been
enlarged, another was scaffolded for the same purpose, and young trees
and neatly-fenced turf replaced the surrounding desert of trampled
earth.
As Amherst came out of the hospital, he heard Miss Brent declining a
seat in Westy's phaeton.
"Thank you so much; but there's some one here I want to see first--one
of the operatives--and I can easily take a Hanaford car." She held out
her hand with the smile that ran like colour over her whole face; and
Westy, nettled by this unaccountable disregard of her privileges,
mounted his chariot alone.
As he glided mournfully away, Amherst turned to Justine. "You wanted to
see the Dillons?" he asked.
Their eyes met, and she smiled again. He had never seen her so
sunned-over, so luminous, since the distant November day when they had
picnicked with Cicely beside the swamp. He wondered vaguely if she were
more elaborately dressed than usual, or if the festal impression she
produced were simply a reflection of her mood.
"I do want to see the Dillons--how did you guess?" she rejoined; and
Amherst felt a sudden impulse to reply: "For the same reason that made
you think of them."
The fact of her remembering the Dillons made him absurdly happy; it
re-established between them the mental communion that had been checked
by his thoughts of the previous day.
"I suppose I'm rather self-conscious about the Dillons, because they're
one of my object lessons--they illustrate the text," he said laughing,
as they went down the steps.
Westmore had been given a half-holiday for the opening of the hospital,
and as Amherst and Justine turned into the street, parties of workers
were dispersing toward their houses. They were still a dull-eyed stunted
throng, to whom air and movement seemed to have been too long denied;
but there was more animation in the groups, more light in individual
faces; many of the younger men returned Amherst's good-day with a look
of friendliness, and the women to whom he spoke met him with a
volubility that showed the habit of frequent intercourse.
"How much you have done!" Justine exclaimed, as he rejoined her after
one of these asides; but the next moment he saw a shade of embarrassment
cross her face, as though she feared to have suggested comparisons she
had meant to avoid.
He answered quite naturally: "Yes--I'm beginning to see my way now; and
it's wonderful how they respond--" and they walked on without a shadow
of constraint between them, while he described to her what was already
done, and what direction his projected experiments were taking.
The Dillons had been placed in charge of one of the old factory
tenements, now transformed into a lodging-house for unmarried
operatives. Even its harsh brick exterior, hung with creepers and
brightened by flower-borders, had taken on a friendly air; and indoors
it had a clean sunny kitchen, a big dining-room with cheerful-coloured
walls, and a room where the men could lounge and smoke about a table
covered with papers.
The creation of these model lodging-houses had always been a favourite
scheme of Amherst's, and the Dillons, incapacitated for factory work,
had shown themselves admirably adapted to their new duties. In Mrs.
Dillon's small hot sitting-room, among the starched sofa-tidies and pink
shells that testified to the family prosperity, Justine shone with
enjoyment and sympathy. She had always taken an interest in the lives
and thoughts of working-people: not so much the constructive interest of
the sociological mind as the vivid imaginative concern of a heart open
to every human appeal. She liked to hear about their hard struggles and
small pathetic successes: the children's sicknesses, the father's lucky
job, the little sum they had been able to put by, the plans they had
formed for Tommy's advancement, and how Sue's good marks at school were
still ahead of Mrs. Hagan's Mary's.
"What I really like is to gossip with them, and give them advice about
the baby's cough, and the cheapest way to do their marketing," she said
laughing, as she and Amherst emerged once more into the street. "It's
the same kind of interest I used to feel in my dolls and guinea pigs--a
managing, interfering old maid's interest. I don't believe I should care
a straw for them if I couldn't dose them and order them about."
Amherst laughed too: he recalled the time when he had dreamed that just
such warm personal sympathy was her sex's destined contribution to the
broad work of human beneficence. Well, it had not been a dream: here was
a woman whose deeds spoke for her. And suddenly the thought came to him:
what might they not do at Westmore together! The brightness of it was
blinding--like the dazzle of sunlight which faced them as they walked
toward the mills. But it left him speechless, confused--glad to have a
pretext for routing Duplain out of the office, introducing him to Miss
Brent, and asking him for the keys of the buildings....
It was wonderful, again, how she grasped what he was doing in the mills,
and saw how his whole scheme hung together, harmonizing the work and
leisure of the operatives, instead of treating them as half machine,
half man, and neglecting the man for the machine. Nor was she content
with Utopian generalities: she wanted to know the how and why of each
case, to hear what conclusions he drew from his results, to what
solutions his experiments pointed.
In explaining the mill work he forgot his constraint and returned to the
free comradery of mind that had always marked their relation. He turned
the key reluctantly in the last door, and paused a moment on the
threshold.
"Anything more?" he said, with a laugh meant to hide his desire to
prolong their tour.
She glanced up at the sun, which still swung free of the tall factory
roofs.
"As much as you've time for. Cicely doesn't need me this afternoon, and
I can't tell when I shall see Westmore again."
Her words fell on him with a chill. His smile faded, and he looked away
for a moment.
"But I hope Cicely will be here often," he said.
"Oh, I hope so too," she rejoined, with seeming unconsciousness of any
connection between the wish and her previous words.
Amherst hesitated. He had meant to propose a visit to the old Eldorado
building, which now at last housed the long-desired night-schools and
nursery; but since she had spoken he felt a sudden indifference to
showing her anything more. What was the use, if she meant to leave
Cicely, and drift out of his reach? He could get on well enough without
sympathy and comprehension, but his momentary indulgence in them made
the ordinary taste of life a little flat.
"There must be more to see?" she continued, as they turned back toward
the village; and he answered absently: "Oh, yes--if you like."
He heard the change in his own voice, and knew by her quick side-glance
that she had heard it too.
"Please let me see everything that is compatible with my getting a car
to Hanaford by six."
"Well, then--the night-school next," he said with an effort at
lightness; and to shake off the importunity of his own thoughts he added
carelessly, as they walked on: "By the way--it seems improbable--but I
think I saw Dr. Wyant yesterday in a Westmore car."
She echoed the name in surprise. "Dr. Wyant? Really! Are you sure?"
"Not quite; but if it wasn't he it was his ghost. You haven't heard of
his being at Hanaford?"
"No. I've heard nothing of him for ages."
Something in her tone made him return her side-glance; but her voice, on
closer analysis, denoted only indifference, and her profile seemed to
express the same negative sentiment. He remembered a vague Lynbrook
rumour to the effect that the young doctor had been attracted to Miss
Brent. Such floating seeds of gossip seldom rooted themselves in his
mind, but now the fact acquired a new significance, and he wondered how
he could have thought so little of it at the time. Probably her somewhat
exaggerated air of indifference simply meant that she had been bored by
Wyant's attentions, and that the reminder of them still roused a slight
self-consciousness.
Amherst was relieved by this conclusion, and murmuring: "Oh, I suppose
it can't have been he," led her rapidly on to the Eldorado. But the old
sense of free communion was again obstructed, and her interest in the
details of the schools and nursery now seemed to him only a part of her
wonderful art of absorbing herself in other people's affairs. He was a
fool to have been duped by it--to have fancied it was anything more
personal than a grace of manner.
As she turned away from inspecting the blackboards in one of the empty
school-rooms he paused before her and said suddenly: "You spoke of not
seeing Westmore again. Are you thinking of leaving Cicely?"
The words were almost the opposite of those he had intended to speak; it
was as if some irrepressible inner conviction flung defiance at his
surface distrust of her.
She stood still also, and he saw a thought move across her face. "Not
immediately--but perhaps when Mr. Langhope can make some other
arrangement----"
Owing to the half-holiday they had the school-building to themselves,
and the fact of being alone with her, without fear of interruption, woke
in Amherst an uncontrollable longing to taste for once the joy of
unguarded utterance.
"Why do you go?" he asked, moving close to the platform on which she
stood.
She hesitated, resting her hand on the teacher's desk. Her eyes were
kind, but he thought her tone was cold.
"This easy life is rather out of my line," she said at length, with a
smile that draped her words in vagueness.
Amherst looked at her again--she seemed to be growing remote and
inaccessible. "You mean that you don't want to stay?"
His tone was so abrupt that it called forth one of her rare blushes.
"No--not that. I have been very happy with Cicely--but soon I shall have
to be doing something else."
Why was she blushing? And what did her last phrase mean? "Something
else--?" The blood hummed in his ears--he began to hope she would not
answer too quickly.
She had sunk into the seat behind the desk, propping her elbows on its
lid, and letting her interlaced hands support her chin. A little bunch
of violets which had been thrust into the folds of her dress detached
itself and fell to the floor.
"What I mean is," she said in a low voice, raising her eyes to
Amherst's, "that I've had a great desire lately to get back to real
work--my special work.... I've been too idle for the last year--I want
to do some hard nursing; I want to help people who are miserable."
She spoke earnestly, almost passionately, and as he listened his
undefined fear was lifted. He had never before seen her in this mood,
with brooding brows, and the darkness of the world's pain in her eyes.
All her glow had faded--she was a dun thrush-like creature, clothed in
semi-tints; yet she seemed much nearer than when her smile shot light on
him.
He stood motionless, his eyes absently fixed on the bunch of violets at
her feet. Suddenly he raised his head, and broke out with a boyish
blush: "Could it have been Wyant who was trying to see you?"
"Dr. Wyant--trying to see me?" She lowered her hands to the desk, and
sat looking at him with open wonder.
He saw the irrelevance of his question, and burst, in spite of himself,
into youthful laughter.
"I mean--It's only that an unknown visitor called at the house
yesterday, and insisted that you must have arrived. He seemed so annoyed
at not finding you, that I thought...I imagined...it must be some one
who knew you very well...and who had followed you here...for some
special reason...."
Her colour rose again, as if caught from his; but her eyes still
declared her ignorance. "Some special reason----?"
"And just now," he blurted out, "when you said you might not stay much
longer with Cicely--I thought of the visit--and wondered if there was
some one you meant to marry...."
A silence fell between them. Justine rose slowly, her eyes screened
under the veil she had lowered. "No--I don't mean to marry," she said,
half-smiling, as she came down from the platform.
Restored to his level, her small shadowy head just in a line with his
eyes, she seemed closer, more approachable and feminine--yet Amherst did
not dare to speak.
She took a few steps toward the window, looking out into the deserted
street. "It's growing dark--I must go home," she said.
"Yes," he assented absently as he followed her. He had no idea what she
was saying. The inner voices in which they habitually spoke were growing
louder than outward words. Or was it only the voice of his own desires
that he heard--the cry of new hopes and unguessed capacities of living?
All within him was flood-tide: this was the top of life, surely--to feel
her alike in his brain and his pulses, to steep sight and hearing in the
joy of her nearness, while all the while thought spoke clear: "This is
the mate of my mind."
He began again abruptly. "Wouldn't you marry, if it gave you the chance
to do what you say--if it offered you hard work, and the opportunity to
make things better...for a great many people...as no one but yourself
could do it?"
It was a strange way of putting his case: he was aware of it before he
ended. But it had not occurred to him to tell her that she was lovely
and desirable--in his humility he thought that what he had to give would
plead for him better than what he was.
The effect produced on her by his question, though undecipherable, was
extraordinary. She stiffened a little, remaining quite motionless, her
eyes on the street.
"_You!_" she just breathed; and he saw that she was beginning to
tremble.
His wooing had been harsh and clumsy--he was afraid it had offended her,
and his hand trembled too as it sought hers.
"I only thought--it would be a dull business to most women--and I'm tied
to it for life...but I thought...I've seen so often how you pity
suffering...how you long to relieve it...."
She turned away from him with a shuddering sigh. "Oh, I _hate_
suffering!" she broke out, raising her hands to her face.
Amherst was frightened. How senseless of him to go on reiterating the
old plea! He ought to have pleaded for himself--to have let the man in
him seek her and take his defeat, instead of beating about the flimsy
bush of philanthropy.
"I only meant--I was trying to make my work recommend me..." he said
with a half-laugh, as she remained silent, her eyes still turned away.
The silence continued for a long time--it stretched between them like a
narrowing interminable road, down which, with a leaden heart, he seemed
to watch her gradually disappearing. And then, unexpectedly, as she
shrank to a tiny speck at the dip of the road, the perspective was
mysteriously reversed, and he felt her growing nearer again, felt her
close to him--felt her hand in his.
"I'm really just like other women, you know--I shall like it because
it's your work," she said.
XXXII
EVERY one agreed that, on the whole, Mr. Langhope had behaved extremely
well.
He was just beginning to regain his equanimity in the matter of the
will--to perceive that, in the eyes of the public, something important
and distinguished was being done at Westmore, and that the venture,
while reducing Cicely's income during her minority, might, in some
incredible way, actually make for its ultimate increase. So much Mr.
Langhope, always eager to take the easiest view of the inevitable, had
begun to let fall in his confidential comments on Amherst; when his
newly-regained balance was rudely shaken by the news of his son-in-law's
marriage.
The free expression of his anger was baffled by the fact that, even by
the farthest stretch of self-extenuating logic, he could find no one to
blame for the event but himself.
"Why on earth don't you say so--don't you call me a triple-dyed fool for
bringing them together?" he challenged Mrs. Ansell, as they had the
matter out together in the small intimate drawing-room of her New York
apartment.
Mrs. Ansell, stirring her tea with a pensive hand, met the challenge
composedly.
"At present you're doing it for me," she reminded him; "and after all,
I'm not so disposed to agree with you."
"Not agree with me? But you told me not to engage Miss Brent! Didn't you
tell me not to engage her?"
She made a hesitating motion of assent.
"But, good Lord, how was I to help myself? No man was ever in such a
quandary!" he broke off, leaping back to the other side of the argument.
"No," she said, looking up at him suddenly. "I believe that, for the
only time in your life, you were sorry then that you hadn't married me."
She held his eyes for a moment with a look of gentle malice; then he
laughed, and drew forth his cigarette-case.
"Oh, come--you've inverted the formula," he said, reaching out for the
enamelled match-box at his elbow. She let the pleasantry pass with a
slight smile, and he went on reverting to his grievance: "Why _didn't_
you want me to engage Miss Brent?"
"Oh, I don't know...some instinct."
"You won't tell me?"
"I couldn't if I tried; and now, after all----"
"After all--what?"
She reflected. "You'll have Cicely off your mind, I mean."
"Cicely off my mind?" Mr. Langhope was beginning to find his charming
friend less consolatory than usual. After all, the most magnanimous
woman has her circuitous way of saying _I told you so_. "As if any good
governess couldn't have done that for me!" he grumbled.
"Ah--the present care for her. But I was looking ahead," she rejoined.
"To what--if I may ask?"
"The next few years--when Mrs. Amherst may have children of her own."
"Children of her own?" He bounded up, furious at the suggestion.
"Had it never occurred to you?"
"Hardly as a source of consolation!"
"I think a philosophic mind might find it so."
"I should really be interested to know how!"
Mrs. Ansell put down her cup, and again turned her gentle tolerant eyes
upon him.
"Mr. Amherst, as a father, will take a more conservative view of his
duties. Every one agrees that, in spite of his theories, he has a good
head for business; and whatever he does at Westmore for the advantage of
his children will naturally be for Cicely's advantage too."
Mr. Langhope returned her gaze thoughtfully. "There's something in what
you say," he admitted after a pause. "But it doesn't alter the fact
that, with Amherst unmarried, the whole of the Westmore fortune would
have gone back to Cicely--where it belongs."
"Possibly. But it was so unlikely that he would remain unmarried."
"I don't see why! A man of honour would have felt bound to keep the
money for Cicely."
"But you must remember that, from Mr. Amherst's standpoint, the money
belongs rather to Westmore than to Cicely."
"He's no better than a socialist, then!"
"Well--supposing he isn't: the birth of a son and heir will cure that."
Mr. Langhope winced, but she persisted gently: "It's really safer for
Cicely as it is--" and before the end of the conference he found himself
confessing, half against his will: "Well, since he hadn't the decency
to remain single, I'm thankful he hasn't inflicted a stranger on us; and
I shall never forget what Miss Brent did for my poor Bessy...."
It was the view she had wished to bring him to, and the view which, in
due course, with all his accustomed grace and adaptability, he presented
to the searching gaze of a society profoundly moved by the incident of
Amherst's marriage. "Of course, if Mr. Langhope approves--" society
reluctantly murmured; and that Mr. Langhope did approve was presently
made manifest by every outward show of consideration toward the
newly-wedded couple.
* * * * *
Amherst and Justine had been married in September; and after a holiday
in Canada and the Adirondacks they returned to Hanaford for the winter.
Amherst had proposed a short flight to Europe; but his wife preferred to
settle down at once to her new duties.
The announcement of her marriage had been met by Mrs. Dressel with a
comment which often afterward returned to her memory. "It's splendid for
you, of course, dear, _in one way_," her friend had murmured, between
disparagement and envy--"that is, if you can stand talking about the
Westmore mill-hands all the rest of your life."
"Oh, but I couldn't--I should hate it!" Justine had energetically
rejoined; meeting Mrs. Dressel's admonitory "Well, then?" with the
laughing assurance that _she_ meant to lead the conversation.
She knew well enough what the admonition meant. To Amherst, so long
thwarted in his chosen work, the subject of Westmore was becoming an
_idée fixe_; and it was natural that Hanaford should class him as a man
of one topic. But Justine had guessed at his other side; a side as long
thwarted, and far less articulate, which she intended to wake into life.
She had felt it in him from the first, though their talks had so
uniformly turned on the subject which palled on Hanaford; and it had
been revealed to her during the silent hours among his books, when she
had grown into such close intimacy with his mind.
She did not, assuredly, mean to spend the rest of her days talking about
the Westmore mill-hands; but in the arrogance of her joy she wished to
begin her married life in the setting of its habitual duties, and to
achieve the victory of evoking the secret unsuspected Amherst out of the
preoccupied business man chained to his task. Dull lovers might have to
call on romantic scenes to wake romantic feelings; but Justine's
glancing imagination leapt to the challenge of extracting poetry from
the prose of routine.
And this was precisely the triumph that the first months brought her. To
mortal eye, Amherst and Justine seemed to be living at Hanaford: in
reality they were voyaging on unmapped seas of adventure. The seas were
limitless, and studded with happy islands: every fresh discovery they
made about each other, every new agreement of ideas and feelings,
offered itself to these intrepid explorers as a friendly coast where
they might beach their keel and take their bearings. Thus, in the
thronging hum of metaphor, Justine sometimes pictured their relation;
seeing it, again, as a journey through crowded populous cities, where
every face she met was Amherst's; or, contrarily, as a multiplication of
points of perception, so that one became, for the world's contact, a
surface so multitudinously alive that the old myth of hearing the grass
grow and walking the rainbow explained itself as the heightening of
personality to the utmost pitch of sympathy.
In reality, the work at Westmore became an almost necessary sedative
after these flights into the blue. She felt sometimes that they would
have been bankrupted of sensations if daily hours of drudgery had not
provided a reservoir in which fresh powers of enjoyment could slowly
gather. And their duties had the rarer quality of constituting,
precisely, the deepest, finest bond between them, the clarifying element
which saved their happiness from stagnation, and kept it in the strong
mid-current of human feeling.
It was this element in their affection which, in the last days of
November, was unexpectedly put on trial. Mr. Langhope, since his return
from his annual visit to Europe, showed signs of diminishing strength
and elasticity. He had had to give up his nightly dinner parties, to
desert his stall at the Opera: to take, in short, as he plaintively put
it, his social pleasures homœopathically. Certain of his friends
explained the change by saying that he had never been "quite the same"
since his daughter's death; while others found its determining cause in
the shock of Amherst's second marriage. But this insinuation Mr.
Langhope in due time discredited by writing to ask the Amhersts if they
would not pity his loneliness and spend the winter in town with him. The
proposal came in a letter to Justine, which she handed to her husband
one afternoon on his return from the mills.
She sat behind the tea-table in the Westmore drawing-room, now at last
transformed, not into Mrs. Dressel's vision of "something lovely in
Louis Seize," but into a warm yet sober setting for books, for scattered
flowers, for deep chairs and shaded lamps in pleasant nearness to each
other.
Amherst raised his eyes from the letter, thinking as he did so how well
her bright head, with its flame-like play of meanings, fitted into the
background she had made for it. Still unobservant of external details,
he was beginning to feel a vague well-being of the eye wherever her
touch had passed.
"Well, we must do it," he said simply.
"Oh, must we?" she murmured, holding out his cup.
He smiled at her note of dejection. "Unnatural woman! New York _versus_
Hanaford--do you really dislike it so much?"
She tried to bring a tone of consent into her voice. "I shall be very
glad to be with Cicely again--and that, of course," she reflected, "is
the reason why Mr. Langhope wants us."
"Well--if it is, it's a good reason."
"Yes. But how much shall you be with us?"
"If you say so, I'll arrange to get away for a month or two."
"Oh, no: I don't want that!" she said, with a smile that triumphed a
little. "But why should not Cicely come here?"
"If Mr. Langhope is cut off from his usual amusements, I'm afraid that
would only make him more lonely."
"Yes, I suppose so." She put aside her untasted cup, resting her elbows
on her knees, and her chin on her clasped hands, in the attitude
habitual to her in moments of inward debate.
Amherst rose and seated himself on the sofa beside her. "Dear! What is
it?" he said, drawing her hands down, so that she had to turn her face
to his.
"Nothing...I don't know...a superstition. I've been so happy here!"
"Is our happiness too perishable to be transplanted?"
She smiled and answered by another question. "You don't mind doing it,
then?"
Amherst hesitated. "Shall I tell you? I feel that it's a sort of ring of
Polycrates. It may buy off the jealous gods."
A faint shrinking from some importunate suggestion seemed to press her
closer to him. "Then you feel they _are_ jealous?" she breathed, in a
half-laugh.
"I pity them if they're not!"
"Yes," she agreed, rallying to his tone. "I only had a fancy that they
might overlook such a dull place as Hanaford."
Amherst drew her to him. "Isn't it, on the contrary, in the ash-heaps
that the rag-pickers prowl?"
* * * * *
There was no disguising it: she was growing afraid of her happiness. Her
husband's analogy of the ring expressed her fear. She seemed to herself
to carry a blazing jewel on her breast--something that singled her out
for human envy and divine pursuit. She had a preposterous longing to
dress plainly and shabbily, to subdue her voice and gestures, to try to
slip through life unnoticed; yet all the while she knew that her jewel
would shoot its rays through every disguise. And from the depths of
ancient atavistic instincts came the hope that Amherst was right--that
by sacrificing their precious solitude to Mr. Langhope's convenience
they might still deceive the gods.
* * * * *
Once pledged to her new task, Justine, as usual, espoused it with
ardour. It was pleasant, even among greater joys, to see her husband
again frankly welcomed by Mr. Langhope; to see Cicely bloom into
happiness at their coming; and to overhear Mr. Langhope exclaim, in a
confidential aside to his son-in-law: "It's wonderful, the _bien-être_
that wife of yours diffuses about her!"
The element of _bien-être_ was the only one in which Mr. Langhope could
draw breath; and to those who kept him immersed in it he was prodigal of
delicate attentions. The experiment, in short, was a complete success;
and even Amherst's necessary weeks at Hanaford had the merit of giving a
finer flavour to his brief appearances.
Of all this Justine was thinking as she drove down Fifth Avenue one
January afternoon to meet her husband at the Grand Central station. She
had tamed her happiness at last: the quality of fear had left it, and it
nestled in her heart like some wild creature subdued to human ways.
And, as her inward bliss became more and more a quiet habit of the mind,
the longing to help and minister returned, absorbing her more deeply in
her husband's work.
She dismissed the carriage at the station, and when his train had
arrived they emerged together into the cold winter twilight and turned
up Madison Avenue. These walks home from the station gave them a little
more time to themselves than if they had driven; and there was always so
much to tell on both sides. This time the news was all good: the work at
Westmore was prospering, and on Justine's side there was a more cheerful
report of Mr. Langhope's health, and--best of all--his promise to give
them Cicely for the summer. Amherst and Justine were both anxious that
the child should spend more time at Hanaford, that her young
associations should begin to gather about Westmore; and Justine exulted
in the fact that the suggestion had come from Mr. Langhope himself,
while she and Amherst were still planning how to lead him up to it.
They reached the house while this triumph was still engaging them; and
in the doorway Amherst turned to her with a smile.
"And of course--dear man!--he believes the idea is all his. There's
nothing you can't make people believe, you little Jesuit!"
"I don't think there is!" she boasted, falling gaily into his tone; and
then, as the door opened, and she entered the hall, her eyes fell on a
blotted envelope which lay among the letters on the table.
The parlour-maid proffered it with a word of explanation. "A gentleman
left it for you, madam; he asked to see you, and said he'd call for the
answer in a day or two."
"Another begging letter, I suppose," said Amherst, turning into the
drawing-room, where Mr. Langhope and Cicely awaited them; and Justine,
carelessly pushing the envelope into her muff, murmured "I suppose so"
as she followed him.
XXXIII
OVER the tea-table Justine forgot the note in her muff; but when she
went upstairs to dress it fell to the floor, and she picked it up and
laid it on her dressing-table.
She had already recognized the hand as Wyant's, for it was not the first
letter she had received from him.
Three times since her marriage he had appealed to her for help, excusing
himself on the plea of difficulties and ill-health. The first time he
wrote, he alluded vaguely to having married, and to being compelled,
through illness, to give up his practice at Clifton. On receiving this
letter she made enquiries, and learned that, a month or two after her
departure from Lynbrook, Wyant had married a Clifton girl--a pretty
piece of flaunting innocence, whom she remembered about the lanes,
generally with a young man in a buggy. There had evidently been
something obscure and precipitate about the marriage, which was a
strange one for the ambitious young doctor. Justine conjectured that it
might have been the cause of his leaving Clifton--or or perhaps he had
already succumbed to the fatal habit she had suspected in him. At any
rate he seemed, in some mysterious way, to have dropped in two years
from promise to failure; yet she could not believe that, with his
talents, and the name he had begun to make, such a lapse could be more
than temporary. She had often heard Dr. Garford prophesy great things
for him; but Dr. Garford had died suddenly during the previous summer,
and the loss of this powerful friend was mentioned by Wyant among his
misfortunes.
Justine was anxious to help him, but her marriage to a rich man had not
given her the command of much money. She and Amherst, choosing to regard
themselves as pensioners on the Westmore fortune, were scrupulous in
restricting their personal expenditure; and her work among the
mill-hands brought many demands on the modest allowance which her
husband had insisted on her accepting. In reply to Wyant's first appeal,
which reached her soon after her marriage, she had sent him a hundred
dollars; but when the second came, some two months later--with a fresh
tale of ill-luck and ill-health--she had not been able to muster more
than half the amount. Finally a third letter had arrived, a short time
before their leaving for New York. It told the same story of persistent
misfortune, but on this occasion Wyant, instead of making a direct
appeal for money, suggested that, through her hospital connections, she
should help him to establish a New York practice. His tone was
half-whining, half-peremptory, his once precise writing smeared and
illegible; and these indications, combined with her former suspicions,
convinced her that, for the moment, he was unfit for medical work. At
any rate, she could not assume the responsibility of recommending him;
and in answering she advised him to apply to some of the physicians he
had worked with at Lynbrook, softening her refusal by the enclosure of a
small sum of money. To this letter she received no answer. Wyant
doubtless found the money insufficient, and resented her unwillingness
to help him by the use of her influence; and she felt sure that the note
before her contained a renewal of his former request.
An obscure reluctance made her begin to undress before opening it. She
felt slightly tired and indolently happy, and she did not wish any
jarring impression to break in on the sense of completeness which her
husband's coming always put into her life. Her happiness was making her
timid and luxurious: she was beginning to shrink from even trivial
annoyances.
But when at length, in her dressing-gown, her loosened hair about her
shoulders, she seated herself before the toilet-mirror, Wyant's note
once more confronted her. It was absurd to put off reading it--if he
asked for money again, she would simply confide the whole business to
Amherst.
She had never spoken to her husband of her correspondence with Wyant.
The mere fact that the latter had appealed to her, instead of addressing
himself to Amherst, made her suspect that he had a weakness to hide, and
counted on her professional discretion. But his continued importunities
would certainly release her from any such supposed obligation; and she
thought with relief of casting the weight of her difficulty on her
husband's shoulders.
She opened the note and read.
"I did not acknowledge your last letter because I was ashamed to tell
you that the money was not enough to be of any use. But I am past shame
now. My wife was confined three weeks ago, and has been desperately ill
ever since. She is in no state to move, but we shall be put out of these
rooms unless I can get money or work at once. A word from you would have
given me a start in New York--and I'd be willing to begin again as an
interne or a doctor's assistant.
"I have never reminded you of what you owe me, and I should not do so
now if I hadn't been to hell and back since I saw you. But I suppose you
would rather have me remind you than apply to Mr. Amherst. You can tell
me when to call for my answer."
Justine laid down the letter and looked up. Her eyes rested on her own
reflection in the glass, and it frightened her. She sat motionless, with
a thickly-beating heart, one hand clenched on the letter.
_"I suppose you would rather have me remind you than apply to Mr.
Amherst."_
That was what his importunity meant, then! She had been paying blackmail
all this time.... Somewhere, from the first, in an obscure fold of
consciousness, she had felt the stir of an unnamed, unacknowledged fear;
and now the fear raised its head and looked at her. Well! She would look
back at it, then: look it straight in the malignant eye. What was it,
after all, but a "bugbear to scare children"--the ghost of the opinion
of the many? She had suspected from the first that Wyant knew of her
having shortened the term of Bessy Amherst's sufferings--returning to
the room when he did, it was almost impossible that he should not have
guessed what had happened; and his silence had made her believe that he
understood her motive and approved it. But, supposing she had been
mistaken, she still had nothing to fear, since she had done nothing that
her own conscience condemned. If the act were to do again she would do
it--she had never known a moment's regret!
Suddenly she heard Amherst's step in the passage--heard him laughing and
talking as he chased Cicely up the stairs to the nursery.
_If she was not afraid, why had she never told Amherst?_
Why, the answer to that was simple enough! She had not told him _because
she was not afraid_. From the first she had retained sufficient
detachment to view her act impartially, to find it completely justified
by circumstances, and to decide that, since those circumstances could be
but partly and indirectly known to her husband, she not only had the
right to keep her own counsel, but was actually under a kind of
obligation not to force on him the knowledge of a fact that he could not
alter and could not completely judge.... Was there any flaw in this line
of reasoning? Did it not show a deliberate weighing of conditions, a
perfect rectitude of intention? And, after all, she had had Amherst's
virtual consent to her act! She knew his feelings on such matters--his
independence of traditional judgments, his horror of inflicting needless
pain--she was as sure of his intellectual assent as of her own. She was
even sure that, when she told him, he would appreciate her reasons for
not telling him before....
For now of course he must know everything--this horrible letter made it
inevitable. She regretted that she had decided, though for the best of
reasons, not to speak to him of her own accord; for it was intolerable
that he should think of any external pressure as having brought her to
avowal. But no! he would not think that. The understanding between them
was so complete that no deceptive array of circumstances could ever make
her motives obscure to him. She let herself rest a moment in the
thought....
Presently she heard him moving in the next room--he had come back to
dress for dinner. She would go to him now, at once--she could not bear
this weight on her mind the whole evening. She pushed back her chair,
crumpling the letter in her hand; but as she did so, her eyes again fell
on her reflection. She could not go to her husband with such a face! If
she was not afraid, why did she look like that?
Well--she was afraid! It would be easier and simpler to admit it. She
was afraid--afraid for the first time--afraid for her own happiness! She
had had just eight months of happiness--it was horrible to think of
losing it so soon.... Losing it? But why should she lose it? The letter
must have affected her brain...all her thoughts were in a blur of
fear.... Fear of what? Of the man who understood her as no one else
understood her? The man to whose wisdom and mercy she trusted as the
believer trusts in God? This was a kind of abominable nightmare--even
Amherst's image had been distorted in her mind! The only way to clear
her brain, to recover the normal sense of things, was to go to him now,
at once, to feel his arms about her, to let his kiss dispel her
fears.... She rose with a long breath of relief.
She had to cross the length of the room to reach his door, and when she
had gone half-way she heard him knock.
"May I come in?"
She was close to the fire-place, and a bright fire burned on the hearth.
"Come in!" she answered; and as she did so, she turned and dropped
Wyant's letter into the fire. Her hand had crushed it into a little
ball, and she saw the flames spring up and swallow it before her husband
entered.
It was not that she had changed her mind--she still meant to tell him
everything. But to hold the letter was like holding a venomous
snake--she wanted to exterminate it, to forget that she had ever seen
the blotted repulsive characters. And she could not bear to have
Amherst's eyes rest on it, to have him know that any man had dared to
write to her in that tone. What vile meanings might not be read between
Wyant's phrases? She had a right to tell the story in her own way--the
true way....
As Amherst approached, in his evening clothes, the heavy locks smoothed
from his forehead, a flower of Cicely's giving in his button-hole, she
thought she had never seen him look so kind and handsome.
"Not dressed? Do you know that it's ten minutes to eight?" he said,
coming up to her with a smile.
She roused herself, putting her hands to her hair. "Yes, I know--I
forgot," she murmured, longing to feel his arms about her, but standing
rooted to the ground, unable to move an inch nearer.
It was he who came close, drawing her lifted hands into his. "You look
worried--I hope it was nothing troublesome that made you forget?"
The divine kindness in his voice, his eyes! Yes--it would be easy, quite
easy, to tell him....
"No--yes--I was a little troubled...." she said, feeling the warmth of
his touch flow through her hands reassuringly.
"Dear! What about?"
She drew a deep breath. "The letter----"
He looked puzzled. "What letter?"
"Downstairs...when we came in...it was not an ordinary begging-letter."
"No? What then?" he asked, his face clouding.
She noticed the change, and it frightened her. Was he angry? Was he
going to be angry? But how absurd! He was only distressed at her
distress.
"What then?" he repeated, more gently.
She looked up into his eyes for an instant. "It was a horrible
letter----" she whispered, as she pressed her clasped hands against him.
His grasp tightened on her wrists, and again the stern look crossed his
face. "Horrible? What do you mean?"
She had never seen him angry--but she felt suddenly that, to the guilty
creature, his anger would be terrible. He would crush Wyant--she must be
careful how she spoke.
"I didn't mean that--only painful...."
"Where is the letter? Let me see it."
"Oh, no" she exclaimed, shrinking away.
"Justine, what has happened? What ails you?"
On a blind impulse she had backed toward the hearth, propping her arms
against the mantel-piece while she stole a secret glance at the embers.
Nothing remained of it--no, nothing.
But suppose it was against herself that his anger turned? The idea was
preposterous, yet she trembled at it. It was clear that she must say
_something_ at once--must somehow account for her agitation. But the
sense that she was unnerved--no longer in control of her face, her
voice--made her feel that she would tell her story badly if she told it
now.... Had she not the right to gain a respite, to choose her own hour?
Weakness--weakness again! Every delay would only increase the phantom
terror. Now, _now_--with her head on his breast!
She turned toward him and began to speak impulsively.
"I can't show you the letter, because it's not--not my secret----"
"Ah?" he murmured, perceptibly relieved.
"It's from some one--unlucky--whom I've known about...."
"And whose troubles have been troubling you? But can't we help?"
She shone on him through gleaming lashes. "Some one poor and ill--who
needs money, I mean----" She tried to laugh away her tears. "And I
haven't any! That's _my_ trouble!"
"Foolish child! And to beg you are ashamed? And so you're letting your
tears cool Mr. Langhope's soup?" He had her in his arms now, his kisses
drying her cheek; and she turned her head so that their lips met in a
long pressure.
"Will a hundred dollars do?" he asked with a smile as he released her.
_A hundred dollars!_ No--she was almost sure they would not. But she
tried to shape a murmur of gratitude. "Thank you--thank you! I hated to
ask...."
"I'll write the cheque at once."
"No--no," she protested, "there's no hurry."
But he went back to his room, and she turned again to the toilet-table.
Her face was painful to look at still--but a light was breaking through
its fear. She felt the touch of a narcotic in her veins. How calm and
peaceful the room was--and how delicious to think that her life would go
on in it, safely and peacefully, in the old familiar way!
As she swept up her hair, passing the comb through it, and flinging it
dexterously over her lifted wrist, she heard Amherst cross the floor
behind her, and pause to lay something on her writing-table.
"Thank you," she murmured again, lowering her head as he passed.
When the door had closed on him she thrust the last pin into her hair,
dashed some drops of Cologne on her face, and went over to the
writing-table. As she picked up the cheque she saw it was for three
hundred dollars.
XXXIV
ONCE or twice, in the days that followed, Justine found herself thinking
that she had never known happiness before. The old state of secure
well-being seemed now like a dreamless sleep; but this new bliss, on its
sharp pinnacle ringed with fire--this thrilling conscious joy, daily
and hourly snatched from fear--this was living, not sleeping!
Wyant acknowledged her gift with profuse, almost servile thanks. She had
sent it without a word--saying to herself that pity for his situation
made it possible to ignore his baseness. And the days went on as before.
She was not conscious of any change, save in the heightened, almost
artificial quality of her happiness, till one day in March, when Mr.
Langhope announced that he was going for two or three weeks to a
friend's shooting-box in the south. The anniversary of Bessy's death was
approaching, and Justine knew that at that time he always absented
himself.
"Supposing you and Amherst were to carry off Cicely till I come back?
Perhaps you could persuade him to break away from work for once--or, if
that's impossible, you could take her with you to Hanaford. She looks a
little pale, and the change would be good for her."
This was a great concession on Mr. Langhope's part, and Justine saw the
pleasure in her husband's face. It was the first time that his
father-in-law had suggested Cicely's going to Hanaford.
"I'm afraid I can't break away just now, sir," Amherst said, "but it
will be delightful for Justine if you'll give us Cicely while you're
away."
"Take her by all means, my dear fellow: I always sleep on both ears when
she's with your wife."
It was nearly three months since Justine had left Hanaford--and now she
was to return there alone with her husband! There would be hours, of
course, when the child's presence was between them--or when, again, his
work would keep him at the mills. But in the evenings, when Cicely was
in bed--when he and she sat alone, together in the Westmore
drawing-room--in Bessy's drawing-room!... No--she must find some excuse
for remaining away till she had again grown used to the idea of being
alone with Amherst. Every day she was growing a little more used to it;
but it would take time--time, and the full assurance that Wyant was
silenced. Till then she could not go back to Hanaford.
She found a pretext in her own health. She pleaded that she was a little
tired, below par...and to return to Hanaford meant returning to hard
work; with the best will in the world she could not be idle there. Might
she not, she suggested, take Cicely to Tuxedo or Lakewood, and thus get
quite away from household cares and good works? The pretext rang
hollow--it was so unlike her! She saw Amherst's eyes rest anxiously on
her as Mr. Langhope uttered his prompt assent. Certainly she did look
tired--Mr. Langhope himself had noticed it. Had he perhaps over-taxed
her energies, left the household too entirely on her shoulders? Oh,
no--it was only the New York air...like Cicely, she pined for a breath
of the woods.... And so, the day Mr. Langhope left, she and Cicely were
packed off to Lakewood.
They stayed there a week: then a fit of restlessness drove Justine back
to town. She found an excuse in the constant rain--it was really
useless, as she wrote Mr. Langhope, to keep the child imprisoned in an
over-heated hotel while they could get no benefit from the outdoor life.
In reality, she found the long lonely hours unendurable. She pined for a
sight of her husband, and thought of committing Cicely to Mrs. Ansell's
care, and making a sudden dash for Hanaford. But the vision of the long
evenings in the Westmore drawing-room again restrained her. No--she
would simply go back to New York, dine out occasionally, go to a concert
or two, trust to the usual demands of town life to crowd her hours with
small activities.... And in another week Mr. Langhope would be back and
the days would resume their normal course.
On arriving, she looked feverishly through the letters in the hall. None
from Wyant--that fear was allayed! Every day added to her reassurance. By
this time, no doubt, he was on his feet again, and ashamed--unutterably
ashamed--of the threat that despair had wrung from him. She felt almost
sure that his shame would keep him from ever attempting to see her, or
even from writing again.
"A gentleman called to see you yesterday, madam--he would give no name,"
the parlour-maid said. And there was the sick fear back on her again!
She could hardly control the trembling of her lips as she asked: "Did he
leave no message?"
"No, madam: he only wanted to know when you'd be back."
She longed to return: "And did you tell him?" but restrained herself,
and passed into the drawing-room. After all, the parlour-maid had not
described the caller--why jump to the conclusion that it was Wyant?
Three days passed, and no letter came--no sign. She struggled with the
temptation to describe Wyant to the servants, and to forbid his
admission. But it would not do. They were nearly all old servants, in
whose eyes she was still the intruder, the upstart sick-nurse--she could
not wholly trust them. And each day she felt a little easier, a little
more convinced that the unknown visitor had not been Wyant.
On the fourth day she received a letter from Amherst. He hoped to be
back on the morrow, but as his plans were still uncertain he would
telegraph in the morning--and meanwhile she must keep well, and rest,
and amuse herself....
Amuse herself! That evening, as it happened, she was going to the
theatre with Mrs. Ansell. She and Mrs. Ansell, though outwardly on
perfect terms, had not greatly advanced in intimacy. The agitated,
decentralized life of the older woman seemed futile and trivial to
Justine; but on Mr. Langhope's account she wished to keep up an
appearance of friendship with his friend, and the same motive doubtless
inspired Mrs. Ansell. Just now, at any rate, Justine was grateful for
her attentions, and glad to go about with her. Anything--anything to get
away from her own thoughts! That was the pass she had come to.
At the theatre, in a proscenium box, the publicity, the light and
movement, the action of the play, all helped to distract and quiet her.
At such moments she grew ashamed of her fears. Why was she tormenting
herself? If anything happened she had only to ask her husband for more
money. She never spoke to him of her good works, and there would be
nothing to excite suspicion in her asking help again for the friend
whose secret she was pledged to keep.... But nothing was going to
happen. As the play progressed, and the stimulus of talk and laughter
flowed through her veins, she felt a complete return of confidence. And
then suddenly she glanced across the house, and saw Wyant looking at
her.
He sat rather far back, in one of the side rows just beneath the
balcony, so that his face was partly shaded. But even in the shadow it
frightened her. She had been prepared for a change, but not for this
ghastly deterioration. And he continued to look at her.
She began to be afraid that he would do something conspicuous--point at
her, or stand up in his seat. She thought he looked half-mad--or was it
her own hallucination that made him appear so? She and Mrs. Ansell were
alone in the box for the moment, and she started up, pushing back her
chair....
Mrs. Ansell leaned forward. "What is it?"
"Nothing--the heat--I'll sit back for a moment." But as she withdrew
into the back of the box, she was seized by a new fear. If he was still
watching, might he not come to the door and try to speak to her? Her
only safety lay in remaining in full view of the audience; and she
returned to Mrs. Ansell's side.
The other members of the party came back--the bell rang, the foot-lights
blazed, the curtain rose. She lost herself in the mazes of the play. She
sat so motionless, her face so intently turned toward the stage, that
the muscles at the back of her neck began to stiffen. And then, quite
suddenly, toward the middle of the act, she felt an undefinable sense of
relief. She could not tell what caused it--but slowly, cautiously, while
the eyes of the others were intent upon the stage, she turned her head
and looked toward Wyant's seat. It was empty.
Her first thought was that he had gone to wait for her outside. But
no--there were two more acts: why should he stand at the door for half
the evening?
At last the act ended; the entr'acte elapsed; the play went on
again--and still the seat was empty. Gradually she persuaded herself
that she had been mistaken in thinking that the man who had occupied it
was Wyant. Her self-command returned, she began to think and talk
naturally, to follow the dialogue on the stage--and when the evening was
over, and Mrs. Ansell set her down at her door, she had almost forgotten
her fears.
The next morning she felt calmer than for many days. She was sure now
that if Wyant had wished to speak to her he would have waited at the
door of the theatre; and the recollection of his miserable face made
apprehension yield to pity. She began to feel that she had treated him
coldly, uncharitably. They had been friends once, as well as
fellow-workers; but she had been false even to the comradeship of the
hospital. She should have sought him out and given him sympathy as well
as money; had she shown some sign of human kindness his last letter
might never have been written.
In the course of the morning Amherst telegraphed that he hoped to settle
his business in time to catch the two o'clock express, but that his
plans were still uncertain. Justine and Cicely lunched alone, and after
luncheon the little girl was despatched to her dancing-class. Justine
herself meant to go out when the brougham returned. She went up to her
room to dress, planning to drive in the park, and to drop in on Mrs.
Ansell before she called for Cicely; but on the way downstairs she saw
the servant opening the door to a visitor. It was too late to draw back;
and descending the last steps she found herself face to face with Wyant.
They looked at each other a moment in silence; then Justine murmured a
word of greeting and led the way to the drawing-room.
It was a snowy afternoon, and in the raw ash-coloured light she thought
he looked more changed than at the theatre. She remarked, too, that his
clothes were worn and untidy, his gloveless hands soiled and tremulous.
None of the degrading signs of his infirmity were lacking; and she saw
at once that, while in the early days of the habit he had probably mixed
his drugs, so that the conflicting symptoms neutralized each other, he
had now sunk into open morphia-taking. She felt profoundly sorry for
him; yet as he followed her into the room physical repulsion again
mastered the sense of pity.
But where action was possible she was always self-controlled, and she
turned to him quietly as they seated themselves.
"I have been wishing to see you," she said, looking at him. "I have felt
that I ought to have done so sooner--to have told you how sorry I am for
your bad luck."
He returned her glance with surprise: they were evidently the last words
he had expected.
"You're very kind," he said in a low embarrassed voice. He had kept on
his shabby over-coat, and he twirled his hat in his hands as he spoke.
"I have felt," Justine continued, "that perhaps a talk with you might be
of more use----"
He raised his head, fixing her with bright narrowed eyes. "I have felt
so too: that's my reason for coming. You sent me a generous present some
weeks ago--but I don't want to go on living on charity."
"I understand that," she answered. "But why have you had to do so? Won't
you tell me just what has happened?"
She felt the words to be almost a mockery; yet she could not say "I read
your history at a glance"; and she hoped that her question might draw
out his wretched secret, and thus give her the chance to speak frankly.
He gave a nervous laugh. "Just what has happened? It's a long story--and
some of the details are not particularly pretty." He broke off, moving
his hat more rapidly through his trembling hands.
"Never mind: tell me."
"Well--after you all left Lynbrook I had rather a bad break-down--the
strain of Mrs. Amherst's case, I suppose. You remember Bramble, the
Clifton grocer? Miss Bramble nursed me--I daresay you remember her too.
When I recovered I married her--and after that things didn't go well."
He paused, breathing quickly, and looking about the room with odd,
furtive glances. "I was only half-well, anyhow--I couldn't attend to my
patients properly--and after a few months we decided to leave Clifton,
and I bought a practice in New Jersey. But my wife was ill there, and
things went wrong again--damnably. I suppose you've guessed that my
marriage was a mistake. She had an idea that we should do better in New
York--so we came here a few months ago, and we've done decidedly worse."
Justine listened with a sense of discouragement. She saw now that he did
not mean to acknowledge his failing, and knowing the secretiveness of
the drug-taker she decided that he was deluded enough to think he could
still deceive her.
"Well," he began again, with an attempt at jauntiness, "I've found out
that in my profession it's a hard struggle to get on your feet again,
after illness or--or any bad set-back. That's the reason I asked you to
say a word for me. It's not only the money, though I need that badly--I
want to get back my self-respect. With my record I oughtn't to be where
I am--and you can speak for me better than any one."
"Why better than the doctors you've worked with?" Justine put the
question abruptly, looking him straight in the eyes.
His glance dropped, and an unpleasant flush rose to his thin cheeks.
"Well--as it happens, you're better situated than any one to help me to
the particular thing I want."
"The particular thing----?"
"Yes. I understand that Mr. Langhope and Mrs. Ansell are both interested
in the new wing for paying patients at Saint Christopher's. I want the
position of house-physician there, and I know you can get it for me."
His tone changed as he spoke, till with the last words it became rough
and almost menacing.
Justine felt her colour rise, and her heart began to beat confusedly.
Here was the truth, then: she could no longer be the dupe of her own
compassion. The man knew his power and meant to use it. But at the
thought her courage was in arms.
"I'm sorry--but it's impossible," she said.
"Impossible--why?"
She continued to look at him steadily. "You said just now that you
wished to regain your self-respect. Well, you must regain it before you
can ask me--or any one else--to recommend you to a position of trust."
Wyant half-rose, with an angry murmur. "My self-respect? What do you
mean? _I_ meant that I'd lost courage--through ill-luck----"
"Yes; and your ill-luck has come through your own fault. Till you cure
yourself you're not fit to cure others."
He sank back into his seat, glowering at her under sullen brows; then
his expression gradually changed to half-sneering admiration. "You're a
plucky one!" he said.
Justine repressed a movement of disgust. "I am very sorry for you," she
said gravely. "I saw this trouble coming on you long ago--and if there
is any other way in which I can help you----"
"Thanks," he returned, still sneering. "Your sympathy is very
precious--there was a time when I would have given my soul for it. But
that's over, and I'm here to talk business. You say you saw my trouble
coming on--did it ever occur to you that you were the cause of it?"
Justine glanced at him with frank contempt. "No--for I was not," she
replied.
"That's an easy way out of it. But you took everything from me--first my
hope of marrying you; then my chance of a big success in my career; and
I was desperate--weak, if you like--and tried to deaden my feelings in
order to keep up my pluck."
Justine rose to her feet with a movement of impatience. "Every word you
say proves how unfit you are to assume any responsibility--to do
anything but try to recover your health. If I can help you to that, I am
still willing to do so."
Wyant rose also, moving a step nearer. "Well, get me that place,
then--I'll see to the rest: I'll keep straight."
"No--it's impossible."
"You won't?"
"I can't," she repeated firmly.
"And you expect to put me off with that answer?"
She hesitated. "Yes--if there's no other help you'll accept."
He laughed again--his feeble sneering laugh was disgusting. "Oh, I don't
say that. I'd like to earn my living honestly--funny preference--but if
you cut me off from that, I suppose it's only fair to let you make up
for it. My wife and child have got to live."
"You choose a strange way of helping them; but I will do what I can if
you will go for a while to some institution----"
He broke in furiously. "Institution be damned! You can't shuffle me out
of the way like that. I'm all right--good food is what I need. You
think I've got morphia in me--why, it's hunger!"
Justine heard him with a renewal of pity. "Oh, I'm sorry for you--very
sorry! Why do you try to deceive me?"
"Why do you deceive _me_? You know what I want and you know you've got
to let me have it. If you won't give me a line to one of your friends at
Saint Christopher's you'll have to give me another cheque--that's the
size of it."
As they faced each other in silence Justine's pity gave way to a sudden
hatred for the poor creature who stood shivering and sneering before
her.
"You choose the wrong tone--and I think our talk has lasted long
enough," she said, stretching her hand to the bell.
Wyant did not move. "Don't ring--unless you want me to write to your
husband," he rejoined.
A sick feeling of helplessness overcame her; but she turned on him
firmly. "I pardoned you once for that threat!"
"Yes--and you sent me some money the next day."
"I was mistaken enough to think that, in your distress, you had not
realized what you wrote. But if you're a systematic blackmailer----"
"Gently--gently. Bad names don't frighten me--it's hunger and debt I'm
afraid of."
Justine felt a last tremor of compassion. He was abominable--but he was
pitiable too.
"I will really help you--I will see your wife and do what I can--but I
can give you no money today."
"Why not?"
"Because I have none. I am not as rich as you think."
He smiled incredulously. "Give me a line to Mr. Langhope, then."
"No."
He sat down once more, leaning back with a weak assumption of ease.
"Perhaps Mr. Amherst will think differently."
She whitened, but said steadily: "Mr. Amherst is away."
"Very well--I can write."
For the last five minutes Justine had foreseen this threat, and had
tried to force her mind to face dispassionately the chances it involved.
After all, why not let him write to Amherst? The very vileness of the
deed must rouse an indignation which would be all in her favour, would
inevitably dispose her husband to readier sympathy with the motive of
her act, as contrasted with the base insinuations of her slanderer. It
seemed impossible that Amherst should condemn her when his condemnation
involved the fulfilling of Wyant's calculations: a reaction of scorn
would throw him into unhesitating championship of her conduct. All this
was so clear that, had she been advising any one else, her confidence in
the course to be taken might have strengthened the feeblest will; but
with the question lying between herself and Amherst--with the vision of
those soiled hands literally laid on the spotless fabric of her
happiness, judgment wavered, foresight was obscured--she felt
tremulously unable to face the steps between exposure and vindication.
Her final conclusion was that she must, at any rate, gain time: buy off
Wyant till she had been able to tell her story in her own way, and at
her own hour, and then defy him when he returned to the assault. The
idea that whatever concession she made would be only provisional, helped
to excuse the weakness of making it, and enabled her at last, without
too painful a sense of falling below her own standards, to reply in a
low voice: "If you'll go now, I will send you something next week."
But Wyant did not respond as readily as she had expected. He merely
asked, without altering his insolently easy attitude: "How much? Unless
it's a good deal, I prefer the letter."
Oh, why could she not cry out: "Leave the house at once--your vulgar
threats are nothing to me"--Why could she not even say in her own heart:
_I will tell my husband tonight?_
"You're afraid," said Wyant, as if answering her thought. "What's the
use of being afraid when you can make yourself comfortable so easily?
You called me a systematic blackmailer--well, I'm not that yet. Give me
a thousand and you'll see the last of me--on what used to be my honour."
Justine's heart sank. She had reached the point of being ready to appeal
again to Amherst--but on what pretext could she ask for such a sum?
In a lifeless voice she said: "I could not possibly get more than one or
two hundred."
Wyant scrutinized her a moment: her despair must have rung true to him.
"Well, you must have something of your own--I saw your jewelry last
night at the theatre," he said.
So it had been he--and he had sat there appraising her value like a
murderer!
"Jewelry--?" she faltered.
"You had a thumping big sapphire--wasn't it?--with diamonds round it."
It was her only jewel--Amherst's marriage gift. She would have preferred
a less valuable present, but his mother had persuaded her to accept it,
saying that it was the bride's duty to adorn herself for the bridegroom.
"I will give you nothing--" she was about to exclaim; when suddenly her
eyes fell on the clock. If Amherst had caught the two o'clock express he
would be at the house within the hour; and the only thing that seemed
of consequence now, was that he should not meet Wyant. Supposing she
still found courage to refuse--there was no knowing how long the
humiliating scene might be prolonged: and she must be rid of the
creature at any cost. After all, she seldom wore the sapphire--months
might pass without its absence being noted by Amherst's careless eye;
and if Wyant should pawn it, she might somehow save money to buy it back
before it was missed. She went through these calculations with feverish
rapidity; then she turned again to Wyant.
"You won't come back--ever?"
"I swear I won't," he said.
He moved away toward the window, as if to spare her; and she turned and
slowly left the room.
She never forgot the moments that followed. Once outside the door she
was in such haste that she stumbled on the stairs, and had to pause on
the landing to regain her breath. In her room she found one of the
housemaids busy, and at first could think of no pretext for dismissing
her. Then she bade the woman go down and send the brougham away, telling
the coachman to call for Miss Cicely at six.
Left alone, she bolted the door, and as if with a thief's hand, opened
her wardrobe, unlocked her jewel-box, and drew out the sapphire in its
flat morocco case. She restored the box to its place, the key to its
ring--then she opened the case and looked at the sapphire. As she did
so, a little tremor ran over her neck and throat, and closing her eyes
she felt her husband's kiss, and the touch of his hands as he fastened
on the jewel.
She unbolted the door, listened intently on the landing, and then went
slowly down the stairs. None of the servants were in sight, yet as she
reached the lower hall she was conscious that the air had grown suddenly
colder, as though the outer door had just been opened. She paused, and
listened again. There was a sound of talking in the drawing-room. Could
it be that in her absence a visitor had been admitted? The possibility
frightened her at first--then she welcomed it as an unexpected means of
ridding herself of her tormentor.
She opened the drawing-room door, and saw her husband talking with
Wyant.
XXXV
AMHERST, his back to the threshold, sat at a table writing: Wyant stood
a few feet away, staring down at the fire.
Neither had heard the door open; and before they were aware of her
entrance Justine had calculated that she must have been away for at
least five minutes, and that in that space of time almost anything
might have passed between them.
For a moment the power of connected thought left her; then her heart
gave a bound of relief. She said to herself that Wyant had doubtless
made some allusion to his situation, and that her husband, conscious
only of a great debt of gratitude, had at once sat down to draw a cheque
for him. The idea was so reassuring that it restored all her clearness
of thought.
Wyant was the first to see her. He made an abrupt movement, and Amherst,
rising, turned and put an envelope in his hand.
"There, my dear fellow----"
As he turned he caught sight of his wife.
"I caught the twelve o'clock train after all--you got my second wire?"
he asked.
"No," she faltered, pressing her left hand, with the little case in it,
close to the folds of her dress.
"I was afraid not. There was a bad storm at Hanaford, and they said
there might be a delay."
At the same moment she found Wyant advancing with extended hand, and
understood that he had concealed the fact of having already seen her.
She accepted the cue, and shook his hand, murmuring: "How do you do?"
Amherst looked at her, perhaps struck by her manner.
"You have not seen Dr. Wyant since Lynbrook?"
"No," she answered, thankful to have this pretext for her emotion.
"I have been telling him that he should not have left us so long without
news--especially as he has been ill, and things have gone rather badly
with him. But I hope we can help now. He has heard that Saint
Christopher's is looking for a house-physician for the paying patients'
wing, and as Mr. Langhope is away I have given him a line to Mrs.
Ansell."
"Extremely kind of you," Wyant murmured, passing his hand over his
forehead.
Justine stood silent. She wondered that her husband had not noticed that
tremulous degraded hand. But he was always so blind to externals--and he
had no medical experience to sharpen his perceptions.
Suddenly she felt impelled to speak "I am sorry Dr. Wyant has
been--unfortunate. Of course you will want to do everything to help him;
but would it not be better to wait till Mr. Langhope comes back?"
"Wyant thinks the delay might make him lose the place. It seems the
board meets tomorrow. And Mrs. Ansell really knows much more about it.
Isn't she the secretary of the ladies' committee?"
"I'm not sure--I believe so. But surely Mr. Langhope should be
consulted."
She felt Wyant's face change: his eyes settled on her in a threatening
stare.
Amherst looked at her also, and there was surprise in his glance. "I
think I can answer for my father-in-law. He feels as strongly as I do
how much we all owe to Dr. Wyant."
He seldom spoke of Mr. Langhope as his father-in-law, and the chance
designation seemed to mark a closer tie between them, to exclude Justine
from what was after all a family affair. For a moment she felt tempted
to accept the suggestion, and let the responsibility fall where it
would. But it would fall on Amherst--and that was intolerable.
"I think you ought to wait," she insisted.
An embarrassed silence settled on the three.
Wyant broke it by advancing toward Amherst. "I shall never forget your
kindness," he said; "and I hope to prove to Mrs. Amherst that it's not
misplaced."
The words were well chosen, and well spoken; Justine saw that they
produced a good effect. Amherst grasped the physician's hand with a
smile. "My dear fellow, I wish I could do more. Be sure to call on me
again if you want help."
"Oh, you've put me on my feet," said Wyant gratefully.
He bowed slightly to Justine and turned to go; but as he reached the
threshold she moved after him.
"Dr. Wyant--you must give back that letter."
He stopped short with a whitening face.
She felt Amherst's eyes on her again; and she said desperately,
addressing him: "Dr. Wyant understands my reasons."
Her husband's glance turned abruptly to Wyant. "Do you?" he asked after
a pause.
Wyant looked from one to the other. The moisture came out on his
forehead, and he passed his hand over it again. "Yes," he said in a dry
voice. "Mrs. Amherst wants me farther off--out of New York."
"Out of New York? What do you mean?"
Justine interposed hastily, before the answer could come. "It is because
Dr. Wyant is not in condition--for such a place--just at present."
"But he assures me he is quite well."
There was another silence; and again Wyant broke in, this time with a
slight laugh. "I can explain what Mrs. Amherst means; she intends to
accuse me of the morphine habit. And I can explain her reason for doing
so--she wants me out of the way."
Amherst turned on the speaker; and, as she had foreseen, his look was
terrible. "You haven't explained that yet," he said.
"Well--I can." Wyant waited another moment. "I know too much about her,"
he declared.
There was a low exclamation from Justine, and Amherst strode toward
Wyant. "You infernal blackguard!" he cried.
"Oh, gently----" Wyant muttered, flinching back from his outstretched
arm.
"My wife's wish is sufficient. Give me back that letter."
Wyant straightened himself. "No, by God, I won't!" he retorted
furiously. "I didn't ask you for it till you offered to help me; but I
won't let it be taken back without a word, like a thief that you'd
caught with your umbrella. If your wife won't explain I will. She's,
afraid I'll talk about what happened at Lynbrook."
Amherst's arm fell to his side. "At Lynbrook?"
Behind him there was a sound of inarticulate appeal--but he took no
notice.
"Yes. It's she who used morphia--but not on herself. She gives it to
other people. She gave an overdose to Mrs. Amherst."
Amherst looked at him confusedly. "An overdose?"
"Yes--purposely, I mean. And I came into the room at the wrong time. I
can prove that Mrs. Amherst died of morphia-poisoning."
"John!" Justine gasped out, pressing between them.
Amherst gently put aside the hand with which she had caught his arm.
"Wait a moment: this can't rest here. You can't want it to," he said to
her in an undertone.
"Why do you care...for what he says...when I don't?" she breathed back
with trembling lips.
"You can see I am not wanted here," Wyant threw in with a sneer.
Amherst remained silent for a brief space; then he turned his eyes once
more to his wife.
Justine lifted her face: it looked small and spent, like an extinguished
taper.
"It's true," she said.
"True?"
"I _did_ give...an overdose...intentionally, when I knew there was no
hope, and when the surgeons said she might go on suffering. She was very
strong...and I couldn't bear it...you couldn't have borne it...."
There was another silence; then she went on in a stronger voice, looking
straight at her husband: "And now will you send this man away?"
Amherst glanced at Wyant without moving. "Go," he said curtly.
Wyant, instead, moved a step nearer. "Just a minute, please. It's only
fair to hear my side. Your wife says there was no hope; yet the day
before she...gave the dose, Dr. Garford told her in my presence that
Mrs. Amherst might live."
Again Amherst's eyes addressed themselves slowly to Justine; and she
forced her lips to articulate an answer.
"Dr. Garford said...one could never tell...but I know he didn't believe
in the chance of recovery...no one did."
"Dr. Garford is dead," said Wyant grimly.
Amherst strode up to him again. "You scoundrel--leave the house!" he
commanded.
But still Wyant sneeringly stood his ground. "Not till I've finished. I
can't afford to let myself be kicked out like a dog because I happen to
be in the way. Every doctor knows that in cases of spinal lesion
recovery is becoming more and more frequent--if the patient survives the
third week there's every reason to hope. Those are the facts as they
would appear to any surgeon. If they're not true, why is Mrs. Amherst
afraid of having them stated? Why has she been paying me for nearly a
year to keep them quiet?"
"Oh----" Justine moaned.
"I never thought of talking till luck went against me. Then I asked her
for help--and reminded her of certain things. After that she kept me
supplied pretty regularly." He thrust his shaking hand into an inner
pocket. "Here are her envelopes...Quebec...Montreal...Saranac...I know
just where you went on your honeymoon. She had to write often, because
the sums were small. Why did she do it, if she wasn't afraid? And why
did she go upstairs just now to fetch me something? If you don't believe
me, ask her what she's got in her hand."
Amherst did not heed this injunction. He stood motionless, gripping the
back of a chair, as if his next gesture might be to lift and hurl it at
the speaker.
"Ask her----" Wyant repeated.
Amherst turned his head slowly, and his dull gaze rested on his wife.
His face looked years older--lips and eyes moved as heavily as an old
man's.
As he looked at her, Justine came forward without speaking, and laid the
little morocco case in his hand. He held it there a moment, as if hardly
understanding her action--then he tossed it on the table at his elbow,
and walked up to Wyant.
"You hound," he said--"now go!"
XXXVI
WHEN Wyant had left the room, and the house-door had closed on him,
Amherst spoke to his wife.
"Come upstairs," he said.
Justine followed him, scarcely conscious where she went, but moving
already with a lighter tread. Part of her weight of misery had been
lifted with Wyant's going. She had suffered less from the fear of what
her husband might think than from the shame of making her avowal in her
defamer's presence. And her faith in Amherst's comprehension had begun
to revive. He had dismissed Wyant with scorn and horror--did not that
show that he was on her side already? And how many more arguments she
had at her call! Her brain hummed with them as she followed him up the
stairs.
In her bedroom he closed the door and stood motionless, the same heavy
half-paralyzed look on his face. It frightened her and she went up to
him.
"John!" she said timidly.
He put his hand to his head. "Wait a moment----" he returned; and she
waited, her heart slowly sinking again.
The moment over, he seemed to recover his power of movement. He crossed
the room and threw himself into the armchair near the hearth.
"Now tell me everything."
He sat thrown back, his eyes fixed on the fire, and the vertical lines
between his brows forming a deep scar in his white face.
Justine moved nearer, and touched his arm beseechingly. "Won't you look
at me?"
He turned his head slowly, as if with an effort, and his eyes rested
reluctantly on hers.
"Oh, not like that!" she exclaimed.
He seemed to make a stronger effort at self-control. "Please don't heed
me--but say what there is to say," he said in a level voice, his gaze on
the fire.
She stood before him, her arms hanging down, her clasped fingers
twisting restlessly.
"I don't know that there is much to say--beyond what I've told you."
There was a slight sound in Amherst's throat, like the ghost of a
derisive laugh. After another interval he said: "I wish to hear exactly
what happened."
She seated herself on the edge of a chair near by, bending forward, with
hands interlocked and arms extended on her knees--every line reaching
out to him, as though her whole slight body were an arrow winged with
pleadings. It was a relief to speak at last, even face to face with the
stony image that sat in her husband's place; and she told her story,
detail by detail, omitting nothing, exaggerating nothing, speaking
slowly, clearly, with precision, aware that the bare facts were her
strongest argument.
Amherst, as he listened, shifted his position once, raising his hand so
that it screened his face; and in that attitude he remained when she had
ended.
As she waited for him to speak, Justine realized that her heart had been
alive with tremulous hopes. All through her narrative she had counted on
a murmur of perception, an exclamation of pity: she had felt sure of
melting the stony image. But Amherst said no word.
At length he spoke, still without turning his head. "You have not told
me why you kept this from me."
A sob formed in her throat, and she had to wait to steady her voice.
"No--that was my wrong--my weakness. When I did it I never thought of
being afraid to tell you--I had talked it over with you in my own
mind...so often...before...."
"Well?"
"Then--- when you came back it was harder...though I was still sure you
would approve me."
"Why harder?"
"Because at first--at Lynbrook--I _could not_ tell it all over, in
detail, as I have now...it was beyond human power...and without doing
so, I couldn't make it all clear to you...and so should only have added
to your pain. If you had been there you would have done as I did.... I
felt sure of that from the first. But coming afterward, you couldn't
judge...no one who was not there could judge...and I wanted to spare
you...."
"And afterward?"
She had shrunk in advance from this question, and she could not answer
it at once. To gain time she echoed it. "Afterward?"
"Did it never occur to you, when we met later--when you first went to
Mr. Langhope----"?
"To tell you then? No--because by that time I had come to see that I
could never be quite sure of making you understand. No one who was not
there at the time could know what it was to see her suffer."
"You thought it all over, then--decided definitely against telling me?"
"I did not have to think long. I felt I had done right--I still feel
so--and I was sure you would feel so, if you were in the same
circumstances."
There was another pause. Then Amherst said: "And last September--at
Hanaford?"
It was the word for which she had waited--the word of her inmost fears.
She felt the blood mount to her face.
"Did you see no difference--no special reason for telling me then?"
"Yes----" she faltered.
"Yet you said nothing."
"No."
Silence again. Her eyes strayed to the clock, and some dim association
of ideas told her that Cicely would soon be coming in.
"Why did you say nothing?"
He lowered his hand and turned toward her as he spoke; and she looked up
and faced him.
"Because I regarded the question as settled. I had decided it in my own
mind months before, and had never regretted my decision. I should have
thought it morbid...unnatural...to go over the whole subject again...to
let it affect a situation that had come about...so much later...so
unexpectedly."
"Did you never feel that, later, if I came to know--if others came to
know--it might be difficult----?"
"No; for I didn't care for the others--and I believed that, whatever
your own feelings were, you would know I had done what I thought right."
She spoke the words proudly, strongly, and for the first time the hard
lines of his face relaxed, and a slight tremor crossed it.
"If you believed this, why have you been letting that cur blackmail
you?"
"Because when he began I saw for the first time that what I had done
might be turned against me by--by those who disliked our marriage. And I
was afraid for my happiness. That was my weakness...it is what I am
suffering for now."
"_Suffering_!" he echoed ironically, as though she had presumed to apply
to herself a word of which he had the grim monopoly. He rose and took a
few aimless steps; then he halted before her.
"That day--last month--when you asked me for money...was it...?"
"Yes----" she said, her head sinking.
He laughed. "You couldn't tell me--but you could use my money to bribe
that fellow to conspire with you!"
"I had none of my own."
"No--nor I either! You used _her_ money.--God!" he groaned, turning away
with clenched hands.
Justine had risen also, and she stood motionless, her hands clasped
against her breast, in the drawn shrinking attitude of a fugitive
overtaken by a blinding storm. He moved back to her with an appealing
gesture.
"And you didn't see--it didn't occur to you--that your doing...as you
did...was an obstacle--an insurmountable obstacle--to our ever ...?"
She cut him short with an indignant cry. "No! No! for it was _not_. How
could it have anything to do with what...came after...with you or me? I
did it only for Bessy--it concerned only Bessy!"
"Ah, don't name her!" broke from him harshly, and she drew back, cut to
the heart.
There was another pause, during which he seemed to fall into a kind of
dazed irresolution, his head on his breast, as though unconscious of her
presence. Then he roused himself and went to the door.
As he passed her she sprang after him. "John--John! Is that all you have
to say?"
"What more is there?"
"What more? Everything!--What right have you to turn from me as if I
were a murderess? I did nothing but what your own reason, your own
arguments, have justified a hundred times! I made a mistake in not
telling you at once--but a mistake is not a crime. It can't be your real
feeling that turns you from me--it must be the dread of what other
people would think! But when have you cared for what other people
thought? When have your own actions been governed by it?"
He moved another step without speaking, and she caught him by the arm.
"No! you sha'n't go--not like that!--Wait!"
She turned and crossed the room. On the lower shelf of the little table
by her bed a few books were ranged: she stooped and drew one hurriedly
forth, opening it at the fly-leaf as she went back to Amherst.
"There--read that. The book was at Lynbrook--in your room--and I came
across it by chance the very day...."
It was the little volume of Bacon which she was thrusting at him. He
took it with a bewildered look, as if scarcely following what she said.
"Read it--read it!" she commanded; and mechanically he read out the
words he had written.
"_La vraie morale se moque de la morale.... We perish because we follow
other men's examples.... Socrates called the opinions of the many
Lamiæ._--Good God!" he exclaimed, flinging the book from him with a
gesture of abhorrence.
Justine watched him with panting lips, her knees trembling under her.
"But you wrote it--you wrote it! I thought you meant it!" she cried, as
the book spun across a table and dropped to the floor.
He looked at her coldly, almost apprehensively, as if she had grown
suddenly dangerous and remote; then he turned and walked out of the
room.
* * * * *
The striking of the clock roused her. She rose to her feet, rang the
bell, and told the maid, through the door, that she had a headache, and
was unable to see Miss Cicely. Then she turned back into the room, and
darkness closed on her. She was not the kind to take grief passively--it
drove her in anguished pacings up and down the floor. She walked and
walked till her legs flagged under her; then she dropped stupidly into
the chair where Amherst had sat....
All her world had crumbled about her. It was as if some law of mental
gravity had been mysteriously suspended, and every firmly-anchored
conviction, every accepted process of reasoning, spun disconnectedly
through space. Amherst had not understood her--worse still, he had
judged her as the world might judge her! The core of her misery was
there. With terrible clearness she saw the suspicion that had crossed
his mind--the suspicion that she had kept silence in the beginning
because she loved him, and feared to lose him if she spoke.
And what if it were true? What if her unconscious guilt went back even
farther than his thought dared to track it? She could not now recall a
time when she had not loved him. Every chance meeting with him, from
their first brief talk at Hanaford, stood out embossed and glowing
against the blur of lesser memories. Was it possible that she had loved
him during Bessy's life--that she had even, sub-consciously, blindly,
been urged by her feeling for him to perform the act?
But she shook herself free from this morbid horror--the rebound of
health was always prompt in her, and her mind instinctively rejected
every form of moral poison. No! Her motive had been normal, sane and
justifiable--completely justifiable. Her fault lay in having dared to
rise above conventional restrictions, her mistake in believing that her
husband could rise with her. These reflections steadied her but they did
not bring much comfort. For her whole life was centred in Amherst, and
she saw that he would never be able to free himself from the traditional
view of her act. In looking back, and correcting her survey of his
character in the revealing light of the last hours, she perceived that,
like many men of emancipated thought, he had remained subject to the old
conventions of feeling. And he had probably never given much thought to
women till he met her--had always been content to deal with them in the
accepted currency of sentiment. After all, it was the currency they
liked best, and for which they offered their prettiest wares!
But what of the intellectual accord between himself and her? She had not
been deceived in that! He and she had really been wedded in mind as well
as in heart. But until now there had not arisen in their lives one of
those searching questions which call into play emotions rooted far below
reason and judgment, in the dark primal depths of inherited feeling. It
is easy to judge impersonal problems intellectually, turning on them the
full light of acquired knowledge; but too often one must still grope
one's way through the personal difficulty by the dim taper carried in
long-dead hands....
But was there then no hope of lifting one's individual life to a clearer
height of conduct? Must one be content to think for the race, and to
feel only--feel blindly and incoherently--for one's self? And was it not
from such natures as Amherst's--natures in which independence of
judgment was blent with strong human sympathy--that the liberating
impulse should come?
Her mind grew weary of revolving in this vain circle of questions. The
fact was that, in their particular case, Amherst had not risen above
prejudice and emotion; that, though her act was one to which his
intellectual sanction was given, he had turned from her with instinctive
repugnance, had dishonoured her by the most wounding suspicions. The
tie between them was forever stained and debased.
Justine's long hospital-discipline made it impossible for her to lose
consciousness of the lapse of time, or to let her misery thicken into
mental stupor. She could not help thinking and moving; and she presently
lifted herself to her feet, turned on the light, and began to prepare
for dinner. It would be terrible to face her husband across Mr.
Langhope's pretty dinner-table, and afterward in the charming
drawing-room, with its delicate old ornaments and intimate luxurious
furniture; but she could not continue to sit motionless in the dark: it
was her innermost instinct to pick herself up and go on.
While she dressed she listened anxiously for Amherst's step in the next
room; but there was no sound, and when she dragged herself downstairs
the drawing-room was empty, and the parlour-maid, after a decent delay,
came to ask if dinner should be postponed.
She said no, murmuring some vague pretext for her husband's absence, and
sitting alone through the succession of courses which composed the brief
but carefully-studied _menu_. When this ordeal was over she returned to
the drawing-room and took up a book. It chanced to be a new volume on
labour problems, which Amherst must have brought back with him from
Westmore; and it carried her thoughts instantly to the mills. Would
this disaster poison their work there as well as their personal
relation? Would he think of her as carrying contamination even into the
task their love had illumined?
The hours went on without his returning, and at length it occurred to
her that he might have taken the night train to Hanaford. Her heart
contracted at the thought: she remembered--though every nerve shrank
from the analogy--his sudden flight at another crisis in his life, and
she felt obscurely that if he escaped from her now she would never
recover her hold on him. But could he be so cruel--could he wish any one
to suffer as she was suffering?
At ten o'clock she could endure the drawing-room no longer, and went up
to her room again. She undressed slowly, trying to prolong the process
as much as possible, to put off the period of silence and inaction which
would close in on her when she lay down on her bed. But at length the
dreaded moment came--there was nothing more between her and the night.
She crept into bed and put out the light; but as she slipped between the
cold sheets a trembling seized her, and after a moment she drew on her
dressing-gown again and groped her way to the lounge by the fire.
She pushed the lounge closer to the hearth and lay down, still
shivering, though she had drawn the quilted coverlet up to her chin. She
lay there a long time, with closed eyes, in a mental darkness torn by
sudden flashes of memory. In one of these flashes a phrase of Amherst's
stood out--a word spoken at Westmore, on the day of the opening of the
Emergency Hospital, about a good-looking young man who had called to see
her. She remembered Amherst's boyish burst of jealousy, his sudden
relief at the thought that the visitor might have been Wyant. And no
doubt it _was_ Wyant--Wyant who had come to Hanaford to threaten her,
and who, baffled by her non-arrival, or for some other unexplained
reason, had left again without carrying out his purpose.
It was dreadful to think by how slight a chance her first draught of
happiness had escaped that drop of poison; yet, when she understood, her
inward cry was: "If it had happened, my dearest need not have
suffered!"... Already she was feeling Amherst's pain more than her own,
understanding that it was harder to bear than hers because it was at war
with all the reflective part of his nature.
As she lay there, her face pressed into the cushions, she heard a sound
through the silent house--the opening and closing of the outer door. She
turned cold, and lay listening with strained ears.... Yes; now there was
a step on the stairs--her husband's step! She heard him turn into his
own room. The throbs of her heart almost deafened her--she only
distinguished confusedly that he was moving about within, so close that
it was as if she felt his touch. Then her door opened and he entered.
He stumbled slightly in the darkness before he found the switch of the
lamp; and as he bent over it she saw that his face was flushed, and that
his eyes had an excited light which, in any one less abstemious, might
almost have seemed like the effect of wine.
"Are you awake?" he asked.
She started up against the cushions, her black hair streaming about her
small ghostly face.
"Yes."
He walked over to the lounge and dropped into the low chair beside it.
"I've given that cur a lesson he won't forget," he exclaimed, breathing
hard, the redness deepening in his face.
She turned on him in joy and trembling. "John!--Oh, John! You didn't
follow him? Oh, what happened? What have you done?"
"No. I didn't follow him. But there are some things that even the powers
above can't stand. And so they managed to let me run across him--by the
merest accident--and I gave him something to remember."
He spoke in a strong clear voice that had a brightness like the
brightness in his eyes. She felt its heat in her veins--the primitive
woman in her glowed at contact with the primitive man. But reflection
chilled her the next moment.
"But why--why? Oh, how could you? Where did it happen--oh, not in the
street?"
As she questioned him, there rose before her the terrified vision of a
crowd gathering--the police, newspapers, a hideous publicity. He must
have been mad to do it--and yet he must have done it because he loved
her!
"No--no. Don't be afraid. The powers looked after that too. There was no
one about--and I don't think he'll talk much about it."
She trembled, fearing yet adoring him. Nothing could have been more
unlike the Amherst she fancied she knew than this act of irrational
anger which had magically lifted the darkness from his spirit; yet,
magically also, it gave him back to her, made them one flesh once more.
And suddenly the pressure of opposed emotions became too strong, and she
burst into tears.
She wept painfully, violently, with the resistance of strong natures
unused to emotional expression; till at length, through the tumult of
her tears, she felt her husband's reassuring touch.
"Justine," he said, speaking once more in his natural voice.
She raised her face from her hands, and they looked at each other.
"Justine--this afternoon--I said things I didn't mean to say."
Her lips parted, but her throat was still full of sobs, and she could
only look at him while the tears ran down.
"I believe I understand now," he continued, in the same quiet tone.
Her hand shrank from his clasp, and she began to tremble again. "Oh, if
you only _believe_...if you're not sure...don't pretend to be!"
He sat down beside her and drew her into his arms. "I am sure," he
whispered, holding her close, and pressing his lips against her face and
hair.
"Oh, my husband--my husband! You've come back to me?"
He answered her with more kisses, murmuring through them: "Poor
child--poor child--poor Justine...." while he held her fast.
With her face against him she yielded to the childish luxury of
murmuring out unjustified fears. "I was afraid you had gone back to
Hanaford----"
"Tonight? To Hanaford?"
"To tell your mother."
She felt a contraction of the arm embracing her, as though a throb of
pain had stiffened it.
"I shall never tell any one," he said abruptly; but as he felt in her a
responsive shrinking he gathered her close again, whispering through the
hair that fell about her cheek: "Don't talk, dear...let us never talk
of it again...." And in the clasp of his arms her terror and anguish
subsided, giving way, not to the deep peace of tranquillized thought,
but to a confused well-being that lulled all thought to sleep.
XXXVII
BUT thought could never be long silent between them; and Justine's
triumph lasted but a day.
With its end she saw what it had been made of: the ascendency of youth
and sex over his subjugated judgment. Her first impulse was to try and
maintain it--why not use the protective arts with which love inspired
her? She who lived so keenly in the brain could live as intensely in her
feelings; her quick imagination tutored her looks and words, taught her
the spells to weave about shorn giants. And for a few days she and
Amherst lost themselves in this self-evoked cloud of passion, both
clinging fast to the visible, the palpable in their relation, as if
conscious already that its finer essence had fled.
Amherst made no allusion to what had passed, asked for no details,
offered no reassurances--behaved as if the whole episode had been
effaced from his mind. And from Wyant there came no sound: he seemed to
have disappeared from life as he had from their talk.
Toward the end of the week Amherst announced that he must return to
Hanaford; and Justine at once declared her intention of going with him.
He seemed surprised, disconcerted almost; and for the first time the
shadow of what had happened fell visibly between them.
"But ought you to leave Cicely before Mr. Langhope comes back?" he
suggested.
"He will be here in two days."
"But he will expect to find you."
"It is almost the first of April. We are to have Cicely with us for the
summer. There is no reason why I should not go back to my work at
Westmore."
There was in fact no reason that he could produce; and the next day they
returned to Hanaford together.
With her perceptions strung to the last pitch of sensitiveness, she felt
a change in Amherst as soon as they re-entered Bessy's house. He was
still scrupulously considerate, almost too scrupulously tender; but with
a tinge of lassitude, like a man who tries to keep up under the
stupefying approach of illness. And she began to hate the power by which
she held him. It was not thus they had once walked together, free in
mind though so linked in habit and feeling; when their love was not a
deadening drug but a vivifying element that cleared thought instead of
stifling it. There were moments when she felt that open alienation would
be easier, because it would be nearer the truth. And at such moments
she longed to speak, to beg him to utter his mind, to go with her once
for all into the depths of the subject they continued to avoid. But at
the last her heart always failed her: she could not face the thought of
losing him, of hearing him speak estranging words to her.
They had been at Hanaford for about ten days when, one morning at
breakfast, Amherst uttered a sudden exclamation over a letter he was
reading.
"What is it?" she asked in a tremor.
He had grown very pale, and was pushing the hair from his forehead with
the gesture habitual to him in moments of painful indecision.
"What is it?" Justine repeated, her fear growing.
"Nothing----" he began, thrusting the letter under the pile of envelopes
by his plate; but she continued to look at him anxiously, till she drew
his eyes to hers.
"Mr. Langhope writes that they've appointed Wyant to Saint
Christopher's," he said abruptly.
"Oh, the letter--we forgot the letter!" she cried.
"Yes--we forgot the letter."
"But how dare he----?"
Amherst said nothing, but the long silence between them seemed full of
ironic answers, till she brought out, hardly above her breath: "What
shall you do?"
"Write at once--tell Mr. Langhope he's not fit for the place."
"Of course----" she murmured.
He went on tearing open his other letters, and glancing at their
contents. She leaned back in her chair, her cup of coffee untasted,
listening to the recurrent crackle of torn paper as he tossed aside one
letter after another.
Presently he rose from his seat, and as she followed him from the
dining-room she noticed that his breakfast had also remained untasted.
He gathered up his letters and walked toward the smoking-room; and after
a moment's hesitation she joined him.
"John," she said from the threshold.
He was just seating himself at his desk, but he turned to her with an
obvious effort at kindness which made the set look of his face the more
marked.
She closed the door and went up to him.
"If you write that to Mr. Langhope--Dr. Wyant will--will tell him," she
said.
"Yes--we must be prepared for that."
She was silent, and Amherst flung himself down on the leather ottoman
against the wall. She stood before him, clasping and unclasping her
hands in speechless distress.
"What would you have me do?" he asked at length, almost irritably.
"I only thought...he told me he would keep straight...if he only had a
chance," she faltered out.
Amherst lifted his head slowly, and looked at her. "You mean--I am to do
nothing? Is that it?"
She moved nearer to him with beseeching eyes. "I can't bear it.... I
can't bear that others should come between us," she broke out
passionately.
He made no answer, but she could see a look of suffering cross his face,
and coming still closer, she sank down on the ottoman, laying her hand
on his. "John...oh, John, spare me," she whispered.
For a moment his hand lay quiet under hers; then he drew it out, and
enclosed her trembling fingers.
"Very well--I'll give him a chance--I'll do nothing," he said, suddenly
putting his other arm about her.
The reaction caught her by the throat, forcing out a dry sob or two; and
as she pressed her face against him he raised it up and gently kissed
her.
But even as their lips met she felt that they were sealing a treaty with
dishonour. That his kiss should come to mean that to her! It was
unbearable--worse than any personal pain--the thought of dragging him
down to falsehood through her weakness.
She drew back and rose to her feet, putting aside his detaining hand.
"No--no! What am I saying? It can't be--you must tell the truth." Her
voice gathered strength as she spoke. "Oh, forget what I said--I didn't
mean it!"
But again he seemed sunk in inaction, like a man over whom some baneful
lethargy is stealing.
"John--John--forget!" she repeated urgently.
He looked up at her. "You realize what it will mean?"
"Yes--I realize.... But it must be.... And it will make no difference
between us...will it?"
"No--no. Why should it?" he answered apathetically.
"Then write--tell Mr. Langhope not to give him the place. I want it
over."
He rose slowly to his feet, without looking at her again, and walked
over to the desk. She sank down on the ottoman and watched him with
burning eyes while he drew forth a sheet of note-paper and began to
write.
But after he had written a few words he laid down his pen, and swung his
chair about so that he faced her.
"I can't do it in this way," he exclaimed.
"How then? What do you mean?" she said, starting up.
He looked at her. "Do you want the story to come from Wyant?"
"Oh----" She looked back at him with sudden insight. "You mean to tell
Mr. Langhope yourself?"
"Yes. I mean to take the next train to town and tell him."
Her trembling increased so much that she had to rest her hands against
the edge of the ottoman to steady herself. "But if...if after
all...Wyant should not speak?"
"Well--if he shouldn't? Could you bear to owe our safety to _him_?"
"Safety!"
"It comes to that, doesn't it, if _we're_ afraid to speak?"
She sat silent, letting the bitter truth of this sink into her till it
poured courage into her veins.
"Yes--it comes to that," she confessed.
"Then you feel as I do?"
"That you must go----?"
"That this is intolerable!"
The words struck down her last illusion, and she rose and went over to
the writing-table. "Yes--go," she said.
He stood up also, and took both her hands, not in a caress, but gravely,
almost severely.
"Listen, Justine. You must understand exactly what this means--may mean.
I am willing to go on as we are now...as long as we can...because I
love you...because I would do anything to spare you pain. But if I speak
I must say everything--I must follow this thing up to its uttermost
consequences. That's what I want to make clear to you."
Her heart sank with a foreboding of new peril. "What consequences?"
"Can't you see for yourself--when you look about this house?"
"This house----?"
He dropped her hands and took an abrupt turn across the room.
"I owe everything to her," he broke out, "all I am, all I have, all I
have been able to give you--and I must go and tell her father that
you...."
"Stop--stop!" she cried, lifting her hands as if to keep off a blow.
"No--don't make me stop. We must face it," he said doggedly.
"But this--this isn't the truth! You put it as if--almost as if----"
"Yes--don't finish.--Has it occurred to you that _he_ may think that?"
Amherst asked with a terrible laugh. But at that she recovered her
courage, as she always did when an extreme call was made on it.
"No--I don't believe it! If he _does_, it will be because you think it
yourself...." Her voice sank, and she lifted her hands and pressed them
to her temples. "And if you think it, nothing matters...one way or the
other...." She paused, and her voice regained its strength. "That is
what I must face before you go: what _you_ think, what _you_ believe of
me. You've never told me that."
Amherst, at the challenge, remained silent, while a slow red crept to
his cheek-bones.
"Haven't I told you by--by what I've done?" he said slowly.
"No--what you've done has covered up what you thought; and I've helped
you cover it--I'm to blame too! But it was not for this that we...that
we had that half-year together...not to sink into connivance and
evasion! I don't want another hour of sham happiness. I want the truth
from you, whatever it is."
He stood motionless, staring moodily at the floor. "Don't you see that's
my misery--that I don't know myself?"
"You don't know...what you think of me?"
"Good God, Justine, why do you try to strip life naked? I don't know
what's been going on in me these last weeks----"
"You must know what you think of my motive...for doing what I did."
She saw in his face how he shrank from the least allusion to the act
about which their torment revolved. But he forced himself to raise his
head and look at her. "I have never--for one moment--questioned your
motive--or failed to see that it was justified...under the
circumstances...."
"Oh, John--John!" she broke out in the wild joy of hearing herself
absolved; but the next instant her subtle perceptions felt the
unconscious reserve behind his admission.
"Your mind justifies me--not your heart; isn't _that_ your misery?" she
said.
He looked at her almost piteously, as if, in the last resort, it was
from her that light must come to him. "On my soul, I don't know...I
can't tell...it's all dark in me. I know you did what you thought
best...if I had been there, I believe I should have asked you to do
it...but I wish to God----"
She interrupted him sobbingly. "Oh, I ought never to have let you love
me! I ought to have seen that I was cut off from you forever. I have
brought you wretchedness when I would have given my life for you! I
don't deserve that you should forgive me for that."
Her sudden outbreak seemed to restore his self-possession. He went up to
her and took her hand with a quieting touch.
"There is no question of forgiveness, Justine. Don't let us torture each
other with vain repinings. Our business is to face the thing, and we
shall be better for having talked it out. I shall be better, for my
part, for having told Mr. Langhope. But before I go I want to be sure
that you understand the view he may take...and the effect it will
probably have on our future."
"Our future?" She started. "No, I don't understand."
Amherst paused a moment, as if trying to choose the words least likely
to pain her. "Mr. Langhope knows that my marriage was...unhappy; through
my fault, he no doubt thinks. And if he chooses to infer that...that you
and I may have cared for each other...before...and that it was _because_
there was a chance of recovery that you----"
"Oh----"
"We must face it," he repeated inflexibly. "And you must understand
that, if there is the faintest hint of this kind, I shall give up
everything here, as soon as it can be settled legally--God, how Tredegar
will like the job!--and you and I will have to go and begin life over
again...somewhere else."
For an instant a mad hope swelled in her--the vision of escaping with
him into new scenes, a new life, away from the coil of memories that
bound them down as in a net. But the reaction of reason came at
once--she saw him cut off from his chosen work, his career destroyed,
his honour clouded, above all--ah, this was what wrung them both!--his
task undone, his people flung back into the depths from which he had
lifted them. And all through her doing--all because she had clutched at
happiness with too rash a hand! The thought stung her to passionate
activity of mind--made her resolve to risk anything, dare anything,
before she involved him farther in her own ruin. She felt her brain
clear gradually, and the thickness dissolve in her throat.
"I understand," she said in a low voice, raising her eyes to his.
"And you're ready to accept the consequences? Think again before it's
too late."
She paused. "That is what I should like...what I wanted to ask you...the
time to think."
She saw a slight shade cross his face, as if he had not expected this
failure of courage in her; but he said quietly: "You don't want me to go
today?"
"Not today--give me one more day."
"Very well."
She laid a timid hand on his arm. "Please go out to Westmore as
usual--as if nothing had happened. And tonight...when you come back...I
shall have decided."
"Very well," he repeated.
"You'll be gone all day?"
He glanced at his watch. "Yes--I had meant to be; unless----"
"No; I would rather be alone. Good-bye," she said, letting her hand slip
softly along his coat-sleeve as he turned to the door.
XXXVIII
AT half-past six that afternoon, just as Amherst, on his return from the
mills, put the key into his door at Hanaford, Mrs. Ansell, in New York,
was being shown into Mr. Langhope's library.
As she entered, her friend rose from his chair by the fire, and turned
on her a face so disordered by emotion that she stopped short with an
exclamation of alarm.
"Henry--what has happened? Why did you send for me?"
"Because I couldn't go to you. I couldn't trust myself in the
streets--in the light of day."
"But why? What is it?--Not Cicely----?"
He struck both hands upward with a comprehensive gesture.
"Cicely--everyone--the whole world!" His clenched fist came down on the
table against which he was leaning. "Maria, my girl might have been
saved!"
Mrs. Ansell looked at him with growing perturbation. "Saved--Bessy's
life? But how? By whom?"
"She might have been allowed to live, I mean--to recover. She was
killed, Maria; that woman killed her!"
Mrs. Ansell, with another cry of bewilderment, let herself drop
helplessly into the nearest chair. "In heaven's name, Henry--what
woman?"
He seated himself opposite to her, clutching at his stick, and leaning
his weight heavily on it--a white dishevelled old man. "I wonder why you
ask--just to spare me?"
Their eyes met in a piercing exchange of question and answer, and Mrs.
Ansell tried to bring out reasonably: "I ask in order to understand what
you are saying."
"Well, then, if you insist on keeping up appearances--my daughter-in-law
killed my daughter. There you have it." He laughed silently, with a tear
on his reddened eye-lids.
Mrs. Ansell groaned. "Henry, you are raving--I understand less and
less."
"I don't see how I can speak more plainly. She told me so herself, in
this room, not an hour ago."
"She told you? Who told you?"
"John Amherst's wife. Told me she'd killed my child. It's as easy as
breathing--if you know how to use a morphia-needle."
Light seemed at last to break on his hearer. "Oh, my poor Henry--you
mean--she gave too much? There was some dreadful accident?"
"There was no accident. She killed my child--killed her deliberately.
Don't look at me as if I were a madman. She sat in that chair you're in
when she told me."
"Justine? Has she been here today?" Mrs. Ansell paused in a painful
effort to readjust her thoughts. "But _why_ did she tell you?"
"That's simple enough. To prevent Wyant's doing it."
"Oh----" broke from his hearer, in a long sigh of fear and intelligence.
Mr. Langhope looked at her with a smile of miserable exultation.
"You knew--you suspected all along?--But now you must speak out!" he
exclaimed with a sudden note of command.
She sat motionless, as if trying to collect herself. "I know nothing--I
only meant--why was this never known before?"
He was upon her at once. "You think--because they understood each other?
And now there's been a break between them? He wanted too big a share of
the spoils? Oh, it's all so abysmally vile!"
He covered his face with a shaking hand, and Mrs. Ansell remained
silent, plunged in a speechless misery of conjecture. At length she
regained some measure of her habitual composure, and leaning forward,
with her eyes on his face, said in a quiet tone: "If I am to help you,
you must try to tell me just what has happened."
He made an impatient gesture. "Haven't I told you? She found that her
accomplice meant to speak, and rushed to town to forestall him."
Mrs. Ansell reflected. "But why--with his place at Saint Christopher's
secured--did Dr. Wyant choose this time to threaten her--if, as you
imagine, he's an accomplice?"
"Because he's a drug-taker, and she didn't wish him to have the place."
"She didn't wish it? But that does not look as if she were afraid. She
had only to hold her tongue!"
Mr. Langhope laughed sardonically. "It's not quite so simple. Amherst
was coming to town to tell me."
"Ah--_he_ knows?"
"Yes--and she preferred that I should have her version first."
"And what is her version?"
The furrows of misery deepened in Mr. Langhope's face. "Maria--don't ask
too much of me! I can't go over it again. She says she wanted to spare
my child--she says the doctors were keeping her alive, torturing her
uselessly, as a...a sort of scientific experiment.... She forced on me
the hideous details...."
Mrs. Ansell waited a moment.
"Well! May it not be true?"
"Wyant's version is different. _He_ says Bessy would have recovered--he
says Garford thought so too."
"And what does she answer? She denies it?"
"No. She admits that Garford was in doubt. But she says the chance was
too remote--the pain too bad...that's her cue, naturally!"
Mrs. Ansell, leaning back in her chair, with hands meditatively
stretched along its arms, gave herself up to silent consideration of the
fragmentary statements cast before her. The long habit of ministering to
her friends in moments of perplexity and distress had given her an
almost judicial keenness in disentangling and coordinating facts
incoherently presented, and in seizing on the thread of motive that
connected them; but she had never before been confronted with a
situation so poignant in itself, and bearing so intimately on her
personal feelings; and she needed time to free her thoughts from the
impending rush of emotion.
At last she raised her head and said: "Why did Mr. Amherst let her come
to you, instead of coming himself?"
"He knows nothing of her being here. She persuaded him to wait a day,
and as soon as he had gone to the mills this morning she took the first
train to town."
"Ah----" Mrs. Ansell murmured thoughtfully; and Mr. Langhope rejoined,
with a conclusive gesture: "Do you want more proofs of panic-stricken
guilt?"
"Oh, guilt--" His friend revolved her large soft muff about a drooping
hand. "There's so much still to understand."
"Your mind does not, as a rule, work so slowly!" he said with some
asperity; but she paid no heed to his tone.
"Amherst, for instance--how long has he known of this?" she continued.
"A week or two only--she made that clear."
"And what is his attitude?"
"Ah--that, I conjecture, is just what she means to keep us from
knowing!"
"You mean she's afraid----?"
Mr. Langhope gathered his haggard brows in a frown. "She's afraid, of
course--mortally--I never saw a woman more afraid. I only wonder she had
the courage to face me."
"Ah--that's it! Why _did_ she face you? To extenuate her act--to give
you her version, because she feared his might be worse? Do you gather
that that was her motive?"
It was Mr. Langhope's turn to hesitate. He furrowed the thick Turkey rug
with the point of his ebony stick, pausing once or twice to revolve it
gimlet-like in a gap of the pile.
"Not her avowed motive, naturally."
"Well--at least, then, let me have that."
"Her avowed motive? Oh, she'd prepared one, of course--trust her to
have a dozen ready! The one she produced was--simply the desire to
protect her husband."
"Her husband? Does _he_ too need protection?"
"My God, if he takes her side----! At any rate, her fear seemed to be
that what she had done might ruin him; might cause him to feel--as well
he may!--that the mere fact of being her husband makes his situation as
Cicely's step-father, as my son-in-law, intolerable. And she came to
clear him, as it were--to find out, in short, on what terms I should be
willing to continue my present relations with him as though this hideous
thing had not been known to me."
Mrs. Ansell raised her head quickly. "Well--and what were your terms?"
He hesitated. "She spared me the pain of proposing any--I had only to
accept hers."
"Hers?"
"That she should disappear altogether from my sight--and from the
child's, naturally. Good heaven, I should like to include Amherst in
that! But I'm tied hand and foot, as you see, by Cicely's interests; and
I'm bound to say she exonerated him completely--completely!"
Mrs. Ansell was again silent, but a swift flight of thoughts traversed
her drooping face. "But if you are to remain on the old terms with her
husband, how is she to disappear out of your life without also
disappearing out of his?"
Mr. Langhope gave a slight laugh. "I leave her to work out that
problem."
"And you think Amherst will consent to such conditions?"
"He's not to know of them."
The unexpectedness of the reply reduced Mrs. Ansell to a sound of
inarticulate interrogation; and Mr. Langhope continued: "Not at first,
that is. She had thought it all out--foreseen everything; and she wrung
from me--I don't yet know how!--a promise that when I saw him I would
make it appear that I cleared him completely, not only of any possible
complicity, or whatever you choose to call it, but of any sort of
connection with the matter in my thoughts of him. I am, in short, to let
him feel that he and I are to continue on the old footing--and I agreed,
on the condition of her effacing herself somehow--of course on some
other pretext."
"Some other pretext? But what conceivable pretext? My poor friend, he
adores her!"
Mr. Langhope raised his eyebrows slightly. "We haven't seen him since
this became known to him. _She_ has; and she let slip that he was
horror-struck."
Mrs. Ansell looked up with a quick exclamation. "Let slip? Isn't it
much more likely that she forced it on you--emphasized it to the last
limit of credulity?" She sank her hands to the arms of the chair, and
exclaimed, looking him straight in the eyes: "You say she was
frightened? It strikes me she was dauntless!"
Mr. Langhope stared a moment; then he said, with an ironic shrug: "No
doubt, then, she counted on its striking me too."
Mrs. Ansell breathed a shuddering sigh. "Oh, I understand your feeling
as you do--I'm deep in the horror of it myself. But I can't help seeing
that this woman might have saved herself--and that she's chosen to save
her husband instead. What I don't see, from what I know of him," she
musingly proceeded, "is how, on any imaginable pretext, she will induce
him to accept the sacrifice."
Mr. Langhope made a resentful movement. "If that's the only point your
mind dwells on----!"
Mrs. Ansell looked up. "It doesn't dwell anywhere as yet--except, my
poor Henry," she murmured, rising to move toward him, and softly laying
her hand on his bent shoulder--"except on your distress and misery--on
the very part I can't yet talk of, can't question you about...."
He let her hand rest there a moment; then he turned, and drawing it into
his own tremulous fingers, pressed it silently, with a clinging
helpless grasp that drew the tears to her eyes.
* * * * *
Justine Brent, in her earliest girlhood, had gone through one of those
emotional experiences that are the infantile diseases of the heart. She
had fancied herself beloved of a youth of her own age; had secretly
returned his devotion, and had seen it reft from her by another. Such an
incident, as inevitable as the measles, sometimes, like that mild
malady, leaves traces out of all proportion to its actual virulence. The
blow fell on Justine with tragic suddenness, and she reeled under it,
thinking darkly of death, and renouncing all hopes of future happiness.
Her ready pen often beguiled her into recording her impressions, and she
now found an escape from despair in writing the history of a damsel
similarly wronged. In her tale, the heroine killed herself; but the
author, saved by this vicarious sacrifice, lived, and in time even
smiled over her manuscript.
It was many years since Justine Amherst had recalled this youthful
incident; but the memory of it recurred to her as she turned from Mr.
Langhope's door. For a moment death seemed the easiest escape from what
confronted her; but though she could no longer medicine her despair by
turning it into fiction, she knew at once that she must somehow
transpose it into terms of action, that she must always escape from
life into more life, and not into its negation.
She had been carried into Mr. Langhope's presence by that expiatory
passion which still burns so high, and draws its sustenance from so deep
down, in the unsleeping hearts of women. Though she had never wavered in
her conviction that her act had been justified her ideas staggered under
the sudden comprehension of its consequences. Not till that morning had
she seen those consequences in their terrible, unsuspected extent, had
she understood how one stone rashly loosened from the laboriously
erected structure of human society may produce remote fissures in that
clumsy fabric. She saw that, having hazarded the loosening of the stone,
she should have held herself apart from ordinary human ties, like some
priestess set apart for the service of the temple. And instead, she had
seized happiness with both hands, taken it as the gift of the very fate
she had herself precipitated! She remembered some old Greek saying to
the effect that the gods never forgive the mortal who presumes to love
and suffer like a god. She had dared to do both, and the gods were
bringing ruin on that deeper self which had its life in those about her.
So much had become clear to her when she heard Amherst declare his
intention of laying the facts before Mr. Langhope. His few broken words
lit up the farthest verge of their lives. She saw that his
retrospective reverence for his wife's memory, which was far as possible
removed from the strong passion of the mind and senses that bound him to
herself, was indelibly stained and desecrated by the discovery that all
he had received from the one woman had been won for him by the
deliberate act of the other. This was what no reasoning, no appeal to
the calmer judgment, could ever, in his inmost thoughts, undo or
extenuate. It could find appeasement only in the renunciation of all
that had come to him from Bessy; and this renunciation, so different
from the mere sacrifice of material well-being, was bound up with
consequences so far-reaching, so destructive to the cause which had
inspired his whole life, that Justine felt the helpless terror of the
mortal who has launched one of the heavenly bolts.
She could think of no way of diverting it but the way she had chosen.
She must see Mr. Langhope first, must clear Amherst of the least faint
association with her act or her intention. And to do this she must
exaggerate, not her own compunction--for she could not depart from the
exact truth in reporting her feelings and convictions--but her husband's
first instinctive movement of horror, the revulsion of feeling her
confession had really produced in him. This was the most painful part of
her task, and for this reason her excited imagination clothed it with a
special expiatory value. If she could purchase Amherst's peace of mind,
and the security of his future, by confessing, and even
over-emphasizing, the momentary estrangement between them there would be
a bitter joy in such payment!
Her hour with Mr. Langhope proved the correctness of her intuition. She
could save Amherst only by effacing herself from his life: those about
him would be only too ready to let her bear the full burden of obloquy.
She could see that, for a dozen reasons, Mr. Langhope, even in the first
shock of his dismay, unconsciously craved a way of exonerating Amherst,
of preserving intact the relation on which so much of his comfort had
come to depend. And she had the courage to make the most of his desire,
to fortify it by isolating Amherst's point of view from hers; so that,
when the hour was over, she had the solace of feeling that she had
completely freed him from any conceivable consequence of her act.
So far, the impetus of self-sacrifice had carried her straight to her
goal; but, as frequently happens with such atoning impulses, it left her
stranded just short of any subsequent plan of conduct. Her next step,
indeed, was clear enough: she must return to Hanaford, explain to her
husband that she had felt impelled to tell her own story to Mr.
Langhope, and then take up her ordinary life till chance offered her a
pretext for fulfilling her promise. But what pretext was likely to
present itself? No symbolic horn would sound the hour of fulfillment;
she must be her own judge, and hear the call in the depths of her own
conscience.
XXXIX
WHEN Amherst, returning late that afternoon from Westmore, learned of
his wife's departure, and read the note she had left, he found it, for a
time, impossible to bring order out of the confusion of feeling produced
in him.
His mind had been disturbed enough before. All day, through the routine
of work at the mills, he had laboured inwardly with the difficulties
confronting him; and his unrest had been increased by the fact that his
situation bore an ironic likeness to that in which, from a far different
cause, he had found himself at the other crisis of his life. Once more
he was threatened with the possibility of having to give up Westmore, at
a moment when concentration of purpose and persistency of will were at
last beginning to declare themselves in tangible results. Before, he had
only given up dreams; now it was their fruition that he was asked to
surrender. And he was fixed in his resolve to withdraw absolutely from
Westmore if the statement he had to make to Mr. Langhope was received
with the least hint of an offensive mental reservation. All forms of
moral compromise had always been difficult to Amherst, and like many men
absorbed in large and complicated questions he craved above all
clearness and peace in his household relation. The first months of his
second marriage had brought him, as a part of richer and deeper joys,
this enveloping sense of a clear moral medium, in which no subterfuge or
equivocation could draw breath. He had felt that henceforth he could
pour into his work all the combative energy, the powers of endurance,
resistance, renovation, which had once been unprofitably dissipated in
the vain attempt to bring some sort of harmony into life with Bessy.
Between himself and Justine, apart from their love for each other, there
was the wider passion for their kind, which gave back to them an
enlarged and deepened reflection of their personal feeling. In such an
air it had seemed that no petty egotism could hamper their growth, no
misintelligence obscure their love; yet all the while this pure
happiness had been unfolding against a sordid background of falsehood
and intrigue from which his soul turned with loathing.
Justine was right in assuming that Amherst had never thought much about
women. He had vaguely regarded them as meant to people that hazy domain
of feeling designed to offer the busy man an escape from thought. His
second marriage, leading him to the blissful discovery that woman can
think as well as feel, that there are beings of the ornamental sex in
whom brain and heart have so enlarged each other that their emotions are
as clear as thought, their thoughts as warm as emotions--this discovery
had had the effect of making him discard his former summary conception
of woman as a bundle of inconsequent impulses, and admit her at a stroke
to full mental equality with her lord. The result of this act of
manumission was, that in judging Justine he could no longer allow for
what was purely feminine in her conduct. It was incomprehensible to him
that she, to whom truth had seemed the essential element of life, should
have been able to draw breath, and find happiness, in an atmosphere of
falsehood and dissimulation. His mind could assent--at least in the
abstract--to the reasonableness of her act; but he was still unable to
understand her having concealed it from him. He could enter far enough
into her feelings to allow for her having kept silence on his first
return to Lynbrook, when she was still under the strain of a prolonged
and terrible trial; but that she should have continued to do so when he
and she had discovered and confessed their love for each other, threw an
intolerable doubt on her whole course.
He stayed late at the mills, finding one pretext after another for
delaying his return to Hanaford, and trying, while he gave one part of
his mind to the methodical performance of his task, to adjust the other
to some definite view of the future. But all was darkened and confused
by the sense that, between himself and Justine, complete communion of
thought was no longer possible. It had, in fact, never existed; there
had always been a locked chamber in her mind, and he knew not yet what
other secrets might inhabit it.
The shock of finding her gone when he reached home gave a new turn to
his feelings. She had made no mystery of her destination, leaving word
with the servants that she had gone to town to see Mr. Langhope; and
Amherst found a note from her on his study table.
"I feel," she wrote, "that I ought to see Mr. Langhope myself, and be
the first to tell him what must be told. It was like you, dearest, to
wish to spare me this, but it would have made me more unhappy; and Mr.
Langhope might wish to hear the facts in my own words. I shall come back
tomorrow, and after that it will be for you to decide what must be
done."
The brevity and simplicity of the note were characteristic; in moments
of high tension Justine was always calm and direct. And it was like her,
too, not to make any covert appeal to his sympathy, not to seek to
entrap his judgment by caressing words and plaintive allusions. The
quiet tone in which she stated her purpose matched the firmness and
courage of the act, and for a moment Amherst was shaken by a revulsion
of feeling. Her heart was level with his, after all--if she had done
wrong she would bear the brunt of it alone. It was so exactly what he
himself would have felt and done in such a situation that faith in her
flowed back through all the dried channels of his heart. But an instant
later the current set the other way. The wretched years of his first
marriage had left in him a residue of distrust, a tendency to dissociate
every act from its ostensible motive. He had been too profoundly the
dupe of his own enthusiasm not to retain this streak of scepticism, and
it now moved him to ask if Justine's sudden departure had not been
prompted by some other cause than the one she avowed. Had that alone
actuated her, why not have told it to him, and asked his consent to her
plan? Why let him leave the house without a hint of her purpose, and
slip off by the first train as soon as he was safe at Westmore? Might it
not be that she had special reasons for wishing Mr. Langhope to _hear
her own version first_--that there were questions she wished to parry
herself, explanations she could trust no one to make for her? The
thought plunged Amherst into deeper misery. He knew not how to defend
himself against these disintegrating suspicions--he felt only that, once
the accord between two minds is broken, it is less easy to restore than
the passion between two hearts. He dragged heavily through his solitary
evening, and awaited with dread and yet impatience a message announcing
his wife's return.
* * * * *
It would have been easier--far easier--when she left Mr. Langhope's
door, to go straight out into the darkness and let it close in on her
for good.
Justine felt herself yielding to the spell of that suggestion as she
walked along the lamplit pavement, hardly conscious of the turn her
steps were taking. The door of the house which a few weeks before had
been virtually hers had closed on her without a question. She had been
suffered to go out into the darkness without being asked whither she was
going, or under what roof her night would be spent. The contrast between
her past and present sounded through the tumult of her thoughts like the
evil laughter of temptation. The house at Hanaford, to which she was
returning, would look at her with the same alien face--nowhere on earth,
at that moment, was a door which would open to her like the door of
home.
In her painful self-absorption she followed the side street toward
Madison Avenue, and struck southward down that tranquil thoroughfare.
There was a physical relief in rapid motion, and she walked on, still
hardly aware of her direction, toward the clustered lights of Madison
Square. Should she return to Hanaford, she had still several hours to
dispose of before the departure of the midnight train; and if she did
not return, hours and dates no longer existed for her.
It would be easier--infinitely easier--not to go back. To take up her
life with Amherst would, under any circumstances, be painful enough; to
take it up under the tacit restriction of her pledge to Mr. Langhope
seemed more than human courage could face. As she approached the square
she had almost reached the conclusion that such a temporary renewal was
beyond her strength--beyond what any standard of duty exacted. The
question of an alternative hardly troubled her. She would simply go on
living, and find an escape in work and material hardship. It would not
be hard for so inconspicuous a person to slip back into the obscure mass
of humanity.
She paused a moment on the edge of the square, vaguely seeking a
direction for her feet that might permit the working of her thoughts to
go on uninterrupted; and as she stood there, her eyes fell on the bench
near the corner of Twenty-sixth Street, where she had sat with Amherst
on the day of his flight from Lynbrook. He too had dreamed of escaping
from insoluble problems into the clear air of hard work and simple
duties; and she remembered the words with which she had turned him back.
The cases, of course, were not identical, since he had been flying in
anger and wounded pride from a situation for which he was in no wise to
blame; yet, if even at such a moment she had insisted on charity and
forbearance, how could she now show less self-denial than she had
exacted of him?
"If you go away for a time, surely it ought to be in such a way that
your going does not seem to cast any reflection on Bessy...." That was
how she had put it to him, and how, with the mere change of a name, she
must now, for reasons as cogent, put it to herself. It was just as much
a part of the course she had planned to return to her husband now, and
take up their daily life together, as it would, later on, be her duty to
drop out of that life, when her doing so could no longer involve him in
the penalty to be paid.
She stood a little while looking at the bench on which they had sat, and
giving thanks in her heart for the past strength which was now helping
to build up her failing courage: such a patchwork business are our best
endeavours, yet so faithfully does each weak upward impulse reach back a
hand to the next.
* * * * *
Justine's explanation of her visit to Mr. Langhope was not wholly
satisfying to her husband. She did not conceal from him that the scene
had been painful, but she gave him to understand, as briefly as
possible, that Mr. Langhope, after his first movement of uncontrollable
distress, had seemed able to make allowances for the pressure under
which she had acted, and that he had, at any rate, given no sign of
intending to let her confession make any change in the relation between
the households. If she did not--as Amherst afterward recalled--put all
this specifically into words, she contrived to convey it in her manner,
in her allusions, above all in her recovered composure. She had the
demeanour of one who has gone through a severe test of strength, but
come out of it in complete control of the situation. There was something
slightly unnatural in this prompt solution of so complicated a
difficulty, and it had the effect of making Amherst ask himself what, to
produce such a result, must have been the gist of her communication to
Mr. Langhope. If the latter had shown any disposition to be cruel, or
even unjust, Amherst's sympathies would have rushed instantly to his
wife's defence; but the fact that there was apparently to be no call on
them left his reason free to compare and discriminate, with the final
result that the more he pondered on his father-in-law's attitude the
less intelligible it became.
A few days after Justine's return he was called to New York on business;
and before leaving he told her that he should of course take the
opportunity of having a talk with Mr. Langhope.
She received the statement with the gentle composure from which she had
not departed since her return from town; and he added tentatively, as if
to provoke her to a clearer expression of feeling: "I shall not be
satisfied, of course, till I see for myself just how he feels--just how
much, at bottom, this has affected him--since my own future relation to
him will, as I have already told you, depend entirely on his treatment
of you."
She met this without any sign of disturbance. "His treatment of me was
very kind," she said. "But would it not, on your part," she continued
hesitatingly, "be kinder not to touch on the subject so soon again?"
The line deepened between his brows. "Touch on it? I sha'n't rest till
I've gone to the bottom of it! Till then, you must understand," he
summed up with decision, "I feel myself only on sufferance here at
Westmore."
"Yes--I understand," she assented; and as he bent over to kiss her for
goodbye a tenuous impenetrable barrier seemed to lie between their lips.
* * * * *
It was Justine's turn to await with a passionate anxiety her husband's
home-coming; and when, on the third day, he reappeared, her dearly
acquired self-control gave way to a tremulous eagerness. This was, after
all, the turning-point in their lives: everything depended on how Mr.
Langhope had "played up" to his cue; had kept to his side of their bond.
Amherst's face showed signs of emotional havoc: when feeling once broke
out in him it had full play, and she could see that his hour with Mr.
Langhope had struck to the roots of life. But the resultant expression
was one of invigoration, not defeat; and she gathered at a glance that
her partner had not betrayed her. She drew a tragic solace from the
success of her achievement; yet it flung her into her husband's arms
with a passion of longing to which, as she instantly felt, he did not as
completely respond.
There was still, then, something "between" them: somewhere the mechanism
of her scheme had failed, or its action had not produced the result she
had counted on.
As soon as they were alone in the study she said, as quietly as she
could: "You saw your father-in-law? You talked with him?"
"Yes--I spent the afternoon with him. Cicely sent you her love."
She coloured at the mention of the child's name and murmured: "And Mr.
Langhope?"
"He is perfectly calm now--perfectly impartial.--This business has made
me feel," Amherst added abruptly, "that I have never been quite fair to
him. I never thought him a magnanimous man."
"He has proved himself so," Justine murmured, her head bent low over a
bit of needlework; and Amherst affirmed energetically: "He has been more
than that--generous!"
She looked up at him with a smile. "I am so glad, dear; so glad there is
not to be the least shadow between you...."
"No," Amherst said, his voice flagging slightly. There was a pause, and
then he went on with renewed emphasis: "Of course I made my point clear
to him."
"Your point?"
"That I stand or fall by his judgment of you."
Oh, if he had but said it more tenderly! But he delivered it with the
quiet resolution of a man who contends for an abstract principle of
justice, and not for a passion grown into the fibres of his heart!
"You are generous too," she faltered, her voice trembling a little.
Amherst frowned; and she perceived that any hint, on her part, of
recognizing the slightest change in their relations was still like
pressure on a painful bruise.
"There is no need for such words between us," he said impatiently; "and
Mr. Langhope's attitude," he added, with an effort at a lighter tone,
"has made it unnecessary, thank heaven, that we should ever revert to
the subject again."
He turned to his desk as he spoke, and plunged into perusal of the
letters that had accumulated in his absence.
* * * * *
There was a temporary excess of work at Westmore, and during the days
that followed he threw himself into it with a zeal that showed Justine
how eagerly he sought any pretext for avoiding confidential moments. The
perception was painful enough, yet not as painful as another discovery
that awaited her. She too had her tasks at Westmore: the supervision of
the hospital, the day nursery, the mothers' club, and the various other
organizations whereby she and Amherst were trying to put some sort of
social unity into the lives of the mill-hands; and when, on the day
after his return from New York, she presented herself, as usual, at the
Westmore office, where she was in the habit of holding a brief
consultation with him before starting on her rounds, she was at once
aware of a new tinge of constraint in his manner. It hurt him, then, to
see her at Westmore--hurt him more than to live with her, at Hanaford,
under Bessy's roof! For it was there, at the mills, that his real life
was led, the life with which Justine had been most identified, the life
that had been made possible for both by the magnanimity of that other
woman whose presence was now forever between them.
Justine made no sign. She resumed her work as though unconscious of any
change; but whereas in the past they had always found pretexts for
seeking each other out, to discuss the order of the day's work, or
merely to warm their hearts by a rapid word or two, now each went a
separate way, sometimes not meeting till they regained the house at
night-fall.
And as the weeks passed she began to understand that, by a strange
inversion of probability, the relation between Amherst and herself was
to be the means of holding her to her compact with Mr. Langhope--if
indeed it were not nearer the truth to say that it had made such a
compact unnecessary. Amherst had done his best to take up their life
together as though there had been no break in it; but slowly the fact
was being forced on her that by remaining with him she was subjecting
him to intolerable suffering--was coming to be the personification of
the very thoughts and associations from which he struggled to escape.
Happily her promptness of action had preserved Westmore to him, and in
Westmore she believed that he would in time find a refuge from even the
memory of what he was now enduring. But meanwhile her presence kept the
thought alive; and, had every other incentive lost its power, this would
have been enough to sustain her. Fate had, ironically enough, furnished
her with an unanswerable reason for leaving Amherst; the impossibility
of their keeping up such a relation as now existed between them would
soon become too patent to be denied.
Meanwhile, as summer approached, she knew that external conditions would
also call upon her to act. The visible signal for her withdrawal would
be Cicely's next visit to Westmore. The child's birthday fell in early
June; and Amherst, some months previously, had asked that she should be
permitted to spend it at Hanaford, and that it should be chosen as the
date for the opening of the first model cottages at Hopewood.
It was Justine who had originated the idea of associating Cicely's
anniversaries with some significant moment in the annals of the mill
colony; and struck by the happy suggestion, he had at once applied
himself to hastening on the work at Hopewood. The eagerness of both
Amherst and Justine that Cicely should be identified with the developing
life of Westmore had been one of the chief influences in reconciling Mr.
Langhope to his son-in-law's second marriage. Husband and wife had
always made it clear that they regarded themselves as the mere trustees
of the Westmore revenues, and that Cicely's name should, as early as
possible, be associated with every measure taken for the welfare of the
people. But now, as Justine knew, the situation was changed; and Cicely
would not be allowed to come to Hanaford until she herself had left it.
The manifold threads of divination that she was perpetually throwing out
in Amherst's presence told her, without word or sign on his part, that
he also awaited Cicely's birthday as a determining date in their lives.
He spoke confidently, and as a matter of course, of Mr. Langhope's
bringing his grand-daughter at the promised time; but Justine could hear
a note of challenge in his voice, as though he felt that Mr. Langhope's
sincerity had not yet been put to the test.
As the time drew nearer it became more difficult for her to decide just
how she should take the step she had determined on. She had no material
anxiety for the future, for although she did not mean to accept a penny
from her husband after she had left him, she knew it would be easy for
her to take up her nursing again; and she knew also that her hospital
connections would enable her to find work in a part of the country far
enough distant to remove her entirely from his life. But she had not yet
been able to invent a reason for leaving that should be convincing
enough to satisfy him, without directing his suspicions to the truth. As
she revolved the question she suddenly recalled an exclamation of
Amherst's--a word spoken as they entered Mr. Langhope's door, on the
fatal afternoon when she had found Wyant's letter awaiting her.
"There's nothing you can't make people believe, you little Jesuit!"
She had laughed in pure joy at his praise of her; for every bantering
phrase had then been a caress. But now the words returned with a
sinister meaning. She knew they were true as far as Amherst was
concerned: in the arts of casuistry and equivocation a child could have
outmatched him, and she had only to exert her will to dupe him as deeply
as she pleased. Well! the task was odious, but it was needful: it was
the bitterest part of her expiation that she must deceive him once more
to save him from the results of her former deception. This decision once
reached, every nerve in her became alert for an opportunity to do the
thing and have it over; so that, whenever they were alone together, she
was in an attitude of perpetual tension, her whole mind drawn up for its
final spring.
The decisive word came, one evening toward the end of May, in the form
of an allusion on Amherst's part to Cicely's approaching visit. Husband
and wife were seated in the drawing-room after dinner, he with a book in
hand, she bending, as usual, over the needlework which served at once as
a pretext for lowered eyes, and as a means of disguising her fixed
preoccupation.
"Have you worked out a plan?" he asked, laying down his book. "It
occurred to me that it would be rather a good idea if we began with a
sort of festivity for the kids at the day nursery. You could take Cicely
there early, and I could bring out Mr. Langhope after luncheon. The
whole performance would probably tire him too much."
Justine listened with suspended thread. "Yes--that seems a good plan."
"Will you see about the details, then? You know it's only a week off."
"Yes, I know." She hesitated, and then took the spring. "I ought to
tell you John--that I--I think I may not be here...."
He raised his head abruptly, and she saw the blood mount under his fair
skin. "Not be here?" he exclaimed.
She met his look as steadily as she could. "I think of going away for
awhile."
"Going away? Where? What is the matter--are you not well?"
There was her pretext--he had found it for her! Why should she not
simply plead ill-health? Afterward she would find a way of elaborating
the details and making them plausible. But suddenly, as she was about to
speak, there came to her the feeling which, up to one fatal moment in
their lives, had always ruled their intercourse--the feeling that there
must be truth, and absolute truth, between them. Absolute, indeed, it
could never be again, since he must never know of the condition exacted
by Mr. Langhope; but that, at the moment, seemed almost a secondary
motive compared to the deeper influences that were inexorably forcing
them apart. At any rate, she would trump up no trivial excuse for the
step she had resolved on; there should be truth, if not the whole truth,
in this last decisive hour between them.
"Yes; I am quite well--at least my body is," she said quietly. "But I am
tired, perhaps; my mind has been going round too long in the same
circle." She paused for a brief space, and then, raising her head, and
looking him straight in the eyes: "Has it not been so with you?" she
asked.
The question seemed to startle Amherst. He rose from his chair and took
a few steps toward the hearth, where a small fire was crumbling into
embers. He turned his back to it, resting an arm on the mantel-shelf;
then he said, in a somewhat unsteady tone: "I thought we had agreed not
to speak of all that again."
Justine shook her head with a fugitive half-smile. "I made no such
agreement. And besides, what is the use, when we can always hear each
other's thoughts speak, and they speak of nothing else?"
Amherst's brows darkened. "It is not so with mine," he began; but she
raised her hand with a silencing gesture.
"I know you have tried your best that it should not be so; and perhaps
you have succeeded better than I. But I am tired, horribly tired--I want
to get away from everything!"
She saw a look of pain in his eyes. He continued to lean against the
mantel-shelf, his head slightly lowered, his unseeing gaze fixed on a
remote scroll in the pattern of the carpet; then he said in a low tone:
"I can only repeat again what I have said before--that I understand why
you did what you did."
"Thank you," she answered, in the same tone.
There was another pause, for she could not trust herself to go on
speaking; and presently he asked, with a tinge of bitterness in his
voice: "That does not satisfy you?"
She hesitated. "It satisfies me as much as it does you--and no more,"
she replied at length.
He looked up hastily. "What do you mean?"
"Just what I say. We can neither of us go on living on that
understanding just at present." She rose as she spoke, and crossed over
to the hearth. "I want to go back to my nursing--to go out to Michigan,
to a town where I spent a few months the year before I first came to
Hanaford. I have friends there, and can get work easily. And you can
tell people that I was ill and needed a change."
It had been easier to say than she had imagined, and her voice held its
clear note till the end; but when she had ceased, the whole room began
to reverberate with her words, and through the clashing they made in her
brain she felt a sudden uncontrollable longing that they should provoke
in him a cry of protest, of resistance. Oh, if he refused to let her
go--if he caught her to him, and defied the world to part them--what
then of her pledge to Mr. Langhope, what then of her resolve to pay the
penalty alone?
But in the space of a heart-beat she knew that peril--that longed-for
peril!--was past. Her husband had remained silent--he neither moved
toward her nor looked at her; and she felt in every slackening nerve
that in the end he would let her go.
XL
MR. LANGHOPE, tossing down a note on Mrs. Ansell's drawing-room table,
commanded imperiously: "Read that!"
She set aside her tea-cup, and looked up, not at the note, but into his
face, which was crossed by one of the waves of heat and tremulousness
that she was beginning to fear for him. Mr. Langhope had changed greatly
in the last three months; and as he stood there in the clear light of
the June afternoon it came to her that he had at last suffered the
sudden collapse which is the penalty of youth preserved beyond its time.
"What is it?" she asked, still watching him as she put out her hand for
the letter.
"Amherst writes to remind me of my promise to take Cicely to Hanaford
next week, for her birthday."
"Well--it was a promise, wasn't it?" she rejoined, running her eyes over
the page.
"A promise--yes; but made before.... Read the note--you'll see there's
no reference to his wife. For all I know, she'll be there to receive
us."
"But that was a promise too."
"That neither Cicely nor I should ever set eyes on her? Yes. But why
should she keep it? I was a fool that day--she fooled me as she's fooled
us all! But you saw through it from the beginning--you said at once that
she'd never leave him."
Mrs. Ansell reflected. "I said that before I knew all the circumstances.
Now I think differently."
"You think she still means to go?"
She handed the letter back to him. "I think this is to tell you so."
"This?" He groped for his glasses, dubiously scanning the letter again.
"Yes. And what's more, if you refuse to go she'll have every right to
break her side of the agreement."
Mr. Langhope sank into a chair, steadying himself painfully with his
stick. "Upon my soul, I sometimes think you're on her side!" he
ejaculated.
"No--but I like fair play," she returned, measuring his tea carefully
into his favourite little porcelain tea-pot.
"Fair play?"
"She's offering to do her part. It's for you to do yours now--to take
Cicely to Hanaford."
"If I find her there, I never cross Amherst's threshold again!"
Mrs. Ansell, without answering, rose and put his tea-cup on the
slender-legged table at his elbow; then, before returning to her seat,
she found the enamelled match-box and laid it by the cup. It was
becoming difficult for Mr. Langhope to guide his movements about her
small encumbered room; and he had always liked being waited on.
* * * * *
Mrs. Ansell's prognostication proved correct. When Mr. Langhope and
Cicely arrived at Hanaford they found Amherst alone to receive them. He
explained briefly that his wife had been unwell, and had gone to seek
rest and change at the house of an old friend in the west. Mr. Langhope
expressed a decent amount of regret, and the subject was dropped as if
by common consent. Cicely, however, was not so easily silenced. Poor
Bessy's uncertain fits of tenderness had produced more bewilderment than
pleasure in her sober-minded child; but the little girl's feelings and
perceptions had developed rapidly in the equable atmosphere of her
step-mother's affection. Cicely had reached the age when children put
their questions with as much ingenuity as persistence, and both Mr.
Langhope and Amherst longed for Mrs. Ansell's aid in parrying her
incessant interrogations as to the cause and length of Justine's
absence, what she had said before going, and what promise she had made
about coming back. But Mrs. Ansell had not come to Hanaford. Though it
had become a matter of habit to include her in the family pilgrimages to
the mills she had firmly maintained the plea of more urgent engagements;
and the two men, with only Cicely between them, had spent the long days
and longer evenings in unaccustomed and unmitigated propinquity.
Mr. Langhope, before leaving, thought it proper to touch tentatively on
his promise of giving Cicely to Amherst for the summer; but to his
surprise the latter, after a moment of hesitation, replied that he
should probably go to Europe for two or three months.
"To Europe? Alone?" escaped from Mr. Langhope before he had time to
weigh his words.
Amherst frowned slightly. "I have been made a delegate to the Berne
conference on the housing of factory operatives," he said at length,
without making a direct reply to the question; "and if there is nothing
to keep me at Westmore, I shall probably go out in July." He waited a
moment, and then added: "My wife has decided to spend the summer in
Michigan."
Mr. Langhope's answer was a vague murmur of assent, and Amherst turned
the talk to other matters.
* * * * *
Mr. Langhope returned to town with distinct views on the situation at
Hanaford.
"Poor devil--I'm sorry for him: he can hardly speak of her," he broke
out at once to Mrs. Ansell, in the course of their first confidential
hour together.
"Because he cares too much--he's too unhappy?"
"Because he loathes her!" Mr. Langhope brought out with emphasis.
Mrs. Ansell drew a deep sigh which made him add accusingly: "I believe
you're actually sorry!"
"Sorry?" She raised her eye-brows with a slight smile. "Should one not
always be sorry to know there's a little less love and a little more
hate in the world?"
"You'll be asking _me_ not to hate her next!"
She still continued to smile on him. "It's the haters, not the hated,
I'm sorry for," she said at length; and he flung back impatiently: "Oh,
don't let's talk of her. I sometimes feel she takes up more place in our
lives than when she was with us!"
* * * * *
Amherst went to the Berne conference in July, and spent six weeks
afterward in rapid visits to various industrial centres and model
factory villages. During his previous European pilgrimages his interest
had by no means been restricted to sociological questions: the appeal of
an old civilization, reaching him through its innumerable forms of
tradition and beauty, had roused that side of his imagination which his
work at home left untouched. But upon his present state of deep moral
commotion the spells of art and history were powerless to work. The
foundations of his life had been shaken, and the fair exterior of the
world was as vacant as a maniac's face. He could only take refuge in his
special task, barricading himself against every expression of beauty and
poetry as so many poignant reminders of a phase of life that he was
vainly trying to cast off and forget.
Even his work had been embittered to him, thrust out of its place in the
ordered scheme of things. It had cost him a hard struggle to hold fast
to his main purpose, to convince himself that his real duty lay, not in
renouncing the Westmore money and its obligations, but in carrying out
his projected task as if nothing had occurred to affect his personal
relation to it. The mere fact that such a renunciation would have been a
deliberate moral suicide, a severing once for all of every artery of
action, made it take on, at first, the semblance of an obligation, a
sort of higher duty to the abstract conception of what he owed himself.
But Justine had not erred in her forecast. Once she had passed out of
his life, it was easier for him to return to a dispassionate view of his
situation, to see, and boldly confess to himself that he saw, the still
higher duty of sticking to his task, instead of sacrificing it to any
ideal of personal disinterestedness. It was this gradual process of
adjustment that saved him from the desolating scepticism which falls on
the active man when the sources of his activity are tainted. Having
accepted his fate, having consented to see in himself merely the
necessary agent of a good to be done, he could escape from
self-questioning only by shutting himself up in the practical exigencies
of his work, closing his eyes and his thoughts to everything which had
formerly related it to a wider world, had given meaning and beauty to
life as a whole.
The return from Europe, and the taking up of the daily routine at
Hanaford, were the most difficult phases in this process of moral
adaptation.
Justine's departure had at first brought relief. He had been too sincere
with himself to oppose her wish to leave Hanaford for a time, since he
believed that, for her as well as for himself, a temporary separation
would be less painful than a continuance of their actual relation. But
as the weeks passed into months he found he was no nearer to a clear
view of his own case: the future was still dark and enigmatic. Justine's
desire to leave him had revived his unformulated distrust of her. What
could it mean but that there were thoughts within her which could not be
at rest in his presence? He had given her every proof of his wish to
forget the past, and Mr. Langhope had behaved with unequalled
magnanimity. Yet Justine's unhappiness was evident: she could not
conceal her longing to escape from the conditions her act had created.
Was it because, in reality, she was conscious of other motives than the
one she acknowledged? She had insisted, almost unfeelingly as it might
have seemed, on the abstract rightness of what she had done, on the fact
that, ideally speaking, her act could not be made less right, less
justifiable, by the special accidental consequences that had flowed from
it. Because these consequences had caught her in a web of tragic
fatality she would not be guilty of the weakness of tracing back the
disaster to any intrinsic error in her original motive. Why, then, if
this was her real, her proud attitude toward the past--and since those
about her believed in her sincerity, and accepted her justification as
valid from her point of view if not from theirs--why had she not been
able to maintain her posture, to carry on life on the terms she had
exacted from others?
A special circumstance contributed to this feeling of distrust; the
fact, namely, that Justine, a week after her departure from Hanaford,
had written to say that she could not, from that moment till her return,
consent to accept any money from Amherst. As her manner was, she put her
reasons clearly and soberly, without evasion or ambiguity.
"Since you and I," she wrote, "have always agreed in regarding the
Westmore money as a kind of wage for our services at the mills, I
cannot be satisfied to go on drawing that wage while I am unable to do
any work in return. I am sure you must feel as I do about this; and you
need have no anxiety as to the practical side of the question, since I
have enough to live on in some savings from my hospital days, which were
invested for me two years ago by Harry Dressel, and are beginning to
bring in a small return. This being the case, I feel I can afford to
interpret in any way I choose the terms of the bargain between myself
and Westmore."
On reading this, Amherst's mind had gone through the strange dual
process which now marked all his judgments of his wife. At first he had
fancied he understood her, and had felt that he should have done as she
did; then the usual reaction of distrust set in, and he asked himself
why she, who had so little of the conventional attitude toward money,
should now develop this unexpected susceptibility. And so the old
question presented itself in another shape: if she had nothing to
reproach herself for, why was it intolerable to her to live on Bessy's
money? The fact that she was doing no actual service at Westmore did not
account for her scruples--she would have been the last person to think
that a sick servant should be docked of his pay. Her reluctance could
come only from that hidden cause of compunction which had prompted her
departure, and which now forced her to sever even the merely material
links between herself and her past.
Amherst, on his return to Hanaford, had tried to find in these
considerations a reason for his deep unrest. It was his wife's course
which still cast a torturing doubt on what he had braced his will to
accept and put behind him. And he now told himself that the perpetual
galling sense of her absence was due to this uneasy consciousness of
what it meant, of the dark secrets it enveloped and held back from him.
In actual truth, every particle of his being missed her, he lacked her
at every turn. She had been at once the partner of his task, and the
_pays bleu_ into which he escaped from it; the vivifying thought which
gave meaning to the life he had chosen, yet never let him forget that
there was a larger richer life outside, to which he was rooted by deeper
and more intrinsic things than any abstract ideal of altruism. His love
had preserved his identity, saved him from shrinking into the mere
nameless unit which the social enthusiast is in danger of becoming
unless the humanitarian passion is balanced, and a little overweighed,
by a merely human one. And now this equilibrium was lost forever, and
his deepest pain lay in realizing that he could not regain it, even by
casting off Westmore and choosing the narrower but richer individual
existence that her love might once have offered. His life was in truth
one indivisible organism, not two halves artificially united. Self and
other-self were ingrown from the roots--whichever portion fate
restricted him to would be but a mutilated half-live fragment of the
whole.
Happily for him, chance made this crisis of his life coincide with a
strike at Westmore. Soon after his return to Hanaford he found himself
compelled to grapple with the hardest problem of his industrial career,
and he was carried through the ensuing three months on that tide of
swift obligatory action that sweeps the ship-wrecked spirit over so many
sunken reefs of fear and despair. The knowledge that he was better able
to deal with the question than any one who might conceivably have taken
his place--this conviction, which was presently confirmed by the
peaceable adjustment of the strike, helped to make the sense of his
immediate usefulness outbalance that other, disintegrating doubt as to
the final value of such efforts. And so he tried to settle down into a
kind of mechanical altruism, in which the reflexes of habit should take
the place of that daily renewal of faith and enthusiasm which had been
fed from the springs of his own joy.
* * * * *
The autumn came and passed into winter; and after Mr. Langhope's
re-establishment in town Amherst began to resume his usual visits to his
step-daughter.
His natural affection for the little girl had been deepened by the
unforeseen manner in which her fate had been entrusted to him. The
thought of Bessy, softened to compunction by the discovery that her love
had persisted under their apparently hopeless estrangement--this
feeling, intensified to the verge of morbidness by the circumstances
attending her death, now sought expression in a passionate devotion to
her child. Accident had, in short, created between Bessy and himself a
retrospective sympathy which the resumption of life together would have
dispelled in a week--one of the exhalations from the past that depress
the vitality of those who linger too near the grave of dead experiences.
Since Justine's departure Amherst had felt himself still more drawn to
Cicely; but his relation to the child was complicated by the fact that
she would not be satisfied as to the cause of her step-mother's absence.
Whenever Amherst came to town, her first question was for Justine; and
her memory had the precocious persistence sometimes developed in
children too early deprived of their natural atmosphere of affection.
Cicely had always been petted and adored, at odd times and by divers
people; but some instinct seemed to tell her that, of all the tenderness
bestowed on her, Justine's most resembled the all-pervading motherly
element in which the child's heart expands without ever being conscious
of its needs.
If it had been embarrassing to evade Cicely's questions in June it
became doubly so as the months passed, and the pretext of Justine's
ill-health grew more and more difficult to sustain. And in the following
March Amherst was suddenly called from Hanaford by the news that the
little girl herself was ill. Serious complications had developed from a
protracted case of scarlet fever, and for two weeks the child's fate was
uncertain. Then she began to recover, and in the joy of seeing life come
back to her, Mr. Langhope and Amherst felt as though they must not only
gratify every wish she expressed, but try to guess at those they saw
floating below the surface of her clear vague eyes.
It was noticeable to Mrs. Ansell, if not to the others, that one of
these unexpressed wishes was the desire to see her stepmother. Cicely no
longer asked for Justine; but something in her silence, or in the
gesture with which she gently put from her other offers of diversion and
companionship, suddenly struck Mrs. Ansell as more poignant than speech.
"What is it the child wants?" she asked the governess, in the course of
one of their whispered consultations; and the governess, after a
moment's hesitation, replied: "She said something about a letter she
wrote to Mrs. Amherst just before she was taken ill--about having had no
answer, I think."
"Ah--she writes to Mrs. Amherst, does she?"
The governess, evidently aware that she trod on delicate ground, tried
at once to defend herself and her pupil.
"It was my fault, perhaps. I suggested once that her little compositions
should take the form of letters--it usually interests a child more--and
she asked if they might be written to Mrs. Amherst."
"Your fault? Why should not the child write to her step-mother?" Mrs.
Ansell rejoined with studied surprise; and on the other's murmuring: "Of
course--of course----" she added haughtily: "I trust the letters were
sent?"
The governess floundered. "I couldn't say--but perhaps the nurse...."
* * * * *
That evening Cicely was less well. There was a slight return of fever,
and the doctor, hastily summoned, hinted at the possibility of too much
excitement in the sick-room.
"Excitement? There has been no excitement," Mr. Langhope protested,
quivering with the sudden renewal of fear.
"No? The child seemed nervous, uneasy. It's hard to say why, because she
is unusually reserved for her age."
The medical man took his departure, and Mr. Langhope and Mrs. Ansell
faced each other in the disarray produced by a call to arms when all
has seemed at peace.
"I shall lose her--I shall lose her!" the grandfather broke out, sinking
into his chair with a groan.
Mrs. Ansell, gathering up her furs for departure, turned on him abruptly
from the threshold.
"It's stupid, what you're doing--stupid!" she exclaimed with unwonted
vehemence.
He raised his head with a startled look. "What do you mean--what I'm
doing?"
"The child misses Justine. You ought to send for her."
Mr. Langhope's hands dropped to the arms of his chair, and he
straightened himself up with a pale flash of indignation. "You've had
moments lately----!"
"I've had moments, yes; and so have you--when the child came back to us,
and we stood there and wondered how we could keep her, tie her
fast...and in those moments I saw...saw what she wanted...and so did
you!"
Mr. Langhope turned away his head. "You're a sentimentalist!" he flung
scornfully back.
"Oh, call me any bad names you please!"
"I won't send for that woman!"
"No." She fastened her furs slowly, with the gentle deliberate movements
that no emotion ever hastened or disturbed.
"Why do you say no?" he challenged her.
"To make you contradict me, perhaps," she ventured, after looking at him
again.
"Ah----" He shifted his position, one elbow supporting his bowed head,
his eyes fixed on the ground. Presently he brought out: "Could one ask
her to come--and see the child--and go away again--for good?"
"To break the compact at your pleasure, and enter into it again for the
same reason?"
"No--no--I see." He paused, and then looked up at her suddenly. "But
what if Amherst won't have her back himself?"
"Shall I ask him?"
"I tell you he can't bear to hear her name!"
"But he doesn't know why she has left him."
Mr. Langhope gathered his brows in a frown. "Why--what on earth--what
possible difference would that make?"
Mrs. Ansell, from the doorway, shed a pitying glance on him. "Ah--if you
don't see!" she murmured.
He sank back into his seat with a groan. "Good heavens, Maria, how you
torture me! I see enough as it is--I see too much of the cursed
business!"
She paused again, and then slowly moved a step or two nearer, laying her
hand on his shoulder.
"There's one thing you've never seen yet, Henry: what Bessy herself
would do now--for the child--if she could."
He sat motionless under her light touch, his eyes on hers, till their
inmost thoughts felt for and found each other, as they still sometimes
could, through the fog of years and selfishness and worldly habit; then
he dropped his face into his hands, hiding it from her with the
instinctive shrinking of an aged grief.
XLI
AMHERST, Cicely's convalescence once assured, had been obliged to go
back to Hanaford; but some ten days later, on hearing from Mrs. Ansell
that the little girl's progress was less rapid than had been hoped, he
returned to his father-in-law's for a Sunday.
He came two days after the talk recorded in the last chapter--a talk of
which Mrs. Ansell's letter to him had been the direct result. She had
promised Mr. Langhope that, in writing to Amherst, she would not go
beyond the briefest statement of fact; and she had kept her word,
trusting to circumstances to speak for her.
Mrs. Ansell, during Cicely's illness, had formed the habit of dropping
in on Mr. Langhope at the tea hour instead of awaiting him in her own
drawing-room; and on the Sunday in question she found him alone.
Beneath his pleasure in seeing her, which had grown more marked as his
dependence on her increased, she at once discerned traces of recent
disturbance; and her first question was for Cicely.
He met it with a discouraged gesture. "No great change--Amherst finds
her less well than when he was here before."
"He's upstairs with her?"
"Yes--she seems to want him."
Mrs. Ansell seated herself in silence behind the tea-tray, of which she
was now recognized as the officiating priestess. As she drew off her
long gloves, and mechanically straightened the row of delicate old cups,
Mr. Langhope added with an effort: "I've spoken to him--told him what
you said."
She looked up quickly.
"About the child's wish," he continued. "About her having written to his
wife. It seems her last letters have not been answered."
He paused, and Mrs. Ansell, with her usual calm precision, proceeded to
measure the tea into the fluted Georgian tea-pot. She could be as
reticent in approval as in reprehension, and not for the world would she
have seemed to claim any share in the turn that events appeared to be
taking. She even preferred the risk of leaving her old friend to add
half-reproachfully: "I told Amherst what you and the nurse thought."
"Yes?"
"That Cicely pines for his wife. I put it to him in black and white."
The words came out on a deep strained breath, and Mrs. Ansell faltered:
"Well?"
"Well--he doesn't know where she is himself."
"Doesn't _know_?"
"They're separated--utterly separated. It's as I told you: he could
hardly name her."
Mrs. Ansell had unconsciously ceased her ministrations, letting her
hands fall on her knee while she brooded in blank wonder on her
companion's face.
"I wonder what reason she could have given him?" she murmured at length.
"For going? He loathes her, I tell you!"
"Yes--but _how did she make him_?"
He struck his hand violently on the arm of his chair. "Upon my soul, you
seem to forget!"
"No." She shook her head with a half smile. "I simply remember more than
you do."
"What more?" he began with a flush of anger; but she raised a quieting
hand.
"What does all that matter--if, now that we need her, we can't get her?"
He made no answer, and she returned to the dispensing of his tea; but as
she rose to put the cup in his hand he asked, half querulously: "You
think it's going to be very bad for the child, then?"
Mrs. Ansell smiled with the thin edge of her lips. "One can hardly set
the police after her----!"
"No; we're powerless," he groaned in assent.
As the cup passed between them she dropped her eyes to his with a quick
flash of interrogation; but he sat staring moodily before him, and she
moved back to the sofa without a word.
* * * * *
On the way downstairs she met Amherst descending from Cicely's room.
Since the early days of his first marriage there had always been, on
Amherst's side, a sense of obscure antagonism toward Mrs. Ansell. She
was almost the embodied spirit of the world he dreaded and disliked: her
serenity, her tolerance, her adaptability, seemed to smile away and
disintegrate all the high enthusiasms, the stubborn convictions, that he
had tried to plant in the shifting sands of his married life. And now
that Bessy's death had given her back the attributes with which his
fancy had originally invested her, he had come to regard Mrs. Ansell as
embodying the evil influences that had come between himself and his
wife.
Mrs. Ansell was probably not unaware of the successive transitions of
feeling which had led up to this unflattering view; but her life had
been passed among petty rivalries and animosities, and she had the
patience and adroitness of the spy in a hostile camp.
She and Amherst exchanged a few words about Cicely; then she exclaimed,
with a glance through the panes of the hall door: "But I must be
off--I'm on foot, and the crossings appal me after dark."
He could do no less, at that, than offer to guide her across the perils
of Fifth Avenue; and still talking of Cicely, she led him down the
thronged thoroughfare till her own corner was reached, and then her own
door; turning there to ask, as if by an afterthought: "Won't you come
up? There's one thing more I want to say."
A shade of reluctance crossed his face, which, as the vestibule light
fell on it, looked hard and tired, like a face set obstinately against a
winter gale; but he murmured a word of assent, and followed her into the
shining steel cage of the lift.
In her little drawing-room, among the shaded lamps and bowls of spring
flowers, she pushed a chair forward, settled herself in her usual corner
of the sofa, and said with a directness that seemed an echo of his own
tone: "I asked you to come up because I want to talk to you about Mr.
Langhope."
Amherst looked at her in surprise. Though his father-in-law's health had
been more or less unsatisfactory for the last year, all their concern,
of late, had been for Cicely.
"You think him less well?" he enquired.
She waited to draw off and smooth her gloves, with one of the
deliberate gestures that served to shade and supplement her speech.
"I think him extremely unhappy."
Amherst moved uneasily in his seat. He did not know where she meant the
talk to lead them, but he guessed that it would be over painful places,
and he saw no reason why he should be forced to follow her.
"You mean that he's still anxious about Cicely?"
"Partly that--yes." She paused. "The child will get well, no doubt; but
she is very lonely. She needs youth, heat, light. Mr. Langhope can't
give her those, or even a semblance of them; and it's an art I've lost
the secret of," she added with her shadowy smile.
Amherst's brows darkened. "I realize all she has lost----"
Mrs. Ansell glanced up at him quickly. "She is twice motherless," she
said.
The blood rose to his neck and temples, and he tightened his hand on the
arm of his chair. But it was a part of Mrs. Ansell's expertness to know
when such danger signals must be heeded and when they might be ignored,
and she went on quietly: "It's the question of the future that is
troubling Mr. Langhope. After such an illness, the next months of
Cicely's life should be all happiness. And money won't buy the kind she
needs: one can't pick out the right companion for such a child as one
can match a ribbon. What she wants is spontaneous affection, not the
most superlative manufactured article. She wants the sort of love that
Justine gave her."
It was the first time in months that Amherst had heard his wife's name
spoken outside of his own house. No one but his mother mentioned Justine
to him now; and of late even his mother had dropped her enquiries and
allusions, prudently acquiescing in the habit of silence which his own
silence had created about him. To hear the name again--the two little
syllables which had been the key of life to him, and now shook him as
the turning of a rusted lock shakes a long-closed door--to hear her name
spoken familiarly, affectionately, as one speaks of some one who may
come into the room the next moment--gave him a shock that was half pain,
and half furtive unacknowledged joy. Men whose conscious thoughts are
mostly projected outward, on the world of external activities, may be
more moved by such a touch on the feelings than those who are
perpetually testing and tuning their emotional chords. Amherst had
foreseen from the first that Mrs. Ansell might mean to speak of his
wife; but though he had intended, if she did so, to cut their talk
short, he now felt himself irresistibly constrained to hear her out.
Mrs. Ansell, having sped her shaft, followed its flight through lowered
lashes, and saw that it had struck a vulnerable point; but she was far
from assuming that the day was won.
"I believe," she continued, "that Mr. Langhope has said something of
this to you already, and my only excuse for speaking is that I
understood he had not been successful in his appeal."
No one but Mrs. Ansell--and perhaps she knew it--could have pushed so
far beyond the conventional limits of discretion without seeming to
overstep them by a hair; and she had often said, when pressed for the
secret of her art, that it consisted simply in knowing the pass-word.
That word once spoken, she might have added, the next secret was to give
the enemy no time for resistance; and though she saw the frown reappear
between Amherst's eyes, she went on, without heeding it: "I entreat you,
Mr. Amherst, to let Cicely see your wife."
He reddened again, and pushed back his chair, as if to rise.
"No--don't break off like that! Let me say a word more. I know your
answer to Mr. Langhope--that you and Justine are no longer together. But
I thought of you as a man to sink your personal relations at such a
moment as this."
"To sink them?" he repeated vaguely: and she went on: "After all, what
difference does it make?"
"What difference?" He stared in unmitigated wonder, and then answered,
with a touch of irony: "It might at least make the difference of my
being unwilling to ask a favour of her."
Mrs. Ansell, at this, raised her eyes and let them rest full on his.
"Because she has done you so great a one already?"
He stared again, sinking back automatically into his chair. "I don't
understand you."
"No." She smiled a little, as if to give herself time. "But I mean that
you shall. If I were a man I suppose I couldn't, because a man's code of
honour is such a clumsy cast-iron thing. But a woman's, luckily, can be
cut over--if she's clever--to fit any new occasion; and in this case I
should be willing to reduce mine to tatters if necessary."
Amherst's look of bewilderment deepened. "What is it that I don't
understand?" he asked at length, in a low voice.
"Well--first of all, why Mr. Langhope had the right to ask you to send
for your wife."
"The right?"
"You don't recognize such a right on his part?"
"No--why should I?"
"Supposing she had left you by his wish?"
"His wish? _His----?_"
He was on his feet now, gazing at her blindly, while the solid world
seemed to grow thin about him. Her next words reduced it to a mist.
"My poor Amherst--why else, on earth, should she have left you?"
She brought it out clearly, in her small chiming tones; and as the sound
travelled toward him it seemed to gather momentum, till her words rang
through his brain as if every incomprehensible incident in the past had
suddenly boomed forth the question. Why else, indeed, should she have
left him? He stood motionless for a while; then he approached Mrs.
Ansell and said: "Tell me."
She drew farther back into her corner of the sofa, waving him to a seat
beside her, as though to bring his inquisitory eyes on a level where her
own could command them; but he stood where he was, unconscious of her
gesture, and merely repeating: "Tell me."
She may have said to herself that a woman would have needed no farther
telling; but to him she only replied, slanting her head up to his: "To
spare you and himself pain--to keep everything, between himself and you,
as it had been before you married her."
He dropped down beside her at that, grasping the back of the sofa as if
he wanted something to clutch and throttle. The veins swelled in his
temples, and as he pushed back his tossed hair Mrs. Ansell noticed for
the first time how gray it had grown on the under side.
"And he asked this of my wife--he accepted it?'"
"Haven't _you_ accepted it?"
"I? How could I guess her reasons--how could I imagine----?"
Mrs. Ansell raised her brows a hair's breadth at that. "I don't know.
But as a fact, he didn't ask--it was she who offered, who forced it on
him, even!"
"Forced her going on him?"
"In a sense, yes; by making it appear that _you_ felt as he did
about--about poor Bessy's death: that the thought of what had happened
at that time was as abhorrent to you as to him--that _she_ was as
abhorrent to you. No doubt she foresaw that, had she permitted the least
doubt on that point, there would have been no need of her leaving you,
since the relation between yourself and Mr. Langhope would have been
altered--destroyed...."
"Yes. I expected that--I warned her of it. But how did she make him
think----?"
"How can I tell? To begin with, I don't know your real feeling. For all
I know she was telling the truth--and Mr. Langhope of course thought she
was."
"That I abhorred her? Oh----" he broke out, on his feet in an instant.
"Then why----?"
"Why did I let her leave me?" He strode across the room, as his habit
was in moments of agitation, turning back to her again before he
answered. "Because I _didn't_ know--didn't know anything! And because
her insisting on going away like that, without any explanation, made me
feel...imagine there was...something she didn't _want_ me to
know...something she was afraid of not being able to hide from me if we
stayed together any longer."
"Well--there was: the extent to which she loved you."
Mrs. Ansell; her hands clasped on her knee, her gaze holding his with a
kind of visionary fixity, seemed to reconstruct the history of his past,
bit by bit, with the words she was dragging out of him.
"I see it--I see it all now," she went on, with a repressed fervour that
he had never divined in her. "It was the only solution for her, as well
as for the rest of you. The more she showed her love, the more it would
have cast a doubt on her motive...the greater distance she would have
put between herself and you. And so she showed it in the only way that
was safe for both of you, by taking herself away and hiding it in her
heart; and before going, she secured your peace of mind, your future. If
she ruined anything, she rebuilt the ruin. Oh, she paid--she paid in
full!"
Justine had paid, yes--paid to the utmost limit of whatever debt toward
society she had contracted by overstepping its laws. And her resolve to
discharge the debt had been taken in a flash, as soon as she had seen
that man can commit no act alone, whether for good or evil. The extent
to which Amherst's fate was involved in hers had become clear to her
with his first word of reassurance, of faith in her motive. And
instantly a plan for releasing him had leapt full-formed into her mind,
and had been carried out with swift unflinching resolution. As he forced
himself, now, to look down the suddenly illuminated past to the weeks
which had elapsed between her visit to Mr. Langhope and her departure
from Hanaford, he wondered not so much at her swiftness of resolve as at
her firmness in carrying out her plan--and he saw, with a blinding flash
of insight, that it was in her love for him that she had found her
strength.
In all moments of strong mental tension he became totally unconscious of
time and place, and he now remained silent so long, his hands clasped
behind him, his eyes fixed on an indeterminate point in space, that Mrs.
Ansell at length rose and laid a questioning touch on his arm.
"It's not true that you don't know where she is?" His face contracted.
"At this moment I don't. Lately she has preferred...not to write...."
"But surely you must know how to find her?"
He tossed back his hair with an energetic movement. "I should find her
if I didn't know how!"
They stood confronted in a gaze of silent intensity, each penetrating
farther into the mind of the other than would once have seemed possible
to either one; then Amherst held out his hand abruptly. "Good-bye--and
thank you," he said.
She detained him a moment. "We shall see you soon again--see you both?"
His face grew stern. "It's not to oblige Mr. Langhope that I am going to
find my wife."
"Ah, now you are unjust to him!" she exclaimed.
"Don't let us speak of him!" he broke in.
"Why not? When it is from him the request comes--the entreaty--that
everything in the past should be forgotten?"
"Yes--when it suits his convenience!"
"Do you imagine that--even judging him in that way--it has not cost him
a struggle?"
"I can only think of what it has cost her!"
Mrs. Ansell drew a deep sighing breath. "Ah--but don't you see that she
has gained her point, and that nothing else matters to her?"
"Gained her point? Not if, by that, you mean that things here can ever
go back to the old state--that she and I can remain at Westmore after
this!"
Mrs. Ansell dropped her eyes for a moment; then she lifted to his her
sweet impenetrable face.
"Do you know what you have to do--both you and he? Exactly what she
decides," she affirmed.
XLII
JUSTINE'S answer to her husband's letter bore a New York address; and
the surprise of finding her in the same town with himself, and not half
an hour's walk from the room in which he sat, was so great that it
seemed to demand some sudden and violent outlet of physical movement.
He thrust the letter in his pocket, took up his hat, and leaving the
house, strode up Fifth Avenue toward the Park in the early spring
sunlight.
The news had taken five days to reach him, for in order to reestablish
communication with his wife he had been obliged to write to Michigan,
with the request that his letter should be forwarded. He had never
supposed that Justine would be hard to find, or that she had purposely
enveloped her movements in mystery. When she ceased to write he had
simply concluded that, like himself, she felt the mockery of trying to
keep up a sort of distant, semi-fraternal relation, marked by the
occasional interchange of inexpressive letters. The inextricable
mingling of thought and sensation which made the peculiar closeness of
their union could never, to such direct and passionate natures, be
replaced by the pretense of a temperate friendship. Feeling thus
himself, and instinctively assuming the same feeling in his wife,
Amherst had respected her silence, her wish to break definitely with
their former life. She had written him, in the autumn, that she intended
to leave Michigan for a few months, but that, in any emergency, a letter
addressed to her friend's house would reach her; and he had taken this
as meaning that, unless the emergency arose, she preferred that their
correspondence should cease. Acquiescence was all the easier because it
accorded with his own desire. It seemed to him, as he looked back, that
the love he and Justine had felt for each other was like some rare
organism which could maintain life only in its special element; and that
element was neither passion nor sentiment, but truth. It was only on the
heights that they could breathe.
Some men, in his place, even while accepting the inevitableness of the
moral rupture, would have felt concerned for the material side of the
case. But it was characteristic of Amherst that this did not trouble
him. He took it for granted that his wife would return to her nursing.
From the first he had felt certain that it would be intolerable to her
to accept aid from him, and that she would choose rather to support
herself by the exercise of her regular profession; and, aside from such
motives, he, who had always turned to hard work as the rarest refuge
from personal misery, thought it natural that she should seek the same
means of escape.
He had therefore not been surprised, on opening her letter that
morning, to learn that she had taken up her hospital work; but in the
amazement of finding her so near he hardly grasped her explanation of
the coincidence. There was something about a Buffalo patient suddenly
ordered to New York for special treatment, and refusing to go in with a
new nurse--but these details made no impression on his mind, which had
only room for the fact that chance had brought his wife back at the very
moment when his whole being yearned for her.
She wrote that, owing to her duties, she would be unable to see him till
three that afternoon; and he had still six hours to consume before their
meeting. But in spirit they had met already--they were one in an
intensity of communion which, as he strode northward along the bright
crowded thoroughfare, seemed to gather up the whole world into one
throbbing point of life.
He had a boyish wish to keep the secret of his happiness to himself, not
to let Mr. Langhope or Mrs. Ansell know of his meeting with Justine till
it was over; and after twice measuring the length of the Park he turned
in at one of the little wooden restaurants which were beginning to
unshutter themselves in anticipation of spring custom. If only he could
have seen Justine that morning! If he could have brought her there, and
they could have sat opposite each other, in the bare empty room, with
sparrows bustling and twittering in the lilacs against the open window!
The room was ugly enough--but how she would have delighted in the
delicate green of the near slopes, and the purplish haze of the woods
beyond! She took a childish pleasure in such small adventures, and had
the knack of giving a touch of magic to their most commonplace details.
Amherst, as he finished his cold beef and indifferent eggs, found
himself boyishly planning to bring her back there the next day....
Then, over the coffee, he re-read her letter.
The address she gave was that of a small private hospital, and she
explained that she would have to receive him in the public parlour,
which at that hour was open to other visitors. As the time approached,
the thought that they might not be alone when they met became
insufferable; and he determined, if he found any one else, in possession
of the parlour, to wait in the hall, and meet her as she came down the
stairs.
He continued to elaborate this plan as he walked back slowly through the
Park, He had timed himself to reach the hospital a little before three;
but though it lacked five minutes to the hour when he entered the
parlour, two women were already seated in one of its windows. They
looked around as he came in, evidently as much annoyed by his appearance
as he had been to find them there. The older of the two showed a sallow
middle-aged face beneath her limp crape veil; the other was a slight
tawdry creature, with nodding feathers, and innumerable chains and
bracelets which she fingered ceaselessly as she talked.
They eyed Amherst with resentment, and then turned away, continuing
their talk in low murmurs, while he seated himself at the marble-topped
table littered with torn magazines. Now and then the younger woman's
voice rose in a shrill staccato, and a phrase or two floated over to
him. "She'd simply worked herself to death--the nurse told me so.... She
expects to go home in another week, though how she's going to stand the
_fatigue_----" and then, after an inaudible answer: "It's all _his_
fault, and if I was her I wouldn't go back to him for anything!"
"Oh, Cora, he's real sorry now," the older woman protestingly murmured;
but the other, unappeased, rejoined with ominously nodding plumes:
"_You_ see--if they do make it up, it'll never be the same between
them!"
Amherst started up nervously, and as he did so the clock struck three,
and he opened the door and passed out into the hall. It was paved with
black and white marble; the walls were washed in a dull yellowish tint,
and the prevalent odour of antiseptics was mingled with a stale smell of
cooking. At the back rose a straight staircase carpeted with brass-bound
India-rubber, like a ship's companion-way; and down that staircase she
would come in a moment--he fancied he heard her step now....
But the step was that of an elderly black-gowned woman in a cap--the
matron probably.
She glanced at Amherst in surprise, and asked: "Are you waiting for some
one?"
He made a motion of assent, and she opened the parlour door, saying:
"Please walk in."
"May I not wait out here?" he urged.
She looked at him more attentively. "Why, no, I'm afraid not. You'll
find the papers and magazines in here."
Mildly but firmly she drove him in before her, and closing the door,
advanced to the two women in the window. Amherst's hopes leapt up:
perhaps she had come to fetch the visitors upstairs! He strained his
ears to catch what was being said, and while he was thus absorbed the
door opened, and turning at the sound he found himself face to face with
his wife.
He had not reflected that Justine would be in her nurse's dress; and the
sight of the dark blue uniform and small white cap, in which he had
never seen her since their first meeting in the Hope Hospital,
obliterated all bitter and unhappy memories, and gave him the illusion
of passing back at once into the clear air of their early friendship.
Then he looked at her and remembered.
He noticed that she had grown thinner than ever, or rather that her
thinness, which had formerly had a healthy reed-like strength, now
suggested fatigue and languor. And her face was spent, extinguished--the
very eyes were lifeless. All her vitality seemed to have withdrawn
itself into the arch of dense black hair which still clasped her
forehead like the noble metal of some antique bust.
The sight stirred him with a deeper pity, a more vehement compunction;
but the impulse to snatch her to him, and seek his pardon on her lips,
was paralyzed by the sense that the three women in the window had
stopped talking and turned their heads toward the door.
He held his hand out, and Justine's touched it for a moment; then he
said in a low voice: "Is there no other place where I can see you?"
She made a negative gesture. "I am afraid not to-day."
Ah, her deep sweet voice--how completely his ear had lost the sound of
it!
She looked doubtfully about the room, and pointed to a sofa at the end
farthest from the windows.
"Shall we sit there?" she said.
He followed her in silence, and they sat down side by side. The matron
had drawn up a chair and resumed her whispered conference with the women
in the window. Between the two groups stretched the bare length of the
room, broken only by a few arm-chairs of stained wood, and the
marble-topped table covered with magazines.
The impossibility of giving free rein to his feelings developed in
Amherst an unwonted intensity of perception, as though a sixth sense had
suddenly emerged to take the place of those he could not use. And with
this new-made faculty he seemed to gather up, and absorb into himself,
as he had never done in their hours of closest communion, every detail
of his wife's person, of her face and hands and gestures. He noticed how
her full upper lids, of the tint of yellowish ivory, had a slight bluish
discolouration, and how little thread-like blue veins ran across her
temples to the roots of her hair. The emaciation of her face, and the
hollow shades beneath her cheek-bones, made her mouth seem redder and
fuller, though a little line on each side, where it joined the cheek,
gave it a tragic droop. And her hands! When her fingers met his he
recalled having once picked up, in the winter woods, the little
feather-light skeleton of a frozen bird--and that was what her touch was
like.
And it was he who had brought her to this by his cruelty, his
obtuseness, his base readiness to believe the worst of her! He did not
want to pour himself out in self-accusation--that seemed too easy a way
of escape. He wanted simply to take her in his arms, to ask her to give
him one more chance--and then to show her! And all the while he was
paralyzed by the group in the window.
"Can't we go out? I must speak to you," he began again nervously.
"Not this afternoon--the doctor is coming. Tomorrow----"
"I can't wait for tomorrow!"
She made a faint, imperceptible gesture, which read to his eyes: "You've
waited a whole year."
"Yes, I know," he returned, still constrained by the necessity of
muffling his voice, of perpetually measuring the distance between
themselves and the window. "I know what you might say--don't you suppose
I've said it to myself a million times? But I didn't know--I couldn't
imagine----"
She interrupted him with a rapid movement. "What do you know now?"
"What you promised Langhope----"
She turned her startled eyes on him, and he saw the blood run flame-like
under her skin. "But _he_ promised not to speak!" she cried.
"He hasn't--to me. But such things make themselves known. Should you
have been content to go on in that way forever?"
She raised her head and her eyes rested in his. "If you were," she
answered simply.
"Justine!"
Again she checked him with a silencing motion. "Please tell me just what
has happened."
"Not now--there's too much else to say. And nothing matters except that
I'm with you."
"But Mr. Langhope----"
"He asks you to come. You're to see Cicely to-morrow."
Her lower lip trembled a little, and a tear flowed over and hung on her
lashes.
"But what does all that matter now? We're together after this horrible
year," he insisted.
She looked at him again. "But what is really changed?"
"Everything--everything! Not changed, I mean--just gone back."
"To where...we were...before?" she whispered; and he whispered back: "To
where we were before."
There was a scraping of chairs on the floor, and with a sense of release
Amherst saw that the colloquy in the window was over.
The two visitors, gathering their wraps about them, moved slowly across
the room, still talking to the matron in excited undertones, through
which, as they neared the threshold, the younger woman's staccato again
broke out.
"I tell you, if she does go back to him, it'll never be the same between
them!"
"Oh, Cora, I wouldn't say that," the other ineffectually wailed; then
they moved toward the door, and a moment later it had closed on them.
Amherst turned to his wife with outstretched arms. "Say you forgive me,
Justine!"
She held back a little from his entreating hands, not reproachfully, but
as if with a last scruple for himself.
"There's nothing left...of the horror?" she asked below her breath.
"To be without you--that's the only horror!"
"You're _sure_----?"
"Sure!"
"It's just the same to you...just as it was...before?"
"Just the same, Justine!"
"It's not for myself, but you."
"Then, for me--never speak of it!" he implored.
"Because it's _not_ the same, then?" leapt from her.
"Because it's wiped out--because it's never been!"
"Never?"
"Never!"
He felt her yield to him at that, and under his eyes, close under his
lips, was her face at last. But as they kissed they heard the handle of
the door turn, and drew apart quickly, her hand lingering in his under
the fold of her dress.
A nurse looked in, dressed in the white uniform and pointed cap of the
hospital. Amherst fancied that she smiled a little as she saw them.
"Miss Brent--the doctor wants you to come right up and give the
morphine."
The door shut again as Justine rose to her feet. Amherst remained
seated--he had made no motion to retain her hand as it slipped from him.
"I'm coming," she called out to the retreating nurse; then she turned
slowly and saw her husband's face.
"I must go," she said in a low tone.
Her eyes met his for a moment; but he looked away again as he stood up
and reached for his hat.
"Tomorrow, then----" he said, without attempting to detain her.
"Tomorrow?"
"You must come away from here--you must come home," he repeated
mechanically.
She made no answer, and he held his hand out and took hers. "Tomorrow,"
he said, drawing her toward him; and their lips met again, but not in
the same kiss.
XLIII
JUNE again at Hanaford--and Cicely's birthday. The anniversary was to
coincide, this year, with the opening of the old house at Hopewood, as a
kind of pleasure-palace--gymnasium, concert-hall and museum--for the
recreation of the mill-hands.
The idea had first come to Amherst on the winter afternoon when Bessy
Westmore had confessed her love for him under the snow-laden trees of
Hopewood. Even then the sense that his personal happiness was enlarged
and secured by its promise of happiness to others had made him wish that
the scene associated with the opening of his new life should be made to
commemorate a corresponding change in the fortunes of Westmore. But when
the control of the mills passed into his hands other and more necessary
improvements pressed upon him; and it was not till now that the
financial condition of the company had permitted the execution of his
plan.
Justine, on her return to Hanaford, had found the work already in
progress, and had been told by her husband that he was carrying out a
projected scheme of Bessy's. She had felt a certain surprise, but had
concluded that the plan in question dated back to the early days of his
first marriage, when, in his wife's eyes, his connection with the mills
still invested them with interest.
Since Justine had come back to her husband, both had tacitly avoided all
allusions to the past, and the recreation-house at Hopewood being, as
she divined, in some sort an expiatory offering to Bessy's plaintive
shade, she had purposely refrained from questioning Amherst about its
progress, and had simply approved the plans he submitted to her.
Fourteen months had passed since her return, and now, as she sat beside
her husband in the carriage which was conveying them to Hopewood, she
said to herself that her life had at last fallen into what promised to
be its final shape--that as things now were they would probably be to
the end. And outwardly at least they were what she and Amherst had
always dreamed of their being. Westmore prospered under the new rule.
The seeds of life they had sown there were springing up in a promising
growth of bodily health and mental activity, and above all in a dawning
social consciousness. The mill-hands were beginning to understand the
meaning of their work, in its relation to their own lives and to the
larger economy. And outwardly, also, the new growth was showing itself
in the humanized aspect of the place. Amherst's young maples were tall
enough now to cast a shade on the grass-bordered streets; and the
well-kept turf, the bright cottage gardens, the new central group of
library, hospital and club-house, gave to the mill-village the hopeful
air of a "rising" residential suburb.
In the bright June light, behind their fresh green mantle of trees and
creepers, even the factory buildings looked less stern and prison-like
than formerly; and the turfing and planting of the adjoining
river-banks had transformed a waste of foul mud and refuse into a little
park where the operatives might refresh themselves at midday.
Yes--Westmore was alive at last: the dead city of which Justine had once
spoken had risen from its grave, and its blank face had taken on a
meaning. As Justine glanced at her husband she saw that the same thought
was in his mind. However achieved, at whatever cost of personal misery
and error, the work of awakening and freeing Westmore was done, and that
work had justified itself.
She looked from Amherst to Cicely, who sat opposite, eager and rosy in
her mourning frock--for Mr. Langhope had died some two months
previously--and as intent as her step-parents on the scene before her.
Cicely was old enough now to regard her connection with Westmore as
something more than a nursery game. She was beginning to learn a great
deal about the mills, and to understand, in simple, friendly ways,
something of her own relation to them. The work and play of the
children, the interests and relaxations provided for their elders, had
been gradually explained to her by Justine, and she knew that this
shining tenth birthday of hers was to throw its light as far as the
clouds of factory-smoke extended.
As they mounted the slope to Hopewood, the spacious white building,
with its enfolding colonnades, its broad terraces and tennis-courts,
shone through the trees like some bright country-house adorned for its
master's home-coming; and Amherst and his wife might have been driving
up to the house which had been built to shelter their wedded happiness.
The thought flashed across Justine as their carriage climbed the hill.
She was as much absorbed as Amherst in the welfare of Westmore, it had
become more and more, to both, the refuge in which their lives still met
and mingled; but for a moment, as they paused before the flower-decked
porch, and he turned to help her from the carriage, it occurred to her
to wonder what her sensations would have been if he had been bringing
her home--to a real home of their own--instead of accompanying her to
another philanthropic celebration. But what need had they of a real
home, when they no longer had any real life of their own? Nothing was
left of that secret inner union which had so enriched and beautified
their outward lives. Since Justine's return to Hanaford they had
entered, tacitly, almost unconsciously, into a new relation to each
other: a relation in which their personalities were more and more merged
in their common work, so that, as it were, they met only by avoiding
each other.
From the first, Justine had accepted this as inevitable; just as she had
understood, when Amherst had sought her out in New York, that his
remaining at Westmore, which had once been contingent on her leaving
him, now depended on her willingness to return and take up their former
life.
She accepted the last condition as she had accepted the other, pledged
to the perpetual expiation of an act for which, in the abstract, she
still refused to hold herself to blame. But life is not a matter of
abstract principles, but a succession of pitiful compromises with fate,
of concessions to old tradition, old beliefs, old charities and
frailties. That was what her act had taught her--that was the word of
the gods to the mortal who had laid a hand on their bolts. And she had
humbled herself to accept the lesson, seeing human relations at last as
a tangled and deep-rooted growth, a dark forest through which the
idealist cannot cut his straight path without hearing at each stroke the
cry of the severed branch: "_Why woundest thou me?_"
* * * * *
The lawns leading up to the house were already sprinkled with
holiday-makers, while along the avenue came the rolling of wheels, the
throb of motor-cars; and Justine, with Cicely beside her, stood in the
wide hall to receive the incoming throng, in which Hanaford society was
indiscriminately mingled with the operatives in their Sunday best.
While his wife welcomed the new arrivals, Amherst, supported by some
young Westmore cousins, was guiding them into the concert-hall, where he
was to say a word on the uses of the building before declaring it open
for inspection. And presently Justine and Cicely, summoned by Westy
Gaines, made their way through the rows of seats to a corner near the
platform. Her husband was there already, with Halford Gaines and a group
of Hanaford dignitaries, and just below them sat Mrs. Gaines and her
daughters, the Harry Dressels, and Amherst's radiant mother.
As Justine passed between them, she wondered how much they knew of the
events which had wrought so profound and permanent change in her life.
She had never known how Hanaford explained her absence or what comments
it had made on her return. But she saw to-day more clearly than ever
that Amherst had become a power among his townsmen, and that if they
were still blind to the inner meaning of his work, its practical results
were beginning to impress them profoundly. Hanaford's sociological creed
was largely based on commercial considerations, and Amherst had won
Hanaford's esteem by the novel feat of defying its economic principles
and snatching success out of his defiance.
And now he had advanced a step or two in front of the "representative"
semi-circle on the platform, and was beginning to speak.
Justine did not hear his first words. She was looking up at him, trying
to see him with the eyes of the crowd, and wondering what manner of man
he would have seemed to her if she had known as little as they did of
his inner history.
He held himself straight, the heavy locks thrown back from his forehead,
one hand resting on the table beside him, the other grasping a folded
blue-print which the architect of the building had just advanced to give
him. As he stood there, Justine recalled her first sight of him in the
Hope Hospital, five years earlier--was it only five years? They had
dealt deep strokes to his face, hollowing the eye-sockets, accentuating
the strong modelling of nose and chin, fixing the lines between the
brows; but every touch had a meaning--it was not the languid hand of
time which had remade his features, but the sharp chisel of thought and
action.
She roused herself suddenly to the consciousness of what he was saying.
"For the idea of this building--of a building dedicated to the
recreation of Westmore--is not new in my mind; but while it remained
there as a mere idea, it had already, without my knowledge, taken
definite shape in the thoughts of the owner of Westmore."
There was a slight drop in his voice as he designated Bessy, and he
waited a moment before continuing: "It was not till after the death of
my first wife that I learned of her intention--that I found by
accident, among her papers, this carefully-studied plan for a
pleasure-house at Hopewood."
He paused again, and unrolling the blue-print, held it up before his
audience.
"You cannot, at this distance," he went on, "see all the admirable
details of her plan; see how beautifully they were imagined, how
carefully and intelligently elaborated. She who conceived them longed to
see beauty everywhere--it was her dearest wish to bestow it on her
people here. And her ardent imagination outran the bounds of practical
possibility. We cannot give you, in its completeness, the beautiful
thing she had imagined--the great terraces, the marble porches, the
fountains, lily-tanks, and cloisters. But you will see that, wherever it
was possible--though in humbler materials, and on a smaller scale--we
have faithfully followed her design; and when presently you go through
this building, and when, hereafter, you find health and refreshment and
diversion here, I ask you to remember the beauty she dreamed of giving
you, and to let the thought of it make her memory beautiful among you
and among your children...."
Justine had listened with deepening amazement. She was seated so close
to her husband that she had recognized the blue-print the moment he
unrolled it. There was no mistaking its origin--it was simply the plan
of the gymnasium which Bessy had intended to build at Lynbrook, and
which she had been constrained to abandon owing to her husband's
increased expenditure at the mills. But how was it possible that Amherst
knew nothing of the original purpose of the plans, and by what mocking
turn of events had a project devised in deliberate defiance of his
wishes, and intended to declare his wife's open contempt for them, been
transformed into a Utopian vision for the betterment of the Westmore
operatives?
A wave of anger swept over Justine at this last derisive stroke of fate.
It was grotesque and pitiable that a man like Amherst should create out
of his regrets a being who had never existed, and then ascribe to her
feelings and actions of which the real woman had again and again proved
herself incapable!
Ah, no, Justine had suffered enough--but to have this imaginary Bessy
called from the grave, dressed in a semblance of self-devotion and
idealism, to see her petty impulses of vindictiveness disguised as the
motions of a lofty spirit--it was as though her small malicious ghost
had devised this way of punishing the wife who had taken her place!
Justine had suffered enough--suffered deliberately and unstintingly,
paying the full price of her error, not seeking to evade its least
consequence. But no sane judgment could ask her to sit quiet under this
last hallucination. What! This unreal woman, this phantom that
Amherst's uneasy imagination had evoked, was to come between himself and
her, to supplant her first as his wife, and then as his fellow-worker?
Why should she not cry out the truth to him, defend herself against the
dead who came back to rob her of such wedded peace as was hers? She had
only to tell the true story of the plans to lay poor Bessy's ghost
forever!
The confused throbbing impulses within her were stifled under a long
burst of applause--then she saw Westy Gaines at her side again, and
understood that he had come to lead Cicely to the platform. For a moment
she clung jealously to the child's hand, hardly aware of what she did,
feeling only that she was being thrust farther and farther into the
background of the life she had helped to call out of chaos. Then a
contrary impulse moved her. She gently freed Cicely's hand, and a moment
later, as she sat with bent head and throbbing breast, she heard the
child's treble piping out above her:
"In my mother's name, I give this house to Westmore."
Applause again--and then Justine found herself enveloped in a general
murmur of compliment and congratulation. Mr. Amherst had spoken
admirably--a "beautiful tribute--" ah, he had done poor Bessy justice!
And to think that till now Hanaford had never fully known how she had
the welfare of the mills at heart--how it was really only _her_ work
that he was carrying on there! Well, he had made that perfectly
clear--and no doubt Cicely was being taught to follow in her mother's
footsteps: everyone had noticed how her step-father was associating her
with the work at the mills. And his little speech would, as it were,
consecrate the child's relation to that work, make it appear to her as
the continuance of a beautiful, a sacred tradition....
* * * * *
And now it was over. The building had been inspected, the operatives had
dispersed, the Hanaford company had rolled off down the avenue, Cicely,
among them, driving away tired and happy in Mrs. Dressel's victoria, and
Amherst and his wife were alone.
Amherst, after bidding good-bye to his last guests, had gone back to the
empty concert-room to fetch the blue-print lying on the platform. He
came back with it, between the uneven rows of empty chairs, and joined
Justine, who stood waiting in the hall. His face was slightly flushed,
and his eyes had the light which in happy moments burned through their
veil of thought.
He laid his hand on his wife's arm, and drawing her toward a table
spread out the blueprint before her.
"You haven't seen this, have you?" he said.
She looked down at the plan without answering, reading in the left-hand
corner the architect's conventional inscription: "Swimming-tank and
gymnasium designed for Mrs. John Amherst."
Amherst looked up, perhaps struck by her silence.
"But perhaps you _have_ seen it--at Lynbrook? It must have been done
while you were there."
The quickened throb of her blood rushed to her brain like a signal.
"Speak--speak now!" the signal commanded.
Justine continued to look fixedly at the plan. "Yes, I have seen it,"
she said at length.
"At Lynbrook?"
"At Lynbrook."
"_She_ showed it to you, I suppose--while I was away?"
Justine hesitated again. "Yes, while you were away."
"And did she tell you anything about it, go into details about her
wishes, her intentions?"
Now was the moment--now! As her lips parted she looked up at her
husband. The illumination still lingered on his face--and it was the
face she loved. He was waiting eagerly for her next word.
"No, I heard no details. I merely saw the plan lying there."
She saw his look of disappointment. "She never told you about it?"
"No--she never told me."
It was best so, after all. She understood that now. It was now at last
that she was paying her full price.
Amherst rolled up the plan with a sigh and pushed it into the drawer of
the table. It struck her that he too had the look of one who has laid a
ghost. He turned to her and drew her hand through his arm.
"You're tired, dear. You ought to have driven back with the others," he
said.
"No, I would rather stay with you."
"You want to drain this good day to the dregs, as I do?"
"Yes," she murmured, drawing her hand away.
"It _is_ a good day, isn't it?" he continued, looking about him at the
white-panelled walls, the vista of large bright rooms seen through the
folding doors. "I feel as if we had reached a height, somehow--a height
where one might pause and draw breath for the next climb. Don't you feel
that too, Justine?"
"Yes--I feel it."
"Do you remember once, long ago--one day when you and I and Cicely went
on a picnic to hunt orchids--how we got talking of the one best moment
in life--the moment when one wanted most to stop the clock?"
The colour rose in her face while he spoke. It was a long time since he
had referred to the early days of their friendship--the days
_before_....
"Yes, I remember," she said.
"And do you remember how we said that it was with most of us as it was
with Faust? That the moment one wanted to hold fast to was not, in most
lives, the moment of keenest personal happiness, but the other kind--the
kind that would have seemed grey and colourless at first: the moment
when the meaning of life began to come out from the mists--when one
could look out at last over the marsh one had drained?"
A tremor ran through Justine. "It was you who said that," she said,
half-smiling.
"But didn't you feel it with me? Don't you now?"
"Yes--I do now," she murmured.
He came close to her, and taking her hands in his, kissed them one after
the other.
"Dear," he said, "let us go out and look at the marsh we have drained."
He turned and led her through the open doorway to the terrace above the
river. The sun was setting behind the wooded slopes of Hopewood, and the
trees about the house stretched long blue shadows across the lawn.
Beyond them rose the smoke of Westmore.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
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Transcriber's Note:
Most inconsistencies in hyphenation and spelling have been left as in the
original. Missing or wrong punctuation has been added or corrected,
where it is obvious (missing punctuation is often a result of the
scanning/OCR process). In one case, a missing letter has also been
added, and the following misspellings have been corrected: involuntairly to
involuntarily, sensastions to sensations, Wetsmore to Westmore, Cilfton
to Clifton, It to If
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