 6. 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, to-night then you must tell me all about those poor dillens. 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 Truscum get onto it and turn me down? How'd I know she wasn't a yellow reporter? Amherst uttered an impatient exclamation. I wished a heaven a yellow reporter would go through these mills and show them up in headlines 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 Truscum'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. Disboro came out. The physician drew back as if surprised and slightly disconcerted, but his smile promptly effaced all signs of vexation, and he held out his hand 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. Truscum, 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. Disboro'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 fingertips. 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 is 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 Truscum'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 to-morrow. 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 a front 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 Bessie 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. Truscum know of your intention, he then inquired? 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. Truscum will not do so when he has the opportunity? Amherst could not repress a smile, because it is owing to Mr. Truscum that they exist. The real object of your visit then, said Mr. Tredegar speaking with deliberation, is 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. Truscum was not in a position to defend himself. I never had a 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 affected 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 goodwill 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 organised, 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 inquiry would have led to another. She spoke this morning of going to the hospital to see Dylan. She did go to the hospital. I went with her. But as Dylan was sleeping, and as the matron told us he was much better, a piece of news which I am happy to say Dr. Disboro has just confirmed, she did not go up to the ward. Amherst was silent, and Mr. Tredegar pursued. I gather, from your bringing up Dylan's case, that for some reason you consider it typical of the defects you find in Mr. Truscum's management. Suppose, therefore, we drop generalizations and confine ourselves to the particular instance. What wrong in your view has been done the Dylan's? 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 Dylan case. He tried to put the facts succinctly, presenting them in their bare ugliness without emotional drapery, setting forth Dylan'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 workrooms, and giving his reasons for the belief that the accident had been caused, not by Dylan's carelessness, but by the overcrowding of the carting-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. That would seem to prove that Mr. Gaines, who lives here, sees as much reason for trusting Truscum'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 employee'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 Dylan's injury is much slider than it ought to be to serve your purpose. Dr. Disborough has just told us that he will probably get off with the loss of a finger, and I hardly say that whatever may have been Dylan'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 check which she asks you to transmit, and which, as I think you will agree, ought to silence, on your part, as well as Mrs. Dylan's, any criticism of Mrs. Westmore's dealing with her operatives. The blood rose to Amherst's forehead, and he just restrained himself from pushing back the check 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 Dylan's injury. Dr. Disbro, who is Mr. Truscum'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 someone 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. Someone 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. Disbro, 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 check, 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 Ansel 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. It was one of Mrs. Ansel'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 the 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 defulgence 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 traveled from Mr. Tredegar, sunk in his morning mail, to Mr. Langhope, who leaned back resignedly in his chair, trying to solace himself with Hannaford Banner, till midday should bring him a sight of the metropolitan press. I suppose you know, she said suddenly, that Bessie has telegraphed for Sicily and made her arrangements to stay here another week. Mr. Langhope's stick slipped to the floor with a 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 Truscum, the lawyer asked, and Mrs. Ansel 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. Ansel answered gently. She said 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. Ansel smiled. She telegraphed at seven. Sicily 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. Bessie 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 either of us to stay on now or to return. Truscum could come to Long Island when he recovers and answer any questions we may have to put. But if Bessie has sent for the child, we must, of course, put off going for to-day. 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 mate is unpacking, Mrs. Ansel Galey affirmed, and Mr. Tredegar, shrugging his shoulders, said curtly, In that case I will ring for the timetable. When he had withdrawn to consult it in the seclusion of the library, and Mrs. Ansel, affecting a sudden desire for a second cup of tea, had receded 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. Ansel's gaze lost itself in the depths of the empty teapot. 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 Truscum'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 Truscum, who is after all the only person entitled to speak with authority. Mrs. Ansel received his outburst in silence, and the butler, reappearing with a 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, Judgeed 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 Bessie? She made a gesture of smiling protest. I confess it is to be regretted that his mother is a lady, and that she looks—you must have noticed it, so amazingly like the portraits of the young Schiller. But I only meant that Bessie 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 to her first parenthesis, how a woman of your good sense stumbled on that idea of hunting up the mother. But Mrs. Ansel 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 Bessie 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 anyone to know how the accident really happened, and how seriously the fellow is hurt. There's the point. Why should Bessie believe Dr. Disbro, rather than Mr. Amherst? For the best of reasons, because Disbro has nothing to gain by distorting the facts, where this young Amherst, as Tredegar pointed out, has the very obvious desire to give Truscum a bad name and shove himself into his place. Mrs. Ansel contemplatively turned the rings on 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 Bessie 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. Bessie 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 keep it from acquiring a more restricted significance. Restricted? To the young man himself? Mrs. Ansel's expressive hands seem to commit the question to fate. All I ask you to consider for the present is that Bessie 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 the 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 is 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 scene, 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, Bessie 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. Ansel 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 Truscum 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. Ansel persisted, rising at the sound of Mr. Tredegar's approach. For don't you perceive, my poor distracted friend, that if Truscum turns rusty, as he undoubtedly will, the inevitable result will be his manager's dismissal, and that thereafter there will presumably be peace and Warsaw? Ah, you divinely wicked woman, cried Mr. Langhope, snatching at an appreciative pressure of her hand as the lawyer reappeared in the doorway. End of Book 1, Chapter 5 Book 1, Chapter 6 of The Fruit of the Tree This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Fruit of the Tree by Edith Wharton. Book 1, Chapter 6 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 defense against this appeal. Rather, the meanness of his surroundings combined with his inherited refinement of taste to deepen the effect of Bessie'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 diluted 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 Dylan'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 millhands, 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 Truscum, 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 Truscum's animosity. From the outset there had been small sympathy between the two. But the scarcity of competent and hard-working assistants had made Truscum endure him for what he was worth to the mills. Now, however, his own folly had put the match to the manager's smoldering dislike, and he saw himself in consequence discharged and blacklisted, 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 labor 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 women dispensing coals and blankets. Luckily, though such wounds to his self-confidence cut deep, he could apply to them the antiseptic of an unfailing humor, and before he had finished dressing the picture of his wide schemes of social reform contracting to a blue-eyed philanthropy of checks 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 see people of that kind now. The words falling from her too simply to be reproachful rung 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 from the first minute. I like a story that keeps one wondering till the end. It was very kind of Maria Ansel, 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 meager 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 one of her own class. How mixed our passions are, and how elastic must be the word that would cover any one of them. Amhersts at that moment were all stained with the deep wound to his self-love. The discoloration 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 roofline 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 Truscum. 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 offence 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 lawmaking and juster relations between the classes. But the last hour's experiences had shown him how vain it was to assault single-handed the strong barrier between money and labor, 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 Bessie 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 made 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. Truscum's absence it would be hard for you to leave the mills, and there are one or two things I want to explain to you 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 skepticism of the morning. In a woman so evidently nurtured independence 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 advisors 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 criticize 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 anyone 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 Dylan his name? And the matron told us he was much better. Dr. Dizbro 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. Truscum was very much annoyed when he heard of your having said before the operatives that Dylan would lose his arm. Amherst smiled. Ah, Mr. Truscum heard that? Well, he's right to be annoyed. I ought not to have said it when I did. But unfortunately I'm 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 anyone 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 at all. You don't think Dylan's accident was his own fault, then? Certainly not. There are too many cards in that room. I pointed the fact out to Mr. Truscum 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 you 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 overcrowded? To make it pay better, Amherst returned bluntly, and the color 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 seemed things 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'm 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? Oh! Amherst exclaimed, with a start of recollection, he means my refusing to say who told me that Dr. Disborough 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. Amhurst 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 high-handed 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 Dylan yesterday. But I begin to think the matron didn't want me to. Amhurst left this inference to work itself out in her mind, contending himself as they drove back to Hannaford with answering her questions about Dylan's family, the ages of his children, and his wife's health. Her inquiries, 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 Dylan's case, and meanwhile Amhurst'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 visitor's hour was not till the afternoon, and beside the sufferer's bed Amhurst 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 Dylan, 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 Bessie hung above him with reassuring murmurs as to his wife's fate and promises that the children should be cared for. Amhurst 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 to 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 gentile 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 Amhurst persisted. Ah! she wondered negligently. Do you mean the young lady you saw here yesterday? Certainly, I had forgotten. Ms. Brent was merely a—a temporary substitute. I believe she was recommended to Dr. Disborough 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, Amhurst's eyes exclaimed, I see they have sent her away because she told you Bessie's flashed back in wrath, and his answering look did not deny her inference. Do you know where she is gone, Amhurst inquired, 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 Hanifurt immediately. In the carriage Bessie 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 Hanifurt, 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, am hers 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 anyone 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 Dylans, and of what might be best 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. Truscum should find some work for Dylan about the office. But I must talk to you about this again. Can you come in this evening? End of Book 1, Chapter 6 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 noonday 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 Hannaford 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. Ansel'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 Bessie at ease, helping her to ask her own questions and to reflect on his suggestions with less bewilderment and more self-confidence. Mrs. Ansel 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 Hearst Sicily, 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 Bessie'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 jeweled 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 trust comes. 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 welcome 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 Truscombe'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 Truscombe will be on his legs 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 coattails. 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 and algebra should be solved by wiping it off the blackboard. My dear Bessie, we all owe you a dead 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 Lang Hope will, I believe, not be the first to 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 jacosly, 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 Hannaford, on our own set of people especially, to have you come here and interest yourself in the, uh, philanthropic side of the work. Bessie colored 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 should never 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. Truscum himself could not have been more helpful, though his larger experience will no doubt be useful later on in developing and, uh, 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 Truscum 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 father's surprise awaited Amherst when Truscum 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 Dylan's arm was to be amputated, and that afternoon Truscum 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 fingertips. 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're 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 Truscum's heart I don't know that it's particularly safe for me. Just tell me 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. Truscum, it appeared, had made no illusion to Dylan. 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 sight having come up, she had mentioned to Truscum his assistant's proposal that the company should buy for the purpose the notorious El Dorado. The road-housing 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 color 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 Truscum's opposition to the scheme centered 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 sight. 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 Truscum ambiguously but unmistakably offering him, with the practiced 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 Truscum, 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 Truscum'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 in the end, but Truscum 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. 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 chariot or 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 centers 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 remained 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 stardust to the naked eye. And in Bessie 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 Bessie'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 Dylan'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 enthousiasms 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 affected the change he perceived. Bessie 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 great a surprise to them to learn whether 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 Truscum's studied forbearance under which he had 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 beach-limbs above the river, watching its brown currents 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 Hannaford that Mrs. Westmore would return for the holidays. Sicily was drooping in town air, and Bessie had persuaded Mr. Lang Hope that the bracing cold of Hannaford 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 of the mills to let the operatives take their pleasure as they saw fit, and the El Dorado and the Hannaford 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 Bessie'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 Bessie 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 El Dorado were well advanced, and it was understood that on their completion she was to return for the opening of the night-school in 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 Truscombe 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 Bessie to defer her experiment. Almost at the same time, however, another piece of news changed the aspect of affairs. A scandalous occurrence at the El Dorado, 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 Truscombe 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 wedded 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 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-honored 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 Truscum. 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 lamp-lights 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 book-shelves behind her. There must be nearly a thousand of them, he said, as their eyes met. Books? Yes, with your fathers. 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. Book I. CHAPTER VIII. Am Hurst'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 Am Hurst'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 El Dorado and kindred inducements often worked against him, but among the younger hands and especially the boys he had gained a personal ascendancy 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 weekend. 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 plain hockey on the rough river ice which eager hands kept clear after every snowstorm. 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 favorite 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 Haniford the news that Mrs. Westmore was leaving at once for an indefinite period and that the Haniford 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 boy's sports with his usual energy, meaning that their last Saturday with him should be their Marriest, 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 slay driven rapidly up the avenue. Amherst watched it in surprise. Who at that hour could be invading the winter solitude of Hopewood? The slay 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. Halfway 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. She glanced away from him at the busy throng on the ice, and at the other black cluster above the coasting slide. How there 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 colored 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, crisscrossed 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 Bessie clapped her hands and joined with them. What fun! I wish I'd brought Sicily. I've not coasted for years, she laughed out, as the second detachment of boys heaped themselves on another sled and shot down. Pamhurst 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 Amhurst was too impatient to wait. Plunging down to the meadow, he caught up the sled-rope, and raced back with a 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, Amhurst 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 opposites stood black against scarlet vapours that ravelled off in sheer light toward a sky hung with an icy moon. Amhurst drew up the sled and held it steady while Bessie, 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. Amhurst 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 Amhurst 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. Bessie 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. Bessie, too, was under the spell. In the dusk of the beach 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-bowl, panting a little, and loosened her furs. What a pity it's too dark to begin again, she sighed, looking about her through the dim weaving of leafless bows. 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 snowfall 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 gray flashes and 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 modelings of gray black bowls against the snow, wet russets of drifted beach 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 the 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 treetop from which his ironical chatter pattered down on their unheating ears. Amherst's sensations were not of that highest order of happiness where mind and heart mingle their elements in the strong draft 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. Bessie 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 Bessie back to Hannaford. 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 Truscum angry, yes, but if I should insist on your staying. Am Hearst felt the blood rushed to his forehead. No, no, it's not possible, he exclaimed, with the vehemence addressed more to himself than to her. Then what will happen at the mills? Oh, someone else will be found. The new ideas are stirring everywhere, and if you'll only come back here and help my successor, do you really think they're likely to choose anyone else with your ideas? She interposed with unexpected acuteness, and after a short while 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 fibers. 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 there 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 and plain sight on the height beyond. Their steps made no sound on the sodden drifts under foot, 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. Bessie, 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. Bessie, he exclaimed again, and as he drew a step nearer he felt her yield to him and bury her sobs against his arm.