 14 Justin 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. Bessie, she knew, would have preferred to have her remain with the party from whom these evidences of gaiety proceeded. Mrs. Amhurst 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. Bessie 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 with indoors, 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 a-facing herself when she thought her presence might be useful. But even if she had cared for the diversions in favour at Lindbrook, a certain unavowed pride would have kept her from participating in them on the same footing with Bessie's guests. She was not in the least ashamed of her position in the household, but she chose that everyone 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 the 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. Again at Bessie's summons, she had joined the latter at her camp in the Adirondacks, the transition from a fatiguing case at Hannaford to a life in which Sylvan freedom was artfully blunt 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. Lyn Brooke also, with her she had been persuaded to go with Bessie 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 gayety. Pain 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 panellins 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 Bessie's weekend 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 Lindbrook 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 Bessie, 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 and a draught and handsome girl may create for herself in a fashionable woman's train. This possibility never presented itself to Justine till Mrs. Ansel 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, preferred like trust in the moral sphere, 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 in sight of the great current, and just in proportion as the scheme of life at Lindbrook 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 tidal 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, and 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 Lindbrook 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. But even Bessie's transparent maneuverings, 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 Bessie Amherst's entrance seemed suddenly to give visible expression. Why did you run off, Justine? You promised to be downstairs when I came back from tennis. Till you came back, wasn't it dear? Justine corrected with a smile, pushing her armchair forward as Bessie 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, Westie gains at any rate the moment he set foot in the house. Bessie declared with a laugh as she dropped into the armchair. Justine echoed the laugh, but offered no comment on the statement which accompanied it, and for a moment both women were silent. Bessie 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 Hannaford with the fact that he's been staying at Lindbrook. Nonsense! The novelty of that is worn off. He's been here three times since we came back. You are admirably hospitable to your family. Justine let her pretty ringed hands fall with a discouraged gesture. Why do you find him so much worse than other people? Justine's eyebrows 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 colored under the unexpected thrust, but met her friend's eyes steadily. As an alternative to Westie? Well, if I were on a desert island. But I'm not, she concluded, with a careless laugh. Bessie frowned inside. You can't mean that of the two she paused and then went undoubtedly. It's because he's cleverer. Dr. Wyant, Justine smiled, it's not making an enormous claim for him. Oh, I know Westie'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 someone who made it interesting. Bessie 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 Hannaford. 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 Bessie'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 quickspirits she was often intolerant of dullness, 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. Now 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 times 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 Bessie 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 fancing 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 and 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. The blank look in Bessie'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 Bessie, who is clamoring 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. Bessie's lip trembled and the color 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 depth 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 Bessie'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. Bessie received this with the mild tolerance of superior wisdom. Once safe on the tried ground of traditional authority, she always felt herself justine superior. That's all very well now. You see the romantic side of it, she said, as if humoring 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 of what a lot of good you could do. Westie 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 heroin 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 Bessie 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. Bessie, 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. Bessie'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 Bessie'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 Bessie 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. Bessie 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. End of book two, chapter fourteen. 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 a writing-table where, after a moment's musing over her suspended pen, she wrote and addressed a hurried note. This business dispatched, 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 dispatch 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 Westie Gaines' 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. Westie Gaines was not alone in the hall. From under the stairway rose the voices of a group ensconced in that popular retreat about a chessboard, 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 girl's 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 looker's on, the peculiar diversion of the scene. It was, of course, inevitable that young Winch, on his arrival at Lindbrook, should have succumbed at once to the tumultuous charms of the Telfer manner which was equally attractive to in articulate youth and to tired and talked-out middle age, but that he should have perceived no resistance in their minds to the deliberate 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 Westie'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 Lindbrook circle he was cherry 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 gains was a gains 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 Westie's manner and in his way of keeping a backward eye on the mute interchange of comment about the chessboard. At another time his embarrassment would have amused Justine, but the feelings stirred by her talk with Bessie had not subsided, and she recognized with a sting of mortification the resemblance between her view of the Lindbrook set and its estimate of herself. If Bessie's friends were negligible to her she was almost nonexistent 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 Westie Gaines did not mean to join her and that he was withheld from doing so by the invisible pressure of the Lindbrook standards had the effect of precipitating Justine's floating intentions. If anything further had been needed to hasten this result it would have been accomplished by the sound of footsteps which, overtaking her a dozen yards from the house, announced her admirers in petuous if tardy pursuit. The act of dismissing him, though it took but a word and was affected 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 Westie showed her in a flash the intrinsic falseness of her position at Lindbrook. 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 afterglow of a vivid sunset, and a few minutes brought her to the village stretching along the turnpike beyond the Lindbrook gates. The new post office dominated the row of shabby houses and stores, set disjointedly under red-need maples, and its arched doorway formed the center of Lindbrook's evening intercourse. Justine, hastening toward the knot of loungers on the threshold, had no consciousness of anything outside 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 a feminacy by the vigorous jut of heavy eyebrows meeting above full gray eyes. The eyes again, at first sight, might have struck one as too aggressive, 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. Stephen and reply to his question had drawn back a step, slipping her letter into the breast of her jacket. That is hardly worthwhile 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 ear-shot of the loiterers on the threshold. Then in the shade of the maple-bowls he pulled up and faced her. You've written to say that I may come to-morrow? 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 to-morrow? 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 to-morrow, 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 the 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 to suit her 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 and hers as he returned ironically. A thousand pardons, I know I'm not always in the key. The key? I haven't acquired the Lindbergh 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. Would 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. Although 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 to-morrow. 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 jetting eyebrows 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 anesthetic? No, a clean cut with a knife. You forget that we're not allowed to dispatch 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 further 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 to-morrow 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 Lindbrook 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 a clear understanding that she was to give at that meeting a definite answer to his offer of marriage, and during her talk with Bessie 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 St. 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 Lindbrook that she had begun to feel a personal interest in him. His youthful promise seemed nearer fulfilment than she had once thought possible, and the contrast he presented to the young men in Bessie's train was really all in his favour. He had gained 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 to the Lindbrook grounds? She was sure that his persistent attentions had already attracted the notice of Bessie'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. End of Book Two, Chapter 15 Book Two, Chapter 16 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 Two, Chapter 16 Amherst, on leaving the train at Lindbrook, 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 drying 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 Lindbrook, but he had not known how to tell Bessie 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 Bessie 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 Lindbrook. 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 Bessie 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 Hannaford while the first changes were making had increased the strain of the situation. He had never expected that Bessie 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 someone 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 Bessie that anyone 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 Hannaford lay in her way. At the moment of her return the work at the Mills made it impossible for him to go to Lindbrook, 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 neighborhood. He was, of course, expected to go to, and Bessie appeared hurt when he declared that he was too tired and preferred to remain with Mr. Langhope, but she did not suggest staying 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 Bessie'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 Lindbrook continued to pour in on him. In the first days of their marriage Bessie had put him in charge of her ex-checker, 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 Lindbrook, 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 Gaines', Mrs. Ansel, and Mr. Tredegar, far from being means of communication, were so many sentinels ready to raise the drawbridge and stop the portcullis at his approach. They were all in league to stifle the incipient feelings he had roused in Bessie, to push her back into the deadening routine of her former life, and the only voice that might conceivably speak for him was Miss Brents. The case which, unexpectedly presented to her by one of the Hope Hospital physicians, had detained Justine at Hannaford 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 Bessie 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 feelings 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 him suddenly thinking of her as a means of communication with his wife, but the thought gave him such encouragement that when he saw Justine and the path before him he went toward her with unusual eagerness. Justine on her part felt an equal pleasure. She knew that Bessie did not expect her husband, and that his prolonged absence had already been the cause of malicious comment at Lindbrook, and she caught at the hope that this sudden return might betoken a more favorable 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 peacemaker. 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 at the small currency of Bessie's circle. Not that any scruple of property restrained him. In trifling matters he recognized the usefulness of such encounters 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'm afraid my wife will sink me negligent. She often has to reproach me for my sins of omission, and this time I know there 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 Bessie does not know how complicated the work at Westmore is, and when I caught sight of you just now I was thinking that you were 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 plow. 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 in a vowel, 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 Bessie yourself your understanding of the case is a good deal clearer than mine or anyone else's? Oh, Bessie 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 led 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 Bessie 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 Lindbrook. 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. Then 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 Bessie 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 the 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 Bessie 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 Lindbrook, 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. Everything 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 Bessie through you, and for that reason I think 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 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 they spoke they passed out of the woodpath they had been following, and rounding a massive 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 a 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 Westie Gaines, a cluster of young bridge-playing couples, and, among the last arrivals, the Fenton Carburys and Ned Beaufort. The names were all familiar to Amherst. He knew they represented the flower of weekend 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 Lindbergh 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 Bessie. 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. Ansel has come back. Amherst halted abruptly. Is Mrs. Ansel here? She arrived from Europe to-day. 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. Bessie 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. CHAPTER XVII Bessie had not seen her little girl that day, and filled with compunction by Justine's reminder, she hastened directly to the schoolroom. Of late in certain moods her maternal tenderness had been clouded by a sense of uneasiness in the child's presence, for Sicily was the argument most effectually used by Mr. Langhope and Mr. Tredegar in their efforts to check the triumph of Amherst's ideas. Bessie, 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 Sicily 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 Sicily'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 Sicily's brightness and vigor. 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. Bessie'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 further to Amherst merely left in Bessie'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 Sicily was at supper with her governess, and enveloped the child in a whirl of passionate caresses, but Sicily 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 Bessie'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,' Bessie exclaimed, while the little governess made a nervous pretense of being greatly amused at this prodigious paradox, and Sicily, 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 Bessie 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. Bessie 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 dare say she tells you how tiresome and stupid I am. She sprang up suddenly, abashed by Sicily's astonished gaze, and by the governess's tremulous attempt to continue to treat the scene as one of Mama's most successful pleasantries. Don't mind me. My headache's horribly. I think I'll rush off for a gallop on impulse before dinner. Still, Sicily'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 schoolroom, leaving pupil and teacher plunged in a stricken silence, from which Sicily at length emerged to say, with the candor that Miss Still dreaded more than any punishable offence. Mother's prettiest, but I do like Justine the best. It was nearly dark when Bessie 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 Sicily, 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 Sicily from her. It frightened her to find herself thinking evil of Justine. Bessie, 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 Bessie 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, Bessie 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 rumors 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. In 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 Lindbrook life, Bessie knew that she stood as much outside of it as Amherst. She could never, for instance, be influenced by what Maria Ansel and the Gaines's and the Telfer's thought. She had her own criteria of conduct, unintelligible to Bessie, 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. Bessie 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 Bessie'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 melds. When she turned her mare toward Lindbrook the longing to see Amherst was again uppermost. He had not written for weeks. She had been obliged to tell Maria Ansel that she knew nothing of his plans, and it mortified her to think that everyone 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, senting 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, someone rose from the chair by the fire, and she stood still, facing her husband. It was the moment both had desired, but when it came it found them tongue-tied and helpless. Bessie 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've 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 color rose to Bessie's face. Of course not, but it seems rather odd to our visitors that I should know so little of your plans. At this he humbled himself still further. 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 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 to Marl. 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. Bessie saw his hesitation, and her color 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 inquired 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 worthwhile 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. Bessie was beginning to feel the physical reaction of her struggle with the mayor. The fatigue which at first had deadened her nerves now awoke 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 Sicily. 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, and 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. Bessie, 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. Bessie 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. Ansel outdid herself in the delicate art of taking everything for granted. But these varied 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 Bessie Amherst's world, which supplied them with their passwords 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 a pace in the atmosphere of the Lindbergh dinner-table. Justine was always reluctant to take part in Bessie's weekend 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 Lindbergh 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. Everyone else had the same standpoint, spoke the same language, drew on the same stock of illusions, 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. Ansel, with her carefully distributed affabilities, and Blanche Carberry, 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 Bessie, understood from the appearance of both that their talk had resulted in increasing Amherst's desire to be with someone 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 Lindbrook. 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 defective 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 clear, 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 background of his predecessor's remarkable sporting prince, for it was characteristic of his relation to Lindbrook 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 prince, and he smoked in silence while Mr. Langhope discoursed to Westie 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 laboring man on the prosperity of Wall Street. In a retired corner Ned Beaufort 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 someone 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 leaked against him, he would win over Bessie 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 Westie Gaines were foremost, would hardly have believed how small a part her personal charms had played in attracting him. Amhurst 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. End of Book Two, Chapter 17 Book Two, Chapter 18 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 Two, Chapter 18. 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. Ansel in the course of a colloquy which these two, the next afternoon, were at some pains to defend from the incursions of the Lindbrook House Party. Mrs. Ansel was the kind of woman who could encircle herself with privacy on an excursion boat and create a nook in a 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. Truscum 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 bee-blows I've bought for her go up the spout. Mrs. Ansel received this with a troubled countenance. What has become of Bessie? I've not seen her since luncheon. No, she and Blanche Carberry have motored over to Dine with the Nick Ledgers at his slip. 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. Ansel 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 Carberry. Mr. Langhope made a gesture of semi-acquiescence. She is not the friend I should have chosen for Bessie. But we know that Providence makes use of strange instruments. Providence and Blanche Carberry, she stared at him. Ah, you are profoundly corrupt. I have the coarse masculine habit of looking facts in the face. Womanlike, 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 Bessie 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 Bessie shall save what is left of her money? I would rather see her save what is left of her happiness. Bessie 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. If you're still imprisoned in the old formulas. Mrs. Ansel confronted him with a grave face. Isn't that precisely what Bessie 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. Ansel added, is that so few of them ever stopped to think. And yet, as I make out, it's precisely what you would have Bessie 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. Ansel, 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 Bessie'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 Bessie'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 mourning 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 Bessie'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. Someday 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 of it as yours? Bessie, freeing herself, sat down on the edge of the straight back 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 blanched Carberry's tones. Though Bessie's intimacy with Mrs. Carberry 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 husband's work, and if the mills were mine I should try to conform to the custom, though I should always think at 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 a representative at Westmore, and I don't see how we can help having the subject come up between us. Bessie 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 a constant effort to keep the human and personal side of the question before her. She listened without comment, her eyes fixed on a little jeweled letter-opener which she had picked up from the writing-table and which she continued to turn in her fingers while she spoke. The full development of Amherst's plans at Westmore, besides resulting as he had foreseen in Truscum's resignation and in Helford Gaines' 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 Bessie, 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 Bessie 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 dispatched 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 Bessie'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 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. Bessie 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 want to produce in his successor. He readened at the reply, and Bessie, profiting by an embarrassment which she had perhaps consciously provoked, went on hastily, 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 unsurmountable. Bessie, he exclaimed following her, don't let us part in this way. She paused with her hand on the dressing-room door. It is time to dress for church, she objected, turning to glance at the little guilt-clock on the chimney-piece. For church, Amherst stared, wondering that it's 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 Lindbrook had always struck him as a purely social observance. But Bessie 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 further 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? End of Book Two, Chapter 18