 Book Four, Chapter forty-one, of the Fruit of the Tree. Amherst, Sicily's convalescence, once assured, had been obliged to go back to Hannaford. But some ten days later, on hearing from Mrs. Ansel that the little girl's progress was less rapid than had been hoped, he returned to his father-in-law's for a Sunday. He came two days after the talk recorded in the last chapter, a talk of which Mrs. Ansel's letter to him had been the direct result. She had promised Mr. Langhope that, in writing to Amherst, she would not go beyond the briefest statement of fact, and she had kept her word, trusting to circumstances to speak for her. Mrs. Ansel, during Sicily's illness, had formed the habit of dropping in on Mr. Langhope at the tea-hour, instead of awaiting him in her own drawing-room, and on the Sunday in question she found him alone. Beneath his pleasure in seeing her, which had grown more marked as his dependence on her increased, she at once discerned traces of recent disturbance, and her first question was for Sicily. He met it with a discouraged gesture. No great change. Amherst finds her less well than when he was here before. He's upstairs with her? Yes, she seems to want him. Mrs. Ansel seated herself in silence behind the tea-tree of which she was now recognized as the officiating priestess. As she drew off her long gloves and mechanically straightened the row of delicate old cups, Mr. Langhope added with an effort. I've spoken to him, told him what you said. She looked up quickly. About the child's wish he continued. About her having written to his wife. It seems her last letters have not been answered. He paused, and Mrs. Ansel, with her usual calm precision, proceeded to measure the tea into the fluted Georgian teapot. She could be as reticent in approval as in reprehension, and not for the world would she seem to claim any share in the turn that events appeared to be taking. She even preferred the risk of leaving her old friend to add half reproachfully. I told Amherst what you and the nurse thought. Yes, that Cicely pines for his wife. I put it to him in black and white. The words came out on a deep, strained breath, and Mrs. Ansel faltered. Well? He doesn't know where she is himself. Doesn't know? They're separated, utterly separated. It's as I told you, he could hardly name her. Mrs. Ansel had unconsciously ceased her ministrations, letting her hands fall on her knee while she brooded in blank wonder on her companion's face. I wonder what reason she could have given him, she murmured at length. Forgoing? He loathes her, I tell you. Yes, but how did she make him? He struck his hand violently on the arm of his chair. Upon my soul you seem to forget. No, she shook her head with a half-smile. I simply remember more than you do. What more he began with a flush of anger, but she raised a quieting hand. What does all that matter if now that we need her we can't get her? He made no answer, and she returned to the dispensing of his tea. But as she rose to put the cup in his hand, he asked, half-querylessly. You think it's going to be very bad for the child, then? Mrs. Ansel smiled with the thin edge of her lips. One can hardly set the police after her. No, we're powerless, he groaned in assent. As the cup passed between them, she dropped her eyes to his with a quick flash of interrogation. But he sat staring moodily before him, and she moved back to the sofa without a word. On the way downstairs she met Amherst descending from Sicily's room. Since the early days of his first marriage there had always been, on Amherst's side, a sense of obscure antagonism toward Mrs. Ansel. She was almost the embodied spirit of the world he dreaded and disliked. Her serenity, her tolerance, her adaptability seemed to smile away and disintegrate all the high-enthusiasms, the stubborn convictions that he had tried to plant in the shifting sands of his married life. And now that Bessie's death had given her back the attributes with which his fancy had originally invested her, he had come to regard Mrs. Ansel as embodying the evil influences that had come between himself and his wife. Mrs. Ansel was probably not unaware of the successive transitions of feeling which had led up to this unflattering view, but her life had been passed among petty rivalries and animosities, and she had the patience and adroitness of the spy in a hostile camp. She and Amherst exchanged a few words about Sicily, then she exclaimed with a glance through the panes of the hall door, but I must be off, I'm on foot in the crossings of Palmy after dark. He could do no less after that than offer to guide her across the perils of Fifth Avenue, and still talking of Sicily, she led him down the thronged thoroughfare till her own corner was reached, and then her own door, turning there to ask as if by an afterthought, won't you come up, there's one more thing I want to say. A shade of reluctance crossed his face, which as the vestibule light fell on it, looked hard and tired, like a face set obstinately against a winter gale, but he murmured a word of assent and followed her into the shining steel cage of the lift. In her little drawing-room, among the shaded lamps and bowls of spring flowers, she pushed a chair forward, settled herself in her usual corner of the sofa, and said with a directness that seemed an echo of his own tone, I asked you to come up because I want to talk to you about Mr. Langhope. Amherst looked at her in surprise, though his father-in-law's health had been more or less unsatisfactory for the last year, all their concern of late had been for Sicily. You think him less well, he inquired. She waited to draw off and smooth her gloves with one of the deliberate gestures that served to shade and supplement her speech. I think him extremely unhappy. Amherst moved uneasily in his seat. He did not know where she meant the talk to lead them, but he guessed that it would be over-painful places, and he saw no reason why he should be forced to follow her. You mean that he's still anxious about Sicily? Partly that, yes, she paused. The child will get well, no doubt, but she is very lonely. She needs youth, heat, light. Mr. Langhope can't give her those, or even a semblance of them. When it's an art I've lost the secret of, she added with her shadowy smile. Amherst's brows darkened. I realize all she has lost. Mrs. Ansel glanced up at him quickly. She is twice motherless, she said. The blood rose to his neck in temples, and he tightened his hand on the arm of his chair. But it was a part of Mrs. Ansel's expertness to know when such danger signals must be heeded and when they might be ignored, and she went on quietly. It's the question of the future that is troubling Mr. Langhope. After such an illness the next months of Sicily's life should be all happiness. And money won't buy the kind she needs. One can't pick out the right companion for such a child as one can match a ribbon. What she wants is spontaneous affection, not the most superlative manufactured article. She wants the sort of love that Justine gave her. It was the first time in months that Amherst had heard his wife's name spoken outside of his own house. No one but his mother mentioned Justine to him now, and of late even his mother had dropped her in quarries and illusions, prudently acquiescing in the habit of silence which his own silence had created about him. To hear the name again, the two little syllables which had been the key of life to him, now shook him as the turning of a rusted lock shakes a long-closed door. To hear her name spoken familiarly, affectionately, as one speaks of someone who may come into the room the next moment, gave him a shock that was half pain and half furtive, unacknowledged joy. Men whose conscious thoughts are mostly projected outward on the world of external activities may be more moved by such a touch on the feelings than those who are perpetually testing and tuning their emotional chords. Amherst had foreseen from the first that Mrs. Ansel might mean to speak of his wife, but though he had intended, if she did so, to cut their talk short, he now felt himself irresistibly constrained to hear her out. Mrs. Ansel, having sped her shaft, followed its flight through lowered lashes and saw that it had struck a vulnerable point, but she was far from assuming that the day was one. I believe, she continued, that Mr. Langhope has said something of this to you already, and my only excuse for speaking is that I understood he had not been successful in his appeal. No one but Mrs. Ansel, and perhaps she knew it, could have been pushed so far beyond the conventional limits of discretion without seeming to overstep them by a hair, and she had often said, when pressed for the secret of her art, that it consisted simply in knowing the password. That word once spoken, she might have added, the next secret was to give the enemy no time for resistance, and though she saw the frown reappear between Amherst's eyes, she went on without heeding it. I entreat you, Mr. Amherst, to let Sicily see your wife. He reddened again, and pushed back his chair as if to rise. No, don't break off like that. Let me say a word more. I know your answer to Mr. Langhope, that you and Justine are no longer together, but I thought of you as a man to sink your personal relations at such a moment as this. To sink them, he repeated vaguely, and she went on. After all, what difference does it make? He stared in unmitigated wonder, and then answered with a touch of irony. It might at least make the difference of my being unwilling to ask a favour of her. Mrs. Ansel, at this, raised her eyes and let them rest full on his. Because she has done you so great a one already. He stared again, sinking back automatically into his chair. I don't understand you. No, she smiled a little as if to give herself time. But I mean that you shall. If I were a man, I suppose I couldn't, because a man's coat of honour is such a clumsy cast-iron thing. But a woman's, luckily, can be cut over, if she's clever, to fit any new occasion. And in this case I should be willing to reduce mine to tatters, if necessary. Amherst's look of bewilderment deepened. What is it that I don't understand, he asked at length in a low voice? Well, first of all, why Mr. Langhope had the right to ask you to send for your wife? The right. You don't recognise such a right on his part? No, why should I? Supposing she had left you by his wish. His wish? His? He was on his feet now, gazing at her blindly, while the solid world seemed to grow thin about him. Her next words reduced it to a mist. My poor Amherst, why else on earth should she have left you? She brought it out clearly in her small chiming tones, and as the sound travelled toward him, it seemed to gather momentum, till her words rang through his brain as if every incomprehensible incident in the past had suddenly boomed forth the question. Why else indeed should she have left him? He stood motionless for a while, then he approached Mrs. Ansel and said, Tell me. She drew farther back into the corner of the sofa, waving him to a seat beside her as though to bring his inquisitory eyes on a level where her own could command them. But he stood where he was, unconscious of her gesture, and merely repeating, Tell me. She may have said to herself that a woman would have needed no further telling, but to him she only replied, slanting her head up to his, to spare you and himself pain, to keep everything between himself and you as it had been before you married her. He dropped down beside her at that, grasping the back of the sofa as if he wanted something to clutch and throttle. The veins swelled in his temples, and as he pushed back his tossed hair Mrs. Ansel noticed for the first time how grey it had grown on the underside. And he asked this of my wife. He accepted it. Haven't you accepted it? I? How could I guess her reasons? How could I imagine? Mrs. Ansel raised her brows, a hair's breadth at that. I don't know. But as a fact he didn't ask, it was she who offered, who forced it on him even. Forced her going on him? In a sense, yes, by making it appear that you felt as he did about it, about poor Bessie's death, that the thought of what had happened at the time was as abhorrent to you as to him, that she was as abhorrent to you. No doubt she foresaw that, had she permitted the least doubt on that point, there would have been no need of her leaving you, since the relation between yourself and Mr. Langhope would have been altered, destroyed. Yes, I expected that. I warned her of it. But how did she make him think? How can I tell? To begin with, I don't know your real feeling. For all I know she was telling the truth. And Mr. Langhope, of course, thought she was. That I aboard her? Oh, he broke out, on his feet in an instant. Then why? Why did I let her leave me? He strode across the room, as his habit was, in moments of agitation, turning back to her again before he answered. Because I didn't know, didn't know anything. And because her insisting on going away like that, without any explanation, made me feel, imagine there was something she didn't want me to know, something she was afraid of not being able to hide from me if we stayed together any longer. Well, there was, the extent to which she loved you. Mrs. Ansel, her hands clasped on her knee, her gaze holding his with a kind of visionary fixity, seemed to reconstruct the history of his past, bit by bit, the words she was dragging out of him. I see it. I see it all now, she went on, with a repressed fervor that he had never divined in her. It was the only solution for her, as well as for the rest of you. The more she showed her love, the more it would have cast a doubt on her motive, the greater distance she would have put between herself and you. And so she showed it in the only way that was safe for both of you. By taking herself away and hiding it in her heart, and before going, she secured your peace of mind, your future. If she ruined anything, she rebuilt the ruin. Oh, she paid, she paid in full. Justine had paid, yes, paid to the utmost limit of whatever debt toward society she had contracted by overstepping its laws. And her resolve to discharge the debt had been taken in a flash, as soon as she had seen that man can commit no act alone, whether for good or evil. The extent to which Amherst's fate was involved in hers had become clear to her with his first word of reassurance of faith and her motive, and instantly a plan for releasing him had leapt full-formed into her mind had been carried out with swift, unflinching resolution. As he forced himself now to look down the suddenly illuminated past to the weeks which had elapsed between her visit to Mr. Langhope and her departure from Hannaford, he wondered not so much at her swiftness of resolve as at her firmness in carrying out her plan, and he saw, with a blinding flash of insight, that it was in her love for him that she had found her strength. In all moments of strong mental tension he became totally unconscious of time and place, and now he remained silent so long his hands clasped behind him, his eyes fixed on an indeterminate point in space that Mrs. Ansel at length rose and laid a questioning touch on his arm. It's not true that you don't know where she is. His face contracted. At this moment I don't. Lately she has preferred. Not to write. But surely you must know how to find her. He tossed back his hair with an energetic movement. I should find her if I didn't know how. They stood confronted in a gaze of silent intensity, each penetrating further into the mind of the other than would have seemed possible to either one. Then Amherst held out his hand abruptly. Good-bye, and thank you, he said. She detained him a moment. We shall see you soon again, see you both? His face grew stern. It's not to oblige Mr. Langhope that I'm going to find my wife. Ah, now you are unjust to him, she exclaimed. Don't let us speak of him, he broke in. Why not? When it is from him the request comes. The entreaty. That everything in the past should be forgotten? Yes, when it suits his convenience. Do you imagine that even judging him in that way it has not cost him a struggle? I can only think of what it has cost her. Mrs. Ansel drew a deep sighing breath. Ah, but don't you see that she has gained her point and that nothing else matters to her? Gained her point? Not if by that you mean that things here can ever go back to the old state, that she and I can remain at Westmore after this. Mrs. Ansel dropped her eyes for a moment. Then she lifted to his, her sweet impenetrable face. Do you know what you have to do, both you and he, exactly what she decides, she affirmed. End of Book 4 Chapter 41 Justine's answer to her husband's letter bore a New York address and the surprise of finding her in the same town with himself and not a half-hour's walk from the room in which he sat was so great that it seemed to demand some sudden and violent outlet of physical movement. He thrust the letter in his pocket, took up his hat, and, leaving the house, strode up Fifth Avenue toward the park in the early spring sunlight. The news had taken five days to reach him for, in order to re-establish communication with his wife, he had been obliged to write to Michigan with the request that his letter should be forwarded. He had never supposed that Justine would be hard to find or that she had purposely enveloped her movements in mystery. When she ceased to write, he simply concluded that, like himself, she felt the mockery of trying to keep up a sort of distant, semi-fraternal relation marked by the occasional interchange of inexpressive letters. The inextricable mingling of thought and sensation which made the peculiar closeness of their union could never, to such direct and passionate natures, be replaced by the pretense of a temperate friendship. Feeling thus himself and instinctively assuming the same feeling in his wife, Amhurst had respected her silence, her wish to break definitely with their former life. She had written him in the autumn that she intended to leave Michigan for a few months, but that in any emergency a letter addressed to her friend's house would reach her, and he had taken this as meaning that, unless the emergency arose, she preferred that their correspondence should cease. Acquiescence was all the easier because it accorded with his own desire. It seemed to him as he looked back that the love he and Justine had felt for each other was like some rare organism which could maintain life only in its special element, and that element was neither passion nor sentiment, but truth. It was only on the heights that they could breathe. Some men in his place, even while accepting the inevitableness of the moral rupture, would have felt concerned for the material side of the case, but it was characteristic of Amhurst that this did not trouble him. He took it for granted that his wife would return to her nursing. From the first he had felt certain that it would be intolerable to her to accept aid from him, and that she would choose, rather, to support herself by the exercise of her regular profession, and, aside from such motives, he, who had always turned to hard work as the rarest refuge from personal misery, thought it natural that she should seek the same means of escape. He had therefore not been surprised on opening her letter that morning to learn that she had taken up her hospital work, but in the amazement of finding her so near, he hardly grasped her explanation of the coincidence. There was something about a buffalo patient suddenly ordered to New York for special treatment and refusing to go in with a new nurse, but these details made no impression on his mind, which had only room for the fact that Chance had brought his wife back at the very moment when his whole being yearned for her. She wrote that owing to her duties she would be unable to see him till three that afternoon, and he had still six hours to consume before their meeting. But in spirit they had met already. They were one in an intensity of communion which, as he strode northward along the bright crowded thoroughfare, seemed to gather up the whole world into one throbbing point of life. He had a boyish wish to keep the secret of his happiness to himself, not to let Mr. Langhope or Mrs. Ansell know of his meeting with Justine till it was over, and after twice measuring the length of the park he turned in at one of the little wooden restaurants which were beginning to unshutter themselves in anticipation of spring custom. If only he could have seen Justine that morning. If he could have brought her there and they could have sat opposite each other in the bare empty room with sparrows bustling and twittering in the lilacs against the open window. The room was ugly enough but how she would have delighted in the delicate green of the near slopes and the purplish haze of the woods beyond. She took a childish pleasure in such small adventures and had the knack of giving a touch of magic to their most commonplace details. Amhurst, as he finished his cold beef and indifferent eggs found himself boyishly planning to bring her back there the next day. Then over the coffee he re-read her letter. The address she gave was that of a small private hospital and she explained that she would have to receive him in the public parlor which at that hour was open to other visitors. As the time approached the thought that they might not be alone when they met became insufferable and he determined if he found anyone else in possession of the parlor to wait in the hall and meet her as she came down the stairs. He continued to elaborate this plan as he walked back slowly through the park. He had timed himself to reach the hospital a little before three but though it lacked five minutes to the hour when he entered the parlor two women were already seated in one of its windows. They looked around as he came in, evidently as much annoyed by his appearance as he had been to find them there. The older of the two showed a sallow, middle-aged face beneath her limp, crepe veil. The other was a slight, tawdry creature with knotting feathers and innumerable chains and bracelets which she fingered ceaselessly as she talked. They eyed Amherst with resentment and then turned away, continuing their talk in low murmurs while he seated himself at the marble-topped table littered with torn magazines. Now and then the younger woman's voice rose in a shrill staccato and a phrase or two floated over to him. She'd simply worked herself to death. The nurse told me so. She expects to go home in another week though how she's going to stand the fatigue. And then, after an inaudible answer, it's all his fault and if I was her I wouldn't go back to him for anything. Oh, Cora, he's real sorry now, the older woman protestingly murmured but the other unappeased rejoined with ominously knotting plumes. You see, if they do make it up it'll never be the same between them. Amherst started up nervously and as he did so the clock struck three and he opened the door and passed out into the hall. It was paved with black and white marble, the walls were washed in a dull yellowish tint and the prevalent odor of antiseptics was mingled with the stale smell of cooking. At the back rose a straight staircase carpeted with brass-bound India rubber ship's companion-way and down that staircase she would come in a moment. He fancied he heard her step now. But the step was that of an elderly black-gowned woman in a cap, the matron probably. She glanced at Amherst in surprise and asked, Are you waiting for someone? He made a motion of ascent and she opened the parlor door saying, Please walk in. May I not wait out here, he urged. She looked at him more attentively. Why, no, I'm afraid not. You'll find the papers and magazines in here. Mildly but firmly she drove him in before her and closing the door advanced to the two women in the window. Amherst's hopes leapt up. Perhaps she had come to fetch the visitors upstairs. He strained his ears to catch what was being said and while he was thus absorbed the door opened and turning at the sound he found himself face to face with his wife. He had not reflected that Justine would be in a nurse's dress and the side of the dark blue uniform and small white cap in which he had never seen her since their first meeting at the Hope Hospital obliterated all bitter and unhappy memories and gave him the illusion of passing back at once into the clear air of their early friendship. Then he looked at her and remembered. He noticed that she had grown thinner than ever or rather that her thinness which had formerly had a healthy read-like strength now suggested fatigue and languor and her face was spent, extinguished, the very eyes were lifeless. All her vitality seemed to have withdrawn itself into the arch of dense black hair which still clasped her forehead like the noble metal of some antique bust. The sight stirred him with a deeper pity, a more vehement compunction, but the impulse to snatch her to him and seek his pardon on her lips was paralyzed by the sense that the three women in the window had stopped talking and turned their heads toward the door. He held his hand out and Justine touched it for a moment. Then he said in a low voice, Is there no other place where I can see you? She made a negative gesture. I'm afraid not today. Ah! her deep sweet voice, how completely his ear had lost the sound of it. She looked doubtfully about the room and pointed to a sofa at the end farthest from the windows. Shall we sit there? she said. He followed her in silence and they sat down side by side. The matron had drawn up a chair and resumed her whispered conference with the women in the window. Between the two groups stretched the bare length of the room broken only by a few arm-chairs of stained wood and the marble-topped table covered with magazines. The impossibility of giving free reign to his feelings developed an amherst and unwanted intensity of perception as though a sixth sense had suddenly emerged to take place of those he could not use. And with this new-made faculty he seemed to gather up and absorb into himself as he had never done in their hours of closest communion every detail of his wife's person, of her face and hands and gestures. He noticed how her full upper lids of the tent of yellowish ivory had a slight bluish discoloration and how the thread-like blue veins ran across her temples to the roots of her hair. The emaciation of her face and the hollow shades beneath her cheekbones made her mouth seem redder and fuller though a little line on each side where it joined the cheek gave it a tragic droop. And her hands, when her fingers met his he recalled having once picked up in the winter woods the little feather-light skeleton of a frozen bird and that was what her touch was like. And it was he who had brought her to this by his cruelty, his obtuseness, his base readiness to believe the worst of her. He did not want to pour himself out in self-accusation. That seemed too easy a way of escape. He wanted simply to take her in his arms to ask her to give him one more chance and then to show her and all the while he was paralyzed by the group in the window. Can't we go out? I must speak to you. He began again nervously. Not this afternoon. The doctor is coming. Tomorrow. I can't wait for tomorrow. She made a faint imperceptible gesture which read to his eyes, you've waited a whole year. Yes, I know he returned still constrained by the necessity of muffling his voice of perpetually measuring the distance between themselves and the window. I know what you might say. Don't you suppose I've said it to myself a million times? But I didn't know. I couldn't imagine. She interrupted him with a rapid movement. What do you know now? What you promised Langhope? She turned her startled eyes on him and he saw the blood run flame-like under her skin. But he promised not to speak, she cried. He hasn't to me, but such things make themselves known. Should you have been content to go on in that way forever? She raised her head and her eyes rested in his. If you were, she answered simply, Justine! Again she checked him with a silencing motion. Please tell me just what has happened. Not now. There's too much else to say. And nothing matters except that I'm with you. But Mr. Langhope, he asks you to come. You're to see Sicily tomorrow. Her lower lip trembled a little and a tear flowed over and hung on her lashes. But what does that all matter now? We're together after this horrible year, he insisted. She looked at him again. But what has really changed? Everything. Everything. Not changed, I mean just gone back. To where we were before, she whispered and he whispered back to where we were before. There was a scraping of chairs on the floor and with a sense of release Amherst saw that the colloquy in the window was over. The two visitors, gathering their wraps about them, moved slowly across the room, still talking to the matron in excited undertones through which, as they neared the threshold, the younger woman's staccato again broke out. I tell you, if she does go back to him, would there be the same between them? Oh, Cora, I wouldn't say that. The other ineffectually wailed. Then they moved toward the door and a moment later it had closed on them. Amherst turned to his wife without stretched arms. Say you forgive me, Justine. She held back a little from his entreating hands, not reproachfully, but as if with a last scruple for himself. There's nothing left of the horror she asked below her breath. To be without you, that's the only horror. You're sure? Sure. It's just the same to you, just as it was before? Just the same, Justine? It's not for myself but you. Then for me, never speak of it, he implored. Because it's not the same then, leapt from her. Because it's wiped out. Because it's never been. Never. Never. He felt her yield to him at that and under his eyes, close under his lips, was her face at last. But as they kissed they heard the handle of the door turn and drew apart quickly, her hand lingering in his under the fold of her dress. A nurse looked in, dressed in the white uniform and pointed cap of the hospital. Amherst fancied that she smiled a little as she saw them. Miss Brent, the doctor wants you to come right up and give the morphine. The door shut again as Justine rose to her feet. Amherst remained seated. He had made no motion to retain her hand as it slipped from him. I'm coming, she called out to the retreating nurse. Then she turned slowly and saw her husband's face. I must go, she said in a low tone. Her eyes met his for a moment, but he looked away again as he stood up and reached for his hat. Tomorrow, then, he said, without attempting to detain her. Tomorrow? You must come away from here. You must come home, he repeated mechanically. She made no answer, and he held his hand out and took hers. Tomorrow, he said, drawing her toward him, and their lips met again, but not in the same kiss. End of book four, chapter forty-two. Book four, chapter forty-three 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 four, chapter forty-three. June again at Hannaford, and Sicily's birthday. The anniversary was to coincide this year with the opening of the old house at Hopewood as a kind of pleasure palace, gymnasium, concert hall, and museum for the recreation of the mill hands. The idea had first come to Amherst on the winter afternoon when Bessie Westmore had confessed her love for him under the snow-laden trees of Hopewood. Even then the sense that his personal happiness was enlarged and secured by its promise of happiness to others had made him wish that the scene associated with the opening of his new life should be made to commemorate a corresponding change in the fortunes of Westmore. But when the control of the mills passed into his hands other and more necessary improvements pressed upon him and it was not till now that the financial condition of the company had permitted the execution of his plan. Justine on her return to Hannaford had found the work already in progress and had been told by her husband that he was carrying out a projected scheme of Bessie's. She had felt a certain surprise but had concluded that the plan in question dated back to the early days of his first marriage when, in his wife's eyes, his connection with the mills still invested them with interest. Since Justine had come back to her husband both had tacitly avoided all illusions to the past and the recreation house at Hopewood being as she devined in some sort an expiatory offering to Bessie's plaintive shade she had purposely refrained from questioning Amherst about its progress and had simply approved the plans he submitted to her. Fourteen months had passed since her return and now as she sat beside her husband in the carriage which was conveying them to Hopewood she said to herself that her life had at last fallen into what promised to be its final shape that as things now were they would probably be to the end and outwardly at least they were what she and Amherst had always dreamed of their being Westmore prospered under the new rule the seeds of life they had sown there were springing up in a promising growth of bodily health and mental activity and above all in a dawning social consciousness the mill hands were beginning to understand the meaning of their work in its relation to their own lives and to the larger economy and outwardly also the new growth was showing itself in the humanized aspect of the place Amherst's young maples were tall enough now to cast a shade on the grass-boarded streets and the well-kept turf, the bright cottage gardens the new central group of library, hospital, and clubhouse gave to the mill village the hopeful air of a rising residential suburb in the bright June light behind their fresh green mantle of trees and creepers even the factory buildings looked less stern and prison-like than formerly and the turfing and planting of the adjoining river banks had transformed a waste of foul mud and refuse into a little park where the operatives might refresh themselves at midday yes Westmore was alive at last the dead city of which Justine had once spoken had risen from its grave and its blank face had taken on a meaning as Justine Glantz did her husband she saw that the same thought was in his mind however achieved at whatever cost of personal misery and error the work of awakening and freeing Westmore was done and that work had justified itself she looked from Amherst to Sicily who sat opposite eager and rosy in her morning frock for Mr. Langhope had died some two months previously and as intent as her step-parents on the scene before her Sicily was old enough now to regard her connection with Westmore as something more than a nursery game she was beginning to learn a great deal about the mills and to understand in simple friendly ways something of her own relation to them the work and play of the children the interests and relaxations provided for their elders had been gradually explained to her by Justine and she knew that this shining tenth birthday of hers was to throw its light as far as the clouds of factory smoke extended as they mounted the slope to Hopewood the spacious white building with its unfolding colonnades its broad terraces and tennis courts shone through the trees like some bright country house adorned for its master's homecoming and Amherst and his wife might have been driving up to the house which had been built to shelter their wedded happiness the thought flashed across Justine as their carriage climbed the hill she was as much absorbed as Amherst in the welfare of Westmore it had become more and more to both the refuge in which their lives still met and mingled but for a moment as they paused before the flower-decked porch and he turned to help her from the carriage it occurred to her to wonder what her sensations would have been if he had been bringing her home to a real home of their own instead of accompanying her to another philanthropic celebration but what need had they of a real home when they no longer had any real life of their own nothing was left of that secret inner union which had so enriched and beautified their outward lives since Justine's return to Hannaford they had entered tacitly almost unconsciously into a new relation to each other a relation in which their personalities were more and more merged in their common work so that as it were they met only by avoiding each other from the first Justine had accepted this as inevitable just as she had understood when Amherst had sought her out in New York that his remaining at Westmore which had once been contingent on her leaving him now depended on her willingness to return and take up their former life she accepted the last condition as she had accepted the other pledged to the perpetual expiation of an act for which in the abstract she still refused to hold herself to blame but life is not a matter of abstract principles but a succession of pitiful compromises with fate of concessions to old tradition old beliefs, old charities and frailties that was what her act had taught her that was the word of the gods to the mortal who had laid a hand on their bolts and she had humbled herself to accept the lesson seeing human relations at last as a tangled and deep-rooted growth a dark forest through which the idealist cannot cut his straight path without hearing at each stroke the cry of the severed branch why woundest thou me? the lawns leading up to the house were already sprinkled with holiday makers while along the avenue came the rolling of wheels the throb of motor-cars and Justine with Sicily beside her stood in the wide hall to receive the incoming throng in which Hannaford Society was indiscriminately mingled with the operatives in their Sunday best while his wife welcomed the new arrivals Amherst, supported by some young Westmore cousins was guiding them into the concert hall where he was to say a word on the uses of the building before declaring it open for inspection and presently Justine and Sicily welcomed by Westie Gaines made their way through the row of seats to a corner near the platform her husband was there already with Halford Gaines and a group of Hannaford dignitaries and just below them sat Mrs. Gaines and her daughters the Harry Dressels and Amherst's radiant mother as Justine passed between them she wondered how much they knew of the events which had wrought so profound and permanent a change in her life she had never known how Hannaford explained her absence or what comments it had made on her return but she saw today more clearly than ever that Amherst had become a power among his own townsmen and that if they were still blind to the inner meaning of his work its practical results were beginning to impress them profoundly Hannaford's sociological creed was largely based on commercial considerations and Amherst had won Hannaford's esteem by the novel feat of defying its economic principles and snatching success out of his defiance and now he had advanced a step or two in front of the representative semi-circle on the platform and was beginning to speak Justine did not hear his first words she was looking up at him trying to see him with the eyes of the crowd and wondering what manner of man he would have seemed to her if she had known as little as they did of his inner history he held himself straight the heavy locks thrown back from his forehead one hand resting on the table beside him the other grasping a folded blueprint which the architect of the building had just advanced to give him as he stood there Justine recalled her first side of him in the Hope Hospital five years earlier was it only five years? they had dealt deep strokes to his face hollowing the eye sockets accentuating the strong modeling of nose and chin fixing the lines between the brows but every touch had a meaning it was not the languid hand of time which had remade his features but the sharp chisel of thought and action she roused herself suddenly to the consciousness of what he was saying for the idea of this building of a building dedicated to the recreation of Westmore is not new in my mind but while it remained there as a mere idea it had already without my knowledge taken definite shape in the thoughts of the owner of Westmore there was a slight drop in his voice as he designated Bessie and he waited a moment before continuing it was not till after the death of my first wife that I learned of her intention that I found by accident among her papers this carefully studied plan for a pleasure house at Hopewood he paused again and unrolling the blueprint held it up before his audience you cannot at this distance he went on see all the admirable details of her plan see how beautifully they were imagined how carefully and intelligently elaborated she who conceived them long to see beauty everywhere it was her dearest wish to bestow it on her people here and her ardent imagination out round the bounds of practical possibility we cannot give you in its completeness the beautiful things she had imagined the great terraces, the marble porches, the fountains lily tanks and cloisters but you will see that wherever it was possible though in humbler materials and on a smaller scale we have faithfully followed her design and when presently you go through this building and when hereafter you find health and refreshment and diversion here I ask you to remember the beauty she dreamed of giving you and to let the thought of it make her memory beautiful among you and among your children Justine had listened with deepening amazement she was seated so close to her husband that she recognized the blueprint the moment he enrolled it there was no mistaking its origin it was simply the plan of the gymnasium which Bessie had intended to build at Lindbrook and which she had been constrained to abandon owing to her husband's increased expenditure at the mills but how was it possible that Amherst knew nothing of the original purpose of the plans and by what mocking turn of events had a project devised in deliberate defiance of his wishes and intended to declare his wife's open contempt for them been transformed into a utopian vision for the betterment of the Westmore operatives a wave of anger swept over Justine at this last derisive stroke of fate it was grotesque and pitiable that a man like Amherst should create out of his regrets a being who had never existed and then ascribe to her feelings and actions of which the real woman had again and again proved herself incapable ah no Justine had suffered enough but to have this imaginary Bessie called from the grave dressed in a semblance of self-devotion and idealism to see her petty impulses of vindictiveness disguised as the motions of a lofty spirit it was as though her small malicious ghost had devised this way of punishing the wife who had taken her place Justine had suffered enough suffered deliberately and unstintingly paying the full price of her error not seeking to evade its least consequence but no sane judgment could ask her to sit quiet under this last hallucination what? this unreal woman this phantom that Amherst's uneasy imagination had evoked was to come between himself and her to supplant her first as his wife and then as his fellow worker why should she not cry out the truth to him defend herself against the dead who came back to rob her of such wedded peace as was hers she had only to tell the true story of the plans to lay poor Bessie's ghost forever the confused, throbbing impulses within her were stifled under a long burst of applause then she saw Westie Gaines at her side again and understood that he had come to lead Sicily to the platform for a moment she clung jealously to the child's hand hardly aware of what she did feeling only that she was being thrust further and further into the background of the life she had helped to call out of chaos then a contrary impulse moved her she gently freed Sicily's hand and a moment later as she sat with bent head and throbbing breast she heard the child's treble piping out above her in my mother's name I give this house to Westmore applause again and then Justine found herself enveloped in a general murmur of compliment and congratulation Mr. Amhurst had spoken admirably a beautiful tribute ah, he had done poor Bessie justice and to think that till now Hannaford had never fully known how she had the welfare of the mills at heart how it was really only her work that he was carrying on there well he had made that perfectly clear and no doubt Sicily was being taught to follow in her mother's footsteps everyone had noticed how her stepfather was associating her with the work at the mills and his little speech would, as it were, consecrate the child's relation to that work make it appear to her as the continuance of a beautiful, a sacred tradition and now it was over the building had been inspected the operatives had dispersed the Hannaford Company had rolled off down the avenue Sicily among them driving away tired and happy in Mrs. Dressel's Victoria and Amhurst and his wife were alone Amhurst, after bidding goodbye to his last guests had gone back to the empty concert room to fetch the blueprint lying on the platform he came back with it between the uneven rows of empty chairs and joined Justine who stood waiting in the hall his face was slightly flushed and his eyes had the light which in happy moments burned through their veil of thought he laid his hand on his wife's arm and drawing her toward a table spread out the blueprint before her you haven't seen this have you, he said she looked down at the plan without answering reading in the left-hand corner the architect's conventional inscription swimming tank and gymnasium designed for Mrs. John Amhurst Amhurst looked up perhaps struck by her silence but perhaps you have seen it at Lindbrook it must have been done while you were there the quickened throb of her blood rushed to her brain like a signal speak speak now the signal commanded Justine continued to look fixedly at the plan yes I have seen it she said at length at Lindbrook? at Lindbrook she showed it to you I suppose while I was away Justine hesitated again yes while you were away and did she tell you anything about it go into details about her wishes her intentions now was the moment now as her lips parted she looked up at her husband the illumination still lingered on his face and it was the face she loved he was waiting eagerly for her next word no I heard no details I merely saw the plan lying there she saw his look of disappointment she never told you about it no she never told me it was best so after all she understood that now it was now at last that she was paying her full price Amherst rolled up the plan with a sigh and pushed it into the drawer of the table it struck her that he too had the look of one who has laid a ghost he turned to her and drew her hand through his arm you're tired dear you ought to have driven back with the others he said no I would rather stay with you you want to drain this good day to the dregs as I do yes she murmured drawing her hand away it is a good day isn't it he continued looking about him at the white paneled walls the vista of large bright rooms seen through the folding doors I feel as if we had reached a height somehow a height where one might pause and draw breath for the next climb don't you feel that too Justine? yes I feel it do you remember once long ago one day when you and I in Sicily went on a picnic to hunt orchids how we got talking of the one best moment in life the moment when one wanted most to stop the clock the color rose in her face while he spoke it was a long time since he had referred to the early days of their friendship the days before yes I remember she said and you remember how we said that it was with most of us as it was with Faust that the moment one wanted to hold fast to was not in most lives the moment of keenest personal happiness but the other kind the kind that would have seemed gray and colorless at first the moment when the meaning of life began to come out from the mists when one could look out at last over the marsh one had drained a tremor ran through Justine it was you who said that she said half smiling but didn't you feel it with me don't you now yes I do now she murmured he came close to her and taking her hands in his kissed them one after the other dear he said let us go out and look at the marsh we've drained he turned and led her through the open doorway to the terrace above the river the sun was setting behind the wooded slopes of Hopewood and the trees about the house stretched long blue shadows across the lawn beyond them rose the smoke of Westmore End of Chapter 43 recorded by Margaret Espeyot, Orlando, Florida End of The Fruit of the Tree by Edith Wharton