The Fruit of the Tree by Edith Wharton (best large ebook reader txt) 📖

struck southward down that tranquil thoroughfare. There was a physical relief in rapid motion, and she walked on, still hardly aware of her direction, toward the clustered lights of Madison Square. Should she return to Hanaford, she had still several hours to dispose of before the departure of the midnight train; and if she did not return, hours and dates no longer existed for her.

It would be easier--infinitely easier--not to go back. To take up her life with Amherst would, under any circumstances, be painful enough; to take it up under the tacit restriction of her pledge to Mr. Langhope seemed more than human courage could face. As she approached the square she had almost reached the conclusion that such a temporary renewal was beyond her strength--beyond what any standard of duty exacted. The question of an alternative hardly troubled her. She would simply go on living, and find an escape in work and material hardship. It would not be hard for so inconspicuous a person to slip back into the obscure mass of humanity.

She paused a moment on the edge of the square, vaguely seeking a direction for her feet that might permit the working of her thoughts to go on uninterrupted; and as she stood there, her eyes fell on the bench near the corner of Twenty-sixth Street, where she had sat with Amherst on the day of his flight from Lynbrook. He too had dreamed of escaping from insoluble problems into the clear air of hard work and simple duties; and she remembered the words with which she had turned him back. The cases, of course, were not identical, since he had been flying in anger and wounded pride from a situation for which he was in no wise to blame; yet, if even at such a moment she had insisted on charity and forbearance, how could she now show less self-denial than she had exacted of him?

"If you go away for a time, surely it ought to be in such a way that your going does not seem to cast any reflection on Bessy...." That was how she had put it to him, and how, with the mere change of a name, she must now, for reasons as cogent, put it to herself. It was just as much a part of the course she had planned to return to her husband now, and take up their daily life together, as it would, later on, be her duty to drop out of that life, when her doing so could no longer involve him in the penalty to be paid.

She stood a little while looking at the bench on which they had sat, and giving thanks in her heart for the past strength which was now helping to build up her failing courage: such a patchwork business are our best endeavours, yet so faithfully does each weak upward impulse reach back a hand to the next.

* * * * *

Justine's explanation of her visit to Mr. Langhope was not wholly satisfying to her husband. She did not conceal from him that the scene had been painful, but she gave him to understand, as briefly as possible, that Mr. Langhope, after his first movement of uncontrollable distress, had seemed able to make allowances for the pressure under which she had acted, and that he had, at any rate, given no sign of intending to let her confession make any change in the relation between the households. If she did not--as Amherst afterward recalled--put all this specifically into words, she contrived to convey it in her manner, in her allusions, above all in her recovered composure. She had the demeanour of one who has gone through a severe test of strength, but come out of it in complete control of the situation. There was something slightly unnatural in this prompt solution of so complicated a difficulty, and it had the effect of making Amherst ask himself what, to produce such a result, must have been the gist of her communication to Mr. Langhope. If the latter had shown any disposition to be cruel, or even unjust, Amherst's sympathies would have rushed instantly to his wife's defence; but the fact that there was apparently to be no call on them left his reason free to compare and discriminate, with the final result that the more he pondered on his father-in-law's attitude the less intelligible it became.

A few days after Justine's return he was called to New York on business; and before leaving he told her that he should of course take the opportunity of having a talk with Mr. Langhope.

She received the statement with the gentle composure from which she had not departed since her return from town; and he added tentatively, as if to provoke her to a clearer expression of feeling: "I shall not be satisfied, of course, till I see for myself just how he feels--just how much, at bottom, this has affected him--since my own future relation to him will, as I have already told you, depend entirely on his treatment of you."

She met this without any sign of disturbance. "His treatment of me was very kind," she said. "But would it not, on your part," she continued hesitatingly, "be kinder not to touch on the subject so soon again?"

The line deepened between his brows. "Touch on it? I sha'n't rest till I've gone to the bottom of it! Till then, you must understand," he summed up with decision, "I feel myself only on sufferance here at Westmore."

"Yes--I understand," she assented; and as he bent over to kiss her for goodbye a tenuous impenetrable barrier seemed to lie between their lips.

* * * * *

It was Justine's turn to await with a passionate anxiety her husband's home-coming; and when, on the third day, he reappeared, her dearly acquired self-control gave way to a tremulous eagerness. This was, after all, the turning-point in their lives: everything depended on how Mr. Langhope had "played up" to his cue; had kept to his side of their bond.

Amherst's face showed signs of emotional havoc: when feeling once broke out in him it had full play, and she could see that his hour with Mr. Langhope had struck to the roots of life. But the resultant expression was one of invigoration, not defeat; and she gathered at a glance that her partner had not betrayed her. She drew a tragic solace from the success of her achievement; yet it flung her into her husband's arms with a passion of longing to which, as she instantly felt, he did not as completely respond.

There was still, then, something "between" them: somewhere the mechanism of her scheme had failed, or its action had not produced the result she had counted on.

As soon as they were alone in the study she said, as quietly as she could: "You saw your father-in-law? You talked with him?"

"Yes--I spent the afternoon with him. Cicely sent you her love."

She coloured at the mention of the child's name and murmured: "And Mr. Langhope?"

"He is perfectly calm now--perfectly impartial.--This business has made me feel," Amherst added abruptly, "that I have never been quite fair to him. I never thought him a magnanimous man."

"He has proved himself so," Justine murmured, her head bent low over a bit of needlework; and Amherst affirmed energetically: "He has been more than that--generous!"

She looked up at him with a smile. "I am so glad, dear; so glad there is not to be the least shadow between you...."

"No," Amherst said, his voice flagging slightly. There was a pause, and then he went on with renewed emphasis: "Of course I made my point clear to him."

"Your point?"

"That I stand or fall by his judgment of you."

Oh, if he had but said it more tenderly! But he delivered it with the quiet resolution of a man who contends for an abstract principle of justice, and not for a passion grown into the fibres of his heart!

"You are generous too," she faltered, her voice trembling a little.

Amherst frowned; and she perceived that any hint, on her part, of recognizing the slightest change in their relations was still like pressure on a painful bruise.

"There is no need for such words between us," he said impatiently; "and Mr. Langhope's attitude," he added, with an effort at a lighter tone, "has made it unnecessary, thank heaven, that we should ever revert to the subject again."

He turned to his desk as he spoke, and plunged into perusal of the letters that had accumulated in his absence.

* * * * *

There was a temporary excess of work at Westmore, and during the days that followed he threw himself into it with a zeal that showed Justine how eagerly he sought any pretext for avoiding confidential moments. The perception was painful enough, yet not as painful as another discovery that awaited her. She too had her tasks at Westmore: the supervision of the hospital, the day nursery, the mothers' club, and the various other organizations whereby she and Amherst were trying to put some sort of social unity into the lives of the mill-hands; and when, on the day after his return from New York, she presented herself, as usual, at the Westmore office, where she was in the habit of holding a brief consultation with him before starting on her rounds, she was at once aware of a new tinge of constraint in his manner. It hurt him, then, to see her at Westmore--hurt him more than to live with her, at Hanaford, under Bessy's roof! For it was there, at the mills, that his real life was led, the life with which Justine had been most identified, the life that had been made possible for both by the magnanimity of that other woman whose presence was now forever between them.

Justine made no sign. She resumed her work as though unconscious of any change; but whereas in the past they had always found pretexts for seeking each other out, to discuss the order of the day's work, or merely to warm their hearts by a rapid word or two, now each went a separate way, sometimes not meeting till they regained the house at night-fall.

And as the weeks passed she began to understand that, by a strange inversion of probability, the relation between Amherst and herself was to be the means of holding her to her compact with Mr. Langhope--if indeed it were not nearer the truth to say that it had made such a compact unnecessary. Amherst had done his best to take up their life together as though there had been no break in it; but slowly the fact was being forced on her that by remaining with him she was subjecting him to intolerable suffering--was coming to be the personification of the very thoughts and associations from which he struggled to escape. Happily her promptness of action had preserved Westmore to him, and in Westmore she believed that he would in time find a refuge from even the memory of what he was now