XX
AMHERST'S morning excursions with his step-daughter and Miss Brentrenewed themselves more than once. He welcomed any pretext for escapingfrom the unprofitable round of his thoughts, and these woodlandexplorations, with their gay rivalry of search for some rare plant orelusive bird, and the contact with the child's happy wonder, and withthe morning brightness of Justine's mood, gave him his only moments ofself-forgetfulness.
But the first time that Cicely's chatter carried home an echo of theiradventures, Amherst saw a cloud on his wife's face. Her resentment ofJustine's influence over the child had long since subsided, and in thetemporary absence of the governess she was glad to have Cicely amused;but she was never quite satisfied that those about her should havepursuits and diversions in which she did not share. Her jealousy did notconcentrate itself on her husband and Miss Brent: Amherst had nevershown any inclination for the society of other women, and if thepossibility had been suggested to her, she would probably have said thatJustine was not "in his style"--so unconscious is a pretty woman apt tobe of the versatility of masculine tastes. But Amherst saw that she feltherself excluded from amusements in which she had no desire to join, andof which she consequently failed to see the purpose; and he gave upaccompanying his stepdaughter.
Bessy, as if in acknowledgment of his renunciation, rose earlier inorder to prolong their rides together. Dr. Wyant had counselled heragainst the fatigue of following the hounds, and she instinctivelyturned their horses away from the course the hunt was likely to take;but now and then the cry of the pack, or the flash of red on a distantslope, sent the blood to her face and made her press her mare to agallop. When they escaped such encounters she showed no great zest inthe exercise, and their rides resolved themselves into a spiritlessmiddle-aged jog along the autumn lanes. In the early days of theirmarriage the joy of a canter side by side had merged them in a communityof sensation beyond need of speech; but now that the physical spell hadpassed they felt the burden of a silence that neither knew how to break.
Once only, a moment's friction galvanized these lifeless rides. It wasone morning when Bessy's wild mare Impulse, under-exercised andover-fed, suddenly broke from her control, and would have unseated herbut for Amherst's grasp on the bridle.
"The horse is not fit for you to ride," he exclaimed, as the hotcreature, with shudders of defiance rippling her flanks, lapsed intosullen subjection.
"It's only because I don't ride her enough," Bessy panted. "That newgroom is ruining her mouth."
"You must not ride her alone, then."
"I shall not let that man ride her."
"I say you must not ride her alone."
"It's ridiculous to have a groom at one's heels!"
"Nevertheless you must, if you ride Impulse."
Their eyes met, and she quivered and yielded like the horse. "Oh, if yousay so--" She always hugged his brief flashes of authority.
"I do say so. You promise me?"
"If you like----"
* * * * *
Amherst had made an attempt to occupy himself with the condition ofLynbrook, one of those slovenly villages, without individual characteror the tradition of self-respect, which spring up in America on theskirts of the rich summer colonies. But Bessy had never given Lynbrook athought, and he realized the futility of hoping to interest her in itsmongrel population of day-labourers and publicans so soon after hisglaring failure at Westmore. The sight of the village irritated himwhenever he passed through the Lynbrook gates, but having perforceaccepted the situation of prince consort, without voice in thegovernment, he tried to put himself out of relation with all thequestions which had hitherto engrossed him, and to see life simply as aspectator. He could even conceive that, under certain conditions, theremight be compensations in the passive attitude; but unfortunately theseconditions were not such as the life at Lynbrook presented.
The temporary cessation of Bessy's week-end parties had naturally notclosed her doors to occasional visitors, and glimpses of the autumnalanimation of Long Island passed now and then across the Amhersts'horizon. Blanche Carbury had installed herself at Mapleside, afashionable colony half-way between Lynbrook and Clifton, and evenAmherst, unused as he was to noting the seemingly inconsecutivemovements of idle people, could not but remark that her visits to hiswife almost invariably coincided with Ned Bowfort's cantering overunannounced from the Hunt Club, where he had taken up his autumnquarters.
There was something very likeable about Bowfort, to whom Amherst wasattracted by the fact that he was one of the few men of Bessy's circlewho knew what was going on in the outer world. Throughout an existencewhich one divined to have been both dependent and desultory, he hadpreserved a sense of wider relations and acquired a smattering ofinformation to which he applied his only independent faculty, that ofclear thought. He could talk intelligently and not too inaccurately ofthe larger questions which Lynbrook ignored, and a gay indifference tothe importance of money seemed the crowning grace of his nature, tillAmherst suddenly learned that this attitude of detachment was generallyascribed to the liberality of Mrs. Fenton Carbury. "Everybody knows shemarried Fenton to provide for Ned," some one let fall in the course ofone of the smoking-room dissertations on which the host of Lynbrook hadsuch difficulty in fixing his attention; and the speaker'smatter-of-course tone, and the careless acquiescence of his hearers,were more offensive to Amherst than the fact itself. In the first flushof his disgust he classed the story as one of the lies bred in themalarious air of after-dinner gossip; but gradually he saw that, whethertrue or not, it had sufficient circulation to cast a shade of ambiguityon the persons concerned. Bessy alone seemed deaf to the rumours abouther friend. There was something captivating to her in Mrs. Carbury'sslang and noise, in her defiance of decorum and contempt of criticism."I like Blanche because she doesn't pretend," was Bessy's vaguejustification of the lady; but in reality she was under the mysteriousspell which such natures cast over the less venturesome imaginations oftheir own sex.
Amherst at first tried to deaden himself to the situation, as part ofthe larger coil of miseries in which he found himself; but all histraditions were against such tolerance, and they were roused to revoltby the receipt of a newspaper clipping, sent by an anonymous hand,enlarging on the fact that the clandestine meetings of a fashionablecouple were being facilitated by the connivance of a Long Island_chatelaine_. Amherst, hot from the perusal of this paragraph, spranginto the first train, and laid the clipping before his father-in-law,who chanced to be passing through town on his way from the Hudson to theHot Springs.
Mr. Langhope, ensconced in the cushioned privacy of the reading-room atthe Amsterdam Club, where he had invited his son-in-law to meet him,perused the article with the cool eye of the collector to whom a newcuriosity is offered.
"I suppose," he mused, "that in the time of the Pharaohs the MorningPapyrus used to serve up this kind of thing"--and then, as the nervoustension of his hearer expressed itself in an abrupt movement, he added,handing back the clipping with a smile: "What do you propose to do? Killthe editor, and forbid Blanche and Bowfort the house?"
"I mean to do something," Amherst began, suddenly chilled by therealization that his wrath had not yet shaped itself into a definiteplan of action.
"Well, it must be that or nothing," said Mr. Langhope, drawing his stickmeditatively across his knee. "And, of course, if it's _that_, you'llland Bessy in a devil of a mess."
Without giving his son-in-law time to protest, he touched rapidly butvividly on the inutility and embarrassment of libel suits, and on thedevices whereby the legal means of vindication from such attacks may beturned against those who have recourse to them; and Amherst listenedwith a sickened sense of the incompatibility between abstract standardsof honour and their practical application.
"What should you do, then?" he murmured, as Mr. Langhope ended with hislight shrug and a "See Tredegar, if you don't believe me"--; and hisfather-in-law replied with an evasive gesture: "Why, leave theresponsibil
ity where it belongs!"
"Where it belongs?"
"To Fenton Carbury, of course. Luckily it's nobody's business but his,and if he doesn't mind what is said about his wife I don't see how youcan take up the cudgels for her without casting another shade on hersomewhat chequered reputation."
Amherst stared. "His wife? What do I care what's said of her? I'mthinking of mine!"
"Well, if Carbury has no objection to his wife's meeting Bowfort, Idon't see how you can object to her meeting him at your house. In suchmatters, as you know, it has mercifully been decided that the husband'sattitude shall determine other people's; otherwise we should be deprivedof the legitimate pleasure of slandering our neighbours." Mr. Langhopewas always careful to temper his explanations with an "as you know": hewould have thought it ill-bred to omit this parenthesis in elucidatingthe social code to his son-in-law.
"Then you mean that I can do nothing?" Amherst exclaimed.
Mr. Langhope smiled. "What applies to Carbury applies to you--by doingnothing you establish the fact that there's nothing to do; just as youcreate the difficulty by recognizing it." And he added, as Amherst satsilent: "Take Bessy away, and they'll have to see each other elsewhere."
* * * * *
Amherst returned to Lynbrook with the echoes of this casuistry in hisbrain. It seemed to him but a part of the ingenious system of evasionwhereby a society bent on the undisturbed pursuit of amusement hadcontrived to protect itself from the intrusion of the disagreeable: apolicy summed up in Mr. Langhope's concluding advice that Amherst shouldtake his wife away. Yes--that was wealth's contemptuous answer to everychallenge of responsibility: duty, sorrow and disgrace were equally tobe evaded by a change of residence, and nothing in life need be facedand fought out while one could pay for a passage to Europe!
In a calmer mood Amherst's sense of humour would have preserved him fromsuch a view of his father-in-law's advice; but just then it fell like aspark on his smouldering prejudices. He was clear-sighted enough torecognize the obstacles to legal retaliation; but this only made him themore resolved to assert his will in his own house. He no longer pausedto consider the possible effect of such a course on his already strainedrelations with his wife: the man's will rose in him and spoke.
The scene between Bessy and himself was short and sharp; and it ended ina way that left him more than ever perplexed at the ways of her sex.Impatient of preamble, he had opened the attack with his ultimatum: thesuspected couple were to be denied the house. Bessy flamed intoimmediate defence of her friend; but to Amherst's surprise she nolonger sounded the note of her own rights. Husband and wife wereanimated by emotions deeper-seated and more instinctive than had everbefore confronted them; yet while Amherst's resistance was gatheringstrength from the conflict, Bessy unexpectedly collapsed in tears andsubmission. She would do as he wished, of course--give up seeingBlanche, dismiss Bowfort, wash her hands, in short, of the imprudentpair--in such matters a woman needed a man's guidance, a wife must ofnecessity see with her husband's eyes; and she looked up into histhrough a mist of penitence and admiration....
The Fruit of the Tree Page 20