The Fruit of the Tree

by Edith Wharton

  XXII

  WHEN Amherst woke, the next morning, in the hotel to which he had goneup from Lynbrook, he was oppressed by the sense that the hardest step hehad to take still lay before him. It had been almost easy to decide thatthe moment of separation had come, for circumstances seemed to haveclosed every other issue from his unhappy situation; but how tell hiswife of his decision? Amherst, to whom action was the first necessity ofbeing, became a weak procrastinator when he was confronted by the needof writing instead of speaking.

  To account for his abrupt departure from Lynbrook he had left word thathe was called to town on business; but, since he did not mean to return,some farther explanation was now necessary, and he was paralyzed by thedifficulty of writing. He had already telegraphed to his friend that hewould be at the mills the next day; but the southern express did notleave till the afternoon, and he still had several hours in which toconsider what he should say to his wife. To postpone the dreaded task,he invented the pretext of some business to be despatched, and takingthe Subway to Wall Street consumed the morning in futile activities. Butsince the renunciation of his work at Westmore he had no active concernwith the financial world, and by twelve o'clock he had exhausted hisimaginary affairs and was journeying up town again. He left the train atUnion Square, and walked along Fourth Avenue, now definitely resolved togo back to the hotel and write his letter before lunching.

  At Twenty-sixth Street he had struck into Madison Avenue, and wasstriding onward with the fixed eye and aimless haste of the man who hasempty hours to fill, when a hansom drew up ahead of him and JustineBrent sprang out. She was trimly dressed, as if for travel, with a smallbag in her hand; but at sight of him she paused with a cry of pleasure.

  "Oh, Mr. Amherst, I'm so glad! I was afraid I might not see you forgoodbye."

  "For goodbye?" Amherst paused, embarrassed. How had she guessed that hedid not mean to return to Lynbrook?

  "You know," she reminded him, "I'm going to some friends nearPhiladelphia for ten days"--and he remembered confusedly that a longtime ago--probably yesterday morning--he had heard her speak of herprojected visit.

  "I had no idea," she continued, "that you were coming up to townyesterday, or I should have tried to see you before you left. I wantedto ask you to send me a line if Bessy needs me--I'll come back at onceif she does." Amherst continued to listen blankly, as if making apainful effort to regain some consciousness of what was being said tohim, and she went on: "She seemed so nervous and poorly yesterdayevening that I was sorry I had decided to go----"

  Her intent gaze reminded him that the emotions of the last twenty-fourhours must still be visible in his face; and the thought of what shemight detect helped to restore his self-possession. "You must not thinkof giving up your visit," he began hurriedly--he had meant to add "onaccount of Bessy," but he found himself unable to utter his wife's name.

  Justine was still looking at him. "Oh, I'm sure everything will be allright," she rejoined. "You go back this afternoon, I suppose? I've leftyou a little note, with my address, and I want you to promise----"

  She paused, for Amherst had made a motion as though to interrupt her.The old confused sense that there must always be truth between them wasstruggling in him with the strong restraints of habit and character; andsuddenly, before he was conscious of having decided to speak, he heardhimself say: "I ought to tell you that I am not going back."

  "Not going back?" A flash of apprehension crossed Justine's face. "Nottill tomorrow, you mean?" she added, recovering herself.

  Amherst hesitated, glancing vaguely up and down the street. At thatnoonday hour it was nearly deserted, and Justine's driver dozed on hisperch above the hansom. They could speak almost as openly as if they hadbeen in one of the wood-paths at Lynbrook.

  "Nor tomorrow," Amherst said in a low voice. There was another pausebefore he added: "It may be some time before--" He broke off, and thencontinued with an effort: "The fact is, I am thinking of going back tomy old work."

  She caught him up with an exclamation of surprise and sympathy. "Yourold work? You mean at----"

  She was checked by the quick contraction of pain in his face. "Not that!I mean that I'm thinking of taking a new job--as manager of a Georgiamill.... It's the only thing I know how to do, and I've got to dosomething--" He forced a laugh. "The habit of work is incurable!"

  Justine's face had grown as grave as his. She hesitated a moment,looking down the street toward the angle of Madison Square, which wasvisible from the corner where they stood.

  "Will you walk back to the square with me? Then we can sit down amoment."

  She began to move as she spoke, and he walked beside her in silence tillthey had gained the seat she pointed out. Her hansom trailed after them,drawing up at the corner.

  As Amherst sat down beside her, Justine turned to him with an air ofquiet resolution. "Mr. Amherst--will you let me ask you something? Isthis a sudden decision?"

  "Yes. I decided yesterday."

  "And Bessy----?"

  His glance dropped for the first time, but Justine pressed her point."Bessy approves?"

  "She--she will, I think--when she knows----"

  "When she knows?" Her emotion sprang into her face. "When she knows?Then she does not--yet?"

  "No. The offer came suddenly. I must go at once."

  "Without seeing her?" She cut him short with a quick commanding gesture."Mr. Amherst, you can't do this--you won't do it! You will not go awaywithout seeing Bessy!" she said.

  Her eyes sought his and drew them upward, constraining them to meet thefull beam of her rebuking gaze.

  "I must do what seems best under the circumstances," he answeredhesitatingly. "She will hear from me, of course; I shall writetoday--and later----"

  "Not later! _Now_--you will go back now to Lynbrook! Such things can'tbe told in writing--if they must be said at all, they must be spoken.Don't tell me that I don't understand--or that I'm meddling in whatdoesn't concern me. I don't care a fig for that! I've always meddled inwhat didn't concern me--I always shall, I suppose, till I die! And Iunderstand enough to know that Bessy is very unhappy--and that you'rethe wiser and stronger of the two. I know what it's been to you to giveup your work--to feel yourself useless," she interrupted herself, withsoftening eyes, "and I know how you've tried...I've watched you...butBessy has tried too; and even if you've both failed--if you've come tothe end of your resources--it's for you to face the fact, and help herface it--not to run away from it like this!"

  Amherst sat silent under the assault of her eloquence. He was consciousof no instinctive resentment, no sense that she was, as she confessed,meddling in matters which did not concern her. His ebbing spirit wasrevived by the shock of an ardour like his own. She had not shrunk fromcalling him a coward--and it did him good to hear her call him so! Herwords put life back into its true perspective, restored their meaning toobsolete terms: to truth and manliness and courage. He had lived so longamong equivocations that he had forgotten how to look a fact in theface; but here was a woman who judged life by his own standards--and bythose standards she had found him wanting!

  Still, he could not forget the last bitter hours, or change his opinionas to the futility of attempting to remain at Lynbrook. He felt asstrongly as ever the need of moral and mental liberation--the right tobegin life again on his own terms. But Justine Brent had made him seethat his first step toward self-assertion had been the inconsistent oneof trying to evade its results.

  "You are right--I will go back," he said.

  She thanked him with her eyes, as she had thanked him on the terrace atLynbrook, on the autumn evening which had witnessed their first brokenexchange of confidences; and he was struck once more with the changethat feeling produced in her. Emotions flashed across her face like thesweep of sun-rent clouds over a quiet landscape, bringing out the gleamof hidden waters, the fervour of smouldering colours, all the subtledelicacies of modelling that are lost under the light of an open sky.And it was extraordinary how she could infuse into a principl
e thewarmth and colour of a passion! If conduct, to most people, seemed acold matter of social prudence or inherited habit, to her it was alwaysthe newly-discovered question of her own relation to life--as most womensee the great issues only through their own wants and prejudices, so sheseemed always to see her personal desires in the light of the largerclaims.

  "But I don't think," Amherst went on, "that anything can be said toconvince me that I ought to alter my decision. These months of idlenesshave shown me that I'm one of the members of society who are a danger tothe community if their noses are not kept to the grindstone----"

  Justine lowered her eyes musingly, and he saw she was undergoing thereaction of constraint which always followed on her bursts ofunpremeditated frankness.

  "That is not for me to judge," she answered after a moment. "But if youdecide to go away for a time--surely it ought to be in such a way thatyour going does not seem to cast any reflection on Bessy, or subject herto any unkind criticism."

  Amherst, reddening slightly, glanced at her in surprise. "I don't thinkyou need fear that--I shall be the only one criticized," he said drily.

  "Are you sure--if you take such a position as you spoke of? So fewpeople understand the love of hard work for its own sake. They will saythat your quarrel with your wife has driven you to support yourself--andthat will be cruel to Bessy."

  Amherst shrugged his shoulders. "They'll be more likely to say I triedto play the gentleman and failed, and wasn't happy till I got back to myown place in life--which is true enough," he added with a touch ofirony.

  "They may say that too; but they will make Bessy suffer first--and itwill be your fault if she is humiliated in that way. If you decide totake up your factory work for a time, can't you do so without--withoutaccepting a salary? Oh, you see I stick at nothing," she broke in uponherself with a laugh, "and Bessy has said things which make me see thatshe would suffer horribly if--if you put such a slight on her." Heremained silent, and she went on urgently: "From Bessy's standpoint itwould mean a decisive break--the repudiating of your whole past. And itis a question on which you can afford to be generous, because I know...Ithink...it's less important in your eyes than hers...."

  Amherst glanced at her quickly. "That particular form of indebtedness,you mean?"

  She smiled. "The easiest to cancel, and therefore the least galling;isn't that the way you regard it?"

  "I used to--yes; but--" He was about to add: "No one at Lynbrook does,"but the flash of intelligence in her eyes restrained him, while at thesame time it seemed to answer: "There's my point! To see theirlimitation is to allow for it, since every enlightenment brings acorresponding obligation."

  She made no attempt to put into words the argument her look conveyed,but rose from her seat with a rapid glance at her watch.

  "And now I must go, or I shall miss my train." She held out her hand,and as Amherst's met it, he said in a low tone, as if in reply to herunspoken appeal: "I shall remember all you have said."

  * * * * *

  It was a new experience for Amherst to be acting under the pressure ofanother will; but during his return journey to Lynbrook that afternoonit was pure relief to surrender himself to this pressure, and thesurrender brought not a sense of weakness but of recovered energy. Itwas not in his nature to analyze his motives, or spend his strength inweighing closely balanced alternatives of conduct; and though, duringthe last purposeless months, he had grown to brood over every spring ofaction in himself and others, this tendency disappeared at once incontact with the deed to be done. It was as though a tributary stream,gathering its crystal speed among the hills, had been suddenly pouredinto the stagnant waters of his will; and he saw now how thick andturbid those waters had become--how full of the slime-bred life thatchokes the springs of courage.

  His whole desire now was to be generous to his wife: to bear the fullbrunt of whatever pain their parting brought. Justine had said thatBessy seemed nervous and unhappy: it was clear, therefore, that she alsohad suffered from the wounds they had dealt each other, though she kepther unmoved front to the last. Poor child! Perhaps that insensibleexterior was the only way she knew of expressing courage! It seemed toAmherst that all means of manifesting the finer impulses must slowlywither in the Lynbrook air. As he approached his destination, histhoughts of her were all pitiful: nothing remained of the personalresentment which had debased their parting. He had telephoned from townto announce the hour of his return, and when he emerged from the stationhe half-expected to find her seated in the brougham whose lampssignalled him through the early dusk. It would be like her to undergosuch a reaction of feeling, and to express it, not in words, but bytaking up their relation as if there had been no break in it. He hadonce condemned this facility of renewal as a sign of lightness, aresult of that continual evasion of serious issues which made the lifeof Bessy's world a thin crust of custom above a void of thought. But henow saw that, if she was the product of her environment, thatconstituted but another claim on his charity, and made the more preciousany impulses of natural feeling that had survived the unifying pressureof her life. As he approached the brougham, he murmured mentally: "Whatif I were to try once more?"

  Bessy had not come to meet him; but he said to himself that he shouldfind her alone at the house, and that he would make his confession atonce. As the carriage passed between the lights on the tall stonegate-posts, and rolled through the bare shrubberies of the avenue, hefelt a momentary tightening of the heart--a sense of stepping back intothe trap from which he had just wrenched himself free--a premonition ofthe way in which the smooth systematized routine of his wife's existencemight draw him back into its revolutions as he had once seen a carelessfactory hand seized and dragged into a flying belt....

  But it was only for a moment; then his thoughts reverted to Bessy. Itwas she who was to be considered--this time he must be strong enough forboth.

  The butler met him on the threshold, flanked by the usual array offootmen; and as he saw his portmanteau ceremoniously passed from handto hand, Amherst once more felt the steel of the springe on his neck.

  "Is Mrs. Amherst in the drawing-room, Knowles?" he asked.

  "No, sir," said Knowles, who had too high a sense of fitness tovolunteer any information beyond the immediate fact required of him.

  "She has gone up to her sitting-room, then?" Amherst continued, turningtoward the broad sweep of the stairway.

  "No, sir," said the butler slowly; "Mrs. Amherst has gone away."

  "Gone away?" Amherst stopped short, staring blankly at the man's smoothofficial mask.

  "This afternoon, sir; to Mapleside."

  "To Mapleside?"

  "Yes, sir, by motor--to stay with Mrs. Carbury."

  There was a moment's silence. It had all happened so quickly thatAmherst, with the dual vision which comes at such moments, noticed thatthe third footman--or was it the fourth?--was just passing hisportmanteau on to a shirt-sleeved arm behind the door which led to theservant's wing....

  He roused himself to look at the tall clock. It was just six. He hadtelephoned from town at two.

  "At what time did Mrs. Amherst leave?"

  The butler meditated. "Sharp at four, sir. The maid took the three-fortywith the luggage."

  With the luggage! So it was not a mere one-night visit. The blood roseslowly to Amherst's face. The footmen had disappeared, but presently thedoor at the back of the hall reopened, and one of them came out,carrying an elaborately-appointed tea-tray toward the smoking-room. Theroutine of the house was going on as if nothing had happened.... Thebutler looked at Amherst with respectful--too respectful--interrogation,and he was suddenly conscious that he was standing motionless in themiddle of the hall, with one last intolerable question on his lips.

  Well--it had to be spoken! "Did Mrs. Amherst receive my telephonemessage?"

  "Yes, sir. I gave it to her myself."

  It occurred confusedly to Amherst that a well-bred man--as Lynbrookunderstood the phrase--would, at this point, have
made some tardy feintof being in his wife's confidence, of having, on second thoughts, noreason to be surprised at her departure. It was humiliating, hesupposed, to be thus laying bare his discomfiture to his dependents--hecould see that even Knowles was affected by the manifest impropriety ofthe situation--but no pretext presented itself to his mind, and afteranother interval of silence he turned slowly toward the door of thesmoking-room.

  "My letters are here, I suppose?" he paused on the threshold to enquire;and on the butler's answering in the affirmative, he said to himself,with a last effort to suspend his judgment: "She has left a line--therewill be some explanation----"

  But there was nothing--neither word nor message; nothing but thereverberating retort of her departure in the face of his return--herflight to Blanche Carbury as the final answer to his final appeal.