XXXVIII
AT half-past six that afternoon, just as Amherst, on his return from themills, put the key into his door at Hanaford, Mrs. Ansell, in New York,was being shown into Mr. Langhope's library.
As she entered, her friend rose from his chair by the fire, and turnedon her a face so disordered by emotion that she stopped short with anexclamation of alarm.
"Henry--what has happened? Why did you send for me?"
"Because I couldn't go to you. I couldn't trust myself in thestreets--in the light of day."
"But why? What is it?--Not Cicely----?"
He struck both hands upward with a comprehensive gesture."Cicely--everyone--the whole world!" His clenched fist came down on thetable against which he was leaning. "Maria, my girl might have beensaved!"
Mrs. Ansell looked at him with growing perturbation. "Saved--Bessy'slife? But how? By whom?"
"She might have been allowed to live, I mean--to recover. She waskilled, Maria; that woman killed her!"
Mrs. Ansell, with another cry of bewilderment, let herself drophelplessly into the nearest chair. "In heaven's name, Henry--whatwoman?"
He seated himself opposite to her, clutching at his stick, and leaninghis weight heavily on it--a white dishevelled old man. "I wonder why youask--just to spare me?"
Their eyes met in a piercing exchange of question and answer, and Mrs.Ansell tried to bring out reasonably: "I ask in order to understand whatyou are saying."
"Well, then, if you insist on keeping up appearances--my daughter-in-lawkilled my daughter. There you have it." He laughed silently, with a tearon his reddened eye-lids.
Mrs. Ansell groaned. "Henry, you are raving--I understand less andless."
"I don't see how I can speak more plainly. She told me so herself, inthis room, not an hour ago."
"She told you? Who told you?"
"John Amherst's wife. Told me she'd killed my child. It's as easy asbreathing--if you know how to use a morphia-needle."
Light seemed at last to break on his hearer. "Oh, my poor Henry--youmean--she gave too much? There was some dreadful accident?"
"There was no accident. She killed my child--killed her deliberately.Don't look at me as if I were a madman. She sat in that chair you're inwhen she told me."
"Justine? Has she been here today?" Mrs. Ansell paused in a painfuleffort to readjust her thoughts. "But _why_ did she tell you?"
"That's simple enough. To prevent Wyant's doing it."
"Oh----" broke from his hearer, in a long sigh of fear and intelligence.Mr. Langhope looked at her with a smile of miserable exultation.
"You knew--you suspected all along?--But now you must speak out!" heexclaimed with a sudden note of command.
She sat motionless, as if trying to collect herself. "I know nothing--Ionly meant--why was this never known before?"
He was upon her at once. "You think--because they understood each other?And now there's been a break between them? He wanted too big a share ofthe spoils? Oh, it's all so abysmally vile!"
He covered his face with a shaking hand, and Mrs. Ansell remainedsilent, plunged in a speechless misery of conjecture. At length sheregained some measure of her habitual composure, and leaning forward,with her eyes on his face, said in a quiet tone: "If I am to help you,you must try to tell me just what has happened."
He made an impatient gesture. "Haven't I told you? She found that heraccomplice meant to speak, and rushed to town to forestall him."
Mrs. Ansell reflected. "But why--with his place at Saint Christopher'ssecured--did Dr. Wyant choose this time to threaten her--if, as youimagine, he's an accomplice?"
"Because he's a drug-taker, and she didn't wish him to have the place."
"She didn't wish it? But that does not look as if she were afraid. Shehad only to hold her tongue!"
Mr. Langhope laughed sardonically. "It's not quite so simple. Amherstwas coming to town to tell me."
"Ah--_he_ knows?"
"Yes--and she preferred that I should have her version first."
"And what is her version?"
The furrows of misery deepened in Mr. Langhope's face. "Maria--don't asktoo much of me! I can't go over it again. She says she wanted to sparemy child--she says the doctors were keeping her alive, torturing heruselessly, as a...a sort of scientific experiment.... She forced on methe hideous details...."
Mrs. Ansell waited a moment.
"Well! May it not be true?"
"Wyant's version is different. _He_ says Bessy would have recovered--hesays Garford thought so too."
"And what does she answer? She denies it?"
"No. She admits that Garford was in doubt. But she says the chance wastoo remote--the pain too bad...that's her cue, naturally!"
Mrs. Ansell, leaning back in her chair, with hands meditativelystretched along its arms, gave herself up to silent consideration of thefragmentary statements cast before her. The long habit of ministering toher friends in moments of perplexity and distress had given her analmost judicial keenness in disentangling and coordinating factsincoherently presented, and in seizing on the thread of motive thatconnected them; but she had never before been confronted with asituation so poignant in itself, and bearing so intimately on herpersonal feelings; and she needed time to free her thoughts from theimpending rush of emotion.
At last she raised her head and said: "Why did Mr. Amherst let her cometo you, instead of coming himself?"
"He knows nothing of her being here. She persuaded him to wait a day,and as soon as he had gone to the mills this morning she took the firsttrain to town."
"Ah----" Mrs. Ansell murmured thoughtfully; and Mr. Langhope rejoined,with a conclusive gesture: "Do you want more proofs of panic-strickenguilt?"
"Oh, guilt--" His friend revolved her large soft muff about a droopinghand. "There's so much still to understand."
"Your mind does not, as a rule, work so slowly!" he said with someasperity; but she paid no heed to his tone.
"Amherst, for instance--how long has he known of this?" she continued.
"A week or two only--she made that clear."
"And what is his attitude?"
"Ah--that, I conjecture, is just what she means to keep us fromknowing!"
"You mean she's afraid----?"
Mr. Langhope gathered his haggard brows in a frown. "She's afraid, ofcourse--mortally--I never saw a woman more afraid. I only wonder she hadthe courage to face me."
"Ah--that's it! Why _did_ she face you? To extenuate her act--to giveyou her version, because she feared his might be worse? Do you gatherthat that was her motive?"
It was Mr. Langhope's turn to hesitate. He furrowed the thick Turkey rugwith the point of his ebony stick, pausing once or twice to revolve itgimlet-like in a gap of the pile.
"Not her avowed motive, naturally."
"Well--at least, then, let me have that."
"Her avowed motive? Oh, she'd prepared one, of course--trust her tohave a dozen ready! The one she produced was--simply the desire toprotect her husband."
"Her husband? Does _he_ too need protection?"
"My God, if he takes her side----! At any rate, her fear seemed to bethat what she had done might ruin him; might cause him to feel--as wellhe may!--that the mere fact of being her husband makes his situation asCicely's step-father, as my son-in-law, intolerable. And she came toclear him, as it were--to find out, in short, on what terms I should bewilling to continue my present relations with him as though this hideousthing had not been known to me."
Mrs. Ansell raised her head quickly. "Well--and what were your terms?"
He hesitated. "She spared me the pain of proposing any--I had only toaccept hers."
"Hers?"
"That she should disappear altogether from my sight--and from thechild's, naturally. Good heaven, I should like to include Amherst inthat! But I'm tied hand and foot, as you see, by Cicely's interests; andI'm bound to say she exonerated him completely--completely!"
Mrs. Ansell was again silent, but a swift flight of tho
ughts traversedher drooping face. "But if you are to remain on the old terms with herhusband, how is she to disappear out of your life without alsodisappearing out of his?"
Mr. Langhope gave a slight laugh. "I leave her to work out thatproblem."
"And you think Amherst will consent to such conditions?"
"He's not to know of them."
The unexpectedness of the reply reduced Mrs. Ansell to a sound ofinarticulate interrogation; and Mr. Langhope continued: "Not at first,that is. She had thought it all out--foreseen everything; and she wrungfrom me--I don't yet know how!--a promise that when I saw him I wouldmake it appear that I cleared him completely, not only of any possiblecomplicity, or whatever you choose to call it, but of any sort ofconnection with the matter in my thoughts of him. I am, in short, to lethim feel that he and I are to continue on the old footing--and I agreed,on the condition of her effacing herself somehow--of course on someother pretext."
"Some other pretext? But what conceivable pretext? My poor friend, headores her!"
Mr. Langhope raised his eyebrows slightly. "We haven't seen him sincethis became known to him. _She_ has; and she let slip that he washorror-struck."
Mrs. Ansell looked up with a quick exclamation. "Let slip? Isn't itmuch more likely that she forced it on you--emphasized it to the lastlimit of credulity?" She sank her hands to the arms of the chair, andexclaimed, looking him straight in the eyes: "You say she wasfrightened? It strikes me she was dauntless!"
Mr. Langhope stared a moment; then he said, with an ironic shrug: "Nodoubt, then, she counted on its striking me too."
Mrs. Ansell breathed a shuddering sigh. "Oh, I understand your feelingas you do--I'm deep in the horror of it myself. But I can't help seeingthat this woman might have saved herself--and that she's chosen to saveher husband instead. What I don't see, from what I know of him," shemusingly proceeded, "is how, on any imaginable pretext, she will inducehim to accept the sacrifice."
Mr. Langhope made a resentful movement. "If that's the only point yourmind dwells on----!"
Mrs. Ansell looked up. "It doesn't dwell anywhere as yet--except, mypoor Henry," she murmured, rising to move toward him, and softly layingher hand on his bent shoulder--"except on your distress and misery--onthe very part I can't yet talk of, can't question you about...."
He let her hand rest there a moment; then he turned, and drawing it intohis own tremulous fingers, pressed it silently, with a clinginghelpless grasp that drew the tears to her eyes.
* * * * *
Justine Brent, in her earliest girlhood, had gone through one of thoseemotional experiences that are the infantile diseases of the heart. Shehad fancied herself beloved of a youth of her own age; had secretlyreturned his devotion, and had seen it reft from her by another. Such anincident, as inevitable as the measles, sometimes, like that mildmalady, leaves traces out of all proportion to its actual virulence. Theblow fell on Justine with tragic suddenness, and she reeled under it,thinking darkly of death, and renouncing all hopes of future happiness.Her ready pen often beguiled her into recording her impressions, and shenow found an escape from despair in writing the history of a damselsimilarly wronged. In her tale, the heroine killed herself; but theauthor, saved by this vicarious sacrifice, lived, and in time evensmiled over her manuscript.
It was many years since Justine Amherst had recalled this youthfulincident; but the memory of it recurred to her as she turned from Mr.Langhope's door. For a moment death seemed the easiest escape from whatconfronted her; but though she could no longer medicine her despair byturning it into fiction, she knew at once that she must somehowtranspose it into terms of action, that she must always escape fromlife into more life, and not into its negation.
She had been carried into Mr. Langhope's presence by that expiatorypassion which still burns so high, and draws its sustenance from so deepdown, in the unsleeping hearts of women. Though she had never wavered inher conviction that her act had been justified her ideas staggered underthe sudden comprehension of its consequences. Not till that morning hadshe seen those consequences in their terrible, unsuspected extent, hadshe understood how one stone rashly loosened from the laboriouslyerected structure of human society may produce remote fissures in thatclumsy fabric. She saw that, having hazarded the loosening of the stone,she should have held herself apart from ordinary human ties, like somepriestess set apart for the service of the temple. And instead, she hadseized happiness with both hands, taken it as the gift of the very fateshe had herself precipitated! She remembered some old Greek saying tothe effect that the gods never forgive the mortal who presumes to loveand suffer like a god. She had dared to do both, and the gods werebringing ruin on that deeper self which had its life in those about her.
So much had become clear to her when she heard Amherst declare hisintention of laying the facts before Mr. Langhope. His few broken wordslit up the farthest verge of their lives. She saw that hisretrospective reverence for his wife's memory, which was far as possibleremoved from the strong passion of the mind and senses that bound him toherself, was indelibly stained and desecrated by the discovery that allhe had received from the one woman had been won for him by thedeliberate act of the other. This was what no reasoning, no appeal tothe calmer judgment, could ever, in his inmost thoughts, undo orextenuate. It could find appeasement only in the renunciation of allthat had come to him from Bessy; and this renunciation, so differentfrom the mere sacrifice of material well-being, was bound up withconsequences so far-reaching, so destructive to the cause which hadinspired his whole life, that Justine felt the helpless terror of themortal who has launched one of the heavenly bolts.
She could think of no way of diverting it but the way she had chosen.She must see Mr. Langhope first, must clear Amherst of the least faintassociation with her act or her intention. And to do this she mustexaggerate, not her own compunction--for she could not depart from theexact truth in reporting her feelings and convictions--but her husband'sfirst instinctive movement of horror, the revulsion of feeling herconfession had really produced in him. This was the most painful part ofher task, and for this reason her excited imagination clothed it with aspecial expiatory value. If she could purchase Amherst's peace of mind,and the security of his future, by confessing, and evenover-emphasizing, the momentary estrangement between them there would bea bitter joy in such payment!
Her hour with Mr. Langhope proved the correctness of her intuition. Shecould save Amherst only by effacing herself from his life: those abouthim would be only too ready to let her bear the full burden of obloquy.She could see that, for a dozen reasons, Mr. Langhope, even in the firstshock of his dismay, unconsciously craved a way of exonerating Amherst,of preserving intact the relation on which so much of his comfort hadcome to depend. And she had the courage to make the most of his desire,to fortify it by isolating Amherst's point of view from hers; so that,when the hour was over, she had the solace of feeling that she hadcompletely freed him from any conceivable consequence of her act.
So far, the impetus of self-sacrifice had carried her straight to hergoal; but, as frequently happens with such atoning impulses, it left herstranded just short of any subsequent plan of conduct. Her next step,indeed, was clear enough: she must return to Hanaford, explain to herhusband that she had felt impelled to tell her own story to Mr.Langhope, and then take up her ordinary life till chance offered her apretext for fulfilling her promise. But what pretext was likely topresent itself? No symbolic horn would sound the hour of fulfillment;she must be her own judge, and hear the call in the depths of her ownconscience.
The Fruit of the Tree Page 38