The Fruit of the Tree

by Edith Wharton

  XLI

  AMHERST, Cicely's convalescence once assured, had been obliged to goback to Hanaford; but some ten days later, on hearing from Mrs. Ansellthat the little girl's progress was less rapid than had been hoped, hereturned to his father-in-law's for a Sunday.

  He came two days after the talk recorded in the last chapter--a talk ofwhich Mrs. Ansell's letter to him had been the direct result. She hadpromised Mr. Langhope that, in writing to Amherst, she would not gobeyond the briefest statement of fact; and she had kept her word,trusting to circumstances to speak for her.

  Mrs. Ansell, during Cicely's illness, had formed the habit of droppingin on Mr. Langhope at the tea hour instead of awaiting him in her owndrawing-room; and on the Sunday in question she found him alone.Beneath his pleasure in seeing her, which had grown more marked as hisdependence on her increased, she at once discerned traces of recentdisturbance; and her first question was for Cicely.

  He met it with a discouraged gesture. "No great change--Amherst findsher less well than when he was here before."

  "He's upstairs with her?"

  "Yes--she seems to want him."

  Mrs. Ansell seated herself in silence behind the tea-tray, of which shewas now recognized as the officiating priestess. As she drew off herlong gloves, and mechanically straightened the row of delicate old cups,Mr. Langhope added with an effort: "I've spoken to him--told him whatyou said."

  She looked up quickly.

  "About the child's wish," he continued. "About her having written to hiswife. It seems her last letters have not been answered."

  He paused, and Mrs. Ansell, with her usual calm precision, proceeded tomeasure the tea into the fluted Georgian tea-pot. She could be asreticent in approval as in reprehension, and not for the world would shehave seemed to claim any share in the turn that events appeared to betaking. She even preferred the risk of leaving her old friend to addhalf-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. Ansell faltered:"Well?"

  "Well--he doesn't know where she is himself."

  "Doesn't _know_?"

  "They're separated--utterly separated. It's as I told you: he couldhardly name her."

  Mrs. Ansell had unconsciously ceased her ministrations, letting herhands fall on her knee while she brooded in blank wonder on hercompanion's face.

  "I wonder what reason she could have given him?" she murmured at length.

  "For going? 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, youseem to forget!"

  "No." She shook her head with a half smile. "I simply remember more thanyou do."

  "What more?" he began with a flush of anger; but she raised a quietinghand.

  "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 asshe rose to put the cup in his hand he asked, half querulously: "Youthink it's going to be very bad for the child, then?"

  Mrs. Ansell smiled with the thin edge of her lips. "One can hardly setthe 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 quickflash of interrogation; but he sat staring moodily before him, and shemoved back to the sofa without a word.

  * * * * *

  On the way downstairs she met Amherst descending from Cicely's room.

  Since the early days of his first marriage there had always been, onAmherst's side, a sense of obscure antagonism toward Mrs. Ansell. Shewas almost the embodied spirit of the world he dreaded and disliked: herserenity, her tolerance, her adaptability, seemed to smile away anddisintegrate all the high enthusiasms, the stubborn convictions, that hehad tried to plant in the shifting sands of his married life. And nowthat Bessy's death had given her back the attributes with which hisfancy had originally invested her, he had come to regard Mrs. Ansell asembodying the evil influences that had come between himself and hiswife.

  Mrs. Ansell was probably not unaware of the successive transitions offeeling which had led up to this unflattering view; but her life hadbeen passed among petty rivalries and animosities, and she had thepatience and adroitness of the spy in a hostile camp.

  She and Amherst exchanged a few words about Cicely; then she exclaimed,with a glance through the panes of the hall door: "But I must beoff--I'm on foot, and the crossings appal me after dark."

  He could do no less, at that, than offer to guide her across the perilsof Fifth Avenue; and still talking of Cicely, she led him down thethronged thoroughfare till her own corner was reached, and then her owndoor; turning there to ask, as if by an afterthought: "Won't you comeup? There's one thing more I want to say."

  A shade of reluctance crossed his face, which, as the vestibule lightfell on it, looked hard and tired, like a face set obstinately against awinter gale; but he murmured a word of assent, and followed her into theshining steel cage of the lift.

  In her little drawing-room, among the shaded lamps and bowls of springflowers, she pushed a chair forward, settled herself in her usual cornerof the sofa, and said with a directness that seemed an echo of his owntone: "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 hadbeen more or less unsatisfactory for the last year, all their concern,of late, had been for Cicely.

  "You think him less well?" he enquired.

  She waited to draw off and smooth her gloves, with one of thedeliberate 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 thetalk 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 Cicely?"

  "Partly that--yes." She paused. "The child will get well, no doubt; butshe is very lonely. She needs youth, heat, light. Mr. Langhope can'tgive her those, or even a semblance of them; and it's an art I've lostthe secret of," she added with her shadowy smile.

  Amherst's brows darkened. "I realize all she has lost----"

  Mrs. Ansell glanced up at him quickly. "She is twice motherless," shesaid.

  The blood rose to his neck and temples, and he tightened his hand on thearm of his chair. But it was a part of Mrs. Ansell's expertness to knowwhen 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 istroubling Mr. Langhope. After such an illness, the next months ofCicely's life should be all happiness. And money won't buy the kind sheneeds: one can't pick out the right companion for such a child as onecan match a ribbon. What she wants is spontaneous affection, not themost superlative manufactured article. She wants the sort of love thatJustine gave her."

  It was the first time in months that Amherst had heard his wife's namespoken outside of his own house. No one but his mother mentioned Justineto him now; and of late even his mother had dropped her enquiries andallusions, prudently acquiescing in the habit of silence which his ownsilence had created about him. To hear the name again--the two littlesyllables which had been the key of life to him, and now shook him asthe turning of a rusted lock shakes a long-closed door--to hear her namespoken familiarly, affectionately, as one speaks of some one who maycome into the room the next moment--gave him a shock that was half pain,and half furtive unacknowledged joy. Men whose conscious thoughts aremostly projected outward, on the world of external activities, may bemore moved by such a touch on the feelings than those who areperpetually testing and tuning their emotional chords. Amherst hadforeseen from the first that Mrs. Ansell might mean to speak of hiswife; but
though he had intended, if she did so, to cut their talkshort, he now felt himself irresistibly constrained to hear her out.

  Mrs. Ansell, having sped her shaft, followed its flight through loweredlashes, and saw that it had struck a vulnerable point; but she was farfrom assuming that the day was won.

  "I believe," she continued, "that Mr. Langhope has said something ofthis to you already, and my only excuse for speaking is that Iunderstood he had not been successful in his appeal."

  No one but Mrs. Ansell--and perhaps she knew it--could have pushed sofar beyond the conventional limits of discretion without seeming tooverstep them by a hair; and she had often said, when pressed for thesecret of her art, that it consisted simply in knowing the pass-word.That word once spoken, she might have added, the next secret was to givethe enemy no time for resistance; and though she saw the frown reappearbetween Amherst's eyes, she went on, without heeding it: "I entreat you,Mr. Amherst, to let Cicely 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 youranswer to Mr. Langhope--that you and Justine are no longer together. ButI thought of you as a man to sink your personal relations at such amoment as this."

  "To sink them?" he repeated vaguely: and she went on: "After all, whatdifference does it make?"

  "What difference?" He stared in unmitigated wonder, and then answered,with a touch of irony: "It might at least make the difference of mybeing unwilling to ask a favour of her."

  Mrs. Ansell, 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'tunderstand you."

  "No." She smiled a little, as if to give herself time. "But I mean thatyou shall. If I were a man I suppose I couldn't, because a man's code ofhonour is such a clumsy cast-iron thing. But a woman's, luckily, can becut over--if she's clever--to fit any new occasion; and in this case Ishould be willing to reduce mine to tatters if necessary."

  Amherst's look of bewilderment deepened. "What is it that I don'tunderstand?" he asked at length, in a low voice.

  "Well--first of all, why Mr. Langhope had the right to ask you to sendfor your wife."

  "The right?"

  "You don't recognize 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 worldseemed 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 soundtravelled toward him it seemed to gather momentum, till her words rangthrough his brain as if every incomprehensible incident in the past hadsuddenly boomed forth the question. Why else, indeed, should she haveleft him? He stood motionless for a while; then he approached Mrs.Ansell and said: "Tell me."

  She drew farther back into her corner of the sofa, waving him to a seatbeside her, as though to bring his inquisitory eyes on a level where herown could command them; but he stood where he was, unconscious of hergesture, and merely repeating: "Tell me."

  She may have said to herself that a woman would have needed no farthertelling; but to him she only replied, slanting her head up to his: "Tospare 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 ifhe wanted something to clutch and throttle. The veins swelled in histemples, and as he pushed back his tossed hair Mrs. Ansell noticed forthe first time how gray it had grown on the under side.

  "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. Ansell 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 onhim, even!"

  "Forced her going on him?"

  "In a sense, yes; by making it appear that _you_ felt as he didabout--about poor Bessy's death: that the thought of what had happenedat that time was as abhorrent to you as to him--that _she_ was asabhorrent to you. No doubt she foresaw that, had she permitted the leastdoubt on that point, there would have been no need of her leaving you,since the relation between yourself and Mr. Langhope would have beenaltered--destroyed...."

  "Yes. I expected that--I warned her of it. But how did she make himthink----?"

  "How can I tell? To begin with, I don't know your real feeling. For allI know she was telling the truth--and Mr. Langhope of course thought shewas."

  "That I abhorred 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 habitwas in moments of agitation, turning back to her again before heanswered. "Because I _didn't_ know--didn't know anything! And becauseher insisting on going away like that, without any explanation, made mefeel...imagine there was...something she didn't _want_ me toknow...something she was afraid of not being able to hide from me if westayed together any longer."

  "Well--there was: the extent to which she loved you."

  Mrs. Ansell; her hands clasped on her knee, her gaze holding his with akind of visionary fixity, seemed to reconstruct the history of his past,bit by bit, with the words she was dragging out of him.

  "I see it--I see it all now," she went on, with a repressed fervour thathe had never divined in her. "It was the only solution for her, as wellas for the rest of you. The more she showed her love, the more it wouldhave cast a doubt on her motive...the greater distance she would haveput between herself and you. And so she showed it in the only way thatwas safe for both of you, by taking herself away and hiding it in herheart; and before going, she secured your peace of mind, your future. Ifshe ruined anything, she rebuilt the ruin. Oh, she paid--she paid infull!"

  Justine had paid, yes--paid to the utmost limit of whatever debt towardsociety she had contracted by overstepping its laws. And her resolve todischarge the debt had been taken in a flash, as soon as she had seenthat man can commit no act alone, whether for good or evil. The extentto which Amherst's fate was involved in hers had become clear to herwith his first word of reassurance, of faith in her motive. Andinstantly a plan for releasing him had leapt full-formed into her mind,and had been carried out with swift unflinching resolution. As he forcedhimself, now, to look down the suddenly illuminated past to the weekswhich had elapsed between her visit to Mr. Langhope and her departurefrom Hanaford, he wondered not so much at her swiftness of resolve as ather firmness in carrying out her plan--and he saw, with a blinding flashof insight, that it was in her love for him that she had found herstrength.

  In all moments of strong mental tension he became totally unconscious oftime and place, and he now remained silent so long, his hands claspedbehind him, his eyes fixed on an indeterminate point in space, that Mrs.Ansell 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 herif I didn't know how!"

  They stood confronted in a gaze of silent intensity, each penetratingfarther into the mind of the other than would once have seemed possibleto either one; then Amherst held out his hand abruptly. "Good-bye--andthank 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 am going tofind my wife."

  "Ah, now you are unjust to him!" she exclaimed.

  "Don't let us speak of him!" he broke in.

  "Why n
ot? When it is from him the request comes--the entreaty--thateverything 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 hima struggle?"

  "I can only think of what it has cost her!"

  Mrs. Ansell drew a deep sighing breath. "Ah--but don't you see that shehas gained her point, and that nothing else matters to her?"

  "Gained her point? Not if, by that, you mean that things here can evergo back to the old state--that she and I can remain at Westmore afterthis!"

  Mrs. Ansell dropped her eyes for a moment; then she lifted to his hersweet impenetrable face.

  "Do you know what you have to do--both you and he? Exactly what shedecides," she affirmed.