XLII
JUSTINE'S answer to her husband's letter bore a New York address; andthe surprise of finding her in the same town with himself, and not halfan hour's walk from the room in which he sat, was so great that itseemed to demand some sudden and violent outlet of physical movement.
He thrust the letter in his pocket, took up his hat, and leaving thehouse, strode up Fifth Avenue toward the Park in the early springsunlight.
The news had taken five days to reach him, for in order to reestablishcommunication with his wife he had been obliged to write to Michigan,with the request that his letter should be forwarded. He had neversupposed that Justine would be hard to find, or that she had purposelyenveloped her movements in mystery. When she ceased to write he hadsimply concluded that, like himself, she felt the mockery of trying tokeep up a sort of distant, semi-fraternal relation, marked by theoccasional interchange of inexpressive letters. The inextricablemingling of thought and sensation which made the peculiar closeness oftheir union could never, to such direct and passionate natures, bereplaced by the pretense of a temperate friendship. Feeling thushimself, and instinctively assuming the same feeling in his wife,Amherst had respected her silence, her wish to break definitely withtheir former life. She had written him, in the autumn, that she intendedto leave Michigan for a few months, but that, in any emergency, a letteraddressed to her friend's house would reach her; and he had taken thisas meaning that, unless the emergency arose, she preferred that theircorrespondence should cease. Acquiescence was all the easier because itaccorded with his own desire. It seemed to him, as he looked back, thatthe love he and Justine had felt for each other was like some rareorganism which could maintain life only in its special element; and thatelement was neither passion nor sentiment, but truth. It was only on theheights that they could breathe.
Some men, in his place, even while accepting the inevitableness of themoral rupture, would have felt concerned for the material side of thecase. But it was characteristic of Amherst that this did not troublehim. He took it for granted that his wife would return to her nursing.From the first he had felt certain that it would be intolerable to herto accept aid from him, and that she would choose rather to supportherself by the exercise of her regular profession; and, aside from suchmotives, he, who had always turned to hard work as the rarest refugefrom personal misery, thought it natural that she should seek the samemeans of escape.
He had therefore not been surprised, on opening her letter thatmorning, to learn that she had taken up her hospital work; but in theamazement of finding her so near he hardly grasped her explanation ofthe coincidence. There was something about a Buffalo patient suddenlyordered to New York for special treatment, and refusing to go in with anew nurse--but these details made no impression on his mind, which hadonly room for the fact that chance had brought his wife back at the verymoment when his whole being yearned for her.
She wrote that, owing to her duties, she would be unable to see him tillthree that afternoon; and he had still six hours to consume before theirmeeting. But in spirit they had met already--they were one in anintensity of communion which, as he strode northward along the brightcrowded thoroughfare, seemed to gather up the whole world into onethrobbing point of life.
He had a boyish wish to keep the secret of his happiness to himself, notto let Mr. Langhope or Mrs. Ansell know of his meeting with Justine tillit was over; and after twice measuring the length of the Park he turnedin at one of the little wooden restaurants which were beginning tounshutter themselves in anticipation of spring custom. If only he couldhave seen Justine that morning! If he could have brought her there, andthey could have sat opposite each other, in the bare empty room, withsparrows bustling and twittering in the lilacs against the open window!The room was ugly enough--but how she would have delighted in thedelicate green of the near slopes, and the purplish haze of the woodsbeyond! She took a childish pleasure in such small adventures, and hadthe knack of giving a touch of magic to their most commonplace details.Amherst, as he finished his cold beef and indifferent eggs, foundhimself boyishly planning to bring her back there the next day....
Then, over the coffee, he re-read her letter.
The address she gave was that of a small private hospital, and sheexplained that she would have to receive him in the public parlour,which at that hour was open to other visitors. As the time approached,the thought that they might not be alone when they met becameinsufferable; and he determined, if he found any one else, in possessionof the parlour, to wait in the hall, and meet her as she came down thestairs.
He continued to elaborate this plan as he walked back slowly through thePark, He had timed himself to reach the hospital a little before three;but though it lacked five minutes to the hour when he entered theparlour, two women were already seated in one of its windows. Theylooked around as he came in, evidently as much annoyed by his appearanceas he had been to find them there. The older of the two showed a sallowmiddle-aged face beneath her limp crape veil; the other was a slighttawdry creature, with nodding feathers, and innumerable chains andbracelets which she fingered ceaselessly as she talked.
They eyed Amherst with resentment, and then turned away, continuingtheir talk in low murmurs, while he seated himself at the marble-toppedtable littered with torn magazines. Now and then the younger woman'svoice rose in a shrill staccato, and a phrase or two floated over tohim. "She'd simply worked herself to death--the nurse told me so.... Sheexpects to go home in another week, though how she's going to stand the_fatigue_----" and then, after an inaudible answer: "It's all _his_fault, and if I was her I wouldn't go back to him for anything!"
"Oh, Cora, he's real sorry now," the older woman protestingly murmured;but the other, unappeased, rejoined with ominously nodding plumes:"_You_ see--if they do make it up, it'll never be the same betweenthem!"
Amherst started up nervously, and as he did so the clock struck three,and he opened the door and passed out into the hall. It was paved withblack and white marble; the walls were washed in a dull yellowish tint,and the prevalent odour of antiseptics was mingled with a stale smell ofcooking. At the back rose a straight staircase carpeted with brass-boundIndia-rubber, like a ship's companion-way; and down that staircase shewould come in a moment--he fancied he heard her step now....
But the step was that of an elderly black-gowned woman in a cap--thematron probably.
She glanced at Amherst in surprise, and asked: "Are you waiting for someone?"
He made a motion of assent, and she opened the parlour door, saying:"Please walk in."
"May I not wait out here?" he urged.
She looked at him more attentively. "Why, no, I'm afraid not. You'llfind the papers and magazines in here."
Mildly but firmly she drove him in before her, and closing the door,advanced to the two women in the window. Amherst's hopes leapt up:perhaps she had come to fetch the visitors upstairs! He strained hisears to catch what was being said, and while he was thus absorbed thedoor opened, and turning at the sound he found himself face to face withhis wife.
He had not reflected that Justine would be in her nurse's dress; and thesight of the dark blue uniform and small white cap, in which he hadnever seen her since their first meeting in the Hope Hospital,obliterated all bitter and unhappy memories, and gave him the illusionof passing back at once into the clear air of their early friendship.Then he looked at her and remembered.
He noticed that she had grown thinner than ever, or rather that herthinness, which had formerly had a healthy reed-like strength, nowsuggested fatigue and languor. And her face was spent, extinguished--thevery eyes were lifeless. All her vitality seemed to have withdrawnitself into the arch of dense black hair which still clasped herforehead like the noble metal of some antique bust.
The sight stirred him with a deeper pity, a more vehement compunction;but the impulse to snatch her to him, and seek his pardon on her lips,was paralyzed by the sense that the three women in the window hadstopped talking and turned their heads toward the door.
He held his hand out, and Justine's touched it for a moment; then hesaid in a low voice: "Is there no other place where I can see you?"
She made a negative gesture. "I am afraid not to-day."
Ah, her deep sweet voice--how completely his ear had lost the sound ofit!
She looked doubtfully about the room, and pointed to a sofa at the endfarthest from the windows.
"Shall we sit there?" she said.
He followed her in silence, and they sat down side by side. The matronhad drawn up a chair and resumed her whispered conference with the womenin the window. Between the two groups stretched the bare length of theroom, broken only by a few arm-chairs of stained wood, and themarble-topped table covered with magazines.
The impossibility of giving free rein to his feelings developed inAmherst an unwonted intensity of perception, as though a sixth sense hadsuddenly emerged to take the place of those he could not use. And withthis new-made faculty he seemed to gather up, and absorb into himself,as he had never done in their hours of closest communion, every detailof his wife's person, of her face and hands and gestures. He noticed howher full upper lids, of the tint of yellowish ivory, had a slight bluishdiscolouration, and how little thread-like blue veins ran across hertemples to the roots of her hair. The emaciation of her face, and thehollow shades beneath her cheek-bones, made her mouth seem redder andfuller, though a little line on each side, where it joined the cheek,gave it a tragic droop. And her hands! When her fingers met his herecalled having once picked up, in the winter woods, the littlefeather-light skeleton of a frozen bird--and that was what her touch waslike.
And it was he who had brought her to this by his cruelty, hisobtuseness, his base readiness to believe the worst of her! He did notwant to pour himself out in self-accusation--that seemed too easy a wayof escape. He wanted simply to take her in his arms, to ask her to givehim one more chance--and then to show her! And all the while he wasparalyzed by the group in the window.
"Can't we go out? I must speak to you," he began again nervously.
"Not this afternoon--the doctor is coming. Tomorrow----"
"I can't wait for tomorrow!"
She made a faint, imperceptible gesture, which read to his eyes: "You'vewaited a whole year."
"Yes, I know," he returned, still constrained by the necessity ofmuffling his voice, of perpetually measuring the distance betweenthemselves and the window. "I know what you might say--don't you supposeI've said it to myself a million times? But I didn't know--I couldn'timagine----"
She interrupted him with a rapid movement. "What do you know now?"
"What you promised Langhope----"
She turned her startled eyes on him, and he saw the blood run flame-likeunder her skin. "But _he_ promised not to speak!" she cried.
"He hasn't--to me. But such things make themselves known. Should youhave been content to go on in that way forever?"
She raised her head and her eyes rested in his. "If you were," sheanswered simply.
"Justine!"
Again she checked him with a silencing motion. "Please tell me just whathas happened."
"Not now--there's too much else to say. And nothing matters except thatI'm with you."
"But Mr. Langhope----"
"He asks you to come. You're to see Cicely to-morrow."
Her lower lip trembled a little, and a tear flowed over and hung on herlashes.
"But what does all that matter now? We're together after this horribleyear," he insisted.
She looked at him again. "But what is really changed?"
"Everything--everything! Not changed, I mean--just gone back."
"To where...we were...before?" she whispered; and he whispered back: "Towhere we were before."
There was a scraping of chairs on the floor, and with a sense of releaseAmherst saw that the colloquy in the window was over.
The two visitors, gathering their wraps about them, moved slowly acrossthe room, still talking to the matron in excited undertones, throughwhich, as they neared the threshold, the younger woman's staccato againbroke out.
"I tell you, if she does go back to him, it'll never be the same betweenthem!"
"Oh, Cora, I wouldn't say that," the other ineffectually wailed; thenthey moved toward the door, and a moment later it had closed on them.
Amherst turned to his wife with outstretched arms. "Say you forgive me,Justine!"
She held back a little from his entreating hands, not reproachfully, butas if with a last scruple for himself.
"There's nothing left...of the horror?" she asked below her breath.
"To be without you--that's the only horror!"
"You're _sure_----?"
"Sure!"
"It's just the same to you...just as it was...before?"
"Just the same, Justine!"
"It's not for myself, but you."
"Then, for me--never speak of it!" he implored.
"Because it's _not_ the same, then?" leapt from her.
"Because it's wiped out--because it's never been!"
"Never?"
"Never!"
He felt her yield to him at that, and under his eyes, close under hislips, was her face at last. But as they kissed they heard the handle ofthe door turn, and drew apart quickly, her hand lingering in his underthe fold of her dress.
A nurse looked in, dressed in the white uniform and pointed cap of thehospital. Amherst fancied that she smiled a little as she saw them.
"Miss Brent--the doctor wants you to come right up and give themorphine."
The door shut again as Justine rose to her feet. Amherst remainedseated--he had made no motion to retain her hand as it slipped from him.
"I'm coming," she called out to the retreating nurse; then she turnedslowly and saw her husband's face.
"I must go," she said in a low tone.
Her eyes met his for a moment; but he looked away again as he stood upand reached for his hat.
"Tomorrow, then----" he said, without attempting to detain her.
"Tomorrow?"
"You must come away from here--you must come home," he repeatedmechanically.
She made no answer, and he held his hand out and took hers. "Tomorrow,"he said, drawing her toward him; and their lips met again, but not inthe same kiss.
The Fruit of the Tree Page 42