The Fruit of the Tree

by Edith Wharton

  XLIII

  JUNE again at Hanaford--and Cicely's birthday. The anniversary was tocoincide, this year, with the opening of the old house at Hopewood, as akind of pleasure-palace--gymnasium, concert-hall and museum--for therecreation of the mill-hands.

  The idea had first come to Amherst on the winter afternoon when BessyWestmore had confessed her love for him under the snow-laden trees ofHopewood. Even then the sense that his personal happiness was enlargedand secured by its promise of happiness to others had made him wish thatthe scene associated with the opening of his new life should be made tocommemorate a corresponding change in the fortunes of Westmore. But whenthe control of the mills passed into his hands other and more necessaryimprovements pressed upon him; and it was not till now that thefinancial condition of the company had permitted the execution of hisplan.

  Justine, on her return to Hanaford, had found the work already inprogress, and had been told by her husband that he was carrying out aprojected scheme of Bessy's. She had felt a certain surprise, but hadconcluded that the plan in question dated back to the early days of hisfirst marriage, when, in his wife's eyes, his connection with the millsstill invested them with interest.

  Since Justine had come back to her husband, both had tacitly avoided allallusions to the past, and the recreation-house at Hopewood being, asshe divined, in some sort an expiatory offering to Bessy's plaintiveshade, she had purposely refrained from questioning Amherst about itsprogress, and had simply approved the plans he submitted to her.

  Fourteen months had passed since her return, and now, as she sat besideher husband in the carriage which was conveying them to Hopewood, shesaid to herself that her life had at last fallen into what promised tobe its final shape--that as things now were they would probably be tothe end. And outwardly at least they were what she and Amherst hadalways dreamed of their being. Westmore prospered under the new rule.The seeds of life they had sown there were springing up in a promisinggrowth of bodily health and mental activity, and above all in a dawningsocial consciousness. The mill-hands were beginning to understand themeaning of their work, in its relation to their own lives and to thelarger economy. And outwardly, also, the new growth was showing itselfin the humanized aspect of the place. Amherst's young maples were tallenough now to cast a shade on the grass-bordered streets; and thewell-kept turf, the bright cottage gardens, the new central group oflibrary, hospital and club-house, gave to the mill-village the hopefulair of a "rising" residential suburb.

  In the bright June light, behind their fresh green mantle of trees andcreepers, even the factory buildings looked less stern and prison-likethan formerly; and the turfing and planting of the adjoiningriver-banks had transformed a waste of foul mud and refuse into a littlepark where the operatives might refresh themselves at midday.

  Yes--Westmore was alive at last: the dead city of which Justine had oncespoken had risen from its grave, and its blank face had taken on ameaning. As Justine glanced at her husband she saw that the same thoughtwas in his mind. However achieved, at whatever cost of personal miseryand error, the work of awakening and freeing Westmore was done, and thatwork had justified itself.

  She looked from Amherst to Cicely, who sat opposite, eager and rosy inher mourning frock--for Mr. Langhope had died some two monthspreviously--and as intent as her step-parents on the scene before her.Cicely was old enough now to regard her connection with Westmore assomething more than a nursery game. She was beginning to learn a greatdeal about the mills, and to understand, in simple, friendly ways,something of her own relation to them. The work and play of thechildren, the interests and relaxations provided for their elders, hadbeen gradually explained to her by Justine, and she knew that thisshining tenth birthday of hers was to throw its light as far as theclouds of factory-smoke extended.

  As they mounted the slope to Hopewood, the spacious white building,with its enfolding colonnades, its broad terraces and tennis-courts,shone through the trees like some bright country-house adorned for itsmaster's home-coming; and Amherst and his wife might have been drivingup to the house which had been built to shelter their wedded happiness.The thought flashed across Justine as their carriage climbed the hill.She was as much absorbed as Amherst in the welfare of Westmore, it hadbecome more and more, to both, the refuge in which their lives still metand mingled; but for a moment, as they paused before the flower-deckedporch, and he turned to help her from the carriage, it occurred to herto wonder what her sensations would have been if he had been bringingher home--to a real home of their own--instead of accompanying her toanother philanthropic celebration. But what need had they of a realhome, when they no longer had any real life of their own? Nothing wasleft of that secret inner union which had so enriched and beautifiedtheir outward lives. Since Justine's return to Hanaford they hadentered, tacitly, almost unconsciously, into a new relation to eachother: a relation in which their personalities were more and more mergedin their common work, so that, as it were, they met only by avoidingeach other.

  From the first, Justine had accepted this as inevitable; just as she hadunderstood, when Amherst had sought her out in New York, that hisremaining at Westmore, which had once been contingent on her leavinghim, now depended on her willingness to return and take up their formerlife.

  She accepted the last condition as she had accepted the other, pledgedto the perpetual expiation of an act for which, in the abstract, shestill refused to hold herself to blame. But life is not a matter ofabstract principles, but a succession of pitiful compromises with fate,of concessions to old tradition, old beliefs, old charities andfrailties. That was what her act had taught her--that was the word ofthe gods to the mortal who had laid a hand on their bolts. And she hadhumbled herself to accept the lesson, seeing human relations at last asa tangled and deep-rooted growth, a dark forest through which theidealist cannot cut his straight path without hearing at each stroke thecry of the severed branch: "_Why woundest thou me?_"

  * * * * *

  The lawns leading up to the house were already sprinkled withholiday-makers, while along the avenue came the rolling of wheels, thethrob of motor-cars; and Justine, with Cicely beside her, stood in thewide hall to receive the incoming throng, in which Hanaford society wasindiscriminately mingled with the operatives in their Sunday best.

  While his wife welcomed the new arrivals, Amherst, supported by someyoung Westmore cousins, was guiding them into the concert-hall, where hewas to say a word on the uses of the building before declaring it openfor inspection. And presently Justine and Cicely, summoned by WestyGaines, made their way through the rows of seats to a corner near theplatform. Her husband was there already, with Halford Gaines and a groupof Hanaford dignitaries, and just below them sat Mrs. Gaines and herdaughters, the Harry Dressels, and Amherst's radiant mother.

  As Justine passed between them, she wondered how much they knew of theevents which had wrought so profound and permanent change in her life.She had never known how Hanaford explained her absence or what commentsit had made on her return. But she saw to-day more clearly than everthat Amherst had become a power among his townsmen, and that if theywere still blind to the inner meaning of his work, its practical resultswere beginning to impress them profoundly. Hanaford's sociological creedwas largely based on commercial considerations, and Amherst had wonHanaford's esteem by the novel feat of defying its economic principlesand snatching success out of his defiance.

  And now he had advanced a step or two in front of the "representative"semi-circle on the platform, and was beginning to speak.

  Justine did not hear his first words. She was looking up at him, tryingto see him with the eyes of the crowd, and wondering what manner of manhe would have seemed to her if she had known as little as they did ofhis inner history.

  He held himself straight, the heavy locks thrown back from his forehead,one hand resting on the table beside him, the other grasping a foldedblue-print which the architect of the building had just advanced to givehim. As he stood there, Justine reca
lled her first sight of him in theHope Hospital, five years earlier--was it only five years? They haddealt deep strokes to his face, hollowing the eye-sockets, accentuatingthe strong modelling of nose and chin, fixing the lines between thebrows; but every touch had a meaning--it was not the languid hand oftime which had remade his features, but the sharp chisel of thought andaction.

  She roused herself suddenly to the consciousness of what he was saying.

  "For the idea of this building--of a building dedicated to therecreation of Westmore--is not new in my mind; but while it remainedthere as a mere idea, it had already, without my knowledge, takendefinite shape in the thoughts of the owner of Westmore."

  There was a slight drop in his voice as he designated Bessy, and hewaited a moment before continuing: "It was not till after the death ofmy first wife that I learned of her intention--that I found byaccident, among her papers, this carefully-studied plan for apleasure-house at Hopewood."

  He paused again, and unrolling the blue-print, held it up before hisaudience.

  "You cannot, at this distance," he went on, "see all the admirabledetails of her plan; see how beautifully they were imagined, howcarefully and intelligently elaborated. She who conceived them longed tosee beauty everywhere--it was her dearest wish to bestow it on herpeople here. And her ardent imagination outran the bounds of practicalpossibility. We cannot give you, in its completeness, the beautifulthing she had imagined--the great terraces, the marble porches, thefountains, lily-tanks, and cloisters. But you will see that, wherever itwas possible--though in humbler materials, and on a smaller scale--wehave faithfully followed her design; and when presently you go throughthis building, and when, hereafter, you find health and refreshment anddiversion here, I ask you to remember the beauty she dreamed of givingyou, and to let the thought of it make her memory beautiful among youand among your children...."

  Justine had listened with deepening amazement. She was seated so closeto her husband that she had recognized the blue-print the moment heunrolled it. There was no mistaking its origin--it was simply the planof the gymnasium which Bessy had intended to build at Lynbrook, andwhich she had been constrained to abandon owing to her husband'sincreased expenditure at the mills. But how was it possible that Amherstknew nothing of the original purpose of the plans, and by what mockingturn of events had a project devised in deliberate defiance of hiswishes, and intended to declare his wife's open contempt for them, beentransformed into a Utopian vision for the betterment of the Westmoreoperatives?

  A wave of anger swept over Justine at this last derisive stroke of fate.It was grotesque and pitiable that a man like Amherst should create outof his regrets a being who had never existed, and then ascribe to herfeelings and actions of which the real woman had again and again provedherself incapable!

  Ah, no, Justine had suffered enough--but to have this imaginary Bessycalled from the grave, dressed in a semblance of self-devotion andidealism, to see her petty impulses of vindictiveness disguised as themotions of a lofty spirit--it was as though her small malicious ghosthad devised this way of punishing the wife who had taken her place!

  Justine had suffered enough--suffered deliberately and unstintingly,paying the full price of her error, not seeking to evade its leastconsequence. But no sane judgment could ask her to sit quiet under thislast hallucination. What! This unreal woman, this phantom thatAmherst's uneasy imagination had evoked, was to come between himself andher, to supplant her first as his wife, and then as his fellow-worker?Why should she not cry out the truth to him, defend herself against thedead who came back to rob her of such wedded peace as was hers? She hadonly to tell the true story of the plans to lay poor Bessy's ghostforever!

  The confused throbbing impulses within her were stifled under a longburst of applause--then she saw Westy Gaines at her side again, andunderstood that he had come to lead Cicely to the platform. For a momentshe clung jealously to the child's hand, hardly aware of what she did,feeling only that she was being thrust farther and farther into thebackground of the life she had helped to call out of chaos. Then acontrary impulse moved her. She gently freed Cicely's hand, and a momentlater, as she sat with bent head and throbbing breast, she heard thechild's treble piping out above her:

  "In my mother's name, I give this house to Westmore."

  Applause again--and then Justine found herself enveloped in a generalmurmur of compliment and congratulation. Mr. Amherst had spokenadmirably--a "beautiful tribute--" ah, he had done poor Bessy justice!And to think that till now Hanaford had never fully known how she hadthe welfare of the mills at heart--how it was really only _her_ workthat he was carrying on there! Well, he had made that perfectlyclear--and no doubt Cicely was being taught to follow in her mother'sfootsteps: everyone had noticed how her step-father was associating herwith the work at the mills. And his little speech would, as it were,consecrate the child's relation to that work, make it appear to her asthe continuance of a beautiful, a sacred tradition....

  * * * * *

  And now it was over. The building had been inspected, the operatives haddispersed, the Hanaford company had rolled off down the avenue, Cicely,among them, driving away tired and happy in Mrs. Dressel's victoria, andAmherst and his wife were alone.

  Amherst, after bidding good-bye to his last guests, had gone back to theempty concert-room to fetch the blue-print lying on the platform. Hecame back with it, between the uneven rows of empty chairs, and joinedJustine, who stood waiting in the hall. His face was slightly flushed,and his eyes had the light which in happy moments burned through theirveil of thought.

  He laid his hand on his wife's arm, and drawing her toward a tablespread out the blueprint before her.

  "You haven't seen this, have you?" he said.

  She looked down at the plan without answering, reading in the left-handcorner the architect's conventional inscription: "Swimming-tank andgymnasium designed for Mrs. John Amherst."

  Amherst looked up, perhaps struck by her silence.

  "But perhaps you _have_ seen it--at Lynbrook? It must have been donewhile you were there."

  The quickened throb of her blood rushed to her brain like a signal."Speak--speak now!" the signal commanded.

  Justine continued to look fixedly at the plan. "Yes, I have seen it,"she said at length.

  "At Lynbrook?"

  "At Lynbrook."

  "_She_ showed it to you, I suppose--while I was away?"

  Justine hesitated again. "Yes, while you were away."

  "And did she tell you anything about it, go into details about herwishes, her intentions?"

  Now was the moment--now! As her lips parted she looked up at herhusband. The illumination still lingered on his face--and it was theface she loved. He was waiting eagerly for her next word.

  "No, I heard no details. I merely saw the plan lying there."

  She saw his look of disappointment. "She never told you about it?"

  "No--she never told me."

  It was best so, after all. She understood that now. It was now at lastthat she was paying her full price.

  Amherst rolled up the plan with a sigh and pushed it into the drawer ofthe table. It struck her that he too had the look of one who has laid aghost. He turned to her and drew her hand through his arm.

  "You're tired, dear. You ought to have driven back with the others," hesaid.

  "No, I would rather stay with you."

  "You want to drain this good day to the dregs, as I do?"

  "Yes," she murmured, drawing her hand away.

  "It _is_ a good day, isn't it?" he continued, looking about him at thewhite-panelled walls, the vista of large bright rooms seen through thefolding doors. "I feel as if we had reached a height, somehow--a heightwhere one might pause and draw breath for the next climb. Don't you feelthat too, Justine?"

  "Yes--I feel it."

  "Do you remember once, long ago--one day when you and I and Cicely wenton a picnic to hunt orchids--how we got talking of the one best momentin life--the moment
when one wanted most to stop the clock?"

  The colour rose in her face while he spoke. It was a long time since hehad referred to the early days of their friendship--the days_before_....

  "Yes, I remember," she said.

  "And do you remember how we said that it was with most of us as it waswith Faust? That the moment one wanted to hold fast to was not, in mostlives, the moment of keenest personal happiness, but the other kind--thekind that would have seemed grey and colourless at first: the momentwhen the meaning of life began to come out from the mists--when onecould look out at last over the marsh one had drained?"

  A tremor ran through Justine. "It was you who said that," she said,half-smiling.

  "But didn't you feel it with me? Don't you now?"

  "Yes--I do now," she murmured.

  He came close to her, and taking her hands in his, kissed them one afterthe other.

  "Dear," he said, "let us go out and look at the marsh we have drained."

  He turned and led her through the open doorway to the terrace above theriver. The sun was setting behind the wooded slopes of Hopewood, and thetrees about the house stretched long blue shadows across the lawn.Beyond them rose the smoke of Westmore.