The Fruit of the Tree Read online

  XI

  AFTER conducting Miss Brent to his wife, John Amherst, by the exerciseof considerable strategic skill, had once more contrived to detachhimself from the throng on the lawn, and, regaining a path in theshrubbery, had taken refuge on the verandah of the house.

  Here, under the shade of the awning, two ladies were seated in aseclusion agreeably tempered by the distant strains of the Hanafordband, and by the shifting prospect of the groups below them.

  "Ah, here he is now!" the younger of the two exclaimed, turning onAmherst the smile of intelligence that Mrs. Eustace Ansell was in thehabit of substituting for the idle preliminaries of conversation. "Wewere not talking of you, though," she added as Amherst took the seat towhich his mother beckoned him, "but of Bessy--which, I suppose, isalmost as indiscreet."

  She added the last phrase after an imperceptible pause, and as if indeprecation of the hardly more perceptible frown which, at the mentionof his wife's name, had deepened the lines between Amherst's brows.

  "Indiscreet of his own mother and his wife's friend?" Mrs. Amherstprotested, laying her trimly-gloved hand on her son's arm; while thelatter, with his eyes on her companion, said slowly: "Mrs. Ansell knowsthat indiscretion is the last fault of which her friends are likely toaccuse her."

  "_Raison de plus_, you mean?" she laughed, meeting squarely thechallenge that passed between them under Mrs. Amherst's puzzled gaze."Well, if I take advantage of my reputation for discretion to meddle alittle now and then, at least I do so in a good cause. I was just sayinghow much I wish that you would take Bessy to Europe; and I am so sureof my cause, in this case, that I am going to leave it to your mother togive you my reasons."

  She rose as she spoke, not with any sign of haste or embarrassment, butas if gracefully recognizing the desire of mother and son to be alonetogether; but Amherst, rising also, made a motion to detain her.

  "No one else will be able to put your reasons half so convincingly," hesaid with a slight smile, "and I am sure my mother would much rather bespared the attempt."

  Mrs. Ansell met the smile as freely as she had met the challenge. "Mydear Lucy," she rejoined, laying, as she reseated herself, a lightcaress on Mrs. Amherst's hand, "I'm sorry to be flattered at yourexpense, but it's not in human nature to resist such an appeal. Yousee," she added, raising her eyes to Amherst, "how sure I am ofmyself--and of _you_, when you've heard me."

  "Oh, John is always ready to hear one," his mother murmured innocently.

  "Well, I don't know that I shall even ask him to do as much as that--I'mso sure, after all, that my suggestion carries its explanation with it."

  There was a moment's pause, during which Amherst let his eyes wanderabsently over the dissolving groups on the lawn.

  "The suggestion that I should take Bessy to Europe?" He paused again."When--next autumn?"

  "No: now--at once. On a long honeymoon."

  He frowned slightly at the last word, passing it by to revert to thedirect answer to his question.

  "At once? No--I can't see that the suggestion carries its explanationwith it."

  Mrs. Ansell looked at him hesitatingly. She was conscious of theill-chosen word that still reverberated between them, and the unwontedsense of having blundered made her, for the moment, less completelymistress of herself.

  "Ah, you'll see farther presently--" She rose again, unfurling her lacesunshade, as if to give a touch of definiteness to her action. "It'snot, after all," she added, with a sweet frankness, "a case forargument, and still less for persuasion. My reasons are excellent--Ishould insist on putting them to you myself if they were not! Butthey're so good that I can leave you to find them out--and to back themup with your own, which will probably be a great deal better."

  She summed up with a light nod, which included both Amherst and hismother, and turning to descend the verandah steps, waved a signal to Mr.Langhope, who was limping disconsolately toward the house.

  "What has she been saying to you, mother?" Amherst asked, returning tohis seat beside his mother.

  Mrs. Amherst replied by a shake of her head and a raised forefinger ofreproval. "Now, Johnny, I won't answer a single question till you smoothout those lines between your eyes."

  Her son relaxed his frown to smile back at her. "Well, dear, there haveto be some wrinkles in every family, and as you absolutely refuse totake your share--" His eyes rested affectionately on the frosty sparkleof her charming old face, which had, in its setting of recoveredprosperity, the freshness of a sunny winter morning, when the very snowgives out a suggestion of warmth.

  He remembered how, on the evening of his dismissal from the mills, hehad paused on the threshold of their sitting-room to watch her a momentin the lamplight, and had thought with bitter compunction of the freshwrinkle he was about to add to the lines about her eyes. The three yearswhich followed had effaced that wrinkle and veiled the others in a tardybloom of well-being. From the moment of turning her back on Westmore,and establishing herself in the pretty little house at Hanaford whichher son's wife had placed at her disposal, Mrs. Amherst had shed alltraces of the difficult years; and the fact that his marriage hadenabled him to set free, before it was too late, the pent-up springs ofher youthfulness, sometimes seemed to Amherst the clearest gain in hislife's confused total of profit and loss. It was, at any rate, the senseof Bessy's share in the change that softened his voice when he spoke ofher to his mother.

  "Now, then, if I present a sufficiently unruffled surface, let us goback to Mrs. Ansell--for I confess that her mysterious reasons are notyet apparent to me."

  Mrs. Amherst looked deprecatingly at her son. "Maria Ansell is devotedto you too, John----"

  "Of course she is! It's her _role_ to be devoted toeverybody--especially to her enemies."

  "Her enemies?"

  "Oh, I didn't intend any personal application. But why does she want meto take Bessy abroad?"

  "She and Mr. Langhope think that Bessy is not looking well."

  Amherst paused, and the frown showed itself for a moment. "What do _you_think, mother?"

  "I hadn't noticed it myself: Bessy seems to me prettier than ever. Butperhaps she has less colour--and she complains of not sleeping. Mariathinks she still frets over the baby."

  Amherst made an impatient gesture. "Is Europe the only panacea?"

  "You should consider, John, that Bessy is used to change and amusement.I think you sometimes forget that other people haven't your faculty ofabsorbing themselves in a single interest. And Maria says that the newdoctor at Clifton, whom they seem to think so clever, is very anxiousthat Bessy should go to Europe this summer."

  "No doubt; and so is every one else: I mean her father and oldTredegar--and your friend Mrs. Ansell not least."

  Mrs. Amherst lifted her bright black eyes to his. "Well, then--if theyall think she needs it----"

  "Good heavens, if travel were what she needed!--Why, we've never stoppedtravelling since we married. We've been everywhere on the globe exceptat Hanaford--this is her second visit here in three years!" He rose andtook a rapid turn across the deserted verandah. "It's not because herhealth requires it--it's to get me away from Westmore, to prevent thingsbeing done there that ought to be done!" he broke out vehemently,halting again before his mother.

  The aged pink faded from Mrs. Amherst's face, but her eyes retainedtheir lively glitter. "To prevent things being done? What a strangething to say!"

  "I shouldn't have said it if I hadn't seen you falling under Mrs.Ansell's spell."

  His mother had a gesture which showed from whom he had inherited hisimpulsive movements. "Really, my son--!" She folded her hands, and addedafter a pause of self-recovery: "If you mean that I have ever attemptedto interfere----"

  "No, no: but when they pervert things so damnably----"

  "John!"

  He dropped into his chair again, and pushed the hair from his foreheadwith a groan.

  "Well, then--put it that they have as much right to their view as Ihave: I only want you to see what it is. Whenever I t
ry to do anythingat Westmore--to give a real start to the work that Bessy and I plannedtogether--some pretext is found to stop it: to pack us off to the endsof the earth, to cry out against reducing her income, to encourage herin some new extravagance to which the work at the mills must besacrificed!"

  Mrs. Amherst, growing pale under this outbreak, assured herself by anervous backward glance that their privacy was still uninvaded; then hereyes returned to her son's face.

  "John--are you sure you're not sacrificing your wife to the mills?"

  He grew pale in turn, and they looked at each other for a moment withoutspeaking.

  "You see it as they do, then?" he rejoined with a discouraged sigh.

  "I see it as any old woman would, who had my experiences to look backto."

  "Mother!" he exclaimed.

  She smiled composedly. "Do you think I mean that as a reproach? That'sbecause men will never understand women--least of all, sons theirmothers. No real mother wants to come first; she puts her son's careerahead of everything. But it's different with a wife--and a wife as muchin love as Bessy."

  Amherst looked away. "I should have thought that was a reason----"

  "That would reconcile her to being set aside, to counting only second inyour plans?"

  "They were _her_ plans when we married!"

  "Ah, my dear--!" She paused on that, letting her shrewd old glance, andall the delicate lines of experience in her face, supply what farthercomment the ineptitude of his argument invited.

  He took the full measure of her meaning, receiving it in a baffledsilence that continued as she rose and gathered her lace mantle abouther, as if to signify that their confidences could not, on such anoccasion, be farther prolonged without singularity. Then he stood upalso and joined her, resting his hand on hers while she leaned on theverandah rail.

  "Poor mother! And I've kept you to myself all this time, and spoiledyour good afternoon."

  "No, dear; I was a little tired, and had slipped away to be quiet." Shepaused, and then went on, persuasively giving back his pressure: "I knowhow you feel about doing your duty, John; but now that things are socomfortably settled, isn't it a pity to unsettle them?"

  * * * * *

  Amherst had intended, on leaving his mother, to rejoin Bessy, whom hecould still discern, on the lawn, in absorbed communion with Miss Brent;but after what had passed it seemed impossible, for the moment, torecover the garden-party tone, and he made his escape through the housewhile a trio of Cuban singers, who formed the crowning number of theentertainment, gathered the company in a denser circle about theirguitars.

  As he walked on aimlessly under the deep June shadows of MaplewoodAvenue his mother's last words formed an ironical accompaniment to histhoughts. "Now that things are comfortably settled--" he knew so wellwhat that elastic epithet covered! Himself, for instance, ensconced inthe impenetrable prosperity of his wonderful marriage; herself too(unconsciously, dear soul!), so happily tucked away in a cranny of thatnew and spacious life, and no more able to conceive why existingconditions should be disturbed than the bird in the eaves understandswhy the house should be torn down. Well--he had learned at last what hisexperience with his poor, valiant, puzzled mother might have taught him:that one must never ask from women any view but the personal one, anymeasure of conduct but that of their own pains and pleasures. She,indeed, had borne undauntedly enough the brunt of their earlier trials;but that was merely because, as she said, the mother's instinct bade herheap all her private hopes on the great devouring altar of her son'sambition; it was not because she had ever, in the very least, understoodor sympathized with his aims.

  And Bessy--? Perhaps if their little son had lived she might in turnhave obeyed the world-old instinct of self-effacement--but now! Heremembered with an intenser self-derision that, not even in the firstsurprise of his passion, had he deluded himself with the idea that BessyWestmore was an exception to her sex. He had argued rather that, beingonly a lovelier product of the common mould, she would abound in theadaptabilities and pliancies which the lords of the earth have seen fitto cultivate in their companions. She would care for his aims becausethey were his. During their precipitate wooing, and through the firstbrief months of marriage, this profound and original theory had beengratifyingly confirmed; then its perfect surface had begun to show aflaw. Amherst had always conveniently supposed that the poet's linesummed up the good woman's rule of ethics: _He for God only, she for Godin him._ It was for the god in him, surely, that she had loved him: forthat first glimpse of an "ampler ether, a diviner air" that he hadbrought into her cramped and curtained life. He could never, now, evokethat earlier delusion without feeling on its still-tender surface thekeen edge of Mrs. Ansell's smile. She, no doubt, could have told him atany time why Bessy had married him: it was for his _beaux yeux_, as Mrs.Ansell would have put it--because he was young, handsome, persecuted, anardent lover if not a subtle one--because Bessy had met him at the fatalmoment, because her family had opposed the marriage--because, in brief,the gods, that day, may have been a little short of amusement. Well,they were having their laugh out now--there were moments when highheaven seemed to ring with it....

  With these thoughts at his heels Amherst strode on, overtaken now andagain by the wheels of departing guests from the garden-party, andknowing, as they passed him, what was in their minds--envy of hissuccess, admiration of his cleverness in achieving it, and a littlehalf-contemptuous pity for his wife, who, with her wealth and looks,might have done so much better. Certainly, if the case could have beenput to Hanaford--the Hanaford of the Gaines garden-party--it would havesided with Bessy to a voice. And how much justice was there in what hefelt would have been the unanimous verdict of her class? Was his motherright in hinting that he was sacrificing Bessy to the mills? But themills _were_ Bessy--at least he had thought so when he married her!They were her particular form of contact with life, the expression ofher relation to her fellow-men, her pretext, her opportunity--unlessthey were merely a vast purse in which to plunge for her pin-money! Hehad fancied it would rest with him to determine from which of thesestand-points she should view Westmore; and at the outset she hadenthusiastically viewed it from his. In her eager adoption of his ideasshe had made a pet of the mills, organizing the Mothers' Club, layingout a recreation-ground on the Hopewood property, and playing withpretty plans in water-colour for the Emergency Hospital and the buildingwhich was to contain the night-schools, library and gymnasium; but eventhese minor projects--which he had urged her to take up as a means oflearning their essential dependence on his larger scheme--were soon tobe set aside by obstacles of a material order. Bessy always wantedmoney--not a great deal, but, as she reasonably put it, "enough"--andwho was to blame if her father and Mr. Tredegar, each in his differentcapacity, felt obliged to point out that every philanthropic outlay atWestmore must entail a corresponding reduction in her income? Perhaps ifshe could have been oftener at Hanaford these arguments would have beencounteracted, for she was tender-hearted, and prompt to relieve suchsuffering as she saw about her; but her imagination was not active, andit was easy for her to forget painful sights when they were not underher eye. This was perhaps--half-consciously--one of the reasons why sheavoided Hanaford; why, as Amherst exclaimed, they had been everywheresince their marriage but to the place where their obligations calledthem. There had, at any rate, always been some good excuse for notreturning there, and consequently for postponing the work of improvementwhich, it was generally felt, her husband could not fitly begin till she_had_ returned and gone over the ground with him. After their marriage,and especially in view of the comment excited by that romantic incident,it was impossible not to yield to her wish that they should go abroadfor a few months; then, before her confinement, the doctors had exactedthat she should be spared all fatigue and worry; and after the baby'sdeath Amherst had felt with her too tenderly to venture an immediatereturn to unwelcome questions.

  For by this time it had become clear to him that such questions were,a
nd always would be, unwelcome to her. As the easiest means of escapingthem, she had once more dismissed the whole problem to the vague andtiresome sphere of "business," whence he had succeeded in detaching itfor a moment in the early days of their union. Her first husband--poorunappreciated Westmore!--had always spared her the boredom of"business," and Halford Gaines and Mr. Tredegar were ready to show herthe same consideration; it was part of the modern code of chivalry thatlovely woman should not be bothered about ways and means. But Bessy wastoo much the wife--and the wife in love--to consent that her husband'sviews on the management of the mills should be totally disregarded.Precisely because her advisers looked unfavourably on his intervention,she felt bound--if only in defense of her illusions--to maintain andemphasize it. The mills were, in fact, the official "platform" on whichshe had married: Amherst's devoted _role_ at Westmore had justified theunconventionality of the step. And so she was committed--the morehelplessly for her dense misintelligence of both sides of thequestion--to the policy of conciliating the opposing influences whichhad so uncomfortably chosen to fight out their case on the field of herpoor little existence: theoretically siding with her husband, butsurreptitiously, as he well knew, giving aid and comfort to the enemy,who were really defending her own cause.

  All this Amherst saw with that cruel insight which had replaced hisformer blindness. He was, in truth, more ashamed of the insight than ofthe blindness: it seemed to him horribly cold-blooded to be thusanalyzing, after two years of marriage, the source of his wife'sinconsistencies. And, partly for this reason, he had put off from monthto month the final question of the future management of the mills, andof the radical changes to be made there if his system were to prevail.But the time had come when, if Bessy had to turn to Westmore for thejustification of her marriage, he had even more need of calling upon itfor the same service. He had not, assuredly, married her because ofWestmore; but he would scarcely have contemplated marriage with a richwoman unless the source of her wealth had offered him some suchopportunity as Westmore presented. His special training, and the naturalbent of his mind, qualified him, in what had once seemed a predestinedmanner, to help Bessy to use her power nobly, for her own uplifting aswell as for that of Westmore; and so the mills became, incongruouslyenough, the plank of safety to which both clung in their sense ofimpending disaster.

  It was not that Amherst feared the temptation to idleness if this outletfor his activity were cut off. He had long since found that the luxurywith which his wife surrounded him merely quickened his natural bent forhard work and hard fare. He recalled with a touch of bitterness how hehad once regretted having separated himself from his mother's class, andhow seductive for a moment, to both mind and senses, that other life hadappeared. Well--he knew it now, and it had neither charm nor peril forhim. Capua must have been a dull place to one who had once drunk the joyof battle. What he dreaded was not that he should learn to love thelife of ease, but that he should grow to loathe it uncontrollably, asthe symbol of his mental and spiritual bondage. And Westmore was hissafety-valve, his refuge--if he were cut off from Westmore what remainedto him? It was not only the work he had found to his hand, but the onework for which his hand was fitted. It was his life that he was fightingfor in insisting that now at last, before the close of thislong-deferred visit to Hanaford, the question of the mills should befaced and settled. He had made that clear to Bessy, in a scene he stillshrank from recalling; for it was of the essence of his somewhatunbending integrity that he would not trick her into a confusedsurrender to the personal influence he still possessed over her, butmust seek to convince her by the tedious process of argument andexposition, against which she knew no defense but tears and petulance.But he had, at any rate, gained her consent to his setting forth hisviews at the meeting of directors the next morning; and meanwhile he hadmeant to be extraordinarily patient and reasonable with her, till thehint of Mrs. Ansell's stratagem produced in him a fresh reaction ofdistrust.