The Fruit of the Tree Page 14

  XIV

  JUSTINE BRENT, her household duties discharged, had gone upstairs to herroom, a little turret chamber projecting above the wide terrace below,from which the sounds of lively intercourse now rose increasingly to herwindow.

  Bessy, she knew, would have preferred to have her remain with the partyfrom whom these evidences of gaiety proceeded. Mrs. Amherst had grown todepend on her friend's nearness. She liked to feel that Justine's quickhand and eye were always in waiting on her impulses, prompt to interpretand execute them without any exertion of her own. Bessy combined greatzeal in the pursuit of sport--a tireless passion for the saddle, thegolf-course, the tennis-court--with an almost oriental inertia withindoors, an indolence of body and brain that made her shrink from theactive obligations of hospitality, though she had grown to depend moreand more on the distractions of a crowded house.

  But Justine, though grateful, and anxious to show her gratitude, wasunwilling to add to her other duties that of joining in the amusementsof the house-party. She made no pretense of effacing herself when shethought her presence might be useful--but, even if she had cared for thediversions in favour at Lynbrook, a certain unavowed pride would havekept her from participating in them on the same footing with Bessy'sguests. She was not in the least ashamed of her position in thehousehold, but she chose that every one else should be aware of it, thatshe should not for an instant be taken for one of the nomadic damselswho form the camp-followers of the great army of pleasure. Yet even onthis point her sensitiveness was not exaggerated. Adversity has a defthand at gathering loose strands of impulse into character, and Justine'searly contact with different phases of experience had given her a fairlyclear view of life in the round, what might be called a sound workingtopography of its relative heights and depths. She was not seriouslyafraid of being taken for anything but what she really was, and stillless did she fear to become, by force of propinquity and suggestion, thekind of being for whom she might be temporarily taken.

  When, at Bessy's summons, she had joined the latter at her camp in theAdirondacks, the transition from a fatiguing "case" at Hanaford to alife in which sylvan freedom was artfully blent with the most studiedpersonal luxury, had come as a delicious refreshment to body and brain.She was weary, for the moment, of ugliness, pain and hard work, and lifeseemed to recover its meaning under the aspect of a graceful leisure.Lynbrook also, whither she had been persuaded to go with Bessy at theend of their woodland cure, had at first amused and interested her. Thebig house on its spreading terraces, with windows looking over brightgardens to the hazy distances of the plains, seemed a haven of harmlessease and gaiety. Justine was sensitive to the finer graces of luxuriousliving, to the warm lights on old pictures and bronzes, the softmingling of tints in faded rugs and panellings of time-warmed oak. Andthe existence to which this background formed a setting seemed at firstto have the same decorative qualities. It was pleasant, for once, to beamong people whose chief business was to look well and take lifelightly, and Justine's own buoyancy of nature won her immediate accessamong the amiable persons who peopled Bessy's week-end parties. If theyhad only abounded a little more in their own line she might havesuccumbed to their spell. But it seemed to her that they missed thepoetry of their situation, transacting their pleasures with the drearymethod and shortness of view of a race tethered to the ledger. Even theverbal flexibility which had made her feel that she was in a world offreer ideas, soon revealed itself as a form of flight from them, inwhich the race was distinctly to the swift; and Justine's phase ofpassive enjoyment passed with the return of her physical and mentalactivity. She was a creature tingling with energy, a little fleetingparticle of the power that moves the sun and the other stars, and thedeadening influences of the life at Lynbrook roused these tendencies togreater intensity, as a suffocated person will suddenly develop abnormalstrength in the struggle for air.

  She did not, indeed, regret having come. She was glad to be with Bessy,partly because of the childish friendship which had left such deeptraces in her lonely heart, and partly because what she had seen of herfriend's situation stirred in her all the impulses of sympathy andservice; but the idea of continuing in such a life, of sinking into anyof the positions of semi-dependence that an adroit and handsome girl maycreate for herself in a fashionable woman's train--this possibilitynever presented itself to Justine till Mrs. Ansell, that afternoon, hadput it into words. And to hear it was to revolt from it with all thestrength of her inmost nature. The thought of the future troubled her,not so much materially--for she had a light bird-like trust in themorrow's fare--but because her own tendencies seemed to have grown lessclear, because she could not rest in them for guidance as she had oncedone. The renewal of bodily activity had not brought back her faith inher calling: her work had lost the light of consecration. She no longerfelt herself predestined to nurse the sick for the rest of her life, andin her inexperience she reproached herself with this instability. Youthand womanhood were in fact crying out in her for their individualsatisfaction; but instincts as deep-seated protected her from even amomentary illusion as to the nature of this demand. She wantedhappiness, and a life of her own, as passionately as youngflesh-and-blood had ever wanted them; but they must come bathed in thelight of imagination and penetrated by the sense of larger affinities.She could not conceive of shutting herself into a little citadel ofpersonal well-being while the great tides of existence rolled onunheeded outside. Whether they swept treasure to her feet, or strewedher life with wreckage, she felt, even now; that her place was there, onthe banks, in sound and sight of the great current; and just inproportion as the scheme of life at Lynbrook succeeded in shutting outall sense of that vaster human consciousness, so did its voice speakmore thrillingly within her.

  Somewhere, she felt--but, alas! still out of reach--was the life shelonged for, a life in which high chances of doing should be mated withthe finer forms of enjoying. But what title had she to a share in suchan existence? Why, none but her sense of what it was worth--and what didthat count for, in a world which used all its resources to barricadeitself against all its opportunities? She knew there were girls whosought, by what is called a "good" marriage, an escape into the outerworld, of doing and thinking--utilizing an empty brain and full pocketas the key to these envied fields. Some such chance the life at Lynbrookseemed likely enough to offer--one is not, at Justine's age and with herpenetration, any more blind to the poise of one's head than to the turnof one's ideas; but here the subtler obstacles of taste and prideintervened. Not even Bessy's transparent manoeuvrings, her tendersolicitude for her friend's happiness, could for a moment weakenJustine's resistance. If she must marry without love--and this wasgrowing conceivable to her--she must at least merge her craving forpersonal happiness in some view of life in harmony with hers.

  A tap on her door interrupted these musings, to one aspect of whichBessy Amherst's entrance seemed suddenly to give visible expression.

  "Why did you run off, Justine? You promised to be down-stairs when Icame back from tennis."

  "_Till_ you came back--wasn't it, dear?" Justine corrected with a smile,pushing her arm-chair forward as Bessy continued to linger irresolutelyin the doorway. "I saw that there was a fresh supply of tea in thedrawing-room, and I knew you would be there before the omnibus came fromthe station."

  "Oh, I was there--but everybody was asking for you----"

  "Everybody?" Justine gave a mocking lift to her dark eyebrows.

  "Well--Westy Gaines, at any rate; the moment he set foot in the house!"Bessy declared with a laugh as she dropped into the arm-chair.

  Justine echoed the laugh, but offered no comment on the statement whichaccompanied it, and for a moment both women were silent, Bessy tiltingher pretty discontented head against the back of the chair, so that hereyes were on a level with those of her friend, who leaned near her inthe embrasure of the window.

  "I can't understand you, Justine. You know well enough what he's comeback for."

  "In order to dazzle Hanaford with the fact t
hat he has been staying atLynbrook!"

  "Nonsense--the novelty of that has worn off. He's been here three timessince we came back."

  "You are admirably hospitable to your family----"

  Bessy let her pretty ringed hands fall with a discouraged gesture. "Whydo you find him so much worse than--than other people?"

  Justine's eye-brows rose again. "In the same capacity? You speak as if Ihad boundless opportunities of comparison."

  "Well, you've Dr. Wyant!" Mrs. Amherst suddenly flung back at her.

  Justine coloured under the unexpected thrust, but met her friend's eyessteadily. "As an alternative to Westy? Well, if I were on a desertisland--but I'm not!" she concluded with a careless laugh.

  Bessy frowned and sighed. "You can't mean that, of the two--?" Shepaused and then went on doubtfully: "It's because he's cleverer?"

  "Dr. Wyant?" Justine smiled. "It's not making an enormous claim forhim!"

  "Oh, I know Westy's not brilliant; but stupid men are not always thehardest to live with." She sighed again, and turned on Justine a glancecharged with conjugal experience.

  Justine had sunk into the window-seat, her thin hands clasping her knee,in the attitude habitual to her meditative moments. "Perhaps not," sheassented; "but I don't know that I should care for a man who made lifeeasy; I should want some one who made it interesting."

  Bessy met this with a pitying exclamation. "Don't imagine you inventedthat! Every girl thinks it. Afterwards she finds out that it's muchpleasanter to be thought interesting herself."

  She spoke with a bitterness that issued strangely from her lips. It wasthis bitterness which gave her soft personality the sharp edge thatJustine had felt in it on the day of their meeting at Hanaford.

  The girl, at first, had tried to defend herself from thesescarcely-veiled confidences, distasteful enough in themselves, andplacing her, if she listened, in an attitude of implied disloyalty tothe man under whose roof they were spoken. But a precocious experienceof life had taught her that emotions too strong for the naturecontaining them turn, by some law of spiritual chemistry, into arankling poison; and she had therefore resigned herself to serving as akind of outlet for Bessy's pent-up discontent. It was not that herfriend's grievance appealed to her personal sympathies; she had learnedenough of the situation to give her moral assent unreservedly to theother side. But it was characteristic of Justine that where shesympathized least she sometimes pitied most. Like all quick spirits shewas often intolerant of dulness; yet when the intolerance passed it lefta residue of compassion for the very incapacity at which she chafed. Itseemed to her that the tragic crises in wedded life usually turned onthe stupidity of one of the two concerned; and of the two victims ofsuch a catastrophe she felt most for the one whose limitations hadprobably brought it about. After all, there could be no imprisonment ascruel as that of being bounded by a hard small nature. Not to bepenetrable at all points to the shifting lights, the wandering music ofthe world--she could imagine no physical disability as cramping as that.How the little parched soul, in solitary confinement for life, must pineand dwindle in its blind cranny of self-love!

  To be one's self wide open to the currents of life does not alwayscontribute to an understanding of narrower natures; but in Justine thepersonal emotions were enriched and deepened by a sense of participationin all that the world about her was doing, suffering and enjoying; andthis sense found expression in the instinct of ministry and solace. Shewas by nature a redresser, a restorer; and in her work, as she had oncetold Amherst, the longing to help and direct, to hasten on by personalintervention time's slow and clumsy processes, had often been inconflict with the restrictions imposed by her profession. But she had noidle desire to probe the depths of other lives; and where there seemedno hope of serving she shrank from fruitless confidences. She wasbeginning to feel this to be the case with Bessy Amherst. To touch therock was not enough, if there were but a few drops within it; yet inthis barrenness lay the pathos of the situation--and after all, may notthe scanty spring be fed from a fuller current?

  "I'm not sure about that," she said, answering her friend's last wordsafter a deep pause of deliberation. "I mean about its being so pleasantto be found interesting. I'm sure the passive part is always the dullone: life has been a great deal more thrilling since we found out thatwe revolved about the sun, instead of sitting still and fancying thatall the planets were dancing attendance on us. After all, they were_not_; and it's rather humiliating to think how the morning stars musthave laughed together about it!"

  There was no self-complacency in Justine's eagerness to help. It was fareasier for her to express it in action than in counsel, to grope for thepath with her friend than to point the way to it; and when she had tospeak she took refuge in figures to escape the pedantry of appearing toadvise. But it was not only to Mrs. Dressel that her parables were dark,and the blank look in Bessy's eyes soon snatched her down from theheight of metaphor.

  "I mean," she continued with a smile, "that, as human nature isconstituted, it has got to find its real self--the self to be interestedin--outside of what we conventionally call 'self': the particularJustine or Bessy who is clamouring for her particular morsel of life.You see, self isn't a thing one can keep in a box--bits of it keepescaping, and flying off to lodge in all sorts of unexpected crannies;we come across scraps of ourselves in the most unlikely places--as Ibelieve you would in Westmore, if you'd only go back there and look forthem!"

  Bessy's lip trembled and the colour sprang to her face; but she answeredwith a flash of irritation: "Why doesn't _he_ look for me there,then--if he still wants to find me?"

  "Ah--it's for him to look here--to find himself _here_," Justinemurmured.

  "Well, he never comes here! That's his answer."

  "He will--he will! Only, when he does, let him find you."

  "Find me? I don't understand. How can he, when he never sees me? I'm nomore to him than the carpet on the floor!"

  Justine smiled again. "Well--be that then! The thing is to _be_."

  "Under his feet? Thank you! Is that what you mean to marry for? It's notwhat husbands admire in one, you know!"

  "No." Justine stood up with a sense of stealing discouragement. "But Idon't think I want to be admired----"

  "Ah, that's because you know you are!" broke from the depths of theother's bitterness.

  The tone smote Justine, and she dropped into the seat at her friend'sside, silently laying a hand on Bessy's feverishly-clasped fingers.

  "Oh, don't let us talk about me," complained the latter, from whose lipsthe subject was never long absent. "And you mustn't think I _want_ youto marry, Justine; not for myself, I mean--I'd so much rather keep youhere. I feel much less lonely when you're with me. But you say you won'tstay--and it's too dreadful to think of your going back to that drearyhospital."

  "But you know the hospital's not dreary to me," Justine interposed;"it's the most interesting place I've ever known."

  Mrs. Amherst smiled indulgently on this extravagance. "A great manypeople go through the craze for philanthropy--" she began in the tone ofmature experience; but Justine interrupted her with a laugh.

  "Philanthropy? I'm not philanthropic. I don't think I ever felt inclinedto do good in the abstract--any more than to do ill! I can't rememberthat I ever planned out a course of conduct in my life. It's only," shewent on, with a puzzled frown, as if honestly trying to analyze hermotives, "it's only that I'm so fatally interested in people that beforeI know it I've slipped into their skins; and then, of course, ifanything goes wrong with them, it's just as if it had gone wrong withme; and I can't help trying to rescue myself from _their_ troubles! Isuppose it's what you'd call meddling--and so should I, if I could onlyremember that the other people were not myself!"

  Bessy received this with the mild tolerance of superior wisdom. Oncesafe on the tried ground of traditional authority, she always feltherself Justine's superior. "That's all very well now--you see theromantic side of it," she said, as if humouring her friend's vagaries."B
ut in time you'll want something else; you'll want a husband andchildren--a life of your own. And then you'll have to be more practical.It's ridiculous to pretend that comfort and money don't make adifference. And if you married a rich man, just think what a lot of goodyou could do! Westy will be very well off--and I'm sure he'd let youendow hospitals and things. Think how interesting it would be to build award in the very hospital where you'd been a nurse! I read somethinglike that in a novel the other day--it was beautifully described. Allthe nurses and doctors that the heroine had worked with were there toreceive her...and her little boy went about and gave toys to thecrippled children...."

  If the speaker's concluding instance hardly produced the effect she hadintended, it was perhaps only because Justine's attention had beenarrested by the earlier part of the argument. It was strange to havemarriage urged on her by a woman who had twice failed to find happinessin it--strange, and yet how vivid a sign that, even to a nature absorbedin its personal demands, not happiness but completeness is the inmostcraving! "A life of your own"--that was what even Bessy, in her obscureway, felt to be best worth suffering for. And how was a spirit likeJustine's, thrilling with youth and sympathy, to conceive of an isolatedexistence as the final answer to that craving? A life circumscribed byone's own poor personal consciousness would not be life at all--farbetter the "adventure of the diver" than the shivering alone on thebank! Bessy, reading encouragement in her silence, returned herhand-clasp with an affectionate pressure.

  "You _would_ like that, Justine?" she said, secretly proud of having hiton the convincing argument.

  "To endow hospitals with your cousin's money? No; I should wantsomething much more exciting!"

  Bessy's face kindled. "You mean travelling abroad--and I suppose NewYork in winter?"

  Justine broke into a laugh. "I was thinking of your cousin himself whenI spoke." And to Bessy's disappointed cry--"Then it _is_ Dr. Wyant,after all?" she answered lightly, and without resenting the challenge:"I don't know. Suppose we leave it to the oracle."

  "The oracle?"

  "Time. His question-and-answer department is generally the most reliablein the long run." She started up, gently drawing Bessy to her feet. "Andjust at present he reminds me that it's nearly six, and that youpromised Cicely to go and see her before you dress for dinner."

  Bessy rose obediently. "Does he remind you of _your_ promises too? Yousaid you'd come down to dinner tonight."

  "Did I?" Justine hesitated. "Well, I'm coming," she said, smiling andkissing her friend.