The Fruit of the Tree

by Edith Wharton

  VIII

  AMHERST'S dismissal was not to take effect for a month; and in theinterval he addressed himself steadily to his task.

  He went through the routine of the work numbly; but his intercourse withthe hands tugged at deep fibres of feelings. He had always shared, asfar as his duties allowed, in the cares and interests of their few freehours: the hours when the automatic appendages of the giant machinebecame men and women again, with desires and passions of their own.Under Amherst's influence the mixed elements of the mill-community hadbegun to crystallize into social groups: his books had served as animprovised lending-library, he had organized a club, a rudimentaryorchestra, and various other means of binding together the betterspirits of the community. With the older men, the attractions of theEldorado, and kindred inducements, often worked against him; but amongthe younger hands, and especially the boys, he had gained a personalascendency that it was bitter to relinquish.

  It was the severing of this tie that cost him most pain in the finaldays at Westmore; and after he had done what he could to console hismother, and to put himself in the way of getting work elsewhere, hetried to see what might be saved out of the ruins of the little polityhe had built up. He hoped his influence might at least persist in theform of an awakened instinct of fellowship; and he gave every spare hourto strengthening the links he had tried to form. The boys, at any rate,would be honestly sorry to have him go: not, indeed, from the profounderreasons that affected him, but because he had not only stoodpersistently between the overseers and themselves, but had recognizedtheir right to fun after work-hours as well as their right to protectionwhile they worked.

  In the glow of Mrs. Westmore's Christmas visitation an athletic club hadbeen formed, and leave obtained to use the Hopewood grounds for Saturdayafternoon sports; and thither Amherst continued to conduct the boysafter the mills closed at the week-end. His last Saturday had now come:a shining afternoon of late February, with a red sunset bending abovefrozen river and slopes of unruffled snow. For an hour or more he hadled the usual sports, coasting down the steep descent from the house tothe edge of the woods, and skating and playing hockey on the roughriver-ice which eager hands kept clear after every snow-storm. He alwaysfelt the contagion of these sports: the glow of movement, the tumult ofyoung voices, the sting of the winter air, roused all the boyhood in hisblood. But today he had to force himself through his part in theperformance. To the very last, as he now saw, he had hoped for a sign inthe heavens: not the reversal of his own sentence--for, merely ondisciplinary grounds, he perceived that to be impossible--but somethingpointing to a change in the management of the mills, some proof thatMrs. Westmore's intervention had betokened more than a passing impulseof compassion. Surely she would not accept without question theabandonment of her favourite scheme; and if she came back to put thequestion, the answer would lay bare the whole situation.... So Amherst'shopes had persuaded him; but the day before he had heard that she was tosail for Europe. The report, first announced in the papers, had beenconfirmed by his mother, who brought back from a visit to Hanaford thenews that Mrs. Westmore was leaving at once for an indefinite period,and that the Hanaford house was to be closed. Irony would have been thereadiest caustic for the wound inflicted; but Amherst, for that veryreason, disdained it. He would not taint his disappointment withmockery, but would leave it among the unspoiled sadnesses of life....

  He flung himself into the boys' sports with his usual energy, meaningthat their last Saturday with him should be their merriest; but he wentthrough his part mechanically, and was glad when the sun began to diptoward the rim of the woods.

  He was standing on the ice, where the river widened just below thehouse, when a jingle of bells broke on the still air, and he saw asleigh driven rapidly up the avenue. Amherst watched it in surprise.Who, at that hour, could be invading the winter solitude of Hopewood?The sleigh halted near the closed house, and a muffled figure, alightingalone, began to move down the snowy slope toward the skaters.

  In an instant he had torn off his skates and was bounding up the bank.He would have known the figure anywhere--known that lovely poise of thehead, the mixture of hesitancy and quickness in the light tread whicheven the snow could not impede. Half-way up the slope to the house theymet, and Mrs. Westmore held out her hand. Face and lips, as she stoodabove him, glowed with her swift passage through the evening air, and inthe blaze of the sunset she seemed saturated with heavenly fires.

  "I drove out to find you--they told me you were here--I arrived thismorning, quite suddenly...."

  She broke off, as though the encounter had checked her ardour instead ofkindling it; but he drew no discouragement from her tone.

  "I hoped you would come before I left--I knew you would!" he exclaimed;and at his last words her face clouded anxiously.

  "I didn't know you were leaving Westmore till yesterday--the daybefore--I got a letter...." Again she wavered, perceptibly trusting herdifficulty to him, in the sweet way he had been trying to forget; and heanswered with recovered energy: "The great thing is that you should behere."

  She shook her head at his optimism. "What can I do if you go?"

  "You can give me a chance, before I go, to tell you a little about someof the loose ends I am leaving."

  "But why are you leaving them? I don't understand. Is it inevitable?"

  "Inevitable," he returned, with an odd glow of satisfaction in the word;and as her eyes besought him, he added, smiling: "I've been dismissed,you see; and from the manager's standpoint I think I deserved it. Butthe best part of my work needn't go with me--and that is what I shouldlike to speak to you about. As assistant manager I can easily bereplaced--have been, I understand, already; but among these boys here Ishould like to think that a little of me stayed--and it will, ifyou'll let me tell you what I've been doing."

  Half-way up the slope to the house they met.]

  She glanced away from him at the busy throng on the ice and at the otherblack cluster above the coasting-slide.

  "How they're enjoying it!" she murmured. "What a pity it was never donebefore! And who will keep it up when you're gone?"

  "You," he answered, meeting her eyes again; and as she coloured a littleunder his look he went on quickly: "Will you come over and look at thecoasting? The time is almost up. One more slide and they'll be packingoff to supper."

  She nodded "yes," and they walked in silence over the white lawn,criss-crossed with tramplings of happy feet, to the ridge from which thecoasters started on their run. Amherst's object in turning the talk hadbeen to gain a moment's respite. He could not bear to waste his perfecthour in futile explanations: he wanted to keep it undisturbed by anythought of the future. And the same feeling seemed to possess hiscompanion, for she did not speak again till they reached the knoll wherethe boys were gathered.

  A sled packed with them hung on the brink: with a last shout it was off,dipping down the incline with the long curved flight of a swallow,flashing across the wide meadow at the base of the hill, and tossedupward again by its own impetus, till it vanished in the dark rim ofwood on the opposite height. The lads waiting on the knoll sang out forjoy, and Bessy clapped her hands and joined with them.

  "What fun! I wish I'd brought Cicely! I've not coasted for years," shelaughed out, as the second detachment of boys heaped themselves onanother sled and shot down. Amherst looked at her with a smile. He sawthat every other feeling had vanished in the exhilaration of watchingthe flight of the sleds. She had forgotten why she had come--forgottenher distress at his dismissal--forgotten everything but the spell of thelong white slope, and the tingle of cold in her veins.

  "Shall we go down? Should you like it?" he asked, feeling no resentmentunder the heightened glow of his pulses.

  "Oh, do take me--I shall love it!" Her eyes shone like a child's--shemight have been a lovelier embodiment of the shouting boyhood aboutthem.

  The first band of coasters, sled at heels, had by this time alreadycovered a third of the homeward stretch; but Amherst was too impatient
to wait. Plunging down to the meadow he caught up the sled-rope, andraced back with the pack of rejoicing youth in his wake. The sharp climbup the hill seemed to fill his lungs with flame: his whole body burnedwith a strange intensity of life. As he reached the top, a distant bellrang across the fields from Westmore, and the boys began to snatch uptheir coats and mufflers.

  "Be off with you--I'll look after the sleds," Amherst called to them asthey dispersed; then he turned for a moment to see that the skatersbelow were also heeding the summons.

  A cold pallor lay on the river-banks and on the low meadow beneath theknoll; but the woodland opposite stood black against scarlet vapoursthat ravelled off in sheer light toward a sky hung with an icy moon.

  Amherst drew up the sled and held it steady while Bessy, seatingherself, tucked her furs close with little breaks of laughter; then heplaced himself in front.

  "Ready?" he cried over his shoulder, and "Ready!" she called back.

  Their craft quivered under them, hanging an instant over the longstretch of whiteness below; the level sun dazzled their eyes, and thefirst plunge seemed to dash them down into darkness. Amherst heard a cryof glee behind him; then all sounds were lost in the whistle of airhumming by like the flight of a million arrows. They had dropped belowthe sunset and were tearing through the clear nether twilight of thedescent; then, with a bound, the sled met the level, and shot awayacross the meadow toward the opposite height. It seemed to Amherst asthough his body had been left behind, and only the spirit in him rodethe wild blue currents of galloping air; but as the sled's rush began toslacken with the strain of the last ascent he was recalled to himself bythe touch of the breathing warmth at his back. Bessy had put out a handto steady herself, and as she leaned forward, gripping his arm, a flyingend of her furs swept his face. There was a delicious pang in being thuscaught back to life; and as the sled stopped, and he sprang to his feet,he still glowed with the sensation. Bessy too was under the spell. Inthe dusk of the beech-grove where they had landed, he could barelydistinguish her features; but her eyes shone on him, and he heard herquick breathing as he stooped to help her to her feet.

  "Oh, how beautiful--it's the only thing better than a good gallop!"

  She leaned against a tree-bole, panting a little, and loosening herfurs.

  "What a pity it's too dark to begin again!" she sighed, looking abouther through the dim weaving of leafless boughs.

  "It's not so dark in the open--we might have one more," he proposed; butshe shook her head, seized by a new whim.

  "It's so still and delicious in here--did you hear the snow fall whenthat squirrel jumped across to the pine?" She tilted her head, narrowingher lids as she peered upward. "There he is! One gets used to thelight.... Look! See his little eyes shining down at us!"

  As Amherst looked where she pointed, the squirrel leapt to another tree,and they stole on after him through the hushed wood, guided by his greyflashes in the dimness. Here and there, in a break of the snow, theytrod on a bed of wet leaves that gave out a breath of hidden life, or ahemlock twig dashed its spicy scent into their faces. As they grew usedto the twilight their eyes began to distinguish countless delicategradations of tint: cold mottlings of grey-black boles against the snow,wet russets of drifted beech-leaves, a distant network of mauve twigsmelting into the woodland haze. And in the silence just such finegradations of sound became audible: the soft drop of loosenedsnow-lumps, a stir of startled wings, the creak of a dead branch,somewhere far off in darkness.

  They walked on, still in silence, as though they had entered the gladeof an enchanted forest and were powerless to turn back or to break thehush with a word. They made no pretense of following the squirrel anylonger; he had flashed away to a high tree-top, from which his ironicalchatter pattered down on their unheeding ears. Amherst's sensations werenot of that highest order of happiness where mind and heart mingle theirelements in the strong draught of life: it was a languid fume that stolethrough him from the cup at his lips. But after the sense of defeat andfailure which the last weeks had brought, the reaction was too exquisiteto be analyzed. All he asked of the moment was its immediatesweetness....

  They had reached the brink of a rocky glen where a little brook stillsent its thread of sound through mufflings of ice and huddled branches.Bessy stood still a moment, bending her head to the sweet cold tinkle;then she moved away and said slowly: "We must go back."

  As they turned to retrace their steps a yellow line of light through thetree-trunks showed them that they had not, after all, gone very deepinto the wood. A few minutes' walk would restore them to the lingeringdaylight, and on the farther side of the meadow stood the sleigh whichwas to carry Bessy back to Hanaford. A sudden sense of the evanescenceof the moment roused Amherst from his absorption. Before the next changein the fading light he would be back again among the ugly realities oflife. Did she, too, hate to return to them? Or why else did she walk soslowly--why did she seem as much afraid as himself to break the silencethat held them in its magic circle?

  A dead pine-branch caught in the edge of her skirt, and she stood stillwhile Amherst bent down to release her. As she turned to help him helooked up with a smile.

  "The wood doesn't want to let you go," he said.

  She made no reply, and he added, rising: "But you'll come back toit--you'll come back often, I hope."

  He could not see her face in the dimness, but her voice trembled alittle as she answered: "I will do what you tell me--but I shall bealone--against all the others: they don't understand."

  The simplicity, the helplessness, of the avowal, appealed to him not asa weakness but as a grace. He understood what she was really saying:"How can you desert me? How can you put this great responsibility on me,and then leave me to bear it alone?" and in the light of her unutteredappeal his action seemed almost like cruelty. Why had he opened her eyesto wrongs she had no strength to redress without his aid?

  He could only answer, as he walked beside her toward the edge of thewood: "You will not be alone--in time you will make the othersunderstand; in time they will be with you."

  "Ah, you don't believe that!" she exclaimed, pausing suddenly, andspeaking with an intensity of reproach that amazed him.

  "I hope it, at any rate," he rejoined, pausing also. "And I'm sure thatif you will come here oftener--if you'll really live among yourpeople----"

  "How can you say that, when you're deserting them?" she broke in, with afeminine excess of inconsequence that fairly dashed the words from hislips.

  "Deserting them? Don't you understand----?"

  "I understand that you've made Mr. Gaines and Truscomb angry--yes; butif I should insist on your staying----"

  Amherst felt the blood rush to his forehead. "No--no, it's notpossible!" he exclaimed, with a vehemence addressed more to himself thanto her.

  "Then what will happen at the mills?"

  "Oh, some one else will be found--the new ideas are stirring everywhere.And if you'll only come back here, and help my successor----"

  "Do you think they are likely to choose any one else with your ideas?"she interposed with unexpected acuteness; and after a short silence heanswered: "Not immediately, perhaps; but in time--in time there will beimprovements."

  "As if the poor people could wait! Oh, it's cruel, cruel of you to go!"

  Her voice broke in a throb of entreaty that went to his inmost fibres.

  "You don't understand. It's impossible in the present state of thingsthat I should do any good by staying."

  "Then you refuse? Even if I were to insist on their asking you to stay,you would still refuse?" she persisted.

  "Yes--I should still refuse."

  She made no answer, but moved a few steps nearer to the edge of thewood. The meadow was just below them now, and the sleigh in plain sighton the height beyond. Their steps made no sound on the sodden driftsunderfoot, and in the silence he thought he heard a catch in herbreathing. It was enough to make the brimming moment overflow. He stoodstill before her and bent his head to hers.
r />   "Bessy!" he said, with sudden vehemence.

  She did not speak or move, but in the quickened state of his perceptionshe became aware that she was silently weeping. The gathering darknessunder the trees enveloped them. It absorbed her outline into the shadowybackground of the wood, from which her face emerged in a faint spot ofpallor; and the same obscurity seemed to envelop his faculties, mergingthe hard facts of life in a blur of feeling in which the distinctestimpression was the sweet sense of her tears.

  "Bessy!" he exclaimed again; and as he drew a step nearer he felt heryield to him, and bury her sobs against his arm.

  BOOK II