The Fruit of the Tree

by Edith Wharton

  XXV

  BESSY, languidly glancing through her midday mail some five days later,uttered a slight exclamation as she withdrew her finger-tip from theflap of the envelope she had begun to open.

  It was a black sleety day, with an east wind bowing the trees beyond thedrenched window-panes, and the two friends, after luncheon, hadwithdrawn to the library, where Justine sat writing notes for Bessy,while the latter lay back in her arm-chair, in the state of dreamylistlessness into which she always sank when not under the stimulus ofamusement or exercise.

  She sat suddenly upright as her eyes fell on the letter.

  "I beg your pardon! I thought it was for me," she said, holding it outto Justine.

  The latter reddened as she glanced at the superscription. It had notoccurred to her that Amherst would reply to her appeal: she had picturedhim springing on the first north-bound train, perhaps not even pausingto announce his return to his wife.... And to receive his letter underBessy's eye was undeniably embarrassing, since Justine felt thenecessity of keeping her intervention secret.

  But under Bessy's eye she certainly was--it continued to rest on hercuriously, speculatively, with an under-gleam of malicious significance.

  "So stupid of me--I can't imagine why I should have expected my husbandto write to me!" Bessy went on, leaning back in lazy contemplation ofher other letters, but still obliquely including Justine in her angle ofvision.

  The latter, after a moment's pause, broke the seal and read.

  "Millfield, Georgia. "My dear Miss Brent,

  "Your letter reached me yesterday and I have thought it over carefully. I appreciate the feeling that prompted it--but I don't know that any friend, however kind and discerning, can give the final advice in such matters. You tell me you are sure my wife will not ask me to return--well, under present conditions that seems to me a sufficient reason for staying away.

  "Meanwhile, I assure you that I have remembered all you said to me that day. I have made no binding arrangement here--nothing to involve my future action--and I have done this solely because you asked it. This will tell you better than words how much I value your advice, and what strong reasons I must have for not following it now.

  "I suppose there are no more exploring parties in this weather. I wish I could show Cicely some of the birds down here.

  "Yours faithfully, "John Amherst.

  "Please don't let my wife ride Impulse."

  Latent under Justine's acute consciousness of what this letter meant,was the sense of Bessy's inferences and conjectures. She could feel themactually piercing the page in her hand like some hypersensitive visualorgan to which matter offers no obstruction. Or rather, baffled in theirendeavour, they were evoking out of the unseen, heaven knew whatfantastic structure of intrigue--scrawling over the innocent page withburning evidences of perfidy and collusion....

  One thing became instantly clear to her: she must show the letter toBessy. She ran her eyes over it again, trying to disentangle theconsequences. There was the allusion to their talk in town--well, shehad told Bessy of that! But the careless reference to their woodlandexcursions--what might not Bessy, in her present mood, make of it?Justine's uppermost thought was of distress at the failure of her plan.Perhaps she might still have induced Amherst to come back, had it notbeen for this accident; but now that hope was destroyed.

  She raised her eyes and met Bessy's. "Will you read it?" she said,holding out the letter.

  Bessy received it with lifted brows, and a protesting murmur--but as sheread, Justine saw the blood mount under her clear skin, invade thetemples, the nape, even the little flower-like ears; then it receded assuddenly, ebbing at last from the very lips, so that the smile withwhich she looked up from her reading was as white as if she had beenunder the stress of physical pain.

  "So you have written my husband to come back?"

  "As you see."

  Bessy looked her straight in the eyes. "I am very much obliged toyou--extremely obliged!"

  Justine met the look quietly. "Which means that you resent myinterference----"

  "Oh, I leave you to call it that!" Bessy mocked, tossing the letter downon the table at her side.

  "Bessy! Don't take it in that way. If I made a mistake I did so with thehope of helping you. How can I stand by, after all these monthstogether, and see you deliberately destroying your life without tryingto stop you?"

  The smile withered on Bessy's lips. "It is very dear and good of you--Iknow you're never happy unless you're helping people--but in this case Ican only repeat what my husband says. He and I don't often look atthings in the same light--but I quite agree with him that the managementof such matters is best left to--to the persons concerned."

  Justine hesitated. "I might answer that, if you take that view, it wasinconsistent of you to talk with me so openly. You've certainly made mefeel that you wanted help--you've turned to me for it. But perhaps thatdoes not justify my writing to Mr. Amherst without your knowing it."

  Bessy laughed. "Ah, my dear, you knew that if you asked me the letterwould never be sent!"

  "Perhaps I did," said Justine simply. "I was trying to help you againstyour will."

  "Well, you see the result." Bessy laid a derisive touch on the letter."Do you understand now whose fault it is if I am alone?"

  Justine faced her steadily. "There is nothing in Mr. Amherst's letter tomake me change my opinion. I still think it lies with you to bring himback."

  Bessy raised a glittering face to her--all hardness and laughter. "Suchmodesty, my dear! As if I had a chance of succeeding where you failed!"

  She sprang up, brushing the curls from her temples with a petulantgesture. "Don't mind me if I'm cross--but I've had a dose of preachingfrom Maria Ansell, and I don't know why my friends should treat me likea puppet without any preferences of my own, and press me upon a man whohas done his best to show that he doesn't want me. As a matter of fact,he and I are luckily agreed on that point too--and I'm afraid all thegood advice in the world won't persuade us to change our opinion!"

  Justine held her ground. "If I believed that of either of you, Ishouldn't have written--I should not be pleading with you now--And Mr.Amherst doesn't believe it either," she added, after a pause, consciousof the risk she was taking, but thinking the words might act like a blowin the face of a person sinking under a deadly narcotic.

  Bessy's smile deepened to a sneer. "I see you've talked me overthoroughly--and on _his_ views I ought perhaps not to have risked anopinion----"

  "We have not talked you over," Justine exclaimed. "Mr. Amherst couldnever talk of you...in the way you think...." And under the lightstaccato of Bessy's laugh she found resolution to add: "It is not inthat way that I know what he feels."

  "Ah? I should be curious to hear, then----"

  Justine turned to the letter, which still lay between them. "Will youread the last sentence again? The postscript, I mean."

  Bessy, after a surprised glance at her, took the letter up with thedeprecating murmur of one who acts under compulsion rather than disputeabout a trifle.

  "The postscript? Let me see...'Don't let my wife ride Impulse.'--_Etpuis?_" she murmured, dropping the page again.

  "Well, does it tell you nothing? It's a cold letter--at first I thoughtso--the letter of a man who believes himself deeply hurt--so deeply thathe will make no advance, no sign of relenting. That's what I thoughtwhen I first read it...but the postscript undoes it all."

  Justine, as she spoke, had drawn near Bessy, laying a hand on her arm,and shedding on her the radiance of a face all charity and sweetcompassion. It was her rare gift, at such moments, to forget her ownrelation to the person for whose fate she was concerned, to cast asideall consciousness of criticism and distrust in the heart she strove toreach, as pitiful people forget their physical timidity in the attemptto help a wounded animal.

  For a moment Bessy seemed to waver. The colour flickered faintly up hercheek, her long lash
es drooped--she had the tenderest lids!--and all herface seemed melting under the beams of Justine's ardour. But the letterwas still in her hand--her eyes, in sinking, fell upon it, and shesounded beneath her breath the fatal phrase: "'I have done this solelybecause you asked it.'

  "After such a tribute to your influence I don't wonder you feelcompetent to set everybody's affairs in order! But take my advice, mydear--_don't_ ask me not to ride Impulse!"

  The pity froze on Justine's lip: she shrank back cut to the quick. For amoment the silence between the two women rang with the flight of arrowy,wounding thoughts; then Bessy's anger flagged, she gave one of herembarrassed half-laughs, and turning back, laid a deprecating touch onher friend's arm.

  "I didn't mean that, Justine...but let us not talk now--I can't!"

  Justine did not move: the reaction could not come as quickly in hercase. But she turned on Bessy two eyes full of pardon, full ofspeechless pity...and Bessy received the look silently before she movedto the door and went out.

  "Oh, poor thing--poor thing!" Justine gasped as the door closed.

  She had already forgotten her own hurt--she was alone again with Bessy'ssterile pain. She stood staring before her for a moment--then her eyesfell on Amherst's letter, which had fluttered to the floor between them.The fatal letter! If it had not come at that unlucky moment perhaps shemight still have gained her end.... She picked it up and re-read it.Yes--there were phrases in it that a wounded suspicious heart mightmisconstrue.... Yet Bessy's last words had absolved her.... Why had shenot answered them? Why had she stood there dumb? The blow to her pridehad been too deep, had been dealt too unexpectedly--for one miserablemoment she had thought first of herself! Ah, that importunate,irrepressible self--the _moi haissable_ of the Christian--if only onecould tear it from one's breast! She had missed an opportunity--her lastopportunity perhaps! By this time, even, a hundred hostile influences,cold whispers of vanity, of selfishness, of worldly pride, might havedrawn their freezing ring about Bessy's heart....

  Justine started up to follow her...then paused, recalling her lastwords. "Let us not talk now--I can't!" She had no right to intrude onthat bleeding privacy--if the chance had been hers she had lost it. Shedropped back into her seat at the desk, hiding her face in her hands.

  Presently she heard the clock strike, and true to her tireless instinctof activity, she lifted her head, took up her pen, and went on with thecorrespondence she had dropped.... It was hard at first to collect herthoughts, or even to summon to her pen the conventional phrases thatsufficed for most of the notes. Groping for a word, she pushed aside herwriting and stared out at the sallow frozen landscape framed by thewindow at which she sat. The sleet had ceased, and hollows of sunlessblue showed through the driving wind-clouds. A hard sky and a hardground--frost-bound ringing earth under rigid ice-mailed trees.

  As Justine looked out, shivering a little, she saw a woman's figureriding down the avenue toward the gate. The figure disappeared behind aclump of evergreens--showed again farther down, through the boughs of askeleton beech--and revealed itself in the next open space asBessy--Bessy in the saddle on a day of glaring frost, when no horsecould keep his footing out of a walk!

  Justine went to the window and strained her eyes for a confirmingglimpse. Yes--it was Bessy! There was no mistaking that light flexiblefigure, every line swaying true to the beat of the horse's stride. ButJustine remembered that Bessy had not meant to ride--had countermandedher horse because of the bad going.... Well, she was a perfecthorsewoman and had no doubt chosen her surest-footed mount...probablythe brown cob, Tony Lumpkin.

  But when did Tony's sides shine so bright through the leafless branches?And when did he sweep his rider on with such long free play of thehind-quarters? Horse and rider shot into sight again, rounding the curveof the avenue near the gates, and in a break of sunlight Justine saw theglitter of chestnut flanks--and remembered that Impulse was the onlychestnut in the stables....

  * * * * *

  She went back to her seat and continued writing. Bessy had left aformidable heap of bills and letters; and when this was demolished,Justine had her own correspondence to despatch. She had heard thatmorning from the matron of Saint Elizabeth's: an interesting "case" wasoffered her, but she must come within two days. For the first few hoursshe had wavered, loath to leave Lynbrook without some definite light onher friend's future; but now Amherst's letter had shed that light--orrather, had deepened the obscurity--and she had no pretext for lingeringon where her uselessness had been so amply demonstrated.

  She wrote to the matron accepting the engagement; and the acceptanceinvolved the writing of other letters, the general reorganizing of thatminute polity, the life of Justine Brent. She smiled a little to thinkhow easily she could be displaced and transplanted--how slender were hermaterial impedimenta, how few her invisible bonds! She was as light anddetachable as a dead leaf on the autumn breeze--yet she was in theseason of sap and flower, when there is life and song in the trees!

  But she did not think long of herself, for an undefinable anxiety ranthrough her thoughts like a black thread. It found expression, now andthen, in the long glances she threw through the window--in her rising toconsult the clock and compare her watch with it--in a nervous snatch ofhumming as she paced the room once or twice before going back to herdesk....

  Why was Bessy so late? Dusk was falling already--the early end of thecold slate-hued day. But Bessy always rode late--there was always arational answer to Justine's irrational conjectures.... It was the sightof those chestnut flanks that tormented her--she knew of Bessy'sprevious struggles with the mare. But the indulging of idleapprehensions was not in her nature, and when the tea-tray came, andwith it Cicely, sparkling from a gusty walk, and coral-pink in her cloudof crinkled hair, Justine sprang up and cast off her cares.

  It cost her a pang, again, to see the lamps lit and the curtainsdrawn--shutting in the warmth and brightness of the house from thatwind-swept frozen twilight through which Bessy rode alone. But the icytouch of the thought slipped from Justine's mind as she bent above thetea-tray, gravely measuring Cicely's milk into a "grown-up" teacup,hearing the confidential details of the child's day, and capping themwith banter and fantastic narrative.

  She was not sorry to go--ah, no! The house had become a prison to her,with ghosts walking its dreary floors. But to lose Cicely would bebitter--she had not felt how bitter till the child pressed against herin the firelight, insisting raptly, with little sharp elbows stabbingher knee: "And _then_ what happened, Justine?"

  The door opened, and some one came in to look at the fire. Justine,through the mazes of her fairy-tale, was dimly conscious that it wasKnowles, and not one of the footmen...the proud Knowles, who nevermended the fires himself.... As he passed out again, hovering slowlydown the long room, she rose, leaving Cicely on the hearth-rug, andfollowed him to the door.

  "Has Mrs. Amherst not come in?" she asked, not knowing why she wished toask it out of the child's hearing.

  "No, miss. I looked in myself to see--thinking she might have come bythe side-door."

  "She may have gone to her sitting-room."

  "She's not upstairs."

  They both paused. Then Justine said: "What horse was she riding?"

  "Impulse, Miss." The butler looked at his large responsible watch. "It'snot late--" he said, more to himself than to her.

  "No. Has she been riding Impulse lately?"

  "No, Miss. Not since that day the mare nearly had her off. I understoodMr. Amherst did not wish it."

  Justine went back to Cicely and the fairy-tale.--As she took up thethread of the Princess's adventures, she asked herself why she had everhad any hope of helping Bessy. The seeds of disaster were in the poorcreature's soul.... Even when she appeared to be moved, lifted out ofherself, her escaping impulses were always dragged back to the magneticcentre of hard distrust and resistance that sometimes forms the core ofsoft-fibred natures. As she had answered her husband's previous appealby her flight to the wom
an he disliked, so she answered this one byriding the horse he feared.... Justine's last illusions crumbled. Thedistance between two such natures was unspannable. Amherst had done wellto remain away...and with a tidal rush her sympathies swept back to hisside....

  * * * * *

  The governess came to claim Cicely. One of the footmen came to putanother log on the fire. Then the rite of removing the tea-table wasmajestically performed--the ceremonial that had so often jarred onAmherst's nerves. As she watched it, Justine had a vague sense of theimmutability of the household routine--a queer awed feeling that,whatever happened, a machine so perfectly adjusted would work oninexorably, like a natural law....

  She rose to look out of the window, staring vainly into blacknessbetween the parted curtains. As she turned back, passing thewriting-table, she noticed that Cicely's irruption had made her forgetto post her letters--an unusual oversight. A glance at the clock toldher that she was not too late for the mail--reminding her, at the sametime, that it was scarcely three hours since Bessy had started on herride.... She saw the foolishness of her fears. Even in winter, Bessyoften rode for more than three hours; and now that the days were growinglonger----

  Suddenly reassured, Justine went out into the hall, intending to carryher batch of letters to the red pillar-box by the door. As she did so, acold blast struck her. Could it be that for once the faultless routineof the house had been relaxed, that one of the servants had left theouter door ajar? She walked over to the vestibule--yes, both doors werewide. The night rushed in on a vicious wind. As she pushed the vestibuledoor shut, she heard the dogs sniffing and whining on the threshold. Shecrossed the vestibule, and heard voices and the tramping of feet in thedarkness--then saw a lantern gleam. Suddenly Knowles shot out of thenight--the lantern struck on his bleached face.

  Justine, stepping back, pressed the electric button in the wall, and thewide door-step was abruptly illuminated, with its huddled, pushing,heavily-breathing group...black figures writhing out of darkness,strange faces distorted in the glare.

  "Bessy!" she cried, and sprang forward; but suddenly Wyant was beforeher, his hand on her arm; and as the dreadful group struggled by intothe hall, he froze her to him with a whisper: "The spine----"