The Fruit of the Tree

by Edith Wharton

  XXVIII

  THAT evening, when Justine took her place at the bedside, and the othertwo nurses had gone down to supper, Bessy turned her head slightly,resting her eyes on her friend.

  The rose-shaded lamp cast a tint of life on her face, and the darkcircles of pain made her eyes look deeper and brighter. Justine wasalmost deceived by the delusive semblance of vitality, and a hope thatwas half anguish stirred in her. She sat down by the bed, clasping thehand on the sheet.

  "You feel better tonight?"

  "I breathe...better...." The words came brokenly, between long pauses,but without the hard agonized gasps of the previous night.

  "That's a good sign." Justine paused, and then, letting her fingersglide once or twice over the back of Bessy's hand--"You know, dear, Mr.Amherst is coming," she leaned down to say.

  Bessy's eyes moved again, slowly, inscrutably. She had never asked forher husband.

  "Soon?" she whispered.

  "He had started on a long journey--to out-of-the-way places--to studysomething about cotton growing--my message has just overtaken him,"Justine explained.

  Bessy lay still, her breast straining for breath. She remained so longwithout speaking that Justine began to think she was falling back intothe somnolent state that intervened between her moments of completeconsciousness. But at length she lifted her lids again, and her lipsstirred.

  "He will be...long...coming?"

  "Some days."

  "How...many?"

  "We can't tell yet."

  Silence again. Bessy's features seemed to shrink into a kind of waxenquietude--as though her face were seen under clear water, a long waydown. And then, as she lay thus, without sound or movement, two tearsforced themselves through her lashes and rolled down her cheeks.

  Justine, bending close, wiped them away. "Bessy--"

  The wet lashes were raised--an anguished look met her gaze.

  "I--I can't bear it...."

  "What, dear?"

  "The pain.... Shan't I die...before?"

  "You may get well, Bessy."

  Justine felt her hand quiver. "Walk again...?"

  "Perhaps...not that."

  "_This?_ I can't bear it...." Her head drooped sideways, turning awaytoward the wall.

  Justine, that night, kept her vigil with an aching heart. The news ofAmherst's return had produced no sign of happiness in his wife--- thetears had been forced from her merely by the dread of being kept aliveduring the long days of pain before he came. The medical explanationmight have been that repeated crises of intense physical anguish, andthe deep lassitude succeeding them, had so overlaid all other feelings,or at least so benumbed their expression, that it was impossible toconjecture how Bessy's little half-smothered spark of soul had reallybeen affected by the news. But Justine did not believe in this argument.Her experience among the sick had convinced her, on the contrary, thatthe shafts of grief or joy will find a crack in the heaviest armour ofphysical pain, that the tiniest gleam of hope will light up depths ofmental inanition, and somehow send a ray to the surface.... It was truethat Bessy had never known how to bear pain, and that her own sensationshad always formed the centre of her universe--yet, for that very reason,if the thought of seeing Amherst had made her happier it would havelifted, at least momentarily, the weight of death from her body.

  Justine, at first, had almost feared the contrary effect--feared thatthe moral depression might show itself in a lowering of physicalresistance. But the body kept up its obstinate struggle against death,drawing strength from sources of vitality unsuspected in that frailenvelope. The surgeon's report the next day was more favourable, andevery day won from death pointed now to a faint chance of recovery.

  Such at least was Wyant's view. Dr. Garford and the consulting surgeonshad not yet declared themselves; but the young doctor, strung to thehighest point of watchfulness, and constantly in attendance on thepatient, was tending toward a hopeful prognosis. The growing convictionspurred him to fresh efforts; at Dr. Garford's request, he hadtemporarily handed over his Clifton practice to a young New York doctorin need of change, and having installed himself at Lynbrook he gave uphis days and nights to Mrs. Amherst's case.

  "If any one can save her, Wyant will," Dr. Garford had declared toJustine, when, on the tenth day after the accident, the surgeons heldtheir third consultation. Dr. Garford reserved his own judgment. He hadseen cases--they had all seen cases...but just at present the signsmight point either way.... Meanwhile Wyant's confidence was aninvaluable asset toward the patient's chances of recovery. Hopefulnessin the physician was almost as necessary as in the patient--contact withsuch faith had been known to work miracles.

  Justine listened in silence, wishing that she too could hope. Butwhichever way the prognosis pointed, she felt only a dull despair. Shebelieved no more than Dr. Garford in the chance of recovery--thatconviction seemed to her a mirage of Wyant's imagination, of his boyishambition to achieve the impossible--and every hopeful symptom pointed,in her mind, only to a longer period of useless suffering.

  Her hours at Bessy's side deepened her revolt against the energy spentin the fight with death. Since Bessy had learned that her husband wasreturning she had never, by sign or word, reverted to the fact. Exceptfor a gleam of tenderness, now and then, when Cicely was brought toher, she seemed to have sunk back into herself, as though her poorlittle flicker of consciousness were wholly centred in the contemplationof its pain. It was not that her mind was clouded--only that it wasimmersed, absorbed, in that dread mystery of disproportionate anguishwhich a capricious fate had laid on it.... And what if she recovered, asthey called it? If the flood-tide of pain should ebb, leaving herstranded, a helpless wreck on the desert shores of inactivity? Whatwould life be to Bessy without movement? Thought would never set herblood flowing--motion, in her, could only take the form of the physicalprocesses. Her love for Amherst was dead--even if it flickered into lifeagain, it could but put the spark to smouldering discords andresentments; and would her one uncontaminated sentiment--her affectionfor Cicely--suffice to reconcile her to the desolate half-life which wasthe utmost that science could hold out?

  Here again, Justine's experience answered no. She did not believe inBessy's powers of moral recuperation--her body seemed less near deaththan her spirit. Life had been poured out to her in generous measure,and she had spilled the precious draught--the few drops remaining in thecup could no longer renew her strength.

  Pity, not condemnation--profound illimitable pity--flowed from thisconclusion of Justine's. To a compassionate heart there could be nosadder instance of the wastefulness of life than this struggle of thesmall half-formed soul with a destiny too heavy for its strength. IfBessy had had any moral hope to fight for, every pang of suffering wouldhave been worth enduring; but it was intolerable to witness thespectacle of her useless pain.

  Incessant commerce with such thoughts made Justine, as the days passed,crave any escape from solitude, any contact with other ideas. Even thereappearance of Westy Gaines, bringing a breath of common-placeconventional grief into the haunted silence of the house, was a respitefrom her questionings. If it was hard to talk to him, to answer hisenquiries, to assent to his platitudes, it was harder, a thousand times,to go on talking to herself....

  Mr. Tredegar's coming was a distinct relief. His dryness was likecautery to her wound. Mr. Tredegar undoubtedly grieved for Bessy; buthis grief struck inward, exuding only now and then, through the fissuresof his hard manner, in a touch of extra solemnity, the more labouredrounding of a period. Yet, on the whole, it was to his feeling thatJustine felt her own to be most akin. If his stoic acceptance of theinevitable proceeded from the resolve to spare himself pain, that atleast was a form of strength, an indication of character. She had nevercared for the fluencies of invertebrate sentiment.

  Now, on the evening of the day after her talk with Bessy, it was morethan ever a solace to escape from the torment of her thoughts into therarefied air of Mr. Tredegar's presence. The day had been a bad one forthe patient, an
d Justine's distress had been increased by the receipt ofa cable from Mr. Langhope, announcing that, owing to delay in reachingBrindisi, he had missed the fast steamer from Cherbourg, and would notarrive till four or five days later than he had expected. Mr. Tredegar,in response to her report, had announced his intention of coming down bya late train, and now he and Justine and Dr. Wyant, after diningtogether, were seated before the fire in the smoking-room.

  "I take it, then," Mr. Tredegar said, turning to Wyant, "that thechances of her living to see her father are very slight."

  The young doctor raised his head eagerly. "Not in my opinion, sir.Unless unforeseen complications arise, I can almost promise to keep heralive for another month--I'm not afraid to call it six weeks!"

  "H'm--Garford doesn't say so."

  "No; Dr. Garford argues from precedent."

  "And you?" Mr. Tredegar's thin lips were visited by the ghost of asmile.

  "Oh, I don't argue--I just feel my way," said Wyant imperturbably.

  "And yet you don't hesitate to predict----"

  "No, I don't, sir; because the case, as I see it, presents certaindefinite indications." He began to enumerate them, cleverly avoiding theuse of technicalities and trying to make his point clear by the use ofsimple illustration and analogy. It sickened Justine to listen to hispassionate exposition--she had heard it so often, she believed in it solittle.

  Mr. Tredegar turned a probing glance on him as he ended. "Then, todayeven, you believe not only in the possibility of prolonging life, but ofultimate recovery?"

  Wyant hesitated. "I won't call it recovery--today. Say--lifeindefinitely prolonged."

  "And the paralysis?"

  "It might disappear--after a few months--or a few years."

  "Such an outcome would be unusual?"

  "Exceptional. But then there _are_ exceptions. And I'm straining everynerve to make this one!"

  "And the suffering--such as today's, for instance--is unavoidable?"

  "Unhappily."

  "And bound to increase?"

  "Well--as the anaesthetics lose their effect...."

  There was a tap on the door, and one of the nurses entered to report toWyant. He went out with her, and Justine was left with Mr. Tredegar.

  He turned to her thoughtfully. "That young fellow seems sure of himself.You believe in him?"

  Justine hesitated. "Not in his expectation of recovery--no one does."

  "But you think they can keep the poor child alive till Langhope and herhusband get back?"

  There was a moment's pause; then Justine murmured: "It can be done...Ithink...."

  "Yes--it's horrible," said Mr. Tredegar suddenly, as if in answer to herthought.

  She looked up in surprise, and saw his eye resting on her with whatseemed like a mist of sympathy on its vitreous surface. Her lipstrembled, parting as if for speech--but she looked away withoutanswering.

  "These new devices for keeping people alive," Mr. Tredegar continued;"they increase the suffering besides prolonging it?"

  "Yes--in some cases."

  "In this case?"

  "I am afraid so."

  The lawyer drew out his fine cambric handkerchief, and furtively wiped aslight dampness from his forehead. "I wish to God she had been killed!"he said.

  Justine lifted her head again, with an answering exclamation. "Oh, yes!"

  "It's infernal--the time they can make it last."

  "It's useless!" Justine broke out.

  "Useless?" He turned his critical glance on her. "Well, that's besidethe point--since it's inevitable."

  She wavered a moment--but his words had loosened the bonds about herheart, and she could not check herself so suddenly. "Why inevitable?"

  Mr. Tredegar looked at her in surprise, as though wondering at sounprofessional an utterance from one who, under ordinary circumstances,showed the absolute self-control and submission of the well-disciplinednurse.

  "Human life is sacred," he said sententiously.

  "Ah, that must have been decreed by some one who had never suffered!"Justine exclaimed.

  Mr. Tredegar smiled compassionately: he evidently knew how to makeallowances for the fact that she was overwrought by the sight of herfriend's suffering: "Society decreed it--not one person," he corrected.

  "Society--science--religion!" she murmured, as if to herself.

  "Precisely. It's the universal consensus--the result of the world'saccumulated experience. Cruel in individual instances--necessary for thegeneral welfare. Of course your training has taught you all this; but Ican understand that at such a time...."

  "Yes," she said, rising wearily as Wyant came in.

  * * * * *

  Her worst misery, now, was to have to discuss Bessy's condition withWyant. To the young physician Bessy was no longer a suffering,agonizing creature: she was a case--a beautiful case. As the problemdeveloped new intricacies, becoming more and more of a challenge to hisfaculties of observation and inference, Justine saw the abstractscientific passion supersede his personal feeling of pity. Though hisprofessional skill made him exquisitely tender to the patient under hishands, he seemed hardly conscious that she was a woman who hadbefriended him, and whom he had so lately seen in the brightness ofhealth and enjoyment. This view was normal enough--it was, as Justineknew, the ideal state of mind for the successful physician, in whomsympathy for the patient as an individual must often impede swift choiceand unfaltering action. But what she shrank from was his resolve to saveBessy's life--a resolve fortified to the point of exasperation by thescepticism of the consulting surgeons, who saw in it only theyoungster's natural desire to distinguish himself by performing a featwhich his elders deemed impossible.

  As the days dragged on, and Bessy's sufferings increased, Justine longedfor a protesting word from Dr. Garford or one of his colleagues. In herhospital experience she had encountered cases where the useless agoniesof death were mercifully shortened by the physician; why was not this acase for such treatment? The answer was simple enough--in the firstplace, it was the duty of the surgeons to keep their patient alive tillher husband and her father could reach her; and secondly, there was thatfaint illusive hope of so-called recovery, in which none of thembelieved, yet which they could not ignore in their treatment. Theevening after Mr. Tredegar's departure Wyant was setting this forth atgreat length to Justine. Bessy had had a bad morning: the bronchialsymptoms which had developed a day or two before had greatly increasedher distress, and there had been, at dawn, a moment of weakness when itseemed that some pitiful power was about to defeat the relentlessefforts of science. But Wyant had fought off the peril. By the promptand audacious use of stimulants--by a rapid marshalling of resources, adisplay of self-reliance and authority, which Justine could not butadmire as she mechanically seconded his efforts--the spark of life hadbeen revived, and Bessy won back for fresh suffering.

  "Yes--I say it can be done: tonight I say it more than ever," Wyantexclaimed, pushing the disordered hair from his forehead, and leaningtoward Justine across the table on which their brief evening meal hadbeen served. "I say the way the heart has rallied proves that we've gotmore strength to draw on than any of them have been willing to admit.The breathing's better too. If we can fight off the degenerativeprocesses--and, by George, I believe we can!" He looked up suddenly atJustine. "With you to work with, I believe I could do anything. How youdo back a man up! You think with your hands--with every individualfinger!"

  Justine turned her eyes away: she felt a shudder of repulsion steal overher tired body. It was not that she detected any note of personaladmiration in his praise--he had commended her as the surgeon mightcommend a fine instrument fashioned for his use. But that she should bethe instrument to serve such a purpose--that her skill, her promptness,her gift of divining and interpreting the will she worked with, shouldbe at the service of this implacable scientific passion! Ah, no--shecould be silent no longer....

  She looked up at Wyant, and their eyes met.

  "Why do you d
o it?" she asked.

  He stared, as if thinking that she referred to some special point in histreatment. "Do what?"

  "It's so useless...you all know she must die."

  "I know nothing of the kind...and even the others are not so suretoday." He began to go over it all again--repeating his arguments,developing new theories, trying to force into her reluctant mind his ownfaith in the possibility of success.

  * * * * *

  Justine sat resting her chin on her clasped hands, her eyes gazingstraight before her under dark tormented brows. When he paused sheremained silent.

  "Well--don't you believe me?" he broke out with sudden asperity.

  "I don't know...I can't tell...."

  "But as long as there's a doubt, even--a doubt my way--and I'll show youthere is, if you'll give me time----"

  "How much time?" she murmured, without shifting her gaze.

  "Ah--that depends on ourselves: on you and me chiefly. That's whatGarford admits. _They_ can't do much now--they've got to leave the gameto us. It's a question of incessant vigilance...of utilizing every hour,every moment.... Time's all I ask, and _you_ can give it to me, if anyone can!"

  Under the challenge of his tone Justine rose to her feet with a lowmurmur of fear. "Ah, don't ask me!"

  "Don't ask you----?"

  "I can't--I can't."

  Wyant stood up also, turning on her an astonished glance.

  "You can't what--?"

  Their eyes met, and she thought she read in his a sudden divination ofher inmost thoughts. The discovery electrified her flagging strength,restoring her to immediate clearness of brain. She saw the gulf ofself-betrayal over which she had hung, and the nearness of the perilnerved her to a last effort of dissimulation.

  "I can't...talk of it...any longer," she faltered, letting her tearsflow, and turning on him a face of pure womanly weakness.

  Wyant looked at her without answering. Did he distrust even these plainphysical evidences of exhaustion, or was he merely disappointed in her,as in one whom he had believed to be above the emotional failings of hersex?

  "You're over-tired," he said coldly. "Take tonight to rest. Miss Macecan replace you for the next few hours--and I may need you moretomorrow."