The Fruit of the Tree

by Edith Wharton

  XXX

  ON a September day, somewhat more than a year and a half after BessyAmherst's death, her husband and his mother sat at luncheon in thedining-room of the Westmore house at Hanaford.

  The house was John Amherst's now, and shortly after the loss of his wifehe had established himself there with his mother. By a will made somesix months before her death, Bessy had divided her estate between herhusband and daughter, placing Cicely's share in trust, and appointingMr. Langhope and Amherst as her guardians. As the latter was also hertrustee, the whole management of the estate devolved on him, while hiscontrol of the Westmore mills was ensured by his receiving a slightlylarger proportion of the stock than his step-daughter.

  The will had come as a surprise, not only to Amherst himself, but to hiswife's family, and more especially to her legal adviser. Mr. Tredegarhad in fact had nothing to do with the drawing of the instrument; but asit had been drawn in due form, and by a firm of excellent standing, hewas obliged, in spite of his private views, and Mr. Langhope's openadjurations that he should "do something," to declare that there was nopretext for questioning the validity of the document.

  To Amherst the will was something more than a proof of his wife'sconfidence: it came as a reconciling word from her grave. For the dateshowed that it had been made at a moment when he supposed himself tohave lost all influence over her--on the morrow of the day when she hadstipulated that he should give up the management of the Westmore mills,and yield the care of her property to Mr. Tredegar.

  While she smote him with one hand, she sued for pardon with the other;and the contradiction was so characteristic, it explained and excused inso touching a way the inconsistencies of her impulsive heart andhesitating mind, that he was filled with that tender compunction, thatsearching sense of his own shortcomings, which generous natures feelwhen they find they have underrated the generosity of others. ButAmherst's was not an introspective mind, and his sound moral sense toldhim, when the first pang of self-reproach had subsided, that he had donehis best by his wife, and was in no way to blame if her recognition ofthe fact had come too late. The self-reproach subsided; and, instead ofthe bitterness of the past, it left a softened memory which made himtake up his task with the sense that he was now working with Bessy andnot against her.

  Yet perhaps, after all, it was chiefly the work itself which had healedold wounds, and quelled the tendency to vain regrets. Amherst was onlythirty-four; and in the prime of his energies the task he was made forhad been given back to him. To a sound nature, which finds its outlet infruitful action, nothing so simplifies the complexities of life, sotends to a large acceptance of its vicissitudes and mysteries, as thesense of doing something each day toward clearing one's own bit of thewilderness. And this was the joy at last conceded to Amherst. The millswere virtually his; and the fact that he ruled them not only in his ownright but as Cicely's representative, made him doubly eager to justifyhis wife's trust in him.

  Mrs. Amherst, looking up from a telegram which the parlour-maid hadhanded her, smiled across the table at her son.

  "From Maria Ansell--they are all coming tomorrow."

  "Ah--that's good," Amherst rejoined. "I should have been sorry if Cicelyhad not been here."

  "Mr. Langhope is coming too," his mother continued. "I'm glad of that,John."

  "Yes," Amherst again assented.

  The morrow was to be a great day at Westmore. The Emergency Hospital,planned in the first months of his marriage, and abandoned in thegeneral reduction of expenditure at the mills, had now been completed ona larger and more elaborate scale, as a memorial to Bessy. The strictretrenchment of all personal expenses, and the leasing of Lynbrook andthe town house, had enabled Amherst, in eighteen months, to lay byenough income to carry out this plan, which he was impatient to seeexecuted as a visible commemoration of his wife's generosity toWestmore. For Amherst persisted in regarding the gift of her fortune asa gift not to himself but to the mills: he looked on himself merely asthe agent of her beneficent intentions. He was anxious that Westmore andHanaford should take the same view; and the opening of the WestmoreMemorial Hospital was therefore to be performed with an unwonted degreeof ceremony.

  "I am glad Mr. Langhope is coming," Mrs. Amherst repeated, as they rosefrom the table. "It shows, dear--doesn't it?--that he's reallygratified--that he appreciates your motive...."

  She raised a proud glance to her tall son, whose head seemed to towerhigher than ever above her small proportions. Renewed self-confidence,and the habit of command, had in fact restored the erectness toAmherst's shoulders and the clearness to his eyes. The cleft between thebrows was gone, and his veiled inward gaze had given place to a glancealmost as outward-looking and unspeculative as his mother's.

  "It shows--well, yes--what you say!" he rejoined with a slight laugh,and a tap on her shoulder as she passed.

  He was under no illusions as to his father-in-law's attitude: he knewthat Mr. Langhope would willingly have broken the will which deprivedhis grand-daughter of half her inheritance, and that his subsequent showof friendliness was merely a concession to expediency. But in hispresent mood Amherst almost believed that time and closer relationsmight turn such sentiments into honest liking. He was very fond of hislittle step-daughter, and deeply sensible of his obligations toward her;and he hoped that, as Mr. Langhope came to recognize this, it mightbring about a better understanding between them.

  His mother detained him. "You're going back to the mills at once? Iwanted to consult you about the rooms. Miss Brent had better be next toCicely?"

  "I suppose so--yes. I'll see you before I go." He nodded affectionatelyand passed on, his hands full of papers, into the Oriental smoking-room,now dedicated to the unexpected uses of an office and study.

  Mrs. Amherst, as she turned away, found the parlour-maid in the act ofopening the front door to the highly-tinted and well-dressed figure ofMrs. Harry Dressel.

  "I'm so delighted to hear that you're expecting Justine," began Mrs.Dressel as the two ladies passed into the drawing-room.

  "Ah, you've heard too?" Mrs. Amherst rejoined, enthroning her visitor inone of the monumental plush armchairs beneath the threatening weight ofthe Bay of Naples.

  "I hadn't till this moment; in fact I flew in to ask for news, and onthe door-step there was such a striking-looking young man enquiring forher, and I heard the parlour-maid say she was arriving tomorrow."

  "A young man? Some one you didn't know?" Striking apparitions of themale sex were of infrequent occurrence at Hanaford, and Mrs. Amherst'sunabated interest in the movement of life caused her to dwell on thisstatement.

  "Oh, no--I'm sure he was a stranger. Extremely slight and pale, withremarkable eyes. He was so disappointed--he seemed sure of finding her."

  "Well, no doubt he'll come back tomorrow.--You know we're expecting thewhole party," added Mrs. Amherst, to whom the imparting of good news wasalways an irresistible temptation.

  Mrs. Dressel's interest deepened at once. "Really? Mr. Langhope too?"

  "Yes. It's a great pleasure to my son."

  "It must be! I'm so glad. I suppose in a way it will be rather sad forMr. Langhope--seeing everything here so unchanged----"

  Mrs. Amherst straightened herself a little. "I think he will prefer tofind it so," she said, with a barely perceptible change of tone.

  "Oh, I don't know. They were never very fond of this house."

  There was an added note of authority in Mrs. Dressel's accent. In thelast few months she had been to Europe and had had nervous prostration,and these incontestable evidences of growing prosperity could not alwaysbe kept out of her voice and bearing. At any rate, they justified her inthinking that her opinion on almost any subject within the range ofhuman experience was a valuable addition to the sum-total of wisdom; andunabashed by the silence with which her comment was received, shecontinued her critical survey of the drawing-room.

  "Dear Mrs. Amherst--you know I can't help saying what I think--and I'veso often wondered why you don't do this room over.
With these highceilings you could do something lovely in Louis Seize."

  A faint pink rose to Mrs. Amherst's cheeks. "I don't think my son wouldever care to make any changes here," she said.

  "Oh, I understand his feeling; but when he begins to entertain--and youknow poor Bessy always _hated_ this furniture."

  Mrs. Amherst smiled slightly. "Perhaps if he marries again--" she said,seizing at random on a pretext for changing the subject.

  Mrs. Dressel dropped the hands with which she was absent-mindedlyassuring herself of the continuance of unbroken relations between herhat and her hair.

  "_Marries again?_ Why--you don't mean--? He doesn't think of it?"

  "Not in the least--I spoke figuratively," her hostess rejoined with alaugh.

  "Oh, of course--I see. He really _couldn't_ marry, could he? I mean, itwould be so wrong to Cicely--under the circumstances."

  Mrs. Amherst's black eye-brows gathered in a slight frown. She hadalready noticed, on the part of the Hanaford clan, a disposition toregard Amherst as imprisoned in the conditions of his trust, andcommitted to the obligation of handing on unimpaired to Cicely thefortune his wife's caprice had bestowed on him; and this open expressionof the family view was singularly displeasing to her.

  "I had not thought of it in that light--but it's really of noconsequence how one looks at a thing that is not going to happen," shesaid carelessly.

  "No--naturally; I see you were only joking. He's so devoted to Cicely,isn't he?" Mrs. Dressel rejoined, with her bright obtuseness.

  A step on the threshold announced Amherst's approach.

  "I'm afraid I must be off, mother--" he began, halting in the doorwaywith the instinctive masculine recoil from the afternoon caller.

  "Oh, Mr. Amherst, how d'you do? I suppose you're very busy abouttomorrow? I just flew in to find out if Justine was really coming," Mrs.Dressel explained, a little fluttered by the effort of recalling whatshe had been saying when he entered.

  "I believe my mother expects the whole party," Amherst replied, shakinghands with the false _bonhomie_ of the man entrapped.

  "How delightful! And it's so nice to think that Mr. Langhope'sarrangement with Justine still works so well," Mrs. Dressel hastened on,nervously hoping that her volubility would smother any recollection ofwhat he had chanced to overhear.

  "Mr. Langhope is lucky in having persuaded Miss Brent to take charge ofCicely," Mrs. Amherst quietly interposed.

  "Yes--and it was so lucky for Justine too! When she came back fromEurope with us last autumn, I could see she simply hated the idea oftaking up her nursing again."

  Amherst's face darkened at the allusion, and his mother said hurriedly:"Ah, she was tired, poor child; but I'm only afraid that, after thesummer's rest, she may want some more active occupation than lookingafter a little girl."

  "Oh, I think not--she's so fond of Cicely. And of course it's everythingto her to have a comfortable home."

  Mrs. Amherst smiled. "At her age, it's not always everything."

  Mrs. Dressel stared slightly. "Oh, Justine's twenty-seven, you know;she's not likely to marry now," she said, with the mild finality of theearly-wedded.

  She rose as she spoke, extending cordial hands of farewell. "You must beso busy preparing for the great day...if only it doesn't rain!... No,_please_, Mr. Amherst!... It's a mere step--I'm walking...."

  * * * * *

  That afternoon, as Amherst walked out toward Westmore for a survey ofthe final preparations, he found that, among the pleasant thoughtsaccompanying him, one of the pleasantest was the anticipation of seeingJustine Brent.

  Among the little group who were to surround him on the morrow, she wasthe only one discerning enough to understand what the day meant to him,or with sufficient knowledge to judge of the use he had made of hisgreat opportunity. Even now that the opportunity had come, and allobstacles were levelled, sympathy with his work was as much lacking asever; and only Duplain, at length reinstated as manager, reallyunderstood and shared in his aims. But Justine Brent's sympathy was of adifferent kind from the manager's. If less logical, it was warmer, morepenetrating--like some fine imponderable fluid, so subtle that it couldalways find a way through the clumsy processes of human intercourse.Amherst had thought very often of this quality in her during the weekswhich followed his abrupt departure for Georgia; and in trying to defineit he had said to himself that she felt with her brain.

  And now, aside from the instinctive understanding between them, she wasset apart in his thoughts by her association with his wife's last days.On his arrival from the south he had gathered on all sides evidences ofher tender devotion to Bessy: even Mr. Tredegar's chary praise swelledthe general commendation. From the surgeons he heard how her unweariedskill had helped them in their fruitless efforts; poor Cicely, awed byher loss, clung to her mother's friend with childish tenacity; and theyoung rector of Saint Anne's, shyly acquitting himself of his visit ofcondolence, dwelt chiefly on the consolatory thought of Miss Brent'spresence at the death-bed.

  The knowledge that Justine had been with his wife till the end had, infact, done more than anything else to soften Amherst's regrets; and hehad tried to express something of this in the course of his first talkwith her. Justine had given him a clear and self-possessed report of thedreadful weeks at Lynbrook; but at his first allusion to her own part inthem, she shrank into a state of distress which seemed to plead with himto refrain from even the tenderest touch on her feelings. It was apeculiarity of their friendship that silence and absence had alwaysmysteriously fostered its growth; and he now felt that her reticencedeepened the understanding between them as the freest confidences mightnot have done.

  Soon afterward, an opportune attack of nervous prostration had sent Mrs.Harry Dressel abroad; and Justine was selected as her companion. Theyremained in Europe for six months; and on their return Amherst learnedwith pleasure that Mr. Langhope had asked Miss Brent to take charge ofCicely.

  Mr. Langhope's sorrow for his daughter had been aggravated by futilewrath at her unaccountable will; and the mixed sentiment thus engenderedhad found expression in a jealous outpouring of affection toward Cicely.He took immediate possession of the child, and in the first stages ofhis affliction her companionship had been really consoling. But as timepassed, and the pleasant habits of years reasserted themselves, herpresence became, in small unacknowledged ways, a source of domesticirritation. Nursery hours disturbed the easy routine of his household;the elderly parlour-maid who had long ruled it resented the interventionof Cicely's nurse; the little governess, involved in the dispute, brokedown and had to be shipped home to Germany; a successor was hard tofind, and in the interval Mr. Langhope's privacy was invaded by a streamof visiting teachers, who were always wanting to consult him aboutCicely's lessons, and lay before him their tiresome complaints andperplexities. Poor Mr. Langhope found himself in the position of themourner who, in the first fervour of bereavement, has undertaken theconstruction of an imposing monument without having counted the cost. Hehad meant that his devotion to Cicely should be a monument to hispaternal grief; but the foundations were scarcely laid when he foundthat the funds of time and patience were almost exhausted.

  Pride forbade his consigning Cicely to her step-father, though Mrs.Amherst would gladly have undertaken her care; Mrs. Ansell's migratoryhabits made it impossible for her to do more than intermittently hoverand advise; and a new hope rose before Mr. Langhope when it occurred tohim to appeal to Miss Brent.

  The experiment had proved a success, and when Amherst met Justine againshe had been for some months in charge of the little girl, and changeand congenial occupation had restored her to a normal view of life.There was no trace in her now of the dumb misery which had haunted himat their parting; she was again the vivid creature who seemed morecharged with life than any one he had ever known. The crisis throughwhich she had passed showed itself only in a smoothing of the brow anddeepening of the eyes, as though a bloom of experience had veiledwithout deadening the first bri
lliancy of youth.

  As he lingered on the image thus evoked, he recalled Mrs. Dressel'swords: "Justine is twenty-seven--she's not likely to marry now."

  Oddly enough, he had never thought of her marrying--but now that heheard the possibility questioned, he felt a disagreeable conviction ofits inevitableness. Mrs. Dressel's view was of course absurd. In spiteof Justine's feminine graces, he had formerly felt in her a kind ofelfin immaturity, as of a flitting Ariel with untouched heart andsenses: it was only of late that she had developed the subtle qualitywhich calls up thoughts of love. Not marry? Why, the vagrant fire hadjust lighted on her--and the fact that she was poor and unattached, withher own way to make, and no setting of pleasure and elegance toembellish her--these disadvantages seemed as nothing to Amherst againstthe warmth of personality in which she moved. And besides, she wouldnever be drawn to the kind of man who needed fine clothes and luxury topoint him to the charm of sex. She was always finished and graceful inappearance, with the pretty woman's art of wearing her few plain dressesas if they were many and varied; yet no one could think of her asattaching much importance to the upholstery of life.... No, the man whowon her would be of a different type, have other inducements tooffer...and Amherst found himself wondering just what those inducementswould be.

  Suddenly he remembered something his mother had said as he left thehouse--something about a distinguished-looking young man who had calledto ask for Miss Brent. Mrs. Amherst, innocently inquisitive in smallmatters, had followed her son into the hall to ask the parlour-maid ifthe gentleman had left his name; and the parlour-maid had answered inthe negative. The young man was evidently not indigenous: all the socialunits of Hanaford were intimately known to each other. He was astranger, therefore, presumably drawn there by the hope of seeing MissBrent. But if he knew that she was coming he must be intimatelyacquainted with her movements.... The thought came to Amherst as anunpleasant surprise. It showed him for the first time how little he knewof Justine's personal life, of the ties she might have formed outsidethe Lynbrook circle. After all, he had seen her chiefly not among herown friends but among his wife's. Was it reasonable to suppose that acreature of her keen individuality would be content to subsist on thefringe of other existences? Somewhere, of course, she must have a centreof her own, must be subject to influences of which he was whollyignorant. And since her departure from Lynbrook he had known even lessof her life. She had spent the previous winter with Mr. Langhope in NewYork, where Amherst had seen her only on his rare visits to Cicely; andMr. Langhope, on going abroad for the summer, had established hisgrand-daughter in a Bar Harbour cottage, where, save for two flyingvisits from Mrs. Ansell, Miss Brent had reigned alone till his return inSeptember.

  Very likely, Amherst reflected, the mysterious visitor was a Bar Harbouracquaintance--no, more than an acquaintance: a friend. And as Mr.Langhope's party had left Mount Desert but three days previously, thearrival of the unknown at Hanaford showed a singular impatience torejoin Miss Brent.

  As he reached this point in his meditations, Amherst found himself atthe street-corner where it was his habit to pick up the Westmoretrolley. Just as it bore down on him, and he sprang to the platform,another car, coming in from the mills, stopped to discharge itspassengers. Among them Amherst noticed a slender undersized man inshabby clothes, about whose retreating back, as he crossed the street tosignal a Station Avenue car, there was something dimly familiar, andsuggestive of troubled memories. Amherst leaned out and looked again:yes, the back was certainly like Dr. Wyant's--but what could Wyant bedoing at Hanaford, and in a Westmore car?

  Amherst's first impulse was to spring out and overtake him. He knew howadmirably the young physician had borne himself at Lynbrook; he evenrecalled Dr. Garford's saying, with his kindly sceptical smile: "PoorWyant believed to the end that we could save her"--and felt again hisown inward movement of thankfulness that the cruel miracle had not beenworked.

  He owed a great deal to Wyant, and had tried to express his sense of thefact by warm words and a liberal fee; but since Bessy's death he hadnever returned to Lynbrook, and had consequently lost sight of the youngdoctor.

  Now he felt that he ought to try to rejoin him, to find out why he wasat Hanaford, and make some proffer of hospitality; but if the strangerwere really Wyant, his choice of the Station Avenue car made it appearthat he was on his way to catch the New York express; and in any caseAmherst's engagements at Westmore made immediate pursuit impossible.

  He consoled himself with the thought that if the physician was notleaving Hanaford he would be certain to call at the house; and then hismind flew back to Justine Brent. But the pleasure of looking forward toher arrival was disturbed by new feelings. A sense of reserve andembarrassment had sprung up in his mind, checking that free mentalcommunion which, as he now perceived, had been one of the unconsciouspromoters of their friendship. It was as though his thoughts faced astranger instead of the familiar presence which had so long dwelt inthem; and he began to see that the feeling of intelligence existingbetween Justine and himself was not the result of actual intimacy, butmerely of the charm she knew how to throw over casual intercourse.

  When he had left his house, his mind was like a summer sky, all openblue and sunlit rolling clouds; but gradually the clouds had darkenedand massed themselves, till they drew an impenetrable veil over theupper light and stretched threateningly across his whole horizon.