The Fruit of the Tree - Edith Wharton (reading well txt) 📗

to speak? Are you prepared to name this anonymous authority?"

Amherst hesitated. "No--I shall have to ask you to take my word for it," he returned with a shade of embarrassment.

"Ah--" Mr. Tredegar murmured, giving to the expressive syllable its utmost measure of decent exultation.

Amherst quivered under the thin lash, and broke out: "It is all you have required of Dr. Disbrow--" but at this point Mr. Tredegar rose to his feet.

"My dear sir, your resorting to such arguments convinces me that nothing is to be gained by prolonging our talk. I will not even take up your insinuations against two of the most respected men in the community--such charges reflect only on those who make them."

Amherst, whose flame of anger had subsided with the sudden sense of its futility, received this in silence, and the lawyer, reassured, continued with a touch of condescension: "My only specific charge from Mrs. Westmore was to hand you this cheque; but, in spite of what has passed, I take it upon myself to add, in her behalf, that your conduct of today will not be allowed to weigh against your record at the mills, and that the extraordinary charges you have seen fit to bring against your superiors will--if not repeated--simply be ignored."

* * * * *

When, the next morning at about ten, Mrs. Eustace Ansell joined herself to the two gentlemen who still lingered over a desultory breakfast in Mrs. Westmore's dining-room, she responded to their greeting with less than her usual vivacity.

It was one of Mrs. Ansell's arts to bring to the breakfast-table just the right shade of sprightliness, a warmth subdued by discretion as the early sunlight is tempered by the lingering coolness of night. She was, in short, as fresh, as temperate, as the hour, yet without the concomitant chill which too often marks its human atmosphere: rather her soft effulgence dissipated the morning frosts, opening pinched spirits to a promise of midday warmth. But on this occasion a mist of uncertainty hung on her smile, and veiled the glance which she turned on the contents of the heavy silver dishes successively presented to her notice. When, at the conclusion of this ceremony, the servants had withdrawn, she continued for a moment to stir her tea in silence, while her glance travelled from Mr. Tredegar, sunk in his morning mail, to Mr. Langhope, who leaned back resignedly in his chair, trying to solace himself with Hanaford Banner, till midday should bring him a sight of the metropolitan press.

"I suppose you know," she said suddenly, "that Bessy has telegraphed for Cicely, and made her arrangements to stay here another week."

Mr. Langhope's stick slipped to the floor with the sudden displacement of his whole lounging person, and Mr. Tredegar, removing his tortoise-shell reading-glasses, put them hastily into their case, as though to declare for instant departure.

"My dear Maria--" Mr. Langhope gasped, while she rose and restored his stick.

"She considers it, then, her duty to wait and see Truscomb?" the lawyer asked; and Mrs. Ansell, regaining her seat, murmured discreetly: "She puts it so--yes."

"My dear Maria--" Mr. Langhope repeated helplessly, tossing aside his paper and drawing his chair up to the table.

"But it would be perfectly easy to return: it is quite unnecessary to wait here for his recovery," Mr. Tredegar pursued, as though setting forth a fact which had not hitherto presented itself to the more limited intelligence of his hearers.

Mr. Langhope emitted a short laugh, and Mrs. Ansell answered gently: "She says she detests the long journey."

Mr. Tredegar rose and gathered up his letters with a gesture of annoyance. "In that case--if I had been notified earlier of this decision, I might have caught the morning train," he interrupted himself, glancing resentfully at his watch.

"Oh, don't leave us, Tredegar," Mr. Langhope entreated. "We'll reason with her--we'll persuade her to go back by the three-forty."

Mrs. Ansell smiled. "She telegraphed at seven. Cicely and the governess are already on their way."

"At seven? But, my dear friend, why on earth didn't you tell us?"

"I didn't know till a few minutes ago. Bessy called me in as I was coming down."

"Ah--" Mr. Langhope murmured, meeting her eyes for a fraction of a second. In the encounter, she appeared to communicate something more than she had spoken, for as he stooped to pick up his paper he said, more easily: "My dear Tredegar, if we're in a box there's no reason why we should force you into it too. Ring for Ropes, and we'll look up a train for you."

Mr. Tredegar appeared slightly ruffled at this prompt acquiescence in his threatened departure. "Of course, if I had been notified in advance, I might have arranged to postpone my engagements another day; but in any case, it is quite out of the question that I should return in a week--and quite unnecessary," he added, snapping his lips shut as though he were closing his last portmanteau.

"Oh, quite--quite," Mr. Langhope assented. "It isn't, in fact, in the least necessary for any of us either to stay on now or to return. Truscomb could come to Long Island when he recovers, and answer any questions we may have to put; but if Bessy has sent for the child, we must of course put off going for today--at least I must," he added sighing, "and, though I know it's out of the question to exact such a sacrifice from you, I have a faint hope that our delightful friend here, with the altruistic spirit of her sex----"

"Oh, I shall enjoy it--my maid is unpacking," Mrs. Ansell gaily affirmed; and Mr. Tredegar, shrugging his shoulders, said curtly: "In that case I will ring for the time-table."

When he had withdrawn to consult it in the seclusion of the library, and Mrs. Ansell, affecting a sudden desire for a second cup of tea, had reseated herself to await the replenishment of the kettle, Mr. Langhope exchanged his own chair for a place at her side.

"Now what on earth does this mean?" he asked, lighting a cigarette in response to her slight nod of consent.

Mrs. Ansell's gaze lost itself in the depths of the empty tea-pot.

"A number of things--or any one of them," she said at length, extending her arm toward the tea-caddy.

"For instance--?" he rejoined, following appreciatively the movements of her long slim hands.

She raised her head and met his eyes. "For instance: it may mean--don't resent the suggestion--that you and Mr. Tredegar were not quite well-advised in persuading her not to see Mr. Amherst yesterday evening."

Mr. Langhope uttered an exclamation of surprise.

"But, my dear Maria--in the name of reason...why, after the doctor's visit--after his coming here last night, at Truscomb's request, to put the actual facts before her--should she have gone over the whole business again with this interfering young fellow? How, in fact, could she have done so," he added, after vainly waiting for her reply, "without putting a sort of slight on Truscomb, who is, after all, the only person entitled to speak with authority?"

Mrs. Ansell received his outburst in silence, and the butler, reappearing with the kettle and fresh toast, gave her the chance to prolong her pause for a full minute. When the door had closed on him, she said: "Judged by reason, your arguments are unanswerable; but when it comes to a question of feeling----"

"Feeling? What kind of feeling? You don't mean to suggest anything so preposterous as that Bessy----?"

She made a gesture of smiling protest. "I confess it is to be regretted that his mother is a lady, and that he looks--you must have noticed it?--so amazingly like the portraits of the young Schiller. But I only meant that Bessy forms all her opinions emotionally; and that she must have been very strongly affected by the scene Mr. Tredegar described to us."

"Ah," Mr. Langhope interjected, replying first to her parenthesis, "how a woman of your good sense stumbled on that idea of hunting up the mother--!" but Mrs. Ansell answered, with a slight grimace: "My dear Henry, if you could see the house they live in you'd think I had been providentially guided there!" and, reverting to the main issue, he went on fretfully: "But why, after hearing the true version of the facts, should Bessy still be influenced by that sensational scene? Even if it was not, as Tredegar suspects, cooked up expressly to take her in, she must see that the hospital doctor is, after all, as likely as any one to know how the accident really happened, and how seriously the fellow is hurt."

"There's the point. Why should Bessy believe Dr. Disbrow rather than Mr. Amherst?"

"For the best of reasons--because Disbrow has nothing to gain by distorting the facts, whereas this young Amherst, as Tredegar pointed out, has the very obvious desire to give Truscomb a bad name and shove himself into his place."

Mrs. Ansell contemplatively turned the rings upon her fingers. "From what I saw of Amherst I'm inclined to think that, if that is his object, he is too clever to have shown his hand so soon. But if you are right, was there not all the more reason for letting Bessy see him and find out as soon as possible what he was aiming at?"

"If one could have trusted her to find out--but you credit my poor child with more penetration than I've ever seen in her."

"Perhaps you've looked for it at the wrong time--and about the wrong things. Bessy has the penetration of the heart."

"The heart! You make mine jump when you use such expressions."

"Oh, I use this one in a general sense. But I want to help you to keep it from acquiring a more restricted significance."

"Restricted--to the young man himself?"

Mrs. Ansell's expressive hands seemed to commit the question to fate. "All I ask you to consider for the present is that Bessy is quite unoccupied and excessively bored."

"Bored? Why, she has everything on earth she can want!"

"The ideal state for producing boredom--the only atmosphere in which it really thrives. And besides--to be humanly inconsistent--there's just one thing she hasn't got."

"Well?" Mr. Langhope groaned, fortifying himself with a second cigarette.

"An occupation for that rudimentary little organ, the mention of which makes you jump."

"There you go again! Good heavens, Maria, do you want to encourage her to fall in love?"

"Not with a man, just at present, but with a hobby, an interest, by all means. If she doesn't, the man will take the place of the interest--there's a vacuum to be filled, and human nature abhors a vacuum."

Mr. Langhope shrugged his shoulders. "I don't follow you. She adored her husband."

His friend's fine smile was like a magnifying glass silently applied to the gross stupidity of his remark. "Oh, I don't say it was a great passion--but they got on perfectly," he corrected himself.

"So perfectly that you must expect her to want a little storm and stress for a change. The mere fact that you and Mr. Tredegar objected to her seeing Mr. Amherst last night has roused the spirit of opposition in her. A year ago she hadn't any spirit of opposition."

"There was nothing for her to oppose--poor Dick made her life so preposterously easy."

"My ingenuous