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

up apologetically, not quite sure that her tired mind had followed his meaning.

"We, I mean, who believe...that not one sparrow falls to the ground...." He flushed, and went on in a more mundane tone: "I am glad you have the hope of Mr. Langhope's arrival to keep you up. Modern science--thank heaven!--can do such wonders in sustaining and prolonging life that, even if there is little chance of recovery, the faint spark may be nursed until...."

He paused again, conscious that the dusky-browed young woman, slenderly erect in her dark blue linen and nurse's cap, was examining him with an intentness which contrasted curiously with the absent-minded glance she had dropped on him in entering.

"In such cases," she said in a low tone, "there is practically no chance of recovery."

"So I understand."

"Even if there were, it would probably be death-in-life: complete paralysis of the lower body."

He shuddered. "A dreadful fate! She was so gay and active----"

"Yes--and the struggle with death, for the next few weeks, must involve incessant suffering...frightful suffering...perhaps vainly...."

"I feared so," he murmured, his kind face paling.

"Then why do you thank heaven that modern science has found such wonderful ways of prolonging life?"

He raised his head with a start and their eyes met. He saw that the nurse's face was pale and calm--almost judicial in its composure--and his self-possession returned to him.

"As a Christian," he answered, with his slow smile, "I can hardly do otherwise."

Justine continued to consider him thoughtfully. "The men of the older generation--clergymen, I mean," she went on in a low controlled voice, "would of course take that view--must take it. But the conditions are so changed--so many undreamed-of means of prolonging life--prolonging suffering--have been discovered and applied in the last few years, that I wondered...in my profession one often wonders...."

"I understand," he rejoined sympathetically, forgetting his youth and his inexperience in the simple desire to bring solace to a troubled mind. "I understand your feeling--but you need have no doubt. Human life is sacred, and the fact that, even in this materialistic age, science is continually struggling to preserve and prolong it, shows--very beautifully, I think--how all things work together to fulfill the divine will."

"Then you believe that the divine will delights in mere pain--mere meaningless animal suffering--for its own sake?"

"Surely not; but for the sake of the spiritual life that may be mysteriously wrung out of it."

Justine bent her puzzled brows on him. "I could understand that view of moral suffering--or even of physical pain moderate enough to leave the mind clear, and to call forth qualities of endurance and renunciation. But where the body has been crushed to a pulp, and the mind is no more than a machine for the registering of sense-impressions of physical anguish, of what use can such suffering be to its owner--or to the divine will?"

The young rector looked at her sadly, almost severely. "There, Miss Brent, we touch on inscrutable things, and human reason must leave the answer to faith."

Justine pondered. "So that--one may say--Christianity recognizes no exceptions--?"

"None--none," its authorized exponent pronounced emphatically.

"Then Christianity and science are agreed." She rose, and the young rector, with visible reluctance, stood up also.

"That, again, is one of the most striking evidences--" he began; and then, as the necessity of taking leave was forced upon him, he added appealingly: "I understand your uncertainties, your questionings, and I wish I could have made my point clearer----"

"Thank you; it is quite clear. The reasons, of course, are different; but the result is exactly the same."

She held out her hand, smiling sadly on him, and with a sudden return of youth and self-consciousness, he murmured shyly: "I feel for you"--the man in him yearning over her loneliness, though the pastor dared not press his help....


XXVIII

THAT evening, when Justine took her place at the bedside, and the other two 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 dark circles of pain made her eyes look deeper and brighter. Justine was almost deceived by the delusive semblance of vitality, and a hope that was half anguish stirred in her. She sat down by the bed, clasping the hand 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 fingers glide 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 for her husband.

"Soon?" she whispered.

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

Bessy lay still, her breast straining for breath. She remained so long without speaking that Justine began to think she was falling back into the somnolent state that intervened between her moments of complete consciousness. But at length she lifted her lids again, and her lips stirred.

"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 waxen quietude--as though her face were seen under clear water, a long way down. And then, as she lay thus, without sound or movement, two tears forced 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 away toward the wall.

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

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

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

"If any one can save her, Wyant will," Dr. Garford had declared to Justine, when, on the tenth day after the accident, the surgeons held their third consultation. Dr. Garford reserved his own judgment. He had seen cases--they had all seen cases...but just at present the signs might point either way.... Meanwhile Wyant's confidence was an invaluable asset toward the patient's chances of recovery. Hopefulness in the physician was almost as necessary as in the patient--contact with such faith had been known to work miracles.

Justine listened in silence, wishing that she too could hope. But whichever way the prognosis pointed, she felt only a dull despair. She believed no more than Dr. Garford in the chance of recovery--that conviction seemed to her a mirage of Wyant's imagination, of his boyish ambition 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 spent in the fight with death. Since Bessy had learned that her husband was returning she had never, by sign or word, reverted to the fact. Except for a gleam of tenderness, now and then, when Cicely was brought to her, she seemed to have sunk back into herself, as though her poor little flicker of consciousness were wholly centred in the contemplation of its pain. It was not that her mind was clouded--only that it was immersed, absorbed, in that dread mystery of disproportionate anguish which a capricious fate had laid on it.... And what if she recovered, as they called it? If the flood-tide of pain should ebb, leaving her stranded, a helpless wreck on the desert shores of inactivity? What would life be to Bessy without movement? Thought would never set her blood flowing--motion, in her, could only take the form of the physical processes. Her love for Amherst was dead--even if it flickered into life again, it could but put the spark to smouldering discords and resentments; and would her one uncontaminated sentiment--her affection for Cicely--suffice to reconcile her to the desolate half-life which was the utmost that science could hold out?

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

Pity, not condemnation--profound illimitable pity--flowed from this conclusion of Justine's. To a compassionate heart there could be no sadder instance of the wastefulness of life than this struggle of the small half-formed soul with a destiny too heavy for its strength. If Bessy had had any moral hope to fight for, every pang of suffering would have been worth enduring; but it was intolerable to witness the spectacle 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 the reappearance of Westy Gaines, bringing a breath of common-place conventional grief into the haunted silence of the house, was a respite from her questionings. If it was hard to talk to him, to answer his enquiries, 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 like cautery to her wound. Mr. Tredegar undoubtedly grieved for Bessy; but his grief struck inward, exuding only now and then, through