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

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Once pledged to her new task, Justine, as usual, espoused it with ardour. It was pleasant, even among greater joys, to see her husband again frankly welcomed by Mr. Langhope; to see Cicely bloom into happiness at their coming; and to overhear Mr. Langhope exclaim, in a confidential aside to his son-in-law: "It's wonderful, the _bien-être_ that wife of yours diffuses about her!"

The element of _bien-être_ was the only one in which Mr. Langhope could draw breath; and to those who kept him immersed in it he was prodigal of delicate attentions. The experiment, in short, was a complete success; and even Amherst's necessary weeks at Hanaford had the merit of giving a finer flavour to his brief appearances.

Of all this Justine was thinking as she drove down Fifth Avenue one January afternoon to meet her husband at the Grand Central station. She had tamed her happiness at last: the quality of fear had left it, and it nestled in her heart like some wild creature subdued to human ways. And, as her inward bliss became more and more a quiet habit of the mind, the longing to help and minister returned, absorbing her more deeply in her husband's work.

She dismissed the carriage at the station, and when his train had arrived they emerged together into the cold winter twilight and turned up Madison Avenue. These walks home from the station gave them a little more time to themselves than if they had driven; and there was always so much to tell on both sides. This time the news was all good: the work at Westmore was prospering, and on Justine's side there was a more cheerful report of Mr. Langhope's health, and--best of all--his promise to give them Cicely for the summer. Amherst and Justine were both anxious that the child should spend more time at Hanaford, that her young associations should begin to gather about Westmore; and Justine exulted in the fact that the suggestion had come from Mr. Langhope himself, while she and Amherst were still planning how to lead him up to it.

They reached the house while this triumph was still engaging them; and in the doorway Amherst turned to her with a smile.

"And of course--dear man!--he believes the idea is all his. There's nothing you can't make people believe, you little Jesuit!"

"I don't think there is!" she boasted, falling gaily into his tone; and then, as the door opened, and she entered the hall, her eyes fell on a blotted envelope which lay among the letters on the table.

The parlour-maid proffered it with a word of explanation. "A gentleman left it for you, madam; he asked to see you, and said he'd call for the answer in a day or two."

"Another begging letter, I suppose," said Amherst, turning into the drawing-room, where Mr. Langhope and Cicely awaited them; and Justine, carelessly pushing the envelope into her muff, murmured "I suppose so" as she followed him.


XXXIII

OVER the tea-table Justine forgot the note in her muff; but when she went upstairs to dress it fell to the floor, and she picked it up and laid it on her dressing-table.

She had already recognized the hand as Wyant's, for it was not the first letter she had received from him.

Three times since her marriage he had appealed to her for help, excusing himself on the plea of difficulties and ill-health. The first time he wrote, he alluded vaguely to having married, and to being compelled, through illness, to give up his practice at Clifton. On receiving this letter she made enquiries, and learned that, a month or two after her departure from Lynbrook, Wyant had married a Clifton girl--a pretty piece of flaunting innocence, whom she remembered about the lanes, generally with a young man in a buggy. There had evidently been something obscure and precipitate about the marriage, which was a strange one for the ambitious young doctor. Justine conjectured that it might have been the cause of his leaving Clifton--or or perhaps he had already succumbed to the fatal habit she had suspected in him. At any rate he seemed, in some mysterious way, to have dropped in two years from promise to failure; yet she could not believe that, with his talents, and the name he had begun to make, such a lapse could be more than temporary. She had often heard Dr. Garford prophesy great things for him; but Dr. Garford had died suddenly during the previous summer, and the loss of this powerful friend was mentioned by Wyant among his misfortunes.

Justine was anxious to help him, but her marriage to a rich man had not given her the command of much money. She and Amherst, choosing to regard themselves as pensioners on the Westmore fortune, were scrupulous in restricting their personal expenditure; and her work among the mill-hands brought many demands on the modest allowance which her husband had insisted on her accepting. In reply to Wyant's first appeal, which reached her soon after her marriage, she had sent him a hundred dollars; but when the second came, some two months later--with a fresh tale of ill-luck and ill-health--she had not been able to muster more than half the amount. Finally a third letter had arrived, a short time before their leaving for New York. It told the same story of persistent misfortune, but on this occasion Wyant, instead of making a direct appeal for money, suggested that, through her hospital connections, she should help him to establish a New York practice. His tone was half-whining, half-peremptory, his once precise writing smeared and illegible; and these indications, combined with her former suspicions, convinced her that, for the moment, he was unfit for medical work. At any rate, she could not assume the responsibility of recommending him; and in answering she advised him to apply to some of the physicians he had worked with at Lynbrook, softening her refusal by the enclosure of a small sum of money. To this letter she received no answer. Wyant doubtless found the money insufficient, and resented her unwillingness to help him by the use of her influence; and she felt sure that the note before her contained a renewal of his former request.

An obscure reluctance made her begin to undress before opening it. She felt slightly tired and indolently happy, and she did not wish any jarring impression to break in on the sense of completeness which her husband's coming always put into her life. Her happiness was making her timid and luxurious: she was beginning to shrink from even trivial annoyances.

But when at length, in her dressing-gown, her loosened hair about her shoulders, she seated herself before the toilet-mirror, Wyant's note once more confronted her. It was absurd to put off reading it--if he asked for money again, she would simply confide the whole business to Amherst.

She had never spoken to her husband of her correspondence with Wyant. The mere fact that the latter had appealed to her, instead of addressing himself to Amherst, made her suspect that he had a weakness to hide, and counted on her professional discretion. But his continued importunities would certainly release her from any such supposed obligation; and she thought with relief of casting the weight of her difficulty on her husband's shoulders.

She opened the note and read.

"I did not acknowledge your last letter because I was ashamed to tell you that the money was not enough to be of any use. But I am past shame now. My wife was confined three weeks ago, and has been desperately ill ever since. She is in no state to move, but we shall be put out of these rooms unless I can get money or work at once. A word from you would have given me a start in New York--and I'd be willing to begin again as an interne or a doctor's assistant.

"I have never reminded you of what you owe me, and I should not do so now if I hadn't been to hell and back since I saw you. But I suppose you would rather have me remind you than apply to Mr. Amherst. You can tell me when to call for my answer."

Justine laid down the letter and looked up. Her eyes rested on her own reflection in the glass, and it frightened her. She sat motionless, with a thickly-beating heart, one hand clenched on the letter.

_"I suppose you would rather have me remind you than apply to Mr. Amherst."_

That was what his importunity meant, then! She had been paying blackmail all this time.... Somewhere, from the first, in an obscure fold of consciousness, she had felt the stir of an unnamed, unacknowledged fear; and now the fear raised its head and looked at her. Well! She would look back at it, then: look it straight in the malignant eye. What was it, after all, but a "bugbear to scare children"--the ghost of the opinion of the many? She had suspected from the first that Wyant knew of her having shortened the term of Bessy Amherst's sufferings--returning to the room when he did, it was almost impossible that he should not have guessed what had happened; and his silence had made her believe that he understood her motive and approved it. But, supposing she had been mistaken, she still had nothing to fear, since she had done nothing that her own conscience condemned. If the act were to do again she would do it--she had never known a moment's regret!

Suddenly she heard Amherst's step in the passage--heard him laughing and talking as he chased Cicely up the stairs to the nursery.

_If she was not afraid, why had she never told Amherst?_

Why, the answer to that was simple enough! She had not told him _because she was not afraid_. From the first she had retained sufficient detachment to view her act impartially, to find it completely justified by circumstances, and to decide that, since those circumstances could be but partly and indirectly known to her husband, she not only had the right to keep her own counsel, but was actually under a kind of obligation not to force on him the knowledge of a fact that he could not alter and could not completely judge.... Was there any flaw in this line of reasoning? Did it not show a deliberate weighing of conditions, a perfect rectitude of intention? And, after all, she had had Amherst's virtual consent to her act! She knew his feelings on such matters--his independence of traditional judgments, his horror of inflicting needless pain--she was as sure of his intellectual assent as of her own. She was even sure that, when she told him, he would appreciate her reasons for not telling him before....

For now of course he must know everything--this horrible letter made it inevitable. She regretted that she had decided, though for the best of reasons, not to speak to him of her own accord; for it was intolerable that he should think of any external pressure as having brought her to avowal. But no! he would not think that. The understanding between them was so complete that no deceptive array of circumstances could ever make her motives obscure to him. She let herself rest a moment in the thought....

Presently she heard him moving in the next room--he had come back to dress for dinner. She would go to him now, at once--she could not bear this weight on her mind the