The Fruit of the Tree Part 36

Justine was silent. Mrs. Ansell's momentary self-betrayal had checked all farther possibility of frank communion, and the discerning lady had seen her error too late to remedy it.

But her hearer's heart gave a leap of joy. It was clear from what Mrs.

Ansell said that Amherst had not bound himself definitely, since he would not have done so without informing his wife. And with a secret thrill of happiness Justine recalled his last word to her: "I will remember all you have said."

He had kept that word and acted on it; in spite of Bessy's last a.s.sault on his pride he had borne with her, and deferred the day of final rupture; and the sense that she had had a part in his decision filled Justine with a glow of hope. The consciousness of Mrs. Ansell's suspicions faded to insignificance--Mrs. Ansell and her kind might think what they chose, since all that mattered now was that she herself should act bravely and circ.u.mspectly in her last attempt to save her friends.

"I am not sure," Mrs. Ansell continued, gently scrutinizing her companion, "that I think it unwise of him to have gone; but if he stays too long Bessy may listen to bad advice--advice disastrous to her happiness." She paused, and turned her eyes meditatively toward the fire. "As far as I know," she said, with the same air of serious candour, "you are the only person who can tell him this."

"I?" exclaimed Justine, with a leap of colour to her pale cheeks.

Mrs. Ansell's eyes continued to avoid her. "My dear Miss Brent, Bessy has told me something of the wise counsels you have given her. Mr.

Amherst is also your friend. As I said just now, you are the only person who might act as a link between them--surely you will not renounce the role."

Justine controlled herself. "My only role, as you call it, has been to urge Bessy to--to try to allow for her husband's views----"

"And have you not given the same advice to Mr. Amherst?"

The eyes of the two women met. "Yes," said Justine, after a moment.

"Then why refuse your help now? The moment is crucial."

Justine's thoughts had flown beyond the stage of resenting Mrs. Ansell's gentle pertinacity. All her faculties were absorbed in the question as to how she could most effectually use whatever influence she possessed.

"I put it to you as one old friend to another--will you write to Mr.

Amherst to come back?" Mrs. Ansell urged her.

Justine was past considering even the strangeness of this request, and its oblique reflection on the kind of power ascribed to her. Through the confused beatings of her heart she merely struggled for a clearer sense of guidance.

"No," she said slowly. "I cannot."

"You cannot? With a friend's happiness in extremity?" Mrs. Ansell paused a moment before she added. "Unless you believe that Bessy would be happier divorced?"

"Divorced--? Oh, no," Justine shuddered.

"That is what it will come to."

"No, no! In time----"

"Time is what I am most afraid of, when Blanche Carbury disposes of it."

Justine breathed a deep sigh.

"You'll write?" Mrs. Ansell murmured, laying a soft touch on her hand.

"I have not the influence you think----"

"Can you do any harm by trying?"

"I might--" Justine faltered, losing her exact sense of the words she used.

"Ah," the other flashed back, "then you _have_ influence! Why will you not use it?"

Justine waited a moment; then her resolve gathered itself into words.

"If I have any influence, I am not sure it would be well to use it as you suggest."

"Not to urge Mr. Amherst's return?"

"No--not now."

She caught the same veiled gleam of incredulity under Mrs. Ansell's lids--caught and disregarded it.

"It must be now or never," Mrs. Ansell insisted.

"I can't think so," Justine held out.

"Nevertheless--will you try?"

"No--no! It might be fatal."

"To whom?"

"To both." She considered. "If he came back now I know he would not stay."

Mrs. Ansell was upon her abruptly. "You _know_? Then you speak with authority?"

"No--what authority? I speak as I feel," Justine faltered.

The older woman drew herself to her feet. "Ah--then you shoulder a great responsibility!" She moved nearer to Justine, and once more laid a fugitive touch upon her. "You won't write to him?"

"No--no," the girl flung back; and the voices of the returning party in the hall made Mrs. Ansell, with an almost imperceptible gesture of warning, turn musingly away toward the fire.

Bessy came back br.i.m.m.i.n.g with the wonders she had seen. A glazed "sun-room," mosaic pavements, a marble fountain to feed the marble tank--and outside a water-garden, descending in successive terraces, to take up and utilize--one could see how practically!--the overflow from the tank. If one did the thing at all, why not do it decently? She had given up her new motor, had let her town house, had pinched and stinted herself in a hundred ways--if ever woman was ent.i.tled to a little compensating pleasure, surely she was that woman!

The days were crowded with consultations. Architect, contractors, engineers, a landscape gardener, and a dozen minor craftsmen, came and went, unrolled plans, moistened pencils, sketched, figured, argued, persuaded, and filled Bessy with the dread of appearing, under Blanche Carbury's eyes, subject to any restraining influences of economy. What!

She was a young woman, with an independent fortune, and she was always wavering, considering, secretly referring back to the mute criticism of an invisible judge--of the husband who had been first to shake himself free of any mutual subjection? The accomplished Blanche did not have to say this--she conveyed it by the raising of painted brows, by a smile of mocking interrogation, a judiciously placed silence or a resigned glance at the architect. So the estimates poured in, were studied, resisted--then yielded to and signed; then the hour of advance payments struck, and an imperious appeal was despatched to Mr. Tredegar, to whom the management of Bessy's affairs had been transferred.

Mr. Tredegar, to his client's surprise, answered the appeal in person.

He had not been lately to Lynbrook, dreading the cold and damp of the country in winter; and his sudden arrival had therefore an ominous significance.

He came for an evening in mid-week, when even Blanche Carbury was absent, and Bessy and Justine had the house to themselves. Mrs. Ansell had sailed the week before with her invalid cousin. No farther words had pa.s.sed between herself and Justine--but the latter was conscious that their talk had increased instead of lessened the distance between them.

Justine herself meant to leave soon. Her hope of regaining Bessy's confidence had been deceived, and seeing herself definitely superseded, she chafed anew at her purposeless inactivity. She had already written to one or two doctors in New York, and to the matron of Saint Elizabeth's. She had made herself a name in surgical cases, and it could not be long before a summons came....

Meanwhile Mr. Tredegar arrived, and the three dined together, the two women bending meekly to his discourse, which was never more oracular and authoritative than when delivered to the gentler s.e.x alone. Amherst's absence, in particular, seemed to loose the thin current of Mr.

Tredegar's eloquence. He was never quite at ease in the presence of an independent mind, and Justine often reflected that, even had the two men known nothing of each other's views, there would have been between them an instinctive and irreducible hostility--they would have disliked each other if they had merely jostled elbows in the street.

Yet even freed from Amherst's presence Mr. Tredegar showed a darkling brow, and as Justine slipped away after dinner she felt that she left Bessy to something more serious than the usual business conference.