The Fruit of the Tree Part 56

Justine followed him, scarcely conscious where she went, but moving already with a lighter tread. Part of her weight of misery had been lifted with Wyant's going. She had suffered less from the fear of what her husband might think than from the shame of making her avowal in her defamer's presence. And her faith in Amherst's comprehension had begun to revive. He had dismissed Wyant with scorn and horror--did not that show that he was on her side already? And how many more arguments she had at her call! Her brain hummed with them as she followed him up the stairs.

In her bedroom he closed the door and stood motionless, the same heavy half-paralyzed look on his face. It frightened her and she went up to him.

"John!" she said timidly.

He put his hand to his head. "Wait a moment----" he returned; and she waited, her heart slowly sinking again.

The moment over, he seemed to recover his power of movement. He crossed the room and threw himself into the armchair near the hearth.

"Now tell me everything."

He sat thrown back, his eyes fixed on the fire, and the vertical lines between his brows forming a deep scar in his white face.

Justine moved nearer, and touched his arm beseechingly. "Won't you look at me?"

He turned his head slowly, as if with an effort, and his eyes rested reluctantly on hers.

"Oh, not like that!" she exclaimed.

He seemed to make a stronger effort at self-control. "Please don't heed me--but say what there is to say," he said in a level voice, his gaze on the fire.

She stood before him, her arms hanging down, her clasped fingers twisting restlessly.

"I don't know that there is much to say--beyond what I've told you."

There was a slight sound in Amherst's throat, like the ghost of a derisive laugh. After another interval he said: "I wish to hear exactly what happened."

She seated herself on the edge of a chair near by, bending forward, with hands interlocked and arms extended on her knees--every line reaching out to him, as though her whole slight body were an arrow winged with pleadings. It was a relief to speak at last, even face to face with the stony image that sat in her husband's place; and she told her story, detail by detail, omitting nothing, exaggerating nothing, speaking slowly, clearly, with precision, aware that the bare facts were her strongest argument.

Amherst, as he listened, shifted his position once, raising his hand so that it screened his face; and in that att.i.tude he remained when she had ended.

As she waited for him to speak, Justine realized that her heart had been alive with tremulous hopes. All through her narrative she had counted on a murmur of perception, an exclamation of pity: she had felt sure of melting the stony image. But Amherst said no word.

At length he spoke, still without turning his head. "You have not told me why you kept this from me."

A sob formed in her throat, and she had to wait to steady her voice.

"No--that was my wrong--my weakness. When I did it I never thought of being afraid to tell you--I had talked it over with you in my own mind...so often...before...."

"Well?"

"Then--- when you came back it was harder...though I was still sure you would approve me."

"Why harder?"

"Because at first--at Lynbrook--I _could not_ tell it all over, in detail, as I have now...it was beyond human power...and without doing so, I couldn't make it all clear to you...and so should only have added to your pain. If you had been there you would have done as I did.... I felt sure of that from the first. But coming afterward, you couldn't judge...no one who was not there could judge...and I wanted to spare you...."

"And afterward?"

She had shrunk in advance from this question, and she could not answer it at once. To gain time she echoed it. "Afterward?"

"Did it never occur to you, when we met later--when you first went to Mr. Langhope----"?

"To tell you then? No--because by that time I had come to see that I could never be quite sure of making you understand. No one who was not there at the time could know what it was to see her suffer."

"You thought it all over, then--decided definitely against telling me?"

"I did not have to think long. I felt I had done right--I still feel so--and I was sure you would feel so, if you were in the same circ.u.mstances."

There was another pause. Then Amherst said: "And last September--at Hanaford?"

It was the word for which she had waited--the word of her inmost fears.

She felt the blood mount to her face.

"Did you see no difference--no special reason for telling me then?"

"Yes----" she faltered.

"Yet you said nothing."

"No."

Silence again. Her eyes strayed to the clock, and some dim a.s.sociation of ideas told her that Cicely would soon be coming in.

"Why did you say nothing?"

He lowered his hand and turned toward her as he spoke; and she looked up and faced him.

"Because I regarded the question as settled. I had decided it in my own mind months before, and had never regretted my decision. I should have thought it morbid...unnatural...to go over the whole subject again...to let it affect a situation that had come about...so much later...so unexpectedly."

"Did you never feel that, later, if I came to know--if others came to know--it might be difficult----?"

"No; for I didn't care for the others--and I believed that, whatever your own feelings were, you would know I had done what I thought right."

She spoke the words proudly, strongly, and for the first time the hard lines of his face relaxed, and a slight tremor crossed it.

"If you believed this, why have you been letting that cur blackmail you?"

"Because when he began I saw for the first time that what I had done might be turned against me by--by those who disliked our marriage. And I was afraid for my happiness. That was my weakness...it is what I am suffering for now."

"_Suffering_!" he echoed ironically, as though she had presumed to apply to herself a word of which he had the grim monopoly. He rose and took a few aimless steps; then he halted before her.

"That day--last month--when you asked me for money...was it...?"

"Yes----" she said, her head sinking.

He laughed. "You couldn't tell me--but you could use my money to bribe that fellow to conspire with you!"