The Fruit of the Tree Part 58

"Justine," he said, speaking once more in his natural voice.

She raised her face from her hands, and they looked at each other.

"Justine--this afternoon--I said things I didn't mean to say."

Her lips parted, but her throat was still full of sobs, and she could only look at him while the tears ran down.

"I believe I understand now," he continued, in the same quiet tone.

Her hand shrank from his clasp, and she began to tremble again. "Oh, if you only _believe_...if you're not sure...don't pretend to be!"

He sat down beside her and drew her into his arms. "I am sure," he whispered, holding her close, and pressing his lips against her face and hair.

"Oh, my husband--my husband! You've come back to me?"

He answered her with more kisses, murmuring through them: "Poor child--poor child--poor Justine...." while he held her fast.

With her face against him she yielded to the childish luxury of murmuring out unjustified fears. "I was afraid you had gone back to Hanaford----"

"Tonight? To Hanaford?"

"To tell your mother."

She felt a contraction of the arm embracing her, as though a throb of pain had stiffened it.

"I shall never tell any one," he said abruptly; but as he felt in her a responsive shrinking he gathered her close again, whispering through the hair that fell about her cheek: "Don't talk, dear...let us never talk of it again...." And in the clasp of his arms her terror and anguish subsided, giving way, not to the deep peace of tranquillized thought, but to a confused well-being that lulled all thought to sleep.

x.x.xVII

BUT thought could never be long silent between them; and Justine's triumph lasted but a day.

With its end she saw what it had been made of: the ascendency of youth and s.e.x over his subjugated judgment. Her first impulse was to try and maintain it--why not use the protective arts with which love inspired her? She who lived so keenly in the brain could live as intensely in her feelings; her quick imagination tutored her looks and words, taught her the spells to weave about shorn giants. And for a few days she and Amherst lost themselves in this self-evoked cloud of pa.s.sion, both clinging fast to the visible, the palpable in their relation, as if conscious already that its finer essence had fled.

Amherst made no allusion to what had pa.s.sed, asked for no details, offered no rea.s.surances--behaved as if the whole episode had been effaced from his mind. And from Wyant there came no sound: he seemed to have disappeared from life as he had from their talk.

Toward the end of the week Amherst announced that he must return to Hanaford; and Justine at once declared her intention of going with him.

He seemed surprised, disconcerted almost; and for the first time the shadow of what had happened fell visibly between them.

"But ought you to leave Cicely before Mr. Langhope comes back?" he suggested.

"He will be here in two days."

"But he will expect to find you."

"It is almost the first of April. We are to have Cicely with us for the summer. There is no reason why I should not go back to my work at Westmore."

There was in fact no reason that he could produce; and the next day they returned to Hanaford together.

With her perceptions strung to the last pitch of sensitiveness, she felt a change in Amherst as soon as they re-entered Bessy's house. He was still scrupulously considerate, almost too scrupulously tender; but with a tinge of la.s.situde, like a man who tries to keep up under the stupefying approach of illness. And she began to hate the power by which she held him. It was not thus they had once walked together, free in mind though so linked in habit and feeling; when their love was not a deadening drug but a vivifying element that cleared thought instead of stifling it. There were moments when she felt that open alienation would be easier, because it would be nearer the truth. And at such moments she longed to speak, to beg him to utter his mind, to go with her once for all into the depths of the subject they continued to avoid. But at the last her heart always failed her: she could not face the thought of losing him, of hearing him speak estranging words to her.

They had been at Hanaford for about ten days when, one morning at breakfast, Amherst uttered a sudden exclamation over a letter he was reading.

"What is it?" she asked in a tremor.

He had grown very pale, and was pushing the hair from his forehead with the gesture habitual to him in moments of painful indecision.

"What is it?" Justine repeated, her fear growing.

"Nothing----" he began, thrusting the letter under the pile of envelopes by his plate; but she continued to look at him anxiously, till she drew his eyes to hers.

"Mr. Langhope writes that they've appointed Wyant to Saint Christopher's," he said abruptly.

"Oh, the letter--we forgot the letter!" she cried.

"Yes--we forgot the letter."

"But how dare he----?"

Amherst said nothing, but the long silence between them seemed full of ironic answers, till she brought out, hardly above her breath: "What shall you do?"

"Write at once--tell Mr. Langhope he's not fit for the place."

"Of course----" she murmured.

He went on tearing open his other letters, and glancing at their contents. She leaned back in her chair, her cup of coffee untasted, listening to the recurrent crackle of torn paper as he tossed aside one letter after another.

Presently he rose from his seat, and as she followed him from the dining-room she noticed that his breakfast had also remained untasted.

He gathered up his letters and walked toward the smoking-room; and after a moment's hesitation she joined him.

"John," she said from the threshold.

He was just seating himself at his desk, but he turned to her with an obvious effort at kindness which made the set look of his face the more marked.

She closed the door and went up to him.

"If you write that to Mr. Langhope--Dr. Wyant will--will tell him," she said.

"Yes--we must be prepared for that."

She was silent, and Amherst flung himself down on the leather ottoman against the wall. She stood before him, clasping and unclasping her hands in speechless distress.

"What would you have me do?" he asked at length, almost irritably.