The Fruit of the Tree Part 7

"That girl in the hospital would have seen it all," he reflected, as the vision of Miss Brent's small incisive profile rose before him; but the next moment he caught the light on Mrs. Westmore's hair, as she bent above a card, and the paler image faded like a late moon in the sunrise.

Meanwhile Mrs. Ansell, seeing that the detailed inspection of the buildings was as trying to Mr. Langhope's lameness as to his daughter's nerves, had proposed to turn back with him and drive to Mrs. Amherst's, where he might leave her to call while the others were completing their rounds. It was one of Mrs. Ansell's gifts to detect the first symptoms of _ennui_ in her companions, and produce a remedy as patly as old ladies whisk out a scent-bottle or a cough-lozenge; and Mr. Langhope's look of relief showed the timeliness of her suggestion.

Amherst was too preoccupied to wonder how his mother would take this visit; but he welcomed Mr. Langhope's departure, hoping that the withdrawal of his ironic smile would leave his daughter open to gentler influences. Mr. Tredegar, meanwhile, was projecting his dry glance over the scene, trying to converse by signs with the overseers of the different rooms, and pausing now and then to contemplate, not so much the workers themselves as the special tasks which engaged them.

How these spectators of the party's progress were affected by Mrs.

Westmore's appearance, even Amherst, for all his sympathy with their views, could not detect. They knew that she was the new owner, that a disproportionate amount of the result of their toil would in future pa.s.s through her hands, spread carpets for her steps, and hang a setting of beauty about her eyes; but the knowledge seemed to produce no special interest in her personality. A change of employer was not likely to make any change in their lot: their welfare would probably continue to depend on Trus...o...b..s favour. The men hardly raised their heads as Mrs. Westmore pa.s.sed; the women stared, but with curiosity rather than interest; and Amherst could not tell whether their sullenness reacted on Mrs.

Westmore, or whether they were unconsciously chilled by her indifference. The result was the same: the distance between them seemed to increase instead of diminishing; and he smiled ironically to think of the form his appeal had taken--"If you see anything that seems to need explaining." Why, she saw nothing--nothing but the greasy floor under her feet, the cotton-dust in her eyes, the dizzy incomprehensible whirring of innumerable belts and wheels! Once out of it all, she would make haste to forget the dreary scene without pausing to ask for any explanation of its dreariness.

In the intensity of his disappointment he sought a pretext to cut short the tour of the buildings, that he might remove his eyes from the face he had so vainly watched for any sign of awakening. And then, as he despaired of it, the change came.

They had entered the princ.i.p.al carding-room, and were half-way down its long central pa.s.sage, when Mr. Tredegar, who led the procession, paused before one of the cards.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing to a ragged strip of black cloth tied conspicuously to the frame of the card.

The overseer of the room, a florid young man with dissipated eyes, who, at Amherst's signal, had attached himself to the party, stopped short and turned a furious glance on the surrounding operatives.

"What in h.e.l.l...? It's the first I seen of it," he exclaimed, making an ineffectual attempt to s.n.a.t.c.h the mourning emblem from its place.

At the same instant the midday whistle boomed through the building, and at the signal the machinery stopped, and silence fell on the mills. The more distant workers at once left their posts to catch up the hats and coats heaped untidily in the corners; but those nearer by, attracted by the commotion around the card, stood spell-bound, fixing the visitors with a dull stare.

Amherst had reddened to the roots of his hair. He knew in a flash what the token signified, and the sight stirred his pity; but it also jarred on his strong sense of discipline, and he turned sternly to the operatives.

"What does this mean?"

There was a short silence; then one of the hands, a thin bent man with mystic eyes, raised his head and spoke.

"We done that for Dillon," he said.

Amherst's glance swept the crowded faces. "But Dillon was not killed,"

he exclaimed, while the overseer, drawing out his pen-knife, ripped off the cloth and tossed it contemptuously into a heap of cotton-refuse at his feet.

"Might better ha' been," came from another hand; and a deep "That's so"

of corroboration ran through the knot of workers.

Amherst felt a touch on his arm, and met Mrs. Westmore's eyes. "What has happened? What do they mean?" she asked in a startled voice.

"There was an accident here two days ago: a man got caught in the card behind him, and his right hand was badly crushed."

Mr. Tredegar intervened with his dry note of command. "How serious is the accident? How did it happen?" he enquired.

"Through the man's own carelessness--ask the manager," the overseer interposed before Amherst could answer.

A deep murmur of dissent ran through the crowd, but Amherst, without noticing the overseer's reply, said to Mr. Tredegar: "He's at the Hope Hospital. He will lose his hand, and probably the whole arm."

He had not meant to add this last phrase. However strongly his sympathies were aroused, it was against his rule, at such a time, to say anything which might inflame the quick pa.s.sions of the workers: he had meant to make light of the accident, and dismiss the operatives with a sharp word of reproof. But Mrs. Westmore's face was close to his: he saw the pity in her eyes, and feared, if he checked its expression, that he might never again have the chance of calling it forth.

"His right arm? How terrible! But then he will never be able to work again!" she exclaimed, in all the horror of a first confrontation with the inexorable fate of the poor.

Her eyes turned from Amherst and rested on the faces pressing about her.

There were many women's faces among them--the faces of f.a.gged middle-age, and of sallow sedentary girlhood. For the first time Mrs.

Westmore seemed to feel the bond of blood between herself and these dim creatures of the underworld: as Amherst watched her the lovely miracle was wrought. Her pallour gave way to a quick rush of colour, her eyes widened like a frightened child's, and two tears rose and rolled slowly down her face.

"Oh, why wasn't I told? Is he married? Has he children? What does it matter whose fault it was?" she cried, her questions pouring out disconnectedly on a wave of anger and compa.s.sion.

"It warn't his fault.... The cards are too close.... It'll happen again.... He's got three kids at home," broke from the operatives; and suddenly a voice exclaimed "Here's his wife now," and the crowd divided to make way for Mrs. Dillon, who, pa.s.sing through the farther end of the room, had been waylaid and dragged toward the group.

She hung back, shrinking from the murderous machine, which she beheld for the first time since her husband's accident; then she saw Amherst, guessed the ident.i.ty of the lady at his side, and flushed up to her haggard forehead. Mrs. Dillon had been good-looking in her earlier youth, and sufficient prettiness lingered in her hollow-cheeked face to show how much more had been sacrificed to sickness and unwholesome toil.

"Oh, ma'am, ma'am, it warn't Jim's fault--there ain't a steadier man living. The cards is too crowded," she sobbed out.

Some of the other women began to cry: a wave of sympathy ran through the circle, and Mrs. Westmore moved forward with an answering exclamation. "You poor creature...you poor creature...." She opened her arms to Mrs. Dillon, and the scrubber's sobs were buried on her employer's breast.

"I will go to the hospital--I will come and see you--I will see that everything is done," Bessy reiterated. "But why are you here? How is it that you have had to leave your children?" She freed herself to turn a reproachful glance on Amherst. "You don't mean to tell me that, at such a time, you keep the poor woman at work?"

"Mrs. Dillon has not been working here lately," Amherst answered. "The manager took her back to-day at her own request, that she might earn something while her husband was in hospital."

Mrs. Westmore's eyes shone indignantly. "Earn something? But surely----"

She met a silencing look from Mr. Tredegar, who had stepped between Mrs.

Dillon and herself.

"My dear child, no one doubts--none of these good people doubt--that you will look into the case, and do all you can to alleviate it; but let me suggest that this is hardly the place----"

She turned from him with an appealing glance at Amherst.

"I think," the latter said, as their eyes met, "that you had better let me dismiss the hands: they have only an hour at midday."

She signed her a.s.sent, and he turned to the operatives and said quietly: "You have heard Mrs. Westmore's promise; now take yourselves off, and give her a clear way to the stairs."

They dropped back, and Mr. Tredegar drew Bessy's arm through his; but as he began to move away she turned and laid her hand on Mrs. Dillon's shoulder.

"You must not stay here--you must go back to the children. I will make it right with Mr. Trus...o...b.." she said in a rea.s.suring whisper; then, through her tears, she smiled a farewell at the lingering knot of operatives, and followed her companions to the door.

In silence they descended the many stairs and crossed the shabby unfenced gra.s.s-plot between the mills and the manager's office. It was not till they reached the carriage that Mrs. Westmore spoke.

"But Maria is waiting for us--we must call for her!" she said, rousing herself; and as Amherst opened the carriage-door she added: "You will show us the way? You will drive with us?"

During the drive Bessy remained silent, as if re-absorbed in the distress of the scene she had just witnessed; and Amherst found himself automatically answering Mr. Tredegar's questions, while his own mind had no room for anything but the sense of her tremulous lips and of her eyes enlarged by tears. He had been too much engrossed in the momentous issues of her visit to the mills to remember that she had promised to call at his mother's for Mrs. Ansell; but now that they were on their way thither he found himself wishing that the visit might have been avoided. He was too proud of his mother to feel any doubt of the impression she would produce; but what would Mrs. Westmore think of their way of living, of the cheap jauntiness of the cottage, and the smell of cooking penetrating all its thin part.i.tions? Duplain, too, would be coming in for dinner; and Amherst, in spite of his liking for the young overseer, became conscious of a rather overbearing freedom in his manner, the kind of misplaced ease which the new-made American affects as the readiest sign of equality. All these trifles, usually non-existent or supremely indifferent to Amherst, now a.s.sumed a sudden importance, behind which he detected the uneasy desire that Mrs.

Westmore should not regard him as less of her own cla.s.s than his connections and his bringing-up ent.i.tled him to be thought. In a flash he saw what he had forfeited by his choice of a calling--equal contact with the little circle of people who gave life its crowning grace and facility; and the next moment he was blushing at this reversal of his standards, and wondering, almost contemptuously, what could be the nature of the woman whose mere presence could produce such a change.

But there was no struggling against her influence; and as, the night before, he had looked at Westmore with the nurse's eyes, so he now found himself seeing his house as it must appear to Mrs. Westmore. He noticed the shabby yellow paint of the palings, the neglected garden of their neighbour, the week's wash flaunting itself indecently through the denuded shrubs about the kitchen porch; and as he admitted his companions to the narrow pa.s.sage he was a.s.sailed by the expected whiff of "boiled dinner," with which the steam of wash-tubs was intimately mingled.

Duplain was in the pa.s.sage; he had just come out of the kitchen, and the fact that he had been washing his hands in the sink was made evident by his rolled-back shirt-sleeves, and by the shiny redness of the knuckles he was running through his stiff black hair.

"Hallo, John," he said, in his aggressive voice, which rose abruptly at sight of Amherst's companions; and at the same moment the frowsy maid-of-all-work, crimson from stooping over the kitchen stove, thrust her head out to call after him: "See here, Mr. Duplain, don't you leave your cravat laying round in my dough."