The Fruit of the Tree

and farther into the background of the life she had helped to call out of chaos. Then a contrary impulse moved her. She gently freed Cicely’s hand, and a moment later, as she sat with bent head and throbbing breast, she heard the child’s treble piping out above her:

“In my mother’s name, I give this house to Westmore.”

Applause again—and then Justine found herself enveloped in a general murmur of compliment and congratulation. Mr. Amherst had spoken admirably—a “beautiful tribute—” ah, he had done poor Bessy justice! And to think that till now Hanaford had never fully known how she had the welfare of the mills at heart—how it was really only her work that he was carrying on there! Well, he had made that perfectly clear—and no doubt Cicely was being taught to follow in her mother’s footsteps: everyone had noticed how her step-father was associating her with the work at the mills. And his little speech would, as it were, consecrate the child’s relation to that work, make it appear to her as the continuance of a beautiful, a sacred tradition….

 

And now it was over. The building had been inspected, the operatives had dispersed, the Hanaford company had rolled off down the avenue, Cicely, among them, driving away tired and happy in Mrs. Dressel’s victoria, and Amherst and his wife were alone.

Amherst, after bidding goodbye to his last guests, had gone back to the empty concert-room to fetch the blueprint lying on the platform. He came back with it, between the uneven rows of empty chairs, and joined Justine, who stood waiting in the hall. His face was slightly flushed, and his eyes had the light which in happy moments burned through their veil of thought.

He laid his hand on his wife’s arm, and drawing her toward a table spread out the blueprint before her.

“You haven’t seen this, have you?” he said.

She looked down at the plan without answering, reading in the left-hand corner the architect’s conventional inscription: “Swimming-tank and gymnasium designed for Mrs. John Amherst.”

Amherst looked up, perhaps struck by her silence.

“But perhaps you have seen it—at Lynbrook? It must have been done while you were there.”

The quickened throb of her blood rushed to her brain like a signal. “Speak—speak now!” the signal commanded.

Justine continued to look fixedly at the plan. “Yes, I have seen it,” she said at length.

“At Lynbrook?”

“At Lynbrook.”

“She showed it to you, I suppose—while I was away?”

Justine hesitated again. “Yes, while you were away.”

“And did she tell you anything about it, go into details about her wishes, her intentions?”

Now was the moment—now! As her lips parted she looked up at her husband. The illumination still lingered on his face—and it was the face she loved. He was waiting eagerly for her next word.

“No, I heard no details. I merely saw the plan lying there.”

She saw his look of disappointment. “She never told you about it?”

“No—she never told me.”

It was best so, after all. She understood that now. It was now at last that she was paying her full price.

Amherst rolled up the plan with a sigh and pushed it into the drawer of the table. It struck her that he too had the look of one who has laid a ghost. He turned to her and drew her hand through his arm.

“You’re tired, dear. You ought to have driven back with the others,” he said.

“No, I would rather stay with you.”

“You want to drain this good day to the dregs, as I do?”

“Yes,” she murmured, drawing her hand away.

“It is a good day, isn’t it?” he continued, looking about him at the white-panelled walls, the vista of large bright rooms seen through the folding doors. “I feel as if we had reached a height, somehow—a height where one might pause and draw breath for the next climb. Don’t you feel that too, Justine?”

“Yes—I feel it.”

“Do you remember once, long ago—one day when you and I and Cicely went on a picnic to hunt orchids—how we got talking of the one best moment in life—the moment when one wanted most to stop the clock?”

The colour rose in her face while he spoke. It was a long time since he had referred to the early days of their friendship—the days before….

“Yes, I remember,” she said.

“And do you remember how we said that it was with most of us as it was with Faust? That the moment one wanted to hold fast to was not, in most lives, the moment of keenest personal happiness, but the other kind—the kind that would have seemed grey and colourless at first: the moment when the meaning of life began to come out from the mists—when one could look out at last over the marsh one had drained?”