“Your letter reached me yesterday and I have thought it over carefully. I appreciate the feeling that prompted it—but I don’t know that any friend, however kind and discerning, can give the final advice in such matters. You tell me you are sure my wife will not ask me to return—well, under present conditions that seems to me a sufficient reason for staying away.
“Meanwhile, I assure you that I have remembered all you said to me that day. I have made no binding arrangement here—nothing to involve my future action—and I have done this solely because you asked it. This will tell you better than words how much I value your advice, and what strong reasons I must have for not following it now.
“I suppose there are no more exploring parties in this weather. I wish I could show Cicely some of the birds down here.
“Yours faithfully, “John Amherst.
“Please don’t let my wife ride Impulse.”
Latent under Justine’s acute consciousness of what this letter meant, was the sense of Bessy’s inferences and conjectures. She could feel them actually piercing the page in her hand like some hypersensitive visual organ to which matter offers no obstruction. Or rather, baffled in their endeavour, they were evoking out of the unseen, heaven knew what fantastic structure of intrigue— scrawling over the innocent page with burning evidences of perfidy and collusion….
One thing became instantly clear to her: she must show the letter to Bessy. She ran her eyes over it again, trying to disentangle the consequences. There was the allusion to their talk in town—well, she had told Bessy of that! But the careless reference to their woodland excursions—what might not Bessy, in her present mood, make of it? Justine’s uppermost thought was of distress at the failure of her plan. Perhaps she might still have induced Amherst to come back, had it not been for this accident; but now that hope was destroyed.
She raised her eyes and met Bessy’s. “Will you read it?” she said, holding out the letter.
Bessy received it with lifted brows, and a protesting murmur—but as she read, Justine saw the blood mount under her clear skin, invade the temples, the nape, even the little flower-like ears; then it receded as suddenly, ebbing at last from the very lips, so that the smile with which she looked up from her reading was as white as if she had been under the stress of physical pain.
“So you have written my husband to come back?”
“As you see.”
Bessy looked her straight in the eyes. “I am very much obliged to you—extremely obliged!”
Justine met the look quietly. “Which means that you resent my interference–-“
“Oh, I leave you to call it that!” Bessy mocked, tossing the letter down on the table at her side.
“Bessy! Don’t take it in that way. If I made a mistake I did so with the hope of helping you. How can I stand by, after all these months together, and see you deliberately destroying your life without trying to stop you?”
The smile withered on Bessy’s lips. “It is very dear and good of you—I know you’re never happy unless you’re helping people—but in this case I can only repeat what my husband says. He and I don’t often look at things in the same light—but I quite agree with him that the management of such matters is best left to—to the persons concerned.”
Justine hesitated. “I might answer that, if you take that view, it was inconsistent of you to talk with me so openly. You’ve certainly made me feel that you wanted help—you’ve turned to me for it. But perhaps that does not justify my writing to Mr. Amherst without your knowing it.”
Bessy laughed. “Ah, my dear, you knew that if you asked me the letter would never be sent!”
“Perhaps I did,” said Justine simply. “I was trying to help you against your will.”
“Well, you see the result.” Bessy laid a derisive touch on the letter. “Do you understand now whose fault it is if I am alone?”
Justine faced her steadily. “There is nothing in Mr. Amherst’s letter to make me change my opinion. I still think it lies with you to bring him back.”
Bessy raised a glittering face to her—all hardness and laughter. “Such modesty, my dear! As if I had a chance of succeeding where you failed!”
She sprang up, brushing the curls from her temples with a petulant gesture. “Don’t mind me if I’m cross—but I’ve had a dose of preaching from Maria Ansell, and I don’t know why my friends should treat me like a puppet without any preferences of my own, and press me upon a man who has done his best to show that he doesn’t want me. As a matter of fact, he and I are luckily agreed on that point too—and I’m afraid all the good advice in the world won’t persuade us to change our opinion!”
Justine held her ground. “If I believed that of either of you, I shouldn’t have written—I should not be pleading with you now—And Mr. Amherst doesn’t believe it either,” she added, after a pause, conscious of the risk she was taking, but thinking the words might act like a blow in the face of a person sinking under a deadly narcotic.
Bessy’s smile deepened to a sneer. “I see you’ve talked me over thoroughly—and on
“We have not talked you over,” Justine exclaimed. “Mr. Amherst could never talk of you…in the way you think….” And under the light staccato of Bessy’s laugh she found resolution to add: “It is not in that way that I know what he feels.”
“Ah? I should be curious to hear, then–-“
Justine turned to the letter, which still lay between them. “Will you read the last sentence again? The postscript, I mean.”
Bessy, after a surprised glance at her, took the letter up with the deprecating murmur of one who acts under compulsion rather than dispute about a trifle.
“The postscript? Let me see…‘Don’t let my wife ride Impulse.’—_Et puis?_” she murmured, dropping the page again.
“Well, does it tell you nothing? It’s a cold letter—at first I thought so—the letter of a man who believes himself
