The Fruit of the Tree

It cost her a pang, again, to see the lamps lit and the curtains drawn—shutting in the warmth and brightness of the house from that wind-swept frozen twilight through which Bessy rode alone. But the icy touch of the thought slipped from Justine’s mind as she bent above the tea-tray, gravely measuring Cicely’s milk into a “grown-up” teacup, hearing the confidential details of the child’s day, and capping them with banter and fantastic narrative.

She was not sorry to go—ah, no! The house had become a prison to her, with ghosts walking its dreary floors. But to lose Cicely would be bitter—she had not felt how bitter till the child pressed against her in the firelight, insisting raptly, with little sharp elbows stabbing her knee: “And then what happened, Justine?”

The door opened, and some one came in to look at the fire. Justine, through the mazes of her fairy-tale, was dimly conscious that it was Knowles, and not one of the footmen…the proud Knowles, who never mended the fires himself…. As he passed out again, hovering slowly down the long room, she rose, leaving Cicely on the hearth-rug, and followed him to the door.

“Has Mrs. Amherst not come in?” she asked, not knowing why she wished to ask it out of the child’s hearing.

“No, miss. I looked in myself to see—thinking she might have come by the side-door.”

“She may have gone to her sitting-room.”

“She’s not upstairs.”

They both paused. Then Justine said: “What horse was she riding?”

“Impulse, Miss.” The butler looked at his large responsible watch. “It’s not late—” he said, more to himself than to her.

“No. Has she been riding Impulse lately?”

“No, Miss. Not since that day the mare nearly had her off. I understood Mr. Amherst did not wish it.”

Justine went back to Cicely and the fairy-tale.—As she took up the thread of the Princess’s adventures, she asked herself why she had ever had any hope of helping Bessy. The seeds of disaster were in the poor creature’s soul…. Even when she appeared to be moved, lifted out of herself, her escaping impulses were always dragged back to the magnetic centre of hard distrust and resistance that sometimes forms the core of soft- fibred natures. As she had answered her husband’s previous appeal by her flight to the woman he disliked, so she answered this one by riding the horse he feared…. Justine’s last illusions crumbled. The distance between two such natures was unspannable. Amherst had done well to remain away…and with a tidal rush her sympathies swept back to his side….

 

The governess came to claim Cicely. One of the footmen came to put another log on the fire. Then the rite of removing the tea-table was majestically performed—the ceremonial that had so often jarred on Amherst’s nerves. As she watched it, Justine had a vague sense of the immutability of the household routine—a queer awed feeling that, whatever happened, a machine so perfectly adjusted would work on inexorably, like a natural law….

She rose to look out of the window, staring vainly into blackness between the parted curtains. As she turned back, passing the writing-table, she noticed that Cicely’s irruption had made her forget to post her letters—an unusual oversight. A glance at the clock told her that she was not too late for the mail—reminding her, at the same time, that it was scarcely three hours since Bessy had started on her ride…. She saw the foolishness of her fears. Even in winter, Bessy often rode for more than three hours; and now that the days were growing longer–-

Suddenly reassured, Justine went out into the hall, intending to carry her batch of letters to the red pillar-box by the door. As she did so, a cold blast struck her. Could it be that for once the faultless routine of the house had been relaxed, that one of the servants had left the outer door ajar? She walked over to the vestibule—yes, both doors were wide. The night rushed in on a vicious wind. As she pushed the vestibule door shut, she heard the dogs sniffing and whining on the threshold. She crossed the vestibule, and heard voices and the tramping of feet in the darkness—then saw a lantern gleam. Suddenly Knowles shot out of the night—the lantern struck on his bleached face.

Justine, stepping back, pressed the electric button in the wall, and the wide doorstep was abruptly illuminated, with its huddled, pushing, heavily-breathing group…black figures writhing out of darkness, strange faces distorted in the glare.

“Bessy!” she cried, and sprang forward; but suddenly Wyant was before her, his hand on her arm; and as the dreadful group struggled by into the hall, he froze her to him with a whisper: “The spine–-“

XXVI

WITHIN Justine there was a moment’s darkness; then, like terror-struck workers rallying to their tasks, every faculty was again at its post, receiving and transmitting signals, taking observations, anticipating orders, making her brain ring with the hum of a controlled activity.

She had known the sensation before—the transmuting of terror and pity into this miraculous lucidity of thought and action; but never had it snatched her from such depths. Oh, thank heaven for her knowledge now—for the trained mind that could take command of her senses and bend them firmly to its service!

Wyant seconded her well, after a moment’s ague-fit of fear. She pitied and pardoned the moment, aware of its cause, and respecting him for the way in which he rose above it into the clear air of professional self-command.