The Fruit of the Tree

Had she misdirected it, then? In that first blinding moment her mind might so easily have failed her. But no— there was the name of the town before her…Millfield, Georgia…the same name as in his letter…. She had made no mistake, but he was gone! Gone—and without leaving an address…. For a moment her tired mind refused to work; then she roused herself, ran down the stairs again, and rang up the telegraph-office. The thing to do, of course, was to telegraph to the owner of the mills—of whose very name she was ignorant!—enquiring where Amherst was, and asking him to forward the message. Precious hours must be lost meanwhile—but, after all, they were waiting for no one upstairs.

 

The verdict had been pronounced: dislocation and fracture of the fourth vertebra, with consequent injury to the spinal cord. Dr. Garford and Wyant came out alone to tell her. The surgeon ran over the technical details, her brain instantly at attention as he developed his diagnosis and issued his orders. She asked no questions as to the future—she knew it was impossible to tell. But there were no immediate signs of a fatal ending: the patient had rallied well, and the general conditions were not unfavourable.

“You have heard from Mr. Amherst?” Dr. Garford concluded.

“Not yet…he may be travelling,” Justine faltered, unwilling to say that her telegram had been returned. As she spoke there was a tap on the door, and a folded paper was handed in—a telegram telephoned from the village.

“Amherst gone South America to study possibilities cotton growing have cabled our correspondent Buenos Ayres.”

Concealment was no longer possible. Justine handed the message to the surgeon.

“Ah—and there would be no chance of finding his address among Mrs. Amherst’s papers?”

“I think not—no.”

“Well—we must keep her alive, Wyant.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

At dusk, Justine sat in the library, waiting for Cicely to be brought to her. A lull had descended on the house—a new order developed out of the morning’s chaos. With soundless steps, with lowered voices, the machinery of life was carried on. And Justine, caught in one of the pauses of inaction which she had fought off since morning, was reliving, for the hundredth time, her few moments at Bessy’s bedside….

She had been summoned in the course of the afternoon, and stealing into the darkened room, had bent over the bed while the nurses noiselessly withdrew. There lay the white face which had been burnt into her inward vision—the motionless body, and the head stirring ceaselessly, as though to release the agitation of the imprisoned limbs. Bessy’s eyes turned to her, drawing her down.

“Am I going to die, Justine?”

“No.”

“The pain is…so awful….”

“It will pass…you will sleep….”

“Cicely–-“

“She has gone for a walk. You’ll see her presently.”

The eyes faded, releasing Justine. She stole away, and the nurses came back.

Bessy had spoken of Cicely—but not a word of her husband! Perhaps her poor dazed mind groped for him, or perhaps it shrank from his name…. Justine was thankful for her silence. For the moment her heart was bitter against Amherst. Why, so soon after her appeal and his answer, had he been false to the spirit of their agreement? This unannounced, unexplained departure was nothing less than a breach of his tacit pledge—the pledge not to break definitely with Lynbrook. And why had he gone to South America? She drew her aching brows together, trying to retrace a vague memory of some allusion to the cotton-growing capabilities of the region…. Yes, he had spoken of it once in talking of the world’s area of cotton production. But what impulse had sent him off on such an exploration? Mere unrest, perhaps—the intolerable burden of his useless life? The questions spun round and round in her head, weary, profitless, yet persistent….

It was a relief when Cicely came—a relief to measure out the cambric tea, to make the terrier beg for ginger- bread, even to take up the thread of the interrupted fairy-tale—though through it all she was wrung by the thought that, just twenty-four hours earlier, she and the child had sat in the same place, listening for the trot of Bessy’s horse….

The day passed: the hands of the clocks moved, food was cooked and served, blinds were drawn up or down, lamps lit and fires renewed…all these tokens of the passage of time took place before her, while her real consciousness seemed to hang in some dim central void, where nothing happened, nothing would ever happen….

And now Cicely was in bed, the last “long-distance” call was answered, the last orders to kitchen and stable had been despatched, Wyant had stolen down to her with his hourly report—“no change”—and she was waiting in the library for the Gaineses.