Justine sat resting her chin on her clasped hands, hereyes gazing straight before her under dark tormented brows. When he paused she remained silent.
"Well—don't you believe me?" he broke out with sudden asperity.
"I don't know...I can't tell...."
"But as long as there's a doubt, even—a doubt my way—and I'll show you there is, if you'll give me time——"
"How much time?" she murmured, without shifting her gaze.
"Ah—that depends on ourselves: on you and me chiefly. That's what Garford admits.Theycan't do much now—they've got to leave the game to us. It's a question of incessant vigilance...of utilizing every hour, every moment.... Time's all I ask, andyoucan give it to me, if any one can!"
Under the challenge of his tone Justine rose to her feet with a low murmur of fear. "Ah, don't ask me!"
"Don't ask you——?"
"I can't—I can't."
Wyant stood up also, turning on her an astonished glance.
"You can't what—?"
Their eyes met, and she thought she read in his a sudden divination of her inmost thoughts. The discovery electrified her flagging strength, restoring her to immediate clearness of brain. She saw the gulf ofself-betrayal over which she had hung, and the nearness of the peril nerved her to a last effort of dissimulation.
"I can't...talk of it...any longer," she faltered, letting her tears flow, and turning on him a face of pure womanly weakness.
Wyant looked at her without answering. Did he distrust even these plain physical evidences of exhaustion, or was he merely disappointed in her, as in one whom he had believed to be above the emotional failings of her sex?
"You're over-tired," he said coldly. "Take tonight to rest. Miss Mace can replace you for the next few hours—and I may need you more tomorrow."
Fourmore days had passed. Bessy seldom spoke when Justine was with her. She was wrapped in a thickening cloud of opiates—morphia by day, bromides, sulphonal, chloral hydrate at night. When the cloud broke and consciousness emerged, it was centred in the one acute point of bodily anguish. Darting throes of neuralgia, agonized oppression of the breath, the diffused misery of the whole helpless body—these were reducing their victim to a mere instrument on which pain played its incessant deadly variations. Onceor twice she turned her dull eyes on Justine, breathing out: "I want to die," as some inevitable lifting or readjusting thrilled her body with fresh pangs; but there were no signs of contact with the outer world—she had ceased even to ask for Cicely....
And yet, according to the doctors, the patient held her own. Certain alarming symptoms had diminished, and while others persisted, the strength to fight them persisted too. With such strength to call on, what fresh agonies were reserved for the poor body when the narcotics had lost their power?
That was the question always before Justine. She never again betrayed her fears to Wyant—she carried out his orders with morbid precision, trembling lest any failure in efficiency should revive his suspicions. She hardly knew what she feared his suspecting—she only had a confused sense that they were enemies, and that she was the weaker of the two.
And then the anæsthetics began to fail. It was the sixteenth day since the accident, and the resources of alleviation were almost exhausted. It was not sure, even now, that Bessy was going to die—and she was certainly going to suffer a long time. Wyant seemed hardly conscious of the increase of pain—his whole mind was fixed on the prognosis. What matter if the patient suffered, as long as he proved his case? That, of course, was not his way of putting it. In reality,he did all he could to allay the pain, surpassed himself in new devices and experiments. But death confronted him implacably, claiming his due: so many hours robbed from him, so much tribute to pay; and Wyant, setting his teeth, fought on—and Bessy paid.
Justine had begun to notice that it was hard for her to get a word alone with Dr. Garford. The other nurses were not in the way—it was Wyant who always contrived to be there. Perhaps she was unreasonable in seeing a special intention in his presence: it was natural enough that the two persons in charge of the case should confer together with their chief. But his persistence annoyed her, and she was glad when, one afternoon, the surgeon asked him to telephone an important message to town.
As soon as the door had closed, Justine said to Dr. Garford: "She is beginning to suffer terribly."
He answered with the large impersonal gesture of the man to whom physical suffering has become a painful general fact of life, no longer divisible into individual cases. "We are doing all we can."
"Yes." She paused, and then raised her eyes to his dry kind face. "Is there any hope?"
Another gesture—the fatalistic sweep of the lifted palms. "The next ten days will tell—the fight is on, as Wyant says. And if any one can do it, that youngfellow can. There's stuff in him—and infernal ambition."
"Yes: but doyoubelieve she can live—?"
Dr. Garford smiled indulgently on such unprofessional insistence; but she was past wondering what they must all think of her.
"My dear Miss Brent," he said, "I have reached the age when one always leaves a door open to the unexpected."
As he spoke, a slight sound at her back made her turn. Wyant was behind her—he must have entered as she put her question. And he certainly could not have had time to descend the stairs, walk the length of the house, ring up New York, and deliver Dr Garford's message.... The same thought seemed to strike the surgeon. "Hello, Wyant?" he said.
"Line busy," said Wyant curtly.
About this time, Justine gave up her night vigils. She could no longer face the struggle of the dawn hour, when life ebbs lowest; and since her duties extended beyond the sick-room she could fairly plead that she was more needed about the house by day. But Wyant protested: he wanted her most at the difficult hour.
"You know you're taking a chance from her," he said, almost sternly.
"Oh, no——"
He looked at her searchingly. "You don't feel up to it?"
"No."
He turned away with a slight shrug; but she knew he resented her defection.
The day watches were miserable enough. It was the nineteenth day now; and Justine lay on the sofa in Amherst's sitting-room, trying to nerve herself for the nurse's summons. A page torn out of the calendar lay before her—she had been calculating again how many days must elapse before Mr. Langhope could arrive. Ten days—ten days and ten nights! And the length of the nights was double.... As for Amherst, it was impossible to set a date for his coming, for his steamer from Buenos Ayres called at various ports on the way northward, and the length of her stay at each was dependent on the delivery of freight, and on the dilatoriness of the South American official.
She threw down the calendar and leaned back, pressing her hands to her temples. Oh, for a word with Amherst—he alone would have understood what she was undergoing! Mr. Langhope's coming would make no difference—or rather, it would only increase the difficulty of the situation. Instinctively Justine felt that, though his heart would be wrung by the sight of Bessy's pain, his cry would be the familiar one, the traditional one:Keep her alive!Under his surface originality, his verbal audacities and ironies, Mr. Langhope was the creature of accepted forms, inherited opinions: he had never really thought for himself on any of the pressing problems of life.
But Amherst was different. Close contact with many forms of wretchedness had freed him from the bondage of accepted opinion. He looked at life through no eyes but his own; and what he saw, he confessed to seeing. He never tried to evade the consequences of his discoveries.
Justine's remembrance flew back to their first meeting at Hanaford, when his confidence in his own powers was still unshaken, his trust in others unimpaired. And, gradually, she began to relive each detail of their talk at Dillon's bedside—her first impression of him, as he walked down the ward; the first sound of his voice; her surprised sense of his authority; her almost involuntary submission to his will.... Then her thoughts passed on to their walk home from the hospital—she recalled his sober yet unsparing summary of the situation at Westmore, and the note of insight with which he touched on the hardships of the workers.... Then, word by word, their talk about Dillon came back...Amherst's indignation and pity...his shudder of revolt at the man's doom.
"In your work, don't you ever feel tempted to set a poor devil free?" And then, after her conventionalmurmur of protest: "To save what, when all the good of life is gone?"
To distract her thoughts she stretched her hand toward the book-case, taking out the first volume in reach—the little copy of Bacon. She leaned back, fluttering its pages aimlessly—so wrapped in her own misery that the meaning of the words could not reach her. It was useless to try to read: every perception of the outer world was lost in the hum of inner activity that made her mind like a forge throbbing with heat and noise. But suddenly her glance fell on some pencilled sentences on the fly-leaf. They were in Amherst's hand, and the sight arrested her as though she had heard him speak.
La vraie morale se moque de la morale....
We perish because we follow other men's examples....
Socrates used to call the opinions of the many by the name of Lamiæ—bugbears to frighten children....
A rush of air seemed to have been let into her stifled mind. Were they his own thoughts? No—her memory recalled some confused association with great names. But at least they must represent his beliefs—must embody deeply-felt convictions—or he would scarcely have taken the trouble to record them.
She murmured over the last sentence once or twice:The opinions of the many—bugbears to frighten children....Yes, she had often heard him speak of current judgments in that way...she had never known a mind so free from the spell of the Lamiæ.
Some one knocked, and she put aside the book and rose to her feet. It was a maid bringing a note from Wyant.
"There has been a motor accident beyond Clifton, and I have been sent for. I think I can safely be away for two or three hours, but ring me up at Clifton if you want me. Miss Mace has instructions, and Garford's assistant will be down at seven."
She looked at the clock: it was just three, the hour at which she was to relieve Miss Mace. She smoothed the hair from her forehead, straightened her cap, tied on the apron she had laid aside....
As she entered Bessy's sitting-room the nurse came out, memoranda in hand. The two moved to the window for a moment's conference, and as the wintry light fell on Miss Mace's face, Justine saw that it was white with fatigue.
"You're ill!" she exclaimed.
The nurse shook her head. "No—but it's awful...this afternoon...." Her glance turned to the sick-room.
"Go and rest—I'll stay till bedtime," Justine said.
"Miss Safford's down with another headache."
"I know: it doesn't matter. I'm quite fresh."
"Youdolook rested!" the other exclaimed, her eyes lingering enviously on Justine's face.
She stole away, and Justine entered the room. It was true that she felt fresh—a new spring of hope had welled up in her. She had her nerves in hand again, she had regained her steady vision of life....
But in the room, as the nurse had said, it was awful. The time had come when the effect of the anæsthetics must be carefully husbanded, when long intervals of pain must purchase the diminishing moments of relief. Yet from Wyant's standpoint it was a good day—things were looking well, as he would have phrased it. And each day now was a fresh victory.
Justine went through her task mechanically. The glow of strength and courage remained, steeling her to bear what had broken down Miss Mace's professional fortitude. But when she sat down by the bed Bessy's moaning began to wear on her. It was no longer the utterance of human pain, but the monotonous whimper of an animal—the kind of sound that a compassionate hand would instinctively crush into silence. But her hand had other duties; she must keep watch on pulse and heart, must reinforce their action with the tremendous stimulants which Wyant was now using, and, having revived fresh sensibility to pain, must presently try to allay it by the cautious use of narcotics.
It was all simple enough—but suppose she shouldnot do it? Suppose she left the stimulants untouched? Wyant was absent, one nurse exhausted with fatigue, the other laid low by headache. Justine had the field to herself. For three hours at least no one was likely to cross the threshold of the sick-room.... Ah, if no more time were needed! But there was too much life in Bessy—her youth was fighting too hard for her! She would not sink out of life in three hours...and Justine could not count on more than that.
She looked at the little travelling-clock on the dressing-table, and saw that its hands marked four. An hour had passed already.... She rose and administered the prescribed restorative; then she took the pulse, and listened to the beat of the heart. Strong still—too strong!
As she lifted her head, the vague animal wailing ceased, and she heard her name: "Justine——"
She bent down eagerly. "Yes?"
No answer: the wailing had begun again. But the one word showed her that the mind still lived in its torture-house, that the poor powerless body before her was not yet a mere bundle of senseless reflexes, but her friend Bessy Amherst, dying, and feeling herself die....
Justine reseated herself, and the vigil began again. The second hour ebbed slowly—ah, no, it was flying now! Her eyes were on the hands of the clock and they seemed leagued against her to devour the preciousminutes. And now she could see by certain spasmodic symptoms that another crisis of pain was approaching—one of the struggles that Wyant, at times, had almost seemed to court and exult in.
Bessy's eyes turned on her again. "Justine——"
She knew what that meant: it was an appeal for the hypodermic needle. The little instrument lay at hand, beside a newly-filled bottle of morphia. But she must wait—must let the pain grow more severe. Yet she could not turn her gaze from Bessy, and Bessy's eyes entreated her again—Justine! There was really no word now—the whimperings were uninterrupted. But Justine heard an inner voice, and its pleading shook her heart. She rose and filled the syringe—and returning with it, bent above the bed....
She lifted her head and looked at the clock. The second hour had passed. As she looked, she heard a step in the sitting-room. Who could it be? Not Dr. Garford's assistant—he was not due till seven. She listened again.... One of the nurses? No, not a woman's step——
The door opened, and Wyant came in. Justine stood by the bed without moving toward him. He paused also, as if surprised to see her there motionless. In the intense silence she fancied for a moment that she heard Bessy's violent agonized breathing. Shetried to speak, to drown the sound of the breathing; but her lips trembled too much, and she remained silent.
Wyant seemed to hear nothing. He stood so still that she felt she must move forward. As she did so, she picked up from the table by the bed the memoranda that it was her duty to submit to him.
"Well?" he said, in the familiar sick-room whisper.
"She is dead."
He fell back a step, glaring at her, white and incredulous.
"Dead?—When——?"
"A few minutes ago...."
"Dead—?It's not possible!"
He swept past her, shouldering her aside, pushing in an electric button as he sprang to the bed. She perceived then that the room had been almost in darkness. She recovered command of herself, and followed him. He was going through the usual rapid examination—pulse, heart, breath—hanging over the bed like some angry animal balked of its prey. Then he lifted the lids and bent close above the eyes.
"Take the shade off that lamp!" he commanded.
Justine obeyed him.
He stooped down again to examine the eyes...he remained stooping a long time. Suddenly he stood up and faced her.
"Had she been in great pain?"
"Yes."
"Worse than usual?"
"Yes."
"What had you done?"
"Nothing—there was no time."
"No time?" He broke off to sweep the room again with his excited incredulous glance. "Where are the others? Why were you here alone?" he demanded.
"It came suddenly. I was going to call——"
Their eyes met for a moment. Her face was perfectly calm—she could feel that her lips no longer trembled. She was not in the least afraid of Wyant's scrutiny.
As he continued to look at her, his expression slowly passed from incredulous wrath to something softer—more human—she could not tell what....
"This has been too much for you—go and send one of the others.... It's all over," he said.
Ona September day, somewhat more than a year and a half after Bessy Amherst's death, her husband and his mother sat at luncheon in the dining-room of the Westmore house at Hanaford.
The house was John Amherst's now, and shortly after the loss of his wife he had established himself there with his mother. By a will made some six months before her death, Bessy had divided her estate between her husband and daughter, placing Cicely's share in trust, and appointing Mr. Langhope and Amherst as her guardians. As the latter was also her trustee, the whole management of the estate devolved on him, while his control of the Westmore mills was ensured by his receiving a slightly larger proportion of the stock than his step-daughter.
The will had come as a surprise, not only to Amherst himself, but to his wife's family, and more especially to her legal adviser. Mr. Tredegar had in fact had nothing to do with the drawing of the instrument; but as it had been drawn in due form, and by a firm of excellent standing, he was obliged, in spite of hisprivate views, and Mr. Langhope's open adjurations that he should "do something," to declare that there was no pretext for questioning the validity of the document.
To Amherst the will was something more than a proof of his wife's confidence: it came as a reconciling word from her grave. For the date showed that it had been made at a moment when he supposed himself to have lost all influence over her—on the morrow of the day when she had stipulated that he should give up the management of the Westmore mills, and yield the care of her property to Mr. Tredegar.
While she smote him with one hand, she sued for pardon with the other; and the contradiction was so characteristic, it explained and excused in so touching a way the inconsistencies of her impulsive heart and hesitating mind, that he was filled with that tender compunction, that searching sense of his own shortcomings, which generous natures feel when they find they have underrated the generosity of others. But Amherst's was not an introspective mind, and his sound moral sense told him, when the first pang of self-reproach had subsided, that he had done his best by his wife, and was in no way to blame if her recognition of the fact had come too late. The self-reproach subsided; and, instead of the bitterness of the past, it left a softened memory which made him take up histask with the sense that he was now working with Bessy and not against her.
Yet perhaps, after all, it was chiefly the work itself which had healed old wounds, and quelled the tendency to vain regrets. Amherst was only thirty-four; and in the prime of his energies the task he was made for had been given back to him. To a sound nature, which finds its outlet in fruitful action, nothing so simplifies the complexities of life, so tends to a large acceptance of its vicissitudes and mysteries, as the sense of doing something each day toward clearing one's own bit of the wilderness. And this was the joy at last conceded to Amherst. The mills were virtually his; and the fact that he ruled them not only in his own right but as Cicely's representative, made him doubly eager to justify his wife's trust in him.
Mrs. Amherst, looking up from a telegram which the parlour-maid had handed her, smiled across the table at her son.
"From Maria Ansell—they are all coming tomorrow."
"Ah—that's good," Amherst rejoined. "I should have been sorry if Cicely had not been here."
"Mr. Langhope is coming too," his mother continued. "I'm glad of that, John."
"Yes," Amherst again assented.
The morrow was to be a great day at Westmore.The Emergency Hospital, planned in the first months of his marriage, and abandoned in the general reduction of expenditure at the mills, had now been completed on a larger and more elaborate scale, as a memorial to Bessy. The strict retrenchment of all personal expenses, and the leasing of Lynbrook and the town house, had enabled Amherst, in eighteen months, to lay by enough income to carry out this plan, which he was impatient to see executed as a visible commemoration of his wife's generosity to Westmore. For Amherst persisted in regarding the gift of her fortune as a gift not to himself but to the mills: he looked on himself merely as the agent of her beneficent intentions. He was anxious that Westmore and Hanaford should take the same view; and the opening of the Westmore Memorial Hospital was therefore to be performed with an unwonted degree of ceremony.
"I am glad Mr. Langhope is coming," Mrs. Amherst repeated, as they rose from the table. "It shows, dear—doesn't it?—that he's really gratified—that he appreciates your motive...."
She raised a proud glance to her tall son, whose head seemed to tower higher than ever above her small proportions. Renewed self-confidence, and the habit of command, had in fact restored the erectness to Amherst's shoulders and the clearness to his eyes. The cleft between the brows was gone, and his veiled inward gaze had given place to a glance almost as outward-looking and unspeculative as his mother's.
"It shows—well, yes—what you say!" he rejoined with a slight laugh, and a tap on her shoulder as she passed.
He was under no illusions as to his father-in-law's attitude: he knew that Mr. Langhope would willingly have broken the will which deprived his grand-daughter of half her inheritance, and that his subsequent show of friendliness was merely a concession to expediency. But in his present mood Amherst almost believed that time and closer relations might turn such sentiments into honest liking. He was very fond of his little step-daughter, and deeply sensible of his obligations toward her; and he hoped that, as Mr. Langhope came to recognize this, it might bring about a better understanding between them.
His mother detained him. "You're going back to the mills at once? I wanted to consult you about the rooms. Miss Brent had better be next to Cicely?"
"I suppose so—yes. I'll see you before I go." He nodded affectionately and passed on, his hands full of papers, into the Oriental smoking-room, now dedicated to the unexpected uses of an office and study.
Mrs. Amherst, as she turned away, found the parlour-maid in the act of opening the front door to the highly-tinted and well-dressed figure of Mrs. Harry Dressel.
"I'm so delighted to hear that you're expecting Justine," began Mrs. Dressel as the two ladies passed into the drawing-room.
"Ah, you've heard too?" Mrs. Amherst rejoined, enthroning her visitor in one of the monumental plush armchairs beneath the threatening weight of the Bay of Naples.
"I hadn't till this moment; in fact I flew in to ask for news, and on the door-step there was such a striking-looking young man enquiring for her, and I heard the parlour-maid say she was arriving tomorrow."
"A young man? Some one you didn't know?" Striking apparitions of the male sex were of infrequent occurrence at Hanaford, and Mrs. Amherst's unabated interest in the movement of life caused her to dwell on this statement.
"Oh, no—I'm sure he was a stranger. Extremely slight and pale, with remarkable eyes. He was so disappointed—he seemed sure of finding her."
"Well, no doubt he'll come back tomorrow.—You know we're expecting the whole party," added Mrs. Amherst, to whom the imparting of good news was always an irresistible temptation.
Mrs. Dressel's interest deepened at once. "Really? Mr. Langhope too?"
"Yes. It's a great pleasure to my son."
"It must be! I'm so glad. I suppose in a way itwill be rather sad for Mr. Langhope—seeing everything here so unchanged——"
Mrs. Amherst straightened herself a little. "I think he will prefer to find it so," she said, with a barely perceptible change of tone.
"Oh, I don't know. They were never very fond of this house."
There was an added note of authority in Mrs. Dressel's accent. In the last few months she had been to Europe and had had nervous prostration, and these incontestable evidences of growing prosperity could not always be kept out of her voice and bearing. At any rate, they justified her in thinking that her opinion on almost any subject within the range of human experience was a valuable addition to the sum-total of wisdom; and unabashed by the silence with which her comment was received, she continued her critical survey of the drawing-room.
"Dear Mrs. Amherst—you know I can't help saying what I think—and I've so often wondered why you don't do this room over. With these high ceilings you could do something lovely in Louis Seize."
A faint pink rose to Mrs. Amherst's cheeks. "I don't think my son would ever care to make any changes here," she said.
"Oh, I understand his feeling; but when he beginsto entertain—and you know poor Bessy alwayshatedthis furniture."
Mrs. Amherst smiled slightly. "Perhaps if he marries again—" she said, seizing at random on a pretext for changing the subject.
Mrs. Dressel dropped the hands with which she was absent-mindedly assuring herself of the continuance of unbroken relations between her hat and her hair.
"Marries again?Why—you don't mean—? He doesn't think of it?"
"Not in the least—I spoke figuratively," her hostess rejoined with a laugh.
"Oh, of course—I see. He reallycouldn'tmarry, could he? I mean, it would be so wrong to Cicely—under the circumstances."
Mrs. Amherst's black eye-brows gathered in a slight frown. She had already noticed, on the part of the Hanaford clan, a disposition to regard Amherst as imprisoned in the conditions of his trust, and committed to the obligation of handing on unimpaired to Cicely the fortune his wife's caprice had bestowed on him; and this open expression of the family view was singularly displeasing to her.
"I had not thought of it in that light—but it's really of no consequence how one looks at a thing that is not going to happen," she said carelessly.
"No—naturally; I see you were only joking. He'sso devoted to Cicely, isn't he?" Mrs. Dressel rejoined, with her bright obtuseness.
A step on the threshold announced Amherst's approach.
"I'm afraid I must be off, mother—" he began, halting in the doorway with the instinctive masculine recoil from the afternoon caller.
"Oh, Mr. Amherst, how d'you do? I suppose you're very busy about tomorrow? I just flew in to find out if Justine was really coming," Mrs. Dressel explained, a little fluttered by the effort of recalling what she had been saying when he entered.
"I believe my mother expects the whole party," Amherst replied, shaking hands with the falsebonhomieof the man entrapped.
"How delightful! And it's so nice to think that Mr. Langhope's arrangement with Justine still works so well," Mrs. Dressel hastened on, nervously hoping that her volubility would smother any recollection of what he had chanced to overhear.
"Mr. Langhope is lucky in having persuaded Miss Brent to take charge of Cicely," Mrs. Amherst quietly interposed.
"Yes—and it was so lucky for Justine too! When she came back from Europe with us last autumn, I could see she simply hated the idea of taking up her nursing again."
Amherst's face darkened at the allusion, and his mother said hurriedly: "Ah, she was tired, poor child; but I'm only afraid that, after the summer's rest, she may want some more active occupation than looking after a little girl."
"Oh, I think not—she's so fond of Cicely. And of course it's everything to her to have a comfortable home."
Mrs. Amherst smiled. "At her age, it's not always everything."
Mrs. Dressel stared slightly. "Oh, Justine's twenty-seven, you know; she's not likely to marry now," she said, with the mild finality of the early-wedded.
She rose as she spoke, extending cordial hands of farewell. "You must be so busy preparing for the great day...if only it doesn't rain!... No,please, Mr. Amherst!... It's a mere step—I'm walking...."
That afternoon, as Amherst walked out toward Westmore for a survey of the final preparations, he found that, among the pleasant thoughts accompanying him, one of the pleasantest was the anticipation of seeing Justine Brent.
Among the little group who were to surround him on the morrow, she was the only one discerning enough to understand what the day meant to him, or with sufficient knowledge to judge of the use he had made ofhis great opportunity. Even now that the opportunity had come, and all obstacles were levelled, sympathy with his work was as much lacking as ever; and only Duplain, at length reinstated as manager, really understood and shared in his aims. But Justine Brent's sympathy was of a different kind from the manager's. If less logical, it was warmer, more penetrating—like some fine imponderable fluid, so subtle that it could always find a way through the clumsy processes of human intercourse. Amherst had thought very often of this quality in her during the weeks which followed his abrupt departure for Georgia; and in trying to define it he had said to himself that she felt with her brain.
And now, aside from the instinctive understanding between them, she was set apart in his thoughts by her association with his wife's last days. On his arrival from the south he had gathered on all sides evidences of her tender devotion to Bessy: even Mr. Tredegar's chary praise swelled the general commendation. From the surgeons he heard how her unwearied skill had helped them in their fruitless efforts; poor Cicely, awed by her loss, clung to her mother's friend with childish tenacity; and the young rector of Saint Anne's, shyly acquitting himself of his visit of condolence, dwelt chiefly on the consolatory thought of Miss Brent's presence at the death-bed.
The knowledge that Justine had been with his wife till the end had, in fact, done more than anything else to soften Amherst's regrets; and he had tried to express something of this in the course of his first talk with her. Justine had given him a clear and self-possessed report of the dreadful weeks at Lynbrook; but at his first allusion to her own part in them, she shrank into a state of distress which seemed to plead with him to refrain from even the tenderest touch on her feelings. It was a peculiarity of their friendship that silence and absence had always mysteriously fostered its growth; and he now felt that her reticence deepened the understanding between them as the freest confidences might not have done.
Soon afterward, an opportune attack of nervous prostration had sent Mrs. Harry Dressel abroad; and Justine was selected as her companion. They remained in Europe for six months; and on their return Amherst learned with pleasure that Mr. Langhope had asked Miss Brent to take charge of Cicely.
Mr. Langhope's sorrow for his daughter had been aggravated by futile wrath at her unaccountable will; and the mixed sentiment thus engendered had found expression in a jealous outpouring of affection toward Cicely. He took immediate possession of the child, and in the first stages of his affliction her companionship had been really consoling. But as time passed,and the pleasant habits of years reasserted themselves, her presence became, in small unacknowledged ways, a source of domestic irritation. Nursery hours disturbed the easy routine of his household; the elderly parlour-maid who had long ruled it resented the intervention of Cicely's nurse; the little governess, involved in the dispute, broke down and had to be shipped home to Germany; a successor was hard to find, and in the interval Mr. Langhope's privacy was invaded by a stream of visiting teachers, who were always wanting to consult him about Cicely's lessons, and lay before him their tiresome complaints and perplexities. Poor Mr. Langhope found himself in the position of the mourner who, in the first fervour of bereavement, has undertaken the construction of an imposing monument without having counted the cost. He had meant that his devotion to Cicely should be a monument to his paternal grief; but the foundations were scarcely laid when he found that the funds of time and patience were almost exhausted.
Pride forbade his consigning Cicely to her step-father, though Mrs. Amherst would gladly have undertaken her care; Mrs. Ansell's migratory habits made it impossible for her to do more than intermittently hover and advise; and a new hope rose before Mr. Langhope when it occurred to him to appeal to Miss Brent.
The experiment had proved a success, and whenAmherst met Justine again she had been for some months in charge of the little girl, and change and congenial occupation had restored her to a normal view of life. There was no trace in her now of the dumb misery which had haunted him at their parting; she was again the vivid creature who seemed more charged with life than any one he had ever known. The crisis through which she had passed showed itself only in a smoothing of the brow and deepening of the eyes, as though a bloom of experience had veiled without deadening the first brilliancy of youth.
As he lingered on the image thus evoked, he recalled Mrs. Dressel's words: "Justine is twenty-seven—she's not likely to marry now."
Oddly enough, he had never thought of her marrying—but now that he heard the possibility questioned, he felt a disagreeable conviction of its inevitableness. Mrs. Dressel's view was of course absurd. In spite of Justine's feminine graces, he had formerly felt in her a kind of elfin immaturity, as of a flitting Ariel with untouched heart and senses: it was only of late that she had developed the subtle quality which calls up thoughts of love. Not marry? Why, the vagrant fire had just lighted on her—and the fact that she was poor and unattached, with her own way to make, and no setting of pleasure and elegance to embellish her—these disadvantages seemed as nothing to Amherst against thewarmth of personality in which she moved. And besides, she would never be drawn to the kind of man who needed fine clothes and luxury to point him to the charm of sex. She was always finished and graceful in appearance, with the pretty woman's art of wearing her few plain dresses as if they were many and varied; yet no one could think of her as attaching much importance to the upholstery of life.... No, the man who won her would be of a different type, have other inducements to offer...and Amherst found himself wondering just what those inducements would be.
Suddenly he remembered something his mother had said as he left the house—something about a distinguished-looking young man who had called to ask for Miss Brent. Mrs. Amherst, innocently inquisitive in small matters, had followed her son into the hall to ask the parlour-maid if the gentleman had left his name; and the parlour-maid had answered in the negative. The young man was evidently not indigenous: all the social units of Hanaford were intimately known to each other. He was a stranger, therefore, presumably drawn there by the hope of seeing Miss Brent. But if he knew that she was coming he must be intimately acquainted with her movements.... The thought came to Amherst as an unpleasant surprise. It showed him for the first time how little he knew of Justine's personal life, of the ties she might have formedoutside the Lynbrook circle. After all, he had seen her chiefly not among her own friends but among his wife's. Was it reasonable to suppose that a creature of her keen individuality would be content to subsist on the fringe of other existences? Somewhere, of course, she must have a centre of her own, must be subject to influences of which he was wholly ignorant. And since her departure from Lynbrook he had known even less of her life. She had spent the previous winter with Mr. Langhope in New York, where Amherst had seen her only on his rare visits to Cicely; and Mr. Langhope, on going abroad for the summer, had established his grand-daughter in a Bar Harbour cottage, where, save for two flying visits from Mrs. Ansell, Miss Brent had reigned alone till his return in September.
Very likely, Amherst reflected, the mysterious visitor was a Bar Harbour acquaintance—no, more than an acquaintance: a friend. And as Mr. Langhope's party had left Mount Desert but three days previously, the arrival of the unknown at Hanaford showed a singular impatience to rejoin Miss Brent.
As he reached this point in his meditations, Amherst found himself at the street-corner where it was his habit to pick up the Westmore trolley. Just as it bore down on him, and he sprang to the platform, another car, coming in from the mills, stopped to discharge itspassengers. Among them Amherst noticed a slender undersized man in shabby clothes, about whose retreating back, as he crossed the street to signal a Station Avenue car, there was something dimly familiar, and suggestive of troubled memories. Amherst leaned out and looked again: yes, the back was certainly like Dr. Wyant's—but what could Wyant be doing at Hanaford, and in a Westmore car?
Amherst's first impulse was to spring out and overtake him. He knew how admirably the young physician had borne himself at Lynbrook; he even recalled Dr. Garford's saying, with his kindly sceptical smile: "Poor Wyant believed to the end that we could save her"—and felt again his own inward movement of thankfulness that the cruel miracle had not been worked.
He owed a great deal to Wyant, and had tried to express his sense of the fact by warm words and a liberal fee; but since Bessy's death he had never returned to Lynbrook, and had consequently lost sight of the young doctor.
Now he felt that he ought to try to rejoin him, to find out why he was at Hanaford, and make some proffer of hospitality; but if the stranger were really Wyant, his choice of the Station Avenue car made it appear that he was on his way to catch the New York express; and in any case Amherst's engagements at Westmore made immediate pursuit impossible.
He consoled himself with the thought that if the physician was not leaving Hanaford he would be certain to call at the house; and then his mind flew back to Justine Brent. But the pleasure of looking forward to her arrival was disturbed by new feelings. A sense of reserve and embarrassment had sprung up in his mind, checking that free mental communion which, as he now perceived, had been one of the unconscious promoters of their friendship. It was as though his thoughts faced a stranger instead of the familiar presence which had so long dwelt in them; and he began to see that the feeling of intelligence existing between Justine and himself was not the result of actual intimacy, but merely of the charm she knew how to throw over casual intercourse.
When he had left his house, his mind was like a summer sky, all open blue and sunlit rolling clouds; but gradually the clouds had darkened and massed themselves, till they drew an impenetrable veil over the upper light and stretched threateningly across his whole horizon.
Thecelebrations at Westmore were over. Hanaford society, mustering for the event, had streamed through the hospital, inspected the clinic, complimented Amherst, recalled itself to Mr. Langhope and Mrs.Ansell, and streamed out again to regain its carriages and motors.
The chief actors in the ceremony were also taking leave. Mr. Langhope, somewhat pale and nervous after the ordeal, had been helped into the Gaines landau with Mrs. Ansell and Cicely; Mrs. Amherst had accepted a seat in the Dressel victoria; and Westy Gaines, with anempressementslightly tinged by condescension, was in the act of placing his electric phaeton at Miss Brent's disposal.
She stood in the pretty white porch of the hospital, looking out across its squares of flower-edged turf at the long street of Westmore. In the warm gold-powdered light of September the factory town still seemed a blot on the face of nature; yet here and there, on all sides, Justine's eye saw signs of humanizing change. The rough banks along the street had been levelled and sodded; young maples, set in rows, already made a long festoon of gold against the dingy house-fronts; and the houses themselves—once so irreclaimably outlawed and degraded—showed, in their white-curtained windows, their flowery white-railed yards, a growing approach to civilized human dwellings.
Glancing the other way, one still met the grim pile of factories cutting the sky with their harsh roof-lines and blackened chimneys; but here also were signs ofimprovement. One of the mills had already been enlarged, another was scaffolded for the same purpose, and young trees and neatly-fenced turf replaced the surrounding desert of trampled earth.
As Amherst came out of the hospital, he heard Miss Brent declining a seat in Westy's phaeton.
"Thank you so much; but there's some one here I want to see first—one of the operatives—and I can easily take a Hanaford car." She held out her hand with the smile that ran like colour over her whole face; and Westy, nettled by this unaccountable disregard of her privileges, mounted his chariot alone.
As he glided mournfully away, Amherst turned to Justine. "You wanted to see the Dillons?" he asked.
Their eyes met, and she smiled again. He had never seen her so sunned-over, so luminous, since the distant November day when they had picnicked with Cicely beside the swamp. He wondered vaguely if she were more elaborately dressed than usual, or if the festal impression she produced were simply a reflection of her mood.
"I do want to see the Dillons—how did you guess?" she rejoined; and Amherst felt a sudden impulse to reply: "For the same reason that made you think of them."
The fact of her remembering the Dillons made him absurdly happy; it re-established between themthe mental communion that had been checked by his thoughts of the previous day.
"I suppose I'm rather self-conscious about the Dillons, because they're one of my object lessons—they illustrate the text," he said laughing, as they went down the steps.
Westmore had been given a half-holiday for the opening of the hospital, and as Amherst and Justine turned into the street, parties of workers were dispersing toward their houses. They were still a dull-eyed stunted throng, to whom air and movement seemed to have been too long denied; but there was more animation in the groups, more light in individual faces; many of the younger men returned Amherst's good-day with a look of friendliness, and the women to whom he spoke met him with a volubility that showed the habit of frequent intercourse.
"How much you have done!" Justine exclaimed, as he rejoined her after one of these asides; but the next moment he saw a shade of embarrassment cross her face, as though she feared to have suggested comparisons she had meant to avoid.
He answered quite naturally: "Yes—I'm beginning to see my way now; and it's wonderful how they respond—" and they walked on without a shadow of constraint between them, while he described to her what was already done, and what direction his projected experiments were taking.
The Dillons had been placed in charge of one of the old factory tenements, now transformed into a lodging-house for unmarried operatives. Even its harsh brick exterior, hung with creepers and brightened by flower-borders, had taken on a friendly air; and indoors it had a clean sunny kitchen, a big dining-room with cheerful-coloured walls, and a room where the men could lounge and smoke about a table covered with papers.
The creation of these model lodging-houses had always been a favourite scheme of Amherst's, and the Dillons, incapacitated for factory work, had shown themselves admirably adapted to their new duties. In Mrs. Dillon's small hot sitting-room, among the starched sofa-tidies and pink shells that testified to the family prosperity, Justine shone with enjoyment and sympathy. She had always taken an interest in the lives and thoughts of working-people: not so much the constructive interest of the sociological mind as the vivid imaginative concern of a heart open to every human appeal. She liked to hear about their hard struggles and small pathetic successes: the children's sicknesses, the father's lucky job, the little sum they had been able to put by, the plans they had formed for Tommy's advancement, and how Sue's good marks at school were still ahead of Mrs. Hagan's Mary's.
"What I really like is to gossip with them, and give them advice about the baby's cough, and the cheapestway to do their marketing," she said laughing, as she and Amherst emerged once more into the street. "It's the same kind of interest I used to feel in my dolls and guinea pigs—a managing, interfering old maid's interest. I don't believe I should care a straw for them if I couldn't dose them and order them about."
Amherst laughed too: he recalled the time when he had dreamed that just such warm personal sympathy was her sex's destined contribution to the broad work of human beneficence. Well, it had not been a dream: here was a woman whose deeds spoke for her. And suddenly the thought came to him: what might they not do at Westmore together! The brightness of it was blinding—like the dazzle of sunlight which faced them as they walked toward the mills. But it left him speechless, confused—glad to have a pretext for routing Duplain out of the office, introducing him to Miss Brent, and asking him for the keys of the buildings....
It was wonderful, again, how she grasped what he was doing in the mills, and saw how his whole scheme hung together, harmonizing the work and leisure of the operatives, instead of treating them as half machine, half man, and neglecting the man for the machine. Nor was she content with Utopian generalities: she wanted to know the how and why of each case, to hear what conclusions he drew from his results, to what solutions his experiments pointed.
In explaining the mill work he forgot his constraint and returned to the free comradery of mind that had always marked their relation. He turned the key reluctantly in the last door, and paused a moment on the threshold.
"Anything more?" he said, with a laugh meant to hide his desire to prolong their tour.
She glanced up at the sun, which still swung free of the tall factory roofs.
"As much as you've time for. Cicely doesn't need me this afternoon, and I can't tell when I shall see Westmore again."
Her words fell on him with a chill. His smile faded, and he looked away for a moment.
"But I hope Cicely will be here often," he said.
"Oh, I hope so too," she rejoined, with seeming unconsciousness of any connection between the wish and her previous words.
Amherst hesitated. He had meant to propose a visit to the old Eldorado building, which now at last housed the long-desired night-schools and nursery; but since she had spoken he felt a sudden indifference to showing her anything more. What was the use, if she meant to leave Cicely, and drift out of his reach? He could get on well enough without sympathy and comprehension, but his momentary indulgence in them made the ordinary taste of life a little flat.
"There must be more to see?" she continued, as they turned back toward the village; and he answered absently: "Oh, yes—if you like."
He heard the change in his own voice, and knew by her quick side-glance that she had heard it too.
"Please let me see everything that is compatible with my getting a car to Hanaford by six."
"Well, then—the night-school next," he said with an effort at lightness; and to shake off the importunity of his own thoughts he added carelessly, as they walked on: "By the way—it seems improbable—but I think I saw Dr. Wyant yesterday in a Westmore car."
She echoed the name in surprise. "Dr. Wyant? Really! Are you sure?"
"Not quite; but if it wasn't he it was his ghost. You haven't heard of his being at Hanaford?"
"No. I've heard nothing of him for ages."
Something in her tone made him return her side-glance; but her voice, on closer analysis, denoted only indifference, and her profile seemed to express the same negative sentiment. He remembered a vague Lynbrook rumour to the effect that the young doctor had been attracted to Miss Brent. Such floating seeds of gossip seldom rooted themselves in his mind, but now the fact acquired a new significance, and he wondered how he could have thought so little of it at the time. Probably her somewhat exaggerated air of indifference simply meant that she had been bored by Wyant's attentions, and that the reminder of them still roused a slight self-consciousness.
Amherst was relieved by this conclusion, and murmuring: "Oh, I suppose it can't have been he," led her rapidly on to the Eldorado. But the old sense of free communion was again obstructed, and her interest in the details of the schools and nursery now seemed to him only a part of her wonderful art of absorbing herself in other people's affairs. He was a fool to have been duped by it—to have fancied it was anything more personal than a grace of manner.
As she turned away from inspecting the blackboards in one of the empty school-rooms he paused before her and said suddenly: "You spoke of not seeing Westmore again. Are you thinking of leaving Cicely?"
The words were almost the opposite of those he had intended to speak; it was as if some irrepressible inner conviction flung defiance at his surface distrust of her.
She stood still also, and he saw a thought move across her face. "Not immediately—but perhaps when Mr. Langhope can make some other arrangement——"
Owing to the half-holiday they had the school-building to themselves, and the fact of being alone with her, without fear of interruption, woke in Amherst an uncontrollable longing to taste for once the joy of unguarded utterance.
"Why do you go?" he asked, moving close to the platform on which she stood.
She hesitated, resting her hand on the teacher's desk. Her eyes were kind, but he thought her tone was cold.
"This easy life is rather out of my line," she said at length, with a smile that draped her words in vagueness.
Amherst looked at her again—she seemed to be growing remote and inaccessible. "You mean that you don't want to stay?"
His tone was so abrupt that it called forth one of her rare blushes. "No—not that. I have been very happy with Cicely—but soon I shall have to be doing something else."
Why was she blushing? And what did her last phrase mean? "Something else—?" The blood hummed in his ears—he began to hope she would not answer too quickly.
She had sunk into the seat behind the desk, propping her elbows on its lid, and letting her interlaced hands support her chin. A little bunch of violets which had been thrust into the folds of her dress detached itself and fell to the floor.
"What I mean is," she said in a low voice, raising her eyes to Amherst's, "that I've had a great desire lately to get back to real work—my special work.... I've been too idle for the last year—I want to do somehard nursing; I want to help people who are miserable."
She spoke earnestly, almost passionately, and as he listened his undefined fear was lifted. He had never before seen her in this mood, with brooding brows, and the darkness of the world's pain in her eyes. All her glow had faded—she was a dun thrush-like creature, clothed in semi-tints; yet she seemed much nearer than when her smile shot light on him.
He stood motionless, his eyes absently fixed on the bunch of violets at her feet. Suddenly he raised his head, and broke out with a boyish blush: "Could it have been Wyant who was trying to see you?"
"Dr. Wyant—trying to see me?" She lowered her hands to the desk, and sat looking at him with open wonder.
He saw the irrelevance of his question, and burst, in spite of himself, into youthful laughter.
"I mean—It's only that an unknown visitor called at the house yesterday, and insisted that you must have arrived. He seemed so annoyed at not finding you, that I thought...I imagined...it must be some one who knew you very well...and who had followed you here...for some special reason...."
Her colour rose again, as if caught from his; but her eyes still declared her ignorance. "Some special reason——?"
"And just now," he blurted out, "when you said you might not stay much longer with Cicely—I thought of the visit—and wondered if there was some one you meant to marry...."
A silence fell between them. Justine rose slowly, her eyes screened under the veil she had lowered. "No—I don't mean to marry," she said, half-smiling, as she came down from the platform.
Restored to his level, her small shadowy head just in a line with his eyes, she seemed closer, more approachable and feminine—yet Amherst did not dare to speak.
She took a few steps toward the window, looking out into the deserted street. "It's growing dark—I must go home," she said.
"Yes," he assented absently as he followed her. He had no idea what she was saying. The inner voices in which they habitually spoke were growing louder than outward words. Or was it only the voice of his own desires that he heard—the cry of new hopes and unguessed capacities of living? All within him was flood-tide: this was the top of life, surely—to feel her alike in his brain and his pulses, to steep sight and hearing in the joy of her nearness, while all the while thought spoke clear: "This is the mate of my mind."
He began again abruptly. "Wouldn't you marry, if it gave you the chance to do what you say—if it offered you hard work, and the opportunity to makethings better...for a great many people...as no one but yourself could do it?"
It was a strange way of putting his case: he was aware of it before he ended. But it had not occurred to him to tell her that she was lovely and desirable—in his humility he thought that what he had to give would plead for him better than what he was.
The effect produced on her by his question, though undecipherable, was extraordinary. She stiffened a little, remaining quite motionless, her eyes on the street.
"You!" she just breathed; and he saw that she was beginning to tremble.
His wooing had been harsh and clumsy—he was afraid it had offended her, and his hand trembled too as it sought hers.
"I only thought—it would be a dull business to most women—and I'm tied to it for life...but I thought...I've seen so often how you pity suffering...how you long to relieve it...."
She turned away from him with a shuddering sigh. "Oh, Ihatesuffering!" she broke out, raising her hands to her face.
Amherst was frightened. How senseless of him to go on reiterating the old plea! He ought to have pleaded for himself—to have let the man in him seek her and take his defeat, instead of beating about the flimsy bush of philanthropy.
"I only meant—I was trying to make my work recommend me..." he said with a half-laugh, as she remained silent, her eyes still turned away.
The silence continued for a long time—it stretched between them like a narrowing interminable road, down which, with a leaden heart, he seemed to watch her gradually disappearing. And then, unexpectedly, as she shrank to a tiny speck at the dip of the road, the perspective was mysteriously reversed, and he felt her growing nearer again, felt her close to him—felt her hand in his.
"I'm really just like other women, you know—I shall like it because it's your work," she said.