The Fruit of the Tree: Chapter 12

Chapter 12

THAT evening when dinner ended, Mrs. Ansell, with a glance through the
tall dining-room windows, had suggested to Bessy that it would be
pleasanter to take coffee on the verandah; but Amherst detained his wife
with a glance.

"I should like Bessy to stay," he said.

The dining-room being on the cool side the house, with a refreshing
outlook on the garden, the men preferred to smoke there rather than in
the stuffily-draped Oriental apartment destined to such rites; and Bessy
Amherst, with a faint sigh, sank back into her seat, while Mrs. Ansell
drifted out through one of the open windows.

The men surrounding Richard Westmore's table were the same who nearly
three years earlier had gathered in his house for the same purpose: the
discussion of conditions at the mills. The only perceptible change in
the relation to each other of the persons composing this group was that
John Amherst was now the host of the other two, instead of being a
subordinate called in for cross-examination; but he was so indifferent,
or at least so heedless, a host--so forgetful, for instance, of Mr.
Tredegar's preference for a "light" cigar, and of Mr. Langhope's
feelings on the duty of making the Westmore madeira circulate with the
sun--that the change was manifest only in his evening-dress, and in the
fact of his sitting at the foot of the table.

If Amherst was conscious of the contrast thus implied, it was only as a
restriction on his freedom. As far as the welfare of Westmore was
concerned he would rather have stood before his companions as the
assistant manager of the mills than as the husband of their owner; and
it seemed to him, as he looked back, that he had done very little with
the opportunity which looked so great in the light of his present
restrictions. What he _had_ done with it--the use to which, as
unfriendly critics might insinuate, he had so adroitly put it--had
landed him, ironically enough, in the ugly _impasse_ of a situation from
which no issue seemed possible without some wasteful sacrifice of
feeling.

His wife's feelings, for example, were already revealing themselves in
an impatient play of her fan that made her father presently lean forward
to suggest: "If we men are to talk shop, is it necessary to keep Bessy
in this hot room?"

Amherst rose and opened the window behind his wife's chair.

"There's a breeze from the west--the room will be cooler now," he said,
returning to his seat.

"Oh, I don't mind--" Bessy murmured, in a tone intended to give her
companions the full measure of what she was being called on to endure.

Mr. Tredegar coughed slightly. "May I trouble you for that other box of
cigars, Amherst? No, _not_ the Caba�as." Bessy rose and handed him the
box on which his glance significantly rested. "Ah, thank you, my dear. I
was about to ask," he continued, looking about for the cigar-lighter,
which flamed unheeded at Amherst's elbow, "what special purpose will be
served by a preliminary review of the questions to be discussed
tomorrow."

"Ah--exactly," murmured Mr. Langhope. "The madeira, my dear John?
No--ah--_please_--to the left!"

Amherst impatiently reversed the direction in which he had set the
precious vessel moving, and turned to Mr. Tredegar, who was
conspicuously lighting his cigar with a match extracted from his
waist-coat pocket.

"The purpose is to define my position in the matter; and I prefer that
Bessy should do this with your help rather than with mine."

Mr. Tredegar surveyed his cigar through drooping lids, as though the
question propounded by Amherst were perched on its tip.

"Is not your position naturally involved in and defined by hers? You
will excuse my saying that--technically speaking, of course--I cannot
distinctly conceive of it as having any separate existence."

Mr. Tredegar spoke with the deliberate mildness that was regarded as his
most effective weapon at the bar, since it was likely to abash those
who were too intelligent to be propitiated by it.

"Certainly it is involved in hers," Amherst agreed; "but how far that
defines it is just what I have waited till now to find out."

Bessy at this point recalled her presence by a restless turn of her
graceful person, and her father, with an affectionate glance at her,
interposed amicably: "But surely--according to old-fashioned ideas--it
implies identity of interests?"

"Yes; but whose interests?" Amherst asked.

"Why--your wife's, man! She owns the mills."

Amherst hesitated. "I would rather talk of my wife's interest in the
mills than of her interests there; but we'll keep to the plural if you
prefer it. Personally, I believe the terms should be interchangeable in
the conduct of such a business."

"Ah--I'm glad to hear that," said Mr. Tredegar quickly, "since it's
precisely the view we all take."

Amherst's colour rose. "Definitions are ambiguous," he said. "Before you
adopt mine, perhaps I had better develop it a little farther. What I
mean is, that Bessy's interests in Westmore should be regulated by her
interest in it--in its welfare as a social body, aside from its success
as a commercial enterprise. If we agree on this definition, we are at
one as to the other: namely that my relation to the matter is defined by
hers."

He paused a moment, as if to give his wife time to contribute some sign
of assent and encouragement; but she maintained a puzzled silence and he
went on: "There is nothing new in this. I have tried to make Bessy
understand from the beginning what obligations I thought the ownership
of Westmore entailed, and how I hoped to help her fulfill them; but ever
since our marriage all definite discussion of the subject has been put
off for one cause or another, and that is my reason for urging that it
should be brought up at the directors' meeting tomorrow."

There was another pause, during which Bessy glanced tentatively at Mr.
Tredegar, and then said, with a lovely rise of colour: "But, John, I
sometimes think you forget how much has been done at Westmore--the
Mothers' Club, and the play-ground, and all--in the way of carrying out
your ideas."

Mr. Tredegar discreetly dropped his glance to his cigar, and Mr.
Langhope sounded an irrepressible note of approval and encouragement.

Amherst smiled. "No, I have not forgotten; and I am grateful to you for
giving my ideas a trial. But what has been done hitherto is purely
superficial." Bessy's eyes clouded, and he added hastily: "Don't think I
undervalue it for that reason--heaven knows the surface of life needs
improving! But it's like picking flowers and sticking them in the ground
to make a garden--unless you transplant the flower with its roots, and
prepare the soil to receive it, your garden will be faded tomorrow. No
radical changes have yet been made at Westmore; and it is of radical
changes that I want to speak."

Bessy's look grew more pained, and Mr. Langhope exclaimed with unwonted
irascibility: "Upon my soul, Amherst, the tone you take about what your
wife has done doesn't strike me as the likeliest way of encouraging her
to do more!"

"I don't want to encourage her to do more on such a basis--the sooner
she sees the futility of it the better for Westmore!"

"The futility--?" Bessy broke out, with a flutter of tears in her voice;
but before her father could intervene Mr. Tredegar had raised his hand
with the gesture of one accustomed to wield the gavel.

"My dear child, I see Amherst's point, and it is best, as he says, that
you should see it too. What he desires, as I understand it, is the
complete reconstruction of the present state of things at Westmore; and
he is right in saying that all your good works there--night-schools, and
nursery, and so forth--leave that issue untouched."

A smile quivered under Mr. Langhope's moustache. He and Amherst both
knew that Mr. Tredegar's feint of recognizing the justice of his
adversary's claim was merely the first step to annihilating it; but
Bessy could never be made to understand this, and always felt herself
deserted and betrayed when any side but her own was given a hearing.

"I'm sorry if all I have tried to do at Westmore is useless--but I
suppose I shall never understand business," she murmured, vainly seeking
consolation in her father's eye.

"This is not business," Amherst broke in. "It's the question of your
personal relation to the people there--the last thing that business
considers."

Mr. Langhope uttered an impatient exclamation. "I wish to heaven the
owner of the mills had made it clear just what that relation was to be!"

"I think he did, sir," Amherst answered steadily, "in leaving his wife
the unrestricted control of the property."

He had reddened under Mr. Langhope's thrust, but his voice betrayed no
irritation, and Bessy rewarded him with an unexpected beam of sympathy:
she was always up in arms at the least sign of his being treated as an
intruder.

"I am sure, papa," she said, a little tremulously, "that poor Richard,
though he knew I was not clever, felt he could trust me to take the best
advice----"

"Ah, that's all we ask of you, my child!" her father sighed, while Mr.
Tredegar drily interposed: "We are merely losing time by this
digression. Let me suggest that Amherst should give us an idea of the
changes he wishes to make at Westmore."

Amherst, as he turned to answer, remembered with what ardent faith in
his powers of persuasion he had responded to the same appeal three years
earlier. He had thought then that all his cause needed was a hearing;
now he knew that the practical man's readiness to let the idealist talk
corresponds with the busy parent's permission to destructive infancy to
"run out and play." They would let him state his case to the four
corners of the earth--if only he did not expect them to act on it! It
was their policy to let him exhaust himself in argument and exhortation,
to listen to him so politely and patiently that if he failed to enforce
his ideas it should not be for lack of opportunity to expound them....
And the alternative struck him as hardly less to be feared. Supposing
that the incredible happened, that his reasons prevailed with his wife,
and, through her, with the others--at what cost would the victory be
won? Would Bessy ever forgive him for winning it? And what would his
situation be, if it left him in control of Westmore but estranged from
his wife?

He recalled suddenly a phrase he had used that afternoon to the
dark-eyed girl at the garden-party: "What risks we run when we scramble
into the chariot of the gods!" And at the same instant he heard her
retort, and saw her fine gesture of defiance. How could he ever have
doubted that the thing was worth doing at whatever cost? Something in
him--some secret lurking element of weakness and evasion--shrank out of
sight in the light of her question: "Do _you_ act on that?" and the "God
forbid!" he had instantly flashed back to her. He turned to Mr. Tredegar
with his answer.

Amherst knew that any large theoretical exposition of the case would be
as much wasted on the two men as on his wife. To gain his point he must
take only one step at a time, and it seemed to him that the first thing
needed at Westmore was that the hands should work and live under
healthier conditions. To attain this, two important changes were
necessary: the floor-space of the mills must be enlarged, and the
company must cease to rent out tenements, and give the operatives the
opportunity to buy land for themselves. Both these changes involved the
upheaval of the existing order. Whenever the Westmore mills had been
enlarged, it had been for the sole purpose of increasing the revenues of
the company; and now Amherst asked that these revenues should be
materially and permanently reduced. As to the suppression of the company
tenement, such a measure struck at the roots of the baneful paternalism
which was choking out every germ of initiative in the workman. Once the
operatives had room to work in, and the hope of homes of their own to
go to when work was over, Amherst was willing to trust to time for the
satisfaction of their other needs. He believed that a sounder
understanding of these needs would develop on both sides the moment the
employers proved their good faith by the deliberate and permanent
sacrifice of excessive gain to the well-being of the employed; and once
the two had learned to regard each other not as antagonists but as
collaborators, a long step would have been taken toward a readjustment
of the whole industrial relation. In regard to general and distant
results, Amherst tried not to be too sanguine, even in his own thoughts.
His aim was to remedy the abuse nearest at hand, in the hope of thus
getting gradually closer to the central evil; and, had his action been
unhampered, he would still have preferred the longer and more circuitous
path of practical experiment to the sweeping adoption of a new
industrial system.

But his demands, moderate as they were, assumed in his hearers the
consciousness of a moral claim superior to the obligation of making
one's business "pay"; and it was the futility of this assumption that
chilled the arguments on his lips, since in the orthodox creed of the
business world it was a weakness and not a strength to be content with
five per cent where ten was obtainable. Business was one thing,
philanthropy another; and the enthusiasts who tried combining them were
usually reduced, after a brief flight, to paying fifty cents on the
dollar, and handing over their stock to a promoter presumably unhampered
by humanitarian ideals.

Amherst knew that this was the answer with which his plea would be met;
knew, moreover, that the plea was given a hearing simply because his
judges deemed it so pitiably easy to refute. But the knowledge, once he
had begun to speak, fanned his argument to a white heat of pleading,
since, with failure so plainly ahead, small concessions and compromises
were not worth making. Reason would be wasted on all; but eloquence
might at least prevail with Bessy....

* * * * *

When, late that night, he went upstairs after long pacings of the
garden, he was surprised to see a light in her room. She was not given
to midnight study, and fearing that she might be ill he knocked at her
door. There was no answer, and after a short pause he turned the handle
and entered.

In the great canopied Westmore couch, her arms flung upward and her
hands clasped beneath her head, she lay staring fretfully at the globe
of electric light which hung from the centre of the embossed and gilded
ceiling. Seen thus, with the soft curves of throat and arms revealed,
and her face childishly set in a cloud of loosened hair, she looked no
older than Cicely--and, like Cicely, inaccessible to grown-up arguments
and the stronger logic of experience.

It was a trick of hers, in such moods, to ignore any attempt to attract
her notice; and Amherst was prepared for her remaining motionless as he
paused on the threshold and then advanced toward the middle of the room.
There had been a time when he would have been exasperated by her
pretense of not seeing him, but a deep weariness of spirit now dulled
him to these surface pricks.

"I was afraid you were not well when I saw the light burning," he began.

"Thank you--I am quite well," she answered in a colourless voice,
without turning her head.

"Shall I put it out, then? You can't sleep with such a glare in your
eyes."

"I should not sleep at any rate; and I hate to lie awake in the dark."

"Why shouldn't you sleep?" He moved nearer, looking down compassionately
on her perturbed face and struggling lips.

She lay silent a moment; then she faltered out: "B--because I'm so
unhappy!"

The pretense of indifference was swept away by a gush of childish sobs
as she flung over on her side and buried her face in the embroidered
pillows.

Amherst, bending down, laid a quieting hand on her shoulder. "Bessy----"

She sobbed on.

He seated himself silently in the arm-chair beside the bed, and kept his
soothing hold on her shoulder. The time had come when he went through
all these accustomed acts of pacification as mechanically as a nurse
soothing a fretful child. And once he had thought her weeping eloquent!
He looked about him at the spacious room, with its heavy hangings of
damask and the thick velvet carpet which stifled his steps. Everywhere
were the graceful tokens of her presence--the vast lace-draped
toilet-table strewn with silver and crystal, the embroidered muslin
cushions heaped on the lounge, the little rose-lined slippers she had
just put off, the lace wrapper, with a scent of violets in its folds,
which he had pushed aside when he sat down beside her; and he remembered
how full of a mysterious and intimate charm these things had once
appeared to him. It was characteristic that the remembrance made him
more patient with her now. Perhaps, after all, it was his failure that
she was crying over....

"Don't be unhappy. You decided as seemed best to you," he said.

She pressed her handkerchief against her lips, still keeping her head
averted. "But I hate all these arguments and disputes. Why should you
unsettle everything?" she murmured.

His mother's words! Involuntarily he removed his hand from her
shoulder, though he still remained seated by the bed.

"You are right. I see the uselessness of it," he assented, with an
uncontrollable note of irony.

She turned her head at the tone, and fixed her plaintive brimming eyes
on him. "You _are_ angry with me!"

"Was that troubling you?" He leaned forward again, with compassion in
his face. _Sancta simplicitas!_ was the thought within him.

"I am not angry," he went on; "be reasonable and try to sleep."

She started upright, the light masses of her hair floating about her
like silken sea-weed lifted on an invisible tide. "Don't talk like that!
I can't endure to be humoured like a baby. I am unhappy because I can't
see why all these wretched questions should be dragged into our life. I
hate to have you always disagreeing with Mr. Tredegar, who is so clever
and has so much experience; and yet I hate to see you give way to him,
because that makes it appear as if...as if...."

"He didn't care a straw for my ideas?" Amherst smiled. "Well, he
doesn't--and I never dreamed of making him. So don't worry about that
either."

"You never dreamed of making him care for your ideas? But then why do
you----"

"Why do I go on setting them forth at such great length?" Amherst smiled
again. "To convince you--that's my only ambition."

She stared at him, shaking her head back to toss a loose lock from her
puzzled eyes. A tear still shone on her lashes, but with the motion it
fell and trembled down her cheek.

"To convince _me_? But you know I am so ignorant of such things."

"Most women are."

"I never pretended to understand anything about--economics, or whatever
you call it."

"No."

"Then how----"

He turned and looked at her gently. "I thought you might have begun to
understand something about _me_."

"About you?" The colour flowered softly under her clear skin.

"About what my ideas on such subjects were likely to be worth--judging
from what you know of me in other respects." He paused and glanced away
from her. "Well," he concluded deliberately, "I suppose I've had my
answer tonight."

"Oh, John----!"

He rose and wandered across the room, pausing a moment to finger
absently the trinkets on the dressing-table. The act recalled with a
curious vividness certain dulled sensations of their first days
together, when to handle and examine these frail little accessories of
her toilet had been part of the wonder and amusement of his new
existence. He could still hear her laugh as she leaned over him,
watching his mystified look in the glass, till their reflected eyes met
there and drew down her lips to his. He laid down the fragrant
powder-puff he had been turning slowly between his fingers, and moved
back toward the bed. In the interval he had reached a decision.

"Well--isn't it natural that I should think so?" he began again, as he
stood beside her. "When we married I never expected you to care or know
much about economics. It isn't a quality a man usually chooses his wife
for. But I had a fancy--perhaps it shows my conceit--that when we had
lived together a year or two, and you'd found out what kind of a fellow
I was in other ways--ways any woman can judge of--I had a fancy that you
might take my opinions on faith when it came to my own special
business--the thing I'm generally supposed to know about."

He knew that he was touching a sensitive chord, for Bessy had to the
full her sex's pride of possessorship. He was human and faulty till
others criticized him--then he became a god. But in this case a
conflicting influence restrained her from complete response to his
appeal.

"I _do_ feel sure you know--about the treatment of the hands and all
that; but you said yourself once--the first time we ever talked about
Westmore--that the business part was different----"

Here it was again, the ancient ineradicable belief in the separable body
and soul! Even an industrial organization was supposed to be subject to
the old theological distinction, and Bessy was ready to co-operate with
her husband in the emancipation of Westmore's spiritual part if only its
body remained under the law.

Amherst controlled his impatience, as it was always easy for him to do
when he had fixed on a definite line of conduct.

"It was my situation that was different; not what you call the business
part. That is inextricably bound up with the treatment of the hands. If
I am to have anything to do with the mills now I can deal with them only
as your representative; and as such I am bound to take in the whole
question."

Bessy's face clouded: was he going into it all again? But he read her
look and went on reassuringly: "That was what I meant by saying that I
hoped you would take me on faith. If I want the welfare of Westmore it's
above all, I believe, because I want Westmore to see you as _I_ do--as
the dispenser of happiness, who could not endure to benefit by any wrong
or injustice to others."

"Of course, of course I don't want to do them injustice!"

"Well, then----"

He had seated himself beside her again, clasping in his the hand with
which she was fretting the lace-edged sheet. He felt her restless
fingers surrender slowly, and her eyes turned to him in appeal.

"But I care for what people say of you too! And you know--it's horrid,
but one must consider it--if they say you're spending my money
imprudently...." The blood rose to her neck and face. "I don't mind for
myself...even if I have to give up as many things as papa and Mr.
Tredegar think...but there is Cicely...and if people said...."

"If people said I was spending Cicely's money on improving the condition
of the people to whose work she will some day owe all her wealth--"
Amherst paused: "Well, I would rather hear that said of me than any
other thing I can think of, except one."

"Except what?"

"That I was doing it with her mother's help and approval."

She drew a long tremulous sigh: he knew it was always a relief to her to
have him assert himself strongly. But a residue of resistance still
clouded her mind.

"I should always want to help you, of course; but if Mr. Tredegar and
Halford Gaines think your plan unbusinesslike----"

"Mr. Tredegar and Halford Gaines are certain to think it so. And that is
why I said, just now, that it comes, in the end, to your choosing
between us; taking them on experience or taking me on faith."

She looked at him wistfully. "Of course I should expect to give up
things.... You wouldn't want me to live here?"

"I should not ask you to," he said, half-smiling.

"I suppose there would be a good many things we couldn't do----"

"You would certainly have less money for a number of years; after that,
I believe you would have more rather than less; but I should not want
you to think that, beyond a reasonable point, the prosperity of the
mills was ever to be measured by your dividends."

"No." She leaned back wearily among the pillows. "I suppose, for
instance, we should have to give up Europe this summer----?"

Here at last was the bottom of her thought! It was always on the
immediate pleasure that her soul hung: she had not enough imagination to
look beyond, even in the projecting of her own desires. And it was on
his knowledge of this limitation that Amherst had deliberately built.

"I don't see how you could go to Europe," he said.

"The doctor thinks I need it," she faltered.

"In that case, of course--" He stood up, not abruptly, or with any show
of irritation, but as if accepting this as her final answer. "What you
need most, in the meantime, is a little sleep," he said. "I will tell
your maid not to disturb you in the morning." He had returned to his
soothing way of speech, as though definitely resigned to the inutility
of farther argument. "And I will say goodbye now," he continued,
"because I shall probably take an early train, before you wake----"

She sat up with a start. "An early train? Why, where are you going?"

"I must go to Chicago some time this month, and as I shall not be wanted
here tomorrow I might as well run out there at once, and join you next
week at Lynbrook."

Bessy had grown pale. "But I don't understand----"

Their eyes met. "Can't you understand that I am human enough to prefer,
under the circumstances, not being present at tomorrow's meeting?" he
said with a dry laugh.

She sank back with a moan of discouragement, turning her face away as he
began to move toward his room.

"Shall I put the light out?" he asked, pausing with his hand on the
electric button.

"Yes, please."

He pushed in the button and walked on, guided through the obscurity by
the line of light under his door. As he reached the threshold he heard a
little choking cry.

"John--oh, John!"

He paused.

"I can't _bear_ it!" The sobs increased.

"Bear what?"

"That you should hate me----"

"Don't be foolish," he said, groping for his door-handle.

"But you do hate me--and I deserve it!"

"Nonsense, dear. Try to sleep."

"I can't sleep till you've forgiven me. Say you don't hate me! I'll do
anything...only say you don't hate me!"

He stood still a moment, thinking; then he turned back, and made his way
across the room to her side. As he sat down beside her, he felt her arms
reach for his neck and her wet face press itself against his cheek.

"I'll do anything..." she sobbed; and in the darkness he held her to him
and hated his victory.

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