The Fruit of the Tree: Chapter 6

Chapter 6

BEFORE daylight that same morning Amherst, dressing by the gas-flame
above his cheap wash-stand, strove to bring some order into his angry
thoughts. It humbled him to feel his purpose tossing rudderless on
unruly waves of emotion, yet strive as he would he could not regain a
hold on it. The events of the last twenty-four hours had been too rapid
and unexpected for him to preserve his usual clear feeling of mastery;
and he had, besides, to reckon with the first complete surprise of his
senses. His way of life had excluded him from all contact with the
subtler feminine influences, and the primitive side of the relation left
his imagination untouched. He was therefore the more assailable by those
refined forms of the ancient spell that lurk in delicacy of feeling
interpreted by loveliness of face. By his own choice he had cut himself
off from all possibility of such communion; had accepted complete
abstinence for that part of his nature which might have offered a
refuge from the stern prose of his daily task. But his personal
indifference to his surroundings--deliberately encouraged as a defiance
to the attractions of the life he had renounced--proved no defence
against this appeal; rather, the meanness of his surroundings combined
with his inherited refinement of taste to deepen the effect of Bessy's
charm.

As he reviewed the incidents of the past hours, a reaction of
self-derision came to his aid. What was this exquisite opportunity from
which he had cut himself off? What, to reduce the question to a personal
issue, had Mrs. Westmore said or done that, on the part of a plain
woman, would have quickened his pulses by the least fraction of a
second? Why, it was only the old story of the length of Cleopatra's
nose! Because her eyes were a heavenly vehicle for sympathy, because her
voice was pitched to thrill the tender chords, he had been deluded into
thinking that she understood and responded to his appeal. And her own
emotions had been wrought upon by means as cheap: it was only the
obvious, theatrical side of the incident that had affected her. If
Dillon's wife had been old and ugly, would she have been clasped to her
employer's bosom? A more expert knowledge of the sex would have told
Amherst that such ready sympathy is likely to be followed by as prompt a
reaction of indifference. Luckily Mrs. Westmore's course had served as a
corrective for his lack of experience; she had even, as it appeared,
been at some pains to hasten the process of disillusionment. This timely
discipline left him blushing at his own insincerity; for he now saw that
he had risked his future not because of his zeal for the welfare of the
mill-hands, but because Mrs. Westmore's look was like sunshine on his
frozen senses, and because he was resolved, at any cost, to arrest her
attention, to associate himself with her by the only means in his power.

Well, he deserved to fail with such an end in view; and the futility of
his scheme was matched by the vanity of his purpose. In the cold light
of disenchantment it seemed as though he had tried to build an
impregnable fortress out of nursery blocks. How could he have foreseen
anything but failure for so preposterous an attempt? His breach of
discipline would of course be reported at once to Mr. Gaines and
Truscomb; and the manager, already jealous of his assistant's popularity
with the hands, which was a tacit criticism of his own methods, would
promptly seize the pretext to be rid of him. Amherst was aware that only
his technical efficiency, and his knack of getting the maximum of work
out of the operatives, had secured him from Truscomb's animosity. From
the outset there had been small sympathy between the two; but the
scarcity of competent and hard-working assistants had made Truscomb
endure him for what he was worth to the mills. Now, however, his own
folly had put the match to the manager's smouldering dislike, and he saw
himself, in consequence, discharged and black-listed, and perhaps
roaming for months in quest of a job. He knew the efficiency of that
far-reaching system of defamation whereby the employers of labour pursue
and punish the subordinate who incurs their displeasure. In the case of
a mere operative this secret persecution often worked complete ruin; and
even to a man of Amherst's worth it opened the dispiriting prospect of a
long struggle for rehabilitation.

Deep down, he suffered most at the thought that his blow for the
operatives had failed; but on the surface it was the manner of his
failure that exasperated him. For it seemed to prove him unfit for the
very work to which he was drawn: that yearning to help the world forward
that, in some natures, sets the measure to which the personal adventure
must keep step. Amherst had hitherto felt himself secured by his insight
and self-control from the emotional errors besetting the way of the
enthusiast; and behold, he had stumbled into the first sentimental trap
in his path, and tricked his eyes with a Christmas-chromo vision of
lovely woman dispensing coals and blankets! Luckily, though such wounds
to his self-confidence cut deep, he could apply to them the antiseptic
of an unfailing humour; and before he had finished dressing, the
picture of his wide schemes of social reform contracting to a blue-eyed
philanthropy of cheques and groceries, had provoked a reaction of
laughter. Perhaps the laughter came too soon, and rang too loud, to be
true to the core; but at any rate it healed the edges of his hurt, and
gave him a sound surface of composure.

But he could not laugh away the thought of the trials to which his
intemperance had probably exposed his mother; and when, at the
breakfast-table, from which Duplain had already departed, she broke into
praise of their visitor, it was like a burning irritant on his wound.

"What a face, John! Of course I don't often see people of that kind
now--" the words, falling from her too simply to be reproachful, wrung
him, for that, all the more--"but I'm sure that kind of soft loveliness
is rare everywhere; like a sweet summer morning with the mist on it. The
Gaines girls, now, are my idea of the modern type; very handsome, of
course, but you see just _how_ handsome the first minute. I like a story
that keeps one wondering till the end. It was very kind of Maria
Ansell," Mrs. Amherst wandered happily on, "to come and hunt me out
yesterday, and I enjoyed our quiet talk about old times. But what I
liked best was seeing Mrs. Westmore--and, oh, John, if she came to live
here, what a benediction to the mills!"

Amherst was silent, moved most of all by the unimpaired simplicity of
heart with which his mother could take up past relations, and open her
meagre life to the high visitations of grace and fashion, without a
tinge of self-consciousness or apology. "I shall never be as genuine as
that," he thought, remembering how he had wished to have Mrs. Westmore
know that he was of her own class. How mixed our passions are, and how
elastic must be the word that would cover any one of them! Amherst's, at
that moment, were all stained with the deep wound to his self-love.

The discolouration he carried in his eye made the mill-village seem more
than commonly cheerless and ugly as he walked over to the office after
breakfast. Beyond the grim roof-line of the factories a dazzle of rays
sent upward from banked white clouds the promise of another brilliant
day; and he reflected that Mrs. Westmore would soon be speeding home to
the joy of a gallop over the plains.

Far different was the task that awaited him--yet it gave him a pang to
think that he might be performing it for the last time. In spite of Mr.
Tredegar's assurances, he was certain that the report of his conduct
must by this time have reached the President, and been transmitted to
Truscomb; the latter was better that morning, and the next day he would
doubtless call his rebellious assistant to account. Amherst, meanwhile,
took up his routine with a dull heart. Even should his offense be
condoned, his occupation presented, in itself, little future to a man
without money or powerful connections. Money! He had spurned the thought
of it in choosing his work, yet he now saw that, without its aid, he was
powerless to accomplish the object to which his personal desires had
been sacrificed. His love of his craft had gradually been merged in the
larger love for his fellow-workers, and in the resulting desire to lift
and widen their lot. He had once fancied that this end might be attained
by an internal revolution in the management of the Westmore mills; that
he might succeed in creating an industrial object-lesson conspicuous
enough to point the way to wiser law-making and juster relations between
the classes. But the last hours' experiences had shown him how vain it
was to assault single-handed the strong barrier between money and
labour, and how his own dash at the breach had only thrust him farther
back into the obscure ranks of the stragglers. It was, after all, only
through politics that he could return successfully to the attack; and
financial independence was the needful preliminary to a political
career. If he had stuck to the law he might, by this time, have been
nearer his goal; but then the gold might not have mattered, since it was
only by living among the workers that he had learned to care for their
fate. And rather than have forfeited that poignant yet mighty vision of
the onward groping of the mass, rather than have missed the widening of
his own nature that had come through sharing their hopes and pains, he
would still have turned from the easier way, have chosen the deeper
initiation rather than the readier attainment.

But this philosophic view of the situation was a mere thread of light on
the farthest verge of his sky: much nearer were the clouds of immediate
care, amid which his own folly, and his mother's possible suffering from
it, loomed darkest; and these considerations made him resolve that, if
his insubordination were overlooked, he would swallow the affront of a
pardon, and continue for the present in the mechanical performance of
his duties. He had just brought himself to this leaden state of
acquiescence when one of the clerks in the outer office thrust his head
in to say: "A lady asking for you--" and looking up, Amherst beheld
Bessy Westmore.

She came in alone, with an air of high self-possession in marked
contrast to her timidity and indecision of the previous day. Amherst
thought she looked taller, more majestic; so readily may the upward
slant of a soft chin, the firmer line of yielding brows, add a cubit to
the outward woman. Her aspect was so commanding that he fancied she had
come to express her disapproval of his conduct, to rebuke him for lack
of respect to Mr. Tredegar; but a moment later it became clear, even to
his inexperienced perceptions, that it was not to himself that her
challenge was directed.

She advanced toward the seat he had moved forward, but in her absorption
forgot to seat herself, and stood with her clasped hands resting on the
back of the chair.

"I have come back to talk to you," she began, in her sweet voice with
its occasional quick lift of appeal. "I knew that, in Mr. Truscomb's
absence, it would be hard for you to leave the mills, and there are one
or two things I want you to explain before I go away--some of the
things, for instance, that you spoke to Mr. Tredegar about last night."

Amherst's feeling of constraint returned. "I'm afraid I expressed myself
badly; I may have annoyed him--" he began.

She smiled this away, as though irrelevant to the main issue. "Perhaps
you don't quite understand each other--but I am sure you can make it
clear to me." She sank into the chair, resting one arm on the edge of
the desk behind which he had resumed his place. "That is the reason why
I came alone," she continued. "I never can understand when a lot of
people are trying to tell me a thing all at once. And I don't suppose I
care as much as a man would--a lawyer especially--about the forms that
ought to be observed. All I want is to find out what is wrong and how to
remedy it."

Her blue eyes met Amherst's in a look that flowed like warmth about his
heart. How should he have doubted that her feelings were as exquisite as
her means of expressing them? The iron bands of distrust were loosened
from his spirit, and he blushed for his cheap scepticism of the morning.
In a woman so evidently nurtured in dependence, whose views had been
formed, and her actions directed, by the most conventional influences,
the mere fact of coming alone to Westmore, in open defiance of her
advisers, bespoke a persistence of purpose that put his doubts to shame.

"It will make a great difference to the people here if you interest
yourself in them," he rejoined. "I tried to explain to Mr. Tredegar that
I had no wish to criticise the business management of the mills--even if
there had been any excuse for my doing so--but that I was sure the
condition of the operatives could be very much improved, without
permanent harm to the business, by any one who felt a personal sympathy
for them; and in the end I believe such sympathy produces better work,
and so benefits the employer materially."

She listened with her gentle look of trust, as though committing to him,
with the good faith of a child, her ignorance, her credulity, her little
rudimentary convictions and her little tentative aspirations, relying on
him not to abuse or misdirect them in the boundless supremacy of his
masculine understanding.

"That is just what I want you to explain to me," she said. "But first I
should like to know more about the poor man who was hurt. I meant to see
his wife yesterday, but Mr. Gaines told me she would be at work till
six, and it would have been difficult to go after that. I _did_ go to
the hospital; but the man was sleeping--is Dillon his name?--and the
matron told us he was much better. Dr. Disbrow came in the evening and
said the same thing--told us it was all a false report about his having
been so badly hurt, and that Mr. Truscomb was very much annoyed when he
heard of your having said, before the operatives, that Dillon would lose
his arm."

Amherst smiled. "Ah--Mr. Truscomb heard that? Well, he's right to be
annoyed: I ought not to have said it when I did. But unfortunately I am
not the only one to be punished. The operative who tied on the black
cloth was dismissed this morning."

Mrs. Westmore flamed up. "Dismissed for that? Oh, how unjust--how
cruel!"

"You must look at both sides of the case," said Amherst, finding it much
easier to remain temperate in the glow he had kindled than if he had had
to force his own heat into frozen veins. "Of course any act of
insubordination must be reprimanded--but I think a reprimand would have
been enough."

It gave him an undeniable throb of pleasure to find that she was not to
be checked by such arguments. "But he shall be put back--I won't have
any one discharged for such a reason! You must find him for me at
once--you must tell him----"

Once more Amherst gently restrained her. "If you'll forgive my saying
so, I think it is better to let him go, and take his chance of getting
work elsewhere. If he were taken back he might be made to suffer. As
things are organized here, the hands are very much at the mercy of the
overseers, and the overseer in that room would be likely to make it
uncomfortable for a hand who had so openly defied him."

With a heavy sigh she bent her puzzled brows on him. "How complicated it
is! I wonder if I shall ever understand it all. _You_ don't think
Dillon's accident was his own fault, then?"

"Certainly not; there are too many cards in that room. I pointed out the
fact to Mr. Truscomb when the new machines were set up three years ago.
An operative may be ever so expert with his fingers, and yet not learn
to measure his ordinary movements quite as accurately as if he were an
automaton; and that is what a man must do to be safe in the
carding-room."

She sighed again. "The more you tell me, the more difficult it all
seems. Why is the carding-room so over-crowded?"

"To make it pay better," Amherst returned bluntly; and the colour
flushed her sensitive skin.

He thought she was about to punish him for his plain-speaking; but she
went on after a pause: "What you say is dreadful. Each thing seems to
lead back to another--and I feel so ignorant of it all." She hesitated
again, and then said, turning her bluest glance on him: "I am going to
be quite frank with you, Mr. Amherst. Mr. Tredegar repeated to me what
you said to him last night, and I think he was annoyed that you were
unwilling to give any proof of the charges you made."

"Charges? Ah," Amherst exclaimed, with a start of recollection, "he
means my refusing to say who told me that Dr. Disbrow was not telling
the truth about Dillon?"

"Yes. He said that was a very grave accusation to make, and that no one
should have made it without being able to give proof."

"That is quite true, theoretically. But in this case it would be easy
for you or Mr. Tredegar to find out whether I was right."

"But Mr. Tredegar said you refused to say who told you."

"I was bound to, as it happened. But I am not bound to prevent your
trying to get the same information."

"Ah--" she murmured understandingly; and, a sudden thought striking him,
he went on, with a glance at the clock: "If you really wish to judge for
yourself, why not go to the hospital now? I shall be free in five
minutes, and could go with you if you wish it."

Amherst had remembered the nurse's cry of recognition when she saw Mrs.
Westmore's face under the street-lamp; and it immediately occurred to
him that, if the two women had really known each other, Mrs. Westmore
would have no difficulty in obtaining the information she wanted; while,
even if they met as strangers, the dark-eyed girl's perspicacity might
still be trusted to come to their aid. It remained only to be seen how
Mrs. Westmore would take his suggestion; but some instinct was already
telling him that the highhanded method was the one she really preferred.

"To the hospital--now? I should like it of all things," she exclaimed,
rising with what seemed an almost childish zest in the adventure. "Of
course that is the best way of finding out. I ought to have insisted on
seeing Dillon yesterday--but I begin to think the matron didn't want me
to."

Amherst left this inference to work itself out in her mind, contenting
himself, as they drove back to Hanaford, with answering her questions
about Dillon's family, the ages of his children, and his wife's health.
Her enquiries, he noticed, did not extend from the particular to the
general: her curiosity, as yet, was too purely personal and emotional to
lead to any larger consideration of the question. But this larger view
might grow out of the investigation of Dillon's case; and meanwhile
Amherst's own purposes were momentarily lost in the sweet confusion of
feeling her near him--of seeing the exquisite grain of her skin, the way
her lashes grew out of a dusky line on the edge of the white lids, the
way her hair, stealing in spirals of light from brow to ear, wavered off
into a fruity down on the edge of the cheek.

At the hospital they were protestingly admitted by Mrs. Ogan, though the
official "visitors' hour" was not till the afternoon; and beside the
sufferer's bed, Amherst saw again that sudden flowering of compassion
which seemed the key to his companion's beauty: as though her lips had
been formed for consolation and her hands for tender offices. It was
clear enough that Dillon, still sunk in a torpor broken by feverish
tossings, was making no perceptible progress toward recovery; and Mrs.
Ogan was reduced to murmuring some technical explanation about the state
of the wound while Bessy hung above him with reassuring murmurs as to
his wife's fate, and promises that the children should be cared for.

Amherst had noticed, on entering, that a new nurse--a gaping young woman
instantly lost in the study of Mrs. Westmore's toilet--had replaced the
dark-eyed attendant of the day before; and supposing that the latter was
temporarily off duty, he asked Mrs. Ogan if she might be seen.

The matron's face was a picture of genteel perplexity. "The other nurse?
Our regular surgical nurse, Miss Golden, is ill--Miss Hibbs, here, is
replacing her for the present." She indicated the gaping damsel; then,
as Amherst persisted: "Ah," she wondered negligently, "do you mean the
young lady you saw here yesterday? Certainly--I had forgotten: Miss
Brent was merely a--er--temporary substitute. I believe she was
recommended to Dr. Disbrow by one of his patients; but we found her
quite unsuitable--in fact, unfitted--and the doctor discharged her this
morning."

Mrs. Westmore had drawn near, and while the matron delivered her
explanation, with an uneasy sorting and shifting of words, a quick
signal of intelligence passed between her hearers. "You see?" Amherst's
eyes exclaimed; "I see--they have sent her away because she told you,"
Bessy's flashed back in wrath, and his answering look did not deny her
inference.

"Do you know where she has gone?" Amherst enquired; but Mrs. Ogan,
permitting her brows a faint lift of surprise, replied that she had no
idea of Miss Brent's movements, beyond having heard that she was to
leave Hanaford immediately

In the carriage Bessy exclaimed: "It was the nurse, of course--if we
could only find her! Brent--did Mrs. Ogan say her name was Brent?"

"Do you know the name?"

"Yes--at least--but it couldn't, of course, be the girl I knew----"

"Miss Brent saw you the night you arrived, and thought she recognized
you. She said you and she had been at some school or convent together."

"The Sacred Heart? Then it _is_ Justine Brent! I heard they had lost
their money--I haven't seen her for years. But how strange that she
should be a hospital nurse! And why is she at Hanaford, I wonder?"

"She was here only on a visit; she didn't tell me where she lived. She
said she heard that a surgical nurse was wanted at the hospital, and
volunteered her services; I'm afraid she got small thanks for them."

"Do you really think they sent her away for talking to you? How do you
suppose they found out?"

"I waited for her last night when she left the hospital, and I suppose
Mrs. Ogan or one of the doctors saw us. It was thoughtless of me,"
Amherst exclaimed with compunction.

"I wish I had seen her--poor Justine! We were the greatest friends at
the convent. She was the ringleader in all our mischief--I never saw any
one so quick and clever. I suppose her fun is all gone now."

For a moment Mrs. Westmore's mind continued to linger among her
memories; then she reverted to the question of the Dillons, and of what
might best be done for them if Miss Brent's fears should be realized.

As the carriage neared her door she turned to her companion with
extended hand. "Thank you so much, Mr. Amherst. I am glad you suggested
that Mr. Truscomb should find some work for Dillon about the office. But
I must talk to you about this again--can you come in this evening?"

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