She looked at him again. "But what is really changed?"
"Everything--everything! Not changed, I mean--just gone back."
"To where...we were...before?" she whispered; and he whispered back: "To where we were before."
There was a sc.r.a.ping of chairs on the floor, and with a sense of release Amherst saw that the colloquy in the window was over.
The two visitors, gathering their wraps about them, moved slowly across the room, still talking to the matron in excited undertones, through which, as they neared the threshold, the younger woman"s staccato again broke out.
"I tell you, if she does go back to him, it"ll never be the same between them!"
"Oh, Cora, I wouldn"t say that," the other ineffectually wailed; then they moved toward the door, and a moment later it had closed on them.
Amherst turned to his wife with outstretched arms. "Say you forgive me, Justine!"
She held back a little from his entreating hands, not reproachfully, but as if with a last scruple for himself.
"There"s nothing left...of the horror?" she asked below her breath.
"To be without you--that"s the only horror!"
"You"re _sure_----?"
"Sure!"
"It"s just the same to you...just as it was...before?"
"Just the same, Justine!"
"It"s not for myself, but you."
"Then, for me--never speak of it!" he implored.
"Because it"s _not_ the same, then?" leapt from her.
"Because it"s wiped out--because it"s never been!"
"Never?"
"Never!"
He felt her yield to him at that, and under his eyes, close under his lips, was her face at last. But as they kissed they heard the handle of the door turn, and drew apart quickly, her hand lingering in his under the fold of her dress.
A nurse looked in, dressed in the white uniform and pointed cap of the hospital. Amherst fancied that she smiled a little as she saw them.
"Miss Brent--the doctor wants you to come right up and give the morphine."
The door shut again as Justine rose to her feet. Amherst remained seated--he had made no motion to retain her hand as it slipped from him.
"I"m coming," she called out to the retreating nurse; then she turned slowly and saw her husband"s face.
"I must go," she said in a low tone.
Her eyes met his for a moment; but he looked away again as he stood up and reached for his hat.
"Tomorrow, then----" he said, without attempting to detain her.
"Tomorrow?"
"You must come away from here--you must come home," he repeated mechanically.
She made no answer, and he held his hand out and took hers. "Tomorrow,"
he said, drawing her toward him; and their lips met again, but not in the same kiss.
XLIII
JUNE again at Hanaford--and Cicely"s birthday. The anniversary was to coincide, this year, with the opening of the old house at Hopewood, as a kind of pleasure-palace--gymnasium, concert-hall and museum--for the recreation of the mill-hands.
The idea had first come to Amherst on the winter afternoon when Bessy Westmore had confessed her love for him under the snow-laden trees of Hopewood. Even then the sense that his personal happiness was enlarged and secured by its promise of happiness to others had made him wish that the scene a.s.sociated with the opening of his new life should be made to commemorate a corresponding change in the fortunes of Westmore. But when the control of the mills pa.s.sed into his hands other and more necessary improvements pressed upon him; and it was not till now that the financial condition of the company had permitted the execution of his plan.
Justine, on her return to Hanaford, had found the work already in progress, and had been told by her husband that he was carrying out a projected scheme of Bessy"s. She had felt a certain surprise, but had concluded that the plan in question dated back to the early days of his first marriage, when, in his wife"s eyes, his connection with the mills still invested them with interest.
Since Justine had come back to her husband, both had tacitly avoided all allusions to the past, and the recreation-house at Hopewood being, as she divined, in some sort an expiatory offering to Bessy"s plaintive shade, she had purposely refrained from questioning Amherst about its progress, and had simply approved the plans he submitted to her.
Fourteen months had pa.s.sed since her return, and now, as she sat beside her husband in the carriage which was conveying them to Hopewood, she said to herself that her life had at last fallen into what promised to be its final shape--that as things now were they would probably be to the end. And outwardly at least they were what she and Amherst had always dreamed of their being. Westmore prospered under the new rule.
The seeds of life they had sown there were springing up in a promising growth of bodily health and mental activity, and above all in a dawning social consciousness. The mill-hands were beginning to understand the meaning of their work, in its relation to their own lives and to the larger economy. And outwardly, also, the new growth was showing itself in the humanized aspect of the place. Amherst"s young maples were tall enough now to cast a shade on the gra.s.s-bordered streets; and the well-kept turf, the bright cottage gardens, the new central group of library, hospital and club-house, gave to the mill-village the hopeful air of a "rising" residential suburb.
In the bright June light, behind their fresh green mantle of trees and creepers, even the factory buildings looked less stern and prison-like than formerly; and the turfing and planting of the adjoining river-banks had transformed a waste of foul mud and refuse into a little park where the operatives might refresh themselves at midday.
Yes--Westmore was alive at last: the dead city of which Justine had once spoken had risen from its grave, and its blank face had taken on a meaning. As Justine glanced at her husband she saw that the same thought was in his mind. However achieved, at whatever cost of personal misery and error, the work of awakening and freeing Westmore was done, and that work had justified itself.
She looked from Amherst to Cicely, who sat opposite, eager and rosy in her mourning frock--for Mr. Langhope had died some two months previously--and as intent as her step-parents on the scene before her.
Cicely was old enough now to regard her connection with Westmore as something more than a nursery game. She was beginning to learn a great deal about the mills, and to understand, in simple, friendly ways, something of her own relation to them. The work and play of the children, the interests and relaxations provided for their elders, had been gradually explained to her by Justine, and she knew that this shining tenth birthday of hers was to throw its light as far as the clouds of factory-smoke extended.
As they mounted the slope to Hopewood, the s.p.a.cious white building, with its enfolding colonnades, its broad terraces and tennis-courts, shone through the trees like some bright country-house adorned for its master"s home-coming; and Amherst and his wife might have been driving up to the house which had been built to shelter their wedded happiness.
The thought flashed across Justine as their carriage climbed the hill.
She was as much absorbed as Amherst in the welfare of Westmore, it had become more and more, to both, the refuge in which their lives still met and mingled; but for a moment, as they paused before the flower-decked porch, and he turned to help her from the carriage, it occurred to her to wonder what her sensations would have been if he had been bringing her home--to a real home of their own--instead of accompanying her to another philanthropic celebration. But what need had they of a real home, when they no longer had any real life of their own? Nothing was left of that secret inner union which had so enriched and beautified their outward lives. Since Justine"s return to Hanaford they had entered, tacitly, almost unconsciously, into a new relation to each other: a relation in which their personalities were more and more merged in their common work, so that, as it were, they met only by avoiding each other.
From the first, Justine had accepted this as inevitable; just as she had understood, when Amherst had sought her out in New York, that his remaining at Westmore, which had once been contingent on her leaving him, now depended on her willingness to return and take up their former life.
She accepted the last condition as she had accepted the other, pledged to the perpetual expiation of an act for which, in the abstract, she still refused to hold herself to blame. But life is not a matter of abstract principles, but a succession of pitiful compromises with fate, of concessions to old tradition, old beliefs, old charities and frailties. That was what her act had taught her--that was the word of the G.o.ds to the mortal who had laid a hand on their bolts. And she had humbled herself to accept the lesson, seeing human relations at last as a tangled and deep-rooted growth, a dark forest through which the idealist cannot cut his straight path without hearing at each stroke the cry of the severed branch: "_Why woundest thou me?_"