<h2><SPAN name="XXXVI" id="XXXVI"></SPAN>XXXVI</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">When</span> Wyant had left the room, and the house-door
had closed on him, Amherst spoke to his
wife.</p>
<p>"Come upstairs," he said.</p>
<p>Justine followed him, scarcely conscious where she
went, but moving already with a lighter tread. Part
of her weight of misery had been lifted with Wyant's
going. She had suffered less from the fear of what her
husband might think than from the shame of making
her avowal in her defamer's presence. And her faith
in Amherst's comprehension had begun to revive. He<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_517" id="Page_517"></SPAN></span>
had dismissed Wyant with scorn and horror—did not
that show that he was on her side already? And how
many more arguments she had at her call! Her
brain hummed with them as she followed him up the
stairs.</p>
<p>In her bedroom he closed the door and stood motionless,
the same heavy half-paralyzed look on his face.
It frightened her and she went up to him.</p>
<p>"John!" she said timidly.</p>
<p>He put his hand to his head. "Wait a moment——"
he returned; and she waited, her heart slowly sinking
again.</p>
<p>The moment over, he seemed to recover his power of
movement. He crossed the room and threw himself
into the armchair near the hearth.</p>
<p>"Now tell me everything."</p>
<p>He sat thrown back, his eyes fixed on the fire, and
the vertical lines between his brows forming a deep
scar in his white face.</p>
<p>Justine moved nearer, and touched his arm beseechingly.
"Won't you look at me?"</p>
<p>He turned his head slowly, as if with an effort, and
his eyes rested reluctantly on hers.</p>
<p>"Oh, not like that!" she exclaimed.</p>
<p>He seemed to make a stronger effort at self-control.
"Please don't heed me—but say what there is to say,"
he said in a level voice, his gaze on the fire.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_518" id="Page_518"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>She stood before him, her arms hanging down, her
clasped fingers twisting restlessly.</p>
<p>"I don't know that there is much to say—beyond
what I've told you."</p>
<p>There was a slight sound in Amherst's throat, like
the ghost of a derisive laugh. After another interval
he said: "I wish to hear exactly what happened."</p>
<p>She seated herself on the edge of a chair near by,
bending forward, with hands interlocked and arms extended
on her knees—every line reaching out to him,
as though her whole slight body were an arrow winged
with pleadings. It was a relief to speak at last, even
face to face with the stony image that sat in her husband's
place; and she told her story, detail by detail,
omitting nothing, exaggerating nothing, speaking slowly,
clearly, with precision, aware that the bare facts were
her strongest argument.</p>
<p>Amherst, as he listened, shifted his position once,
raising his hand so that it screened his face; and in that
attitude he remained when she had ended.</p>
<p>As she waited for him to speak, Justine realized that
her heart had been alive with tremulous hopes. All
through her narrative she had counted on a murmur of
perception, an exclamation of pity: she had felt sure of
melting the stony image. But Amherst said no word.</p>
<p>At length he spoke, still without turning his head.
"You have not told me why you kept this from me."<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_519" id="Page_519"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>A sob formed in her throat, and she had to wait to
steady her voice.</p>
<p>"No—that was my wrong—my weakness. When I
did it I never thought of being afraid to tell you—I had
talked it over with you in my own mind...so often...before...."</p>
<p>"Well?"</p>
<p>"Then—- when you came back it was harder...though
I was still sure you would approve me."</p>
<p>"Why harder?"</p>
<p>"Because at first—at Lynbrook—I <i>could not</i> tell it
all over, in detail, as I have now...it was beyond
human power...and without doing so, I couldn't
make it all clear to you...and so should only have
added to your pain. If you had been there you would
have done as I did.... I felt sure of that from the first.
But coming afterward, you couldn't judge...no one
who was not there could judge...and I wanted to
spare you...."</p>
<p>"And afterward?"</p>
<p>She had shrunk in advance from this question, and
she could not answer it at once. To gain time she
echoed it. "Afterward?"</p>
<p>"Did it never occur to you, when we met later—when
you first went to Mr. Langhope——"?</p>
<p>"To tell you then? No—because by that time I had
come to see that I could never be quite sure of making<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_520" id="Page_520"></SPAN></span>
you understand. No one who was not there at the
time could know what it was to see her suffer."</p>
<p>"You thought it all over, then—decided definitely
against telling me?"</p>
<p>"I did not have to think long. I felt I had done right—I
still feel so—and I was sure you would feel so, if you
were in the same circumstances."</p>
<p>There was another pause. Then Amherst said:
"And last September—at Hanaford?"</p>
<p>It was the word for which she had waited—the word
of her inmost fears. She felt the blood mount to her
face.</p>
<p>"Did you see no difference—no special reason for
telling me then?"</p>
<p>"Yes——" she faltered.</p>
<p>"Yet you said nothing."</p>
<p>"No."</p>
<p>Silence again. Her eyes strayed to the clock, and
some dim association of ideas told her that Cicely would
soon be coming in.</p>
<p>"Why did you say nothing?"</p>
<p>He lowered his hand and turned toward her as he
spoke; and she looked up and faced him.</p>
<p>"Because I regarded the question as settled. I had
decided it in my own mind months before, and had
never regretted my decision. I should have thought it
morbid...unnatural...to go over the whole subject
again...to let it affect a situation that had come about...so
much later...so unexpectedly."
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_521" id="Page_521"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"Did you never feel that, later, if I came to know—if
others came to know—it might be difficult——?"</p>
<p>"No; for I didn't care for the others—and I believed
that, whatever your own feelings were, you would know
I had done what I thought right."</p>
<p>She spoke the words proudly, strongly, and for the
first time the hard lines of his face relaxed, and a slight
tremor crossed it.</p>
<p>"If you believed this, why have you been letting that
cur blackmail you?"</p>
<p>"Because when he began I saw for the first time that
what I had done might be turned against me by—by
those who disliked our marriage. And I was afraid
for my happiness. That was my weakness...it is
what I am suffering for now."</p>
<p>"<i>Suffering</i>!" he echoed ironically, as though she had
presumed to apply to herself a word of which he had
the grim monopoly. He rose and took a few aimless
steps; then he halted before her.</p>
<p>"That day—last month—when you asked me for
money...was it...?"</p>
<p>"Yes——" she said, her head sinking.</p>
<p>He laughed. "You couldn't tell me—but you could
use my money to bribe that fellow to conspire with
you!"<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_522" id="Page_522"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"I had none of my own."</p>
<p>"No—nor I either! You used <i>her</i> money.—God!"
he groaned, turning away with clenched hands.</p>
<p>Justine had risen also, and she stood motionless,
her hands clasped against her breast, in the drawn
shrinking attitude of a fugitive overtaken by a blinding
storm. He moved back to her with an appealing gesture.</p>
<p>"And you didn't see—it didn't occur to you—that
your doing...as you did...was an obstacle—an insurmountable
obstacle—to our ever ...?"</p>
<p>She cut him short with an indignant cry. "No!
No! for it was <i>not</i>. How could it have anything to do
with what...came after...with you or me? I did
it only for Bessy—it concerned only Bessy!"</p>
<p>"Ah, don't name her!" broke from him harshly, and
she drew back, cut to the heart.</p>
<p>There was another pause, during which he seemed
to fall into a kind of dazed irresolution, his head on
his breast, as though unconscious of her presence.
Then he roused himself and went to the door.</p>
<p>As he passed her she sprang after him. "John—John!
Is that all you have to say?"</p>
<p>"What more is there?"</p>
<p>"What more? Everything!—What right have you
to turn from me as if I were a murderess? I did nothing
but what your own reason, your own arguments,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_523" id="Page_523"></SPAN></span>
have justified a hundred times! I made a mistake in
not telling you at once—but a mistake is not a crime.
It can't be your real feeling that turns you from me—it
must be the dread of what other people would think!
But when have you cared for what other people thought?
When have your own actions been governed by it?"</p>
<p>He moved another step without speaking, and she
caught him by the arm. "No! you sha'n't go—not
like that!—Wait!"</p>
<p>She turned and crossed the room. On the lower
shelf of the little table by her bed a few books were
ranged: she stooped and drew one hurriedly forth, opening
it at the fly-leaf as she went back to Amherst.</p>
<p>"There—read that. The book was at Lynbrook—in
your room—and I came across it by chance the very
day...."</p>
<p>It was the little volume of Bacon which she was
thrusting at him. He took it with a bewildered look,
as if scarcely following what she said.</p>
<p>"Read it—read it!" she commanded; and mechanically
he read out the words he had written.</p>
<p>"<i>La vraie morale se moque de la morale.... We perish
because we follow other men's examples.... Socrates
called the opinions of the many Lamiæ.</i>—Good God!"
he exclaimed, flinging the book from him with a gesture
of abhorrence.</p>
<p>Justine watched him with panting lips, her knees<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_524" id="Page_524"></SPAN></span>
trembling under her. "But you wrote it—you wrote
it! I thought you meant it!" she cried, as the book
spun across a table and dropped to the floor.</p>
<p>He looked at her coldly, almost apprehensively, as
if she had grown suddenly dangerous and remote; then
he turned and walked out of the room.</p>
<hr style='width: 45%;' />
<p>The striking of the clock roused her. She rose to her
feet, rang the bell, and told the maid, through the door,
that she had a headache, and was unable to see Miss
Cicely. Then she turned back into the room, and
darkness closed on her. She was not the kind to take
grief passively—it drove her in anguished pacings up
and down the floor. She walked and walked till her
legs flagged under her; then she dropped stupidly into
the chair where Amherst had sat....</p>
<p>All her world had crumbled about her. It was as if
some law of mental gravity had been mysteriously suspended,
and every firmly-anchored conviction, every
accepted process of reasoning, spun disconnectedly
through space. Amherst had not understood her—worse
still, he had judged her as the world might judge
her! The core of her misery was there. With terrible
clearness she saw the suspicion that had crossed his
mind—the suspicion that she had kept silence in the
beginning because she loved him, and feared to lose
him if she spoke.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_525" id="Page_525"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>And what if it were true? What if her unconscious
guilt went back even farther than his thought dared to
track it? She could not now recall a time when she
had not loved him. Every chance meeting with him,
from their first brief talk at Hanaford, stood out embossed
and glowing against the blur of lesser memories.
Was it possible that she had loved him during
Bessy's life—that she had even, sub-consciously, blindly,
been urged by her feeling for him to perform the act?</p>
<p>But she shook herself free from this morbid horror—the
rebound of health was always prompt in her, and
her mind instinctively rejected every form of moral
poison. No! Her motive had been normal, sane and
justifiable—completely justifiable. Her fault lay in
having dared to rise above conventional restrictions,
her mistake in believing that her husband could rise
with her. These reflections steadied her but they did
not bring much comfort. For her whole life was centred
in Amherst, and she saw that he would never be
able to free himself from the traditional view of her act.
In looking back, and correcting her survey of his character
in the revealing light of the last hours, she perceived
that, like many men of emancipated thought,
he had remained subject to the old conventions of feeling.
And he had probably never given much thought
to women till he met her—had always been content to
deal with them in the accepted currency of sentiment.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_526" id="Page_526"></SPAN></span>
After all, it was the currency they liked best, and for
which they offered their prettiest wares!</p>
<p>But what of the intellectual accord between himself
and her? She had not been deceived in that! He
and she had really been wedded in mind as well as in
heart. But until now there had not arisen in their
lives one of those searching questions which call into
play emotions rooted far below reason and judgment, in
the dark primal depths of inherited feeling. It is easy
to judge impersonal problems intellectually, turning
on them the full light of acquired knowledge; but too
often one must still grope one's way through the personal
difficulty by the dim taper carried in long-dead
hands....</p>
<p>But was there then no hope of lifting one's individual
life to a clearer height of conduct? Must one be content
to think for the race, and to feel only—feel blindly
and incoherently—for one's self? And was it not from
such natures as Amherst's—natures in which independence
of judgment was blent with strong human sympathy—that
the liberating impulse should come?</p>
<p>Her mind grew weary of revolving in this vain circle
of questions. The fact was that, in their particular
case, Amherst had not risen above prejudice and emotion;
that, though her act was one to which his intellectual
sanction was given, he had turned from her with
instinctive repugnance, had dishonoured her by the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_527" id="Page_527"></SPAN></span>
most wounding suspicions. The tie between them was
forever stained and debased.</p>
<p>Justine's long hospital-discipline made it impossible
for her to lose consciousness of the lapse of time, or to
let her misery thicken into mental stupor. She could
not help thinking and moving; and she presently lifted
herself to her feet, turned on the light, and began to
prepare for dinner. It would be terrible to face her
husband across Mr. Langhope's pretty dinner-table,
and afterward in the charming drawing-room, with its
delicate old ornaments and intimate luxurious furniture;
but she could not continue to sit motionless in the dark:
it was her innermost instinct to pick herself up and go
on.</p>
<p>While she dressed she listened anxiously for Amherst's
step in the next room; but there was no sound,
and when she dragged herself downstairs the drawing-room
was empty, and the parlour-maid, after a decent
delay, came to ask if dinner should be postponed.</p>
<p>She said no, murmuring some vague pretext for her
husband's absence, and sitting alone through the succession
of courses which composed the brief but carefully-studied
<i>menu</i>. When this ordeal was over she
returned to the drawing-room and took up a book.
It chanced to be a new volume on labour problems,
which Amherst must have brought back with him from
Westmore; and it carried her thoughts instantly to the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_528" id="Page_528"></SPAN></span>
mills. Would this disaster poison their work there
as well as their personal relation? Would he think
of her as carrying contamination even into the task their
love had illumined?</p>
<p>The hours went on without his returning, and at
length it occurred to her that he might have taken the
night train to Hanaford. Her heart contracted at the
thought: she remembered—though every nerve shrank
from the analogy—his sudden flight at another crisis
in his life, and she felt obscurely that if he escaped from
her now she would never recover her hold on him. But
could he be so cruel—could he wish any one to suffer
as she was suffering?</p>
<p>At ten o'clock she could endure the drawing-room
no longer, and went up to her room again. She undressed
slowly, trying to prolong the process as much as
possible, to put off the period of silence and inaction
which would close in on her when she lay down on her
bed. But at length the dreaded moment came—there
was nothing more between her and the night. She
crept into bed and put out the light; but as she slipped
between the cold sheets a trembling seized her, and after
a moment she drew on her dressing-gown again and
groped her way to the lounge by the fire.</p>
<p>She pushed the lounge closer to the hearth and lay
down, still shivering, though she had drawn the quilted
coverlet up to her chin. She lay there a long time,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_529" id="Page_529"></SPAN></span>
with closed eyes, in a mental darkness torn by sudden
flashes of memory. In one of these flashes a phrase of
Amherst's stood out—a word spoken at Westmore, on
the day of the opening of the Emergency Hospital, about
a good-looking young man who had called to see her.
She remembered Amherst's boyish burst of jealousy,
his sudden relief at the thought that the visitor might
have been Wyant. And no doubt it <i>was</i> Wyant—Wyant
who had come to Hanaford to threaten her, and
who, baffled by her non-arrival, or for some other unexplained
reason, had left again without carrying out
his purpose.</p>
<p>It was dreadful to think by how slight a chance her
first draught of happiness had escaped that drop of
poison; yet, when she understood, her inward cry was:
"If it had happened, my dearest need not have suffered!"...
Already she was feeling Amherst's pain
more than her own, understanding that it was harder
to bear than hers because it was at war with all the
reflective part of his nature.</p>
<p>As she lay there, her face pressed into the cushions,
she heard a sound through the silent house—the opening
and closing of the outer door. She turned cold,
and lay listening with strained ears.... Yes; now there
was a step on the stairs—her husband's step! She
heard him turn into his own room. The throbs of her
heart almost deafened her—she only distinguished<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_530" id="Page_530"></SPAN></span>
confusedly that he was moving about within, so close
that it was as if she felt his touch. Then her door
opened and he entered.</p>
<p>He stumbled slightly in the darkness before he found
the switch of the lamp; and as he bent over it she saw
that his face was flushed, and that his eyes had an excited
light which, in any one less abstemious, might
almost have seemed like the effect of wine.</p>
<p>"Are you awake?" he asked.</p>
<p>She started up against the cushions, her black hair
streaming about her small ghostly face.</p>
<p>"Yes."</p>
<p>He walked over to the lounge and dropped into the
low chair beside it.</p>
<p>"I've given that cur a lesson he won't forget," he
exclaimed, breathing hard, the redness deepening in his
face.</p>
<p>She turned on him in joy and trembling. "John!—Oh,
John! You didn't follow him? Oh, what happened?
What have you done?"</p>
<p>"No. I didn't follow him. But there are some
things that even the powers above can't stand. And so
they managed to let me run across him—by the merest
accident—and I gave him something to remember."</p>
<p>He spoke in a strong clear voice that had a brightness
like the brightness in his eyes. She felt its heat
in her veins—the primitive woman in her glowed at<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_531" id="Page_531"></SPAN></span>
contact with the primitive man. But reflection chilled
her the next moment.</p>
<p>"But why—why? Oh, how could you? Where
did it happen—oh, not in the street?"</p>
<p>As she questioned him, there rose before her the
terrified vision of a crowd gathering—the police, newspapers,
a hideous publicity. He must have been mad
to do it—and yet he must have done it because he loved
her!</p>
<p>"No—no. Don't be afraid. The powers looked
after that too. There was no one about—and I don't
think he'll talk much about it."</p>
<p>She trembled, fearing yet adoring him. Nothing
could have been more unlike the Amherst she fancied
she knew than this act of irrational anger which had
magically lifted the darkness from his spirit; yet, magically
also, it gave him back to her, made them one flesh
once more. And suddenly the pressure of opposed
emotions became too strong, and she burst into tears.</p>
<p>She wept painfully, violently, with the resistance of
strong natures unused to emotional expression; till at
length, through the tumult of her tears, she felt her
husband's reassuring touch.</p>
<p>"Justine," he said, speaking once more in his natural
voice.</p>
<p>She raised her face from her hands, and they looked
at each other.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_532" id="Page_532"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"Justine—this afternoon—I said things I didn't
mean to say."</p>
<p>Her lips parted, but her throat was still full of sobs,
and she could only look at him while the tears ran down.</p>
<p>"I believe I understand now," he continued, in the
same quiet tone.</p>
<p>Her hand shrank from his clasp, and she began to
tremble again. "Oh, if you only <i>believe</i>...if you're
not sure...don't pretend to be!"</p>
<p>He sat down beside her and drew her into his arms.
"I am sure," he whispered, holding her close, and
pressing his lips against her face and hair.</p>
<p>"Oh, my husband—my husband! You've come
back to me?"</p>
<p>He answered her with more kisses, murmuring
through them: "Poor child—poor child—poor Justine...."
while he held her fast.</p>
<p>With her face against him she yielded to the childish
luxury of murmuring out unjustified fears. "I was
afraid you had gone back to Hanaford——"</p>
<p>"Tonight? To Hanaford?"</p>
<p>"To tell your mother."</p>
<p>She felt a contraction of the arm embracing her, as
though a throb of pain had stiffened it.</p>
<p>"I shall never tell any one," he said abruptly; but
as he felt in her a responsive shrinking he gathered
her close again, whispering through the hair that fell<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_533" id="Page_533"></SPAN></span>
about her cheek: "Don't talk, dear...let us never
talk of it again...." And in the clasp of his arms her
terror and anguish subsided, giving way, not to the deep
peace of tranquillized thought, but to a confused well-being
that lulled all thought to sleep.</p>
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