BOOK I

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THE FRUIT OF THE TREE

[Illustration: He stood by her in silence, his eyes on the injured

man.]

THE FRUIT OF THE TREE

BY

EDITH WHARTON

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALONZO KIMBALL

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

MDCCCCVII

COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

[Illustration: mark]

ILLUSTRATIONS

_He stood by her in silence, his eyes on the injured man_ _Frontispiece_

_"No--I shall have to ask you to take my word for it"_ _Facing p. 82_

_Half-way up the slope they met_ 130

BOOK I

THE FRUIT OF THE TREE

I

IN the surgical ward of the Hope Hospital at Hanaford, a nurse was

bending over a young man whose bandaged right hand and arm lay stretched

along the bed.

His head stirred uneasily, and slipping her arm behind him she effected

a professional readjustment of the pillows. "Is that better?"

As she leaned over, he lifted his anxious bewildered eyes, deep-sunk

under ridges of suffering. "I don't s'pose there's any kind of a show

for me, is there?" he asked, pointing with his free hand--the stained

seamed hand of the mechanic--to the inert bundle on the quilt.

Her only immediate answer was to wipe the dampness from his forehead;

then she said: "We'll talk about that to-morrow."

"Why not now?"

"Because Dr. Disbrow can't tell till the inflammation goes down."

"Will it go down by to-morrow?"

"It will begin to, if you don't excite yourself and keep up the fever."

"Excite myself? I--there's four of 'em at home----"

"Well, then there are four reasons for keeping quiet," she rejoined.

She did not use, in speaking, the soothing inflection of her trade: she

seemed to disdain to cajole or trick the sufferer. Her full young voice

kept its cool note of authority, her sympathy revealing itself only in

the expert touch of her hands and the constant vigilance of her dark

steady eyes. This vigilance softened to pity as the patient turned his

head away with a groan. His free left hand continued to travel the

sheet, clasping and unclasping itself in contortions of feverish unrest.

It was as though all the anguish of his mutilation found expression in

that lonely hand, left without work in the world now that its mate was

useless.

The nurse felt a touch on her shoulder, and rose to face the matron, a

sharp-featured woman with a soft intonation.

"This is Mr. Amherst, Miss Brent. The assistant manager from the mills.

He wishes to see Dillon."

John Amherst's step was singularly noiseless. The nurse, sensitive by

nature and training to all physical characteristics, was struck at once

by the contrast between his alert face and figure and the silent way in

which he moved. She noticed, too, that the same contrast was repeated in

the face itself, its spare energetic outline, with the high nose and

compressed lips of the mover of men, being curiously modified by the

veiled inward gaze of the grey eyes he turned on her. It was one of the

interests of Justine Brent's crowded yet lonely life to attempt a rapid

mental classification of the persons she met; but the contradictions in

Amherst's face baffled her, and she murmured inwardly "I don't know" as

she drew aside to let him approach the bed. He stood by her in silence,

his hands clasped behind him, his eyes on the injured man, who lay

motionless, as if sunk in a lethargy. The matron, at the call of another

nurse, had minced away down the ward, committing Amherst with a glance

to Miss Brent; and the two remained alone by the bed.

After a pause, Amherst moved toward the window beyond the empty cot

adjoining Dillon's. One of the white screens used to isolate dying

patients had been placed against this cot, which was the last at that

end of the ward, and the space beyond formed a secluded corner, where a

few words could be exchanged out of reach of the eyes in the other beds.

"Is he asleep?" Amherst asked, as Miss Brent joined him.

Miss Brent glanced at him again. His voice betokened not merely

education, but something different and deeper--the familiar habit of

gentle speech; and his shabby clothes--carefully brushed, but ill-cut

and worn along the seams--sat on him easily, and with the same

difference.

"The morphine has made him drowsy," she answered. "The wounds were

dressed about an hour ago, and the doctor gave him a hypodermic."

"The wounds--how many are there?"

"Besides the hand, his arm is badly torn up to the elbow."

Amherst listened with bent head and frowning brow.

"What do you think of the case?"

She hesitated. "Dr. Disbrow hasn't said----"

"And it's not your business to?" He smiled slightly. "I know hospital

etiquette. But I have a particular reason for asking." He broke off and

looked at her again, his veiled gaze sharpening to a glance of

concentrated attention. "You're not one of the regular nurses, are you?

Your dress seems to be of a different colour."

She smiled at the "seems to be," which denoted a tardy and imperfect

apprehension of the difference between dark-blue linen and white.

"No: I happened to be staying at Hanaford, and hearing that they were in

want of a surgical nurse, I offered my help."

Amherst nodded. "So much the better. Is there any place where I can say

two words to you?"

"I could hardly leave the ward now, unless Mrs. Ogan comes back."

"I don't care to have you call Mrs. Ogan," he interposed quickly. "When

do you go off duty?"

She looked at him in surprise. "If what you want to ask about

is--anything connected with the management of things here--you know

we're not supposed to talk of our patients outside of the hospital."

"I know. But I am going to ask you to break through the rule--in that

poor fellow's behalf."

A protest wavered on her lip, but he held her eyes steadily, with a

glint of good-humour behind his determination. "When do you go off

duty?"

"At six."

"I'll wait at the corner of South Street and walk a little way with you.

Let me put my case, and if you're not convinced you can refuse to

answer."

"Very well," she said, without farther hesitation; and Amherst, with a

slight nod of farewell, passed through the door near which they had been

standing.

II

WHEN Justine Brent emerged from the Hope Hospital the October dusk had

fallen and the wide suburban street was almost dark, except when the

illuminated bulk of an electric car flashed by under the maples.

She crossed the tracks and approached the narrower thoroughfare where

Amherst awaited her. He hung back a moment, and she was amused to see

that he failed to identify the uniformed nurse with the girl in her trim

dark dress, soberly complete in all its accessories, who advanced to

him, smiling under her little veil.

"Thank you," he said as he turned and walked beside her. "Is this your

way?"

"I am staying in Oak Street. But it's just as short to go by Maplewood

Avenue."

"Yes; and quieter."

For a few yards they walked on in silence, their long steps falling

naturally into time, though Amherst was somewhat taller than his

companion.

At length he said: "I suppose you know nothing about the relation

between Hope Hospital and the Westmore Mills."

"Only that the hospital was endowed by one of the Westmore family."

"Yes; an old Miss Hope, a great-aunt of Westmore's. But there is more

than that between them--all kinds of subterranean passages." He paused,

and began again: "For instance, Dr. Disbrow married the sister of our

manager's wife."

"Your chief at the mills?"

"Yes," he said with a slight grimace. "So you see, if Truscomb--the

manager--thinks one of the mill-hands is only slightly injured, it's

natural that his brother-in-law, Dr. Disbrow, should take an optimistic

view of the case."

"Natural? I don't know----"

"Don't you think it's natural that a man should be influenced by his

wife?"

"Not where his professional honour is concerned."

Amherst smiled. "That sounds very young--if you'll excuse my saying so.

Well, I won't go on to insinuate that, Truscomb being high in favour

with the Westmores, and the Westmores having a lien on the hospital,

Disbrow's position there is also bound up with his taking--more or

less--the same view as Truscomb's."

Miss Brent had paused abruptly on the deserted pavement.

"No, don't go on--if you want me to think well of you," she flashed out.

Amherst met the thrust composedly, perceiving, as she turned to face

him, that what she resented was not so much his insinuation against his

superiors as his allusion to the youthfulness of her sentiments. She

was, in fact, as he now noticed, still young enough to dislike being

excused for her youth. In her severe uniform of blue linen, her dusky

skin darkened by the nurse's cap, and by the pale background of the

hospital walls, she had seemed older, more competent and experienced;

but he now saw how fresh was the pale curve of her cheek, and how

smooth the brow clasped in close waves of hair.

"I began at the wrong end," he acknowledged. "But let me put Dillon's

case before you dismiss me."

She softened. "It is only because of my interest in that poor fellow

that I am here----"

"Because you think he needs help--and that you can help him?"

But she held back once more. "Please tell me about him first," she said,

walking on.

Amherst met the request with another question. "I wonder how much you

know about factory life?"

"Oh, next to nothing. Just what I've managed to pick up in these two

days at the hospital."

He glanced at her small determined profile under its dark roll of hair,

and said, half to himself: "That might be a good deal."

She took no notice of this, and he went on: "Well, I won't try to put

the general situation before you, though Dillon's accident is really the

result of it. He works in the carding room, and on the day of the

accident his 'card' stopped suddenly, and he put his hand behind him to

get a tool he needed out of his trouser-pocket. He reached back a little

too far, and the card behind him caught his hand in its million of

diamond-pointed wires. Truscomb and the overseer of the room maintain

that the accident was due to his own carelessness; but the hands say

that it was caused by the fact of the cards being too near together, and

that just such an accident was bound to happen sooner or later."

Miss Brent drew an eager breath. "And what do _you_ say?"

"That they're right: the carding-room is shamefully overcrowded. Dillon

hasn't been in it long--he worked his way up at the mills from being a

bobbin-boy--and he hadn't yet learned how cautious a man must be in

there. The cards are so close to each other that even the old hands run

narrow risks, and it takes the cleverest operative some time to learn

that he must calculate every movement to a fraction of an inch."

"But why do they crowd the rooms in that way?"

"To get the maximum of profit out of the minimum of floor-space. It

costs more to increase the floor-space than to maim an operative now and

then."

"I see. Go on," she murmured.

"That's the first point; here is the second. Dr. Disbrow told Truscomb

this morning that Dillon's hand would certainly be saved, and that he

might get back to work in a couple of months if the company would

present him with an artificial finger or two."

Miss Brent faced him with a flush of indignation. "Mr. Amherst--who gave

you this version of Dr. Disbrow's report?"

"The manager himself."

"Verbally?"

"No--he showed me Disbrow's letter."

For a moment or two they walked on silently through the quiet street;

then she said, in a voice still stirred with feeling: "As I told you

this afternoon, Dr. Disbrow has said nothing in my hearing."

"And Mrs. Ogan?"

"Oh, Mrs. Ogan--" Her voice broke in a ripple of irony. "Mrs. Ogan

'feels it to be such a beautiful dispensation, my dear, that, owing to a

death that very morning in the surgical ward, we happened to have a bed

ready for the poor man within three hours of the accident.'" She had

exchanged her deep throat-tones for a high reedy note which perfectly

simulated the matron's lady-like inflections.

Amherst, at the change, turned on her with a boyish burst of laughter:

she joined in it, and for a moment they were blent in that closest of

unions, the discovery of a common fund of humour.

She was the first to grow grave. "That three hours' delay didn't help

matters--how is it there is no emergency hospital at the mills?"

Amherst laughed again, but in a different key. "That's part of the

larger question, which we haven't time for now." He waited a moment, and

then added: "You've not yet given me your own impression of Dillon's

case."

"You shall have it, if you saw that letter. Dillon will certainly lose

his hand--and probably the whole arm." She spoke with a thrilling of her

slight frame that transformed the dispassionate professional into a girl

shaken with indignant pity.

Amherst stood still before her. "Good God! Never anything but useless

lumber?"

"Never----"

"And he won't die?"

"Alas!"

"He has a consumptive wife and three children. She ruined her health

swallowing cotton-dust at the factory," Amherst continued.

"So she told me yesterday."

He turned in surprise. "You've had a talk with her?"

"I went out to Westmore last night. I was haunted by her face when she

came to the hospital. She looks forty, but she told me she was only

twenty-six." Miss Brent paused to steady her voice. "It's the curse of

my trade that it's always tempting me to interfere in cases where I can

do no possible good. The fact is, I'm not fit to be a nurse--I shall

live and die a wretched sentimentalist!" she ended, with an angry dash

at the tears on her veil.

Her companion walked on in silence till she had regained her composure.

Then he said: "What did you think of Westmore?"

"I think it's one of the worst places I ever saw--and I am not unused to

slums. It looks so dead. The slums of big cities are much more

cheerful."

He made no answer, and after a moment she asked: "Does the cotton-dust

always affect the lungs?"

"It's likely to, where there is the least phthisical tendency. But of

course the harm could be immensely reduced by taking up the old rough

floors which hold the dust, and by thorough cleanliness and

ventilation."

"What does the company do in such cases? Where an operative breaks down

at twenty-five?"

"The company says there was a phthisical tendency."

"And will they give nothing in return for the two lives they have

taken?"

"They will probably pay for Dillon's care at the hospital, and they have

taken the wife back as a scrubber."

"To clean those uncleanable floors? She's not fit for it!"

"She must work, fit for it or not; and there is less strain in scrubbing

than in bending over the looms or cards. The pay is lower, of course,

but she's very grateful for being taken back at all, now that she's no

longer a first-class worker."

Miss Brent's face glowed with a fine wrath. "She can't possibly stand

more than two or three months of it without breaking down!"

"Well, you see they've told her that in less than that time her husband

will be at work again."

"And what will the company do for them when the wife is a hopeless

invalid, and the husband a cripple?"

Amherst again uttered the dry laugh with which he had met her suggestion

of an emergency hospital. "I know what I should do if I could get

anywhere near Dillon--give him an overdose of morphine, and let the

widow collect his life-insurance, and make a fresh start."

She looked at him curiously. "Should you, I wonder?"

"If I saw the suffering as you see it, and knew the circumstances as I

know them, I believe I should feel justified--" He broke off. "In your

work, don't you ever feel tempted to set a poor devil free?"

She mused. "One might...but perhaps the professional instinct to save

would always come first."

"To save--what? When all the good of life is gone?"

"I daresay," she sighed, "poor Dillon would do it himself if he

could--when he realizes that all the good _is_ gone."

"Yes, but he can't do it himself; and it's the irony of such cases that

his employers, after ruining his life, will do all they can to patch up

the ruins."

"But that at least ought to count in their favour."

"Perhaps; if--" He paused, as though reluctant to lay himself open once

more to the charge of uncharitableness; and suddenly she exclaimed,

looking about her: "I didn't notice we had walked so far down Maplewood

Avenue!"

They had turned a few minutes previously into the wide thoroughfare

crowning the high ground which is covered by the residential quarter of

Hanaford. Here the spacious houses, withdrawn behind shrubberies and

lawns, revealed in their silhouettes every form of architectural

experiment, from the symmetrical pre-Revolutionary structure, with its

classic portico and clipped box-borders, to the latest outbreak in

boulders and Moorish tiles.

Amherst followed his companion's glance with surprise. "We _have_ gone a

block or two out of our way. I always forget where I am when I'm talking

about anything that interests me."

Miss Brent looked at her watch. "My friends don't dine till seven, and I

can get home in time by taking a Grove Street car," she said.

"If you don't mind walking a little farther you can take a Liberty

Street car instead. They run oftener, and you will get home just as

soon."

She made a gesture of assent, and as they walked on he continued: "I

haven't yet explained why I am so anxious to get an unbiassed opinion of

Dillon's case."

She looked at him in surprise. "What you've told me about Dr. Disbrow

and your manager is surely enough."

"Well, hardly, considering that I am Truscomb's subordinate. I shouldn't

have committed a breach of professional etiquette, or asked you to do

so, if I hadn't a hope of bettering things; but I have, and that is why

I've held on at Westmore for the last few months, instead of getting out

of it altogether."

"I'm glad of that," she said quickly.

"The owner of the mills--young Richard Westmore--died last winter," he

went on, "and my hope--it's no more--is that the new broom may sweep a

little cleaner."

"Who is the new broom?"

"Westmore left everything to his widow, and she is coming here to-morrow

to look into the management of the mills."

"Coming? She doesn't live here, then?"

"At Hanaford? Heaven forbid! It's an anomaly nowadays for the employer

to live near the employed. The Westmores have always lived in New

York--and I believe they have a big place on Long Island."

"Well, at any rate she _is_ coming, and that ought to be a good sign.

Did she never show any interest in the mills during her husband's life?"

"Not as far as I know. I've been at Westmore three years, and she's not

been seen there in my time. She is very young, and Westmore himself

didn't care. It was a case of inherited money. He drew the dividends,

and Truscomb did the rest."

Miss Brent reflected. "I don't know much about the constitution of

companies--but I suppose Mrs. Westmore doesn't unite all the offices in

her own person. Is there no one to stand between Truscomb and the

operatives?"

"Oh, the company, on paper, shows the usual official hierarchy. Richard

Westmore, of course, was president, and since his death the former

treasurer--Halford Gaines--has replaced him, and his son, Westmore

Gaines, has been appointed treasurer. You can see by the names that it's

all in the family. Halford Gaines married a Miss Westmore, and

represents the clan at Hanaford--leads society, and keeps up the social

credit of the name. As treasurer, Mr. Halford Gaines kept strictly to

his special business, and always refused to interfere between Truscomb

and the operatives. As president he will probably follow the same

policy, the more so as it fits in with his inherited respect for the

_status quo_, and his blissful ignorance of economics."

"And the new treasurer--young Gaines? Is there no hope of his breaking

away from the family tradition?"

"Westy Gaines has a better head than his father; but he hates Hanaford

and the mills, and his chief object in life is to be taken for a New

Yorker. So far he hasn't been here much, except for the quarterly

meetings, and his routine work is done by another cousin--you perceive

that Westmore is a nest of nepotism."

Miss Brent's work among the poor had developed her interest in social

problems, and she followed these details attentively.

"Well, the outlook is not encouraging, but perhaps Mrs. Westmore's

coming will make a change. I suppose she has more power than any one."

"She might have, if she chose to exert it, for her husband was really

the whole company. The official cousins hold only a few shares apiece."

"Perhaps, then, her visit will open her eyes. Who knows but poor

Dillon's case may help others--prove a beautiful dispensation, as Mrs.

Ogan would say?"

"It does come terribly pat as an illustration of some of the abuses I

want to have remedied. The difficulty will be to get the lady's ear.

That's her house we're coming to, by the way."

An electric street-lamp irradiated the leafless trees and stone

gate-posts of the building before them. Though gardens extended behind

it, the house stood so near the pavement that only two short flights of

steps intervened between the gate-posts and the portico. Light shone

from every window of the pompous rusticated facade--in the turreted

"Tuscan villa" style of the 'fifties--and as Miss Brent and Amherst

approached, their advance was checked by a group of persons who were

just descending from two carriages at the door.

The lamp-light showed every detail of dress and countenance in the

party, which consisted of two men, one slightly lame, with a long white

moustache and a distinguished nose, the other short, lean and

professional, and of two ladies and their laden attendants.

"Why, that must be her party arriving!" Miss Brent exclaimed; and as she

spoke the younger of the two ladies, turning back to her maid, exposed

to the glare of the electric light a fair pale face shadowed by the

projection of her widow's veil.

"Is that Mrs. Westmore?" Miss Brent whispered; and as Amherst muttered:

"I suppose so; I've never seen her----" she continued excitedly: "She

looks so like--do you know what her name was before she married?"

He drew his brows together in a hopeless effort of remembrance. "I don't

know--I must have heard--but I never can recall people's names."

"That's bad, for a leader of men!" she said mockingly, and he answered,

as though touched on a sore point: "I mean people who don't count. I

never forget an operative's name or face."

"One can never tell who may be going to count," she rejoined

sententiously.

He dwelt on this in silence while they walked on catching as they

passed a glimpse of the red-carpeted Westmore hall on which the glass

doors were just being closed. At length he roused himself to ask: "Does

Mrs. Westmore look like some one you know?"

"I fancied so--a girl who was at the Sacred Heart in Paris with me. But

isn't this my corner?" she exclaimed, as they turned into another

street, down which a laden car was descending.

Its approach left them time for no more than a hurried hand-clasp, and

when Miss Brent had been absorbed into the packed interior her

companion, as his habit was, stood for a while where she had left him,

gazing at some indefinite point in space; then, waking to a sudden

consciousness of his surroundings, he walked off toward the centre of

the town.

At the junction of two business streets he met an empty car marked

"Westmore," and springing into it, seated himself in a corner and drew

out a pocket Shakespeare. He read on, indifferent to his surroundings,

till the car left the asphalt streets and illuminated shop-fronts for a

grey intermediate region of mud and macadam. Then he pocketed his volume

and sat looking out into the gloom.

The houses grew less frequent, with darker gaps of night between; and

the rare street-lamps shone on cracked pavements, crooked

telegraph-poles, hoardings tapestried with patent-medicine posters, and

all the mean desolation of an American industrial suburb. Farther on

there came a weed-grown field or two, then a row of operatives' houses,

the showy gables of the "Eldorado" road-house--the only building in

Westmore on which fresh paint was freely lavished--then the company

"store," the machine shops and other out-buildings, the vast forbidding

bulk of the factories looming above the river-bend, and the sudden

neatness of the manager's turf and privet hedges. The scene was so

familiar to Amherst that he had lost the habit of comparison, and his

absorption in the moral and material needs of the workers sometimes made

him forget the outward setting of their lives. But to-night he recalled

the nurse's comment--"it looks so dead"--and the phrase roused him to a

fresh perception of the scene. With sudden disgust he saw the sordidness

of it all--the poor monotonous houses, the trampled grass-banks, the

lean dogs prowling in refuse-heaps, the reflection of a crooked gas-lamp

in a stagnant loop of the river; and he asked himself how it was

possible to put any sense of moral beauty into lives bounded forever by

the low horizon of the factory. There is a fortuitous ugliness that has

life and hope in it: the ugliness of overcrowded city streets, of the

rush and drive of packed activities; but this out-spread meanness of the

suburban working colony, uncircumscribed by any pressure of surrounding

life, and sunk into blank acceptance of its isolation, its banishment

from beauty and variety and surprise, seemed to Amherst the very

negation of hope and life.

"She's right," he mused--"it's dead--stone dead: there isn't a drop of

wholesome blood left in it."

The Moosuc River valley, in the hollow of which, for that river's sake,

the Westmore mills had been planted, lingered in the memory of

pre-industrial Hanaford as the pleasantest suburb of the town. Here,

beyond a region of orchards and farm-houses, several "leading citizens"

had placed, above the river-bank, their prim wood-cut "residences," with

porticoes and terraced lawns; and from the chief of these, Hopewood,

brought into the Westmore family by the Miss Hope who had married an

earlier Westmore, the grim mill-village had been carved. The pillared

"residences" had, after this, inevitably fallen to base uses; but the

old house at Hopewood, in its wooded grounds, remained, neglected but

intact, beyond the first bend of the river, deserted as a dwelling but

"held" in anticipation of rising values, when the inevitable growth of

Westmore should increase the demand for small building lots. Whenever

Amherst's eyes were refreshed by the hanging foliage above the roofs of

Westmore, he longed to convert the abandoned country-seat into a park

and playground for the mill-hands; but he knew that the company counted

on the gradual sale of Hopewood as a source of profit. No--the mill-town

would not grow beautiful as it grew larger--rather, in obedience to the

grim law of industrial prosperity, it would soon lose its one lingering

grace and spread out in unmitigated ugliness, devouring green fields and

shaded slopes like some insect-plague consuming the land. The conditions

were familiar enough to Amherst; and their apparent inevitableness

mocked the hopes he had based on Mrs. Westmore's arrival.

"Where every stone is piled on another, through the whole stupid

structure of selfishness and egotism, how can one be pulled out without

making the whole thing topple? And whatever they're blind to, they

always see that," he mused, reaching up for the strap of the car.

He walked a few yards beyond the manager's house, and turned down a side

street lined with scattered cottages. Approaching one of these by a

gravelled path he pushed open the door, and entered a sitting-room where

a green-shaded lamp shone pleasantly on bookshelves and a crowded

writing-table.

A brisk little woman in black, laying down the evening paper as she

rose, lifted her hands to his tall shoulders.

"Well, mother," he said, stooping to her kiss.

"You're late, John," she smiled back at him, not reproachfully, but with

affection.

She was a wonderfully compact and active creature, with face so young

and hair so white that she looked as unreal as a stage mother till a

close view revealed the fine lines that experience had drawn about her

mouth and eyes. The eyes themselves, brightly black and glancing, had

none of the veiled depths of her son's gaze. Their look was outward, on

a world which had dealt her hard blows and few favours, but in which her

interest was still fresh, amused and unabated.

Amherst glanced at his watch. "Never mind--Duplain will be later still.

I had to go into Hanaford, and he is replacing me at the office."

"So much the better, dear: we can have a minute to ourselves. Sit down

and tell me what kept you."

She picked up her knitting as she spoke, having the kind of hands that

find repose in ceaseless small activities. Her son could not remember a

time when he had not seen those small hands in motion--shaping garments,

darning rents, repairing furniture, exploring the inner economy of

clocks. "I make a sort of rag-carpet of the odd minutes," she had once

explained to a friend who wondered at her turning to her needlework in

the moment's interval between other tasks.

Amherst threw himself wearily into a chair. "I was trying to find out

something about Dillon's case," he said.

His mother turned a quick glance toward the door, rose to close it, and

reseated herself.

"Well?"

"I managed to have a talk with his nurse when she went off duty this

evening."

"The nurse? I wonder you could get her to speak."

"Luckily she's not the regular incumbent, but a volunteer who happened

to be here on a visit. As it was, I had some difficulty in making her

talk--till I told her of Disbrow's letter."

Mrs. Amherst lifted her bright glance from the needles. "He's very bad,

then?"

"Hopelessly maimed!"

She shivered and cast down her eyes. "Do you suppose she really knows?"

"She struck me as quite competent to judge."

"A volunteer, you say, here on a visit? What is her name?"

He raised his head with a vague look. "I never thought of asking her."

Mrs. Amherst laughed. "How like you! Did she say with whom she was

staying?"

"I think she said in Oak Street--but she didn't mention any name."

Mrs. Amherst wrinkled her brows thoughtfully. "I wonder if she's not the

thin dark girl I saw the other day with Mrs. Harry Dressel. Was she tall

and rather handsome?"

"I don't know," murmured Amherst indifferently. As a rule he was

humorously resigned to his mother's habit of deserting the general for

the particular, and following some irrelevant thread of association in

utter disregard of the main issue. But to-night, preoccupied with his

subject, and incapable of conceiving how anyone else could be unaffected

by it, he resented her indifference as a sign of incurable frivolity.

"How she can live close to such suffering and forget it!" was his

thought; then, with a movement of self-reproach, he remembered that the

work flying through her fingers was to take shape as a garment for one

of the infant Dillons. "She takes her pity out in action, like that

quiet nurse, who was as cool as a drum-major till she took off her

uniform--and then!" His face softened at the recollection of the girl's

outbreak. Much as he admired, in theory, the woman who kept a calm

exterior in emergencies, he had all a man's desire to know that the

springs of feeling lay close to the unruffled surface.

Mrs. Amherst had risen and crossed over to his chair. She leaned on it a

moment, pushing the tossed brown hair from his forehead.

"John, have you considered what you mean to do next?"

He threw back his head to meet her gaze.

"About this Dillon case," she continued. "How are all these

investigations going to help you?"

Their eyes rested on each other for a moment; then he said coldly: "You

are afraid I am going to lose my place."

She flushed like a girl and murmured: "It's not the kind of place I ever

wanted to see you in!"

"I know it," he returned in a gentler tone, clasping one of the hands on

his chair-back. "I ought to have followed a profession, like my

grandfather; but my father's blood was too strong in me. I should never

have been content as anything but a working-man."

"How can you call your father a working-man? He had a genius for

mechanics, and if he had lived he would have been as great in his way as

any statesman or lawyer."

Amherst smiled. "Greater, to my thinking; but he gave me his

hard-working hands without the genius to create with them. I wish I had

inherited more from him, or less; but I must make the best of what I am,

rather than try to be somebody else." He laid her hand caressingly

against his cheek. "It's hard on you, mother--but you must bear with

me."

"I have never complained, John; but now you've chosen your work, it's

natural that I should want you to stick to it."

He rose with an impatient gesture. "Never fear; I could easily get

another job----"

"What? If Truscomb black-listed you? Do you forget that Scotch overseer

who was here when we came?"

"And whom Truscomb hounded out of the trade? I remember him," said

Amherst grimly; "but I have an idea I am going to do the hounding this

time."

His mother sighed, but her reply was cut short by the noisy opening of

the outer door. Amherst seemed to hear the sound with relief. "There's

Duplain," he said, going into the passage; but on the threshold he

encountered, not the young Alsatian overseer who boarded with them, but

a small boy who said breathlessly: "Mr. Truscomb wants you to come down

bimeby."

"This evening? To the office?"

"No--he's sick a-bed."

The blood rushed to Amherst's face, and he had to press his lips close

to check an exclamation. "Say I'll come as soon as I've had supper," he

said.

The boy vanished, and Amherst turned back to the sitting-room.

"Truscomb's ill--he has sent for me; and I saw Mrs. Westmore arriving

tonight! Have supper, mother--we won't wait for Duplain." His face still

glowed with excitement, and his eyes were dark with the concentration of

his inward vision.

"Oh, John, John!" Mrs. Amherst sighed, crossing the passage to the

kitchen.

III

AT the manager's door Amherst was met by Mrs. Truscomb, a large flushed

woman in a soiled wrapper and diamond earrings.

"Mr. Truscomb's very sick. He ought not to see you. The doctor thinks--"

she began.

Dr. Disbrow, at this point, emerged from the sitting-room. He was a pale

man, with a beard of mixed grey-and-drab, and a voice of the same

indeterminate quality.

"Good evening, Mr. Amherst. Truscomb is pretty poorly--on the edge of

pneumonia, I'm afraid. As he seems anxious to see you I think you'd

better go up for two minutes--not more, please." He paused, and went on

with a smile: "You won't excite him, of course--nothing unpleasant----"

"He's worried himself sick over that wretched Dillon," Mrs. Truscomb

interposed, draping her wrapper majestically about an indignant bosom.

"That's it--puts too much heart into his work. But we'll have Dillon all

right before long," the physician genially declared.

Mrs. Truscomb, with a reluctant gesture, led Amherst up the handsomely

carpeted stairs to the room where her husband lay, a prey to the cares

of office. She ushered the young man in, and withdrew to the next room,

where he heard her coughing at intervals, as if to remind him that he

was under observation.

The manager of the Westmore mills was not the type of man that Amherst's

comments on his superior suggested. As he sat propped against the

pillows, with a brick-red flush on his cheek-bones, he seemed at first

glance to belong to the innumerable army of American business men--the

sallow, undersized, lacklustre drudges who have never lifted their heads

from the ledger. Even his eye, now bright with fever, was dull and

non-committal in daily life; and perhaps only the ramifications of his

wrinkles could have revealed what particular ambitions had seamed his

soul.

"Good evening, Amherst. I'm down with a confounded cold."

"I'm sorry to hear it," the young man forced himself to say.

"Can't get my breath--that's the trouble." Truscomb paused and gasped.

"I've just heard that Mrs. Westmore is here--and I want you to go

round--tomorrow morning--" He had to break off once more.

"Yes, sir," said Amherst, his heart leaping.

"Needn't see her--ask for her father, Mr. Langhope. Tell him what the

doctor says--I'll be on my legs in a day or two--ask 'em to wait till I

can take 'em over the mills."

He shot one of his fugitive glances at his assistant, and held up a bony

hand. "Wait a minute. On your way there, stop and notify Mr. Gaines. He

was to meet them here. You understand?"

"Yes, sir," said Amherst; and at that moment Mrs. Truscomb appeared on

the threshold.

"I must ask you to come now, Mr. Amherst," she began haughtily; but a

glance from her husband reduced her to a heaving pink nonentity.

"Hold on, Amherst. I hear you've been in to Hanaford. Did you go to the

hospital?"

"Ezra--" his wife murmured: he looked through her.

"Yes," said Amherst.

Truscomb's face seemed to grow smaller and dryer. He transferred his

look from his wife to his assistant.

"All right. You'll just bear in mind that it's Disbrow's business to

report Dillon's case to Mrs. Westmore? You're to confine yourself to my

message. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly clear. Goodnight," Amherst answered, as he turned to follow

Mrs. Truscomb.

* * * * *

That same evening, four persons were seated under the bronze chandelier

in the red satin drawing-room of the Westmore mansion. One of the four,

the young lady in widow's weeds whose face had arrested Miss Brent's

attention that afternoon, rose from a massively upholstered sofa and

drifted over to the fireplace near which her father sat.

"Didn't I tell you it was awful, father?" she sighed, leaning

despondently against the high carved mantelpiece surmounted by a bronze

clock in the form of an obelisk.

Mr. Langhope, who sat smoking, with one faultlessly-clad leg crossed on

the other, and his ebony stick reposing against the arm of his chair,

raised his clear ironical eyes to her face.

"As an archaeologist," he said, with a comprehensive wave of his hand, "I

find it positively interesting. I should really like to come here and

dig."

There were no lamps in the room, and the numerous gas-jets of the

chandelier shed their lights impartially on ponderously framed canvases

of the Bay of Naples and the Hudson in Autumn, on Carrara busts and

bronze Indians on velvet pedestals.

"All this," murmured Mr. Langhope, "is getting to be as rare as the

giant sequoias. In another fifty years we shall have collectors fighting

for that Bay of Naples."

Bessy Westmore turned from him impatiently. When she felt deeply on any

subject her father's flippancy annoyed her.

"_You_ can see, Maria," she said, seating herself beside the other lady

of the party, "why I couldn't possibly live here."

Mrs. Eustace Ansell, immediately after dinner, had bent her slender back

above the velvet-covered writing-table, where an inkstand of Vienna

ormolu offered its empty cup to her pen. Being habitually charged with a

voluminous correspondence, she had foreseen this contingency and met it

by despatching her maid for her own writing-case, which was now

outspread before her in all its complex neatness; but at Bessy's appeal

she wiped her pen, and turned a sympathetic gaze on her companion.

Mrs. Ansell's face drew all its charm from its adaptability. It was a

different face to each speaker: now kindling with irony, now gently

maternal, now charged with abstract meditation--and few paused to

reflect that, in each case, it was merely the mirror held up to some one

else's view of life.

"It needs doing over," she admitted, following the widow's melancholy

glance about the room. "But you are a spoilt child to complain. Think of

having a house of your own to come to, instead of having to put up at

the Hanaford hotel!"

Mrs. Westmore's attention was arrested by the first part of the reply.

"Doing over? Why in the world should I do it over? No one could expect

me to come here _now_--could they, Mr. Tredegar?" she exclaimed,

transferring her appeal to the fourth member of the party.

Mr. Tredegar, the family lawyer, who had deemed it his duty to accompany

the widow on her visit of inspection, was strolling up and down the room

with short pompous steps, a cigar between his lips, and his arms behind

him. He cocked his sparrow-like head, scanned the offending apartment,

and terminated his survey by resting his eyes on Mrs. Westmore's

charming petulant face.

"It all depends," he replied axiomatically, "how large an income you

require."

Mr. Tredegar uttered this remark with the air of one who pronounces on

an important point in law: his lightest observation seemed a decision

handed down from the bench to which he had never ascended. He restored

the cigar to his lips, and sought approval in Mrs. Ansell's expressive

eye.

"Ah, that's it, Bessy. You've that to remember," the older lady

murmured, as if struck by the profundity of the remark.

Mrs. Westmore made an impatient gesture. "We've always had money

enough--Dick was perfectly satisfied." Her voice trembled a little on

her husband's name. "And you don't know what the place is like by

daylight--and the people who come to call!"

"Of course you needn't see any one now, dear," Mrs. Ansell reminded her,

"except the Halford Gaineses."

"I am sure they're bad enough. Juliana Gaines will say: 'My dear, is

that the way widows' veils are worn in New York this autumn?' and

Halford will insist on our going to one of those awful family dinners,

all Madeira and terrapin."

"It's too early for terrapin," Mrs. Ansell smiled consolingly; but Bessy

had reverted to her argument. "Besides, what difference would my coming

here make? I shall never understand anything about business," she

declared.

Mr. Tredegar pondered, and once more removed his cigar. "The necessity

has never arisen. But now that you find yourself in almost sole control

of a large property----"

Mr. Langhope laughed gently. "Apply yourself, Bessy. Bring your masterly

intellect to bear on the industrial problem."

Mrs. Ansell restored the innumerable implements to her writing-case, and

laid her arm with a caressing gesture on Mrs. Westmore's shoulder.

"Don't tease her. She's tired, and she misses the baby."

"I shall get a telegram tomorrow morning," exclaimed the young mother,

brightening.

"Of course you will. 'Cicely has just eaten two boiled eggs and a bowl

of porridge, and is bearing up wonderfully.'"

She drew Mrs. Westmore persuasively to her feet, but the widow refused

to relinquish her hold on her grievance.

"You all think I'm extravagant and careless about money," she broke out,

addressing the room in general from the shelter of Mrs. Ansell's

embrace; "but I know one thing: If I had my way I should begin to

economize by selling this horrible house, instead of leaving it shut up

from one year's end to another."

Her father looked up: proposals of retrenchment always struck him as

business-like when they did not affect his own expenditure. "What do you

think of that, eh, Tredegar?"

The eminent lawyer drew in his thin lips. "From the point of view of

policy, I think unfavourably of it," he pronounced.

Bessy's face clouded, and Mrs. Ansell argued gently: "Really, it's too

late to look so far into the future. Remember, my dear, that we are due

at the mills tomorrow at ten."

The reminder that she must rise early had the effect of hastening Mrs.

Westmore's withdrawal, and the two ladies, after an exchange of

goodnights, left the men to their cigars.

Mr. Langhope was the first to speak.

"Bessy's as hopelessly vague about business as I am, Tredegar. Why the

deuce Westmore left her everything outright--but he was only a heedless

boy himself."

"Yes. The way he allowed things to go, it's a wonder there was anything

to leave. This Truscomb must be an able fellow."

"Devoted to Dick's interests, I've always understood."

"He makes the mills pay well, at any rate, and that's not so easy

nowadays. But on general principles it's as well he should see that we

mean to look into everything thoroughly. Of course Halford Gaines will

never be more than a good figure-head, but Truscomb must be made to

understand that Mrs. Westmore intends to interest herself personally in

the business."

"Oh, by all means--of course--" Mr. Langhope assented, his light smile

stiffening into a yawn at the mere suggestion.

He rose with an effort, supporting himself on his stick. "I think I'll

turn in myself. There's not a readable book in that God-forsaken

library, and I believe Maria Ansell has gone off with my volume of

Loti."

* * * * *

The next morning, when Amherst presented himself at the Westmore door,

he had decided to follow his chief's instructions to the letter, and ask

for Mr. Langhope only. The decision had cost him a struggle, for his

heart was big with its purpose; but though he knew that he must soon

place himself in open opposition to Truscomb, he recognized the prudence

of deferring the declaration of war as long as possible.

On his round of the mills, that morning, he had paused in the room where

Mrs. Dillon knelt beside her mop and pail, and had found her, to his

surprise, comparatively reassured and cheerful. Dr. Disbrow, she told

him, had been in the previous evening, and had told her to take heart

about Jim, and left her enough money to get along for a week--and a

wonderful new cough-mixture that he'd put up for her special. Amherst

found it difficult to listen calmly, with the nurse's words still in his

ears, and the sight before him of Mrs. Dillon's lean shoulder-blades

travelling painfully up and down with the sweep of the mop.

"I don't suppose that cost Truscomb ten dollars," he said to himself, as

the lift lowered him to the factory door; but another voice argued that

he had no right to accuse Disbrow of acting as his brother-in-law's

agent, when the gift to Mrs. Dillon might have been prompted by his own

kindness of heart.

"And what prompted the lie about her husband? Well, perhaps he's an

incurable optimist," he summed up, springing into the Hanaford car.

By the time he reached Mrs. Westmore's door his wrath had subsided, and

he felt that he had himself well in hand. He had taken unusual pains

with his appearance that morning--or rather his mother, learning of the

errand on which Truscomb had sent him, had laid out his

carefully-brushed Sunday clothes, and adjusted his tie with skilful

fingers. "You'd really be handsome, Johnny, if you were only a little

vainer," she said, pushing him away to survey the result; and when he

stared at her, repeating: "I never heard that vanity made a man

better-looking," she responded gaily: "Oh, up to a certain point,

because it teaches him how to use what he's got. So remember," she

charged him, as he smiled and took up his hat, "that you're going to see

a pretty young woman, and that you're not a hundred years old yourself."

"I'll try to," he answered, humouring her, "but as I've been forbidden

to ask for her, I am afraid your efforts will be wasted."

The servant to whom he gave his message showed him into the library,

with a request that he should wait; and there, to his surprise, he

found, not the white-moustached gentleman whom he had guessed the night

before to be Mr. Langhope, but a young lady in deep black, who turned on

him a look of not unfriendly enquiry.

It was not Bessy's habit to anticipate the clock; but her distaste for

her surroundings, and the impatience to have done with the tedious

duties awaiting her, had sent her downstairs before the rest of the

party. Her life had been so free from tiresome obligations that she had

but a small stock of patience to meet them with; and already, after a

night at Hanaford, she was pining to get back to the comforts of her own

country-house, the soft rut of her daily habits, the funny chatter of

her little girl, the long stride of her Irish hunter across the

Hempstead plains--to everything, in short, that made it conceivably

worth while to get up in the morning.

The servant who ushered in Amherst, thinking the room empty, had not

mentioned his name; and for a moment he and his hostess examined each

other in silence, Bessy puzzled at the unannounced appearance of a

good-looking young man who might have been some one she had met and

forgotten, while Amherst felt his self-possession slipping away into the

depths of a pair of eyes so dark-lashed and deeply blue that his only

thought was one of wonder at his previous indifference to women's eyes.

"Mrs. Westmore?" he asked, restored to self-command by the perception

that his longed-for opportunity was at hand; and Bessy, his voice

confirming the inference she had drawn from his appearance, replied with

a smile: "I am Mrs. Westmore. But if you have come to see me, I ought to

tell you that in a moment I shall be obliged to go out to our mills. I

have a business appointment with our manager, but if----"

She broke off, gracefully waiting for him to insert his explanation.

"I have come from the manager; I am John Amherst--your assistant

manager," he added, as the mention of his name apparently conveyed no

enlightenment.

Mrs. Westmore's face changed, and she let slip a murmur of surprise

that would certainly have flattered Amherst's mother if she could have

heard it; but it had an opposite effect on the young man, who inwardly

accused himself of having tried to disguise his trade by not putting on

his everyday clothes.

"How stupid of me! I took you for--I had no idea; I didn't expect Mr.

Truscomb here," his employer faltered in embarrassment; then their eyes

met and both smiled.

"Mr. Truscomb sent me to tell you that he is ill, and will not be able

to show you the mills today. I didn't mean to ask for you--I was told to

give the message to Mr. Langhope," Amherst scrupulously explained,

trying to repress the sudden note of joy in his voice.

He was subject to the unobservant man's acute flashes of vision, and

Mrs. Westmore's beauty was like a blinding light abruptly turned on eyes

subdued to obscurity. As he spoke, his glance passed from her face to

her hair, and remained caught in its meshes. He had never seen such

hair--it did not seem to grow in the usual orderly way, but bubbled up

all over her head in independent clusters of brightness, breaking, about

the brow, the temples, the nape, into little irrelevant waves and eddies

of light, with dusky hollows of softness where the hand might plunge. It

takes but the throb of a nerve to carry such a complex impression from

the eye to the mind, but the object of the throb had perhaps felt the

electric flash of its passage, for her colour rose while Amherst spoke.

"Ah, here is my father now," she said with a vague accent of relief, as

Mr. Langhope's stick was heard tapping its way across the hall.

When he entered, accompanied by Mrs. Ansell, his sharp glance of

surprise at her visitor told her that he was as much misled as herself,

and gave her a sense of being agreeably justified in her blunder. "If

_father_ thinks you're a gentleman----" her shining eyes seemed to say,

as she explained: "This is Mr. Amherst, father: Mr. Truscomb has sent

him."

"Mr. Amherst?" Langhope, with extended hand, echoed affably but vaguely;

and it became clear that neither Mrs. Westmore nor her father had ever

before heard the name of their assistant manager.

The discovery stung Amherst to a somewhat unreasoning resentment; and

while he was trying to subordinate this sentiment to the larger feelings

with which he had entered the house, Mrs. Ansell, turning her eyes on

him, said gently: "Your name is unusual. I had a friend named Lucy Warne

who married a very clever man--a mechanical genius----"

Amherst's face cleared. "My father _was_ a genius; and my mother is Lucy

Warne," he said, won by the soft look and the persuasive voice.

"What a delightful coincidence! We were girls together at Albany. You

must remember Judge Warne?" she said, turning to Mr. Langhope, who,

twirling his white moustache, murmured, a shade less cordially: "Of

course--of course--delightful--most interesting."

Amherst did not notice the difference. His perceptions were already

enveloped in the caress that emanated from Mrs. Ansell's voice and

smile; and he only asked himself vaguely if it were possible that this

graceful woman, with her sunny autumnal air, could really be his

mother's contemporary. But the question brought an instant reaction of

bitterness.

"Poverty is the only thing that makes people old nowadays," he

reflected, painfully conscious of his own share in the hardships his

mother had endured; and when Mrs. Ansell went on: "I must go and see

her--you must let me take her by surprise," he said stiffly: "We live

out at the mills, a long way from here."

"Oh, we're going there this morning," she rejoined, unrebuffed by what

she probably took for a mere social awkwardness, while Mrs. Westmore

interposed: "But, Maria, Mr. Truscomb is ill, and has sent Mr. Amherst

to say that we are not to come."

"Yes: so Gaines has just telephoned. It's most unfortunate," Mr.

Langhope grumbled. He too was already beginning to chafe at the

uncongenial exile of Hanaford, and he shared his daughter's desire to

despatch the tiresome business before them.

Mr. Tredegar had meanwhile appeared, and when Amherst had been named to

him, and had received his Olympian nod, Bessy anxiously imparted her

difficulty.

"But how ill is Mr. Truscomb? Do you think he can take us over the mills

tomorrow?" she appealed to Amherst.

"I'm afraid not; I am sure he can't. He has a touch of bronchitis."

This announcement was met by a general outcry, in which sympathy for the

manager was not the predominating note. Mrs. Ansell saved the situation

by breathing feelingly: "Poor man!" and after a decent echo of the

phrase, and a doubtful glance at her father, Mrs. Westmore said: "If

it's bronchitis he may be ill for days, and what in the world are we to

do?"

"Pack up and come back later," suggested Mr. Langhope briskly; but while

Bessy sighed "Oh, that dreadful journey!" Mr. Tredegar interposed with

authority: "One moment, Langhope, please. Mr. Amherst, is Mrs. Westmore

expected at the mills?"

"Yes, I believe they know she is coming."

"Then I think, my dear, that to go back to New York without showing

yourself would, under the circumstances, be--er--an error in judgment."

"Good Lord, Tredegar, you don't expect to keep us kicking our heels here

for days?" her father ejaculated.

"I can certainly not afford to employ mine in that manner for even a

fraction of a day," rejoined the lawyer, always acutely resentful of the

suggestion that he had a disengaged moment; "but meanwhile----"

"Father," Bessy interposed, with an eagerly flushing cheek, "don't you

see that the only thing for us to do is to go over the mills now--at

once--with Mr. Amherst?"

Mr. Langhope stared: he was always adventurously ready to unmake plans,

but it flustered him to be called on to remake them. "Eh--what? Now--at

once? But Gaines was to have gone with us, and how on earth are we to

get at him? He telephoned me that, as the visit was given up, he should

ride out to his farm."

"Oh, never mind--or, at least, all the better!" his daughter urged. "We

can see the mills just as well without him; and we shall get on so much

more quickly."

"Well--well--what do you say, Tredegar?" murmured Mr. Langhope, allured

by her last argument; and Bessy, clasping her hands, summed up

enthusiastically: "And I shall understand so much better without a lot

of people trying to explain to me at once!"

Her sudden enthusiasm surprised no one, for even Mrs. Ansell, expert as

she was in the interpreting of tones, set it down to the natural desire

to have done as quickly as might be with Hanaford.

"Mrs. Westmore has left her little girl at home," she said to Amherst,

with a smile intended to counteract the possible ill-effect of the

impression.

But Amherst suspected no slight in his employer's eagerness to visit

Westmore. His overmastering thought was one of joy as the fulness of his

opportunity broke on him. To show her the mills himself--to bring her

face to face with her people, unhampered by Truscomb's jealous

vigilance, and Truscomb's false explanations; to see the angel of pity

stir the depths of those unfathomable eyes, when they rested, perhaps

for the first time, on suffering that it was in their power to smile

away as easily as they had smiled away his own distrust--all this the

wonderful moment had brought him, and thoughts and arguments thronged so

hot on his lips that he kept silence, fearing lest he should say too

much.

IV

JOHN AMHERST was no one-sided idealist. He felt keenly the growing

complexity of the relation between employer and worker, the seeming

hopelessness of permanently harmonizing their claims, the recurring

necessity of fresh compromises and adjustments. He hated rant, demagogy,

the rash formulating of emotional theories; and his contempt for bad

logic and subjective judgments led him to regard with distrust the

panaceas offered for the cure of economic evils. But his heart ached

for the bitter throes with which the human machine moves on. He felt the

menace of industrial conditions when viewed collectively, their

poignancy when studied in the individual lives of the toilers among whom

his lot was cast; and clearly as he saw the need of a philosophic survey

of the question, he was sure that only through sympathy with its

personal, human side could a solution be reached. The disappearance of

the old familiar contact between master and man seemed to him one of the

great wrongs of the new industrial situation. That the breach must be

farther widened by the ultimate substitution of the stock-company for

the individual employer--a fact obvious to any student of economic

tendencies--presented to Amherst's mind one of the most painful problems

in the scheme of social readjustment. But it was characteristic of him

to dwell rather on the removal of immediate difficulties than in the

contemplation of those to come, and while the individual employer was

still to be reckoned with, the main thing was to bring him closer to his

workers. Till he entered personally into their hardships and

aspirations--till he learned what they wanted and why they wanted

it--Amherst believed that no mere law-making, however enlightened, could

create a wholesome relation between the two.

This feeling was uppermost as he sat with Mrs. Westmore in the carriage

which was carrying them to the mills. He had meant to take the trolley

back to Westmore, but at a murmured word from Mr. Tredegar Bessy had

offered him a seat at her side, leaving others to follow. This

culmination of his hopes--the unlooked-for chance of a half-hour alone

with her--left Amherst oppressed with the swiftness of the minutes. He

had so much to say--so much to prepare her for--yet how begin, while he

was in utter ignorance of her character and her point of view, and while

her lovely nearness left him so little chance of perceiving anything

except itself?

But he was not often the victim of his sensations, and presently there

emerged, out of the very consciousness of her grace and her

completeness, a clearer sense of the conditions which, in a measure, had

gone to produce them. Her dress could not have hung in such subtle

folds, her white chin have nestled in such rich depths of fur, the

pearls in her ears have given back the light from such pure curves, if

thin shoulders in shapeless gingham had not bent, day in, day out, above

the bobbins and carders, and weary ears throbbed even at night with the

tumult of the looms. Amherst, however, felt no sensational resentment at

the contrast. He had lived too much with ugliness and want not to

believe in human nature's abiding need of their opposite. He was glad

there was room for such beauty in the world, and sure that its purpose

was an ameliorating one, if only it could be used as a beautiful spirit

would use it.

The carriage had turned into one of the nondescript thoroughfares, half

incipient street, half decaying lane, which dismally linked the

mill-village to Hanaford. Bessy looked out on the ruts, the hoardings,

the starved trees dangling their palsied leaves in the radiant October

light; then she sighed: "What a good day for a gallop!"

Amherst felt a momentary chill, but the naturalness of the exclamation

disarmed him, and the words called up thrilling memories of his own

college days, when he had ridden his grandfather's horses in the famous

hunting valley not a hundred miles from Hanaford.

Bessy met his smile with a glow of understanding. "You like riding too,

I'm sure?"

"I used to; but I haven't been in the saddle for years. Factory managers

don't keep hunters," he said laughing.

Her murmur of embarrassment showed that she took this as an apologetic

allusion to his reduced condition, and in his haste to correct this

impression he added: "If I regretted anything in my other life, it would

certainly be a gallop on a day like this; but I chose my trade

deliberately, and I've never been sorry for my choice."

He had hardly spoken when he felt the inappropriateness of this avowal;

but her prompt response showed him, a moment later, that it was, after

all, the straightest way to his end.

"You find the work interesting? I'm sure it must be. You'll think me

very ignorant--my husband and I came here so seldom...I feel as if I

ought to know so much more about it," she explained.

At last the note for which he waited had been struck. "Won't you try

to--now you're here? There's so much worth knowing," he broke out

impetuously.

Mrs. Westmore coloured, but rather with surprise than displeasure. "I'm

very stupid--I've no head for business--but I will try to," she said.

"It's not business that I mean; it's the personal relation--just the

thing the business point of view leaves out. Financially, I don't

suppose your mills could be better run; but there are over seven hundred

women working in them, and there's so much to be done, just for them and

their children."

He caught a faint hint of withdrawal in her tone. "I have always

understood that Mr. Truscomb did everything----"

Amherst flushed; but he was beyond caring for the personal rebuff. "Do

you leave it to your little girl's nurses to do everything for her?" he

asked.

Her surprise seemed about to verge on annoyance: he saw the preliminary

ruffling of the woman who is put to the trouble of defending her

dignity. "Really, I don't see--" she began with distant politeness; then

her face changed and melted, and again her blood spoke for her before

her lips.

"I am glad you told me that, Mr. Amherst. Of course I want to do

whatever I can. I should like you to point out everything----"

Amherst's resolve had been taken while she spoke. He _would_ point out

everything, would stretch his opportunity to its limit. All thoughts of

personal prudence were flung to the winds--her blush and tone had routed

the waiting policy. He would declare war on Truscomb at once, and take

the chance of dismissal. At least, before he went he would have brought

this exquisite creature face to face with the wrongs from which her

luxuries were drawn, and set in motion the regenerating impulses of

indignation and pity. He did not stop to weigh the permanent advantage

of this course. His only feeling was that the chance would never again

be given him--that if he let her go away, back to her usual life, with

eyes unopened and heart untouched, there would be no hope of her ever

returning. It was far better that he should leave for good, and that she

should come back, as come back she must, more and more often, if once

she could be made to feel the crying need of her presence.

But where was he to begin? How give her even a glimpse of the packed and

intricate situation?

"Mrs. Westmore," he said, "there's no time to say much now, but before

we get to the mills I want to ask you a favour. If, as you go through

them, you see anything that seems to need explaining, will you let me

come and tell you about it tonight? I say tonight," he added, meeting

her look of enquiry, "because later--tomorrow even--I might not have the

chance. There are some things--a good many--in the management of the

mills that Mr. Truscomb doesn't see as I do. I don't mean business

questions: wages and dividends and so on--those are out of my province.

I speak merely in the line of my own work--my care of the hands, and

what I believe they need and don't get under the present system.

Naturally, if Mr. Truscomb were well, I shouldn't have had this chance

of putting the case to you; but since it's come my way, I must seize it

and take the consequences."

Even as he spoke, by a swift reaction of thought, those consequences

rose before him in all their seriousness. It was not only, or chiefly,

that he feared to lose his place; though he knew his mother had not

spoken lightly in instancing the case of the foreman whom Truscomb, to

gratify a personal spite, had for months kept out of a job in his trade.

And there were special reasons why Amherst should heed her warning. In

adopting a manual trade, instead of one of the gentlemanly professions

which the men of her family had always followed, he had not only

disappointed her hopes, and to a great extent thrown away the benefits

of the education she had pinched herself to give him, but had disturbed

all the habits of her life by removing her from her normal surroundings

to the depressing exile of a factory-settlement. However much he blamed

himself for exacting this sacrifice, it had been made so cheerfully that

the consciousness of it never clouded his life with his mother; but her

self-effacement made him the more alive to his own obligations, and

having placed her in a difficult situation he had always been careful

not to increase its difficulties by any imprudence in his conduct toward

his employers. Yet, grave as these considerations were, they were really

less potent than his personal desire to remain at Westmore. Lightly as

he had just resolved to risk the chance of dismissal, all his future was

bound up in the hope of retaining his place. His heart was in the work

at Westmore, and the fear of not being able to get other employment was

a small factor in his intense desire to keep his post. What he really

wanted was to speak out, and yet escape the consequences: by some

miraculous reversal of probability to retain his position and yet effect

Truscomb's removal. The idea was so fantastic that he felt it merely as

a quickening of all his activities, a tremendous pressure of will along

undetermined lines. He had no wish to take the manager's place; but his

dream was to see Truscomb superseded by a man of the new school, in

sympathy with the awakening social movement--a man sufficiently

practical to "run" the mills successfully, yet imaginative enough to

regard that task as the least of his duties. He saw the promise of such

a man in Louis Duplain, the overseer who boarded with Mrs. Amherst: a

young fellow of Alsatian extraction, a mill-hand from childhood, who had

worked at his trade in Europe as well as in America, and who united with

more manual skill, and a greater nearness to the workman's standpoint,

all Amherst's enthusiasm for the experiments in social betterment that

were making in some of the English and continental factories. His

strongest wish was to see such a man as Duplain in control at Westmore

before he himself turned to the larger work which he had begun to see

before him as the sequel to his factory-training.

All these thoughts swept through him in the instant's pause before Mrs.

Westmore, responding to his last appeal, said with a graceful eagerness:

"Yes, you must come tonight. I want to hear all you can tell me--and if

there is anything wrong you must show me how I can make it better."

"I'll show her, and Truscomb shan't turn me out for it," was the vow he

passionately registered as the carriage drew up at the office-door of

the main building.

How this impossible result was to be achieved he had no farther time to

consider, for in another moment the rest of the party had entered the

factory with them, and speech was followed up in the roar of the

machinery.

Amherst's zeal for his cause was always quickened by the sight of the

mills in action. He loved the work itself as much as he hated the

conditions under which it was done; and he longed to see on the

operatives' faces something of the ardour that lit up his own when he

entered the work-rooms. It was this passion for machinery that at school

had turned him from his books, at college had drawn him to the courses

least in the line of his destined profession; and it always seized on

him afresh when he was face to face with the monstrous energies of the

mills. It was not only the sense of power that thrilled him--he felt a

beauty in the ordered activity of the whole intricate organism, in the

rhythm of dancing bobbins and revolving cards, the swift continuous

outpour of doublers and ribbon-laps, the steady ripple of the long

ply-frames, the terrible gnashing play of the looms--all these varying

subordinate motions, gathered up into the throb of the great engines

which fed the giant's arteries, and were in turn ruled by the invisible

action of quick thought and obedient hands, always produced in Amherst a

responsive rush of life.

He knew this sensation was too specialized to affect his companions; but

he expected Mrs. Westmore to be all the more alive to the other

side--the dark side of monotonous human toil, of the banquet of flesh

and blood and brain perpetually served up to the monster whose

insatiable jaws the looms so grimly typified. Truscomb, as he had told

her, was a good manager from the profit-taking standpoint. Since it was

profitable to keep the machinery in order, he maintained throughout the

factory a high standard of mechanical supervision, except where one or

two favoured overseers--for Truscomb was given to favoritism--shirked

the duties of their departments. But it was of the essence of Truscomb's

policy--and not the least of the qualities which made him a "paying"

manager--that he saved money scrupulously where its outlay would not

have resulted in larger earnings. To keep the floors scrubbed, the

cotton-dust swept up, the rooms freshly whitewashed and well-ventilated,

far from adding the smallest fraction to the quarterly dividends, would

have deducted from them the slight cost of this additional labour; and

Truscomb therefore economized on scrubbers, sweepers and window-washers,

and on all expenses connected with improved ventilation and other

hygienic precautions. Though the whole factory was over-crowded, the

newest buildings were more carefully planned, and had the usual sanitary

improvements; but the old mills had been left in their original state,

and even those most recently built were fast lapsing into squalor. It

was no wonder, therefore, that workers imprisoned within such walls

should reflect their long hours of deadening toil in dull eyes and

anaemic skins, and in the dreary lassitude with which they bent to their

tasks.

Surely, Amherst argued, Mrs. Westmore must feel this; must feel it all

the more keenly, coming from an atmosphere so different, from a life

where, as he instinctively divined, all was in harmony with her own

graceful person. But a deep disappointment awaited him. He was still

under the spell of their last moments in the carriage, when her face and

voice had promised so much, when she had seemed so deeply, if vaguely,

stirred by his appeal. But as they passed from one resounding room to

the other--from the dull throb of the carding-room, the groan of the

ply-frames, the long steady pound of the slashers, back to the angry

shriek of the fierce unappeasable looms--the light faded from her eyes

and she looked merely bewildered and stunned.

Amherst, hardened to the din of the factory, could not measure its

effect on nerves accustomed to the subdued sounds and spacious

stillnesses which are the last refinement of luxury. Habit had made him

unconscious of that malicious multiplication and subdivision of noise

that kept every point of consciousness vibrating to a different note, so

that while one set of nerves was torn as with pincers by the dominant

scream of the looms, others were thrilled with a separate pain by the

ceaseless accompaniment of drumming, hissing, grating and crashing that

shook the great building. Amherst felt this tumult only as part of the

atmosphere of the mills; and to ears trained like his own he could make

his voice heard without difficulty. But his attempts at speech were

unintelligible to Mrs. Westmore and her companions, and after vainly

trying to communicate with him by signs they hurried on as if to escape

as quickly as possible from the pursuing whirlwind.

Amherst could not allow for the depressing effect of this enforced

silence. He did not see that if Bessy could have questioned him the

currents of sympathy might have remained open between them, whereas,

compelled to walk in silence through interminable ranks of meaningless

machines, to which the human workers seemed mere automatic appendages,

she lost all perception of what the scene meant. He had forgotten, too,

that the swift apprehension of suffering in others is as much the result

of training as the immediate perception of beauty. Both perceptions may

be inborn, but if they are not they can be developed only through the

discipline of experience.

"That girl in the hospital would have seen it all," he reflected, as the

vision of Miss Brent's small incisive profile rose before him; but the

next moment he caught the light on Mrs. Westmore's hair, as she bent

above a card, and the paler image faded like a late moon in the sunrise.

Meanwhile Mrs. Ansell, seeing that the detailed inspection of the

buildings was as trying to Mr. Langhope's lameness as to his daughter's

nerves, had proposed to turn back with him and drive to Mrs. Amherst's,

where he might leave her to call while the others were completing their

rounds. It was one of Mrs. Ansell's gifts to detect the first symptoms

of _ennui_ in her companions, and produce a remedy as patly as old

ladies whisk out a scent-bottle or a cough-lozenge; and Mr. Langhope's

look of relief showed the timeliness of her suggestion.

Amherst was too preoccupied to wonder how his mother would take this

visit; but he welcomed Mr. Langhope's departure, hoping that the

withdrawal of his ironic smile would leave his daughter open to gentler

influences. Mr. Tredegar, meanwhile, was projecting his dry glance over

the scene, trying to converse by signs with the overseers of the

different rooms, and pausing now and then to contemplate, not so much

the workers themselves as the special tasks which engaged them.

How these spectators of the party's progress were affected by Mrs.

Westmore's appearance, even Amherst, for all his sympathy with their

views, could not detect. They knew that she was the new owner, that a

disproportionate amount of the result of their toil would in future pass

through her hands, spread carpets for her steps, and hang a setting of

beauty about her eyes; but the knowledge seemed to produce no special

interest in her personality. A change of employer was not likely to make

any change in their lot: their welfare would probably continue to depend

on Truscomb's favour. The men hardly raised their heads as Mrs. Westmore

passed; the women stared, but with curiosity rather than interest; and

Amherst could not tell whether their sullenness reacted on Mrs.

Westmore, or whether they were unconsciously chilled by her

indifference. The result was the same: the distance between them seemed

to increase instead of diminishing; and he smiled ironically to think of

the form his appeal had taken--"If you see anything that seems to need

explaining." Why, she saw nothing--nothing but the greasy floor under

her feet, the cotton-dust in her eyes, the dizzy incomprehensible

whirring of innumerable belts and wheels! Once out of it all, she would

make haste to forget the dreary scene without pausing to ask for any

explanation of its dreariness.

In the intensity of his disappointment he sought a pretext to cut short

the tour of the buildings, that he might remove his eyes from the face

he had so vainly watched for any sign of awakening. And then, as he

despaired of it, the change came.

They had entered the principal carding-room, and were half-way down its

long central passage, when Mr. Tredegar, who led the procession, paused

before one of the cards.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing to a ragged strip of black cloth tied

conspicuously to the frame of the card.

The overseer of the room, a florid young man with dissipated eyes, who,

at Amherst's signal, had attached himself to the party, stopped short

and turned a furious glance on the surrounding operatives.

"What in hell...? It's the first I seen of it," he exclaimed, making an

ineffectual attempt to snatch the mourning emblem from its place.

At the same instant the midday whistle boomed through the building, and

at the signal the machinery stopped, and silence fell on the mills. The

more distant workers at once left their posts to catch up the hats and

coats heaped untidily in the corners; but those nearer by, attracted by

the commotion around the card, stood spell-bound, fixing the visitors

with a dull stare.

Amherst had reddened to the roots of his hair. He knew in a flash what

the token signified, and the sight stirred his pity; but it also jarred

on his strong sense of discipline, and he turned sternly to the

operatives.

"What does this mean?"

There was a short silence; then one of the hands, a thin bent man with

mystic eyes, raised his head and spoke.

"We done that for Dillon," he said.

Amherst's glance swept the crowded faces. "But Dillon was not killed,"

he exclaimed, while the overseer, drawing out his pen-knife, ripped off

the cloth and tossed it contemptuously into a heap of cotton-refuse at

his feet.

"Might better ha' been," came from another hand; and a deep "That's so"

of corroboration ran through the knot of workers.

Amherst felt a touch on his arm, and met Mrs. Westmore's eyes. "What has

happened? What do they mean?" she asked in a startled voice.

"There was an accident here two days ago: a man got caught in the card

behind him, and his right hand was badly crushed."

Mr. Tredegar intervened with his dry note of command. "How serious is

the accident? How did it happen?" he enquired.

"Through the man's own carelessness--ask the manager," the overseer

interposed before Amherst could answer.

A deep murmur of dissent ran through the crowd, but Amherst, without

noticing the overseer's reply, said to Mr. Tredegar: "He's at the Hope

Hospital. He will lose his hand, and probably the whole arm."

He had not meant to add this last phrase. However strongly his

sympathies were aroused, it was against his rule, at such a time, to say

anything which might inflame the quick passions of the workers: he had

meant to make light of the accident, and dismiss the operatives with a

sharp word of reproof. But Mrs. Westmore's face was close to his: he saw

the pity in her eyes, and feared, if he checked its expression, that he

might never again have the chance of calling it forth.

"His right arm? How terrible! But then he will never be able to work

again!" she exclaimed, in all the horror of a first confrontation with

the inexorable fate of the poor.

Her eyes turned from Amherst and rested on the faces pressing about her.

There were many women's faces among them--the faces of fagged

middle-age, and of sallow sedentary girlhood. For the first time Mrs.

Westmore seemed to feel the bond of blood between herself and these dim

creatures of the underworld: as Amherst watched her the lovely miracle

was wrought. Her pallour gave way to a quick rush of colour, her eyes

widened like a frightened child's, and two tears rose and rolled slowly

down her face.

"Oh, why wasn't I told? Is he married? Has he children? What does it

matter whose fault it was?" she cried, her questions pouring out

disconnectedly on a wave of anger and compassion.

"It warn't his fault.... The cards are too close.... It'll happen

again.... He's got three kids at home," broke from the operatives; and

suddenly a voice exclaimed "Here's his wife now," and the crowd divided

to make way for Mrs. Dillon, who, passing through the farther end of the

room, had been waylaid and dragged toward the group.

She hung back, shrinking from the murderous machine, which she beheld

for the first time since her husband's accident; then she saw Amherst,

guessed the identity of the lady at his side, and flushed up to her

haggard forehead. Mrs. Dillon had been good-looking in her earlier

youth, and sufficient prettiness lingered in her hollow-cheeked face to

show how much more had been sacrificed to sickness and unwholesome toil.

"Oh, ma'am, ma'am, it warn't Jim's fault--there ain't a steadier man

living. The cards is too crowded," she sobbed out.

Some of the other women began to cry: a wave of sympathy ran through

the circle, and Mrs. Westmore moved forward with an answering

exclamation. "You poor creature...you poor creature...." She opened her

arms to Mrs. Dillon, and the scrubber's sobs were buried on her

employer's breast.

"I will go to the hospital--I will come and see you--I will see that

everything is done," Bessy reiterated. "But why are you here? How is it

that you have had to leave your children?" She freed herself to turn a

reproachful glance on Amherst. "You don't mean to tell me that, at such

a time, you keep the poor woman at work?"

"Mrs. Dillon has not been working here lately," Amherst answered. "The

manager took her back to-day at her own request, that she might earn

something while her husband was in hospital."

Mrs. Westmore's eyes shone indignantly. "Earn something? But surely----"

She met a silencing look from Mr. Tredegar, who had stepped between Mrs.

Dillon and herself.

"My dear child, no one doubts--none of these good people doubt--that you

will look into the case, and do all you can to alleviate it; but let me

suggest that this is hardly the place----"

She turned from him with an appealing glance at Amherst.

"I think," the latter said, as their eyes met, "that you had better let

me dismiss the hands: they have only an hour at midday."

She signed her assent, and he turned to the operatives and said quietly:

"You have heard Mrs. Westmore's promise; now take yourselves off, and

give her a clear way to the stairs."

They dropped back, and Mr. Tredegar drew Bessy's arm through his; but as

he began to move away she turned and laid her hand on Mrs. Dillon's

shoulder.

"You must not stay here--you must go back to the children. I will make

it right with Mr. Truscomb," she said in a reassuring whisper; then,

through her tears, she smiled a farewell at the lingering knot of

operatives, and followed her companions to the door.

In silence they descended the many stairs and crossed the shabby

unfenced grass-plot between the mills and the manager's office. It was

not till they reached the carriage that Mrs. Westmore spoke.

"But Maria is waiting for us--we must call for her!" she said, rousing

herself; and as Amherst opened the carriage-door she added: "You will

show us the way? You will drive with us?"

During the drive Bessy remained silent, as if re-absorbed in the

distress of the scene she had just witnessed; and Amherst found himself

automatically answering Mr. Tredegar's questions, while his own mind

had no room for anything but the sense of her tremulous lips and of her

eyes enlarged by tears. He had been too much engrossed in the momentous

issues of her visit to the mills to remember that she had promised to

call at his mother's for Mrs. Ansell; but now that they were on their

way thither he found himself wishing that the visit might have been

avoided. He was too proud of his mother to feel any doubt of the

impression she would produce; but what would Mrs. Westmore think of

their way of living, of the cheap jauntiness of the cottage, and the

smell of cooking penetrating all its thin partitions? Duplain, too,

would be coming in for dinner; and Amherst, in spite of his liking for

the young overseer, became conscious of a rather overbearing freedom in

his manner, the kind of misplaced ease which the new-made American

affects as the readiest sign of equality. All these trifles, usually

non-existent or supremely indifferent to Amherst, now assumed a sudden

importance, behind which he detected the uneasy desire that Mrs.

Westmore should not regard him as less of her own class than his

connections and his bringing-up entitled him to be thought. In a flash

he saw what he had forfeited by his choice of a calling--equal contact

with the little circle of people who gave life its crowning grace and

facility; and the next moment he was blushing at this reversal of his

standards, and wondering, almost contemptuously, what could be the

nature of the woman whose mere presence could produce such a change.