The Fruit of the Tree — Key Ideas to Explore

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?"

"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.

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."

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."

"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."

"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?"

"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 façade--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.