Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/135

Rh whither they had strayed as to see the arid streets of Westmore suddenly bursting into leaf.

With Mrs. Westmore’s departure Amherst, for the ﬁrst time, became aware of a certain ﬂatness in his life. His daily task seemed dull and purposeless, and he was galled by Truscomb’s studied forbearance, under which he suspected a quickly accumulating store of animosity. He almost longed for some collision which would release the manager’s pent-up resentment; yet he dreaded increasingly any accident that might make his stay at Westmore impossible.

It was on Sundays, when he was freed from his weekly task, that he was most at the mercy of these opposing feelings. They drove him forth on long soli- tary walks beyond the town, walks ending most often in the deserted grounds of Hopewood, beautiful now in the ruined gold of October. As he sat under the beech-limbs above the river, watching its brown current sweep the willow-roots of the banks, he thought how this same current, within its next short reach, passed from wooded seclusion to the noise and pollution of the mills. So his own life seemed to have passed once more from the tranced ﬂow of the last weeks into its old channel of unillumined labour. But other thoughts came to him too: the vision of converting that melancholy pleasure-ground into an outlet for the cramped liVes of the mill-workers; and he pictured the weed-grown lawns and [ 121 ]