Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/411

Rh departure was nothing less than a breach of his tacit pledge—the pledge not to break deﬁnitely with Lynbrook. And why had he gone to South America? She drew her aching brows together, trying to retrace a vague memory of some allusion to the cotton-growing capabilities of the region.… Yes, he had spoken of it once in talking of the world’s area of cotton production. But what impulse had sent him off on such an exploration? Mere unrest, perhaps—the intolerable burden of his useless life? The questions spun round and round in her head, weary, proﬁtless, yet persistent.…

It was a relief when Cicely came—a relief to measure out the cambric tea, to make the terrier beg for gingerbread, even to take up the thread of the interrupted fairy-tale—though through it all she was wrung by the thought that, just twenty-four hours earlier, she and the child had sat in the same place, listening for the trot of Bessy’s horse.…

The day passed: the hands of the clocks moved, food was cooked and served, blinds were drawn up or down, lamps lit and ﬁres renewed … all these tokens of the passage of time took place before her, while her real consciousness seemed to hang in some dim central void, where nothing happened, nothing would ever happen.…

And now Cicely was in bed, the last “long-distance” call was answered, the last orders to kitchen and stable [ 395 ]