作者：Edith Wharton
出版社：Delphi Classics (Parts Edition)
格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT
The Fruit of the Tree by Edith Wharton - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)试读：
The Complete Works ofEDITH WHARTONVOLUME 5 OF 50The Fruit of the TreeParts EditionBy Delphi Classics, 2014Version 4COPYRIGHT‘The Fruit of the Tree’(in 50 parts)Edith Wharton: Parts Edition First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.© Delphi Classics, 2017.All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.ISBN: 978 1 78877 208 2Delphi Classicsis an imprint ofDelphi Publishing LtdHastings, East SussexUnited KingdomContact: sales@delphiclassics.comwww.delphiclassics.comEdith Wharton: Parts EditionThis eBook is Part 5 of the Delphi Classics edition of Edith Wharton in 50 Parts. It features the unabridged text of The Fruit of the Tree from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Edith Wharton, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Edith Wharton or the Complete Works of Edith Wharton in a single eBook.Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here. EDITH WHARTONIN 50 VOLUMESParts Edition ContentsThe Novels1, Fast and Loose2, The Valley of Decision3, Sanctuary4, The House of Mirth5, The Fruit of the Tree6, Ethan Frome7, The Reef8, The Custom of the Country9, Summer10, The Age of Innocence11, The Glimpses of the Moon12, A Son at the Front13, The Mother’s Recompense14, Twilight Sleep15, The Children16, Hudson River Bracketed17, The Gods Arrive18, The BuccaneersThe Novellas19, The Touchstone20, Madame de Treymes21, The Marne22, Old New York23, False Dawn24, The Old Maid25, The Spark26, New Year’s DayThe Short Story Collections27, The Greater Inclination28, Crucial Instances29, The Descent of Man and Other Stories30, The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories31, Tales of Men and Ghosts32, Uncollected Early Short Stories33, Xingu and Other Stories34, Here and Beyond35, Certain People36, Human Nature37, The World Over38, GhostsThe Play39, The Joy of LivingThe Poetry40, Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verses41, Uncollected PoetryThe Non-Fiction42, The Decoration of Houses43, Italian Villas and Their Gardens44, Italian Backgrounds45, A Motor-Flight Through France46, France, from Dunkerque to Belfort47, French Ways and Their Meaning48, In Morocco49, The Writing of FictionThe Autobiography50, A Backward Glancewww.delphiclassics.com The Fruit of the TreePublished in 1907, this long novel received mixed reviews at the time of publication, largely due to its handling of controversial themes such as euthanasia, the problems of labour and industrial conditions, and professions for women, as well as Wharton’s recurring theme of divorce.The novel opens with John Amherst, the reform-minded assistant manager at the Hanaford textile mills, who meets trained nurse Justine Brent at the hospital bedside of Dillon, an injured mill worker. Justine and Amherst agree Dillon would be better off dead if he is deprived of his occupation, a conversation that unites them in their approval of euthanasia and sets in motion the novel’s major incident.The first editionCONTENTSBOOK IIIIIIIIVVVIVIIVIIIBOOK IIIXXXIXIIXIIIXIVXVXVIXVIIXVIIIBOOK IIIXIXXXXXIXXIIXXIIIXXIVXXVXXVIXXVIIXXVIIIXXIXBOOK IVXXXXXXIXXXIIXXXIIIXXXIVXXXVXXXVIXXXVIIXXXVIIIXXXIXXLXLIXLIIXLIII He stood by her in silence, his eyes on the injured man.BOOK IIIn 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.IIWhen 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试读结束[说明：试读内容隐藏了图片]