Melissa could actually hear the strong melodious sound of her father’s voice, so that she was certain that he was with her in fact. She was silent. She did not reply to the ghost. But a curious warmth crept over her cold flesh. She melted inside, and her strength drained away. She began to cry helplessly, but with passionate relief, like one who has had a reprieve. Her pardoned and rescued body began to pulse again with rallying life, and the exhausted brain, triumphant over reason, dissolved in emotion and remorse.
“Oh, Papa, Papa!” she moaned. “How can you ever forgive me for thinking such horrible thoughts? If I am so weak, how can I ever complete your work? I’m not worthy to do it, and if I don’t do it, how shall I save Phoebe and Andrew?”
Now her heart throbbed with a sense of hurry and urgency as she deserted the truth she had seen in one awful moment. Now her feet were set again on firm ground, but she trembled from her former struggles. Wrapped in a kind of warm blessedness and enclosed in a kind of peaceful but singing sanctuary, she got to her feet. Her way of life, all her plans and hopes, her beliefs and convictions, were safe again. She was no longer thrown adrift into darkness, where there was nothing sure, nothing inviolate, nothing with a purpose, where everything was frightful and lost.
She felt almost rapturous as she went into the woods, carrying the axe. She had no thought now but contentment and peace. She found a perfect little tree, and hacked away at its trunk, close to the snow. It resisted her efforts for a long time, clutching sturdily at life. But finally it wavered, then toppled, and its small snow-filled branches sank down to the white earth.
Melissa seized the trunk, and dragged it through the woods. It wounded the pure snow; it was like a body being hauled unprotestingly to death. Sometimes its frail branches clutched at a hidden stone, or entangled themselves with dense brush. It appeared to have a dying but sentient life of its own, and Melissa’s breath came in fast plumes of smoke in the clear, purged quiet. Her exertions restored her depleted energy. Never had pure cold air exhilarated her like this, nor had her blood ever flowed so freely. She was young again, and happy for the moment; once she even laughed a little as she freed the tree from a tangle of blackberry bushes. At times a kind of glad delirium and release seized her. She had come into the woods to fight a terrible fight, and she had won and was returning, joyous with conquest.
She put the axe back in the woodshed, and dragged the tree into the house. Sally was not in the kitchen. Melissa did not notice the station hack at the front door. She lifted the tree in her strong arms and carried it directly to the drawing-room.
CHAPTER 16
A few minutes before Melissa had returned from her sojourn in the woods, Geoffrey Dunham arrived at Midfield and had immediately taken the station hack to the Upjohn house, sending a message to his sister by a boy in the village to announce his arrival and ask that she send a carriage for him at the Upjohns’.
Now he sat beside Amanda’s bed, alone with her, for she had sent her nurse from the room. He was extremely shocked at Amanda’s appearance, and asked her at once why she had not sent for him before. Arabella’s letters to him, he said, with cold anger in his voice, had told him nothing, had, in fact, reassured him that Amanda was only slightly ill.
Amanda considered. In her good sense, she reflected that one should avoid enemies at all cost. Melissa would soon live in Geoffrey’s house, and whether or not Arabella then sought another residence, Melissa would inevitably come in contact with her. Enemies, even the meanest and apparently the most impotent, had a way of suddenly becoming dangerous when least expected. No, it was bad policy at any time to make an enemy, and she, Amanda, wanted no enemies for the vulnerable Melissa, who, because of her innocence, would not recognize a foe when she saw him.
So Amanda said weakly: “Dear Geoffrey, it is I, perhaps, whom you should reproach. I particularly requested Arabella not to alarm you. I did not wish you unduly disturbed. But now that I know I have very little longer to live, I had to send for you.”
Geoffrey’s anger subsided, but he eyed Amanda with suspicion. She returned his look with quiet equanimity. She repeated: “Reproach me if you must, Geoffrey.”
“I do not intend to reproach you, Mrs. Upjohn, under any circumstances. I am only shocked and hurt that you did not send for me before.”
Amanda smiled feebly. She regarded Geoffrey with her sunken and clouded eyes. How strong and assured he was! She was not deceived as to the virtues of the man, but at least he was honest in his brutality, clean in his ruthlessnesses. There were no shadowy deviousnesses in his character, no twistings, no soft capriciousnesses, no blurrings of his outlines. He is a hard man, and perhaps even cruel, she thought, but at least he has mental honor, and there are things he would not do. If his voice was rarely gentle, it would never be treacherous. He had his own code, and though some of the rigorous might denounce it, he adhered to it according to his own interpretation of good and evil. He would not deceive from corrupt delight in deception. He did not lust for power, because he had it and was capable of attaining it openly. He was no benign hypocrite who concealed all enormities under a mild and ingratiating exterior, and therefore he was not dangerous. She could trust him, this man who was not a liar and certainly no weakling.
Geoffrey said: “It is all nonsense, of course, that you are dying, Mrs. Upjohn.”
Amanda smiled faintly. “I was dying, and then I knew I could not die until I had seen you, Geoffrey.” She looked at him with sudden piercing attention. “It is impossible for me to go on living. I have been dying for a long time, for years, because life was unendurable for me. It hasn’t improved, Geoffrey. I don’t want to live.”
“Nonsense,” he repeated. “When one is recovering from a severe illness one has any amount of sentimental thoughts.”
She smoothed the sheets restlessly with her worn hand. “Geoffrey, I have always failed. I am on the point of failing utterly. No, please listen to me, for I—I am not strong and every word is an effort. My children: Phoebe, Andrew, Melissa. Melissa, in her awful innocence, and ignorance of the world, has plans for the others. No matter; I doubt they will agree, but it will shock Melissa beyond endurance when they defy her. She will have no one to look to but you, Geoffrey.”
“Yes,” he replied, gently.
Amanda sighed. “I told Melissa of your offer. She seemed to think that you had insulted her too horribly for any comment from her.”
Geoffrey smiled. “I thought that would happen,” he said.
Amanda lifted her head from her pillow, and looked at him urgently. “Geoffrey, you still want Melissa? You will not let her go? I must know that!”
He was alarmed at her agitation. He took her hand, and the fingers jumped against his palm like cold dry bones. He said: “I still want Melissa, and I won’t let her go. You can rest assured about that.”
“No matter how she refuses?”
“No matter how she refuses.”
“You will find a way?”
“Of course. The poor girl!”
Amanda’s eyes filled with tears; she let them fall over her face and did not hide them. She could hardly speak, and he had to bend over her to hear her: “Geoffrey, I was a blind and wicked woman. When you asked me for Melissa, I said unpardonable things about her. I said she was bad, that she had brought evil into this house. How can God forgive me for that? I did not know! But I know now. If only I had the strength to tell you everything, to make things clear to you—” She could not speak, but she clutched his hand desperately.
“You don’t need to tell me,” said Geoffrey, greatly disturbed. “I already knew everything.”
She gazed at him for a long time, in silence. Then she whispered: “About Charles?”
“Yes, everything about Charles. He was quite a villain, Mrs. Upjohn.”
She turned away from him, and looked at her cold windows. “No,” she whispered at last, “he was no villain. The wrong is in us, because of our blindness. It is the innocent who create villains, who perpetuat
e them and give them power. And the stupid.” She paused, labored for breath. “Charles was only a little man. Melissa and I, and perhaps the others, created him. If he ruined our lives, it was because, in our innocence, or our ignorance, we invited him to do so. Charles did not make a legend of himself; Melissa did that. She must be rescued from the legend, Geoffrey.”
Geoffrey thought this a very, charitable and faulty view of Charles, but he also thought that there was a nucleus of truth in Amanda’s words. Perhaps it was true that there were no villains, in the pure sense of the word. They tentatively suggest the idea, others enthusiastically enlarge upon it, give it reality. Still, the kernel of the villainy remained, and Charles could not be exonerated.
“How can Melissa be rescued from her self-deception?” asked Amanda, almost frantically.
“I am not sure that Melissa has completely deceived her self,” said Geoffrey. “I think Charles gave her very active assistance. No, please don’t speak again. It exhausts you. I only want to tell you this: Whatever happens, I won’t desert Melissa. I’ll marry her, and as soon as possible. She has no chance against me,” he added, with a reassuring smile.
Amanda sighed, and closed her eyes. “I look back at my life, and I see what a fool I was,” she murmured. “Why do we have to come to death before we know what follies we have committed?”
“I don’t know,” said Geoffrey. “It is bad sport on the part of Heaven, isn’t it? But then, you aren’t dying, dear friend.”
He got up, and through Amanda’s window he had an oblique view of Melissa, shawl a-flutter, hair uncovered and blowing, dragging the Christmas tree towards the back of the house. “She is such a poor, silly child,” said the panting voice from the bed. “She is so innocent, so arrogantly stupid, so open to any calamity.”
“The innocent invite calamity,” remarked Geoffrey, half to himself. “That is why there are wars and all the other damn foolishnesses. I don’t think the world of men is villainous. I think it is just naïve. It amounts to the same thing in the end; catastrophe is none the less complete because it is invoked by ingenuous fools.”
He thought of the war which had murdered so many thousands a bare three years ago, had crippled and embittered so many millions more, and had almost irrevocably divided a nation forever. When would men learn that wars never decided any issue, and that if it seemed so it was a delusion? Murder never cured hatred or enthroned justice. The root of wars, of any crime, lay in man’s belief that violence could create peace or change human nature. Man’s applauded brain, his cherished “reason,” had only changed him from a sensible animal into a confused beast who thought dangerous thoughts and filled a perfectly normal world with the phantoms of nightmare, the howling dervishes of mad dreams. Yet, thought Geoffrey, it also discovered, or invented, God. For this vision alone, for that single transcendental passion, it should be regarded with awe and reverence, and forgiven.
Who am I, anyway, to despise or deride or condemn anyone else, thought Geoffrey, as he stood by the window and looked out at the wide white desolation. I have probably never had a thought or a desire that somebody else hasn’t had before me, multitudes of somebodies. And most probably all of us, to a lesser or greater degree, have committed the crimes of all men, and, to the same degrees, possess the nobility of the saints and the dreams of the heroes. We are all one bloodstream, possibly all one soul, just as all other animals are linked together with the long chain of instinct and mystery. Homo sum; humanum nihil mihi alienum puto—I am a man; nothing human is alien to me. If I want to understand any other man, even such a man as Charles, I have only to look into myself.
He walked back slowly to the bed, and sat down. Amanda had spent all her strength and could only lie on her pillows now and smile at him faintly. He returned her smile, with inner compassion. She was a woman of sense and, above all things, he admired sense.
Amanda, in her turn, regarded him with affectionate approbation. He sat beside her, massive and firm, his shoulders hard, wide and sleek under their black broadcloth. His crisp dark hair, touched with gray, had a vital spring at the temples, and if his small gray eyes were stony and unyielding, they could, at moments, be kind. She thought that under certain conditions they could even be tender. Certainly, they were shrewd and direct and, in their own way, honest. His mouth might be thick and somewhat sensual, but it showed a lust for life, and there was common sense in the heavy lines about it. Melissa considered his dark face and Roman nose gross; Amanda knew them for the marks of a healthy and sensible man. He had good big hands, without delicacy, the hands of a man who had a certain subtlety which did not interfere with his strength.
Amanda liked the way he dressed: richly yet conservatively, his only jewelry the black pearl pin in his full crimson cravat, the signet ring on his finger, and the gold watch-chain that stretched over his black and figured waistcoat. Yes, a level-headed man, intelligent without being intellectual, sardonic but without cruelty, hard without being obdurate. She could trust the fanatical Melissa to him, but for a moment she was disturbed by the thought of what he would have to endure with the girl. However, he was at least fifteen years older than Melissa, and very much wiser.
“You will have a difficult time with Melissa,” she murmured.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Upjohn. The poor girl isn’t half as thorny as you and she think she is.” He paused. “I know what you are thinking: Why do I want Melissa? Because she reminds me of you. You are both devils for personal integrity.”
The nurse returned to say that her patient must rest now, and Geoffrey got up to go. He hesitated a moment, then bent over Amanda and kissed her cold damp forehead. She clung to his hand briefly, then released him. She watched him leave the room, and sighed with content. Then she laughed feebly at his last words.
Geoffrey went down the stairway, frowning abstractedly. He had just reached the hall when the parlor door opened and Melissa appeared as abruptly as a jack-in-the-box. She was more disheveled than usual; her black frock was pricked all over with green pine needles, and her hair hung in gilt wisps about her cheeks, which were still flushed from her exertions with the tree.
She had erupted from the parlor, but when she saw Geoffrey standing before her in the hall she stopped as suddenly and completely as though struck in the breast by an iron fist. She literally swayed backwards, and one of her heels cracked loudly against the door she had closed. Her color vanished instantly, and she stood looking at Geoffrey with mingled shock and outrage and something like hatred and terror.
Geoffrey began to smile at her, then he saw how emaciated she had become, how ghastly were the shadows her facial bones cast over her white face. Her clothing, he saw, looked much too large for her shrunken body, and blue veins protruded in her temples and over the tendons of her thin neck. He said with consternation: “Good God!”
“What are you doing here?” she cried. Then, remembering his “offer” and her humiliation, she turned a feverish scarlet.
But he did not hear her. He was too busy looking at her face. Her expression, always somewhat fixed, had now a fanatical intensity, a rigor, which dismayed him. He said: “What the hell has happened to you, Melissa?”
“How dare you come to this house?” she answered, hysterically, pressing herself back against the door and gathering her skirts about her.
He stared at her, incredulously, then frowned. “What’s the matter with you? Have you lost your mind? What do you mean, anyway?” His voice was impatient, but his concerned eyes searched her face and he could not be too angry with this poor and dwindled young creature. “Don’t you remember me?” he added, trying to smile humorously. “I’m Geoffrey -Dunham.”
She could only look at him with a loathing he found unbelievable. Her nostrils flared suddenly. He was making fun of her again! He had come here to tease her, to ridicule her. Now she saw it all: he had not been sincere when he had made his offer. He had been laughing at her all the time, secretly.
He had not only robbed her father, was no
t only intending to rob all the Upjohns, now that Charles was dead and defenseless, but he had deliberately taunted her mother with his lying offer of marriage with herself. How could a man be so base, so contemptible, so unscrupulous?
It was incredible that she could be thinking this, but she thought it, this immured and ignorant girl. And as she did so she felt such a desolation, such a misery and inarticulate despair, that her lips turned cold and her heart began a long and sickening roll of pain. She shivered and trembled; she shrank back against the door, for her legs had become too weak to hold her. But her eyes, full of a blue blaze, never left Geoffrey’s face.
“How dare you humiliate me with your lies to my mother?” she asked, and her voice shook.
He stared at her, dumbfounded. Then, very slowly, he began to understand, and he looked away to hide his compassion, his impatient amusement. He said, quite gently: “I wasn’t lying, Melissa.” He turned to her again. “Why, you poor, damned little fool! Is that what you thought all the time?”
He took a step towards her, but she shrank back, spread out her arms against the door in an attitude which uncomfortably reminded him of crucifixion.
“You lied! You lied!” she said, and then repeated it breathlessly: “You lied. You always made fun of me. You are making fun of me now.” She caught her breath and cried loudly: “Go awayl Oh, go away!”
She swung about, faced the door, and buried her head in her arms. She began to sob with such a forlorn and distracted sound that Geoffrey was aghast. Her back was so thin, for all the broad straight shoulders, and her black frock dragged on the floor. He could not stand looking at her and not touching her, yet he knew he must not touch her now. And he knew that whatever he might say would not reach her in her present frantic agony.