Ellis tiptoed to the door, and suddenly opened it. But the hall outside was empty. She caught a glimpse of Melissa disappearing into her own room. She closed the door.
“Ellis,” said Arabella exultantly, “I have been trying to discover how we could get rid of that jape, that hobbledehoy, that hideous female. And now I think I have found the way!”
CHAPTER 36
Melissa sat alone at one of the windows of her bedroom in the darkening night. The cold hard moon, a thin glittering sphere, rolled in a black sky over the marble silence below. Bare trees stood in tangled webs of black shadow on the stark whiteness of the slopes, that undulated in slow and rigid dunes down to the valley. The hills were ghostly shadows against the sky; at a long distance a few twinkling lights like fallen stars testified to far neighbors.
The cold, the stillness, the silence, seemed, to Melissa, to be part of her own mind and desolate emotions. The house about her, warm, filled with soft lights and fires, did not exist for her now; she was not in it, nor part of it, nor did she feel it about her. She was part of the desolation outside, and alone in it, and utterly lost, as if she were dead and completely exiled from life and voices and warm faces. The moon shone on the angles and planes of her quiet face, in the dark pits of her eyes, on the still carved outlines of her lips.
The grief she had known for her father, devastating as it was, had been a wild hot grief, full of despair, denial and bitterness. But this frozen agony in her heart was infinitely more terrible, for it was without a name. It was simply there. One thought kept recurring to her: I must go away, and at once. But immediately the frozen agony tightened in her chest, became so unendurable that her physical strength fell away and left her progressively weaker and more broken. In all her life she had no memory of such pain before, it was beyond comprehension or comparison, and of such dimensions that she could not even begin to discover its identity or meaning.
There were soft sounds in the house as the guests prepared for dinner, but Melissa did not hear them. Namelessly bereaved and solitary, she could only sit by the window, like one who mourns for life itself. The firelight flickered behind her; the candles wavered gently. She neither saw nor felt them. Over and over, she relived the scene with Arabella, and Arabella’s voice came back to her in sick echoes.
Finally, one thought took possession of her: Papa wanted me to marry Geoffrey. Poor Papa. He thought he would provide for all of us in that way. Papa would not want me to go away. Yet I must do so. But first, I must be certain that neither Phoebe nor Andrew needs me. Then, when this is all settled, I shall remove myself—from Geoffrey’s life. For it is perfectly evident that I am shaming and disgracing him, and that I am a contemptible burden hung about his neck. Had he not known that Papa wished it, he would never have married me; he married me for Papa’s sake, and out of pity, and because there was nothing else he could do to help all of us.
She had not cried before, but now she uttered a dry sob of pure anguish, and pressed her fingers to her eyes. But there were no tears at all, only this devouring and bottomless pain. She thought: In the meantime, I can spare him as much as possible, and shame him as little as I can. I will do my best, until it is time for me to go away, to let him forget all the Upjohns and relieve him of his burden.
She heard a knock on her door, and mechanically called: “Come in.” Her voice hurt her throat. Rachel entered and, though she was surprised to see her mistress sitting by the window in such lonely desolation, she said cheerfully: “Good evening, Mrs. Dunham. I have just finished your new dinner dress. It is time to prepare for dinner. Mr. Dunham wishes me to remind you that everyone is going on a moonlight sleighing party, later.”
Melissa rose silently. She glanced at the gown, formerly Arabella’s, on the bed. The hurt in her throat was like a knife. She said: “Rachel, I cannot go down to dinner. I should embarrass him—Mr. Dunham—again. If you do not mind, you may bring me a tray; though if it is a trouble, please do not bother. And I cannot go on that party. I am afraid I am very tired.”
Rachel, anxious now, came closer to the girl, and her eyes flickered swiftly over her mistress’ face. She murmured: “I will bring you a tray, ma’am. You do look very tired indeed. And I will take your excuses to Mr. Dunham. Would you like to go to bed now?”
But Melissa was gazing at her with that directness which so many found disconcerting. “Rachel, am I so frightful, so impossible? What do you truly think of me, Rachel?”
“I think you are a great lady, Mrs. Dunham,” answered Rachel, wrenched with compassion, “a truly great lady.”
Melissa sighed. “That is very kind of you, Rachel, but I am afraid it is not true. I am beginning to see that I have no right in this house at all.”
Rachel risked boldness. “Mr. Dunham does not think so, ma’am.”
“Oh, he does! He married me because my father wished him to help me, and my brother and sister.”
“He told you so, Mrs. Dunham?”
The naïve Melissa replied: “No, but I learned this today from—from someone who knows.”
Rachel’s indignant thoughts rushed accurately to Arabella. She came even closer to Melissa. “I do not know who could have told you this, ma’am, but it is not true. You are a great lady, and have elegance and presence. Perhaps—perhaps you do not know all the ways of the grand world, but they are easy to learn.”
Melissa shook her head. “I fear not. Well, it does not matter. I have work to do, and that is the only thing that is important. I am afraid that I forgot that during the past hour or two. Yes,” she continued, with a faint brightening of her white face, “work is most important! My father always told me that. He said it was of more worth than any other human aspiration or emotion, that it was the cure for any sickness.”
Rachel dubiously considered this. Work was necessary, yes, but to regard it as the greatest human good seemed to her a very outrageous folly. Work in itself was a pointless and onerous thing. If it brought esteem, a respectable savings account, independence, then it had tangible value and should be endured with honest grace. But to substitute work, voluntarily, for more important matters revolted Rachel.
“I think Mr. Dunham would prefer you to go down to dinner, and then to the sleighing party, ma’am,” she offered.
Melissa shook her head again. “No, Rachel. You see, the sooner I complete my father’s manuscripts the sooner I shall have money, and then Mr. Dunham will be free of me!”
A trick of the moonlight, and her own emotions, gave her face a sudden desperate animation and mobility. Rachel saw it was useless for her to argue with her mistress when in this condition. So she merely drew the curtains, and allowed herself a moment or two of fierce anger against Arabella. The poor, poor lady! If she, Rachel, had ever seen a woman closer to hysteria than this young woman, she could not remember the occasion. Her one desire now was to pacify and soothe Melissa, and opposition, she saw, was not the way.
She lit a few lamps, and the room filled with gentle light. Rachel induced Melissa to remove her gown, which was crumpled now, and to replace it with a green velvet peignoir recruited from Arabella’s wardrobe. Her narrow mind focussed intently on the work she must do, Melissa docilely allowed herself to be seated and to eat the food which Rachel later brought her. Rachel also conveyed Geoffrey’s regrets. At this, Melissa lifted her head.
“That was all, Rachel?” asked Melissa faintly.
Rachel hesitated. Geoffrey had received the news coolly as he sat with his guests in the “Yellow Room.” It was evident that the news annoyed him and that he considered the message from Melissa as the capricious behavior of a child. He, too, had asked: “That was all?”
Rachel had falteringly enlarged on Melissa’s indisposition, which Geoffrey did not believe in the least, and his displeasure increased. But he had dismissed the girl and turned to his guests to continue the conversation she had interrupted.
“I believe Mr. Dunham really wished you to join him at dinner and go on the party, ma’am.”
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“Oh, no!” said Melissa, vehemently. “It will please him better if I stay out of sight. At least, until I know what to do and say, even if it is all lies. But,” she added, looking up with her long grave glance at Rachel, “I think I should be glad even to tell lies, if it saves him embarrassment.” Rachel found this so piteous that she hurried away and pretended to be deeply engaged in something at a distant chest. She herself was full of seething emotion, blind anger, and pity. She remembered the titters among the servants all that day. It was an open secret among them all that Mr.
Dunham had slept alone on his wedding night, and that his wife was “queerer” than anyone had ever suspected. Only Rachel and James had kept apart from the snickering gossip and conjectures. Ellis had been there. Some innate caution kept Rachel and James from insulting Ellis when she had intimated, vaguely, some portentous scene which had taken place in her mistress’ room, during which the new Mrs. Dunham had shown herself “in her true colors.” It was too terrible to remember, she had said, when avidly pressed for details. “But time will tell,” she had added, with a sententious nod of her head. Later, James whispered to Rachel: “If we keep quiet, we may learn something of advantage. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say.”
Rachel prepared Melissa’s bed, shook up the fire, laid out the nightgown. Though she had hardly touched her tray, Melissa could eat no more. She dismissed Rachel with less peremptory words than she had used the night before, and with a sudden aching loss watched the girl leave the room.
She went to her desk and began to work. It was an enormous effort for her to begin. The pen felt heavy and dull in her hand. She could not concentrate upon the papers before her. For the first time in her life her head began to pound with long strokes of pain. She rubbed her throbbing temples with her fingers, without relief. Then she heard the jingling of bells outside, and voices, and laughter. She ran to the window and pushed aside a drapery. There were sleighs outside, and horses whose breath rose in silvery vapor under the moon, and the figures of men and women emerging from the house in a flood of light. Then, while Melissa watched, the sleighs filled, and went hissing and belling down the low slopes. Geoffrey’s dogs, barking, followed the cavalcade for a little distance.
When she returned slowly to the desk, the room seemed very still and empty to Melissa. She tried to work. It was impossible. Vaguely, she searched through the books she had brought, for something to read. But she turned from them, sickened. They had taken on, for her, a dry and dusty age, a meaninglessness, and she pushed them away hopelessly. But she must have something to read in bed, before going to sleep. She knew she could not sleep just now.
She remembered the library downstairs. There were many books there, she recalled. Surely, among them, there was some historical volume, a classic, which she had not yet read. One, perhaps, which might help her with her father’s work. She was suddenly relieved, as if a weight had been taken from her shoulders, and dimly pleased. One must not waste time, not even when one could not work.
She opened her door, and peered distrustfully down the long, lighted corridor. But no one was about; she heard no voice, not even that of a servant. She crept down the carpeted stairs, clinging to the balustrade, holding up her green velvet skirts. The “Yellow Room,” and the rooms beyond it, were in darkness, though last embers flickered on the hearths. Only the library showed a single light, shining in a diffused circle on the many books on the walls. Here a fire crackled warmly, as if freshly stirred.
Letting go of her skirts, Melissa ran swiftly into the library, her eyes fixed on the illuminated books. She reached up for one, examined it, replaced it contemptuously when she saw it was one of Mr. Dickens’ inconsequential and paltry novels, and took down another. It appeared, at first glance, to be a “serious” work, then this, too, was revealed as “only a novel” by another man as trivial as Mr. Dickens. She had nothing but disdain for Mr. Thackeray, whose Vanity Fair had been written obviously and shamelessly for “entertainment.” As if the sacred Word dared be prostituted to such abandoned use; and, worse, that such desecration should be condoned! There was no excuse at all, Papa had often said, for a book that offered only laughter, vulgar interest, diversion and amusement for an idle hour. All books should be soberly dedicated to the solution of human problems, edification, instruction or meditation. “Let the people go to halls of low comedy and cheap music, or to popular plays, for their mindless distractions,” Charles had often said. “Literature is a somber and meaningful thing, and cheapjacks like Dickens and Thackeray should be denied a place on the shelves of thoughtful people, true and serious students of humanity, and those who understand that the Word has a peculiar and significant duty to men. Let those who use it, use it in solemnity of heart and soul!”
“I never cared much for Thackeray, either,” said a voice behind Melissa. “A very superficial man. A buffoon, like Dickens, and one equally ephemeral.”
Melissa started so violently that the book she held fell to the floor with a crash. She swung about, to look into the gravely smiling face of Ravel Littlefield.
CHAPTER 37
Ravel casually bent over and picked up the book. He replaced it on the shelf in the most matter-of-fact and easy manner, while Melissa, her face red, clutched the green velvet peignoir tightly about her, conscious of her casual dress, her disheveled hair and ink-stained hands.
Ignoring her confusion, Ravel said gravely: “I am so glad you came down, Mrs. Dunham. I was having a very tedious hour here, alone.”
“I didn’t know you were here, or I should not have come,” replied Melissa bluntly. Then she stammered: “Oh, no, I did not mean that as it sounds! I mean, I’d not have disturbed you!”
“On the contrary,” replied Ravel, with quiet enthusiasm, “you have relieved my tedium. You see, I have a headache tonight, and was in no mood for festivities. Very distrait. Not ill enough to retire, not well enough to cavort, especially when the temperature is so unfriendly outside. I suppose you find yourself in the same case?”
“Well, yes,” answered Melissa slowly. “Perhaps not exactly. I just felt that no one cared whether I went or not, and, then, I am always making the most dreadful mistakes.”
Ravel was offering her a leather chair near the fire and, forgetting her state of dress, she sat down mechanically. The haggard look began to recede from her face. But Ravel knew he must move delicately. He began to scan the books on the shelves, gave a rueful smile, shook his head. “I confess I find nothing worth while or of interest to me here,” he said, pretending that he had not heard Melissa’s last remark. “I was reading a criticism of Mr. Dickens only recently, by a very famous and serious New York critic who openly declared that Mr. Dickens was not a writer but only a vulgar story-teller. No reality in his work, no depth. His prolific pen proves that he cannot be counted among those rare souls whom we call geniuses.
“It is is impossible to write a serious book in less than two or three years of long and arduous toil, soul-searching struggle, solemn contemplation and reflection. Mr. Dickens is, therefore, not a writer of any importance to this generation, or to the generations to come. The very prodigality of his works, the constant easy flow, the profusion of his chapters and his involved phrases, the effortless abundance, all betray the mark of the superficial scribbler, the writer of no consequence, the entertainer, whose name will be forgotten with his death, if not before.” Ravel turned to Melissa. “That is the judgment of reputable critics. I quote them practically verbatim, Mrs. Dunham.”
His remarks had given Melissa time to forget her confusion and dismay and to take her self-engrossed mind from her own problems. Before Ravel had half finished, she had forgotten herself and was listening with that absorbed seriousness so characteristic of her.
Ravel, a very subtle man, understood Melissa with extraordinary acuteness. The way to that beleaguered heart, that cold hard innocence, was not through physical channels but through the bookish and intellectual mind, which was at once so strong in her and so ing
enuous. He believed that her ice-bound emotions could be released by abstract words only, that she was immune to human temptations as other women knew them.
Melissa considered what he had said, sitting primly and stiffly on the edge of her chair, the green velvet making her long throat seductively white and pure. It also enhanced the fragile gilt of her hair, and threw sea-colored lights into her eyes. Ravel thought he had never seen a woman so tempting, so desirable, so lovely, and his tenderness made his handsome face soft and hushed. He came closer to her, and looked down at her. She studied him thoughtfully, no coquetry in her manner, no coy shrinking or flirtation. He was, to her, a human being who had made it clear that he shared her own, and her father’s, opinions, and was therefore to be trusted. Ravel sighed, half with impatience, half with amusement. He saw that he might roll his limpid eyes, show off his profile and his shoulders, and strike the most classic attitudes, yet they would not entice or interest Melissa in the least. This both intrigued and exasperated him. Here was a woman who was truly a woman, with the features, the breasts, the hair, the throat, the curves of an adorable female, yet anyone less female he had never seen in his life.
Ravel, in his eloquent and soothing voice, continued for a few moments to expound on the despicable Dickens and Thackeray, then he said: “Dear Mrs. Dunham, I am de lighted to have the opportunity tonight of telling you of my profound admiration and reverence for your father’s work. Books of authentic genius. Documents of a superior and immortal mind.”
Immediately, Melissa became faintly animated, and she smiled, showing the beautiful even whiteness of her teeth. He had never seen her smile before and he was struck by its shy, pure charm, its open and virginal quality. Fascinated, he came even closer to her. Yes, this was certainly Eurydice; lines of his projected poem rushed suddenly into his mind, perfectly formed and faultless.