But Melissa seemed to be meditating. Even her bedraggled skirts, her fallen hair, her stained face and scratched hands could not detract from her somber dignity and abstraction.
There was no sound in the room now. Melissa had forgotten Phoebe. She was deep in some desolate world of her own. Phoebe watched her intently. There was something strange about this fool and slut now, something untouchable and invulnerable. Something that made a curious pang run through Phoebe, like a quick slash of pain. This made her say, with a savage defensiveness: “What else could we believe, after you ran off with him? There was nothing else to believe.”
Melissa slowly looked up, and regarded her sister almost thoughtfully.
“I suppose not Though, if you had loved me, Phoebe, as I loved you, you would never have believed it.”
“Love!” cried Phoebe, struck again with pain. “You never loved anyone in all your life but yourself.”
Melissa shook her head. “You are quite wrong. I loved—Papa. And I love Geoffrey.”
Phoebe drew in her breath. She could not speak.
“But he does not love me, and I was a burden to him, and an embarrassment, and so I decided to go away and let him forget me.” Melissa spoke slowly and calmly. “Ravel had promised to help me find work or a position in New York or Philadelphia. I have no money, no means at all. He was to give me what assistance I needed, because he was my friend.”
Phoebe was still silent. But now the hot flush of joy and excitement left her cheeks. She did not want to believe it; she tried not to believe it. Yet, all at once, she knew that Melissa was speaking the truth. She knew also that, in spite of what she had said, in spite of her rapture and exultation over her sister’s “fall,” she had not believed it, not even when Johnnie had told her, not even when Susie had informed her, in hushed, shocked tones, of what all the township had seen and suspected.
There was a hard lump in Phoebe’s throat now, and a sickness in her heart. She took a step towards Melissa, and asked, insistently:
“Well, why didn’t you go with him?” She tried to bring back the old malevolent delight, but succeeded only for a moment “Or did he discard you, after all?”
Melissa sighed again, and the sound was all desolation. “I went to meet him, down by the river. He did not come. I waited all night and then I knew he would never come again. And now I know. He loved me, and he knew I’d never love him. It was no use at all. So, he went away, without me.” She lifted her hands from her sides, dropped them again in a moving and eloquent gesture. “I seem to know so many things I never knew before. I didn’t know, until this very minute, that Ravel loved me. I am very sorry. I’m afraid I never really saw Ravel, at any time, either as a man or as a human being. He was just someone I could talk to, and with; I was very lonely. I was grateful that there was someone with whom I could speak. It is very strange, but I seem only now, for the first time, to see Ravel.”
Phoebe had no words with which to make any comment. She could not look away from her sister.
Melissa smiled, the strangest, saddest smile.
“There are so many things I did not know yesterday, but which I know today. It seems impossible that I was the fool you know I was. But I was indeed a fool. It is too late, of course. Everything has, I see, always been too late.”
Phoebe tried to speak again, but her tongue lay heavy and numb in her mouth.
Melissa said: “Do you remember, Phoebe, the day I asked you whether Geoffrey had once wanted to send you away to school? I asked you that because I found an old draft of a letter Papa had written to Geoffrey. I thought he meant you.” She smiled again. “I was such a fool. I dared not believe the truth.”
She put her hand inside her stained bodice and drew out the letter. She held it out to Phoebe, whose face had changed. The younger woman hesitated, then she stepped towards her sister and took the letter. She read it quickly.
She had so small and petty a soul that she could exclaim immediately: “How could you insult me by thinking Papa meant me? ‘Stupid’! ‘Fantasies’! All the rest of it! I was never like that, and you knew it, yet still you could think Papa meant me!” Her voice rose shrilly in indignation.
She stopped abruptly. Melissa was still smiling that mournful and enigmatic smile. “You are right, Phoebe, it was an insult to think that. Anyone could have seen Papa meant me. I knew it at once, but I dared not let myself believe it.”
Phoebe was silent. She held out the letter to Melissa, as if it were a repugnant thing, and her gesture was honest. Her mouth had lost its cruelty; her eyes were uncertain and troubled. Melissa shook her head. “No, Phoebe, I do not want it. Destroy it, if you wish. But I never want to see it, or to remember it, again.”
Phoebe laid the paper on a table near at hand. She said sullenly:
“Why did you come here tonight, to me, after what you had done? Because you know what you have done, and you admitted, yourself, that you had intended to run away with Mr. Littlefield, and would have done so, had he come for you.”
Melissa looked at her, and said clearly and simply: “I thought you might give me shelter, and help me, and let me rest a little, until I could discover what I must do.”
Phoebe was still sullen, despite the increasing pain in her heart. She thought: Why should I feel like this, when none of it is my fault, when stupid old Melissa has brought it all down on herself? And disgraced us all, and made us the laughing-stock of the whole countryside?
She opened her mouth to speak, but Melissa had turned away and was going to the door. She had reached it, had opened it, when Phoebe cried impulsively:
“What are you going to do? Where are you going?”
“I don’t know yet. It is of no importance,” replied Melissa, without glancing back. She closed the door gently behind her.
Phoebe was alone in the room now, with all the comfort of her ugly but pleasant parlor about her, and the soft lamplight. She stood for a long time in the center of the room, her yellow brows frowning and thoughtful. Her eyes wandered helplessly. Her breast hurt with a dull and throbbing pain. Then she saw her father’s letter, lifted it, reread it. She flung it from her with disgust, and said aloud: “Monster!”
Now she started. She stared at the door through which her sister had gone. She ran to it, tripping over her flounces. She flung them aside. She tore open the door, ran down the stone steps, shouting: “Melissa! Melissa, come back!”
But only the climbing moon was outside, whitening the trees, and the night. The dog, barking, rushed towards his mistress. His barking became more excited as she called into the darkness with hopelessness and frenzy.
Melissa walked aimlessly away from the house to which she had gone for protection and help, and from which she had been turned away. She walked for a long time, her head hanging, her arms lax at her sides. Her step was very slow and dragging.
Again, her mind was blank and empty, and there was no feeling in her, no memory. She had already forgotten Phoebe. There was no sight in her eyes, no hearing in her ears. She did not even say to herself: There is nowhere for me to go. She only wandered on, mechanically, under the moon, through fields and pastures sleeping and still.
Finally, sheer exhaustion made her stop. She had come to the river and was standing beside it, the water almost at her feet. Mud sucked at her boots. The river’s voice was loud as surf; a wind had blown up, and it bent the trees and tore at them. The lightning, which had died down, now began to flash fiercely again, glimmering on the water like steel, and the river answered the fateful thunder. No rain had fallen as yet, but the earth breathed its disturbed breath to the night and the wind.
Melissa looked about her dazedly, pushing the tangled hair from her face. For the first time since she had left her sister’s house, full sanity returned to her, clearing her mind of the silent chaos that had possessed it. She began to tremble, and shivered. Suddenly a frightful pain attacked her, a pain compounded of grief and sorrow and despair. She was standing beside a willow. She put her arm
about it, she pressed her face to the warm bark. She hugged it to her breast as if it were alive and comprehending, and she was utterly lost and desolate, seeking for comfort in a most terrible world.
At last, she grew very quiet. She rubbed her wet eyes and cheeks childishly with the back of her hands. She looked steadily about her. There was nothing, nothing at all. There was no other world to which she could go. Everything was without meaning. Her face changed, in the stormy moonlight. Firmly, she took a step closer to the water, the sticky mud sucking at her heels. She did not waver or hesitate for a moment. She went down into the water, step by step. After the first shock of cold, she became numb. It was as though her legs dissolved slowly into the water; she could not even feel the sloping bottom under her feet. The current tugged at her thighs, rose to her waist. It swirled under her breasts, embraced them.
CHAPTER 50
“You do not believe it? You dare to insinuate, Andrew Upjohn, that I am a liar?” Arabella almost screamed. “Look at this, then. Here is the letter she left, found this morning in her room! Read it for yourself.”
The library was fully lighted, as if alerted for an emergency. The windows stood open to the hot night, there was the sullen mutter of thunder beyond, the flash of lightning and the cry of the crickets. Arabella, clothed in heavy, funereal black, appropriate to the awful occasion, sat opposite the two young men before her, and sobbed loudly.
Andrew looked at the letter in Arabella’s outthrust hand. He sat, the huge and somber young man, in Geoffrey’s chair, his pipe cold in his fingers. Under the sun-bronze of his skin a paleness glimmered; there were great beads of sweat on his forehead. But, otherwise, he showed no emotion, except by the grimness of his big mouth. He had changed very hastily from his overalls and sweat-stained shirt. His shirt was white and clean, but he had not bothered with a cravat or a coat, in his hurry to respond to Arabella’s urgent summons. His brown and pillar-like neck was exposed; a pulse throbbed in it, like a small heart. His little dark-blue eyes expressed nothing.
Near him sat Johnnie Barrett, Phoebe’s husband, also summoned by Arabella. He was a silent, brown young man, slighter and smaller than Andrew, but strangely like him, except that his thin face was normally gentler, less crag-like, and more sensitive. Tonight, his usual gentleness had given way to a fixed grimness. He looked slowly from Arabella to Andrew. He was very fond of his brother-in-law. They had much in common, beyond the relationship that existed by marriage. They had the countryman’s means of slow and silent communication. Johnnie had never liked Melissa. But now his brown eyes were uncertain. They said to Andrew: It is not true. It cannot be true. Do not believe it.
They were redolent of the fields and the barns, these young men. They sat before Arabella, and she hated their impassive silence, their “stupid” obduracy. She hated their calm and their patience and the way they looked at her, with the long and motionless serenity that had come to them from the earth. They were like trees or stones, she thought furiously. They were without life, imagination or understanding. Johnnie had not yet spoken at all. Andrew had only said: “It is not true.”
But Arabella now had a letter in her hand. Her small gray eyes glittered in their swollen redness, and there was exultation in them, and triumph. She fluttered the paper at Andrew, and exclaimed: “Read it! It was addressed to my brother, but when it was brought to me, after it was discovered that Melissa had not been home all night, I felt it my duty to open it, in order to notify Geoffrey, if necessary. I immediately dispatched a telegram to him. He will doubtless be home on the midnight train. What? You do not wish to read it? Then I shall read it to you both.”
She looked at Andrew, who had not moved to take the letter. He was staring at Arabella attentively, with the most curious glint in his eyes. She gave a short hard laugh, and tossed her head. With elaboration, she unfolded the letter, and read aloud:
“‘Geoffrey, I have gone to join Ravel Littlefield. He has promised to help me, either in Philadelphia or New York. When I know where I am to be, I shall ask you to send me the rest of my belongings, my father’s books and papers. I should have told you today that I was going, but I did not wish to annoy you. And something had hurt me beyond any imagining. You will be glad to know that I have gone. You have been so very kind, but I have nothing to give you in return. I want to thank you; I had no words for thanks today.’” It was signed: “Melissa.”
Arabella read it all, dramatically, and with a flourish. When she had finished, she glanced up vindictively at the two young men. But they still sat unmoving, watching her. Their obdurate expressions had not changed, except that Andrew appeared strangely and subtly stirred. Johnnie now looked only at Andrew, as if awaiting his explanation. Neither spoke.
Arabella smiled. She folded the letter, placed it carefully on the table beside her, and gave a deep and mournful sigh. “Neither you, Andrew, nor you, Johnnie, nor the whole countryside, could have been unaware of what has been transpiring between Melissa and Ravel Littlefield. You cannot have been so stupid. It was common knowledge.”
“Was it?” said Andrew quietly.
Arabella was outraged. “Certainly it was! It was the talk of the whole township! If you have not heard, Andrew, then someone was sentimentally protecting you, for, after all, she is your sister.”
“Did Geoffrey know? Had you told him before this?” asked Andrew, still very quietly.
“I?” Arabella cried out that syllable in righteous disbelief. “Was I the one to deal my brother such a blow? Was I to be the one to announce his dishonor and his shame? I would rather have died! He knew nothing. I hoped he need never know anything. I thought the shameless girl might come to her senses. In truth, I even believed, until this morning, that there was really nothing serious between her and Ravel. I thought it a foolish, but harmless, summer interlude, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, in spite of her constant and frequent meetings with Ravel, in spite of—”
“In spite of everything, believing what you believed, you let him come to this house?” Andrew’s voice was suddenly like the thrust of a broad-sword. Arabella shrank before it. She tried to look away from the eyes fixed upon her so steadily now, so ruthlessly, and with such contempt
She stammered: “I tell you, I thought it was nothing.”
“You knew it was nothing. You know it is still nothing,” said Andrew. “You are not a stupid woman, Arabella. You know all about Melissa. You have read that letter, many times over,
I know. You know as well as I know that if Melissa has really gone with Littlefield, she will not sleep with him.”
Arabella flung the back of her hand against her eyes, and the rings on her fingers flashed as she did so. “How dare you speak so lewdly to me!” she cried. “And I to be insulted in my own house, as if no tragedy had come upon us here, no disgrace and no dishonor? My brother! My poor brother!”
“You evade everything I say to you,” said Andrew, without raising his voice. “You are very clever. But you thought you might compromise Melissa. You have always hated and resented her. So you encouraged Littlefield to come here. Somehow, you must have known he was attracted to her, though Melissa probably never saw him as a man. You hoped something like this might happen. Melissa never said anything to me, but I’ll wager you made her life wretched, that you tried to drive her away. It is all very clear to me. I have no proof but my own inner convictions. I may be wrong. But I do not think so.”
Though no one was looking at Johnnie Barrett, he nodded his head solemnly.
Andrew’s voice was still calm, but louder now: “She might have been happy, but for you. But for you, she might have found her way to peace and happiness. I don’t care what the letter says. You are reading lies into it. To me, it isn’t lying. Something broke my sister’s heart, and you helped to break it. Something drove her out of this house, and I think you are part of it.”
Arabella’s hand fell slowly from her eyes. Her raddled paint was blotches of brick-colored grease on her cheeks. Her mouth
gaped, showing the rounded rows of yellow teeth within. Her eyes glittered with hatred and rage.
She said, with slow emphasis and quietness: “You are a fool. All the Upjohns were fools. Your father was a miserable pretender, and you know it. Melissa was little more than an idiot, and you know that, too. Yet I tried to help her. I did all in my power to give her some small polish and grace, so that my brother need no longer be ashamed of her—as indeed he was. I chose her frocks and gowns. I taught her manners every day. I have my own servants as witnesses. I was kind to her, though she was always impossible. For this, I receive your vituperation, your insults. No matter. It is over now. It is finished.”
Andrew stood up, ponderously. He went to the cold fire-place and looked down at it thoughtfully. He was still pale, under his brownness, but his expression was moved and somber.
“No,” he said, not turning to Arabella, “it is not over. It is not finished. There is too much to explain. Dunham’s infrequent returns here. Melissa’s open wretchedness. Where she has gone. What she is doing now. Your own part in all this. There is too much to be explained. And I shall find the explanation.” He added, with rough gentleness, as if to himself: “Poor Melly.”
Now he turned to Arabella. His eyes were sharp spots of blue fire. His big hands knotted. He did not move, but she sat upright in her chair, catching her breath in quick and abject fear.
“I am not such a fool as you believe me,” he said. “I am not such a fool as to believe your lies. I know all about you. I shall come back here, tomorrow, and see Dunham, if he has arrived. I shall tell him everything I know or suspect.”
He said to Johnnie Barrett, who was rising slowly: “Come on, Johnnie. This isn’t a place for clean and decent men to be in, just now.”
In utter silence, the young men left the library. They had reached the door when they heard a whispering sound behind them. They turned, to see James, Geoffrey’s man. Andrew scowled at him, but James put his finger eagerly to his lips, and then said in a loud and courteous voice: “This way, gentlemen, please. I believe your horses are tethered to the post near the door? Ah, yes, please allow me.”