Melissa

  Arabella was very astute. Geoffrey was, indeed, thinking this. He could not understand. He felt no hatred for Melissa, no anger, no bitterness or disgust. He had completely forgotten Ravel as an intimate part of this whole affair. He only wanted to know. Melissa seemed to stand before him, mute and grave, following him with her eyes. He went back and back, into her childhood, to the very first day when he had seen her. Step by step, he recalled all the years of watching her grow, of loving her, of understanding her, pitying her, plotting for her. Never once had she shown a single equivocal trait, uttered a word which was not in accord with her nature or which did not grow out of it. There were times when she had been enigmatical, even to him, but this had been part of her very innocence, not to be measured by sophisticated or subtle standards or understood by those who compared everyone with the accepted average. Never, to Geoffrey, had she seemed obscure, in the full meaning of the term, never consciously ambiguous or questionable. Subtlety, assumed or natural, had been beyond her.

  So, with the facts he had, there was no understanding what had happened. It could only be that he did not have all the facts.

  He stopped before Arabella and ruthlessly questioned her. But first he warned her, in an oddly moderate tone, that this was the one time in her life when she must not lie. Looking, terrified, into his eyes, she knew, indeed, that she must not lie. She dared not tell him all the truth. But she could suppress part of it.

  He went over the months since he had married Melissa; sometimes he went over certain weeks, and then even over certain days. An hour went by, another, and still the terrible questions went on, and still Arabella, growing more exhausted, more frightened, more weak, answered. A few times she became hysterical and begged to be allowed to go to bed, crying that it was half-past one, two o’clock, half-past two. But Geoffrey appeared not to have heard. He waited until she became comparatively calm, then went on with the questioning.

  Slowly, in spite of Arabella’s evasions, a picture was forming before him, a picture of a lonely, heart-broken, bewildered girl, alternately retiring into her solitariness and emerging for those accursed “lessons.” The old picture of her becoming reconciled, of taking an interest in her new life, of trying to adjust herself resolutely, began to fade, though he felt that there was still some truth in it, somewhere. He could not completely discard the old picture, but it began to merge with the new one, giving Melissa another dimension. Arabella dared not lie, but she did not spare Melissa. She exaggerated the girl’s rudeness, her boorishness, her inability to understand the finer points of civilized deportment, her inadvertent and innocent insults to her sister-in-law. Once or twice, in spite of everything, Geoffrey almost smiled, bleakly. But he could not convince himself that Melissa’s struggles with her “lessons” had impelled her to run away with Ravel. That was too grotesque, even for Melissa. Something, somewhere, was being left out, in this whining narrative. The skeleton was being shown him, but the flesh was still not visible. And so the questioning went on.

  In her hatred and malice, Arabella launched into an attack on Phoebe, the girl’s malevolence towards her sister, her envy, her small and mean remarks. Andrew’s neglect was gone into thoroughly. Nothing was spared by Arabella which might deflect Geoffrey’s dangerous closeness to the real meat of the affair. She could feel him searching, prodding, almost touching. There were wild moments when she thought she would not care if he found it, so tormented was she by now, so shocked with terror. Nothing could be worse than this remorseless questioning. She had only one comfort: Melissa was gone, and with Ravel, and, even if found and questioned, would not be able to say, distinctly and truthfully, that her sister-in-law had suggested that she leave this house forever, that she was a burden and a shame in it, and a disgrace to the man who had unfortunately married her.

  Secure in this knowledge, and congratulating herself on her subtlety, Arabella became calmer, and her terror lessened. For a while she could answer Geoffrey without a stammer, without evasion.

  Everything finally came back to the one thing sure: Melissa had been seen with Ravel in many places during the summer, and she had gone off with him. The facts were there, and there was her letter. But Geoffrey knew, more surely with each tick of the clock, that something vital was missing. For he was now remembering Sunday afternoon, when Melissa had come to him with her father’s manuscript, and he was remembering her strange manner, her wildness, her incoherence, her queer questions and glances. But there was a hiatus in his memory. He could not remember what she had asked him. He could not rid himself of the conviction that the clue lay in whatever she had asked.

  Moment by moment, his old compassion for Melissa returned with increasing strength and, with it, his love and tenderness for her. He could not, as yet, envision Melissa with Ravel. It was impossible. He could only feel desolation and misery, and a grim determination to uncover the torturing answer to the whole thing. It was not time for plans, for action. These would come later.

  He was no longer questioning Arabella. He could not remember when he had last spoken or when she had last answered him. He had been pacing up and down forever, while Arabella sniffled softly in her chair and dabbed at her eyes. The clock had boomed three, a long time ago, and there was no sound after it but the sound of his footsteps, up and down, back and forth.

  Arabella watched him malignantly. Why, he did not seem aware that he had been dishonored, betrayed, and disgraced! This might have been only a serious illness of Melissa’s, which was concerning him! Had he no shame, no pride, no self-respect? Was he so contemptible that he cared nothing for the blight on his name, his father’s name? Now outrage stirred Arabella, and her swollen eyes flashed at him vindictively.

  She broke the crushing silence in a loud if wavering voice: “Geoffrey, is it possible that you’ve forgotten the most important thing in this whole affair, the flagrant ignominy that crea ture has brought to this house, the house where we were born, where our parents lived and died? How dare you overlook that! How dare you forget! Have you no sense of honor, no sense of shame? But no! If you had had any of these, you’d never have married her, never have humiliated me with her presence, never have allowed her to enter these doors!”

  In her agitation and hatred and vengefulness she sprang to her feet and confronted him as he turned in his pacing and returned to the spot where she stood. He stopped, and looked at her in silence, at her distorted face, furious gestures, mouthings.

  He said, without any emotion at all: “I seem to have forgotten something, I admit. And I think it concerns you, Arabella. Somewhere, somehow, whether you know it or not, you have the key to everything. But I think you know it.”

  His eyes hypnotized her, her arms fell to her sides and her mouth sagged. He came a little closer to her. He said, almost gently: “What is it, Arabella? You know, don’t you?”

  She retreated a step from him, but he followed her, with a white cold excitement. Then she stopped, and cried out:

  “I know nothing but what I have told you!”

  “You are a liar,” he said, in a neutral tone that had something deadly in it. “You know, and soon I shall know, too. That will be the end of you in this house, Bella.”

  She could not speak, but now she began to pant in the extremity of her malevolence, wrestling with her hatred for him and the memory of her old humiliations. Her head began to hum and throb with a loud and twisting noise. She wanted to kill him. She wanted to see him fall dead at her feet. She wanted to strike at him so violently that he would never recover.

  “Yes!” she exclaimed, “there is something! You are right. I would never have told you, but I can, now, since it is too late! Late, too late! The drab dared to love you, Geoffrey! At the last, before she disgraced you, she dared to love you.”

  She began to laugh, showing the round yellow ridges of the teeth in her ovalled mouth. Her laughter filled the library with an obscene sound.

  “She didn’t know it herself, dear Geoffrey. I discovered it only a short time ago.
She thought you didn’t care about her, and because I knew what she was and what she was already doing with Ravel Littlefield, I refused to enlighten her. I wanted her out of this house, because I knew all about her. That, Geoffrey, is what I know.”

  He only stood there and looked at her, and it was this lack of expression in him, this lack of reaction, this lack of fury, which goaded her in into madness:

  “I am glad, glad to be able to tell you this now, for it is some consolation to me after the years of humiliation you inflicted upon me, your callousness, your miserliness, your brutality! Do you think I have forgotten a single one of your insults, your sneers, your contemptuous remarks about everything I did, said, wore? Did you think I was less than human, Geoffrey? No, I was human, and I could not forget. And that is why I am glad this thing has happened to you. It is a just judgment.”

  The rush of her memories exalted her and she acquired a kind of ugly dignity, in spite of her mockery, in spite of her hideous smiles. Because she had struck him in the one spot in which he was vulnerable, she was no longer afraid of him. He might stand there and just look at her with a quiet dead face, but she knew she had struck him and that he had felt it. She knew he believed her. That would be his punishment.

  She said, still smiling: “That, I think, is why she went away with Ravel. Because she thought you did not want her, that you were tired of her and regretted your marriage.”

  He said nothing, did nothing. Arabella waited. They faced each other in silence. Then, very slowly, Arabella’s smile faded; her face changed, became old and dwindled and full of wrinkles. All at once she was a tired and elderly woman, worn out by secret miseries and heart-burnings, by frustrations and petty despairs, by posings and artfulnesses, by pretensions and piteous hypocrisy. She no longer cared about anything. She wanted only to sleep and to forget. She wanted to force out from her this new sick pain, this illness, which might have been called remorse.

  “I am sorry, Geoffrey,” she said faintly. “It is true, and I am sorry now. If I could have back the time, it might be different. I’d have told you, before it was too late. If I am guilty, you also are guilty, and you must forgive me.”

  Geoffrey began to shake his head from side to side, ponderously, almost helplessly. “Yes,” he said. And then again: “Yes.” She could not stand it. She burst into tears and ran out of the room, and he heard her sobs as she rushed up the stairs beyond.

  The clock struck four. Now the sky outside the library windows began to turn gray as pearl, and the birds cried out in a multitude of voices. It was silent in the house. The house was like a soundless shell, impervious and shut against the tumult of the awakening earth. The black and distant hills began slowly to be outlined with pale rosy fire. The lamps in the library became raucous in their yellowness and, to the eyes of the man who sat in their light, were ringed in desolation.

  He did not move, or even smoke. He sat, with his weighted arms heavy on the arms of his chair, and looked at the lamps.

  Melissa, he thought. And over and over again: Melissa.

  There was something he could do, and he would do it. He would find Melissa. He had no feeling against Ravel, not the slightest stir of rage or jealousy, because he was certain now that Melissa had not only not betrayed him but that she was incapable of betraying him. He was becoming more sure, and this frightened him, that Ravel probably did not know where Melissa was.

  But where could Melissa have gone? To the best of his knowledge, she had no money, no friends. Could she have gone to her sister, her brother? But surely, if that were so, they would have told him or sent him some word. Yet he could not rid himself of the conviction that Phoebe or Andrew might be able to give him some help. In a little while he would go to them. But, before that, he must find some solution for Melissa and himself.

  Yet, though his whole mind was filled with Melissa, there was someone else even closer, more imminent, almost more real. Charles Upjohn. Exhaustion, suffering, pain, had temporarily removed from Geoffrey reason and common sense. He felt the exultant presence of Charles Upjohn in this very room. He believed that he need only stare steadily at a certain spot and he would see his old enemy as he had seen him in life, gently smiling, his thin delicate head tilted, his large pale eyes gleaming in the fading lamplight, his slender shoulders bowed under his cloak. He did not want to see Charles, for he was afraid of the surge of hatred that would rise up in him. He did not want to see that scholarly and reflective face, which hid so much malignity, so much petty yet potent evil. If there was a villain in all this, it was old Charles, Charles who lived because he still influenced Melissa and could make his presence so felt to Geoffrey. Yes, it was Charles who was the villain, who had always been the villain, who had almost destroyed, if he had not actually destroyed, Melissa, and with her, her husband. His presence had been corruption; he had lived in his family like a stealthy disease. Geoffrey could hear the echo of his voice, insidious, melting, most touching and melliflous, and everything he had ever said had been a lie, and everything he had touched had been polluted. If there is danger in a stupid man, thought Geoffrey, there is even greater danger in an intelligent man if that man be both egotistic and frustrated and if his aspirations are greater than his abilities.

  The clock struck five. It was long past the time for ghosts to vanish. But Charles Upjohn did not vanish. He became more and more imminent. Geoffrey in his exhausted state, thought that he heard soft footfalls in the room, a murmur, a rustle as of paper.

  He stood up suddenly. He went to his desk and withdrew from it the manuscript Melissa had given him on Sunday. He held it in his hand, and smiled. He carried it to the hearth, laid it on the dead ashes. He struck a light and applied it to the heap of papers. The flame caught, snatched hungrily at the food offered it, leapt upwards triumphantly. But its light was a thin and spectral one, for now the first fiery rays of the rising sun soared into the room.

  Geoffrey stood and watched the burning manuscript. In a little while he would go upstairs and find all of Charles’ papers, and they would join these, and then, perhaps, Charles would finally die. He would see himself dying on this hearth, and it would be too much for him.

  Geoffrey had the conviction that not only he but Charles himself was watching this rite of exorcism, and that they watched it together and knew it was the end.

  The dawn came into the library brighter and clearer, and the lamps flickered. Now the sun touched the lower shelves of the books, brought out the pattern of the carpet. The manuscript blackened on the hearth; fragments were caught in the draft and rushed up the chimney. With them went the ghost of Charles Upjohn, and Geoffrey knew that he was finally alone.

  The house began to come alive with the distant footsteps and murmurs of servants. But Geoffrey stood by the hearth. In spite of his desolation and fear for Melissa, a curious peace had come to him.

  It was then that he heard a loud knocking at the door, a peremptory knocking. He went to answer it, not running, but with the sure conviction that it was news of Melissa. When he opened the door, he saw Andrew, Andrew with a gray, drawn face and grim eyes.

  “We’ve found Melissa,” said the young man, without preliminary greeting. “I found her coming out of the river, last night. She’s at my house. I think you’d better come.”

  CHAPTER 52

  If there is anything more terrible than an army with swords, it is innocence, thought Geoffrey Dunham. The romanticists might find this fact a source of inspiration, of poetry, of music and painting. But the awful truth remained that the innocent are very frequently not only a source of danger to themselves, but to others. For innocence is often armed with ruthlessness and fanaticism and can be the fountain-head of corruption and calamity, and of its own death.

  Even in his present state of peace and happiness and hope for the future, he could think this, somberly and with detachment, because he knew that unless Melissa’s profound innocence could be modified there would be no peace, happiness or hope for her or for him in the years to
come.

  He had just come from the room where Melissa lay, in the house of her brother. She was sleeping. The doctor had said that she was suffering from intense shock and exposure but her naturally hardy constitution would preserve her from any lasting effects and would help her to recover rapidly.

  Geoffrey still did not know exactly what had brought Melissa to this pass. The whole story had been told him, partly by the sobbing and remorseful Phoebe, who had shown him Charles’ letter, partly by Andrew, partly by Arabella, and a little by Melissa herself. In all these was discernible the outer architecture of the truth. But the deeper and more inaccessible truth lay in Melissa, and in Melissa alone. She had been victimized, derided, rejected and vilified, and though Geoffrey could not yet bring himself to forgive those who had done these things to Melissa, he had to admit that it was she, herself, who had exposed herself to attack, and who, by her very nature, had awakened the more brutish instincts of her enemies against her. Charles had not completely submerged his wife; he had been more or less impotent against Phoebe and Andrew. Only in Melissa had he found the total and ready victim, blindly eager to be used and destroyed. This did not excuse either Charles or Arabella, or the hard-hearted who had had no pity upon her. In fact, this was further condemnation of them. But Melissa, because of her intrinsic innocence, had not been able to defend herself, and thus her innocence had been a weakness and a danger rather than a virtue. If there was truth in the theory that the murdered is in part guilty for the crime of his murderer, then Melissa was in part guilty for the evil that had been Charles Upjohn, and the aggravated malice that had been aroused in Arabella.

  Geoffrey thought of all the heroes and martyrs who had been hanged, crucified, burned, beheaded and beaten to death throughout man’s horrible history. Their assassins were despised, and remembered with hatred. But, in truth, the heroes and martyrs were also responsible, because they had been unable to see that there might be another point of view besides their own, however noble, and that if man is to endure the proximity of his brother without killing or being killed by him, he must learn to compromise and to consider the other side of the question.