CHAPTER XXXIV
NOW it was May. Thanks to Laurentine’s precautions Melissa and Malory rarely saw each other; indeed their only time together was their brief walk to and from school. But this they did quite openly; as a matter of fact they had never seriously attempted to conceal their interest in each other from any one save Laurentine. . . . Why should they? And yet it was being born in on the sensitive natures of the two of them that their little romance was causing undue notice. Malory, the least self-conscious of young men could not help observing the attention paid them on the street by citizens of colored Red Brook whom he had never known, indeed, had scarcely noticed.
Both he and Melissa were becoming uneasily aware of the curious hush which seemed to rise around them if ever they were part of any assembly,—in Sunday School say, or in any of their small community clubs. It was rarely that they were part of any other gathering. From time to time Kitty Brown still asked Melissa to her house but on such occasions there was only a group of other girls there. Malory, dropping into the Brown homestead, never happened to run into Melissa; in some curious, silent, inexplicable manner they were being kept apart.
There really was something behind it. Laurentine, going about the house, pale and quiet, completely composed, no longer stayed up late entertaining Denleigh, for the simple reason that he no longer came. But she paid for this by remaining up till all hours of her own accord and for her own reasons. . . . The weather being very warm she sat frequently, these nights, on the side porch, sometimes she trailed langorously out on the tender grass and sat for hours under the Chinaberry Tree.
Occasionally she had a visitor from New York, a slender swarthy man, finely almost dude-ishly dressed, with a manner too completely at ease, too sophisticated. Evidently a man of the world, he was, for all that, clearly excited about Laurentine who looked at him with negligent invitation in her eyes. . . . Aunt Sal watching them without ostentation, but grimly, severely.
“I don’t know what she’s up to,” Melissa laughed uneasily to Malory, telling him about Laurentine, “but she’s completely changed. And I know that whatever she means or doesn’t mean she’s found out about us and means to keep us apart.”
This would always infuriate Malory. “The nerve of her,” he used to mutter. “I wish you’d let me go to her, Melissa, and talk to her. What business has she to take such a dislike to me, when she’s never even seen me?”
But Melissa begged him to wait. “We have so little time left now. My but I’d like to see her face when she knows we’re married!”
• • • • •
On the second Saturday in June the Sunday School was to hold its picnic. Melissa was to attend with Malory. Laurentine forgetting church, rarely, these days, going to see even Mrs. Ismay, knew nothing of all this. As usual she had arranged to utilize the girl’s Saturday, by sending her as she often did to deliver her creations. Melissa proffered no objections.
“Hey! Hey! and also Hey!” she whispered jazzily to Charles, a small black kitten, who had come up to her room to help her with the business of going out. The day was sunny, bright and propitious; she donned a sleeveless white crêpe dress, a little nonsensical cherry jacket and a cherry colored beret. Laurentine did not give her a second thought as she passed through the sewing-room and picked up her box. . . . All of them in that house were careful of their dress. . . . Two blocks down the street Melissa was joined by Giovanni Ricardi; the box, a piece of money, a paper with directions thereon changed hands. . . . Near the Post Office she met Malory and the two proceeded to Redd’s Woods to the picnic.
That was a strange experience. The two arrived a little after noon. Most of the picnickers were gathered in the open pavilion where Mrs. Simmons, Mrs. Brown and a few trusty church pillars were dispensing lunch. Everything was noise, gayety, happy confusion. . . . The two young people, serene in their enjoyment of having outwitted Lau-rentine and in their prospect of a pleasant afternoon, walked leisurely, laughing, assured, across the clearing.
“Look,” Harry Robbins said suddenly, “here comes the bride!”
And suddenly the noise and gayety died away; the whole group stood petrified, immobile with the immanence of some grave, some unspeakable awfulness closing in upon them. Speechless they waited.
The silence was palpable. Malory could feel it even before he was close enough to realize that it actually was silence. . . . Just before they reached the pavilion Melissa glancing at his face saw the change there, looked up, saw the group of icy statues.
And then in a moment the queerness was dissipated. Mrs. Brown came rushing down the steps; she seized the young girl’s hand. “Oh Melissa,” she cried, “you’re just the one we want to help with the sandwiches.” Kitty annexed Malory and Herbert Tucker and drove back to town for some needless article without which the luncheon could not proceed. With a determination none the less palpable because it was so invisible the pair were kept apart all afternoon.
Toward evening Mrs. Brown, still keeping Melissa by her side, contrived to wound her arm slightly with a small knife. It frightened her beyond words she said; she and Kitty would take her home to Dr. Brown and have the cut washed and sterilized. She could not tell Malory how sorry she was that there was no room in the car for him, but they had so many things besides themselves “to carry home and all. . . .” Malory, his face set and pale, managed to whisper to the bewildered patient. . . . “Don’t worry darling. I’ll straighten all this out. Be sure to wait for me after school on Monday.”
Both of them found Sunday a nightmare.
• • • • •
On Monday he met her, his face as pale and set as when he had left her Saturday. He made no pretense about the anxiety and blind fury which for two days had been raging within him. Melissa, already frightened, felt her own fear growing, so greatly did his attitude emphasize the strangeness of this curious, puzzling mystery which so enveloped them.
Slowly they walked down side-streets, hardly speaking, until the girl, realizing that they had come to a part of the town with which she was barely familiar, asked him where they were going.
“To my home,” he told her proudly. “After all my mother is a woman and she is my mother . . . she’ll take care of you . . . she’s lived here such a long time I know she’ll understand these hateful busybodies and their ugly ways. She’ll know how to handle them. It’s been a long time since I’ve asked her to do anything for me. . . . And to-morrow Melissa we’ll get her to go to Morristown with us and we’ll be married. Then let’s see what they’ll say!”
Speechless, she looked at him, admiring his pluck, his courage, her heart strangely lightened.
Presently they were walking down his street, a rather narrow one, small, thick maples growing on either side. The houses belonged to another date; they were of a greenish brown wood, with ugly, jutting bay windows and small stoops. He stopped before one so like its neighbors that the wonder was he could pick it out. Opening the gate, he stood back to let her precede him and perceived that she was greatly trembling. She raised her pale face to him.
“Oh, Malory!” she whispered pitifully, “must I really go in? C-c-couldn’t we wait a few days longer?”
But he was determined to scotch this snake now. “Darling, you’ll just have to be brave; we must get through with this. . . . My mother will be very kind.”
His hand under her elbow he helped her up the steep steps. But when he stretched out that hand to open the much discussed screen door, he perceived his sister Reba on the other side of it . . . barring his way. Melissa, her eyes still dazzled by the sun and by her grief saw at first only a bodiless head topped, half way above it, by another one, older, more sunken, deathly with an ancient sorrow. . . .
The first head spoke : “Malory, she can’t come in here. . . .”
He was so frantic, he swore, the oath coming strangely from his prim, boyish lips. “Damn you! Has the whole world gone crazy? Open this door! Open it, I say, and let us in!”
The other head
speaking in a slow and measured tone uttered its confirmation: “No, Malory, she can never come into this house.”
Melissa cried out: “I don’t want to go into that house!” . . . She was halfway down the steps before Malory could stop her.
“Go home, Melissa, Angel,” he told her gently, sternly. “Go home now and remember I’ll see you to-morrow.”
Running back up the steps like a mad man, he dashed into the house slamming the screen door and turning on those two subdued, lifeless figures like a tiger. “Now damn it, I say, damn it!” he cried, “tell me what you mean, tell me what it’s all about!”
Very gently, then, they got him up to his room and slowly, quietly, inexorably they told him . . . told him what he had to know . . . told him why they were always so sad . . . told him how much they had hoped to save him from sadness.
• • • • •
Melissa ran all the way home. When she got up to her room she was half fainting, but she dashed to her mirror, pulled all her clothes off, examined minutely her delicate, yellow body. “Could I have the leprosy, I wonder? Oh God what is it?” She fell into an agony of weeping.
It was better, she knew, to go down to dinner since her absence would mean a visit from Aunt Sal and she did not think she could hold out against that tenderness. . . . When she was doing the dishes Mr. Stede wandered in, in hope of largess, but even more in hope of helping her. His old eyes traced the marks of anguish in her face.
From afar off he began to approach his subject by speaking of Asshur. “Hope he’s as peart as ever.”
Languidly she answered that he seemed to be all right. “Said in his last letter that he had a horse and was riding all over the place.”
The old voice chuckled. “Like to see Asshur ridin’ a hoss; bet he cert’ny makes some pitcher. . . . . I remember I usta ride a hoss when I was a lad, cert’ny could go . . . many’s the fall I’ve had off that old gayly hoss. . . .” With a jerk he returned to the real subject in his mind. . . . Riding with Mr. Gathers in his little truck, to-day, he had caught sight of the young lovers, had noted with a sinking heart their pitiful absorption. “See much of that young Forten feller these days, Melissa?”
And suddenly she knew the meaning of his presence, his rambling words about Asshur and the “gayly hoss” whatever that might mean. He was like all the rest of Red Brook, prying into her affairs, picking at her because she was Sal Strange’s niece. Well then she’d give him some information for his pains. . . . “No,” she said clearly, “I’ve been seeing very little of him . . . but I expect it’ll be different after to-morrow.”
He was very silent then. If she had looked at him, she would have seen a strange, ashen pallor spreading over his face. But barely murmuring “Good-night,” she passed out of the kitchen, leaving him. . . . She had a lot to do between now and to-morrow.
The old man, apostrophizing as on a former occasion, groaned: “God, You know, that hadn’t oughta happen. . . .” Well he had trusted Gertrude Brown; her mother had come to see him to confirm his statements. And they had both failed him. He couldn’t tell Sal Strange. . . . And suddenly he thought of Dr. Denleigh.
• • • • •
Melissa, awakening, said to herself unhappily: “I’m going to be married. To-day I’m going to be married.” And couldn’t believe it.
She did not see Malory before school nor during lunch period but she did not greatly mind. . . . Undoubtedly she would see him after school. And meanwhile she had this new thought to occupy her.
But she did not see him after school either.
At first she had stood at the corner where she could see the stream of pupils issuing from the two exits. But he was not there. Never doubting she walked to a store two blocks off where they sometimes met though always by appointment. It was so easy for the boys eluding complaisant monitors to slip out ahead. . . . But he was not there. Confused and worried she waited a long time ; she needed her thought now to sustain her. . . .
At the end of an hour she said to herself suddenly: “The Romany Road! . . .” Of course the Romany Road! Something had happened; he’d been delayed, detained. But he’d trust to her common sense . . . it was true they had never been on it together since that day Harry Robbins had discovered them. . . . Doubtless he had meant to tell her about it yesterday; it would be so like Malory’s foolishness to want them to begin their last adventure on the Road which had brought them such joy.
But, as she plodded on through the dusty streets under the blazing June sun, she did not smile over Malory’s foolishness. . . . And the instant she set foot on the Road she knew that it was the road of her dream. She said to herself sadly: “Now, now it’s going to happen!”
Far, far up the clearing she spied the bowed figure, plodding on like herself with footsteps, slow, unwilling and shuffling, stirring up little clouds of blinding, acrid, dust. . . . She knew, child though she was, that to accost him would be the death of love, of all, all happiness. She knew that the face he would turn on her would be the face of the Comic Mask and that she would see it for the rest of her life, perhaps after life. . . . She caught up with him, she put her hand on his sleeve.
“Malory!” she said timidly.
So suddenly he whirled that he nearly knocked her down. His recognition was instant. And sure enough, the face which he turned on her,—oh terrible!—was laughing,—with a horrible, insane laughter.
“You!” he said, still laughing, his mouth set in that unspeakably awful rictus . . . “and to think you were to be my wife!”
She said to him gently: “Malory what is it? Of course I’m to be your wife. Why shouldn’t I?”
His burning eyes scorched her. As she stretched bare, pleading arms toward him his burning hands corroded her skin.
“Why shouldn’t you? I’ll tell you why. . . . Because you’re my sister! Isn’t it funny? God! Why don’t you laugh? My sister! Isn’t it the grandest joke?”
She knew then that he had gone insane. Pleadingly she tried to put her arms about him, tried to calm him, actually put up one small bronze hand and tried to close those awful, gaping lips. “Malory, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” . . .
“I do know what I’m talking about. . . . Your mother . . . with that rotten Strange blood in her . . . she was never married to any man named Paul; she—she was my father’s mistress, his woman . . . and you’re his child and my—my sister !” He raised his tortured eyes, he strained frantic arms toward the blazing, pitiless sky. “Oh God, how could You do it? You knew I loved her . . . You knew I wanted her . . . and she’s my sister!”
Even yet she couldn’t believe him. “But tell me Malory, ”
“Your mother was my mother’s best friend—and she betrayed her. She ate my mother’s bread . . . and slept with my father; my father went off with her and came home to die and told my mother. . . . You’re bad, bad, all of you!”
He was crying now, full of pity for his own lost love and of loathing for her who had so inadvertently caused the loss.
“You bastard!” he spat at her and thrusting her roughly aside he plunged down the clearing and into the road leaving her lying stricken in the black, black abyss into which she had fallen.
It was there that Laurentine and Denleigh found her.
• • • • •
Denleigh had spent the night in Newark, as he had often done since his rift with Laurentine. There were several of his class-mates down there with whom one could play a little poker, drink a little whiskey. In the morning he drove back, leisurely. It was two o’clock when the old man located him. . . .
For six weeks he had not seen Laurentine; for three weeks, infuriated by her mad stubbornness, he had not even tried to talk to her over the telephone. . . . Well he’d have to see her now and he cursed himself for being such a stubborn fool. She saw him coming up to the porch, saw his face and, mindful of the sewing girls, dashed down the steps to meet him. Breathless and fearful they stood for a moment under the Chinaberry Tree.
/> “Laurentine,” he asked, “where’s Melissa?”
“In school.”
It was then quarter of three. “Get in the car, Laurentine, we may be able to save her yet. They’re planning to get married.”
In palpable relief she hung back a moment. “But Stephen, tell me, what’s the matter with that? Why shouldn’t she marry this Malory boy?”
“You don’t mean you’re willing for her to marry Malory Forten! Why Mr. Stede says, ”
But then she had caught it. . . . “Forten, Forten! Why I thought his name was Malory! Oh why didn’t I know! Oh Mother» Mother!” She was like a maenad. . . . She ran into the house, the doctor at her heels. Her mother was up in her own room, putting away the winter clothes. For a long time no one of the three could smell camphor without remembering that scene.
“Oh Mother, Mother, he says, Stephen says that Melissa is planning to marry young Malory Forten! You know, you remember that man,—you remember Aunt Judy. . . .”
She turned to Denleigh. “I should have told you before Stephen, but I was so afraid. It’s God’s curse! Before she married, Melissa’s mother used to—to run with this Forten boy’s father; he actually went off and lived with her for a time. . . . Why it would be horrible for him to marry her. . . .”
Aunt Sal’s eyes met his puzzled, questioning ones. She sighed. “It’s worse than that, daughter. Melissa herself is Forten’s child. . . . I should never have let her come here. . . .”
Denleigh thought the younger woman would faint. But she rallied. “Come, Stephen,” she said calmly. “We’ve got to find her. But remember if anything has happened, it’s all my fault and,—and Stephen, for her own sake, I shall have to kill her.”
• • • • •
Sometimes the thick darkness that lay upon her like a blanket would lift and rays of light would steal in. At such times Melissa lifting languid lids ever so slightly, would descry Laurentine, strangely pale and altered sitting, apparently doing nothing, somewhere quite near her. . . . She wanted to speak to her but it took all her strength to reason out the cause of that pallor and that idleness and before she could do that the darkness had descended on her again. . . .