But once her eyes must have opened quite wide and very plainly she saw Laurentine coming quickly toward her, bending over her and saying very loud, very pitifully: “Melissa, Melissa darling, do you know me?” . . . She couldn’t remember ever having heard Laurentine call her “darling” before . . . but it seemed very pleasant, she hoped she’d do it again.
Often thereafter she’d glance at her cousin through barely opened lids, but the older girl said nothing, just sat there idle; pale, distracted and lovely.
Then there was the time when her lids quite of their own accord remained wide open and she said to Laurentine faintly: “You know you called me ‘darling.’ Do you mean you don’t hate me any more?” . . . She didn’t remember ever having seen Laurentine cry before, either.
Then there was Aunt Sal, standing erect and quiet beside her bed and slipping something stiff and squarish into her hand. She couldn’t tell what the object was, for, oddly, her hands refused to lift anything into her line of vision. . . . Sometimes she lost the object on the bedspread . . . she hated that; it made her feel lost herself. And then Aunt Sal would slide it back into her hand and she felt infinitely relieved and very, very safe.
One day her grasp became suddenly normal and lifting the square of paste-board she realized that it was a letter and the writing on it was from a boy whom she knew very well, a boy named Asshur. She did not ask any one to read the letter to her. . . . She knew very well what it would contain. It would tell her to be very good. . . . She never doubted but that Asshur would be glad to know that she had followed his advice and that she had always been very, very good.
Another face too came and went. At first she couldn’t place it . . . but after awhile she knew it was the face of Stephen Denleigh. Then for a long, long time it disappeared. . . . And one day the face with the tall figure which belonged to it came back. And with it came another figure, younger and very slightly taller; another face, also younger, and darker, and looking,—”Oh, so slick!” . . . And it was Asshur!
Over night she reflected on Malory. . . she was so sorry for him, sorrier for him than for herself. . . . He wasn’t very—solid—she thought. Imagine, imagine any one becoming so cruelly so revealingly bitter over a thing that neither he nor she could help . . . he really wasn’t very strong—all nerves and ideals—he would need a girl like Gertrude Brown, her mind amended clearly. . . .
In the morning Asshur came in and finding her eyes wide open, slid all his marvelous length of brawn and limb down beside the bed and looked at her. . . . She rested her pale brown hand on his curly head that made her heart throb, and loved him dearly.
But her voice was very steady when she spoke. “Asshur,” she said, “you know I’m nobody. Not Melissa Paul, nor just any one. My mother,—you know, my mother,—Asshur. . . .”
He interrupted her. He said: “After we marry you’ll be Melissa Lane; but until then, and after, you are Melissa the Queen.” . . .
CHAPTER XXXV
IT was Asshur who restored them. He it was, who with his nice, keen sense of values unperturbed by the world’s standards of weights and measures, brought them healing. He had a fine, sweet, sanity, a strength, and above all, a comprehension which made it possible for him to guess and anticipate this stricken household’s needs. For himself he had no false pride; Life, Death and Essential Honor were the only matters which greatly concerned him in his simple code. Life was for enjoyment; Death was to be met,—with great dignity,—only when it could be no longer avoided; Honor consisted in downing no man and in refusing to consider oneself downed, “especially by these Acts of God,” he told Denleigh flashing his wonderful smile. The doctor admired him greatly, found him completely fascinating.
His simple good sense was astounding. He it was, who sleuthing quietly and persistently with the aid of his Uncle Ceylon, and of his own trusty cohorts scattered here and there throughout the town, brought back the soothing report that no one dreamed of the awfulness of the thing which had almost happened. Only Mr. Stede and the Browns suspected that Melissa was really Forten’s child. The rest of the oldest inhabitants had merely guessed, merely pieced out that Judy and Malory’s father had been on too intense terms of intimacy.
Some deep-lying natural sense of decency within them reared up to consider itself outraged at the thought of young Malory’s marrying the daughter of the woman who had caused his mother such an agony of wounded pride and humiliation. . . . Such a matter, they felt, called for a direct visitation from God and they were rather waiting, half hopeful, half fearful, to see in what shape the Wrath would come. . . . If they had known the actual truth! Imagination could not picture their reaction.
It was Asshur too who said to Denleigh quite simply: “Don’t you think we ought to find out from Aunt Sal if there’s anything else that could happen to these girls? . . . They’ve had so much trouble.”
But there was nothing more, Aunt Sal said. She blamed herself terribly for not having told Lauren-tine, for not having refused to take Judy’s child in. . . . “But who’d ever have guessed of such happenings?” she said trembling, half crying.
Asshur put his strong young arms about her, bent his splendid head and kissed her tenderly, respectfully. “You mustn’t feel like that. I’ll bet it wasn’t Judy’s fault. . . . I’ve often heard Uncle C. mirate on what a rake Forten senior was.”
“And it’s the God’s truth,” Sal asseverated piously. “Judy never meant to carry on with him; she really liked Mrs. Forten. She used to say she was a fool but she felt sorry for her. . . . Only Sylvester Forten wouldn’t leave Judy alone. She ran away from him to Philadelphia and he followed her; she couldn’t get rid of him. . . . But he was frightened when the child came. . . . He really died of the shame of it. . . . Judy now, she wasn’t that way; she’d say ‘there’s no use givin’ in to trouble, that’s just an invitation for trouble to step in and hand you another punch.’”
• • • • •
Melissa could not bear to let Asshur out of her sight. If he could have been spoiled he would have succumbed that summer. But he was too essentially sound for that. He had no notion of his own power. . . . It was, only he didn’t know it, with an almost absurd timidity that he approached Melissa on the question of an immediate marriage.
“You know Melissa I’ve still got another year at Tuskegee. . . . Do you think you could stand living in the South? My father’s got a big house over in Rising Sun, that’s a settlement just about as big as your hand. But you could get well and strong there . . . and afterwards we could come back here to Uncle Ceylon’s farm. . . .”
Melissa looked at him radiantly. “Rising Sun! Oh, Asshur, I’d love to live in a place called that. How soon do you think we could go? Asshur you’re sure you want me? No foolin’?”
“No foolin’!” the boy rejoined happily.
• • • • •
Denleigh and Laurentine said almost nothing, the fewest words. She hoped, she said gently, that he could forgive her mad stupidity, her instant leap to such a stubborn misunderstanding. “It was because I thought I had lost you darling, and I didn’t see how I could stand it . . .”
He understood. “People only fall out like that with some one they love very dearly,” he told her, happy, satisfied.
• • • • •
On Melissa’s first day downstairs Aunt Sal said they would picnic under the Chinaberry Tree. . . . They piled a table high with strawberries, salad, upside down cake, a bowl of punch, sandwiches, a deep dish of iced cantalopes and watermelon scooped out in little balls. . . . Charles, the small, black kitten, who, without changing size, ate as though his were the strength of ten, patted Melissa’s hand every time she lifted the spoon containing one of these balls, and made her drop it . . . his eyes followed it negligently, he seemed to smile through his whiskers which were really too profuse for such a little cat.
Mr. Stede appearing from the tool-house offered to bear him away but Pentecost choosing to rain showers of blessing on him at this moment
he walked off with his calculated booty and forgot all about Charles.
There they sat the five of them,—Aunt Sal, Asshur, Dr. Denleigh, Laurentine and Melissa, under the Chinaberry Tree, all happy, all talking, all enjoying a brief span of peace in the tragic disorder of their lives. And underneath that peace ran differing currents of thought.
Aunt Sal was thinking: “Now, my child is safe, and Melissa too. These are such splendid men. . . . Dear Asshur did any one in this world ever look as happy as he? Frank and I were like that once.” And suddenly she felt free to think of her dead lover,—with ease and gratefulness and the complete acceptance which always made their lack of conformity of absolutely no moment. She had always been willing to pay the Piper. Now, with Laurentine safe and satisfied, she was at liberty to recall the Piper’s tune.
Denleigh felt himself recovering . . . he had really been badly frightened. He mused: “There actually is such a thing as Greek Tragedy even in these days. . . . We were almost swamped with it. But the wave missed us. . . . I ought to get Laurentine out of all this. . . . Lovely thing! But I don’t believe she’ll really ever want to go away. . .”
Asshur looked at Melissa. In his veins his blood ran hot and thick. His thoughts were inchoate; he was the triumphant male. Boyishly, crudely, he pictured the rapture of his marriage. . . . There would be Melissa, home, children . . . he would order their well-being. He would work for them, protect them, love them, have them . . . he stretched strong, sinewy arms well above his head. . . . He could have broken into a dance all rhythm and joy.
• • • • •
But Laurentine and Melissa, so widely different, were thinking on none of these things. Caught up in an immense tide of feeling, they were unable to focus their minds on home, children, their men. . . .-Rather like spent swimmers, who had given up the hope of rescue and then had suddenly met with it, they were sensing with all their being, the feel of the solid ground beneath their feet, the grateful monotony of the skies above their heads, . . . and everywhere about them the immanence of God. . . . The Chinaberry Tree became a Temple.
FINIS
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