Geoffrey smoked calmly. Arabella upbraided herself for her words. She wished she could see Geoffrey’s face, but she could see only the firefly that was the burning end of his cheroot. Then Geoffrey chuckled. “I have an idea that Amanda will now manage the affairs of the family very competently. There is iron in the soul of that indomitable woman. Do not worry too much about them, Bella.”
Arabella felt a profound relief, for Geoffrey’s voice had been cheerfully indifferent. But still, she had to probe the dangerous area in which Melissa’s name lay, like a festering abscess.
“Perhaps you are right, dear Geoffrey, but it is very hard not to be concerned with the sorrowful affairs of old friends. Of course, Phoebe is to be married to young John Barrett in June, and an excellent marriage it is for her, too, and Amanda will probably contrive to keep Andrew at Harvard.” She paused, then went on resolutely: “It is evident that Melissa is a confirmed spinster, and it is her duty to remain with her mother and complete her father’s lifework.”
She waited. But Geoffrey merely puffed, and then he yawned. Never had a more delicious sound come to Arabella’s ears. She let out her tight breath in slow exhalations. She continued, with confidence: “A most unpleasant and disagreeable woman, Melissa. And so-so unattractive, and wild-looking, for all that stony expression of hers. There were moments today when I thought her completely insensible. She offered no comfort to her mother, and seemed to have detached herself from all the members of her poor family. When she was younger, there were times when I thought her not unhandsome, but now that she is definitely a spinster, and no longer young, she is most unprepossessing. Fortunate, indeed, it is that she never desired to marry, though I have not heard that any young man has ever proposed to her.”
Geoffrey still did not answer. Arabella could not see her brother’s face. She waited, and felt a prickling of dampness along her hairline. Why did he offer no comment? And then, when her alarm was at its height, he said, yawning: “I must leave on the seven o’clock train tomorrow, and I urge you, after these exhausting few days, not to rise to see me off. It is too early, and you are too weary.”
Arabella drew a deep breath that was like the inhalation after a prayer. Her eyes filled with grateful tears. She sought her brother’s hand under the robe, and said, just a little incoherently: “O Geoffrey, how can you ask me to lie abed while you prepare to leave in the cold dark morning! It is my duty, no, my pleasure, to say goodbye to you, and to see to it that you have every comfort, and to pour your coffee! No, I insist upon it, my dear, and will hear nothing to the contrary!”
In the darkness she did not see Geoffrey’s smile, but she felt the returning pressure of his hand. To her joy, the carriage was now turning up the smooth gravel path of the drive, and the pile of Dunham House lay before her.
They stepped out of the carriage under the carriage porch, and Geoffrey assisted his sister up the wide stone stairway to the door, which immediately opened and emitted a gush of warm candle- and firelight. The ruddy flare splashed on the granite steps, so that they had the quality of wet marble. Indeed, the whole great house loomed in the night as if built of that substance, though in fact it had been constructed of special white granite, very costly and smooth, somewhat incongruous in that region of fîeldstone. Three stories tall, with deep wide cellars, it presented an austere Georgian front to the long and wandering valleys below, and could be seen, on bright days, by the villagers of Midfield, two miles away, while on clear nights its windows would twinkle like stars on the hill-side. Elms and evergreens surrounded it, but at some distance, so that it was encircled by vast stretches of clipped lawns, and open to the sun. Behind it lay terraced gardens, with flagged paths, grottoes, tiny glades, rose-gardens, vegetable gardens, a large hen-house, a carriage house, and the stables. There was a spring at the end of the main garden, which had been dammed, and in the summer a lily-covered pool filled with thumping frogs made the warm nights deeply sonorous. The pottery fortune was, in the main, responsible for the beauty, entrancement and serenity of the gardens, as well as for the house itself.
Wind tore and battered at Geoffrey and Arabella Dunham as they alighted from the carriage. Geoffrey assisted his sister over the slippery wet steps, while she gasped for breath and tried to keep her fur hood over her head. The carriage grated back to the stables, and, breathing a word of gratitude at being “safe at home once more,” Arabella scurried into the hall, sweetly greeting the butler as the latter closed the door behind her and Geoffrey.
The immènse square hall was paved with dark red-and-black marble squares, which gave a baronial atmosphere to it, as did the vast walnut stairway curving up to a great arch and leading to the second floor. The walls, of darkest walnut, were gracefully and heavily panelled, and had no other ornament than the darkened portrait of Geoffrey’s grandfather over the mantelpiece. The fireplace was of pillared black marble, polished, vast, and glowing with mighty logs, and furnished with the brightest brass andirons and other equipment. On the mantelpiece were set three crystal and gilt candelabra, shining with bending and flowing candlelight which illuminated the portrait above it. A very monolith of a grandfather’s clock, of walnut intricately carved, loomed against the stairway, sounding each quarter hour in a majestic Westminster peal of measured notes. Against the right wall stood a long dark table bearing a blue Chinese vase full of flowers from the conservatory, and here and there were scattered tall carved chairs of walnut with red velvet seats.
To the left opened the library, to the right, the spacious, dark, double drawing-rooms, and behind the drawing-rooms, the dining-room, and others.
The fire rose higher at the gust of wind which followed Geoffrey and Arabella. The candle flame bent and flowed in banners of soft yellow light. The hall was pervaded by the mingled odors of warm smoke, tallow and the fresh sweetness of the flowers. Two English setters rose from the Aubusson rug before the hearth and came leaping and barking joyously at their master. Geoffrey bent to their greetings, while the butler assisted Arabella with her hood and cape. “Any important messages or letters, James?” asked Geoffrey as he fended off the vociferous affections of the dogs.
“Oh, what a relief to be home, dear Geoffrey!” exclaimed Arabella, in her sweetly whining and sentimental voice. “James, please see about some tea and perhaps some cold meat and a pastry for Mr. Dunham.”
“No, thank you, Arabella. You’d best go to bed. I’ll stay only a short time in the library, while I look over my letters.”
But Arabella did not want to leave her brother alone in the library, “with his thoughts.” Gentlemen often had dangerous thoughts which boded no good for those dependent upon them. She said, with an arch smile: “I think I’ll join you in a glass of mild port, Geoffrey. There is such a lovely fire in the library, I see, and I must just toast my toes for a few moments before it. And then to bed for both of us!”
James was an elderly, short and very fat little man, and he knew all Geoffrey’s moods, so he only needed to see one of Geoffrey’s eyebrows lifted in a certain way for him to say smoothly: “There is a fire in your own chamber, Miss Arabella, and I believe that tea things are prepared. I shall bring up the kettle at once, as the maids have all gone to bed.” Arabella flashed one of those glances at James which Melissa had aptly called “shark-like,” but her sweet smile, though stiffening somewhat, remained fixed. Geoffrey said, quickly: “Dear Arabella, you look exhausted. Please go upstairs. I must look over my letters, and I shall be very dull company.” He held out his hand to her, bent and kissed her forehead, for she was a rather small woman. “Good night, dear Arabella, and sleep well.”
Arabella, still fuming, still smiling, hesitated. Her shortness of stature was emphasized by her broad plumpness, now straining at the dark purple silk of her widow’s garb. Arabella believed she had considerable French chic, and had not the gown indeed come from Paris? But she inevitably wore gowns a size or two too small for her, their elaborateness of ruffle, drape and bustle calling attention to her stocky
and over-nourished figure with its thick short arms and tiny, fat white hands. Arabella wore jewelry in great quantity, many winking rings, bracelets and chains, which she had not been able to relinquish even on this day of dolor for the Upjohns, a commonness which Geoffrey had noticed. But there is no use ever talking to Arabella, he thought. She just has no taste, poor thing, and he thought how much she resembled their mother, of pottery fame. It was unfortunate that their father had had to espouse Miranda Bolt for the sake of his sacred publishing house, and Geoffrey suspected that old Mr. Dunham understood that thoroughly and never quite forgave his wife for the necessity.
Arabella’s face was an anomaly. She had the fat and ruddy fullness of her dead mother’s face, heavy and round, glistening, and giving evidence of an untrammelled appetite for the richer things of the table. With that countenance, she ought to have had rotund and jolly features, radiating good-humor and a placid disposition. But, on the contrary, she had acquired the contour of old Geoffrey Dunham’s features, without their aristocracy. Her nose was sharp, bent and pointed, and very large, almost a parrot’s beak, and under it was a tiny, slit-like mouth, which, when opening to speak and smile, lost every vestige of lip. This made a rather unpleasant orifice, round and hard, filled with long, narrow, and quite yellow teeth. Again, Melissa’s description of “shark-like” was very apt, and Melissa did not know which was the more unpleasant: Arabella’s mouth in tight repose, or Arabella’s smile, thought by the poor woman to be very engaging, and which she was at pains to practice constantly.
Her eyes, a hard, slate-gray, quite indicated her character, which was acquisitive, suspicious and disingenuous, for they never were lit up by the almost constant smile beneath them. In fact, they were well-nigh expressionless, except when a shrewd flash would light them, or a chambermaid on the occasion of some dereliction would find them fixed upon her like granite points. Her brows were light and sparse, though above them was piled a mass of gray-streaked lightish hair, always dressed in the most elaborate puffs and ringlets. She was Geoffrey’s senior by several years, yet she maintained a great vivacity of movement, a great youthfulness of lavish gesture and bounce. Geoffrey would wish she would not so overwork herself in order to acquire a reputation for being remarkably well-preserved, and for being his junior when among more casual acquaintances; he was sure that it must be an enormous strain upon her and her health. He was fond of her, in a careless way, for she was always devoted to his interests, though he was not in the least deceived that she had any charity of nature, any real kindness of heart, or any appreciable amount of brains. Sometimes her constant sentimental babble, her overripe sweetness, and her trilling, hackneyed phrases irritated him beyond endurance, yet he was invariably courteous and affectionate to her. After all, the poor woman was only a silly fool who had been indiscreet enough to marry a very bad artist. (That was during the years when Arabella had taken up “Art” at her papa’s expense in Philadelphia.) Adelbert Shaw had run through Arabella’s private fortune very quickly, in less than twelve years, to be exact, and after his death she arrived home at Dunham House with less than two thousand dollars.
Arabella, however, had not recovered from her attack of “Art.” During her spare moments, she painted lavishly in her “studio” on the third floor, the room with the north light. Her canvases, always of “sweet pussycats in the most beguiling attitudes,” or of summer flowers, or a “most entrancing aspect of the garden,” were stacked five deep all around the walls. They were most atrocious. Geoffrey did not pity her for her folly in marrying Adelbert Shaw, or for her loss of fortune, or for her widowhood, but he did pity her for the terrible works of art which she endlessly produced.
Geoffrey, looking at his sister tonight, smirking under the candlelight, and wearing a yellowish reflection on her face from her purple gown, was suddenly impatient. He knew what she was thinking, and he frowned a little. He repeated: “Good night, dear Arabella,” and turned away and went into the library, closing the walnut door firmly behind him. A few more of Arabella’s platitudes, and he would have been rude to her. When she was out of his sight he invariably forgot Arabella, and he never remembered her spitefulness when he had been a child, or her tale-bearing, or her sanctimonious sweetness of expression while she had watched him being punished. Her mother had favored her, for they had been much alike, and Mrs. Dunham had never had that devotion to her son which was almost axiomatic between other mothers and sons.
The dogs had followed him into the library, and he let them lie at his feet while he absently pulled at their ears. He liked the peace of the enormous library, away from Arabella. Here, too, everything was of walnut or black marble, the walls ponderous with many hundreds of books, the walnut ceiling vaulted. From that ceiling, on a chain, hung a huge crystal chandelier, unlighted tonight. But James had lit one of the polished brass lamps on a table near the fire, and the firelight and lamplight made a warm and ruddy circle surrounded by soft and shadowy gloom. The long sofa against the wall was of black leather; the deep chairs, scattered throughout the library on the dark crimson carpet, were either of black or green or red leather, and very restful. Each chair had its round, square or octagon table of walnut, and its individual lamp. The room had been designed for comfort, for reading, for thought, for work. In a corner, near one of the wide, enormous windows draped in dark-green satin, was Geoffrey’s large walnut desk, closed now.
Two heavy bronze candelabra stood on the mantelpiece, and between them ticked an old black marble clock with a gold face. The great walnut clock in the hall boomed out eleven notes; it was like the striking of a weighted stick on a velvet drum. The fire hissed and flared. The wind rolled impotently against the windows, against which the draperies had been drawn. Geoffrey took a cheroot from the silver box which lay on the table beside him, lit it, leaned back in the chair, and continued to stroke a dog’s head absently. There was a tap at the door, and James entered with a silver tray on which stood two bottles and a glass. He put it down on the table.
Geoffrey said, smiling: “James, are you clairvoyant?”
James’ round and rubicund face was grave, but his eyes twinkled. “Oh, no sir, Mr. Dunham. But you left word, if you remember, that you would return tonight.”
Geoffrey still smiled through the smoke of his cheroot. Someone had once told him that he had none of the attributes of a gentleman, and he had replied: “Gentlemen are invariably fools, and unless they have had the good sense to endow themselves with ancestors who were not gentry, they also invariably starve.” One of the inflexible rules of gentlefolk was not to discuss equals with inferiors, especially not with servants. So Geoffrey said: “Wait a minute, James. I want to tell you something. Please give orders that fresh flowers are to be sent to the Upjohn house twice a week, from the conservatories. Our best flowers,” he added, thinking of Arabella.
“Yes, sir,” said James, without expression, but with a flicker in his eyes.
Geoffrey leaned back and smoked with a pleasant expression. “Do you often see old Sally in Midfield, any of you, James?”
“The Upjohn Sally, Mr. Geoffrey?”
“Tut, tut, James. Let’s not start being so definite now. Who else?”
James allowed himself the twinkle of a smile. Goeffrey nodded at the whiskey bottle. It was a familiar gesture. James, with a bow, picked up the bottle and tossed down a neat swig. Then he carefully cleaned the top with a very white handkerchief, wiped his lips, said: “Ah.” He looked at Geoffrey, and lowered his voice:
“And what’d you like to know, Mr. Geoffrey?”
“The Upjohn larder, James. Full or lean?”
“Lean, sir. Not mean, but lean.”
“You’d say adequate?”
“Monotonous rather, sir.”
“Wine?”
“It was kept just for old Mr. Upjohn.”
“Well, James, once weekly there must be carried a fine ham, a hamper of wine, a side of bacon, and some other delicacies from our larder to the Upjohn household, in additi
on to the flowers. It must be done discreetly. I’ll leave the wording to you.”
James pondered. “Mrs. Upjohn has the reputation of being a very proud lady, sir.”
“I think, after a certain conversation I had with her tonight, alone, that she will accept, with understanding.”
The servants had heard, through James, of Geoffrey’s conversation with his sister, two or three years before, about Melissa, and had been disappointed that the occasion of Arabella’s discomfiture was being so long delayed. James’ little eyes sparkled. He would have a morsel to tell ’em in the servants’ dining-room tomorrow morning!
Geoffrey continued: “I know the reputation of the Upjohns which my friends hold, James. But what do the servants say of them?”
James was beginning to enjoy himself, and he said, without reticence: “Mrs. Upjohn is very proud, like I said, sir, and hoity-toity, but everybody respects her. She is a lady. Miss Phoebe is very pretty, and we all think she is making a good match with Mr. Barrett; she’s a nice little creature. Mr. Andrew—well, somehow Mr. Andrew don’t figure in things much. Kind as if he was just someone goin’ in and out occasionally. And there’s Miss Melissa.” He paused, peered uncertainly at Geoffrey. “They say Miss Melissa don’t know she’s alive, poor young lady.”
Geoffrey nodded gravely. “I see.”
James went on: “Nobody among the servants ever thought highly of Mr. Upjohn.”
Geoffrey said nothing, but stared at the fire. James waited. He became a little uneasy. Sometimes he wished the master was a little less “familiar.” A man knew where he was in a proper household, and besides, when certain amenities were observed and certain taboos respected, there was “dignity.” Yet, thought James, we all love the master, and there’s none that pays better, even in Philadelphia, none more careful of his servants’ comfort and health and fortunes. A hard man he is, and that’s a fact, but behave yourself, and don’t slack up on your work, and there’s none better. He’s worth a hundred great “gentlemen,” with their high airs and their cruel ways. James pondered while he waited. Let them talk! Mr. Dunham was a gentleman in the real meaning of the word, even if there were no portraits of old ancestors in the house, and no crested silver, even if there were funny rumors about his fancy women in New York, given out by that silly girl who was lady’s maid to old Mrs. Sheridan. Hadn’t Mr. Dunham been a colonel in the war, and didn’t he have a medal? That’s how families were built.
Melissa Page 6