Melissa

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  Rachel said nothing. Melissa flung the nightgown disdainfully onto the bed. Then she became aware of Rachel’s distress. A little warmth, unique and strange, touched her hard young heart. It was all too amusing and absurd, but apparently one could hurt by saying the most natural things, and she saw hurt in Rachel’s dark little face.

  “Oh, Rachel, if you think it best, I shall wear the silly thing, though if I have a cold tomorrow, and a dreadful sore throat, we shall know who is to blame. But all those ribbons!” she went on, looking contemptuously at the nightgown. “I shall never manage the ribbons.” She had another thought. “My woolen dressing gown. Where is it?”

  Sighing, Rachel produced a dressing gown of thin blue wool and lace, and quietly laid it beside the nightgown. The two young women contemplated the garments in a profound silence. Then they looked at each other. Simultaneously, they smiled, then began to laugh a little. Melissa’s laughter came rustily and awkwardly, then with a quicker rush, almost gay and childlike.

  She then literally pushed Rachel from the room. She undressed quickly, piling the pretty clothing carelessly on a chair, and pushed the boots under the rungs. She found her carpet slippers and, with a sigh of relief, thrust her feet into them. Then, scowling, she put on the nightgown. It fell in a cloud about her, clinging to her body. She awkwardly tied the ribbons, straightened the lace. The foolish thing had no weight or substance or warmth. She glanced in the mirror, and was arrested at the lovely reflection. She bent and peered closer. Her hair flowed about her, her flesh gleamed through the silk. She huriedly pulled on the blue wool gown. It was too short, but it was surprisingly warm. Forgetting everything, Melissa suddenly ran to the chest where her father’s manuscripts lay, retrieved the precious papers, and heaped them on the pretty gold-and-white desk. Impatiently, she laid various crystal and porcelain articles on the floor, put out her sturdy ugly pens, pencils and ink-pot. She sat and stared at the manuscript, and then at the pile of reference books near her feet. Absently, she caught up her hair and braided it with tense fingers. Her mind had already left this room and this house, and all that it contained. The long braid fell down her back; she bent over the manuscript and the note-books, pen in hand. She began to write.

  Now there was no sound in the room but that of the pen and the crackling fire. But outside it had begun to storm and a wind hurled itself savagely against the closed shutters. Sparks flew up the chimney. Music sounded softly downstairs. Melissa was oblivious.

  This manuscript of Charles Upjohn’s dealt with the philosophers of a certain phase of the Athenian Republic. Charles had considered that a sterile era. He quoted Machiavelli: “Republics have a longer life and enjoy better fortune than principalities, because they can profit by their greater internal diversity. They are the better able to meet emergencies.” Charles took cold but strong offense at this. “Republics,” said his notes, “produce nothing but hypocritical equality. No sensible man believes that equality is possible, for equality, put into practice, is an outrage to nature herself. The majority of men are born for obscurity and death. They have no function in life except to serve the superior man. Under aristocratic governments, this is accepted and acknowledged, and so, under such governments, we see the full flowering of the arts, their purest expression and essence, uncorrupted, uncoarsened and undefiled by the common touch. But Republics, admitting, as they do, the common man into all the precincts of the arts, encourage him to enter with his smell of offal, his dirt of averageness, his mud of mediocrity. He carries with him, also, the potential thunderbolt of anarchy, which can destroy the sacred temples. The distortion of the doctrine spreads to the lesser facets of life, so that eventually the servant protests at serving, leisure is curtailed for the superior man, who alone can envision the perfect civilization, and the drab dust of enforced neglect sifts over the pillared walls and the white colonnades.”

  Melissa copied rapidly. How true, dear Papa, she thought, remembering the guests downstairs. Then she paused. But her father was not speaking derisively of those people who had leisure and education, fine homes and rich clothing. No, he was not speaking derisively of them. He was speaking for them! She knew that surely, with a kind of surprised sickness. Those he was attacking were such as Rachel, Rachel with the kind brown eyes and the worn little hands, Rachel, servant to her inferiors.

  Melissa dropped her pen slowly from her fingers, and stared blindly before her. The queerest thoughts rushed into her mind—questioning, confused and amorphous thoughts. She glanced down at the manuscript. She read: “There are some who, like myself, believe that universal literacy would mean the epicedium of culture.”

  No, thought Melissa, you are wrong, Papa. It is only that the wrong people, that too few people, have an opportunity for culture. Had Rachel been born among gentlefolk of means, or even gentlefolk without means, she might have displayed a mind of considerable stature. I’ve seen intelligence and understanding in her eyes. There is something wrong with your whole thesis, Papa.

  The flight of her ideas became more confused, more rapid. She reread her father’s last sentence, and suddenly it had to her a cruel, lofty and stupid ring. Something like violent protest struggled in her mind, and a strange and fierce contempt. She recalled so many things her father had said, so many quotations from men like himself, men who believed that art remained art only so long as it was protected and hidden from the people. To these men it was a secret language; it had a secret code and handclasp. It was a marble cloister, a hidden city on a forbidden hill. Once entered by the masses of mankind, and it was no longer art, because it was comprehensible. That was their belief: That art must necessarily be obscure, precious, exquisitely inscrutable and impenetrable, incapable, by its very nature, of being translated into common speech. A book which was enjoyed by the many was unworthy of the interest of the superior man, who understood that because of its wide acceptance it was not art. A poem which the masses might repeat with love, was not truly a poem. Music adored by the mob was ludicrous, it was not music. A statue worshipped by common men was a common thing.

  Greatly agitated, Melissa jumped to her feet and began to walk up and down the room, her gown flowing behind her as if in a high wind. What did the jeweled phrase matter, if it expressed nothing but its own sparkle? What potency was there in an artist who was interested only in art, as a thing in itself, and did not use it to make articulate the urgent but formless thoughts of other men? An artist who painted an unfathomable picture, whose meaning was not immediately and simply obvious, was a pretentious dauber, no matter what his skill. Music preoccupied only with its own intricacy, its own mathematical and convoluted perfection, was not music, however perfect its technique.

  Melissa, stunned by her own heretical and lawless thoughts, stood before the fire, twisting her fingers together. She heard the wind outside, and it was like a shout. She turned her head nervously, and started. She thought someone had entered the room. But no one was there. Her thoughts began to ebb away, and now her mind became slowly empty and cold, and very tired.

  Something has happened to me, she thought. Something very wrong. It is all this strangeness and excitement. This house. I have no right in this house. Everything has lost its clarity for me, in this house. Oh, I know where I got these thoughts I have been indulging. They are only an echo of what Mr. Dunham said tonight, when he made fun of Mr. Littlefield and held him up to the contempt of his superficial guests. Am I so weak, then, that I can let a callous man’s greedy ideas obscure my father’s ideals, a gross man’s sentiments besmirch my father’s inviolate convictions? Who is right, he or my father? He lives in luxury; my father lived in self-ordained poverty, because he preferred integrity to wealth, honor, to the prostituting of his genius in the open market place. My father was right, as he always was right.

  She glanced about the lovely silent room, and hated it. She hated its delicate bright colors, its shine of gilt and white and crystal and silver. She hated the very fire on the hearth. All at once, she remembered Ravel
Littlefield, and something stirred in her like a surge of gratitude and happiness. If only Papa had known him, she thought.

  Resolutely, she returned to the desk and continued with her work. The music downstairs died away, lost in wind and silence. The fire burned low, flickered on the hearth. The pen scratched furiously. Note after note was coordinated smoothly. Melissa forgot her uneasy sense that someone was in the room with her watching remorselessly. Now peace and contentment filled her. The little clock chimed on and on, and she did not hear it.

  A faint click reached her buried consciousness of her surroundings, and she started. Geoffrey Dunham was entering the room through his dressing-room, and he stood there Silently, closing the door behind him. He wore a long gown of maroon silk, tied with a silken cord, and there were slippers on his feet.

  Melissa looked over her shoulder at him, the pen in her hand. She did not move. She was pale with exhaustion, and her eyes were glazed. It was some moments before she could orient herself, before she could become fully aware of where she was and of the presence of this man whom she had completely forgotten.

  Slowly, she turned in her chair, pushing away a long strand of hair which had fallen over her forehead. She stared at Geoffrey numbly; her eyes travelled from his quietly smiling face to his feet. Then she jumped to her own feet and clutched the back of the chair, and her mouth opened soundlessly.

  “What on earth are you doing, Melissa?” asked Geoffrey. He came slowly into the room, stopped at the hearth. He looked at the desk, and his brows moved quickly. But he made no comment, though he understood. “It is getting very cold in here. Why haven’t you put some coals on the fire?” He lifted the scuttle, tossed coals on the last pink embers, stirred the grate vigorously. A crackling and a burst of sparks rewarded him. He picked up the bellows and worked them. Melissa watched him, still clutching the chair.

  All at once, she became aware that her blue robe had fallen away from her nightgown. She caught it swiftly and furtively together. Geoffrey was looking at her again. She smiled, and the smile made him frown a little, it was so terror-stricken and so pathetic, so desperately pleading.

  “I’ve been working on my father’s notes,” she stammered. “I forgot the time.” She glanced at the clock. “It is almost two,” she added feebly. “I think I’ll go to bed. I’m very tired.”

  Geoffrey said nothing. He just stood on the hearth and studied her, and his face darkened. Then, very slowly and deliberately, he walked towards her. She watched him come, and he saw the widening and too-brilliant stare of her eyes. She did not retreat, nor move, nor even shrink. He stopped now, before her. Then, still moving slowly as if not to startle her, he put his hands on her shoulders.

  They looked at each other. He felt her agonized stiffness. Her eyes did not leave his; the iris had dwindled to a tiny glittering blackness of fear. Yet the poor foolish girl did not wince or try to free herself. She only waited.

  A long time seemed to pass. Then Geoffrey took his hands from her shoulders. She stood where he had released her. He turned away from her, went back to the fire, stood and looked down at it. She would not let herself breathe more easily, nor relax her distraught tightness of muscle and body. She could only watch him in dread.

  Geoffrey regarded the fire steadily and thoughtfully, as if he had forgotten her. She saw his profile, meditative and unreadable, with the firelight flickering on it. His hands were in his pockets. The dark red of his robe shimmered in a watery pattern. Melissa’s hands, aching from their clutch on the back of the chair, only tightened. So long as she did not move, did not speak, did not let go, nothing would happen. She had only to be very still like this, breathing only shallow breaths, not looking away from this terrible stranger who called himself her husband and called her his wife. She had only to regard him steadily and fixedly, like this, and he could do nothing but go away.

  Geoffrey continued to study the fire. Oh, go, go! cried Melissa in herself. She was becoming aware of his bigness, his strength, and her terror became more alive and threatening. She swallowed slowly and carefully, to control it. There was a huge dry lump in her throat, If he came back to her, if he touched her again, she would collapse; she knew this. But what could she do?

  Geoffrey turned his head and looked at her once more, but he made no movement towards her. She smiled convulsively. Geoffrey looked away quickly. Then he began to speak, in a very quiet and gentle voice:

  “Don’t be frightened, Melissa. You may sit down.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. Still keeping her eyes on him, she sat down, sideways, on the chair.

  “Melissa,” he went on, after a long moment, and thoughtfully studying the fire, “I told you today that you mustn’t ever be afraid of me, or of anything in this house. I want you to remember that. There is nothing here to frighten you, and there never will be. Why are you frightened, now?”

  She tried to speak, but the lump choked her. Then her voice came in a dry rustle: “I’m not afraid.”

  “Good.” Geoffrey smiled somberly. He added steadily: “Did you think I would force myself on you, poor child?”

  Melissa was silent. Geoffrey waited, not turning to her. Then he added impatiently: “You are a fool, Melissa. I’m your husband, and I want you. I am a man. Or didn’t you know? And you are a woman. You never knew that, did you? But all this doesn’t alter the case. I won’t force you. Try to remember that.”

  She said, incredibly, and he could not believe his ears: “Thank you.”

  He wanted to laugh.

  He said: “Well, then. Good night, Melissa.”

  He turned to her with a friendly smile, as though he were trying to keep from laughing. “Good night,” he repeated.

  “Good night,” she replied.

  He went to the door of his dressing-room, opened it, passed through, and closed the door behind him.

  For a long time Melissa sat where she was. The clock chimed. The whole house was completely silent. There was no sound but the wind. Then Melissa moved her cramped alert body and a great sigh rushed past her lips; she dropped her head on the back of the chair. She began to tremble violently. The fire died down, and now the chill of the room struck her. She stood up, pushing against the chair, and staggered slightly. She looked at the closed door. She went to it along the stretch of the room and her eyes fixed themselves on the handle. She turned it involuntarily. It was locked.

  Her hand dropped from the handle. But she remained standing against the door. Slowly, like a glacier moving over fields and meadows, a sudden and nameless desolation crept over the girl, a sudden sense of abandonment, of yearning and misery. She had no words for its overpowering anguish, for its profound sickness, for its sorrow. She was cold with it, paralyzed with it. She touched the handle again, wondering vaguely at her own huge pain, not understanding it, only suffering it.

  After a very long time, shivering and exhausted, she crept into her bed and blew out the light. When, in the darkness, she felt the tears on her face, she was amazed, and said aloud in a voice of distressed wonder: “What is the matter with me?”

  CHAPTER 32

  It was only eight o’clock the next morning when the Upjohns’ decrepit farm wagon lumbered, rattled and groaned to the door of the Dunham house.

  The wind had increased at dawn, and now the white countryside boiled and smoked and pillars of airy white particles swirled in high columns off the earth, like ghosts gyrating, spiraling, twisting, and fleeing. The wind caught up the blue vapor from the chimneys and sent it flooding and swirling like water over the red roof. Here and there, the torn blue sky rushed out between radiant white clouds, and the sun blazed down in an unbearable cataract of incandescent light over the white hills and fields.

  A very tall and burly young man in a farmer’s rough clothing and heavy jacket and woolen cap clambered to the ground, tied up the ancient nag, and went purposefully to the gleaming door of the house. Resolutely, he lifted the knocker, let it fall. The clear loud echo started back at him from the shin
ing emptiness of the land. After some long moments, the door opened, and James, blinking, shrugging his shoulders into his newly donned coat, looked out distrustfully. He frowned at the young man, and was about to speak indignantly about back doors, when the young man said in his deep voice: “I am Andrew Upjohn. I wish to see my sister, Mrs. Dunham.” As Andrew was rarely seen in the countryside, James had not recognized him, but now the man flung open the door and politely requested the visitor to enter. He said: “I do not think Mrs. Dunham has arisen as yet, sir, but I will see.” “Oh, Melissa is certain to be up,” replied Andrew. There was about him the same clean, strong simplicity which marked his sister and had marked his mother.

  “Would you please wait in the library?” asked James. Andrew immediately went into the library, where he surprised a pretty maid just finishing her dusting and the cleaning of the hearth. She fled with blushes, but not without astonishment, at the entrance of this farmer.

  Andrew slowly circled the room, scanning the titles of the books. He seemed preoccupied. He fished absently in his pocket, pulled out a deplorable corncob pipe, stuffed it with tobacco, lit it, without stopping his inspection of the books. He wandered to the windows, looked out, puffed, narrowed his eyes. He began to hum abstractedly and tonelessly to himself.

  He heard the swift rush of feet on the stairway, then Melissa burst into the room. Andrew turned, and examined his sister acutely in the very instant of her entrance. He saw she was wearing her old brown frock, that her hair was bundled up in her usual careless fashion, that she was as disheveled and unkempt as always. Andrew felt an angry rush of disappointment. Melissa was married; she was now doubtless a wife in fact as well as in name. Andrew did not know exactly what he had expected, but it was certain that he had not expected to see his sister in such a garb, and with such an untouched and virginal air. Then, he became conscious that her color was much better and, though she still gave the impression of a wind-blown figure-head, there was less strain in her eyes. I don’t know what’s happened to her, thought Andrew, but it evidently wasn’t much. Well, even a little is something, I suppose. But can anything really touch Melissa at all?