The house drew about her, as if to clutch and hold her forever, and it was full of Charles. She closed the door, and went across the narrow hallway to her mother’s room. The pitiless sun drove through the unshuttered windows upon the shrouded bed, the grayed furniture, the worn, patched hangings.
“Mama,” said Melissa, softly and clearly. She closed the door behind her, and approached the bed. “O Mama,” she said, and put her hands on the counterpane. A cloud of dust rose, but Melissa did not see nor care. Here she had been born; here her mother had died. In the room the silence deepened, but it seemed to hold at bay the inimical silence of the rest of the house, the ghost that listened behind the door with a gently inclined head and a derisive smile. Peace and tenderness were in the room, like a breathing presence, like a voice of comfort and protection.
Melissa put down her bag and shawl. Her hands and face were smeared with dust, and now tears made paths of whiteness down her cheeks. She lay upon the bed, hopeless and quiet. The fixed pain began to retreat from her. Everything became foggy and unreal. She closed her eyes, and fell into the darkness of a shocked sleep.
CHAPTER 49
Melissa woke suddenly, and completely, in a gray and swimming twilight full of heavy silence. She was drenched with sweat, prostrated with heat. There was an ominous and waiting quality in the house, but that quality was also beyond the house.
She lay in her mother’s bed, and her mind was sharp and clear. She stared up at the dimming ceiling without lifting her hand or moving her painful body. But there was no pain in her mind, only that vast emptiness of emotion which had ended the night. She had turned her back upon a world that never was, a world that had been compounded of lies and illusions. She had, in a way, died. But all was still chaos before her. No new world of substance or hope or promise had formed, upon which she could set her foot and travel on. Did it exist, that new world, she thought, or was that, too, an illusion? Was there nothing at all, only this sustained blankness, this untenanted formlessness, this vacuity? If so, it would soon be easy to lose all reality, to question whether one lived or not. Terror lay in that question.
Her thoughts began to circle in vague patterns of dread and despair. Loneliness filled her, but such a loneliness as she had never known in all her life.
She sat up in bed and pushed back her loosened wet hair. It clung stickily to her cheeks and forehead and neck. Now her head swam, and she had to bend forward to retain consciousness. When the sensation passed, she was panting feebly but swiftly. Then she sat, holding onto the mattress with tight fingers, and tried to bring her thoughts to order, to consider the immediate future.
If there was no world ready-made and unshakable, then she had to make one for herself. She had no money, she told herself steadily. She had no home except this, and it had become a place of horror from which she wanted to run in fear. She had no friends, no one who wanted her. She had never, in all her twenty-six years, asked help for herself. But now she must ask for help, not in shame, but simply because she needed it. Surely, she thought, there was no need of shame when one truly needed help, any more than there was shame in a drowning man crying for rescue.
Whom could she ask? Andrew? He would be glad to help her. Phoebe? Ah, yes, Phoebe, her sister! It was more natural for a sister to help a sister than for a brother to help a sister. Then, too, Phoebe had been so kind the other day, so solicitous. Despite the illusions from which she had been so shockingly delivered only recently, in poor Melissa’s mind Phoebe’s pretty dimpled face rose up ringed with tender light. Melissa had yet to learn that in discarding major illusions minor ones had an irritating, if not dangerous, tendency to remain behind, like seeds, ready to grow into greater ones and again swamp the mind with a jungle-growth. She thought she had no self-deceptions left. In the vast unheaval that had taken place in her, surely no lie or credulity had survived.
I must take one step at a time, she told herself severely. My first step must be to wash my face and hands. It is possible that the pump still works. The room became dimmer. A light. No, not a light! It might be seen—by someone, somehow.
She struggled from the bed, and the floor up-ended, but she caught a bed-post and rigidly forced her body to remain upright. A loud sound of gasping filled the room. She said, aloud, and slowly, as to an hysterical fool: “Be still. Be quiet.” Now the beat of heavy wings that seemed to be in herself subsided under the force of her will.
She crept down the stairs to the pump outside the door. A rusted bucket still remained under the spout. She lifted the handle of the pump and worked it. The creaking tore at the darkening silence. After some moments, dull and reluctant water trickled forth, became stronger, then gushed. She let the bucket fill, plunged her hands into it, splashed water over her face. She gasped as the cold wetness stung her and dripped in her hair. She wiped herself with her petticoat, in her old, forgotten habit.
Now she did not feel so ill, so weak and broken. A little strength returned to her. Standing in the deep grass, under the brightening stars, she unfastened her hair, clumsily rebraided it, and pinned it as neatly as possible around her head. She did not look about her. She did not look towards the long and distant slope in the direction of Geoffrey’s house. That, too, had become part of the world which never was and which she must never let herself remember. She did not look at the house where she had been born, and in which so much of her had died. That, too, was behind her. She would never enter it again.
She set out across the wet dark fields towards Phoebe’s home, which she had not once entered. The grass was thick with dew. Heat lightning flashed momentarily across the sky, revealed the mountainous shapes of hills, and drenched the hushed trees in livid light. Crickets shrilled all about her. From nearby woods owls hooted. She saw and heard nothing. All her mind was bent towards seeing Phoebe.
Brambles caught at her skirts and nettles stung her ankles. She passed a farmhouse, and a dog barked fiercely. Cattle and horses stamped in fat barns. Now a muttering of thunder came from the hills. Melissa went on. She was not conscious of time. She had no thought but Phoebe, the shelter her sister would give her, and the rest, while she gathered her strength to deal with the new world which had not yet formed for her. It would not be long. She was certain of that. A few days, a week, of peace and quiet, of long, dreamless sleep. Perhaps Phoebe would give her some money, so that she might go to Philadelphia and find a position, or any kind of work. Or perhaps Phoebe might let her remain in her house; she would learn household tasks, and be of use. She wanted nothing now but an opportunity to be truly useful, without illusions and stupidities, or her former grandiose ideas of importance. There was no longing in her for her former state of self-deception, only horror and disgust and contempt.
It might have been an hour, or even more, before a dim bulk rose before her, with rectangles of yellow light flaring in it. It was Phoebe’s house. Melissa was forced to rest at the gate, leaning against it. A dog came rushing out of the night, barking and snarling. He caught a fold of her dress.
She beat him off, without fright, with impatience only. He caught another fold and tugged at it, growling. But she opened the gate and went inside the garden, the dog struggling to hold her back. The uproar he made must have aroused someone within, for the door was suddenly flung open, and a hoarse female voice called: “Bill! Bill, what is it?” A stout shadow stood in the doorway.
The light fell full upon Melissa, and she must have been a strange sight, bedraggled and disheveled, with the dog wrenching at the hem of her rumpled skirts, her hair, loosened again, falling in braids over her shoulders. She came up the garden path with difficulty, her face stark and white in the lamplight, her eyes shining with preternatural brightness. The shadow in the doorway stepped back in alarm.
Though Susie Whitehall, Phoebe’s maid-of-all-work, knew Melissa by sight, as did everyone in the township, she could not at first recognize this wild tom woman as the sister of her mistress. So, in stupefaction, she merely stood and watched Melissa a
pproach, the dog clinging grimly to her. It was not until Melissa stumbled up the white stone steps that Susie came to life and shouted furiously at the dog to release the girl. The dog, bewildered at this, snarled one last defiance and slunk away, but remained at a distance, his eyes shining in the dark.
Susie caught at Melissa’s arm, for it was obvious that the girl was about to collapse. “Dear me, ma’am, I didn’t know you!” exclaimed Susie, drawing Melissa into the lamplit parlor of the comfortable farmhouse. “Of all things! Here, do sit down, and let me put this footstool under your feet, ma’am.”
In the excitement, Susie forgot what was now common knowledge in Midfield. As she was a kindly, middle-aged woman, her first thought was to help Melissa. But now, as she stood beside the soiled and distracted young woman, staring down at her in utter astonishment, her broad rough face flushed crimson. Whatever was Mrs. Dunham doing here, here in her sister’s house, when everyone knew that she had run away with that young Mr. Ravel Littlefield with whom she had been carrying on the whole summer to the shame of all honest folk? Now curiosity began to excite Susie, and she wet her lips avidly. What had happened to Mrs. Dunham? Had her fancy man abandoned her?
Melissa sat in the mahogany and red-plush chair, the lamplight striking her vividly and revealing her stark and haggard face, her sunken eyes and falling hair. She saw nothing of the solid bourgeois comfort of this big room, the black wallpaper with its red roses and brilliant green leaves, the heavily carved chairs and tables, the red, green and yellow china lamps, the Brussels carpeting on the polished floor, the crimson draperies at the tall windows. She had begun to rub the soiled palms of her hands together, over and over, as if cold. She looked about her almost frantically. “Susie, where is my sister?” she asked, in a faint voice. “I must see my sister at once. Please call her.”
Susie hesitated, more excited than ever. She said: “Oh, ma’am, Mrs. Barrett was quite—upset—todayl It was terrible.” She paused, significantly.
But Melissa appeared not to have grasped the significance. She said: “Phoebe is never really ill. And I must see her. Tell her I am here.”
“Yes, ma’am,” replied Susie, in a solemn and portentous voice, and beginning to back away. “But I doubt she’ll see you. She is in bed, with vinegar cloths and smelling-salts, and must be quiet, Mr. Barrett said.” She stopped, and waited for Melissa’s comment, for some guilty flush, for some discomfiture. But Melissa had forgotten her. She had folded her hands in her lap, and sat motionless, her head bent. She had not heard or understood a word.
Baffled, Susie left the room, leaving Melissa alone in her exhaustion and silence. Melissa began to forget where she was. The queer swimming sensation had returned to her. Everything wavered before her, as if seen through water, and the beat of monstrous wings was all about her again. Her whole body numbed; her senses were unconscious of their surroundings, so that she neither saw nor heard. It was a long time before she became aware that someone had cried out, more than once, in a shrill and furious voice. She was so tired that it took an enormous effort of the will to lift her head.
Phoebe was standing before her, Phoebe, a pretty and enraged fury in a crimson silk peignoir, her yellow ringlets blowing on her shoulders, her tear-stained eyes dancing with anger and hatred, her little white fists clenched at her sides.
From some far distance, Melissa heard her cries: “How dare you come to my house, you slut? How dare you creep back here, like a dog? After all the shame you’ve brought on your innocent family, and the disgrace? I’ll never live it down, never, never, that my sister ran away with a strange man, abandoning her home and her husband!”
Very slowly Melissa pushed herself to her feet, but one hand retained hold of the back of the chair, to keep from falling.
She said: “Phoebe.”
With a dramatic gesture, Phoebe recoiled from her, and with so much exaggeration that under other circumstances it would have been absurd. Phoebe wrapped her gown about her as if to protect herself from pollution, and regarded her sister with pure malignance.
“Don’t you dare touch me! Don’t you dare speak my name! Why, you’re nothing but a loathsome Thing! I knew you’d do something like this, some day, to dishonor your family. I knew it all the time. But no one else knew about you—except Papa. He knew! He knew all the time. How he laughed at you, behind your back! He must have known all about you. He hated you.” She paused, her eyes, for all their tearstains, glittering with something monstrously like glee and delight. “Did you know that? He hated you.”
Melissa pushed herself upright, and stood very tall and quiet, full of dignity, her hands clasped together.
“I know,” she said gently.
But the satisfaction of hatred and envy in Phoebe was now so rich and full and delicious that she did not hear what her sister had said. Her heart swelled with a voluptuous delight, as if, long hungering, it was being fed.
“You thought you were the world to him, that you meant something to him, and all the time he despised you, and made fun of you with little smiles when you weren’t looking, and he would rub the side of his nose with his finger. Why, you weren’t important to him at all, except that you amused him. He couldn’t help being amused. You were so stupid. You never knew you were stupid, did you? You thought you were a learned blue-stocking, and all the time you were only a fool.”
“I know,” whispered Melissa. Her pale and shining eyes fixed themselves upon her sister.
Now the joy and fulfilment made Phoebe’s breath come short and fast, and filled her with frenzy. She pointed her finger derisively at Melissa, and actually gave a skip or two, her ringlets bouncing.
“Look at you now! Look at your dirt, you shameless creature, you abandoned woman! Look at you, and all your pretenses! You and your books! You and your grand marriage, and your servants, and a rich husband, and your handsome frocks! You and your trickery, deceiving Geoffrey Dunham into marrying you, heavens know how! Why, you’re nothing but a drab and an imbecile. You always were; I knew it, even when you swept about the house, all haughty and serious, with a pen in your hair, and your hands stained with ink. How dared you marry Geoffrey? How dared you have the effrontery to think you could be a fine lady—you baggage? How I’ve wanted to laugh in your face when you trailed around in the handsome frocks and gowns he bought you, with jewels on your hands and around your dirty neck! Sometimes it was more than I could endure, just looking at you, and I had to run home, time after time, so I could laugh in peace.”
She shivered with such pure delight that she caught her hands together and clasped them against her chin. Her eyes studied Melissa with jubilation, and what she saw made her give another exuberant skip.
“You had no right to marry poor Geoffrey!” she cried.
“I know,” said Melissa again, and this time clearly.
Phoebe stood and looked at her. If she did not skip again, her eyes did, with distilled malice.
“Oh, you do?” she cried, mockery dancing in her voice.
“Yes,” said Melissa.
Phoebe laughed out loud, and clapped her hands together.
“How consoling that will be to him now, since you have been deceiving him all summer with Ravel Littlefield, and then ran off with him! How pleasant it will make him feel, realizing at last that he ought never to have married you!”
But Melissa had moved. She had certainly not taken a step backward or forward; she had not swayed nor changed her towering and rigid posture. Yet, in some way, she had changed, and stirred.
“Phoebe,” she said, steadfastly, “what do you mean, about deceiving Geoffrey all summer, with Ravel. I don’t understand.” She paused, and now her white face blazed. “You don’t mean—but you never believed that, did you? You, Phoebe, my sister?”
Wonder filled her, and disbelief. Her light brows drew together in stern incredulity.
Phoebe was aghast at this effrontery. “You have the temerity to deny it, to lie to me, to pretend, you odious hussy? You dare insult me
like that? Why, the whole township was watching and laughing, pitying Geoffrey, condemning you! Everyone waited for this to happen. No!” she exclaimed, enraged, “I did not know! I was protected from knowing, because my friends were merciful. Andrew did not know, and for the same reason. But now I know that everyone else knew. Tonight, Susie told me what has been common knowledge for months—”
Melissa was silent. Her eyes did not leave Phoebe’s face. Piercing and inflexible, they scrutinized her, as if seeing her for the first time. Phoebe, about to burst into a fresh tirade of abuse, stopped. Something about her sister vaguely alarmed her.
“Yes,” said Melissa, at last. “I see that you believe it. I see that you want to believe it. Why, Phoebe?”
If Phoebe had taken a moment to consider, or if she had been less exultant, she might not have said what she did say. But she cried out, in fierce exultation: “Because I hate you! Because I’ve always hated youl”
Then, the very sound of these ugly words made her put the fingers of her right hand quickly against her lips, as if to recall them. Her eyes remained vengeful, but some of the glitter of malice faded from them.
“I see,” said Melissa. There was no emotion in her voice. She still gazed at her sister. She sighed. “Does Andrew believe it, too? But no, he does not hate me.”
Shame, and something else which she refused to recognize, made Phoebe say loudly and vehemently: “If he does not hate you, he must, now. Arabella sent for my Johnnie, with a message telling him what you had done. She also sent a message to Andrew. They are both up at the Dunham house, this minute, hearing all the details. A family conclave!” she added, her mouth twisting contemptuously. “And I suppose she’s sent for Geoffrey.”
She paused. “My advice to you is to leave at once and never to let anyone see you again. If Geoffrey finds you, he will probably kill you.”
Melissa Page 49