Melissa

by Taylor Caldwell

  You ought to have known that Charles was utterly irresponsible, undependable and childlike, thought Geoffrey. But you must have known, and, like a good wife, you forced yourself not to see. Then, too, there is a fatalism in you New Englanders.

  Amanda threw out her hands in a quick distracted gesture. “And now we are beggars. I have two unmarried daughters, and a son.”

  She turned her head and looked at her children. She touched Melissa with her eyes, and those eyes became stony. But they softened when they glanced at Phoebe and Andrew. “Tomorrow, we shall have a family conclave, and we’ll discuss what is best to be done. But in all events, I shall keep this farm. It is part of me, part of my life and very flesh.”

  “Yes, of course,” murmured Geoffrey. He said: “I am at your service for advice or assistance at any time, Mrs. Upjohn.”

  She inclined her head with stiff graciousness. “Thank you, Geoffrey. It is very kind of you. I shall remember your offer. Now that I have the facts, I have no fear. I can manage very well, with the assistance of my children.”

  The folding doors near the far end end of the room opened, and Arabella Shaw appeared, smiling dolefully. “Tea is ready, my poor dears,” she said, “and you must force yourselves to partake of a small repast, even on this sad occasion.”

  Geoffrey rose, as did the others. Indomitable as always, Amanda darted a glance at her children. “It is only intelligent to prepare strength for tomorrow,” she said.

  But, without a word, Melissa turned and left the room, her black skirt swaying. They watched her go in silence. Her face and gilded hair were a sudden vivid flash as she passed the lamp.

  CHAPTER 3

  Someone had lit the wrought-iron lamp which swayed on its black chain from the hall ceiling. The light flowed dimly on the oak-panelled walls, on the long mirror over the drum table, on the stiff, carved oaken chairs, on the dark-brown carpet, on the ancient grandfather clock. But the shadowy light only enhanced the chill and desolation of the hall. Beyond the clock rose the abrupt oak staircase with its wooden balustrade and polished steps. The upper part of the house lay engulfed in darkness.

  Melissa stood alone in the hall. She quietly wiped her forehead, the palms of her hands. She did this mechanically, and without hysteria, and her breath was controlled. She climbed a stair or two, then stood there, listening. The wind beat against the house like an attacking army, and the hanging lamp shivered. Every board, every beam, trembled. A shutter or two banged somewhere. The sound of the rain was the sound of a cataract, washing and flooding over the old four-storey house. But it was very tall and very narrow, and sound; it had seen a thousand storms like this, and it would hold firmly and strongly. Nothing could shake its graystone chimneys; nothing could shatter its thick oaken doors. It’s clapboards might quiver, its shutters might tear themselves away from their iron hinges, its windows might rattle, its floors might vibrate. But it would stand, its cellars deep in the black earth.

  Melissa leaned against the balustrade. Faintness had come over her again. She clenched her teeth, threw up her head. In a moment, this silly weakness would pass, and she would be able to go up the stairs to the study—and her father. He was waiting there, surely. She did not see his light, for he must have closed the door. But his fire would be burning, as it always burned, and she would see him there under his lamp, his thin gray head bent over a book. Or perhaps he would be at his old desk, writing, the scratching of the pen louder than the storm outside. She would come in softly, and he would look up, smiling fondly, and the lamplight would gleam on his spectacles. “Come in, my dear,” he would say. “This last chapter is not going well, I am afraid. Please glance over it and tell me what is wrong.”

  She would sit on the hassock near him, and begin to read. She would be overwhelmed, as always, by his pure felicity of phrase, by his beautiful carved paragraphs, by his scholarly quoting of ancient philosophers in their native Greek and Latin. O dull and hideous world that did not appreciate such grandeur, which filed away on dusty shelves the few books it bought, and forgot the glorious intellect which had conceived them! She would return the chapter to her father, and she would say with passionate strength: “Papa, it is perfect. Not a line must be changed.” Then he would beam at her, touch her cheek with his long thin fingers, and say: “Let us ring for tea, shall we, my dear?”

  Old Sally would come up, fat, waddling, grumbling at being disturbed so late in the evening, the silver tray rattling in her hands. There would be sliced seed-cake, or fruit-cake, and hot tea, thick cream and loaf sugar. They would sit together and drink and eat, and laugh softly, and discuss the next chapter. The wind might howl, the rain might run in rivers through the eaves, the shutters might bang, but here, in the quiet house, before the fire, in the warm lamplight, daughter and father would sit in complete content and the richest and sweetest companionship. Above and about them the others would be sleeping. They would hear old Sally climb to her attic room, two storeys above, under the slate roof. Then there would be no other sound in this lamplit sanctuary except for their own voices and the chuckle of the fire. They might sit there until long after midnight, until the chiming of the clock below would startle them to an awareness of the hour.

  Melissa came to herself, and was dully surprised to find herself sitting on the stairs in the hall, whereas she seemed to remember having climbed those stairs. A deathly chill made her shiver violently. She felt mortally sick and leaned her head against the hard balustrade. I must have fainted for a moment, she thought, abstractedly. She looked about her, her eyes swimming. How had she come to be here, when her father was waiting for her in his study? But, said her mind clearly and coldly, he is no longer there.

  “No!” she said aloud, with fierceness. “It is not true. It is not true that he is—dead!”

  She heard her own voice uttering the terrible word, and she put her hands to her throat as if to choke away the horror of her own speech. The pulses throbbed under her fingers as if they would burst the flesh. Now something opened in her breast, wide and bleeding, running with dark and dying blood. She felt the thick and failing current in her veins. Her arms and legs grew numb. She bowed her head on her knees.

  The old walnut clock, its face faded and almost obliterated by the years, struck a dolorous series of notes. Eight o’clock. The oaken walls echoed the sound, humming under the vibrations. The wind grew louder, and the rain.

  Melissa pulled herself to her feet. The steps below her tilted and swayed. The clock leaned at an impossible angle. In a moment it would fall with a crash, and they would all come running. She must get away before they came. It would amuse them so, to see her standing there like a black statue, the shattered clock below her.

  She put her hand on the smooth balustrade and dragged herself up the stairs. They were a nightmare flight, going on up forever and forever into the cold darkness, touched, here and there, by a ghostly shadow from the hall light below. But one had to climb the flight, no matter how one’s knees bent or how one’s breath came in long painful gasps. Her father was waiting for her.

  The study door was unlatched. She could not understand why it was so enormously heavy, and why it took all her strength to push it open. No lamp had been lighted in the study and it was completely dark. The fire had not been lit and a cold blast of air struck at Melissa’s damp face. She pushed the door closed behind her, leaned abjectly against it, in order that she might not fall, her shoulders bent desperately against the cold wood. How loud the wind was, and the rain! The shutters here had not been closed, or had been latched carelessly. They banged and pounded against the clapboards, swinging and creaking. The rain hissed and rushed against the windows. The room smelled of old ashes, of old tobacco, of old pipes and wool and books and wax, of dampness and decay.

  Melissa leaned back against the door. She had pressed her palms against it for support. She listened to the roaring of wind and rain, the pounding of the shutters. In a moment, she would be strong enough to go to the windows and do something
about the shutters, and she would light a lamp, and make a fire.

  Now the faintest and most crepuscular dimness pervaded the room, not really a light, but a glint from the drowned full moon beyond the clouds. She could see the windows now; they ran with swift black streams of water. She pushed herself away from the door, went to the windows, threw them open. Immediately the roaring became a deafening thunder. She leaned out into the rain and tugged at the flailing shutters. Her strength, already spent, was almost unavailing, and she felt the water lashing into her face and battering her head. It was deathly cold, and where the rain soaked into her bodice and shoulders it was like the drip of ice. Finally, she was able to pull in the shutters and latch them, and close the windows. The roaring subsided to a dull and threatening mutter.

  She went to the fireplace, groped for the tapers and the box of lucifers. Her hands were completely numb, and she had to try several times before she could strike a light. She lit the wax taper, found her way to the lamp on her father’s desk, and lit it. Immediately the room was flooded with a wan and dusty light. She returned to the fireplace, knelt down, and put the taper to the crushed newspaper under the kindling. It smoldered and smoked; finally the short apple logs took fire, and a blaze of sparks gushed up the blackened chimney. Melissa crouched on the gritty hearth, shivering uncontrollably, pushing back her wet and disheveled hair. Now the logs caught, crackled sullenly, and a tongue of flame flashed upwards. She pressed closer to the fire, feeling nothing but her deathlike coldness, her passionate desire for warmth. The wind battered down the chimney, blew out a cloud of smoke. But Melissa did not retreat. The necessity for warmth was too compelling.

  She crouched there, shaking and trembling, her chin on her wet black knees, her dress flowing about her stiffly, spread out in heaps around her body.’ Her hair still dripped; she felt the cold drops running down her neck into the hollows of her breast. Wherever they touched, they numbed, like pellets of snow. The heat of the new fire beat out at her, but she could not get warm, and all her body ached. Then she turned her head and looked at the room.

  She knew every inch of the study, but now it was strange, an alien room, belonging to no one, abandoned and shut away. Charles had occupied it only four days ago, yet years must have passed, for it was no longer familiar. She knew all those oaken bookcases which lined the walls; she knew those books, in their dim brown and crimson and blue bindings, their faded golden titles glimmering in the lamplight. She knew this black marble fireplace, this flagged hearth, that mantelpiece which held Charles’ rack of pipes, the hobnailed glass which held the wax tapers, his metal box of tobacco, which had come from China, the old pink seashell which someone had given him when he was a child. There, against the far wall, stood his horsehair couch, with its untidy heap of blankets and the mussed pillow, where he slept at night. There stood his old high desk, with the cubbyholes full of bills, papers, memoranda; she knew each of the quill pens on the scarred desk, the ink-pots, the blotters, and the old-fashioned sandbox which he never used but which had belonged to his father. There was his old black-leather chair with the foot-stool, her own black-leather hassock drawn near it, his large oaken table where the manuscripts were assembled, and which was still covered with heaps of papers inscribed with his meticulous and beautiful small writing. On the little table beside his chair stood the brass lamp Melissa had lighted. A pipe still lay there, where he had left it on the terrible night when he had died so suddenly, alone before his fire, just after Melissa had left him for bed.

  Another Aubusson rug covered the floor, its colors almost obliterated with grit and dust, for Charles would permit no one in to clean his study and what housework Melissa had ever done had necessarily been so careless and haphazard as to make little difference in the general confusion and dust. Dust lay thickly on the tables, on the desk. It lifted into the disturbed air, with a dry powdery smell. The fire and the lamplight shone on all the shabbiness and disorder. The draperies at the windows, of an old blue discolored cloth, bellied in the wind that came through the cracks.

  The fire burned high, but the room remained as damp and cold as a vault. Melissa crouched closer; she felt the burning on her forehead and on her cheeks, but she could not feel the warmth itself. Her head was turned over her shoulder; she looked slowly and heavily at every object in the room.

  Oh, surely Papa was coming into the room nowl She strained her ears, held her breath, waiting for the soft shuffle of his footsteps. She looked at the door. It must open, if only she willed it strongly enough. It did not open. It gleamed in the lamplight, and remained closed.

  Then, for the first time, she knew, inexorably, that he was dead. Dead. He would never enter this room again. He would never take down a book, and glance through it, commenting wryly on a certain passage, his spectacles sliding down his long thin nose. He would never again pass his veined and mottled hands, which looked like the hands of ancient marble saints, over his white and narrow skull, and turn to her with a soft laugh of mingled perplexity and amusement. Never again would he regard her with his vague but brilliant blue eyes; which seemed to stare beyond her at serene and dazzling landscapes. Never again would she see the smile on his wide full lips, with their crooked corners, a smile that combined ruefulness and satire, gentleness and profound meditation. She would never see his profile again, outlined by the fire. All his features had been clear and salient, acute even, yet they had given the impression of too much pliability and mildness, and this, at times, had puzzled even Melissa, had made her dimly uneasy. But she had explained it by telling herself that it was because her father had such subtle mobility of mind, such sensibility, such intellect, and that it had softened and changed the priginal mold of his features.

  She pushed herself to her feet and wandered over to her father’s desk. She touched the papers, the ink-pot, the pens. They felt cold as ice. They would be moved and tidied, but never again by her father. She saw the little thin sheaf of paper to the right, near his reference books. She had forgotten. It was a sheaf of little Phoebe’s poems. She picked them up, and her aching eyes scanned them. How surprised she and Charles had been when they had discovered that Phoebe, small, shy, smiling Phoebe, wrote poetry! The girl had come into the study, simpering like a bashful child, and they had looked up at her in courteous and affectionate expectation, for Phoebe never came here—they could not remember her ever entering this room before. She had not looked at Melissa. She had just run lightly over to Charles and had dropped her pathetic little sheaf on his knee, and had blushed, and exclaimed softly and breathlessly: “Papa, I wrote these poems! I’ve always written poems and then thrown them away. But I—I—thought these weren’t bad, and I do wish you’d just look at them, and then tell me!”

  She had stood there, in her blue cotton frock, her pretty hands clenched tightly before her, her face bright with blushes, her eyes filled with glittering tears, and there had been something both defiant and touching in the glance she had given Melissa. Charles was always gentle. He took his pipe from his mouth and smiled at his younger daughter indulgently. “Well, this is a surprise, my darling,” he murmured. Out of the corner of his eye he had pleaded with Melissa to be patient, for she was frowning, and for a moment he thought how odd it was that Melissa could frown without a single line invading the frozen expanse of her brow. He had cleared his throat, and he began to read the poems aloud.

  Melissa had listened, at first impatiently, then with startled astonishment. The poems were perfect, exquisitely composed, without a flaw. Their sentiments were childish, immature, almost inane. But the talent was there, smooth as rippling silk, faintly luminous like Dresden china. Charles’ own face, too, began to express surprise. Now his voice lost its indulgent quality. He read with seriousness, on and on, poem after poem, while Phoebe stood there so stiff and childish and tense, her golden ringlets spilling on her shoulders and over her forehead, her eyes tearful.

  Then, at last, Charles had slowly dropped the sheaf onto his knee again, and looked at Me
lissa. They gazed at each other steadily, in silence. Finally Charles said: “The child has talent, Melissa. It is authentic, yes. The meter is perfect. How strange it is that we’ve never known this before.” And all the time Phoebe had stood there, but now she had uttered a whimpering sound and had begun to cry, her hands over her face.

  Melissa had stood up and put her arm about her little sister’s shoulder. For a moment or two something ignoble had burned in her, like an ugly jealousy, because Phoebe had put her little soft fingers like a wedge between herself and Charles. The swift thought had run through her mind: Now Papa and I shall never really be alone again. But she had pushed the thought away, and she had spoken with an alien richness in her cool and neutral voice: “Dearest Phoebe! And you never told us before!” Phoebe, overcome, had buried her head on Melissa’s shoulder and had sobbed, while Charles and Melissa had looked at each other over that shining head.

  Later, Charles and Melissa had made their plans, with a touch of unusual excitement. Phoebe would write a number of poems, enough to make a slender volume. Then Charles would approach Geoffrey Dunham, and urge their publication. “Pure, limpid water!” Charles had cried, his blue eyes very brilliant. “Dew on the grass! It is a true talent, Melissa, and with cultivation, with caution and guidance, our little Phoebe will emerge as an important and significant poetess. It is our duty, our privilege, Melissa, to guide and cultivate her. I am afraid, my love, that your obligations have now increased and must embrace your sister as well as myself.”

  He had expressed a courteous and affectionate anxiety for Melissa. Dear Papa, she had thought. He does not know that I am quite adequate to all “burdens,” for they are not really burdens at all. They are a delight, and a joy.