Melissa

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  She knew a crisis would soon arise. Then Charles had died.

  Again, Phoebe, remembering, smiled luxuriously in the dark. It was very thoughtful of Papa to die so conveniently. There would be no need, now, of engaging in distasteful combat with Melissa. Even silly Melissa would know that it was necessary for Phoebe to marry, to marry at once, and to marry John Barrett. So Phoebe would be spared a contretemps, and, like her father, she always avoided a contretemps whenever possible. It was much pleasanter to get one’s way by apparent compliance.

  She thought of John Barrett, and now a glow moved over her body. I am truly fond of John, she thought. He must never be sorry that he chose me. Thanks to dear Mama, I am a most excellent housekeeper. I shall, of course, make many changes in that old house, and we are going to be very happy indeed. Doubtless, John will take me to New York often and, later, we shall travel.

  She was so pleased with her thoughts and with the visions they had conjured up that she began to cry into her pillow. Softened and happy, she wept for her father, and thought how frightful it was that he was dead. Of course, silly Melissa would have no one at all now, and it was what she deserved, with her haughty ways and her overbearing manners. She would discover that she had no power at all, really. It served her right.

  The wind groaned somberly in the eaves, and Phoebe slept, a smile on her face.

  CHAPTER 8

  Amanda’s room, which she had once shared with Charles, overlooked the wide bleak lawns and the torn elms, also the distant road, the flowing meadows beyond, and the great brown hills. Narrow and long, it lay over the drawingroom below and was lighted by a thin tall window at each end. Here Amanda had hung her mother’s somberest draperies of dark crimson, now threadbare but still elegant, and here she had placed her mother’s own bedroom furniture, all heavy black walnut of ponderous size and weight; with dim narrow mirrors reaching almost to the ceiling. Handmade rugs, also dark of hue, had been scattered over an oaken floor so polished and so old that it appeared made of dusky glass. Amanda had hung dimmed portraits of her parents, her grandparents, her great-grandmother and one illustrious great-grandfather on the faded gray walls. Against a far wall, near her great-grandfather’s black and enormous desk, her father’s and her grandfather’s fine old books stood in a black walnut bookcase with glass doors.

  From the very beginning, Charles had hated this room, and had expressed himself eloquently about it. So it had been no great shock when, fifteen years later, he had withdrawn from it and had taken to sleeping in his frowsy study. Amanda had not commented on this abandonment, but sharp lines began to appear about her stern mouth. Modesty, delicacy, self-restraint, kept her silent. Later, marks of suffering would shadow her pale eyes when she saw Melissa with Charles and observed how the girl spent long hours with her father in his study. So it was that Amanda, always known for her good sense, her practical and realistic outlook, began to be blinded by her emotions. She did not blame Charles; she had never been able to blame him. She blamed Melissa.

  She lay, rigid and ice-cold, in her wide hard bed, and stared at one of the shadowy windows. She listened to the wind and the rain. Her worn hands under their cambric ruffles were clenched together. All her body seemed clenched, every muscle drawn like hard rope, as she silently struggled against her desolation and despair.

  How starkly vivid her life lay before her, like pinnacled rocks on a desert! She remembered so many things now. She remembered the anxious face of her father when she had told him of her coming marriage to Charles. “My dear girl,” he had said, “you know nothing of this man. Yes, I know that we are well acquainted with his background and family, which I admit are impeccable. We know he is considered a very erudite scholar and writer. But we know nothing else. I have known him for many years, yet still I do not know him. Why? Because he will not let himself be known! Why? He is of a good reputation; they speak highly of him in New York, elaborating on his good temper, his education, his brilliant qualities of mind. There is nothing murky or reprehensible in his history. Yet he hides himself. Is it shyness? No. I know shyness. Is it reserve, which we have always admired? No. It is not reserve. It is something else, and I fear it for you. There is something dangerous and wrong in a man who will not let himself be known even by those closest to him, even by those he professes are his friends.”

  Amanda could see her father now, so clearly. Tall, lean, clad in black broadcloth, he stood before the black marble fireplace in their home in Boston. He had a thin gray beard, meticulously cut and shaped, and he had pale bright eyes, penetrating yet kind. He stood with his back to the fire, his coat-tails draped over his arms, leaning towards his daughter, with trouble on his narrow white face.

  Nevertheless, she had married Charles, and had loved him, and still loved him. Her father had been wrong. Never once had Charles used an ugly word to her; never once had he displayed angry impatience or lack of consideration or cruelty. He had always been full of gentleness and reason, always courteous, always pliable and considerate. He had striven to shield her from every anxiety, had invariably displayed fondness for her, his every word had been humorous and kind. Yet she had been most desperately unhappy.

  But why? she cried out to the wind and the darkness, with anguish in her heart Charles had been perfect There had been no flaw in him. The reason for her misery lay elsewhere, as she had always known. The misery lay with Melissa, who, from earliest childhood, had seized upon Charles, had appropriated him, had turned him away from his other daughter, his son, and his wife. (Oh, Charlesl Charles!)

  Amanda’s heart beat with thick violence and pain, with dark emotion. It was as if a black obliterating hand were moving over her struggling mind, which tried to see something she most enormously wished to deny. She felt the denial in herself but in her agony, gave it another name. She called it hatred for Melissa, who had taken Charles away from his wife.

  When had Melissa begun to haunt her father’s study? It must have been when she was ten years old or so. Charles had first taught her her lessons in the dining-room, by candlelight and firelight in the long winter days. Then they had gone up to his study, where “there was more quiet” to quote Charles. Phoebe and Andrew were young and noisy, and Charles had claimed, with an affectionate smile, that it was impossible to conduct lessons in that atmosphere. Thereafter, Melissa and her father had immured themselves upstairs, with the shut door like an immovable barrier. But strangely, he continued to teach Phoebe and Andrew in the dining-room.

  Amanda had not complained. It was not in her nature. Besides, on the surface, it was “reasonable.” As early as twelve, Melissa had become her father’s amanuensis. She answered his letters in her sharp and angular handwriting, so clear and uncompromising. Yes, it had all been very reasonable, and Amanda had been taught by her New England father to respect reason above all other things. She had told herself firmly that she was absurd, when she began to repine at her loneliness and isolation, at the long empty hours. She saw Charles less and less. He was always in his study with Melissa, and when she passed the door she could hear the murmur of their voices, Charles’ rich humorous tones, Melissa’s quiet firm answers. There was an intimacy in the sounds which vaguely frightened Amanda, she did not know why. She did not know that she was afraid.

  Remembering, her face grew damp again, as if with terror. She thought: I should have rescued Charles from her. I ought not to have been so restrained. I let Melissa destroy him, close him away from his family, deny him the warmth of a family life. He was always so compliant, my dear husband! Always so generous, so afraid of giving pain, so soft in the hands of a firm character! He would not hurt Melissa.

  I have never been able to love Melissa. Even when she was a very young child she was cold and insensitive, turning from every proffered affection save that offered by her father. She never had a friend; she repulsed the friendly gestures of other children. She haunted her father, until she utterly conquered him. Never have I had a tender word from her; never did she consider her little
sister, or her brother, until the day she laid her wicked hands on my Phoebe’s life, until she sent Andrew from his home for an education he does not want. One by one, she eleminated us from Charles’ life and absorbed him unto herself. Now she is trying to destroy my son and my daughter, and this time, Papa, I shall fight to the death, as I ought to have fought before.

  Amanda flung aside her sheets and her quilts, and sprang to the floor. She walked up and down in her bare feet. She moaned a little.

  The sound of her feet was dull and feverish below the voice of the wind and the rain. She wrung her wet hands; her throat ached from her harsh and rushing-breath. The black hand moved away from her mind and now, suddenly, she saw everything!

  “My God!” she cried aloud, in wondering torment. “How could I have been so blind? How could I have allowed my life to be destroyed so, and my children’s lives? How could I have let Melissa be destroyed before my very eyes?”

  Horror seized her, and she covered her face with her hands.

  Melissa! Charles had first destroyed his wife, and then had destroyed Melissa! But such a small and obscure triumph, such a tiny field for cruelty and malignance! He was a man of gifts; he could have broadened his destruction had he wished. Yet he was content with this poor, small conquest, this conquest of a lonely woman and a girl. Had he so base a heart, so narrow a mind, that this contented him? Or did he know that he did not possess the power to do harm to more than us?

  Shame for Charles filled her, as well as horror. She sat down in a chair near a window, and shivered violently. She thought of the web that always seemed to smother her whenever she had tried to enter into a contest with Charles. She saw that Melissa was completely swathed in that web. Was Melissa lost? Was it too late?

  Geoffrey Dunham had asked her consent in his suit for Melissa. Again, Amanda’s face was wet; she sat up, stared urgently into the darkness. And she had warned him against the girl! Amanda pressed her clenched hands to her lips as if to try to recall the words she had spoken. She remembered Geoffrey’s faint, enigmatic smile. Had there been compassion in his eyes, wonder at her blindness? Yes, she was sure of that. He had known. He had always known.

  “Melissa!” she cried into the darkness, the tears spilling over her face. “My child! My child!”

  She stood up again, returned to her bed, and threw herself upon it in utter and despairing abandon. She thought, incoherently, how she had been deprived of even an honest widowhood, for she could not mourn her husband. She could not remember him with pride and with trust. She thought of the women she knew who had lost their husbands, and she remembered their tears, their proud words of love. They had their consolation in their memories. She had nothing. How innocent she had been, how ingenuous! Her husband’s face swayed before her, benign, gently smiling, and now she saw how inscrutable and hooded his eyes had been. He had lived a secret and ominous life of his own, yet he had put out a silent and corrupting finger to destroy others, others who never knew they were being destroyed. She squeezed her own eyes together to shut out his face, she cried aloud: “No, Charles, no, no!” All her robbed heart raised itself like a shield before the memory of him.

  After a long time, weak and trembling, she pushed herself to her feet, threw her woolen wrapper over her nightdress, and crept out into the hall. The scent of the funeral flowers lingered there and she closed her nostrils against it. The dark hall was silent; somewhere a mouse gnawed, she heard the running of the water in the eaves, the forlorn crying of the wind, the strident ticking of the clock below. The old house creaked as if a legion of ghosts were walking up and down the stairs and over the ancient floors. A spectral chill blew over Amanda, fluttered her garments about her feet. She felt, rather than saw, the cold doors shut against her as she stood alone in the hall listening to the faint sounds all about her. She crept on, reached Melissa’s door. No light showed through the crack. Amanda pressed her trembling palm against the icy wood and all her spirit went through the door to her daughter.

  She stood there a long time, until her flesh was heavy with cold, and her heart too numb with pain to feel anything.

  CHAPTER 9

  Melissa’s bedroom windows, two of them, narrow and tall like slots, looked out at the dreary side garden, the long road that wound down to Midfield, and a series of stark brown meadows. The room was furnished with Spartan austerity; in fact, so bleak was it that one of discernment would have suspected that there was just a little innocent pretension, a little preciousness, in the meagerness of furniture, the uncarpeted floor, the skimpiness of draperies, the lack of decoration and feminine prettinesses. Large, cold, filled with a glare of hard north light during the day, and with a crepuscular shadowiness in the mornings and early evenings, not even a fire could heat it adequately. Melissa herself had painted the walls a dull gray, making them resemble the walls of a monk’s cell. Over the brown marble fireplace, itself a miserable monstrosity, she had hung a fairly good print of the Mona Lisa, a present from her father. There were no other pictures or portraits on the bare walls, nor did the mantelpiece boast more than a pair of large pewter candlesticks filled with fat candles. The fireplace equipment was rusted steel, even the fender. Near the hearth was a Boston rocker, innocent of cushion, its legs splintered and worn. A great rickety wardrobe in a far corner held Melissa’s few garments and her other pair of shoes. The commode was innocent of linen scarf; two dingy towels hung on its rails. It’s china pitcher and bowl, without decoration, stood on the top, scrupulously clean if well cracked.

  Beside them lay Melissa’s comb and brush, her soap in a white dish, and above it hung a small distempered mirror in a wooden frame. She had no bureau. Between the two windows was her desk, wide flat, stained, at which she examined and corrected her father’s manuscripts and prepared them for postage. She had a single inkpot, a blotter, and an old quill pen. In the center of the bare room stood her hard, narrow, tester bed, starkly made, and covered with a quilt. Not for Melissa any counterpane, fringed or draped.

  One whole wall was occupied by a long bookcase, literally jammed with books, classics, reference works, poetry, travelogues, Roman poets in the Latin. originals, French books, German books, an ancient encyclopedia, and, on a shelf by themselves, Charles’ books, in fine calf with gold tops.

  Melissa believed passionately in views, and in order not to obstruct her view of the countryside below she had resisted Amanda’s suggestions for full and heavy draperies at the windows. Consequently, the girl had hung thin sparse curtains of pale brown linen at the windows, and had thrust them so far back that they were hardly more than crumpled ropes. Melissa never closed her shutters, even on the coldest nights. She liked to watch the desolate moon rising in the midnight winter skies, and to catch the first shallow morning light as it crept over the earth.

  Charles called it affectionately “my nun’s cell.” He hated fripperies, he had said. Frivolities were not for Melissa, with her Greek mind and stern, dedicated life. So Charles said. He had begun to deride feminine trappings and conceits to Melissa during her very earliest childhood, so that any secret longings beginning to arise in her child’s mind for pretty garments, handsome rugs or delicate colors had been effectually crushed. Once he caught her furtively embroidering a scarf for her commode and tatting lace for her pillowcases, and he had expressed such a gentle disgust, such a soft derision, that she had instantly thrown the things into the fire and had remembered them thereafter with flushings of shame.

  It was at Charles’ suggestion that Melissa had pulled back her hair so severely from the hard if noble planes of her face and knotted it grimly at the nape of her neck. Once she had tied it with a blue ribbon. Charles had given the ribbon one hurt and disappointed glance, and it, too, was tossed into the fire. Later, he had said gently, as if grieved: “Would you tie a ribbon about the head of a Greek statue, my darling?”

  It was Charles who early had told Melissa that he despised the trumperies of silly females who had nothing but vapid thoughts in their heads. It wa
s Charles who said that the man and woman of “true mind” thought of garments as necessary coverings only and protections from inclement weather. Melissa had gravely agreed with him, and had quelled any wistful yearnings of her own.

  Once Amanda had looked Charles squarely in the eye and had said in a low tone: “One would suspect that you desire that Melissa may never marry, that she present herself as an ugly spectacle in the eyes of gentlemen. Assuredly, she dresses to please you, and as a result she is hideous.” But Charles had returned Amanda’s look with one of astonished bewilderment and had left his wife with a very visible quivering of his full mouth. Later, he had condescended to say: “My dear Amanda, it is regrettable that you do not discern that Melissa has a statuesque beauty of her own which should not be marred by stupid ruffles and laces, bangles and hoops. If you do not see that, then I am truly sorry for you. As for marriage, it will delight me if Melissa obtains a man worthy of her. Unless she does, it would much better for her to remain a spinster.”

  What Amanda did not know (if she had known she would have struggled with Charles long ago for the girl’s soul) was that Charles had begun a sinister campaign against marriage for Melissa when she had been but fourteen years old. He had opened his campaign with wistful hints of the misery one of mind must endure when mated with one who has no eye above material and mundane things. His hints were accompanied by sighs, by martyred but resigned gestures, by smiles that implored sympathy and understanding. Melissa’s single heart, intrinsically so passionate, so trusting and so pure, had understood, and the intense tenderness she felt for her father in his wretchedness began to grow into an intolerant hatred for her mother who so afflicted him.