The awful grief, that had been held back by her numbness, now flooded Melissa. The scene that morning in the Upjohn house rushed before her eyes. She saw Phoebe and Andrew vividly, and heard their voices. They were lost, their thoughts and ideals perverted, because there had been no money. They had said ugly things, because they had been desperate. They had refused help, for they had been too proud. Hideousness was closing about them, and she, Melissa, could not hold it away. It was too late. It was always too late, when there was no money, money which the wicked and the frivolous held in tight and avaricious hands and which they would not let go to rescue the lives of those who might save the world.
Melissa, forgetting the presence of Rachel, leaned her head on the back of her hand and sobbed aloud, harsh and grating sobs of utter despair and sorrow.
CHAPTER 25
Geoffrey abruptly flung open the door of his sister’s apartments without bothering to knock. He was not too surprised to see that the draperies had been drawn closely over the windows, so that the room lay deep in drifted shadows, as if one already dead lay there. But he was taken aback at the reek of Cologne water and smelling-salts which assaulted his nostrils with an acrid wave. Arabella lay flat in bed, her plump body a heap under the white silken quilts, and beside her sat her favorite elderly maid, Ellis, farming her and murmuring hoarsely in a sympathetic manner.
Geoffrey did not like Ellis, for she was tall and lank and sly, with a spade-like chin, dark flesh, long thin features, and little, tilted, and malicious eyes. But she and Arabella were friends as well as mistress and servant. Geoffrey had often played with the amusing idea of writing a monograph on the subject of mental similarities between those who were faithfully served and those who served them. One had only to study the servant to understand all about the master or the mistress. There was such a situation in his own offices between Eliot Bargette, his chief editor, and the latter’s slavish secretary, Wilson Bogerson. Eliot was a thin, slight, and whitefaced fox, with drawn, small features, and Wilson was a grave and sonorous-voiced giant, with features like a church-deacon’s. Yet they could communicate completely by a single glance, by the slightest lifting of a silent finger, and they both hated and feared Geoffrey Dunham.
Ellis returned her master’s dislike with equal vigor, yet she now rose and curtseyed with deep respect and stood by the bed in a servile attitude, giving Geoffrey sidelong and mealy-mouthed glances. He could not endure the woman. He said: “You may go, Ellis.”
The woman hesitated, and threw a swift look at the faintly moaning lady on the bed, as if waiting for the order to be countermanded. Geoffrey lost his temper. “I told you to get out,” he said quietly. The woman’s deep-set eyes flashed at him in fright, and with a rustle of her skirts and a flutter of an apron she literally ran from the room.
Geoffrey sat down in the chair she had vacated. Arabella appeared unaware of his presence. Her face was buried in her pillows; she kept up an incessant moaning. Her brother said nothing as yet. He merely waited, for he knew that nothing is more unbearable than silence. The room was very hot, and its smells were overpowering. Now he detected Arabella’s violet sachet mingling with the smelling-salts and the Cologne and the attar of roses she frequently affected. The fire was a brilliant red hole in the gloom. The edges of the drawn draperies were gilded with the bright fingers of the exiled sun. The little ormolu clock on the white mantel ticked gently and the fire crackled.
After a long while, Geoffrey spoke: “You are an unregenerate bitch, Arabella.”
During their frequent quarrels he was often given to what Arabella called “uncouth” language, but never had he used such an epithet in addressing her before. She was shocked out of her dramatic moaning; she lay utterly silent and stiff under her quilts, hardly breathing, but not removing her face from the pillows. Geoffrey stood up and began to walk slowly up and down the room, his mouth grim and set. He went on, pausing at the foot of the bed:
“You have behaved like a slut today. Fortunately, and with rare good sense, you chose not to make a filthy display before your guests. Had you done so, you should not have spent another night under this roof. However, you have communicated something to them, some way, so that my wife entered my home as ungreeted as a strumpet, and passed the closed doors of those who have feasted on my hospitality. By God, I shall not forget this, and you’ll pay for it, eventually!”
The short thick mound under the quilts moved. Very slowly, rising like a small hill, Arabella sat up in bed. Her full face was raddled and gray; she had become an old woman. Her reddened eyes had swollen to twice their size and her lightish hair sprang out about her head in a ragged cloud. But there was no mistaking the complete sincerity of her aghast and agonized expression as she peered at her brother between crimson lids.
“You are talking like this, to your sister, Geoffrey?” she asked, each word painfully uttered and incredulous.
“I am talking to a woman who has lost every semblance of decency and who has forgotten even the few manners she had acquired,” replied Geoffrey with cold violence. “Had you been the veriest drab who ever bent over a wash-tub, or a fishmonger’s wife, you would have displayed more feeling, more propriety, more graciousness, than you have done today. You were always very careful to be meticulously correct in the presence of guests and to control yourself with some seemliness. Had you had a single instinct of a lady you would have pretended to some grace, some fortitude, some naturalness, before these people in this house. But that was beyond you. And yet, I wonder. I believe this was a deliberate attempt on your part to dishonor me, to throw odium on my wife, to cause your friends to laugh in ridicule and slyness behind my doors, to punish me by allowing me to enter my own house, with my wife, like some skulking cur with his dam, shamefaced and sheepish and contemptible.”
Arabella stared at him speechlessly, her fat shoulders huddled together under her ruffled silk nightdress, her plump arms hugging herself as if she had turned very cold. Then she gasped aloud and put her hands to her throat. Geoffrey made a sound of disgust, and looked at her with inexorable loathing.
Arabella began to speak, hardly above a hoarse whisper: “You say you shall never forget. Neither shall I, Geoffrey. You speak of my ‘dishonoring’ you. You have dishonored yourself and dishonored me. You ran away early in the morning, leaving behind a foolish and cowardly note, and married a female who has all my scorn and disdain, and who will bring you nothing but misery. Had you had, yourself, ‘a single instinct’ of a gentleman, you would have come to me this morning and told me—” She swallowed convulsively.
Geoffrey’s face changed as he remembered Melissa’s remarks to him in the carriage about the note he had left for his sister. But he was too enraged to be reasonable.
“I left you that note because I know you too well, Bella. I was afraid you would kick up a hell of a stink and arouse the whole damn household with carefully unmodulated yells and hysterias. I knew your hatred for Melissa; I have known all your tricks and your ‘subtlety’ for a long time. You would not have succeeded in preventing me from marrying Melissa, but you would have tried. How you would have tried!”
But Arabella’s shrewd ear had caught the note of overemphasized rage in his voice, and she took quick advantage of it. She found her own voice and cried wildly, beating her quilts with her fists:
“Yes, I would have tried! I would have flung myself down before you, so that to pass me you would have had to step on my body! In my misguided affection for you, I would have fallen on my knees before you, imploring you not to commit this crime against yourself, this terrible folly! I would have clung to you, begging you to reflect, to realize, and perhaps I might have saved you from this disgrace and madness. To marry such a creature, to bring her to this house, to flaunt her before the faces of gentlefolk in all her ugliness and stupidity! I would have tried, even with my life, to save you from that!”
She burst into hiccoughing sobs, buried her face in her hands, and began to rock back and forth in her bed. The
sobs became deep and genuine groans. Geoffrey’s face grew darker, but he could not speak. Too much had been said now between himself and his sister. He listened to her groans and, in spite of his hatred and fury, he felt sick and alarmed.
“What can our guests think?” said Arabella between the awful sounds she uttered. “Completely unheralded—you run away from this house and bring back a ‘wife’! And such a wife! What will they say, our friends? They will laugh at you, until all Philadelphia roars. Worse, they will think the only thing possible—that you had to marry her, this frumpish countrywoman, this miserable female in her ragged frock and her tattered shawl!”
Again, in spite of himself, Geoffrey had a sudden vision of the faces of his guests and his friends, and heard the distant rumble of their laughter. And again, his fury mounted, in defense of Melissa, Melissa with her poor chapped hands, her dreadful garments, her dazed bewilderment and innocent sorrow, her crushing grief. Perhaps he ought not to have done this to her, in her defenselessness. But there had been no other way possible. Nevertheless, he heard the cruel and delighted laughter at himself and Melissa. He, at least, could combat his enemies. But Melissa had no weapons, and she had been sufficiently stricken already.
He said, brutally, hating his sister afresh: “You know this, and so you abandoned me, deliberately, and exposed Melissa to the hyena laughter of cheese-mongers and tradesmen and other riff-raff. Had you gallantly accepted the situation, had you expressed some sentiment, however false to your true feelings and nature, they would have had to accept what I had done with some pretension to gentility. You planned to make me lose face, to hold Melissa up to the mirth of jackals. That is the way you have returned the charity I extended to you, the kindness, and the generosity.”
His face swelled with passion, became suffused with new rage, so that it had a brutish look. A thick and livid ridge outlined his sensual mouth.
Arabella regarded him in silence, though there was an evil glint between her scarlet eyelids.
“Enough,” said Geoffrey. “Here are my orders: You shall appear at the dinner-table as composed as possible, and as gracious. You shall pretend that this was no surprise to you. You shall greet my wife with the respect due her, and make her welcome. If you fail in any of these, you shall leave my house forever, as penniless as you came, carrying with you nothing but what you possessed when I gave you shelter, and be damned to you!”
Arabella caught her breath in a loud hiss of terror. She stared at him incredulously, and her large nose jutted out from her sagging face like a vulture’s beak. And Geoffrey stared back, implacably, with an expression that was completely bestial.
Arabella knew when she was defeated. She knew that, for her own sake, she must do the best possible with this appalling situation. But she could not immediately surrender, even if her life had depended upon it.
She whispered malignantly: “Do you know what the whole countryside, and even those parts of Philadelphia where the Upjohns are known, say of Melissa? They say she is demented, crazed. They say things of her and her father which cannot be repeated by any Christian tongue—”
Geoffrey turned white. Slowly, he moved to the side of the bed. Arabella watched him come, and shrank back as far as possible, her heart leaping up into her throat. Again, there was silence in the room, as they looked at each other across the sharp deep abyss of their mutual hatred.
“‘A Christian tongue’!” said Geoffrey at last, in a very soft tone. “Your tongue, Arabella. That is the ‘Christian’ tongue which has slavered at Melissa’s skirts. Only you could be guilty of such dirtiness. You have been afraid for years, haven’t you, that I might some day marry Melissa? So you deliberately befouled her, whispering your vile lies into every ear that would listen, hoping that one of these days, perhaps, I might hear an echo from another tongue without suspecting the source of the vicious tale. But apparently more decency lives even in your hearers than in you—you, a woman! Where did you learn such things, Arabella? From your husband, from the dregs that haunted your ‘salon’ before that miserable wretch died? From strumpets and perverts and other horrible monsters?”
Almost fainting from his tone and his words, Arabella crouched away from her brother, not daring to take her eyes from him for fear of physical violence.
Geoffrey went on: “But, in spite of all your efforts, no such tale ever came to me, nor, if it had, should I have believed it even for a single moment. There is no more to say,” he added, thickly. “You have your orders.”
He looked at the great wardrobes against the far corner of the room. He went to them, his footsteps, even on the thick rugs, loud in the silence. He flung open the wardrobe doors, and his hands riffled through the crowded racks of gowns and dresses which filled the depths. Arabella watched him in stupefied terror, and as she swallowed drily she made a curious series of sounds. She saw Geoffrey tear several of her best gowns from their hangers, a new soft satin which she had never worn, a black silk heavily and richly draped and embroidered with pearls, a deep brown velvet with golden buttons, a dark crimson velvet with pale cream lace. He tossed the garments over his arm. He went directly to his sister’s chests, and wrenched out the drawers. He scooped up handfuls of the filmiest petticoats and nightgowns and chemises. He stuffed his pockets with silk stockings.
Then he turned to his sister. “These will be altered at once to fit Melissa. But when I leave this room you will immediately get up and send a list to Philadelphia for an entire and complete wardrobe for my wife, and you will send another list to New York. You will know the sizes to order. And then you will give the list to James, so as to catch the morning post.” Arabella could not speak. She could only look at the pre cious frippery on her brother’s arm, and her face became wild with rage and hate.
“You will also call your maid, Ellis, and gather up all the jewels which belonged to my mother, and you will send them, in an hour or two, to my wife’s room. They are hers, now. You wore them by courtesy. You shall never disgrace them again.”
He went out of the room. Arabella watched him go in silence. Even when the door had closed behind him she continued to look at it, and her swollen eyes became terrible.
CHAPTER 26
Geoffrey threw the heap of clothing which he had confiscated from his sister onto his bed, and walked through his dressing-room to the room which had once been his mother’s. Here he found that the white draperies had been partially drawn. But there was a fresh sweet scent in the air, and even the fire seemed cleaner than the one he had just left. Melissa lay on the velvet bed, asleep, still dressed in her brown woolen frock. But Rachel had thrown a light blue robe over the girl’s feet.
The maid rose as Geoffrey entered, and her pert black eyes were both alert and soft. She whispered: “Mrs. Dunham just fell asleep, sir. She seemed very tired.”
Geoffrey nodded, touched the girl’s arm, and led her back to his bedroom. He indicated the gowns on the bed. “These are Mrs. Shaw’s. She has kindly presented them to Mrs. Dunham, but they are, obviously, of a size that will not fit her. Do you think you could take one of them at once and, by working very quickly, have it ready for Mrs. Dunham for dinner?”
He looked at his watch. It was half-past three. He suddenly remembered that he had had no mid-day meal. Rachel picked up one of the frocks and examined it critically, went to the wardrobe, removed Melissa’s black dress, and measured the two dresses together with concentrated attention. Arabella’s dresses were short and wide compared with the long and slender lines of the miserable black bombazine, and Rachel’s pink face became dubious and hopeless.
“It doesn’t have to fit exactly,” said Geoffrey, with impatience. “But it is impossible for Mrs. Dunham to appear tonight in what she is wearing today.” He felt cheap and foolish, for Melissa, in brown woolen, would be far handsomer than the prettiest guest in his house. He was not a man to consider the opinions of others in his own life. But now he must consider Melissa. Damn women. They forever complicated a man’s existence, made hi
m dance to the organ-grinder’s music of the conventions like an infernal grinning monkey. Who was the fool who said that men have power over women? The truth was that men feared women, which resulted in masculine arrogance towards the so-called weaker sex, and an eternally futile gesture of dominance. Geoffrey was now quite sure that women secretly laughed at men and well knew who held the balance of power.
He waited irascibly for the result of Rachel’s close inspection. She was now examining the soft light-blue silk of the new dress. Now her face brightened. “Look, sir,” she said eagerly. “The gown has not been quite completed. The hem is unfinished. Apparently this was to be done by one of the maids, at home. A matter of some six inches has been marked off. This third ruffle on the drapery can be dropped, the bustle lowered a few inches, the bodice lengthened by letting out this seam, the sleeves narrowed by tucking—”
Melissa Page 24
