No festivities could take place, naturally, after so much grief, and so Geoffrey and Melissa had decided to be married with the utmost quietness. She, Arabella, she must confess, had been shocked by this, for she was a very conventional soul and thought the marriage ought to have been postponed for at least six months. But others were not so conventional. Arabella, at this, sighed, and fluttered her handkerchief. However, it was not her place to criticize, she added, with meek pathos. It was entirely the affair of Geoffrey and dear Melissa. She, Arabella, truly, must not be considered, with her very, very foolish ideas of what was proper. Times changed, and manners with them, and one must try to understand, must one not? Things were certainly not the same as before the war. Whether that was a matter to be deplored was beside the question.
The guests listened, murmured sympathetically, and did not believe Arabella in the least. They had heard her wild scream that morning, and then, later, her wilder sobs behind her door. The discreet questioning of a servant, here and there, had revealed a mystery exciting and full of potential interest. But, as they were polite, and guests, they could do nothing but pretend, and they nodded their heads with deep gravity as they contemplated Arabella’s air of vivacious hysteria, her drawn and tinted cheeks, so raddled and lined, her reddened eyes.
Mr. Victor Littlefield was little in stature, character and soul, a little black ant of a man with an ant’s hidden and murderous pincers and potentialities. He was sixty years old, but no grayness had appeared in his thin black hair or in his strong black beard. His dress was dignified, for he invariably wore black broadcloth excellently tailored and fitted. Little, darting black eyes shone and danced above the forest below, and they had an ant-like tendency to rove, to examine, to seize. His lady was his second wife, considerably younger than himself, and, as she was the daughter of a prosperous blanket-maker of low beginnings, she was very elegant, indeed, and of such a swooning appearance that one was constantly afraid that a single loud word would compel her to reach for her smelling-salts. Her husband was convinced of her aristocratic fragility; once he had had a certain robustness of his own, but his wife had carefully instilled precious mannerisms in him and allowed him in his conversation to use only the most stilted and ceremonious phrases. Like all vulgarians by race and breeding, she was intensely devoted to the more delicate arts, was one of Arabella’s most ardent admirers, and was given to indulge in soirées in her mansion in Philadelphia. So clever was this lady, so careful her conduct, so polished her pretensions, that she had been able to deceive even the most astute, avaricious and well-born members of Philadelphia society, and her soirées were well attended by them on every occasion.
Mr. and Mrs. Brewster Eldridge were a fat, short and smiling couple, in their forties. Mr. Eldridge was also a publisher, but in New York. Some thought them brother and sister, for they were astoundingly alike, both possessing round pink faces, blue, twinkling eyes, small white teeth, and humorous mouths. One felt about them the aura of good-temper, shrewdness and an inclination to kindly laughter.
Then there were the Bertrams, of New York, who had no character or outstanding features at all, but merged against every background and were lost. Their aura was thin and rather dusty, and one felt something faintly acrid about them, something dried and attenuated. But, in Arabella’s eyes, they possessed the most sterling of qualities: they were rich. Mr. Peter Bertram’s father had been very successful in financing opium running into China, and his pedantic son, who patronized all arts and artists indiscriminately, had inherited an enormous fortune. Mr. Bertram and his musty little lady considered Arabella a veritable genius with pencil and paintbrush, and they respected her all the more because she had no need of their, help.
It was not in Arabella’s nature to revere or admire anyone who did not possess considerable money, not even a real artist. But, though Mr. Erskine Holland was not wealthy, it was quite the thing to invite him everywhere. Of course, hypocrites pretended that they respected his brilliance as a popular portrait-painter and the fact that his father had been a distinguished artist in his own right and his mother the daughter of a former governor of Massachusetts and the descendant of a long line of Puritan aristocracy. She, Arabella, was not taken in by this hypocrisy in the least. But it was the thing, among the established, to have one’s portrait painted by Mr. Holland, he was quite “the rage,” and hostesses fought for the privilege of entertaining him and his wife. So the Hollands had been invited for the holidays, and they, and the Eldridges, made the occasion almost endurable for Geoffrey Dunham.
Mr. Holland was a very tall, very lean, middle-aged gentle man, with a wide, thick gray mustache and a pair of crystalline brown eyes, acute, penetrating and gentle. He had a warm handshake, and his glance missed nothing. Mrs. Holland was a tiny woman, like a dainty piece of porcelain, and though she was in her forties, she appeared much younger. She gave the impression of butterfly fragility and color, yet she had much character, whimsicality and sturdy common-sense. She was given, on occasion, to amazingly vigorous exclamations of “Nonsense!” and almost always she was quite right. Her good-tempered and searching brown eyes were kind even when her words were not. But much was forgiven her because of her charm and her warmth of personality.
It could not be said that Arabella truly liked any of her guests, with the possible exception of Mrs. Littlefield, of the cheese and the vast fortune, who was Arabella’s one confidante and her “devoted friend.” She endured them all, because they were either fashionable or rich, and hardly one detected the fact that she innately disliked them. There was one guest, however, and he almost unexpected until a day or two before his arrival, with whom Arabella had quite fallen in love in a coquettishly aunt-like fashion. This fortunate creature was the son of Mr. Littlefield by his first wife, and his name was Ravel. Mrs. Littlefield the First had been of a poetic temperament and she had conned this name from some languishing and romantic novel written by an English lady. Mr. Littlefield had protested, for he had considerable common-sense of a rather crude sort, but his wife had been determined. So Ravel it was, and Mr. Littlefield was sometimes heard bitterly commenting on the fact that it “suited the rascal, damned if it didn’t.”
When Mr. Littlefield had remarried, his relatives had murmured darkly of future sinister machinations against the peace and happiness of the young Ravel. Stepmothers were notorious for unkindness, if not for outright wickedness and poison-plots, especially when such a fortune was at stake. But to the astonishment of everyone, Mrs. Littlefield became a sincere and devoted second mother to the child. She never bore any children of her own. Strangers were always amazed when they discovered that Ravel was only her step-son, for the two were not only friends in public and in actuality but had immediately formed a deep attachment for each other.
It was Mrs. Littlefield who defended the boy against his father and was secretly guilty of turning any weak affection the lad had had for his progenitor into suspicious dislike. Mr. Littlefield liked concrete facts and common-sense be havior, to both of which Ravel had an instinctive aversion, being of a “poetic temperament.” It was inevitable that father and son must some day come to actual hatred. Mrs. Littlefield only hastened the process, and was in possession of Ravel’s complete trust and fervid love. She understood the boy very well, and brooded over him even now, when he was almost thirty, with something like obsession.
Ravel had winning ways and few women could resist them. He was also his father’s chief heir, and this did nothing to turn the ladies against him. With those exquisite manners and all that potential cash, he would have been considered desirable even had he resembled Caliban. But, as he was also remarkably handsome, the whole effect was devastating as far as susceptible females were concerned. Almost always he preferred to stand, usually against something noble like a marble pillar or a frescoed wall, and his attitudes were dramatically wistful, and calculated to set gentlemen’s teeth on edge and ladies’ hearts to fluttering. He was almost as tall as Mr. Holland, the artist, but mu
ch more elegant and fluid. His figure, usually in faultless black broadcloth and white linen, gave the impression of suppleness and languor and almost feminine slenderness. This last was denied by really excellent shoulders and good musculature, which fine tailoring displayed to artful advantage. All his movements were swimming and graceful, and designed like an actor’s, and most of his expressions were overlaid with tender melancholy, dreamy abstraction, and poetic but delicate gloom.
The figure, the attitudes, and the cash, would have been quite enough. But infatuated Nature, in a fit of delirium, had tossed all her gifts at Ravel with an astonishing abandon. She gave him a beautifully modelled face, glowingly pale but redeemed cunningly from effeminacy by a fine strong jaw, good cheek-planes and a large chiselled nose. These hid a telltale soft mouth of too much color and of an ungenerously small cut. The underlip had a full and formless pink outline, somewhat pouting, like a petulant woman’s. But women found this adorable. It so expressed his “sensitive” soul, his love for beauty, his refinement and delicacy. One had only to look at that mouth, that face, to know he was a poet. Unfortunately, he was, of a sort. Otherwise, he was quite intelligent, a flaw he cleverly hid from the ladies.
His adoring female friends quite often quarreled about what constituted his greatest charm. But there was no quarrel about his eyes. These were conceded to be his best feature, even beyond the mop of rich dark waves which crowned his head and which was cut just a trifle too long in order to give him a Byronic appearance. (He also affected the Byronic cravat, full and flowing.) His eyes were full, melting and dark, with white hooded lids and remarkable eyelashes that could sweep his pale cheek. He could make those eyes flash like jewels, glimmer like moonlight with passionate tenderness, gleam with poetic fire. (He practiced these different moods sedulously before his mirror.) No one of the female sex could resist those eyes. They made the older ladies wish to embrace him with tearful maternal love; they made the younger ladies wish to embrace him also, without the maternal ingredient. He suffered both, with equal grace, having had good tutelage in his beloved Paris, where he had been living for the past three years, romantically residing in the Latin Quarter, writing his poetry and cultivating the ladies of the salons and the soubrettes of the theatre.
For the rest, he had a beguilingly musical voice, resonant and full of the most fascinating nuances, and a pair of extremely slender white hands, expressive and fluent.
Gentlemen fervently averred that he “made them gag.” They called him “that puppy.” He had no friends among his sex. But as he knew his own worth and understood that the hostility was in great part envy and jealousy, he was only amused. His forte was the ladies, and he cultivated them with ardor. His stepmother saw to it that his allowance was enormous, and so he never lacked for money for jewels, for flowers, for a carriage of his own and a beautiful apartment in New York.
He was, at this time, in the doldrums. He was just recovering from his last passionate encounter with a more than ordinarily determined young lady of the New York stage. She had been resolutely set on marriage, a thing which Ravel regarded with natural abhorrence, for, in his way, he had considerable sense. He knew that marriage would greatly inhibit him among the ladies. Moreover, he knew very well that if he ever married (God forbid!), it would not be to any lady who had displayed her thighs to him either in public or in private. Even in passion, he kept his head. He gave all his charm to his current inamorata, but never his heart. Knowing what a fortune would be his some day, he demanded the like in a prospective wife. He was, therefore, quite outraged and honestly indignant when the young lady of the New York stage artlessly informed him she desired to marry him. He had hurriedly parted from her, genuinely wounded at her lack of sensibility and intelligence. But he was not to rid him seif of her for months, for she was a girl of considerable character and obstinacy. It cost him five thousand dollars in the end.
He was now in the mood when he longed for “real true love.” This mood was not an unfamiliar one, but he distrusted it. It had led him into some sad and expensive débâcles. Nevertheless, he also welcomed it, for it added a gentle melancholy to his temper and made him absolutely irresistible. Moreover, the poetic and creative passion was upon him, and he had decided that he was now ready to begin his magnum opus, a long dramatic poem on the subject of Orpheus and his lute and his beautiful, tragic young wife. The only trouble was that he needed an inspiration, and none was immediately forthcoming in the persons of any of the young ladies he knew. Not one of them resembled Eurydice. So Ravel, during these holidays, was filled with gloom, creative urges, and urges of a more robust nature, hopelessness, and rancor. His father had been particularly obnoxious about the five thousand dollars, and was not yet placated. He had insisted that his son accompany him and Mrs. Littlefield to “this outpost, this utter negation of beauty, this company of dolts and donkeys and hideous women.” His stepmother, who was in his confidence, had urged that he seek some “quiet, sylvan spot” where his muse could have its way with him, and he was in a temper to agree, provided Eurydice made a fortuitous appearance in that spot.
So far, she had refrained. He had had to content himself with the adoration of the dazzled old Arabella, his stepmother, the timid Mrs. Bertram, and the shrewd railleries of the unimpressed Mesdames Eldridge and Holland. If these two latter ladies had been young and handsome, he would have been stimulated. But they were too old for him, too obdurately married, and not too pretty. He regarded them with a jaundiced eye, decided that he did not like witty females, though he could be witty himself, and abandoned any attempts to subdue them.
He had never met Geoffrey Dunham before, and he had been jolted out of his indifference by a real surge of active dislike and suspicion. Here, in one person, was a species he hated—the publisher who never appreciated a poet, and a man who could threaten his own adoring kingdom. As Ravel, in spite of his general appearance, was very masculine himself, he resented the masculinity of another man, for quite natural reasons, and very healthy ones. Had he been a rooster, he would have raked the ground with his claws and his wattles would have turned bright red with rage. Eurydice was certainly not present anywhere on the premises, but there was always the possibility that she would put in a miraculous appearance. And females, being the senseless creatures they were, might, just possibly, prefer a Geoffrey Dunham to a Ravel Littlefield. After a careful if furtive study of Geoffrey, Ravel came to the contemptuous conclusion that he was “gross and insensitive,” not really a rival. Nevertheless, females were unpredictable, and sometimes they preferred beasts to cultivated poets and gentlemen. Geoffrey, in return, did not manifest any great liking for his youngest guest and did him the injustice of considering him effeminate. But he shrewdly guessed that Ravel was a fraud and a poseur, and often had moments of amusement at the younger man’s expense.
Tonight, Ravel leaned against the golden mantelpiece where the ladies could admire him at their leisure, and listened with interest, for the first time in days, as Arabella’s false sprightliness of conversation concerned itself with her new sister-in-law. Doubtless a heavy-footed country wench with big breasts and a perfume of manure about her, thought Ravel, with a sudden return of gloom. Just the sort that Dunham would admire. However, he kept glancing at the doorway with some impatience for the appearance of the bride. There was just a possibility that Arabella might be wrong. There was too much venom in her sugary voice as she elaborated on Melissa, and Ravel knew women and their venom. Whenever he heard that tone of voice, from a lady he knew, about another, unknown lady, he was filled with anticipation. He had rarely been disappointed. It was not likely that he would be disappointed tonight. But one could never tell.
Arabella’s voice now took on the subtle intonation of courageous regret. She fluttered her kerchief, and her eyes became positively malignant as she arched her neck, tilted her head, and sighed. “Of course,” she said, “it is not the poor, darling child’s fault that nature has so feebly endowed her with beauty. But one must remember t
hat a man of dear Geoffrey’s. age often outgrows callowness, and looks for character and family. With both, dearest Melissa has been amply endowed.”
Good God, thought Ravel, much dismayed, and despondent. But a sharp glance at Arabella renewed his anticipation. The other guests, too, had become astonishingly interested, and kept glancing at the empty doorway.
However, so engrossed were they with Arabella’s spiteful commiserations on the subject of Melissa’s lack of beauty that they missed the first appearance of Geoffrey and his bride, and it was not until Arabella sprang to her feet with guilty and fervish animation that they became aware that their host and Melissa were standing on the threshold of the room. They heard Arabella give a lyrical and dramatic exclamation: “Ah, there they are now, the dears!” and they started, every head turned itself to the door.
Every eye fixed itself upon Melissa, with curiosity at first, and then with startled stupefaction.
The gentlemen, fascinated, unable to look away, stood up slowly, and Ravel dropped his elbow from the mantelpiece.
My God! he thought. An ice goddess! A blue Aphrodite! Eurydice!
She was moving into the room now, beside Geoffrey. Dazzled, Ravel could only stare at her in dumfounded wonder. She walks like a queen, he thought. She is Galatea, come to life. I don’t believe it!
Melissa Page 27
