The damp and wrinkled gloves lay in a little heap on the hall table, where they had been dropped in gestures of complete desolation.
Melissa removed hers from her cold hands and added them to the heap. She stood a moment and looked emptily down at the gloves, lying one on top of the other, and they seemed to be external manifestations of her own stupefied hopelessness. Her mother had gone into the drawing-room before her, and her young sister, Phoebe, and her brother, Andrew, and Mrs. Arabella Dunham Shaw and the latter’s brother, Geoffrey Dunham. They were all sitting there, in the utter silence that follows calamity, while she remained behind in the dark cold hall, this late November afternoon. None of them had glanced at her, except Geoffrey Dunham, and he had stood near her for a few moments, while she had fumbled at her gloves. But she had indicated that she wanted him to leave her, with a motion of her hands so abrupt and repellent that he had obeyed automatically. She had watched him go; she believed she saw him shrug as if in indifferent contempt. It was no more than she expected of him; everything he did increased her distrust and detestation. Suddenly, in the midst of her dreadful anguish, she felt a sharp and vivid thrill of hatred, an emotion that was alive for the first time in three stunned days.
She could not look away from the wrinkled gloves, lying there in a heap on the table. It had begun to rain again, and Melissa heard the dolorous running of the eaves and the forsaken voice of the wind against the great oaken door of the old house. What little light remained in the narrow hall faded; what little warmth had seeped into the hall from the drawing-room was sucked away. Now there was only dimness and chill, and herself alone in the hall. Melissa could hear her mother’s sobbing, which became part of the wind and the rain. There was no other sound, not even from the kitchen, where old Sally and the Dunhams’ cook, Hulda, were preparing the funeral baked meats.
The Dunhams had filled the parlor with armfuls and baskets and vases of flowers from their conservatories. The flowers now lay on a raw grave in St. Margaret’s Cemetery on the slope of a hill, yet Melissa could smell their horrible sick ghosts in the hall. Strange that funeral flowers smelled as no other flowers ever smelled! There was a deathliness about them, a sickness, a miasma. O Papa, Papa! Melissa cried in herself.
She wrung her hands together. The merciful stupefaction drained away from her, leaving her open and naked and anguished in the swirling waves of her grief. Her mouth parted in a kind of suppressed gasp, as if for air. But no tears came. Her mother had wept, little Phoebe had cried with the faint and mewling sound of a wounded and innocent animal, Andrew had sobbed drily a few times. But Melissa’s eyes had remained glazed, burning, stark, completely sleepless and parched, since her father’s death three days ago. She knew that her mother thought her heartless. It did not matter; it had never mattered to her what her mother, Amanda, had ever thought about her, or, for that matter, what anyone else thought. Wherever lay the source of tears, that source in Melissa remained dry. Arabella Dunham Shaw, that sharkmouthed, sentimental and emotional fool, had throbbingly urged her to “give way; do, my poor child.” But there was no “giving way” in Melissa. She had looked at Arabella with disgust and bitter loathing, and had confirmed in Arabella’s mind the opinion that she lacked sensibility and true female sentiment. How was it possible—Arabella had plainly revealed her thought—that the favorite and most beloved daughter of Charles Upjohn could refrain from the slightest expression of sorrow, could maintain an attitude of subdued calm and glacial dignity in the face of his death?
A fog floated outside over the brown drenched earth. Wisps of it appeared to penetrate the hall, so that faint scarfs and whitish shadows filled every oaken corner. The round drum table where the gloves and the cards lay gleamed like water in the gloom. Above it was a mirror. Old Sally had removed the cloths from the glimmering surface. Melissa lifted her head and saw her own face in the dark and fitful depths, and it was the face of a ghost. Her face stared blindly back at her from the glass, a rigid and emotionless face, all bleached contours and hard delicate planes, like dull marble. When she had been young and helpless, her mother, Amanda, had forced her to swallow iron concoctions, in the belief that she was anaemic and afflicted with the “green sickness,” not understanding, then, that the pure and colorless pallor was no indication of weakness, but rather of an indomitable constitution.
“A New England old maid,” Arabella Dunham had once said to her brother, Geoffrey. “Oh, believe me, dear Geoffrey, it is not that I truly dislike Melissa Upjohn! I’m sure you’d never accuse me of such uncharitableness, for you know how readily I believe the best of everyone and how far malice is from my nature. But you must admit that Melissa can be very odious at times, most repulsive. She is so cold and without sensibility, and has such a high, hard face. There is nothing attractive in her, though you insist, in your kindness, that she is a true beauty. No one else shares your opinion, dear Geoffrey.
“What did you say, Geoffrey? Melissa is a grande dame? Oh, how absurd, how completely ridiculous! She is nothing but a bluestocking, utterly without heart and sweetness, priding herself on her knowledge of Greek and Latin, and on her scholarly accomplishments! What does a woman need of these?”
“She needs me,” Geoffrey Dunham had replied with a smile. He laughed when his sister uttered a shrill wail of horror. “And, what’s more, she’s going to have me, though she does not know it yet. I may have to wait a long time, until poor old Charles is dead.”
Melissa stood unmoving before the mirror, which steadily darkened until her face and figure were lost in it and there remained only a ghostly blur. Now she heard Geoffrey Dunham’s strong grave voice consoling her mother, and her white mouth became more tense, harder. The wound in her chest throbbed and pulsated. “Papa,” she said aloud, in a low and searching voice. She pressed her hands down on the wet gloves, dropped her head, and leaned heavily against the table. Her father’s last words came to her: “I know I can trust your strength and your calmness, Lissa. Your poor mother and your little sister will need you. I know now that it was wrong to have taken you so far from them, to have absorbed you in my needs and my dreams and my hopes. Your brother cannot be the man of the family when I am gone. That is left for you, and I know that I can trust you.”
“You never took me away from anything, Papa,” she said, in her heart. “I never cared for anything but you. You were all my life. We understood each other so completely. How can I go on without you?”
For the first time there was an acid moisture in her eyes, which burned and stung. But it did not spill over. After an instant it was gone. But she felt weak and faint, and she clutched at the smooth edges of the table. Her mind became dim and blurred, the rough thick carpet under her feet began to slide away from her.
Someone was holding her, someone strong and steady. Without that grasp, she would have fallen. Her eyes were blind. She murmured: “Andrew. It’s perfectly all right. Just a moment of faintness.” She tried to pull herself away gently, but the arms held her.
“And no wonder,” said a man’s voice in reply. “I hear you haven’t eaten anything in three days. There, don’t move; just lean against me for a while.”
But the sound of that hateful voice aroused Melissa, invigorated her. She pushed the arms away with new strength. She could still see only dimly. Geoffrey Dunham’s figure swayed and floated and expanded and retreated before her like a dancing shadow. But her detestation made her strong again. She pressed her hands to the sides of her head and muttered: “I am perfectly well now, thank you.” All the spots on her body where he had touched her became acutely aware.
“Good,” said Geoffrey Dunham, and under the tone of friendly sympathy she heard the old good-natured jeer in his voice. “We’ve been waiting for you. I am about to read your father’s will, and then we’ll have our supper. May I assist you, Melissa? My arm—”
But she was already walking away from him, her quivering knees held rigidly, her thin and slender back as hard as stone. Her black-and-rusty gown trailed on the floor; it was an old gown, and completely without taste or fashion, yet it gave to her figure an air of cold elegance. There was only a suggestion of crinoline under it. Not for Melissa the hoops and draperies and ruffles of other women, the soft beguilements of lace and of bows.
Geoffrey reached the door of the drawing-room before her, however. He waved her through it with a bow, in which she felt was his old mockery and amusement. Her flesh tightened and cringed away from him, and she sped into the drawingroom almost precipitously. It was too much! But she must endure this, for the last time. One had only to be calm and composed. One must be steadfast, for Papa’s sake. Oh, Papa, Papa!