A score of times a day Melissa said to herself, but aloud, in a faint dull voice: “I cannot go on.” And many Hmw a day she climbed up and down the steep back stairs, balancing trays, basins, kettles of hot water, mustard plasters, warmed blankets and fresh glasses. Many times a day she brought them downstairs again, including wrinkled sheets and pillows for airing in the cold snowy wind. The hours became individual nightmares of exhaustion, all alike. The stairs became a treadmill, on which her feet were forever set, so that sometimes she had to pause and wonder, in confused agonies of weariness, whether she had been climbing the stairs just now or descending them.
Her mother lay in her still and darkened room, bolstered up by several pillows, her stertorous breathing, her sighs and gasps an ominous sound in the hushed quiet. A shaded candle burned day and night between her windows. She never spoke, for that was forbidden. She could, not lift her hands, It was
Melissa who had to turn her every fifteen minutes. It was Melissa who had to bathe her and change her sheets, comb her whitened hair, hold the glass to her lips, feed her, ease her in a hundred aching ways, rubbing her feet and shrunken arms, wiping the sweat from her pallid forehead and her gray cheeks, administering certain pungent drops to her every half hour by the clock, twenty-four hours a day. It was Melissa who sat up with her at night, sometimes falling into a tormented doze in her straight chair, to come awake with a start so violent as almost to throw herself to the floor. There was no company, no surcease, for Melissa. She could not even read. She had once had a vague thought that she might work on her father’s manuscripts during the night watches, but the candlelight was too dim, and that dreadful moaning and gasping from the bed beat into her brain like iron fists.
Dr. Mellon had suggested a woman from the village to relieve Melissa, but Melissa replied simply: “We have no money. Besides, my father would have wished me to stay with my mother.” So she sat there at night, rising every half hour to give the poor semiconscious woman her drops in water, to wipe away her sweat, to lift up her pillows. She sat and watched the candlelight, and finally she could think no more, was only a pair of burning eyes and a throbbing heart. She watched the candlelight on the high mouldering ceiling; she watched the shadows flickering on the walls, and chasing themselves in fugitive shapes over the black, lurking furniture. She watched the gray dawns come, and was sometimes so prostrated that she had to watch those dawns for a long time, until they lightened, before she knew whether the morning was coming or it was about to be night again. Sometimes she did not know whether she was awake or dreaming that she was awake, and the clock became to her an evil, clicking enemy who was trying to escape her and carry the dangerous minutes away, and with them her mother’s life. Sometimes, when she approached Amanda’s bed, she felt singularly light, as if formed only of mist, so that she seemed to drift, and her hands had no substance; and sometimes she felt that every muscle had become weighted lead and that she could not carry her body a single step forward.
The long, dusky brown days crept into December, became white and blinded with snow, became lost in blizzards. The wind howled down the chimney, scattered sparks on the bedroom hearth. The draperies stirred in the gales that seeped through the shutters. At night, the house rumbled and complained in the maelstrom of the storm. But Amanda’s glazed eyes hardly moved; she seemed intent only on getting the next breath, and the next; all her being, all her efforts and spirit, were concentrated on that terrible necessity. When she looked at Melissa, she did not appear to recognize the girl. When old Sally crept into the room, or the doctor, she glanced at them blindly, then dropped her lids.
Dr. Mellon had told Melissa that her mother had a very slight chance for life. It was his opinion, though he did not tell this to Melissa, that long years of tension, of strain, of frustration and old grief, had wrecked that indomitable heart. He himself was always amazed to find her still alive when he called; he was filled with respect that a human will could so long defeat inevitable death. He was an old man, and knew the powers of the human will, and he suspected that Amanda would not die until she had fulfilled some mission she had set for herself.
His concern now was for Melissa, and he admired her for her indestructibilty, for her grim determination not to collapse. Always thin, she had become emaciated, and the beautifully formed bones of her face now turned angular, sharp and clear, the flesh refined away by exhaustion. Her light-blue eyes, formerly abstracted and clouded and cold, grew almost vivid with the fever of weariness. Quite often she forgot to dress her hair even in her own rough and careless fashion, and allowed it to hang in two long braids of pale gilt almost to her thighs. Wearing her funeral black, which, though wrinkled and creased, had a sad air of elegance, she reminded the old doctor of some mourning Teutonic goddess, some Freya inconsolable and dark with unreason. No argument to spare herself elicited even a protest; she did not seem to hear. The doctor was not deceived that it was devotion to her mother which kept Melissa constantly in that somber bedroom, for he had known the Upjohns for many years and had delivered all Amanda’s children. It was something else, perhaps a rigid sense of duty, or an obscure accusation of guilt, or even hatred. The doctor shook his head. He was old, but there were many things he did not know regarding the hidden places of the human soul, he confessed to himself. Finally, he gave up his arguments with Melissa, which were always one-sided. He began to hope that poor Amanda would soon be at peace and that her daughter could rest.
Even old bloated Sally was subdued by the event of Amanda’s fatal illness. She hardly complained: firstly, because in the face of approaching death she was afraid, and, secondly, because she knew that Melissa would not hear her.
All the chores had fallen to her again, and more, for Amanda was not at hand, and Phoebe, protesting hysterically that she would die, “I know I will,” kept to her own room and sobbed loudly whenever she heard a footstep outside. She called pathetically for her mother, and could sometimes be detected praying behind her door, but no daughterly solicitude would persuade her to enter Amanda’s room. Like Charles, she refused to involve herself in an unpleasant or frightening situation. When she felt she was safe, she sewed placidly on the lengths of new silk and wool which were her trousseau, and embroidered her bridal sheets and pillowcases. She slept easily at night, and dreamlessly as a child. When awake, she thought of her future, hardly emerged from her room, accepted the trays the staggering Melissa brought her, smiled at Melissa’s bent and retreating back, and sobbed until her sister was out of hearing. She found all this very agreeable. She was relieved of onerous household duties; she was enjoying Melissa’s wretched state. If she thought at all of her mother, it was with indifference. Amanda was now in no position to pamper her, and so her importance in her daughter’s life had diminished.
The house, always dank and gloomy, had heretofore been well-kept, for Amanda had been an excellent housekeeper. But now Sally, saddled with all the work, with endless washings of linens to do, and with no supervision, let dust and dirt accumulate. Days would pass without any room receiving the ministrations of broom or duster. Hearths piled high with ashes; grit covered the carpets, and drifted onto the windowsills. The house, once filled with the smell of wax and polish and soap, now reeked with the odors of grease, dust, ashes and unaired rooms. Slowly it fell into decay, each room, each piece of furniture, exuding neglect and hopelessness. The dining-room, as narrow and bleak as a cold slit, was never used now. Melissa ate her brief meals in the kitchen. She never sat in the parlor, not even for a moment.
Andrew had returned to Harvard three weeks ago. He had wanted to remain, but Melissa, gathering the full force of her will, the full passion of her devotion to her dead father, had beaten down her brother’s resistance. “There is no use in your remaining, Andrew,” she had said, with the old hard ring of authority in her voice. “It may be weeks. It may even be months. Besides, you will be returning home for Christmas. You have your studies. You dare not abandon them now. Papa struggled so hard for you.” So Andrew had gone back to Harvard. Women were too much for him, he had reflected somberly. But there would soon come a day when they would dominate him no longer. Poor Mother. Yet she had hardly ever noticed him. He had no dislike for her, and certainly no affection. He was only sorry for her, but he was also impatient. She had allowed her husband, who was, in a way, a woman himself, to ruin and degrade her. Andrew, to his surprise, discovered in himself a disgust for any human creature who permitted another to devour his life, to suck the juices from him. It was not so much Melissa’s arguments which persuaded him to return to Harvard as his desire to complete his emancipation, which had begun on the day when he had stood at his father’s grave. “I must clear my eyes,” he thought. While at Harvard, he would round out his plans. In the home atmosphere of despair and silent decay, his mind would be too confused.
Melissa was alone with her days of nursing, suffering and weariness. She was alone with the candlelight and the gaspings of her mother. She was alone with Phoebe’s tears and “vapors.” She was alone with the dry bread she ate and the stiff chair in which she dozed.
She dared not think of her father very much now, for if she did she knew her last waning strength would go and she would collapse. But sometimes she felt that he would be proud of her. Long-suffering, patient, self-sacrificing as he had been, condemned by this dying woman to a frustrated and painful life, he would still be all gentle forgiveness, would urge his daughter to minister to his enemy with tenderness and commiseration. Had he not always advocated patience and non-resistance to fate? Had he not always spoken with kindness and tolerance and understanding of everyone, even when Melissa had raged? He would want her to do this thing. She was not serving her mother; she was serving Papa.
Snow piled itself against the doors, heaped itself about the trees, ridged the walls, obliterated the road, whitened the hills against a white sky, covered the slate roofs of the house, the barn and the out-buildings. Soundlessly the days crept towards Christmas, moving over the snow. The windows became blank, covered with frost, so that the house was a prison, shut-in, immured, unaware of any life beyond itself. No visitors arrived; Dr. Mellon had forbidden them. For a little while, the neighboring farmers, and even the gentry in Midfield, had sent messages and vague offers of help. Now these no longer came. Melissa sat in her candlelighted tomb and listened to her mother struggle for one more breath, then another.