One night, as the clock in the hall below struck midnight, Melissa came to herself with a start. She had been dozing. She sat upright and looked at her mother. Amanda seemed to be sleeping. Her breathing was quieter and more regular. Her hands no longer clutched the quilts in a prodigious effort to breathe. They lay slack on the covers, the calloused palms turned upwards in a gesture of utter resignation.
Melissa crept to the bed. Her mother’s eyes were closed. Her color seemed better. Melissa returned to her chair, sighing, pushing aside a lock of hair which had fallen against her cheek. She could not doze again. She was conscious of a constant vibration in herself, deep within her bones, and the painful throbbing of her own heart. She was wide awake with the toxins of exhaustion.
She thought: Why, it is only three days to Christmas. Andrew would be coming home in a day or two. He would be coming home to a desolate house, and to fear. Melissa remembered past Christmases. She and her father would go into the woods with a small bright axe, and they would bring back a fresh young fir tree smelling of snow and cold and resin. They would set it up in the drawing-room, while Charles fondly laughed at himself for his sentimentality. Together, assisted by Phoebe, and enlivened by her gay chitterings, they would decorate the tree. Strings of colored paper, twisted together. Balls of molasses popcorn. Candles. Borax to be sprinkled over damp needles. Presents to be hung on the bending and fragrant branches. It would be very gay.
I owe it to poor little Phoebe, and to Andrew, to get a tree for them, thought Melissa. I shall decorate it myself. She swallowed hard against a wave of uncontrollable sorrow and pain. Papa would want it. I must get a tree. I must make every effort to make the house comfortable for Phoebe and Andrew, and to ease their grief. Life must go on for them. They are young. When—this—is all over, then I will direct them again, and do what is best for them. Tomorrow, if Mama seems better, I’ll go into the woods for a tree, or send Hiram for one. Who knows? Perhaps in a few days I shall be able to get to work on Papa’s manuscripts. I need the money! Andrew’s and Phoebe’s lives must not be injured by this.
She went to the bowl on her mother’s commode, dipped a cloth in cold water and pressed it against her feverish eyes. She smoothed back her hair. She turned around. For the first time in weeks she heard her mother’s voice, faint, almost a whisper: “Melissa!”
Melissa started, then began to tremble acutely. She crossed the room to her mother’s bed in a sea of wavering shadows. She stood by the bed and looked down at Amanda. Amanda’s eyes were wide open now, sunken deeply in their sockets. But they were no longer glazed. They were alert with consciousness and awareness. “Yes, Mama,” said Melissa. Her pale heavy braids swung across her shoulders, touched the guilts, as she bent over Amanda.
Amanda looked at them, turning her eyes slowly. Her hand moved. She touched one of the braids, held it a moment in her gaunt fingers.
“You must not talk,” said Melissa, in a low tone. “You must not move. Is there anything you want? No, do not speak. Just move your head. Water? It is not time for your medicine. Are you comfortable? Do you need another blanket? It is very cold in here, and I’ll stir up the fire at once.”
But Amanda’s fingers clutched the braid she had taken. “Sit near me, Melissa,” she whispered. “I must talk to you. I insist.”
Melissa sat down carefully on the edge of the hard bed. Amanda held onto her hair. She could not pull away.
“Only a few words,” whispered Amanda. She was not gasping now, but breathing normally. “You have been here a long time. I have known it. Why?”
Melissa said, urgently, but still in a hushed voice: “You must not talk. It is Dr. Mellon’s orders. Yes, I have nursed you all this time. You have been very ill. But you are getting better now.” She paused. “Papa would have wanted me to take care of you,” she added, with the brutal forthrightness of her innocence.
Amanda smiled. It was only a shadow of a smile, bitter and twisted. Her fingers caressed the braid she held, but Melissa was not aware of it.
Amanda murmured: “Your father, Melissa, he devoured you as he devoured me. No, do not pull away. You must listen, if you would save your life.” Her face had become alive, fluid with her indomitable will, and she held tighter to Melissa, who had involuntarily arched back against her mother’s hold. “Listen, Melissa, and remember. He tried to destroy you, as he destroyed me. He was a man who all his life wanted power, and adulation, and influence over others. He thought he might get it through his writings. He thought he might have admiration that way. But he failed. He failed, because there was no truth in him. He was a liar.”
Melissa’s eyes flashed in the semi-darkness, and her dry lips parted in a wild protest. Her whole body shook with denial and horror, and with fear. She forgot her mother’s dangerous condition. She yanked her braid from Amanda’s grasp and stood up. She cried out: “That is a lie! He was everything that was truth! He cared nothing for power. He derided it to me, said the man who wanted it was contemptible. Power! He only wanted to study and work and live in peace—”
She had to catch at the bedpost to keep herself from falling. Her breast rose and fell with anguish and outrage. And Amanda lay on her pillows and regarded her daughter with dying sternness.
Amanda did not move, but her eyes caught and held Melissa’s, and finally the girl was silent and only stood there clutching the bedpost.
“Listen, my daughter,” whispered Amanda. “He wanted power, and could not get it in the world. It was a disease in him. So he did the next best thing he could. He exercised power over us. If he had lived, there would have been no hope for you. He’s dead now. And you are free, if you’ll only take your freedom.”
Melissa covered her eyes with her hand, and could not speak. Papa, Papa, she thought.
“Be free, Melissa,” said Amanda, in a stronger voice, with a ring of warning in it. “Go free, Melissa.”
Melissa dropped her hand. Amanda’s eyes held hers compellingly. Then the older woman said: “Send for Arabella Dunham. I must see her in the morning.”
She closed her eyes, and seemed to sleep again.
Melissa crept back to her chair. She sat there, her clenched hands on her -trembling knees, her body bent forward, her eyes staring at the floor. She was one savage storm of grief and rage and bitter agony. Papal To be so calumnied, so despised, so rejected! To be spoken of so, while he, dead and silent, could not defend himself. She saw him so clearly, asleep in his grave, smiling, pathetic, vulnerable. “No, Papa,” she whispered, “you are not defenseless. I am alive, and here. No one shall dare slander you again. No one understood you, Papa, except me. And some day the world shall know what you were, what a genius, what a great man, what a noble man. I shall never forget you, Papa.”
Tears began to roll down her cheeks. Her shoulders shook with repressed sobs. The hour for her mother’s medicine passed unheeded, while Melissa wept and could not stop her tears and Amanda seemingly slumbered.