Rachel was already waiting for Melissa when her mistress entered with a slow and heavy step and a heart-sick face. The maid had laid out for her a light summer tea-gown of chocolat-au-lait-colored silk, with streamers of green silk trimmed with airy black lace, a confection newly sent from New York and guaranteed to have been created by Worth. Melissa had been taking a novel interest in clothing lately, and Rachel was dismayed now when the girl only glanced dully at the gown as Rachel held it up for her inspection.
“Tell me, Rachel, why is it necessary to lie and tell a guest that you are delighted to see her when you are not?” asked Melissa, so absently that Rachel was aware that she hardly heard her own words.
“It is an accepted social custom, Mrs. Dunham,” replied Rachel, anxiously studying Melissa’s pallor and the lines about her pale mouth. “You would not say: ‘Mrs. Jones, I am not delighted to see you, but please come in just the same’?”
She hoped to amuse Melissa, and indeed Melissa did smile, but so faintly that it only added to the deep misery of her eyes.
“Well,” said Melissa, “I don’t think it honest, or even kind, to express delight when you are not delighted and the guest is probably interrupting an interesting afternoon or evening of work or quiet solitude. I think it is enough to invite the guest in. Then, if she is a woman of sensibility, she will soon learn that she is intruding, and will take herself off, and everyone will be more comfortable. It saves your own time, and the guest’s, for she will then go to another house where she will indeed be welcome.”
“It is not possible always to be honest,” said Rachel, nonplussed as usual when faced with Melissa’s inflexible logic.
A slight animation returned to Melissa’s eyes. “Why not? Do you know, I think that we’d have fewer wars, and certainly would make fewer enemies, and society would be set on a firmer basis, if we were always uncompromisingly honest. My father was a completely honest man, and I surely believe he had no enemies and was respected by all, because he refused to prevaricate even in the interests of a false politeness.”
She sat down suddenly, overcome with the unbearable weight of her depression. She leaned her elbow on the arm of the chair, and dropped her head in her hand. “I am so tired,” she murmured.
Rachel stood with the gown in her arms, and could not speak. She could only look at her mistress with aching compassion and love. She knew, and guessed at the cause of, the chronic and overpowering agony that was breaking down the high and intolerant spirit of Melissa, that had taken away her old arrogant certitude of mind and conviction. Such agony, Rachel knew, was too vast and enormous for words of comfort. An outsider was powerless to help. A kind of spiritual disintegration was taking place in Melissa, and the force that would reintegrate it into a new and happier pattern was not coming to her rescue. Rachel felt a fierce anger against Geoffrey, and a bafflement.
Melissa had no friends, in this household, but James and Rachel. Melissa instinctively felt the derision and hostility of the other servants, and shrank from their services and their presence. This seemed most terrible to Rachel: that Melissa should be demonstrating fear before eyes both friendly and hostile. And Rachel understood that, to Melissa, fear was a new and unrecognized emotion, as was the more powerful anguish that beset her every moment.
Had Melissa’s suffering been less deep, been even faintly self-understood or articulate, Rachel would have been able to help her with argument, reason and comfort. But it was a mute and gigantic anguish, too immense for any consolation or sympathy. Rachel could only convey her love and understanding by smiles, by a murmur, by a touch, by a great gentleness. She knew the gossip of the countryside and the household about Melissa and Ravel Littlefield, and once or twice she had wanted to warn her mistress. But one glance at that strong and uncomprehending face, and Rachel fell into impotent silence again. Melissa would not understand. She just would not understand in the least, and her bewilderment and incredulity might force her to drive Rachel from her.
“May I help you get dressed, Mrs. Dunham?” asked Rachel, in a moved voice.
Melissa wearily lifted her head. “In just a moment, Rachel,” she replied She glanced at her desk, and sighed. “So much work to be done, and I must waste time on a tea-party.”
“But, Mrs. Dunham, it was you, was it not, who extended the invitation?”
Melissa stared at her emptily. “Oh, that doesn’t matter. We never stood on ceremony at home.”
Rachel was concerned. “I think Mrs. Shaw might object,” she ventured. “She is very rigid about social manners. She would think it necessary for you to be present at a tea for your sister, Mrs. Dunham.”
Melissa nodded. “I suppose you are right, Rachel. No wonder Arabella considers me hopeless. I never remember.” She stood up and let Rachel unbutton her frock. She had become accustomed to these services and thought no more of them. Besides, the maid’s touch soothed her like the touch of a friend Rachel felt the cold and clammy flesh under her finger-tips, and again she ached with pity.
“I think, if we hurry, that I might have fifteen minutes or more to work,” said Melissa, as Rachel assisted her to dress.
Rachel turned her towards the mirror. “This new gown is so becoming, Mrs. Dunham,” she said admiringly. “The turquoise necklace and ear-rings and bangles will go excellently with the green silk streamers. And I think you should wear the green silk net over your hair, with the black bows, to match the black lace.”
Melissa glanced into the mirror. “Nothing,” she said, despairingly, “will ever make me passable in appearance. I have such an ugly face and such pale lifeless hair, and I am too tall and thin. But, then, I should not be distressed at all this. I have had my body for twenty-six years, and Papa often pointed out to me that, though I am not pleasing to look at, I at least had intelligence. Though I am beginning to doubt this, too.”
Rachel’s mouth compressed itself into a straight line. “You are a beautiful lady, Mrs. Dunham,” she said, as she had said a hundred times before without impressing Melissa. Again Melissa shook her head impatiently and commented: “You are very kind. Rachel, but you know it is not true. No wonder Mr. Dunham cannot bear to look at me.”
“I remember the evening of the day you married Mr. Dunham,” said Rachel. “You wore a blue silk frock. If you remember, ma’am, he said that you were very beautiful And you believed him, then.”
“Yes, I did. I was a fool. He was only trying to be kind. I ought to have known.” She allowed Rachel to brush and twist up her long hair. “Arabella has made me see myself as I am. She has done her best for me, to change me, but it is no use.”
Rachel listened grimly. Her mouth opened once or twice, then she closed it. But finally she said: “Mrs. Shaw is getting old, ma’am, and I have heard it said that elderly ladies do not like young and handsome ones.”
Melissa turned on her in outrage. “Rachel! How cruel of you to say that! Arabella has spent endless hours with me in an effort to teach me graces and manners and elegances! She has chosen my gowns, my laces, my ribbons, my—silks. Even you have commented on their beauty and costliness, and how they become me. How can you be so unkind?”
Rachel knew it was hopeless, so she did not reply.
Melissa, now dressed, glanced at the clock on the white mantel. It was only twenty minutes past four. Forgetting Rachel, she ran, rustling, to her desk, determined to use the last precious moments for work on her father’s almost completed manuscript. She sat down, and hastily pulled a bundle of papers from a lower drawer. She had not as yet gone through these thoroughly, though a former cursory glance had convinced her that these notes were merely redundant and contained little of what had not already been enlarged upon and included in the finished portion of the manuscript. In a moment, she was completely engrossed, rapidly skimming over page after page. She saw that many of the notes were old, for Charles had meticulously dated each one at the top. Apparently he had intended them for earlier books, then had laid them aside to be included in later ones, not caring to discard them completely. Some of them bore dates as early as 1859 and 1860, and were worn and dog-eared.
Rachel watched her mistress helplessly. The poor young creature, with her pale thin face and slender worn hands! How busily she turned the pages and laid them aside, and how reverently she handled them. She was so engrossed that she might have been lifted bodily into a different and remote world, where no one could touch her. It was a face in a trance, a dedicated face, lost to any human contact. The bright sunlight that flooded the lovely room lay on her head as it would lie on curved gold, and made the turquoises on white neck and in white ears glow like illuminated green metal.
Melissa came upon a shorter sheet of paper. It was dated March 15, 1860. Apparently it had been crushed, tossed aside, then smoothed out, reread, and finally discarded. Whole sentences had been crossed out, others added above. Melissa studied it, puzzling over the faded writing. She glanced at the date again. Above it, she saw the words: “Midfield, State of Pennsylvania,” and below it: “Dear Geoffrey.” It was a letter, then. How had it come to be included in the papers? It was most obviously the first draft of a letter written to Geoffrey, and had only accidentally found its way into the bundle of notes. But perhaps her father had reason to keep the draft, after all. He often kept copies of important letters to his publishers, or to critics, or to other scholars. Melissa looked through it hastily, trying to find the reason for its preservation. It was some moments before the full import of the letter came to her.
“Dear Geoffrey,” Charles had written, “I have your letter of the first, and I am deeply moved by it, and by its implications of your regard for a member of my family, and your concern for her. But, as I wrote you before, when you hinted at matters more boldly expressed in your last letter, it is impossible. The girl has been well-schooled by me; she is far better educated than you realize, and if I were not an understanding friend of yours, and did not sense the kindness that prompted your letter, I might take serious offense. I do know, however, your attachment to my family, and, I humbly understand, to myself. I feel compassion in your letter. I am a proud man, and I resent compassion in others, particularly when I do not need pity or generosity, and when the girl certainly does not need it. If I should send her to the school you suggest, and on your bounty, she would most surely be driven out of her very precariously balanced mind. She is not only incurably unworldly, but she suffers from fantasies and delusions, as only a father can know, and from which only a loving and suffering father can derive so complete a despair. Imagine her in the company of graceful and handsome young females! The imagination recoils at the thought. She is not only unprepossessing by nature, but, I confess with anguish, is strangely stupid and obtuse. Consider, too, her lack of charm of face and figure, afflictions which would cause her wretchedness in contrast with others more blessed and fortunate. I have considered all these things from her earliest childhood, and have kept her with me to shield her from the world and its inevitable thrusts. And now you suggest that I expose her to all manner of agonies! You will recall that we have had many conversations on this very subject before and that, out of my own understanding of the motives that inspired you, I have expressed my gratitude for your pity for the girl and for your desire to aid her. Believe me, should I ever, in a weak moment, consent, you would long and sadly rue the day.”
The crushed letter lay in Melissa’s hands, and slowly all its letters and all its lines began to dance before her in a kind of wavering fire. The fire seemed to enter her brain, to fill it with a dazzling empty light of numbness and overpowering shock. She had no thoughts at all, no sensation but a sort of utter and devastating paralysis of emotional reaction. Even her fingers, holding the letter, turned numb and senseless. She read and reread the paper over and over, some phrases rising from it like brilliant swords to strike at her eyes. Somewhere, something was beating like wild drums, and somewhere, someone was screaming on one prolonged note. But she felt nothing, though that disembodied creature nearby began to feel a horrible nausea and an unendurable agony creeping through the deadness.
She sat there. From some far distance she heard the faint echo of a voice: “Mrs. Dunham, ma’am, you have only five minutes more. I think I heard Mrs. Barrett’s rig come up the drive.”
Melissa carefully smoothed the letter with her cold fingers, and reread it. Sweat had started out all over her, icy and sickening. A great pain had pierced her head and her breast. She put the letter down, stood up, and faced Rachel. “Oh, no,” she said, very calmly and quietly. Her eyes, however, pierced Rachel in a penetrating frenzy. “It isn’t true, Rachel. He didn’t mean me, did he? He must be referring to Phoebe. Though it is still so unkind—that about her having no—no intelligence—” Her voice began to fail, and she struggled with it, so that it emerged from her throat as a croak. “You have seen Phoebe, my sister, haven’t you, Rachel? Is she not very beautiful? Phoebe is a poet, too—” And then she stopped, and could not speak again. But she looked at Rachel with her great pale eyes as if she were dying.
“Mrs. Dunham!” cried Rachel, terrified. She ran to Melissa and caught her by the arms. “You are ill, ma’am. What is wrong?” In affright, Rachel stared at her mistress’ face.
Melissa stood very still. “There is nothing wrong with me,” she said, uttering every word precisely and carefully. “Noth ing at all. It is the heat. I have never known such heat before in July. Where is my kerchief, Rachel?”
But Rachel produced her own handkerchief, and with trembling hands wiped away the sweat from Melissa’s forehead and upper lip. She wished she might dart away for the smelling-salts, for help, but Melissa’s whole appearance was so terrible, so stricken, so wild, in spite of her calmness, that the girl was afraid she might fall to the floor.
“Please read the letter, Rachel,” said Melissa. “You will see my father means Phoebe. It is so unjust— Phoebe must never know. It would hurt her immeasurably. Phoebe used to write the most wonderful poetry. I had such hopes for her. And now it is all over. But it is still unkind, and cruel of Papa. Phoebe must never know—”
She held the letter out to Rachel, who, still holding Melissa by one hand, took the letter and read it slowly. Most of the words were unintelligible to her, but she caught the meaning, and she gasped. She wanted to crush the hideous thing in her hand, to throw it down and stamp on it, and she was filled with hatred for a dead man she had never seen or known.
“No,” said Rachel, her own voice breaking, “Mrs. Barrett must never know. It is cruel, indeed. But fathers don’t always know about their own children, do they, ma’am? And, besides, it is possible that Mr. Upjohn wanted to—to keep his daughters with him. Kind of like jealousy, ma’am. I’ve heard fathers sometimes do outrageous things, keeping their daughters from suitors and—and—benefactors.”
“It was indeed kind of Mr. Dunham,” said Melissa, frowning like one in profound and only half-conscious shock. “It was kind, wasn’t it, Rachel?”
“Oh, surely, very kind, ma’am,” said Rachel. She held Melissa’s arms, and gently pressed her down into a chair. Then she darted to the dressing-table, found the smelling-salts, returned to Melissa, and put the opened bottle under the girl’s nose. But Melissa did not turn aside, or cough, as the pungent fumes struck her nostrils. She merely sat like stone, looking emptily before her, her arms fallen heavily over the arms of the chair.
“Phoebe,” said Melissa, “had a truly great imagination. Perhaps Papa did not realize that, in full. Mama always monopolized Phoebe, and kept her so busy. Papa must have thought Phoebe rather tiresome and ordinary. I did, too, until I saw her poems. And Papa thought them excellent and extraordinary, also. Rachel, what is the date of that letter? March 15, 1860. That was before the war. That was eight years ago. Yes, yes, of course. Phoebe was twelve years old then. At the school-girl’s age. She was ready for school.” Her voice died again. But she gazed at Rachel with those enormous and fainting eyes, so numbly pleading, so desperate.
“Just at the school-age, yes, ma’am,” murmured Rachel, in growing distress. Again she wiped the sweat from Melissa’s forehead.
“Phoebe must never know. It would hurt her immeasurably,” repeated Melissa with stony emphasis. “She would never forgive Papa. She could not bear to live, if she knew of this letter. There—there would be nothing left to live for, Rachel. There is nothing ever left to live for, when—when the heart has been struck like this, and all the faith and the dreams are gone, and everything is so very empty.”
“I think Mrs. Barrett has much character, ma’am,” replied Rachel. “Unkind letters never hurt very much, in the long run, especially when they are prompted by jealousy and deliberate misunderstanding.”
“Oh, Papa was not jealous, nor did he misunderstand,” said Melissa, in a loud and childlike tone of denial. “But that was before he knew about Phoebe’s poems, of course. After he had read them, he would not have written such a letter.”
“Mrs. Dunham, will you not lie down, and let me tell Mrs. Barrett and Mrs. Shaw that you are indisposed?” pleaded Rachel, almost in tears.
Melissa seemed to see Rachel for the first time. She shook her head, as if outraged. “Oh, no, Rachel, that would never do at all. That would be very impolite. Arabella has often told me that a lady must receive her invited guests, no matter how ill she may be. Only death, Arabella said, could be an excuse for such discourtesy. Rachel, I do feel very ill, though. I think I might feel this way if I were dying—”
However, she pushed aside Rachel’s hands, and stood up. She absently smoothed the black lace on her breast, and pushed up the ruffled sleeves. She appeared to be half asleep, moving mechanically. She pressed her hands against the wings of hair on her temples. “I really must go down,” she said, in her curious, slow tone of emphasis. “Phoebe would be disturbed. She might wonder. She must never know, and if I did not go down she might come up here, and even see the letter.”
She glanced behind her at the desk. She turned and thrust the letter into the sheaf of notes. Now she began to shiver so violently that she almost staggered. Rachel watched her with helpless alarm.
“Why not destroy the letter, Mrs. Dunham? Then you could be sure that no one would ever see it.”
“Oh, no,” answered Melissa, seriously, “that would be very wrong. Everything of Papa’s is important.”
She turned heavily, and then, as if she had forgotten Rachel entirely and was walking in the numbness of complete sleep, she moved slowly towards the door, and went out.
The long staircase lay before her, a shadowy darkness falling down into bottomless space. She held to the balustrade very tightly, and went downwards, step by step. Her knees were strangely fluid and jelly-like. There was no air anywhere. Melissa found it difficult to breathe. Though she moved so slowly, her heart was beating in her breast and throat and temples in swift hard strokes of intolerable pain. Her head swam; there was no feeling in her feet and she had to grope in a swirling mist.
She did not know that Rachel stepped down beside her, hands ready to catch her if she fell.