The next morning Geoffrey had a long talk with Andrew, and with his friend, Judge Farrell, while Miriam and Phoebe helped Melissa to prepare for her return to her home.
“The first thing I am going to do,” said Andrew grimly, “is to pull down that damned old house. We’ll start, almost immediately, before the crops are ready. Every stick and stone will come down. I ought to have done it months ago. Melissa could see it any time she wished, and as long as it’s there, she’ll remember my father.” He paused. “She remembers him now, with disgust, but that’s almost as bad as the other way she remembered him.”
Geoffrey was surprised at the younger man’s subtlety. He nodded his head. “I’m going to take her on a—delayed—honeymoon,” he said. “We’re going to Europe. You can take down the old eyesore while we are gone.”
“No,” said Andrew positively, “I’m going to start tomorrow. You won’t be leaving for at least two weeks.” He added: “And there’ll be no piece of furniture, not even a saucer or a cup, a book or a chair, to remind her. It all goes.”
“Why not burn the whole damn thing down?” asked the Judge, with humor. “Simpler.”
Geoffrey laughed and then was amused to see Andrew in his forthright way so reminiscent of Melissa considering the idea. Humor, thought Geoffrey, was not a conspicuous Upjohn trait. Only Charles had had it in any measure at all.
Geoffrey expressed with frankness to both of his sympathetic friends his deep concern about Melissa. “If she were younger,” he said, “the problem would not be such a source of anxiety to all who care for her. Ordinarily healthy children learn early that man is naturally ‘evil,’ a murderer and a liar and they accept this fundamental truth as they accept the food they eat and the air they breath. By the time they reach maturity they have incorporated this knowledge in their own minds and have made compromises, steadily adjusting themselves to their own natures and to the very similar natures of other men. Unless they become either saints or politicians, they give no particular thought to it, neither lamenting it nor plotting to use it unduly.”
The Judge nodded soberly, while Andrew listened in intent silence.
“But Melissa,” continued Geoffrey, “is no longer young. The full nature of man has been revealed to her at a time when she is not young enough to digest and forget it, to accept it as one of the irrefutable facts of life. It was revealed to her when she possessed both the awful innocence of a child and the maturity and insight of an intelligent human being. Her well-developed mind is incapable of forgetting as a child normally forgets. Moreover, though a young child does not reflect, and so cannot comment to himself on his own nature, Melissa not only can see but inevitably will meditate upon what she sees. I am afraid this will be a constant source of misery to her.”
“Well,” said the Judge, after thoughtfully considering this, “I can see that you’re going to have your hands full, Dunham. I don’t envy you. But it is something, I suppose, to have a woman like Melissa as a wife.”
Geoffrey sighed. “I don’t know. If Melissa could be thrown into such disruption, such despair and agony, upon her first real contact with the world and the nature of men, then she is due for successive and steadily more devastating shocks. Worse, she possesses an inflexibility of temperament, a fanatical inability to compromise. Sometimes, in spite of everything, I am afraid that she will be constantly besieged and embattled. This does not argue very well for her own peace of mind.”
Andrew said, with firmness: “Melissa was always a fighter. I don’t think you ought to worry too much. Melissa without a fight for something or other on her hands would be miserable. I know.”
Geoffrey laughed. “Yes, I see. And they’ll always be fanatical fights. I suppose I ought to try to find harmless subjects for her to fight over.”
“I think,” said the Judge, “that the only hope for the girl will be to convince her that her latest opinion cannot possibly be the true and final one, that there are no fixed verities anywhere in the universe. Try to get her to doubt what her senses reveal to her, help her to be uncertain about any posi tive judgment of her own, and I think everything will be all right. Of course, it would be her salvation could she develop a sense of humor, but I suppose that is too much to expect.” Geoffrey laughed again. “Sometimes I wonder whether the development of a sense of humor, with its ability to compromise, is not the final corruption of man.”
Phoebe came out, still avoiding meeting Geoffrey’s eyes, and announced that Melissa was ready to go home. Arabella, too, had arrived in the Dunham carriage, and was waiting.
Geoffrey went into the large, old-fashioned bedroom, trying to cover, with a smile, his anxiety over Melissa. She was waiting for him, dressed in the clothing Arabella had brought: a soft, pale-blue poplin gown with cascades of white lace at breast and elbows. A broad yellow straw hat had been tied on her head, and her hands were gloved. There was a quiet and tranquil air about her, subdued and meditative. When Geoffrey entered, her white face became illuminated with that new look of hers, a shy yet fixed adoration which made her tired eyes kindle with brilliance. This always disconcerted Geoffrey while it delighted him. He began to wonder whether it was a good thing for Melissa to have transferred her fanaticism to himself. It imposed too impossible a burden on a mere human being. It had in it, for Melissa, the potentiality of pain, disillusionment and distress.
He sat down beside her and took both her hands in his. He leaned towards her, no longer smiling, but very grave:
“My darling, I am taking you home now. You are going to be very happy there, with me. You believe that, don’t you?”
“Yes, yes, Geoffrey,” she said, and her hands clung to his.
He sighed. “Melissa, I must talk to you before we leave. It is very important. You know, now, that you were wrong about many things and had formed dangerous opinions which almost destroyed you?”
“Yes.” She spoke simply and fully. “I was wrong. I was so very wrong about dear little Phoebe, and Arabella. They are so good. I never knew people could be so kind.”
Geoffrey frowned. “Melissa, listen to me closely. Phoebe and Arabella have not changed in the least. They are neither better nor worse than they were a week ago, a month ago, a year ago, or when they were born. If you continue to think them angels, formerly unjustly maligned by you, you are going to have plenty of shocks. I want you to remember this: Accept everybody just as he or she is. Demand from them nothing impossible in kindness, virtue, generosity, sympathy or wisdom. At the present moment, you think I am all perfection. If you continue to think that, you are going to suffer, and that might embitter you and turn you against the whole world. We are all just human beings. You have no right to expect anything very much from anybody.”
She listened with absorbed attention. Her face became somewhat sad. “Yes, I see,” she said in a low tone. But there was uncertainty in her. She added: “I don’t believe you’ll ever hurt or disillusion me, Geoffrey.”
“That is sweet of you, and I am touched,” he said with sincerity. “But you are quite wrong, my love. I shall hurt you often and even more often I shall disillusion you. I shan’t be able to help it. Sometimes it will be my fault, sometimes yours. And, in the natural course of events, you’ll wound me, too, and sometimes we shan’t like each other in the least. There may be rare moments when we’ll even hate each other. None of this can injure the love between us, if we remember that we have all the faults of humanity in common.”
She was silent. Geoffrey waited a moment, then said: “Melissa, I can’t imagine anything worse for you and for me than for you to transfer to me the old unthinking worship you had for your father, your old belief that the one you love is beyond vice or malice or cruelty, your old conviction that the one you love is all wisdom and perfection. I don’t want that from you, Melissa. I only want you to love me, to understand me as much as you can, to forgive me very frequently. You’ll have need to do all of these, and I, also, shall have need for them in my life with you.”
“I’d die rather than hurt you!” she cried.
“No, Melissa. You’ll hurt me, and you won’t die. And there is another thing: “I’d like you to learn to laugh. Do you know, love, that I’ve never heard you laugh?”
She began to smile, and then, to his delight and astonishment, she actually laughed, though with uncertainty and shyness.
After a little, he said: “At the moment, you are sure that the new world waiting for you is going to be all light and joy and peace. You are wrong. You must not get any fixed notions about the world, in any way, any idea that what you see today or tomorrow or the next year is immutable. The intelligent human being passes constantly from old worlds to new, constantly discarding, renewing and inventing illusions. Mind, no less than external nature, is always in flux. So you must be prepared to shed your erroneous illusions and opinions, day by day, with complete flexibility. Do you follow me, my dear?”
“Yes.” She looked at him steadily. “It sounds very confusing though.”
“It is. That’s what makes life so unpredictable and interesting. Try to understand, darling. The trouble was that your first world remained, inflexibly, the one in which you spent twenty-five years of your life without discarding an illusion or an opinion. Be determined, then, not to make the same mistake again, or you will inevitably be condemned to a chronic unhappiness. You are too young for that. Such a state is reserved for the old, or for the stupid, who let their minds harden in a matrix of ideas from which they cannot, or will not, permit themselves to be freed. You are not old, and you are not stupid.”
Melissa became agitated. “Am I to have no opinions, no convictions at all?” she demanded, with a touch of her old arrogant impatience.
He was very pleased at this. “Yes, indeed. Have opinions and convictions all over the premises, like the trees in a jungle, if you wish. But don’t let yourself get the idea that these are the right ones, the irrefutable ones, the ultimate ones. Doubt, Melissa.” He smiled at her. “Doubt like hell.”
She laughed, suddenly and spontaneously, and he thought he had never heard so good a sound, so cleansing and so full of hope.
Now he put her to the test of the lessons he had been trying to teach her. “What are your thoughts about your father, Melissa?”
Her face changed abruptly, became pinched and quiet. She drew her hands away from his, twisted the gloved fingers together. He waited for some time before she spoke.
“My father. At first, I could not bear the thought of him. I made my whole mind empty of him. Then I was disgusted, and I hated him. When I remembered his face and his voice, it seemed more than I could bear. But now I think I am beginning to see that he was very miserable, that he was cheated, not by others but by his own limitations. He had wonderful aspirations. He did not have the ability to realize them in actual performance. And so I am very sorry for him. Sometimes I am so sorry that I can hardly endure it.”
It was much more than Geoffrey could ever have expected. He took her hands again, and stood up, pulling her to her feet. They looked at each other for a long moment.
Then Geoffrey said: “I think we can go home now, darling.”