Melissa Read online

  She smiled at Amanda tenderly, bent forward from her chair to pat Amanda’s icy fingers. “Indeed I have, dear friend, and he is all anxiety. He will return at Christmas, and will come to see you. Though, of course, everything will be very confused, as we shall have eight house guests for the holidays. But I do hope he can spare an hour or so for his old friends.” To herself, she thought: Amanda is obviously dying. I doubt whether she will survive until Christmas. And I shall contrive to keep dear Geoffrey so busy with his dear friends that he will hardly have time to visit these dreadful people.

  She added aloud: “And when you see Geoffrey, Amanda, I know that you will express your gratification at his engagement to darling Miss Grace Biddle, of Philadelphia.” She spoke in a simpering arch voice, and contrived to look extremely coy. But her sharp and malevolent eyes fixed themselves watchfully upon Amanda.

  Amanda did not start, did not turn to stare searchingly upon the other woman. She said to herself: It is a lie. She has a motive for that lie, and I know what it is. I must be very careful. She looked at Arabella now, turning her head slowly. She managed a quiet smile.

  “That is good news, indeed,” she whispered. Arabella drew a relieved breath. She had been frightening herself unnecessarily, filling her life with nightmares. Geoffrey had forgotten that incredible remark of his three or four years ago. Perhaps he had only been teasing his sister.

  Amanda went on, and she managed to inject a hint of secrecy into her feeble tone: “I have some news for Geoffrey. He is Charles’ executor. Some unexpected money has been found. I wish to put it into his hands, for my children.” Amanda had rarely lied in her life, but she spoke this lie with quiet assurance.

  “Indeed,” murmured Arabella, conveying congratulation. “That is happy news, dear Amanda. Geoffrey will be so pleased.” She herself was pleased. She magnified the “money” into a fortune. She would tell Geoffrey that there was no need for his assisting the Upjohns. Perhaps she could tell him that Melissa had gone to Philadelphia to spend Christmas with friends, and had taken her mother with her, and her sister. It would be a precarious falsehood, but she would try it.

  “So,” said Amanda, “I wish you would send Geoffrey a telegram tonight, immediately upon leaving here, that I must see him at once.”

  Arabella said: “But dearest Amanda, he will be at home on Thursday, for Christmas, and this is Monday! Surely business can wait until then!”

  “No,” said Amanda firmly, “it cannot wait.” She turned her head and looked unyieldingly at Arabella, and the power of her will was like a compelling hand on the other woman’s shoulder.

  She watched Arabella, and when the latter hesitated, her eyes wavering cunningly from side to side, she added: “I am afraid I have burdened you. I shall send Melissa, or Hiram, to Midfield tonight, to send a telegram to Geoffrey.” She paused, went on: “One cannot rely upon telegrams. If I receive no answer by tomorrow night from the telegraph office that Geoffrey is returning immediately, I shall send another message.”

  Yes, she is capable of it, thought Arabella, with enraged dismay. And then, when he returns, he will be furious with me that I have kept the truth from him and have not sent for him myself. She has me in a trap.

  “Nonsense, dear Amanda!” she exclaimed. “I shall send Geoffrey the telegram immediately.” Her frightened thoughts continued: I shall telegraph him, saying that Amanda has taken a turn for the worse, and that he must come at once. There is slight chance he will ever know that she has been at the point of death for weeks. And there is always the possibility that she may die before he arrives. Oh, how dreadful and irritating fate can be, when one means only for the best!

  Amanda smiled grimly, and said: “Thank you.” She indicated her medicine on the table. “Would you please, Arabella? Poor Melissa has been constantly at my side. Perhaps she has thrown herself upon her bed for a few minutes’ much-needed rest.”

  Arabella rose with a flutter, administered the medicine. She began to chatter nervously: “Geoffrey will be so upset! With the house guests arriving and everything, and with his engagement to be announced. On second thought, darling Amanda, do not mention this to him. He will be annoyed that I have announced it prematurely. You know how shy gentlemen are about these things.”

  Amanda nodded gravely, by a supreme effort preventing a smile. “And now, Arabella, if you will be so kind as to lift my pillows and arrange that blanket over my feet. Melissa must be resting.”

  Arabella obeyed, then sat down by the bed again. Amanda closed her eyes and seemed to sleep. Arabella fixed her eyes upon the older woman’s face and willed that she might die at once, before Geoffrey arrived. She had discovered that James, Geoffrey’s man-servant, had been sending hampers to the Upjohns at her brother’s request. It had been days before she had been able to conquer her fear. And now, as she watched Amanda sleep, she was overcome with dismay and terror and hatred. All her fears returned to her, tremendously exaggerated. Fervently, over and over, she willed that Amanda might die tonight.

  CHAPTER 15

  When Dr. Mellon arrived that evening, he was quite astonished at the change in his patient, and, with gratification, he exclaimed: “Well, now, this is excellent! Practically a miracle, my dear Amanda!” He beamed at her, the kind old man, and opened his bag. But as he listened to Amanda’s heart, his wide smile grew less, became grave and concerned. Slowly he straightened up, staring at Amanda keenly and for a long time. Then he repeated, but in a very low voice: “Yes. A miracle.” He stroked his white beard in puzzled distress.

  “You mean, do you not, that my heart is no better, though I appear better?” asked Amanda quietly. She lifted her hand as if it were heavily weighted. “Yes, I know I have little strength. But God has been good enough to allow me sufficient for what I must do.”

  She spoke to him for a moment or two longer, then fell suddenly into a deep sleep.

  The next morning, when Melissa opened the door for Dr. Mellon, she was surprised to see that he was accompanied by a buxom young woman from the village, carrying a bag and exuding an air of capability. Dr. Mellon said heartily: “This is Matilda Pratt, Melissa, a very competent nurse.”

  We do not need a nurse,” replied Melissa, peremptorily, and attempting to bar the way. Her dwindled face flushed.

  “We have no money. My mother has no money to pay for a nurse.”

  She caught hold of the newel of the stairway, for she was half fainting with weariness. Dr. Mellon continued to smile heartily: “Nonsense, Melissa. Your mother asked for Matilda. She wishes to spare you any more night vigils, or day vigils, for that matter. She is much concerned about you.”

  Melissa gave him a hard sardonic smile and straightened up. But she allowed the doctor and the rosy nurse to pass her on the stairs. Dr. Mellon nodded affably at her, and her face became rigorous. Besides the nurse, the doctor had brought a message from the telegraph office for Amanda, as she had requested. Geoffrey Dunham would arrive late that afternoon and would come at once to the Upjohn house. The message had been for Melissa, but the doctor had tactfully refrained from giving it to the girl, for Amanda had warned him.

  “There will be a message in reply to one sent by Arabella Shaw,” she had said, controlling her laboring breath. “Whether it be for her, or for us, deliver it only to me. You will have no difficulty, I know, doctor, in ascertaining whether such a message has been received.”

  Melissa remained near the stairway until she heard her mother’s door close after the doctor and the nurse. Now she was dully enraged. Her mother was obviously better. There was no need for the night watch; there was no need to waste Papa’s precious money, which must be preserved for Andrew and Phoebe! It was intolerable. It was part of her mother’s hatred for Papa and herself. Melissa wrung her hands in a gesture of panic.

  Then she thrust out her chin in the old, intolerant way. No matter. There was always a way for an inflexible will. Amanda would not defeat Charles. She would not defeat her daughter. When she, Melissa, had a little stre
ngth, she would fight only the more ruthlessly. Melissa sat down very suddenly on the stairs, bent her head on her knees, and struggled with her faintness.

  After a long time she crawled up the stairs. She peered into her mother’s room, then hastily shut the crack she had opened. Dr. Mellon was preparing to leave. The nurse was already in efficient attendance and Amanda was smiling a little. I’ll go down to the kitchen and help Sally, thought Melissa. Then she stopped still in the hall. Here was the opportunity she had craved. She could work on her father’s manuscripts now. Tiptoeing, so that the alert Sally might not catch her in desertion, she stole slowly down the corridor to the study. She closed the door silently behind her, her heart thumping as if in escape. If that odious nurse was to be paid, there was no time to be lost. She must begin work at once, for the sake of her brother and sister. It was only nine o’clock. She might have some three hours and not a minute must be wasted.

  She looked at the study, and her tired eyes filled with tears. No one had cleaned it in weeks. It was exactly as it had been on the day when her father had been laid in his grave, except that a heavy fur of dust lay over everything and a mouldering smell floated almost palpably in the dank, closed air.

  She opened the windows and let in the cold snowy wind until the sickening closeness of the room had lessened considerably. She looked at the fireplace. There was no wood; she had burned it on that dreadful night when Geoffrey Dunham had forced his way into this room. She dared not go downstairs for more, for she might encounter Sally who would soon know that Melissa’s services were no longer needed in Amanda’s room. Shivering, Melissa went to her father’s wardrobe and took down his old greenish cloak. She wrapped it about her. It clung to her shoulders and arms like a loving embrace. She burst into deep, subdued sobs, held the folds to her lips and kissed them in an agony of fresh sorrow. She sat down on her hassock, buried her face in the cloak and rocked in her grief, her sobs muffled by the thickness of the fabric. Her father’s death, held at bay these last weeks, returned to her with full and piercing reality.

  At last she lifted her head, wiped her eyes, and dried her wet cheeks. Her face, softened by sorrow, now hardened resolutely. This was no way to serve her father when there was so little time. She could almost hear his gentle words of reproach. She stood up, fastened the cloak firmly about her neck, and went to his desk. She opened the desk, sat in his chair, took up his pen. The manuscript and its notes lay before her, untouched, waiting.

  She ran quickly through the notes, blinking her sore and reddened eyes. Some appeared to be missing. Though she felt that she was trespassing, she opened several drawers in her search. Her father’s desk had always tacitly been regarded by all as sacrosanct. Here the notes lay, until he was ready to use them. She came on a large flat notebook of black leather, and opened it with trembling hands. Then she sighed with relief. Not only did it contain the notes he had previously discussed with her, but many more. They were all there, in his exquisite handwriting, and again tears ran down her cheeks as she saw them.

  She began to work, correlating the notes, so that she might finish the manuscript. In this she displayed a profound orderliness and trained intelligence. An hour slipped by in that icy room as Melissa in her father’s cloak crouched over the desk and wrote firmly with numbing fingers. She lost all sense of time.

  She came to a series of notes on the ancient Carthaginians. Charles had written beside them in smaller writing: “To be used for the seventh volume of the series.” Melissa began to put these notes aside, then read Plutarch’s denunciation of the Carthaginians:

  “… harsh and gloomy, ruthless to their subjects, running to the extremes of cowardice in fear and of savagery in anger, obstinate in decisions, austere and narrow, and insensible to amusement or the graciousness of life.”

  Under this he had written: “How like my dear Amanda! But how docile she has become, since she has discovered who rules! It is a pleasure to see her despairing abjectness, her attempts to regain her integrity—It is all the more amusing because she does not know how supine she has become. She struggles quite blindly—with her New England instinct not to surrender.”

  The writing had a gay and humorous flow, a gleeful, dancing tilt. Like a caricatured face, it expressed something evil.

  Melissa sat and stared at the comment. She read it over and over. She read it, and sat there, until her cold flesh lost all sensation. She crouched over the book, and could not stir. She bent over it as if stricken by paralysis. Her eyes would not move away from the script; it was as if something was compelling her to remain there, helplessly reading and rereading it, absorbing all its cruelty and gloating derision.

  Then, very slowly, she closed the notebook. Methodically, she replaced it in its drawer and closed the drawer. Her hands had no feeling; her mind was empty. She tidied the heaps of notes methodically, straightened the pages of the manuscript. She wiped the pen, put it down, dropped the cover of the ink-pot. She did all this automatically, and from long habit. Then she said, loudly and clearly: “No!”

  Her voice aroused her from her dead apathy, and she started up with such abruptness that the cloak fell to her feet. She stood rigid, staring before her. Somewhere there was a dull and heavy pounding; she listened to it, dazed, and did not know it was her own heart. But she felt its most enormous and staggering pain.

  She heard her mother’s words of yesterday: “… he wanted power. He had a lust for it.” She clapped her hands over her ears, and again cried: “No!” She flung up her head and clenched her teeth so hard that her jaw-line sprang out like marble under her thin flesh. She gripped her hands together and fought down the terror and the fear as if they had been wolves tearing at her throat and her life depended on the outcome. She knew she must not be overcome, that she must fight for her whole existence in these appalling moments.

  She willed her mind to become quiet. She willed her body to stop its anguished trembling. She closed her ears. She was absorbed only in her atempts to rally from some profound shock.

  Slowly, at last, she unclenched her fingers from each other; slowly, she became still. She did not move for a long time, for there was no quickened movement of blood in her legs as yet. Then drained, quiet, unfeeling and unthinking, she went out of the room. She said to herself: I must get away. I must leave this house. I must go where there is nobody, so I can think sanely.

  She went out of the room, creeping like a fugitive. She went to her own room, took a heavy gray shawl from her wobbling wardrobe, wrapped it closely about her head and shoulders. She went downstairs; the stairway wavered like a tremulous ribbon before her, and she carefully held up her skirts and took each step cautiously. She opened the heavy oaken door of the hall and closed it behind her. The snow had stopped. The whole world was one black-and-white silence. She thought: I will go into the woods and get a Christmas tree for Phoebe and Andrew. She bent as she passed the little windows of the kitchen, so that Sally might not see her. Beyond the house lay the woodshed. There she found the small bright axe, and carried it away with her.

  Moving more quickly now, racing like a gray-and-black shadow against the snow, she went across the white-filled meadows, her skirts flowing behind her as if struck by wind. Everything was silent. Not a twig or branch cracked anywhere; not an animal scurried before the girl’s flying footsteps. Once or twice an evergreen dropped its load of snow with a faint cold sound. The sky overhead was a lid of motionless mist, and everywhere was the pure and sterile smell of the winter day.

  The woods drew her in. Pines and hemlocks and spruce stood immobile, coated with whiteness. Here and there a huge and twisted black tracery of elm or poplar or oak broke the ranks of the firs, gave, through their skeleton shapes, a view of the skies. Melissa broke the trackless marble with her hurrying feet. Deeper and deeper she penetrated into the breathless and alabaster quiet. She reached a small clearing. A fallen trunk stood in her way. She sat down on it, huddled, the shawl falling from her hair, which was revealed as a pale bright bl
ur against all that frozen whiteness and blackness.

  Her feet were enveloped with snow, and the cold made them numb. But she did not feel it. She stared at the ground, and did not move. Now the desperate struggle was resumed; grimly she faced it.

  “I must understand,” she said aloud, in her quiet and ruthless voice. “I must understand, or I’ll surely die.”

  Her father’s notebook lay before her as clearly as it had lain on Charles’ desk. Over and over, she reread what he had written. The words were like fire, sharp and bold. With each rereading, something sank away in her, like the withdrawing of blood, like the dying of some innocent virtue. Courageously, she repeated the words to herself, for Melissa had always had a formidable courage, and no deviousness had ever scarred or weakened it.

  . She did not know that there are some truths which must be denied if one is to live. Her young body defied death and defeat, it clamored that the truth be hidden from it in order that it might survive. Her stricken brain, answering the call of that body, rallied, began to marshal specious arguments, lying consolations, twisted reasonings, until the time when she could endure the truth and not die of it.

  Before the deathliness of the face of the truth, her brain spun rapid and concealing webs. A quiet but insistent thought came to her: I must do justice to Papa. I must not come to some treacherous conclusion. As she thought this, her father’s face and body rose up before her, as vividly as in life, gentle, benign, tender and humorous. She could even hear his faint voice:

  “Oh, Melissa, how can you betray me like this, even for an instant? Have you forgotten our long years together, our years of trust and affection and work and candid discussion? Can you recall a single word of mine that was cruel or harsh or without pity? Did I ever deal treacherously with you, or with anyone else, in all the time you have known me? Yet you balance years of love and understanding against a single paragraph inadvertently read, and which you are now shamelessly misinterpreting.”