Melissa by Taylor Caldwell
He was, in some ways, a naïf man. He knew he held the whip-lash over his sister. Knowing that without him she would be a pauper, and that he had complete power over her, he believed she would not dare lift a hand against Melissa, that she would obey him in everything he asked for his wife. He had great faith in power, and so he had come to trust Arabella in anything which pertained to Melissa. She dared not, he believed, do anything but help Melissa, and himself.
He said: “How is Melissa?”
He had asked this question of her on the occasion of each of his visits, and she answered him as she had always answered him: “Very well, indeed. She is doing splendidly with her lessons. Very docile and eager to learn. And happier, I do believe. Yes, she grows happier each day.”
He frowned, put down his cup. “I thought, the last two times, that she was paler and more quiet than usual.”
“Oh, dear Geoffrey, what an imagination you havel You must remember that the summer has been an uncommonly trying one. Besides, Melissa has been working every day on her father’s book. Really, you must leave her alone, my love. As you once said, she must find the way herself. I truly believe she is finding it. There are times when she seems very thoughtful, and uncertain.”
As this agreed with Geoffrey’s own opinions and beliefs, he nodded his head. Nevertheless, he was somewhat uneasy. “I have asked her many times to come with me to Philadelphia or New York, for music and the art galleries. But she has always refused.” He paused, for this was a delicate subject. “Now, I intend to go to Europe soon. I want her to go with me. I shall insist that she go.”
Arabella felt suddenly ill. She said, quickly: “Oh, Geoffrey, you must not press her! She has been so content all this summer, so peaceful and friendly. You remember, I urged you to let her be, not to be importunate or insistent. We agreed that Melissa must be quiet, that she must become accustomed to her new home, that she must have long, tranquil periods in which to forget her old life and miseries and to free herself from the incubus of her father. She is doing so well now. Why not merely suggest to her that you would like her to accompany you, that you wish her to consider it?”
Geoffrey was silent. His face had darkened. Then he said: “I have left her alone for months. I have, for her own sake, not intruded myself upon her. I have hardly spoken to her, convinced that it was best to let her make her own advances. But she has not made them. I can’t wait any longer, Bella. I must take matters into my own hands. I have a feeling it is dangerous to let matters drift as they have been drifting. We have been married seven months. In that time, Melissa must have found herself or she never will, without outside help. I have waited long enough. I intend to offer, or force, that help.”
Arabella clenched her hands together desperately under the mauve ruffles. A sick sweat broke out under her rouge, and smarted.
“Geoffrey,” she pleaded, “for Melissa’s sake, merely suggest Europe. If she refuses, let her remain here quietly. She is happier. I swear. She is becoming accustomed to the house, to the routine, to the. peace and comfort. She and I have become very affectionate friends. She defers to my opinion and is learning many things in a truly commendable way. A few months longer, and I am sure that she will have recovered both mental and physical health and will be prepared to welcome you home with every manifestation of wifely devotion.”
“You think she is still afraid of me?” asked Geoffrey.
Arabella hesitated, then said sadly: “Yes, I believe so. But it is becoming less, that fear. Occasionally, she mentions your name without her usual shrinking. Oh, Geoffrey, do not press her! Believe me, I speak from full knowledge. It would be dangerous.”
She was so terrified that her voice rang with complete sincerity, and Geoffrey was impressed by it. He stood up, patted her shoulder. “I shall think about what you have said, Bella. But I can promise no more than that.”
“You need promise me nothing,” said Arabella, aware of the desperation in her voice, and attempting to cover it with a fond smile. “It is your affair, and Melissa’s. I speak only from affection for both of you. I am a woman, and I understand a woman’s heart, even so strange a one as that poor girl’s. She has not recovered completely from her father’s death, but time is doing its long healing. I am her confidante now, and she tells me many things. I can say with conviction that the influence her father had over her is diminishing. By forcing matters, you would only antagonize her. Once or twice I have spoken of Charles, and immediately she bristled and became fanatical again. Now I let her broach the subject herself, and listen in silent sympathy. I do not speak of you, but I have observed that she has, lately, on a few occasions, mentioned your name. That is a very good omen, dear Geoffrey. Let time do for you what precipitation will not do.”
Geoffrey considered this thoughtfully for a few moments. He was a little cheered by what his sister had said. Moreover, it sounded sensible to him. However, he could not rid himself of a sense of uneasiness and doubt. He touched his sister’s cheek, smiled, and announced that he had some work to finish in the library and that he would see her in the morning.
Arabella had contemplated going to bed before her brother’s arrival, but now she was sleepless. She sat for a long time, distractedly plotting and discarding each plot as it presented itself. What if Melissa consented to accompany Geoffrey to Europe? What if she now had come to a realization of her own suppressed emotions with regard to her husband? Then, for Arabella, everything was over. Hour after hour, she sat in her chair, full of hatred and fear and wretchedness. If only Geoffrey had not returned so soon! Ravel was still Arabella’s only hope, and it was a hope dwindling away very fast. Even when morning approached, Arabella could not sleep.
Though it was now very late, Geoffrey went to the library and unpacked his briefcase of manuscripts and other papers, spread them before him, and picked up his pen. But, though he was pressed for time, it was impossible to begin work. He refilled his whiskey glass repeatedly. The rain and the wind had ceased. He listened to the lonely cry of the crickets, to the scream of an owl. He could smell the hot wet earth and the scent of evergreens dripping with moisture. When in the city, he remembered these things with nostalgia. But now the night silences and the intermittent wild sounds only increased his restlessness.
There was much to annoy and worry him lately, but nothing imminent and urgent enough for him to grasp and analyze. Though he had persuaded himself that matters concerning her would soon be settled, Melissa was the chronically uneasy background of all his thoughts. He refused to think of her actively, but concentrated on other things connected with his business affairs and annoyances.
He was not a man normally given to strong patriotic impulses, and his interest in the late war had not been overwhelming and enthusiastic. But he had lately been thinking that America was too much preoccupied with British writers, and that England, though ostensibly regarded with bitterness, more particularly in the North, still had a mysterious fascination for Americans. When he complained that America was not producing writers who really expressed American life and strength and vitality, he was reproachfully referred to Holmes, Longfellow, Whittier and Lowell. Even when he pointed out that these merely imitated British writers and poets, his audience was not convinced. They did not understand his reference to “spirit.” Geoffrey had published several of Dickens’ books, and admired them conservatively, but the worship of Mr. Dickens in America irritated him. Harpers had published the English Collins’ novels, and Lothair, by Disraeli, had sold prodigiously. Reade’s assinine novels had commanded large royalties. The worst of the English novelists could depend on a huge American public, as could Hugo, Björnson and Turgenev. But, Geoffrey argued, these did nothing to explain
America to Americans, and that, in these days of national restlessness and uncertainty and confusion, was the enormous need. America needed a vision, an Interpretation, a translator. She needed them, but she was not getting them. The time had arrived for Americans to produce a literary art peculiarly their own, f
Some of his friends advised him, cynically, to be content with his profits. It was advice which, only a short time ago, he would have given other publishers. He had had no patience with that romantic “itch” which impelled some publishers to believe they had a “mission” and to take their business seriously. Now he found himself suffering from the same condition, and could not laugh himself out of it. It was not enough for him that younger Americans were now engrossed with the great English scientists and essayists such as Darwin, Spencer, Huxley and Tyndall. Surely, somewhere, there lived men who could express American philosophies. He had not found them. There was Emerson, of course, but in a nation of incredible Anglophiles, who considered everything homegrown as distinctly unfashionable and unworthy of serious study, Emerson was not as popular as Huxley.
In short, even the American writers of worth and genius were still influenced by English writers and modes, methods of thought and approach. It sometimes surprised Geoffrey that he was forced to remember that Edgar Allan Poe was an American. To him, Poe was more English than American, in sentiment and spirit and expression.
Though Geoffrey was making large profits from such American books as Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ sentimental and eclectic novels, and the maundering tracts of T. S. Arthur and the sweet idiocy of Theodore Tilton’s tales, the fact remained that no American writer of great stature was indicating his existence. Perhaps, he thought, the reason for the popularity of saccharine trash by American writers in America was because the American women were almost the sole patrons of novels. American men still did not realize that it was not effeminate to appreciate, admire and support literary artists. In truth, there was an alarming and growing indication that American men considered any form of art to be effeminate and left to the women.
Geoffrey was resisting a new form of writing which had become popular after the war, and that was the cheap “dime novel” with yellow covers and gory titles. The Far West had come into vogue, an incredible West which had never existed.
Mr. Eldridge had succumbed to the lure of profits, and was now happily pouring out “yellowbacks” in enormous profusion. He argued that many of them truly recorded the hell-raising adventures of pioneers and woodsmen, and should be appreciated for that fact. But to Geoffrey they were not the literature he wished for America. The theme was good, but the writing was execrable.
Moreover, he had come to the conclusion that the book trade, itself, needed reorganization. If he published books in the spring, they were conveyed to auction rooms on lower Broadway in New York, where publishers, like cheap auctioneers, sold stock on consignment, and later hoped for the best in slow national distribution. The subscription system, which Geoffrey detested, further enlarged the purses and reputations of foreign authors, because it necessarily must concentrate on famous writers to the hurt of any aspiring American author.
Slowly, two novel ideas presented themselves to Geoffrey: retailers and advertising. There were some of his colleagues, particularly in conservative Boston, who lifted horrified hands at the mere thought of advertising “literature” as one would advertise furniture, stoves, horses and chinaware. But Geoffrey began to understand that if vast areas of the country were to be made acquainted with books of any kind they must first be approached by advertising. Such advertising would introduce still unknown American writers of worth to a public that knew only foreign writers by way of the subscription system. Better still, it would make books of all kinds accessible to the American people.
As publishers were not immune to the cupidity affecting other human beings, they were also averse to the idea of allowing retailers to take a cut on their profits. They preferred the system, much more contemptible to Geoffrey than the thought of retailers, whereby they auctioned off their publications. Though he had long ago become accustomed to human inconsistencies, he could still marvel at this attitude. He finally came to the conclusion that it was no mere reverence for literature which made his colleagues shudder at “commercialism,” but sheer timidity at atttempting the new, and avarice.
He was determined, at whatever risk, to begin advertising wherever a newspaper was published, or a monthly periodical. He determined, too, to engage the services of retailers. There was still another way of acquainting Americans far from large cities with books of all kinds, and that was the private circulating library. The idea was not new; there were at least thousand such libraries in existence. Geoffrey decided that their numbers must be increased. He, himself, would sponsor at least one hundred more, in remote outposts and in the smaller towns of the West and South.
Only by such methods would the hopeful, if still unpublished, American writers obtain the audience they deserved, and Americans become truly literate.
In pursuit of these ideas, he had spent much of the past months in traveling over the country, talking with newspaper proprietors and the owners of national periodicals. They were willing to accept his money for advertising, but laughed at him behind his back. He knew this, and merely shrugged. Most of these gentlemen were avaricious, and had no objection to taking his dollars, but he found in them, too, that curious phenomenon: the belief that “literature” was too sacred for the touch of the dirty hand of advertising.
He had engaged, and set up in business, a few retailers in distant towns and cities, men quite happy to agree to his propositions but also quite doubtful of their success. They listened respectfully when he said: “Create an audience for American writers, and they will appear, I have no doubt” But they did not believe him.
He had pursued any trail, however faint, which he thought might lead him to a future American writer of stature and importance. Lately, he had come upon some copies of the San Francisco Alta California, which contained some amusing and vivid letters contributed by one “Mark Twain.” In them he thought he detected a virile and living spirit, distinctly and exclusively American, with no overtones of British influence. But when he had written to the paper for the author’s address, he was informed that Mr. Twain had embarked on the steamship Quaker City for a tour of the Mediterranean. He was supplied with the itinerary by the obliging newspaper, and he had decided to follow Mr. Twain and try to induce him to write a book or two for publication.
He had read only a few of the letters but, by some mysterious intuition, he felt that he had come on a fat quarry, one of importance and power, and expressive of America. He intended to sail within two weeks. His passage was already engaged. He also intended to take Melissa with him.
These, then, were the problems and hazards occupying him tonight He had many plans, but he knew the danger and possible loss inherent in them. Sometimes, as he paced up and down, he accused himself of being a “damned sentimentalist.” But he could not shake off his intuitive convictions, nor could he really believe himself a fool. There was something strong and stirring in America. It needed a voice. He believed that he had found one such voice. America needed many. Even if they involved new methods and novel approaches which might be successfully resisted, he was willing to wager all his fortune on his hopes and his ideas. It was worth trying. He intended to try.
The ultimate problem was Melissa. He returned with impatience and determination to the thought of his wife. The girl had had time enough. If she was not ready, then he must leave her, for she would never be ready. When he had married her, he had had moments when he believed that he had done a stupid and foolish thing. It was time to determine whether it had indeed been stupid and foolish, or whether there was some hope for Melissa and himself. In either event, he had decided, he must force a crisis and submit to the outcome.
It was useless to try to work. He replaced his papers, blew out the lights, and went up to bed. James came in to help him undress and to prepare him for the night. Geoffrey thought such service a “damned lot of nonsense” but it appeared to give James satisfaction and pleasure. On such occasions, Geoffrey was accustomed to discussing casual matters w
Though ostentatious, the mournfulness was not assumed. James had decided that when he next saw his master he would hint to him of Melissa and her unhappiness, quoting Rachel copiously. But how was it possible, he asked himself, to tell an employer that his wife was miserable, subtly and not so subtly persecuted and bedevilled by her husband’s sister, that she was fast reaching the breaking point, and that her husband was an obtuse fool who did not see what was shouting at him under his very nose? James, however diplomatic, could see no way of informing Geoffrey of all this in a delicate yet unmistakable manner. In spite of the intimacy and familiarity which Geoffrey frequently encouraged in his servants, James well knew that he was a capricious and brutal man and that, for all his genial air of democracy, there were barriers he would not allow to be crossed. Once or twice, in his earlier days, encouraged by a hearty friend liness, James had crossed that barrier, and he would never forget, he reminded himself, the devastating results. Geoffrey might not be “a gentleman,” but there were times when he acted as viciously as if he had been one. Worst of all, one never knew when he would suddenly decide to be “gentry.” He never indicated when this metamorphosis was about to take place, and so it was all very disconcerting.
But, though Geoffrey was preoccupied, he finally became aware of James’ heavy silence and sad countenance. He did not want, tonight, to hear any account of any indisposition conceivably being suffered by his man. He contemplated being a gentleman and ignoring James, but both this and James began very shortly to irritate him. He got into bed and looked at his man impatiently.