The Chinaberry Tree by Jessie Redmon Fauset

Author:Jessie Redmon Fauset [Fauset, Jessie Redmon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2013-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XXVI

SHE did not dream it immediately; she did not fall to sleep immediately. Instead, lying at first tense and then relaxed in her narrow bed she sought to bring her mind to bear on Harry Robbins and his slimy generosity. What lay behind it she could not quite guess but she knew enough about Harry to realize that there lurked some evil intent. It was not like him to give her up; it was not like him to yield up anything even that he didn’t want, with grace and good-will. It was indeed his would-be air of eager kindness that most frightened. She could understand his willingness to thwart Asshur, but it seemed hardly likely that he would sacrifice his own desires to that extent. No he must have some ulterior motive whose working out would satisfy the grudge which she knew he bore her.

Stubbornly she tried to fathom it out. Could it be that knowing Malory’s pride in his name, Harry was hoping to precipitate the marriage and then acquaint his young rival with the story of Aunt Sal and Lau-rentine and their connection with her? Perhaps Robbins thought such a tale pointing to deception on Melissa’s part would alienate Malory to such an extent that it would mean separation and that she would come to Harry after all for shelter and protection.

“But I never would,” she told herself stoutly.

Well then what was it all about? Her tired mind refusing to cope any longer with such an unsolvable problem switched involuntarily to a discussion which they had had in her English class on the ancient Greek drama. She had meant to read up on the subject but she had been too tired. However, Miss Scarlett, her teacher had been as always very clear and precise in presenting the details. She could remember, she thought, almost every word of it, in case an examination was sprung. What had intrigued her attention most had been the pictures which Miss Scarlett had shown of the masks of Tragedy and Comedy. After they had gone the round of the class Melissa had secured them again and pored over them in an agony of fascination, fear, and repulsion.

She hated the sightless eyes, the horrid, gaping mouths, the snaky hair. Even the plane of the cheeks and the moulding of the lips seemed to carry a suggestion, in both masks, of a mad, deliberate cruelty. In particular she was at once magnetized and repelled by the hint of laughter in the Comic Mask. If anyone were ever to look at her with that vacant, leering grin, that promise of heartless mirth. . . .

“I’d scream out loud,” she told herself cowering under her warm covers. She closed her eyes to shut out the image which her mind had conjured up for her, opened them again—the face was peering at her over the foot of the bed.

• • • • •

Of course it was not surprising that she dreamed, she thought, waking wanly and exhausted in the chilly little light of a December morning.

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