A Bloodsmoor Romance

  “Who is that, Mamma?” Samantha once asked, pointing at a tinted daguerreotype of Mrs. Zinn in her bridal gown, in the family scrapbook, and Mrs. Zinn, brushing the little girl’s hand aside in order to close the book, said: “A creature of vanity.”

  Yet she loved her daughters, hardly a whit less than she loved her husband; and tho’ her love for Deirdre was perhaps not quite so fervent as her love for the other girls (such is my assumption: I cannot after all pierce the inviolable mystery of the human heart), she did cherish the unhappy child, and suffered intermittent grief on her account, and dreamt frequently of her—troubled, chaotic dreams in which Deirdre, again a ten-year-old, held her thin arms out to Mrs. Zinn in vain. “Momma! Momma!” the child cried, as she had so rarely cried in real life: but Mrs. Zinn, paralyzed, could not move to her; and woke much disturbed, hardly knowing where she was, except that, with Mr. Zinn slumbering and snoring peacefully beside her, she was much alone.

  “Deirdre, my lost Deirdre,” she murmured, “how we have wronged you! Yet how can we make amends?”

  In addition to Aunt Geraldine Miller, now a somewhat giddy widow in her late sixties, there were a number of female relatives who dabbled, it might be said, in Spiritualism; and even in her girlhood Prudence Zinn and several female companions had experimented with a Ouija board (which they claimed to find intensely boring, far less interesting than a book, say, by Mr. Emerson); but that very new and very American branch of science or religion was vehemently rejected by most of the family, who were after all nominally Episcopalian, or comfortably agnostic, and scornful of religious enthusiasm of a primitive kind. The usually tolerant John Quincy Zinn himself considered Spiritualism “a shameful deception of the credulous, and a still more shameful expenditure of Time.”

  After the tragic death of nineteen-year-old Annie Miller in Rome, as a consequence of malaria (or so it was given out: the family whispered that Annie might have been murdered by Italians, perhaps poisoned; others whispered cruelly that she might have died as a result of “illicit” behavior with Italians, of an indeterminate nature), Aunt Geraldine and Annie’s mother and one or two other ladies sought to make contact with her, by way of mediums in New York City, Schenectady, and Boston; but to little avail. A fair amount of money was spent, and rumor had it that Aunt Geraldine had pressed upon the chela-companion of the celebrated Madame Blavatsky, the young Indian Hassan Agha, a costly pearl-and-sapphire brooch that had come down through the family from the reign of William and Mary, yet to no avail: the brooch being accepted as an honorable contribution to the cause of Theosophy, and the erection, in particular, of a new Lamasery in Adyar, Madras; but no contact with the dead girl was promised, or, indeed, was forthcoming. Rather more hurt than discouraged, the grieving Mrs. Miller next applied to the popular trance medium Johnette Whittaker, a former innkeeper’s wife of Pike’s Falls, New York; and then to the ubiquitous Mrs. Theodora Guilford, whose séances were always characterized by what some observers called an excess of Christian piety (the anxious Mrs. Guilford fearing, not altogether unreasonably, that she might be damned as a witch in some quarters—in Roman Catholic Boston, for instance), alas, to no avail: the deceased Annie, or Daisy, as she was ofttimes called, being as queerly reticent in death, as she was loquacious in life.

  It was a measure of Mrs. Miller’s desperation that she sent letters and telegrams to the great trance medium Daniel Dunglas Home, now in sumptuous retirement on the Riviera: Home being incontestably the very greatest of mediums in recorded history: Highlander-born (of a long line of “seers”) but American-reared, and hence, poor Mrs. Miller wished to believe, disposed to aid her in her search. To these heartfelt applications the redoubtable Home answered only with silence—ungracious man!

  Nevertheless, tho’ Aunt Geraldine and her companions did not make contact with the dead Annie, they did, in the course of a dozen séances, experience phenomena of a kind to defy all logic, as well as common sense—and became, to the disgust of the men of the family, fervent Spiritualists, contributing much to the cause, by way of both gifts and hard cash.

  Deirdre of the Shadows began to hold sessions in the Boston-Quincy-Providence area, in the late spring of 1880; and made a New York début not many months afterward, in the lower Fifth Avenue home of a highly respectable widow named Strong, under the auspices of the Theosophical Society, tho’ her relationship to the Theosophists, and to Madame Blavatsky, was unclear. As a consequence of her well-born and monied clientele, this young woman soon enjoyed a blossoming reputation, and was duly written up in the papers, and even investigated by the “scourge of the occultists,” Colonel Lynes, writing for the New York Daily Graphic, who allowed that the young medium might possess powers: he had, in any case, witnessed a great deal that could not be explained, either by common sense, or by a suspicion of fraud.

  Immediately upon her arrival at the séance, Mrs. Zinn saw, to her relief, that Deirdre of the Shadows was not her daughter; and gave inward thanks (for how very, very bizarre all this Spiritualist claptrap was!—how indelicate, how morbid, how common), tho’ she was, of course, disappointed at the same time, to know that she would return to Bloodsmoor without Deirdre. “My poor lost child,” she murmured to herself, “lost in the cruel spaciousness of our century . . . !”

  Tho’ Deirdre of the Shadows was not Deirdre Louisa Zinn, Mrs. Zinn did admit afterward to having been impressed, as much by the young medium’s air of innocence and detachment, as by her alleged skills. (These included voices called out of the air; raps and knocks and chimes, and ectoplasmic faces—which did astound the credulous Octavia; a heaving table of solid mahogany; the rattling of dice, or bones; an eerie hunter’s horn; an eerie harp; “contact spirits” who babbled in foreign languages, and could not be hushed; and sudden revelations that meant a great deal to the participants at the table, coming, as they evidently did, from “Spirit World,” but which sounded like sad, simple nonsense to the uninvolved observers.)

  As the young medium seated herself at the head of the table, her cape rustling about her, Mrs. Zinn lifted her dark veil, in order to see as clearly as possible. The medium appeared to be already in a partial trance—or drugged. She had a small, narrow, exceedingly pale face; a perceptible widow’s peak; jet-black hair in a shockingly loose style; a small, thin, and somewhat pouting mouth. To be sure, this young woman resembled the lost Deirdre (as the impressionable Octavia whispered in her mother’s ear), but, in fact, unhappily, and irrevocably, she was not Deirdre, but a stranger.

  Mrs. Zinn stared openly, paying little attention to the medium’s queer halting words, or to the air of nervous expectation in the room. She was not, after all, a client; she had not come to communicate with her dead, or with any dead at all; she prided herself on being a steadfast Episcopalian, in manner if not fully in doctrine (for there were elements of the Trinity, and of Mary’s role, she found most difficult to accept). Spiritualism might be taken up by the nouveau riche of the city, and even by European and English nobility, but it struck a Kidde­master as being distinctly lowlife, and she had no use for it. And so she watched, she stared, she assessed, quite coolly, and queried herself whether the young woman was truly in a trance, or pretending—or might she be hypnotized?—or under the influence of a powerful narcotic? Ah, there was tragedy here, if one had time to investigate, and the necessary sympathy!

  An ironic coincidence, Mrs. Zinn thought, lowering her veil, that this young woman should have taken for herself the appellation “Deirdre of the Shadows.” There was, surely, nothing about her sombre face that suggested childhood: and Mrs. Zinn could not help but recall her youngest daughter’s small pretty features, and the roses that oft bloomed faintly in her cheeks; and the sparkle of her gray eyes. Lost, lost! And never to be regained!

  Octavia again leaned close, to whisper in her mother’s ear, and again Mrs. Zinn pushed her gently away. Deirdre of the Shadows was surely a stranger to all sense of decorum and decency, to appear before a paying public as she did, in that theatrical
ly flamboyant cape, and a black silk dress that suggested a nightgown rather than a proper dress, since it was not drawn in tightly at the waist, but fell in loose graceful folds like a pagan tunic; nor was her hair normally fashioned, but tumbled to her shoulders in an unspeakably vulgar style, Latin perhaps, or even gypsy, Mrs. Zinn knew not. . . . “Deirdre of the Shadows,” indeed! And the people who attended her, how very odd they were, a lady’s maid with staring agate eyes and a skirt so short her ankles nearly showed, and a young dark-skinned male, slender as an eel, East Indian by the look of him, and decidedly sinister, in a black turban with a scarab brooch, and a black raw silk tunic that fitted his body far too snugly. Behind the scenes, too, offstage as it were, a grossly fat woman swathed in shawls, with a frizzed mop of hair and no head covering, bustled about, doing the Lord knew what, and hissing instructions to the maid and the turbaned youth. How shameful, how despicable, it all was . . . !

  Mrs. Zinn wiped tears from her eyes, which had begun to soak her veil. She felt a sudden physical loathing not only for the medium and her grotesque comrades, but for the clients as well. Fools! Gulls! So credulous were they, so childlike in their naïveté, they were leaning forward eagerly to take in the medium’s every movement, however jerky and spasmodic, and her every half-audible word and moan—as if the entire performance were not fraudulent!

  “Mother,” Octavia whispered, “are you feeling faint? Shall we step outside for some air?”

  “I am quite well,” Mrs. Zinn said curtly, pushing her daughter’s hand away. “Only rather warm. It is unpleasantly close in here.”

  “I have brought along smelling salts in case—”

  “I assure you, I am quite well.”

  “It isn’t Deirdre after all—is it?” Octavia whispered, squinting through her veil.

  “Certainly not.”

  “She is much older—much older than my little sister,” Octavia said. “So strange and pale and steeped in sorrow—no longer a child—not, I am sure, our Deirdre?”

  “Not our Deirdre,” Mrs. Zinn said quietly.

  ON THEIR RETURN journey to Philadelphia, in the privacy of their plush-lined compartment, Mrs. Zinn and Octavia spoke little of the abortive Boston adventure, and occupied themselves industriously with their sewing. (Each was working on a teatowel for Constance Philippa’s household.) From time to time Octavia sighed heavily, but Mrs. Zinn, in her stoic detachment, did not scruple to discipline her.

  Before retiring for the night Octavia murmured sleepily: “How very strange, that unhappy young lady!—and she appeared to take no notice of us.”

  The remark was so incidentally made, and Mrs. Zinn so half consciously heard it, no reply was necessary; and neither was to remember it on the following morn, when the coach pulled with a triumphant clatter into sunny Philadelphia.

  NINETEEN

  Miss Constance Philippa Zinn and the Baron Adolf von Mainz were joined in holy matrimony on November 15, 1880, at Trinity Church of Bloodsmoor, the Reverend Silas Hewett presiding. The bride wore a gown of surpassing beauty, of the finest China silk, with a many-layered skirt and train, and a long veil of Brussels lace; and the groom was impeccably attired in a morning coat and tails, with a sprig of orange blossom in his lapel. There was only a moment’s awkwardness, when, it appeared, the wedding band was too small for the bride’s finger, and the groom, perhaps embarrassed by his role, seemed to grow impatient, and jammed it on: but an instant later all was well, and, tho’ slightly red-faced, the bridal couple continued with the ceremony, and Reverend Hewett pronounced them man and wife; and the organ sounded.

  Wedding guests were driven to Kidde­master Hall in special carriages, and received in the reception room at the east end of the house, which was sumptuously decorated with floral displays of all kinds, and had never looked more elegant. On a raised platform was a six-piece chamber orchestra, which played throughout the evening; in one corner, a display of wedding gifts (a great number of the most beautiful specimens of cut glass, china, silverware, side pieces, watercolors and oil paintings, linens, etc.), which all the guests inspected with delight, and congratulations to the bride and groom.

  The wedding repast was served in the larger of the two dining rooms, which room had been given a marvelous pink cast, by the judicious selection and arrangement of roses, candles, napkins, and glassware of that hue, to the exclaimed admiration of the guests. The bride’s table was circular in form, with a generous mound of tulle upon which were strewn a countless number of pink tea roses interspersed with little bows of pink-and-white-striped ribbon, the appearance of all being most beautiful. Before the bride was placed the bride’s loaf, magnificently frosted, and at each of the twelve places about this table, occupied by the bridal party, were bouquets of pink and cream roses, large ones for the ladies, and smaller ones for the gentlemen. (Vivacious Malvinia created something of a scene, by presenting to her elder sister Constance Philippa a prankish little mock-bouquet of tea roses some hours past their prime, interspersed with weed flowers of a common ghastly whitish hue: turkey beard, fly poison, miterwort, and death camas!—a bouquet the bride accepted without comment, and laid beside her plate at the table.)

  The long dining table was adorned with pink and cream roses as well, and drew forth unstinting exclamations of delight, as did the delicious ten-course meal, which, as was the tradition at Kidde­master Hall, disappointed neither in quality nor quantity. Guests were overheard commenting to one another upon the festivities, in tones of fulsome praise: “The most brilliant social event of the Bloodsmoor season,” was the general verdict; and I cannot but concur in their judgment.

  A fair amount of champagne was consumed, inspiring Cousin Basil Miller to an impudent but high-spirited toast, delivered in rollicking song:

  It’s we two, it’s we two for aye,

  All the world and we two, and Heaven be our stay!

  Like a laverock in the lift, sing O bonny bride!

  All the world was Adam once, with Eve by his side!

  All the world was Adam once—with Eve by his side!

  The honeymoon journey was to be an ambitious one, involving visits to Washington, D.C., Richmond, Atlanta, and New Orleans; and possibly the West Indies as well—where the Baron’s sugar-cane plantation was said to be threatened of late by labor difficulties. So the couple betook themselves to their carriage, and departed for Philadelphia, where they were scheduled to spend the night in the Baron’s handsome suite in the Hotel de la Paix, overlooking Logan Square.

  They were, it hardly needs to be said, a subdued couple, for Constance Philippa in particular was extremely shy, and not even the champagne poured for them by the Baron’s silent manservant could loosen her tongue, tho’ she drank, it may be unthinkingly, several glasses in rapid succession. From time to time both the bride and the groom glanced around, as if expecting to see, in the room’s distant corners, an unheralded visitor or witness. But of course they were alone—quite alone.

  “Are you warm enough, my dear?” the Baron asked solicitously, having noticed his bride shivering; and before she had even time to reply, he had arisen, and fetched a lovely white cashmere shawl, and draped it about her shoulders. “Perhaps, my dear Constance Philippa,” he murmured, “we can aspire to warmth together.”

  Constance Philippa murmured an inaudible reply, no doubt an assent.

  He regained his seat, and in silence they finished their light repast of ham, scallops, and caviar toast, and drank the rest of the champagne, the Baron now eying his bride steadily, with a look of grimness leavened by some humor (for one must remember that, despite the romance of their courtship, the young man had been married before), and, from time to time, a slight quiver of his mustache; and the bride’s cheeks appeared to have acquired a permanent blush, which gave to her ordinarily undistinguished complexion a look, almost, of maidenly delicacy. That the bride was nervous was evident in the trembling of her hand, as she lifted the glass to her mouth, and in a certain quickening of her breath; that the groom was
similarly affected was evident in the quickening of his breath, which soon became audible. “My dear,” the Baron said, in a dry, gentle voice, “perhaps it is time to retire for the night?”

  At once the bride rose from her chair, so quickly her husband had not time to help her, and in a soft rushed tone she excused herself, and went into the bedchamber with no evident air of hesitation, and closed the door quietly behind her. The Baron, being a considerate, and, as it were, a practiced husband, lingered behind, idly eating what remained of the ham, and, after some minutes, pouring an inch or two of brandy in a glass, the fumes of which he inhaled with evident pleasure. Time passed: he checked his pocket watch and decided to give the new Baroness another minute or two, to prepare herself. She had brought along for the honeymoon trip such a quantity of suitcases, trunks, and boxes, it would not have surprised him had she searched in vain for her nighttime apparel; and he smiled tightly to think of her growing desperation, should she not find it.