A Bloodsmoor Romance
Nevertheless, the mistress of staid Rumford Hall secretly knew of each of Malvinia Morloch’s stage triumphs, and saved such clippings and magazine features as she could, hiding them beneath the silver-tissue in certain of the drawers of Grandmother Kiddemaster’s wardrobe. She knew, tho’ she dared not speak of it to anyone, of Malvinia’s early success as a “saucy and mesmerizing” Rosalind, in As You Like It; she knew of Malvinia’s Broadway fame as an “inspired comedienne” in Dollars and Sense; she knew of the relative failure of Ah Sin, and of Mark Twain’s generous praise of Malvinia before the opening-night audience—as she was to know, to her incredulous dismay, some years later, of the crude gossip that alleged a liaison between her sister and that famous man of letters. She knew of a triumphant tour to the West Coast, with the road company of the popular melodrama She Lov’d Him Dearly, from which Orlando Vandenhoffen was to withdraw with such surprising abruptness. It goes without saying that Octavia never spoke of Malvinia to her husband or his numerous relatives, no more than she would have voiced a wish to journey to New York City in order to attend a theatrical entertainment!—such meretricious vanities now being excluded forever from her life.
Octavia followed, too, and likewise followed in earnest secret, the parallel career of her sister Deirdre, in which she was aided by the happenstance that the housekeeper of Rumford Hall, an elderly German widow, received in the mail such Spiritualist periodicals as The Seer, The Far Shore, The Spiritist, and The Theosophist, which regularly took note of “Deirdre of the Shadows,” soon proclaimed as the “unquestioned Seeress of the Age.” Octavia read avidly, albeit with a necessary repugnance, for she knew that Spiritualism was fraudulent, and her sister quite lost to all standards of civilization and decency; she knew that Our Saviour redeems us, and assures us of immortality in His bosom, and that Heaven is presided over by Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and that, according to Episcopal doctrine, mediums could have no role in any of this—the mechanism of the church being one of masculine authority, and beyond all usurpation, as it was beyond all comprehension, by persons of the weaker sex. Nonetheless, Octavia did follow Deirdre’s career, and knew of the early accolades bestowed upon her, and of the generally respectable coverage by the Spiritualist “muckraker” Colonel Lynes, for the New York Daily Graphic; and, of course, of the infamous investigation by the Society for Psychical Research, which had resulted in the deaths of two—nay, three—gentlemen, from causes never to be satisfactorily explained in the public press. How Octavia would have liked to speak of such things to her housekeeper, how she would have liked to broach the subject of Spirit World in general, and “Deirdre of the Shadows” in particular! But, fortunately, the credulous young mistress of Rumford Hall was saved from such folly, by a sober awareness of the necessary distance between herself and the servant class. “One does not speak with servants, but only to them”—so Miss Edwina Kiddemaster herself had oft counseled, in such manuals as The Christian House & Home, and The Young Wife’s Almanac; and tho’ she sometimes felt o’ercome with loneliness (Mr. Rumford being of a taciturn nature), Octavia successfully resisted speaking to her housekeeper, on any matters save those strictly regarding the house.
And she would have as readily raised the subject of Spiritualism to Mr. Rumford, as she would have the subject of theatrical entertainments!—knowing with what astonished scorn, and choler, that sombre Christian gentleman would have greeted it. (For, despite his husbandly concern for her physical enfeeblement, upon the occasion of her first miscarriage, Mr. Rumford had been incensed at Octavia’s delirious assertion that she had had a premonition of the catastrophe—for such bespoke pagan superstition in his eyes, and “the crudest sort of women’s prattle.”)
So the years passed, and the new mistress of Rumford Hall shared her secrets with no one: having become estranged from Samantha (who, fanatically engrossed in Mr. Zinn’s numerous projects, had simply no interest in Octavia’s married life, or in her children—and made no pretense of it); and seeing but rarely her younger cousins from Philadelphia, who frequently visited Bloodsmoor, but found Rumford Hall “too distant,” and Mr. Rumford possibly too forbidding. Of course Octavia often visited with Mrs. Zinn, and enjoyed visits from her, but naturally she could not speak of Malvinia and Deirdre to her mother—she dared not even allude to them. (Save to say, with a sigh, that she sometimes missed her old bedchamber!—her dear cozy old room, and the cozy double bed!—but knew it was mere foolishness, so childish a sentiment.)
Yet, a most peculiar incident occurred one dark wintry afternoon, when Mrs. Zinn and Octavia were companionably knitting together, in the drafty parlor at Rumford Hall, and Octavia’s eye chanced to fall upon a copy of the Philadelphia Ledger which she had perused at some length, and which was about to be discarded, and her tongue got the better of her, as it ofttimes did: and she thoughtlessly blurted out, that she should very much like Mrs. Zinn to look at a photograph in the paper, and deliver her opinion.
In silence Mrs. Zinn took the much-folded newspaper from her daughter, and in silence she adjusted her reading glasses, while Octavia bent over her knitting, her face flushed with excitement, and some little apprehension. (The dear child! How impetuous, how ill considered her whims might be! It was a custom in these days for mother and married daughter to knit and sew baby things, month upon month, and, indeed, year upon year, in anticipation of an imminent birth, without once descending to the coarseness of mind that would feel the need to state their mutual purpose: such indelicacies as “pregnant,” “going to have a baby,” and “expecting” being quite out of place in genteel surroundings. Yet such had been Octavia’s childish excitement, upon the occasion of her first pregnancy, in the first year of her marriage to Mr. Rumford, that she had, of a sudden, as soon as she and Mrs. Zinn were alone together, blurted out: “Oh, Momma! I think it has happened! I mean—I think it will happen! Mr. Rumford shall have another son!”—these words uttered with such incredulity, Mrs. Zinn had hardly the heart to chastise Octavia, for the unseemliness of her diction and deportment.)
Now Mrs. Zinn frowned at the Ledger, and the bracketing creases beside her mouth deepened. What had this photograph of a stranger to do with her? A gentleman not yet thirty, with emphatic dark eyebrows, and calmly gazing eyes in which some measure of irony might be noted: smooth-shaven, angular of face, the lines of the jaw bespeaking stubbornness, the thin-lipped mouth set firm. He was, perhaps, with difficulty, handsome—yet a certain arrogance of demeanor quite offended the eye. “Philippe Fox” of the Rock Bluff Mining and Milling Company, of the San Pedro Valley in Arizona, recently appointed Deputy Assistant to the United States Marshal for southeastern Arizona. The singularity of this appointment, the Ledger noted, was that the telegram was received not five minutes before Fox was to be hanged, by local authorities, in Tombstone—“a happenstance not greatly irregular in the West,” the Ledger continued, “though the precision of the timing must surely be noted.”
For a very long time Mrs. Zinn contemplated the young gentleman in the photograph, and then, making no haste, with an expulsion of wearied breath that might have been a maternal sigh, she hoisted her considerable bulk forward in her chair, and thrust the offensive newspaper into the fireplace, where it burst into gladsome flames at once, and was extinguished in a moment. Octavia, staring sightless at her knitting, felt her pulses race, and murmured boldly: “That gentleman—whosoever he may be—caught my eye—I know ’twas foolish—the features very distantly resembling those of—of— Ah, I know ’twas foolish, and I hope you will not scold, Mother!”
Mrs. Zinn picked up her knitting, and one could not have judged, from the mechanical rapidity with which her well-practiced fingers worked, and her rigorous posture, whether she was displeased with her daughter, or no. After some minutes she said: “It is hardly a time in your life, dear daughter, in which to allow your imagination free rein. If you are troubled by wild, scattered, unproductive thoughts, I shall insist that you spend more time at prayer, both in the morning, and b
efore retiring at night. And I shall leave for you, this very day, a small bottle of Miss Emmeline’s—which, as you know, Dr. Moffet most strenuously prescribes for my sensitive nerves, and which, I am pleased to say, does have some minimal effect. At this time in your life, dear Octavia,” Mrs. Zinn said, deliberately spacing out her words, so that, with great subtlety, she was able to make explicit what must needs have remained unspoken between them, so causing sweet Octavia to blush with embarrassment and pleasure, “at this sacred time in your life, in which, alas, the blood oft runs riot with fanciful notions delved from God knows where, and one conjures up fatuous ideas, as exotic and unspeakable as a sudden ravening appetite for fruit out of season, it is wise, my dear daughter, to surrender yourself fully to Our Heavenly Father, that nothing go amiss: Our Heavenly Father, and Miss Emmeline’s—which, if you do not allow me to forget, I shall leave for you today.”
Chastised, yet gratified, Octavia glanced up shyly from her knitting: but Mrs. Zinn did not meet her eye, and was now as placidly knitting, as if no problematic exchange had occurred. The sudden outburst of flames in the fireplace having died back, and the birch logs burning as steadily as before, perhaps nothing had occurred.
“Miss Emmeline’s Remedy—ah yes!—I am very grateful to you, Mother—very grateful indeed: but I am already under Dr. Moffet’s prescription for that very medicine, and do find it salubrious,” Octavia murmured.
There being nothing further to say on the subject, mother and daughter continued to knit companionably, until teatime, in agreeable silence.
FORTY-FIVE
The trials of Octavia Zinn in her alter’d state as Mrs. Lucius Rumford, wife, mother, and mistress of old Rumford Hall, are of so dark-visagèd a character, and so redolent of despair, that, were I, as the narrator, not confident that the young lady’s fortitude in meeting them, and her exemplary Christian behavior throughout, would not inspire rather than horrify the reader, I would throw down my pen forthwith: for of what value is a book, or any manifestation of art, or, indeed, any human experience whatsoever, that does not contribute to the moral betterment of mankind, and the strengthening—nay, universalizing—of the Christian religion? That this sacred mission is inexorably bound up with the chronicle of Progress in our great nation, and that Christian morality, Progress, and the American People, are to be grasped as one resounding anthem, doubtless sounding through Heaven even now, cannot be too stridently claimed, especially in an epoch in which all standards of behavior, and even, alas, all standards of grammatical discourse, have been thrown into tumult; that it is the Author’s sacred obligation, no matter his or her subject, to conform to these requirements, and to present withal a smiling countenance, in the face of all adversity, seems to me incontestable. It is not remiss to quote from a sovereign address made to the Senate at about the time of Octavia’s second confinement (her first having blessed Mr. Rumford with a hearty little male heir, splendidly formed, and of perfect health: Godfrey II, named for his belovèd great-grandfather, who held with palsied hands, and stared at with urgent, somewhat protruding rheumy eyes, this hallowed infant), the address delivered, in fact, by the very Albert J. Beveridge who would, in later years, become one of John Quincy Zinn’s strongest advocates in Congress, and a vociferous supporter of government-financed scientific research. (Alas, I trust the reader will forgive me in leaping ahead of myself for, fired by my duty to transcribe Octavia’s tale, and half tremulous at the challenge, I find that my nerves are all shatter’d this morn, and I scarcely know the date on my calendar, let alone the date of my narrative.) In any case, Senator Beveridge’s charge to the Senate is very akin in spirit to this author’s sense of her own sacrosanct mission, tho’ it emanated, surprisingly, from the crude Midwest, and not from the portals of old Philadelphia or Boston:
Of all our race, God has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world. This is the divine Mission of America, and it holds for us all the profit, all the glory, all the happiness possible to man. We are humble trustees of the world’s progress, and guardians of its righteous peace!
Thus the good Senator from Indiana; and so, too, it is to be hoped, this yet more humble trustee, your narrator.
THE VICISSITUDES OF fate, heaped upon the pious head of our poor dear Octavia, are such that almost call into question the sovereign justice of the universe: yet, Octavia’s final happiness being so profound and lasting, one must concur, as Job did, that the ways of God are not our ways; and to be but dimly understood. That this sweetly docile, resolutely uncomplaining, and perfectly obedient young wife should experience not merely the agonies of several miscarriages (not markedly uncommon in our day), but the death of her beautiful infant daughter Sarah, her second-born, at the age of nine months, as she lay napping in her crib undisturbed by any prior symptom; that she should—alas, my eyes well with tears merely with the act of recording such sorrow!—be forced to witness the drowning of her firstborn, Little Godfrey, at the age of seven, on a beauteous and serene summer’s day; and that she should suffer the heartrending loss of her belovèd husband, in the very unitary act of their connubial bliss, in what was scarcely the thirteenth year of their wedlock—all this would paint a spectacle so deathly of visage, as to be quite unfit for perusal, save for the fact that our heroine triumphed over despair in each event, and emerged, in her forty-first year, as serenely unquestioning of her Maker’s judgment, and as smooth-brow’d, as she had been in her childish virgin state! Such was Octavia’s piety in her suffering, and her resolute refusal to cry her woes aloud, like other weak-minded creatures of her sex, that even the gentleman who was to become her second husband promised to bethink himself of his “irreligious nature,” and “give some possible credence” to the Christian faith, upon which, I am troubled to say, he had, in his youth, turned his back for reasons rather of ignorance than of congenital wickedness. (This second marriage, which I am quite content to see as a happy event, despite the bridegroom’s free thinking, will take place beyond the temporal confines of this narrative; and the reader is begged to think no more of it.)
IT IS STRONGLY advis’d that the bride shall not succumb to unseemly or ill-timed emotion, in the bridal bed: neither to an outburst of tears, nor to an abrupt expression of fright. So Octavia read, and was duly perplexed by, in Dr. Mudrick’s The Christian Marriage and Family, pressed into her hand, with a wordless smile, by Cousin Rowena Kale, some weeks before Octavia’s wedding. Unseemly or ill-timed emotion! Tears, nor—fright! The impressionable young maiden tormented her curiosity, for many an hour, over the precise meaning of these words: at a time when she might better have occupied herself with more fructifying tasks, such as the completion of her trousseau, and the monogramming of her linen. She could not seek an audience with Mrs. Zinn, who was greatly absorbed at this time, and quite happily so, with a thousand and one details pertaining to the wedding; nor would she have dared approach Mr. Zinn, who, throughout that difficult decade, the Eighties, labored most piteously on his aluminum-sided dirigible, for which he had, alas! such noble hopes—only to see them dashed to the ground, and shattered in a million fragments, when, in 1888, the German aeronaut Wolfert made an ascent in a large dirigible of similar construction, equipped with a Daimler gasoline engine: an advance poor John Quincy Zinn was forced to assess as truly revolutionary, tho’ it came from abroad, and not out of his native country.
“I know I should not succumb to ignoble self-pity,” Octavia murmured to her only remaining sister, “but I should dearly like, Samantha, to speak with someone—someone, I mean, who has trod this particular pathway before me, and might offer some advice. But Mother has no time for me now; nor does Father; and Great-Aunt Edwina merely presses her books upon me, which, I own, I have already read a dozen times, and very nearly memorized.”
Samantha stared at her sister with unsmiling eyes, as if vexed that Octavia should detain her thusly, in the corridor outside their bedchambers, when the morn was so fresh and promising, and t
he workshop above the gorge beckoned. She wore her plainest calico gown, with an apron not inordinately fresh; her fine red hair, hastily arranged in a chignon that owed more to practicability than to feminine grace, was covered by a morning cap barren of all lace, and adorned with but a half-dozen spiritless ribbons. Tho’, of late, for some quite unfathomable reason, Samantha appeared to be maturing almost daily, and growing, to Octavia’s surprised eye, ever more lithesome and pretty, her manner in regard to Octavia was very frequently impatient, and, at its best, condescending, despite the significant fact that Octavia was several years older than Samantha, and ought to have commanded both respect and affection.
Now the malapert young miss said, in response to Octavia’s heartfelt declaration: “Dear Octavia, Mother has time for no one but you. She rushes about the two households, commandeering all the servants, sending away to the city for every sort of fribble and furbelow, and worrying aloud that all her plans will go asunder, if the weather does not cooperate on your wedding day, or Mr. Rumford vanishes into thin air—which, considering the dryness and gravity of that excellent gentleman, I think an unlikely possibility. And Father, our dear Father: naturally he has no time for you, who has no time even for himself. Have you marked of late the o’erabundance of his beard, and its asymmetry; the fatigue that underlies his cheeriest smile; the nervousness and distraction of his manner? The John Quincy Zinn who resides with us, Octavia, is but our father by a happenstance of nature, for which we must be grateful, and not greedy: his true allegiance, like his true identity, resides elsewhere, in the pantheon of the ages, where he shall someday assume his rightful place alongside Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Newton, and Franklin. And you wish,” Samantha murmured, with a cruel pitying half-smile, “you wish to discuss wedding-day flummery with him!”