That the licentious “love affair” came to a most disastrous, and, indeed, humiliating conclusion, for both principals, is a fact that should be softened by our superior knowledge that it figured but slenderly in the lifetime of each; and that, in particular, the episode for Malvinia is most cogently comprehended as a stopgap, and a near-desperate means of distraction, as the storm clouds that brooded over the unhappy young woman’s life began, with grim resoluteness, to close in.
(For, yes! Miss Malvinia Morloch, envied by so many, was a deeply unhappy young woman: no matter that her public gaiety would seem to deny it, and the lavishness of her jewels, and elaborately fashioned hair, and her ermines and minks and other furs; and the stern-willed defiance of her beauty.)
The fiery liaison with Vandenhoffen had ended, it is true, some years back: but, lest the romantic-minded reader immediately deduce that it was this loss that had pierced Malvinia’s heart, to render her incapable of contentment, let alone those paroxysms of euphoria she almost daily simulated, I must inform you that the loss figured comparatively little in Malvinia’s emotional life—to her shame be it said. For the sharp-eyed career woman had cruelly, but accurately, seen that her lover was past his prime, both so far as his thespian activities were concerned, and his youthful energies: she had noted the frequent slurring of his words, on stage, and an increasing slovenliness in his performance, as a consequence of the imbibing of alcohol, and a general indifference. (“Our audiences are but sheep, idiots, and love-starved females,” Vandenhoffen had observed. “Why, then, must we memorize each line to perfection, for them?”) If she suffered some small pang of regret, now and then, it was as much for the fact—which she and her associates at the Fanshawe had done their best to correct—that the public might believe he had left her, in order to return to his wife: and naturally her vanity was prick’d.
No, the loss of Vandenhoffen did not deeply distress her, nor inspire many genuine tears: rather less, I suppose, than she was accustom’d to shedding in her nightly performances, when she portrayed, with a singular authenticity, now an aggrieved widow, now a betrayed wife, now a heartsick daughter, now a fiancée whose lover was in jeopardy.
Vandenhoffen was at once replaced by a new lover, and he in turn by another: a middle-aged manufacturer of ladies’ parasols; a gentleman-attorney in the hire of the copper trust; a widower-banker with several anxious sons (and heirs); an associate of Chauncey Depew; an amiable ne’er-do-well, the youngest son of a wealthy family, who spoke often of having “quite pulverized” Theodore Roosevelt, at Harvard, in the semifinals for the lightweight boxing championship. And, one giddy evening, when, it seemed, a political victory of some sort was being celebrated, by gentlemen conspicuously not in the company of their wives, but of another sort of woman altogether, Malvinia had even come face-to-face with—of all people—Cheyney Du Pont: so hideously chang’d, as to his physical being, and so pathetically drunk, that she no more recognized him at first than he did her.
“My dear Mademoiselle,” the bulbous-nosed creature began, attempting a leering smile, and a bow so clumsy he nearly toppled against Malvinia, “unless I am gravely mistaken—and I am ofttimes so mistaken—are we not, to your knowledge, previously acquainted? Or are you but a part of my dream? My dream that goes on—and on—and on: and is so hideously compelling, I am tempted to believe it is real!”
It was that night, whilst tossed by chaotic dreams, that Malvinia experienced, for the first time in more than twenty years, a sudden and unmistakable flood of grief—and loss—and anguish—and, yes, heartrending guilt: not for her cold-blooded treatment of Mr. Du Pont, nor even for her heinous treatment of her belovèd parents: but for her inexplicable disregard for that gentle man of the cloth, the Reverend Malcolm Kennicott!
You may well register surprise, as I do; and yet it is so. Some obdurate rock in Malvinia’s soul must have been o’erturned, by the ghastly reappearance in her life of the once-dashing Cheyney; and by the frenetic gaiety of the revelers, which had left her more than ordinarily exhausted, and desirous of being alone. Her toilette but half completed, she collapsed upon her bed, and, by way of the great mystery of the night, in which all the laws of nature and logic are suspended, the glamorous Malvinia Morloch found herself transform’d into the child Malvinia Zinn: but eight years old, and weeping copious tears, as if her heart would break!—for the childish cruelty she had unwittingly perpetrated upon Mr. Malcolm Kennicott, whom she adored above all men, save her father.
Mr. Malcolm Kennicott—whom she adored above all men, save her father!
Hoarse shuddering sobs roused her from her alcoholic slumber, and, for some affrighted moments, Malvinia scarce knew where she was: murmuring in a piteous voice, “Octavia? Octavia? Why have you slipped out of bed, and left me alone? I am so very, very frightened!”
Gradually her senses returned; she knew she lay in a bed not her own, in a hotel, in a great city (for down on the street, even at this godless hour, the clatter of horses’ hooves sounded on the cobblestones, and drunken masculine laughter arose), she knew she had traveled a great distance—a tragic distance—from her lost, belovèd Bloodsmoor, and from the innocent little girl she had been, at the age of eight years.
Lost—ah, lost!
And never to be retrieved!
Whether Mr. Malcolm Kennicott was deceased, and now dwelt in Spirit World, from which his phantom might be freed at such exigent moments; or whether it was but hallucination, I cannot say: but Malvinia so clearly beheld his melancholy visage, she would have sworn he had entered her bedchamber. His dreamy, poetical countenance—his shy-smiling eyes—the hair which was fawn-colored, and wavy, and silken-soft—the boyish air, suffused with wounded reproach!
“I am so sorry—I did not know—O dear Mr. Kennicott! I was but a heedless child, and did not know—”
Had Malvinia thought to fling aside her luxurious covers, and throw herself to her knees on the floor, appealing to Our Heavenly Father for forgiveness, and for counsel, these dark hours might have been transform’d to joy: but the distraught woman was so unaccustom’d to prayer, and so bewitched by the phantasm, that, to her shame be it said, she gave no thought to God; and abandoned herself to violent spasms of sobbing, which wracked her body with as much barbaric force as The Beast itself might wrack it.
“I am so sorry! O dear Mr. Kennicott, forgive me—forgive a heedless child! I did not know!”
FIFTY-EIGHT
There followed then a period of some heightened days, when, convinced that Mr. Kennicott was dead, Malvinia greedily perused all the Spiritualist publications she could find—The Theosophist, The Spiritist, The Darkling Tide, The Psychical Letter, and others, many of them published on cheap pulp paper, and all of them given over to numerous columns of classified advertisements. Mountain Seeress—Highlander Visionary—Trance Medium of Lake Champlain—Priestess of Amazing Gifts: the self-proclamations alternately intrigued Malvinia, and disgusted her. Her dread that she would suddenly discover herself reading about “Deirdre of the Shadows” came to naught, for she found not a word in any of these publications, pertaining to her lost sister; and wondered, not without a small thrill of regret, whether Deirdre had given up her peculiar profession, or had somehow failed at it. (Malvinia being unfamiliar with Spiritualist protocol, she could not have known that the most exalted and prestigious mediums never advertised their services: they would not have condescended to do so, and, in any case, being so constantly in demand, despite their high fees, they had no need. And, after the historic investigation at the headquarters of the Society for Psychical Research, Deirdre of the Shadows had so enviable a reputation, she gave but a few sittings a month, and these generally in very private circumstances.)
It was Malvinia’s intention to arrange for a private séance, that she might be put in contact with the spirit of the young clergyman whom she had so wantonly mistreated, for she was quite certain he must be dead. So she scanned the numerous publications, murmuring, “It is my fault—he did away
with himself, for me—because of me—I alone am to blame”: still in a heightened state from that night of tempestuous emotions, and somewhat disoriented, in her ratiocinative powers, as a consequence of the liberal doses of ether and water she daily prescribed for herself. “If we can but greet each other, face-to-face,” she whispered, “surely he will forgive me—surely he cannot help but forgive his little Malvinia, once he grasps the burden of sorrow and repentance I bear!”
Yet in the end she wearied of the pamphlets, her inborn drollery aroused by so many insipid advertisements for “visionaries,” and “seers,” and “miracle-mediums,” and “priestesses.” She gathered the publications in her arms and threw them away, at the very instant the telephone began to ring in the next room.
In a moment her maid would rap gently at her door, to inform her that a gentleman was on the line: and who, Malvinia wondered with a sudden smile, would it be this time?
And poor Malcolm Kennicott became, at that moment, a shade indeed!
FIFTY-NINE
It was a bitter, yet not an unjust, irony, that The Beast should emerge with especial malevolence, when Malvinia Morloch had at last—after so many months of coquettish retreat!—abandoned herself to the intimate embrace of Mr. Mark Twain; and at a most precarious time in her career, when she was about to tour the Far West in She Loved Him Dearly—a trifling romance written for her particular talents.
Having no capability, and, indeed, no desire, so far as graphic descriptions of “love embraces” are concerned, I shall make no attempt to sketch for the repelled reader precisely how The Beast emerged, to make a loathsome mockery of the love declarations, kisses, caresses, and other amorous indulgences, which transpired between Malvinia and Mr. Twain, in Malvinia’s sumptuously appointed bedchamber in the Hotel Nicklaus, in the late hours of January 13, 1894; I shall make no attempt to record, even for the interest of those employed in the profession of morbid psychology, with what suddenness The Beast blazed forth, in the midst of an embrace of extreme intimacy, announcing itself by a chuckling deep in the damsel’s throat, and a brash flurry of activity, involving hands, feet, knees, and mouth, of a sort never experienced in his lifetime, we may infer, by the incredulous man of letters. That an interlude of sybaritic dalliance should erupt so violently, and so lewdly, against all normal expectations, plunging mistress and would-be lover into a struggle of brute physicality, the one cursing and grunting, the other crying aloud in alarm and fear, and begging, finally, for help—that a love scene of illicit (and, some would say, romantic) proportions should be o’erturned, with such alacrity, to become a spectacle of buffoonery, may indeed strike the Christian contingent amongst my readers as fit punishment for such projected wickedness: and, were I not stirred to a vague pity, for Malvinia’s extreme degradation (and its attendant effect upon her career), I would surely concur.
“I know not what has happened, or why—save that it is not my fault—it is not my doing!” the shamed woman cried, her eyes gleaming a lurid black, and her hair disheveled, and the widow’s peak prominent above her furrowed brow: “It is not my doing, and I own it not! I am innocent!”
LEST YOU PITY the grappling lovers, being moved to sympathy by the embarrassment of the distinguished author (who, having dined royally that evening, on oysters, tripe, roast suckling pig, and crêpes suzette, was perhaps not in prime condition), I should remind you that there could hardly have been any genuine love between the principals, and but a modicum of meretricious sentiment. Doubtless, yes, Miss Malvinia Morloch and Mr. Mark Twain liked each other well enough, or at any rate admired each other, beneath the stylized carapace of their “romance,” for over a period of months they did have, it seems, an occasional serious conversation. (You may well imagine with what astonishment Malvinia greeted Mr. Twain’s casual remark that his father, John Clemens, had spent a great deal of his time laboring on a perpetual-motion machine, back in Hannibal, Missouri!)
But both were celebrities, jaded with the proffered adoration of strangers, which, coming so freely, could not escape being valued as cheap. They were magnificently self-absorbed, and blithe in their common intercourse with others; they made clever speeches, and did not listen; and were always glancing about, in public rooms, to take note of who took note of them. No, they could not have felt any tenderness toward each other, and one would be misguided to pity them. Only a queer “mental telegraphy”—a coinage of Mr. Twain’s—drew them together; and this tenuous connection was blasted forever by the brute emergence of The Beast.
LIKE ANY SEASONED courtesan, Malvinia professed to admire her admirer. Upon the occasion of their first late-night supper together, after an evening performance of She Loved Him Dearly, Malvinia confessed that, a decade previously, she had been “o’erwhelmed, and struck to the heart” by his personage, as he had stood on the stage to make his “wondrously witty” speech, on the opening night of Ah Sin. His mastery of the English language—his aristocratic, yet unassuming manner—his generosity toward her: all were quite remarkable.
All this Mr. Twain appeared to absorb with a bemused, even skeptical, smile, beneath his prominent mustache: but he did not stint, upon the morn, in the quantity of red roses he caused to be delivered to Miss Malvinia Morloch’s suite at the Nicklaus!
How attentively Malvinia appeared to listen, as her white-suited admirer, a carnation in his buttonhole, a whisky-slurred drawl to his words, spoke in lengthy monologues, in which melancholy and drollery contended, of his childhood in Hannibal, Missouri, where he oft saw men shot and stabbed in the streets, and “niggers” sorely abused, and where his father had gone bankrupt, before a premature death; with what amused sympathy she attended to his speechifying on the “good, rough, man’s world” of Nevada and California, in the old days; and the “unparalleled ambrosia” of the riverboat world. Florid-faced from a substantial dinner at Sherry’s, consisting of claret, champagne, bourbon, brandy, and rum punch, among the liquid refreshments alone, he recounted loving anecdotes of General Grant, “the iron man,” and recited, for Malvinia’s benefit, and for the benefit of diners at nearby tables, a speech evidently given some years ago, by one Colonel Robert Ingersoll: “Blood was water, money was leaves, and life was only common air until one flag floated over a Republic without a master and without a slave!”—the climax to a masterpiece of oratory that brought five hundred Union veterans to their feet in clamorous applause. And Mark Twain had himself given so wickedly amusing a speech, in ostensible honor of General Grant, that he had broken that giant into pieces with laughter: “I did it! I licked him! And I knew I could lick him!” Mr. Twain mused, filling his glass again with more claret. “My dear, if only you might have been there!—or, ladies not allowed, if only you might have eavesdropped! For once in Grant’s life he had been knocked out of his iron serenity, and it was little Sam who did the job—shook him up like dynamite—racked all the bones of his body apart. And the audience saw that I had done it: five hundred witnesses. Ah, what a night! The house came crashing down! These Broadway ovations are piddle. Not to insult you, my dear: everything else is piddle. Shall I tell you, Miss Morloch,” he said, leaning uncomfortably close, as if in confidence, but with his voice still raised, “everything else is piddle. But we must keep the lid on our secret, eh?”
Malvinia was pleased to learn that Mr. Twain’s “billion-dollar baby,” a typesetting machine patented by a genius-inventor named Paige, was being manufactured—or was it not being manufactured, owing to difficulties?—in a factory at Eighteenth Street and Broadway. Paige was not simply an inventor of surpassing genius, but a poet—a most great and genuine poet—“the Shakespeare of mechanical invention.” There were certain difficulties with the machine, at the present time, Mr. Twain conceded, and there were financial snarls; but once the Paige typesetter was manufactured in quantity, and on the competitive market, why, its boon to mankind would translate into hundreds of millions of dollars—solid cash—solid gold: and Mr. Mark Twain would be “up there in the Parthenon” with Vande
rbilt, Astor, Carnegie, and the rest. “I hope we shall have sustained, if not to say deepened, our acquaintance by that time, Miss Morloch,” he said. “For it is but a matter of time!—piddling time.”
“You are very compassionate, Mr. Twain,” Malvinia said. “But tell me, please, about the miracle-machine: for tho’ my ear is untutor’d, I have some small interest in the great inventions of our century.” A stratagem on the courtesan’s part to keep her admirer talking, and talking, and talking, and drinking, so that, for this night at least, his importunate invitations that she join him in his modest suite at the Players’ Club, in order that they watch, together, the sun’s first slant rays penetrating the lacework of the great elms of Gramercy Park, might be bypassed.
So Mr. Twain talked, his twangy bumpkin’s voice oft rearing to an impassioned height, as he spoke in unabash’d adulation of the Inventor, who was but second to God Himself: for was he not, after God, the “creator of the world”? Where the Old World pimped for its tiresome hodgepodge of castles, and cathedrals, and worn-out anemic Czars, and so many madonnas, you could pile them to the moon, the New World had the right idea: Hadn’t the Connecticut Yankee opened a patent office right in King Arthur’s England, to get things going? Didn’t every Yankee with a head on his shoulders do the same kind of thing, in his own life? “Now a writer like myself may be acclaimed, Miss Morloch, as those in your profession are frequently acclaimed, but we are but entertainers for the masses. At best, we can hope to be teachers and moralists, and other such tedious bearers of wisdom. But the inventor, ah, the inventor!—the great American inventor!—he is the poet—the true poet—and nothing in any degree less than the poet. If I could trade in my feeble scribbling for a patent on a brilliant mechanism like the cotton gin, let us say, or that new contraption for executing criminals, the ‘electric chair,’ is it called?—or my own James W. Paige’s jewel of a machine, why, that would be true redemption, and let the suet-headed missionaries have the other!”