As if there were any reasonable grounds for the slightest hesitancy, in choosing between them!
Yet hesitate the perverse Deirdre had done; and continued to do; all the while further taxing her fragile nervous constitution, by inquiring as to whether, “fallen” as she was in so many respects (I refer to the egregious worldly career she had forg’d for herself, out of vanity and ambition, as well as to the outlaw nature of her flight from Bloodsmoor), she deserved either man for a husband; or any man at all.
“It is my fate, I am sure,” Deirdre languidly mused, many a night, in the frugal solitude of her spinster’s abode, “to dwell alone: husbandless, and childless. And, tho’ I feel naught but relief, how apt it now seems, that even my ‘spirits’ have abandoned me!”
(For, indeed, those diabolical creatures had abandoned their “medium”: and had not even teased her, during the long months of her convalescence, when, one might think, her enfeebl’d state might have tempted them.)
Plagued by sleepless nights, and rarely soothed by the robust tolling of the bells, of old St. George’s, Deirdre nonetheless absorbed herself in a subtle species of pride, in musing thusly; and in so fastidiously interrogating herself, as to whether, impoverish’d as she was, and granted so very little in the way of security, as to the future of her employment (her elderly master, the retired professor of Islamic studies, being both forgetful, and ill-tempered), she might not, in spinster desperation, marry for money: the mere possibility of which repulsed her.
“While it is the case that Dr. Stoughton has, I believe, a more modest yearly income than Mr. Agha, I can hardly make that the basis for choosing,” Deirdre tormented herself, “and who can say, but that a spirit of malevolence continues to haunt me, and would misdirect me, even when I dared to fancy I was behaving well!”
So troubled was this young lady, she found it increasingly difficult to enjoy the company of others; and, upon one singular occasion, greatly surprised, and offended, her landlady’s daughter, when after the evening repast one night, this pleasant-voiced girl sat herself at the piano in the parlor, and sang but a few words of a song, with the consequence that Miss Zinn fled in tears up to her room.
A mystery to that startl’d gathering, no doubt; yet hardly a mystery to us, for the song was that heartrending melody by the musical genius Paul Dresser, to become so deservedly popular in the late Nineties:
’Tis the grave of an outcast who died long ago,
Who has sinned, and no mercy was shown;
So one cold winter’s day, her soul passed away,
And they buried her there all alone.
—this classic being, I hardly need inform the reader, “The Outcast Unknown,” whose words struck very deep in poor Deirdre’s heart.
THAT IT WAS Dr. Lionel Stoughton who advised Deirdre to contact Mr. Miller in Philadelphia, as the numerous advertisements bade, suggests a certain intimacy between them: which, I must hasten to clarify, was not the case.
On Dr. Stoughton’s part, there was the continuance of a professional concern with the erstwhile medium, which, whilst not uncontaminated with romantic aspirations, was noble in itself, and disinterested. After her ignominious collapse at the Fairbanks estate, Deirdre was, for some eighteen months, a patient at a private sanatorium in the Adirondack Mountains: this enforc’d convalescence, in salubrious surroundings, being initially paid for out of her own savings, and, as these rapidly dwindled, by funds from an “anonymous well-wisher”—none other than that very same doctor of medicine, and President of the New York branch of the Society for Psychical Research, who had, years previous, warned “Deirdre of the Shadows” against embarking upon her perilous career!
Yet, when at last they did meet, Deirdre’s condition having substantially improved, and her melancholy having partly lifted, this considerate gentleman naturally did not press his advantage; nor did he allude to her former life, and her notorious “career,” which was still avidly discussed in Spiritualist circles—and may be, for all that I know, still discussed today, if such occult enclaves exist. Dr. Stoughton’s conversation had to do with positive matters: primarily with Deirdre’s future, whether she would now return to her family, or whether she would seek employment in some wise, appropriate to her talents. “I cannot return to my family,” Deirdre said quietly, “for, in truth, I have none: I was but an adopted child, and was never allowed to forget it. Zinn is my adopted parents’ name; Bonner my real parents’ name; and all, alas! are lost to me now. So I shall seek employment in the city, Dr. Stoughton, and hope to lay by some savings, so that, in time, I may repay you, at least in part, for the kindness you have shown.”
“Not at all,” Dr. Stoughton said, reddening. (For he had imagined his secret safe—that the object of his Christian beneficence might never guess his identity.) “I cannot—I will not—hear of that, Miss Zinn!”
So pitiful were the wages Deirdre received for her labors, as the assistant to the Islamic scholar, that, to her extreme embarrassment, she was able to save but a few pennies a week; nor did the future look brighter. Ah, what a queer dream it had been, the years of her relative wealth! She could scarce believe she had once commanded such exorbitant fees, and had believed them but her due: for now she had naught to show for those years save certain items of clothing, of resolutely sombre hue; and some very upsetting memories.
“Nay, I count myself blessèd,” she oft murmured, in solitude, “tho’ I be near-penniless, I am my own woman at last: and I am not mad.”
Nor did she miss the intoxicating powers, her wicked spirits had once afforded her. Was it a dream? Had she imagined all? Father Darien, and Mrs. Dodd, and the Raging Captain, and Bianca, and fork-tongued Zachariah? And, beyond them, the black silken balloon that had borne her so silently away, from the peaceful countryside of her birth?
Ofttimes she queried herself: Had Bloodsmoor itself been naught but a dream?
IT WAS NOT many weeks after her discharge from the sanatorium, and the establishment of her residency, in the spartan brownstone at 207½ East Seventeenth Street, that her benefactor, Dr. Stoughton, tendered to her his proposal of marriage: worded, at the first, in such abash’d and recondite language, she scarce grasped its import.
Dr. Stoughton made haste to assure her, that he wanted nothing less, than to bring further upset into her life; and that she should bear in mind that he was, first and foremost, her devoted friend, who desired only her happiness, and well-being. “If you should ever consent to return my love,” he murmured, his gaze affixed to the floor, “and to be my wife, why, I would be transform’d into the happiest man on earth: but you must feel no obligation, toward that end, nor any pressure whatsoever.”
Thus spoke one of the most magnanimous gentlemen, who ever drew breath: his thick blond hair but lightly touched with silver, and his forceful countenance betraying but a very few lines and creases, to indicate the deepening maturity of his years.
Deirdre’s reply was faltering, and near-inaudible. “I cannot consent,” she murmured.
“You cannot consent,” Dr. Stoughton slowly repeated. “And yet—dare I hope?—you do not absolutely deny me?”
At this the agitated young woman could not force herself to speak: to indicate yes, or no, would have cost her weakened constitution far more strain, than it might have endured.
Yet, if she did not accept his plea, she did not reject it: and if she did not banish the hot-blooded Hassan Agha from her life, she did not encourage him either: and seemed, indeed, to her own way of thinking, near-helpless in her fate, as a fly entrapped in a spider’s elaborate silver-tinged web.
Dr. Stoughton first called her attention to the classified notices in the Tribune, which she read with great alarm: and a rush of emotion, in which regret, and guilt, and fear, and a sense of prickling curiosity, were commingled. Her initial response was violently negative: nay, she would not comply. But, as days and weeks passed, and she turned the prospect over in her mind, she bethought herself that the tyrannical old lady, Miss Kid
demaster, had not been altogether cruel to her: perhaps—ah, perhaps!—there had even been some affection, but awkwardly expressed, and never reliable.
And one morn she woke to the thought: I shall do as Dr. Stoughton counsels, and return to Bloodsmoor; and perhaps, by so doing, I will give the wheel of my own fortune a helpful turn—and be awakened from this paralysis, to know whether I dare marry, or no; and whom it might be.
Thus, her arrival at Kiddemaster Hall, some twenty minutes past the hour: breathless, and stricken to the heart by the assault of so many eyes upon her, and, ah! by the ravages of time, so harshly evident in the faces of the elder Zinns. (For, in truth, poor Deirdre scarce recognized the once-handsome John Quincy Zinn: for a confus’d instant she wondered if that sallow-skinned bearded old gentleman might have been Grandfather Kiddemaster!)
Startl’d silence greeting her, she heard her own voice—graceless, and throaty, and rushed—offering a feeble apology. “I am sorry—I am very sorry—it seems that I am late—it is an inexcusable tardiness, which might be accounted for, yet cannot be excused—”
So her words nervously rattled; and Mr. Basil Miller, with his practiced social instinct, advanced upon her, to welcome her with kindly reassurance that she was not seriously late, for they were also awaiting Constance Philippa. And, after a moment’s hesitation (doubtless fearing a rebuff), Octavia, too, advanced upon her, and folded her in a solemn embrace, the while murmuring: “Ah, my poor Deirdre! My little sister! It has been incalculably long! It has been piteously long! We are sisters, yet we are strangers—yet we are sisters, still!”
Dear effusive Octavia! Deirdre weakly offered to embrace her in turn, yet felt o’ercome by the sentiment of the moment. She would not have recognized this full-bodied matronly woman with her handsome, high-colored countenance, so liberally glistening with tears: nor would she, in other circumstances, have recognized Malvinia—was it truly Malvinia?—suddenly before her, who offered a gloved hand, and a droll searching smile. Malvinia, so changed! A mature woman! Striking, still, but ah!—no longer young!
And there arose Samantha—might this woman be Samantha?—her bedmate of childhood, Samantha?—with her cool green eyes and quizzical expression, yet wondrously alter’d, and now radiantly lovely: the once-plain and graceless girl who had offered, against the grain of her own heart, some small measure of patience, and affection, and sisterly concern, to the ungrateful Deirdre. Now they grasped hands, and managed a ceremonial embrace, not affectionate, and surely not sisterly, but adequate to the flurried circumstances.
Dazed, wiping a stray tear from her eye, Deirdre next found herself meekly standing before Mr. and Mrs. Zinn. Ah, how she had dreaded this moment! How she had deluded herself, in never seeking to precisely envision it, but always shrinking back from the prospect! She had fled them—had injured them—had rejected them, in her heart: because they had failed to love her sufficiently: the which adolescent fancy struck her now as merely absurd, for why, in truth, should anyone have loved the orphan Deirdre at all?
Only twenty years had passed since the afternoon of the black silken balloon, no extraordinary span of time, perhaps, yet, to Deirdre’s shocked eye, Mr. and Mrs. Zinn were so alarmingly agèd, they seemed rather of the sculptor’s fancy of Matriarch and Patriarch, of another generation entirely. Finely creased skin—dry reproachful eyes—Mrs. Zinn’s mouth so grim it would seem a stoic chore to smile—Mr. Zinn’s gaze fixed and impersonal and, alas!—unloving.
Forced murmured greetings were exchanged, and stinging salt-tears so invaded Deirdre’s vision, she could scarce continue to discern the unresponsive countenances of her adoptive mother and father. Yet she bravely spoke: “Dear Mother, and dear Father, I know you cannot—indeed, you should not—forgive me, and I have not come to ask your forgiveness, at this unhappy time. I assure you, I will not further upset you, by remaining any longer in Bloodsmoor than is absolutely required, for I suspect that the mere sight of me, the ingrate orphan, is repulsive. Nay, do not mind,” she said, seeing that Mrs. Zinn felt compelled to issue a faint protest, “for you are entirely in the right, and God has judged me harshly, these past twenty years.”
This speech having been most spiritedly uttered, the gathering received it in hushed quiet; and it was a long moment before Mrs. Zinn bestirred herself to reply, with but a weak stretching of her lips, and a markedly cool gray gaze. “Our Lord judges not harshly,” she said, “but justly. As our family has always known.”
And Mr. Zinn—John Quincy Zinn—the acclaimed inventor-genius J.Q.Z. of Bloodsmoor—that very gentleman, so tall! so handsome! so robust! so kindly! who had, in another lifetime, it seemed, merrily stooped from his great height, that he might befriend a scampering fairy-child, a naughty little miss who had run into the woods above the gorge, and quite frightened her parents, with the possibility of her being lost: this gentleman, now so mysteriously aged beyond his seventy-one years, raised his eyes to sternly regard his renegade “daughter,” and plucked absently at his beard, and opened his mouth to speak, and—and spoke not at all: but remained silent, and immobile, save for the scarce-perceptible trembling of his frame.
SEVENTY-FOUR
May I escort you, Miss Zinn, to a comfortable chair?” murmured the solicitous Basil Miller, gauging the depth of Deirdre’s distraction; and wishing to remove the young woman from her stepparents’ propinquity, out of consideration for all three personages.
Thus Basil palliated, by his adroit action, the stridency of emotion of the scene; and the others, still somewhat flurried, and wiping tears from out their eyes, regained their seats.
Ah!—the morn was fast elapsing! And where was Constance Philippa?
Even before the audacious entrance of the problematic “Philippe Fox,” it must be said that the atmosphere of the Golden Oak room, despite the elegance of its decor and furnishings, and the pleasing eurythmy of its high windows, pilasters, and stained-glass inserts, was exceedingly strange; and taxes my limited verbal resources, in seeking to describe it. An agitated quiet: a paralyzed tension: an air in which dread, and euphoric anticipation, and resentment, and even some small bitterness, were wildly commingled!—the very constraint of the principals, in their formal attire, and seated in such wise as to face the front of the room (where Basil Miller had arranged a graceful escritoire, of rosewood and gilt, for his own use), contributing to this strained sensation.
For, only consider: there were those present who, by dint of their age, and station, had every right to resent the theatricality of the scene: and the whimsy by which, from out the marbl’d mausoleum in which her corporeal being now slept, old Edwina manipulated the living, as if they were mere puppets, for her diversion. Many a time Mrs. Zinn had burst into tears of helpless fury, both before her sympathetic spouse, and in the privacy of her locked room, that, by all the laws of God and the Devil (these being her angry words, I should explain, and hardly my own), it was monstrously unfair that, in his dotage, her father should decide to leave his fortune to his elderly, and notoriously eccentric, sister, rather than to his devoted daughter and son-in-law!—and cruel beyond measurement, that the tyrannical old man should state, in his official will and testament, that the mere erasing of debt should prove, in their case, an unlook’d-for boon. “That Father disapproved of our marriage, out of a cynical rejection of all that is pure, and spontaneous, and romantic,” poor Prudence stormed, pressing both hands against her heaving bosom, “I have never doubted. That he had failed to forgive me, all these many years, and had, moreover, failed to measure the exceptional worth of my husband, I find remarkable—nay, insupportable. And then, and then—!” she raged, her ruddy cheeks pulsing crimson; “—and then, that Aunt Edwina should so wantonly refuse to correct the injustice, the effrontery of which she well knew, and restore the lost fortune to me, the rightful heiress!”
“And yet,” J.Q.Z. observed, upon more than one occasion, in a voice somewhat hollow, and chilled, “and yet, my dear, we must not be small-minded. It does not do us
proud, at our ages.”
“Uncle Vaughan dies, and leaves Father an incalculable fortune. Why, consider his shipbuilding business alone; or his properties in Philadelphia. Mother having died earlier, and a substantial portion of the old Whitton-Steuben fortune being hers, it resides all untouched with Father: who surely knew that Mother would have wished, nay, would have commanded, that a goodly proportion fall to me, her sole offspring, and her devoted daughter. Now, consider, Uncle Vaughan’s fortune; and Mother’s; and the great Kiddemaster fortune here in Bloodsmoor; and, added to this, old Edwina’s cache, the details of which she was fierce to keep secret: and do you grasp, Mr. Zinn, the monumental nature of what is at stake? Yet you bid me not to be small-minded,” Prudence all but wept, in scornful frenzy, “as if one could succeed in being small-minded, about a fortune of such celestial proportions!” She paused, to draw a labored breath; and to steady her quivering bulk. And then proceeded, in a calmer, and lower, voice: “Why, if we heaped Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt, and Hanna, and one or two others, together, and assessed their collective worth, do you think it would be greatly in excess of this fortune, the which my greedy aunt accepted as her due? Not many years ago our national wealth was boasted of as sixty-five billion dollars: and, I daresay, we Kiddemasters have, of that, some five or ten billion at the very least!”
“You exaggerate, Prudence,” Mr. Zinn said shakily. “Why, I cannot quite grasp such a notion: five or ten billion dollars, you are saying?”
“Enough to fill a pedlar’s sack many times over, you will agree,” Mrs. Zinn said curtly.
THUS THE ELDER Zinns, with whom it would be difficult, indeed, not to be in sympathy.
And there were present, too, at the gathering, some personages not yet mentioned: the kindly old Miss Narcissa Gilpin, who had told intimates, in her unassuming manner, that Edwina had promised a high percentage of the fortune to her, in return for her lifetime of friendship, and critical suggestions; and Miss Flora Kale, a cousin of Edwina’s, and a girlhood friend, upon whom Mrs. Zinn looked with especial resentment, and some apprehension; and some Philadelphia Kiddemasters, of advanced years; and the Reverend Silas Hewett and his wife, also greatly agèd, but in full possession of their faculties, and serenely confident as to their figuring handsomely in the will—for, according to their somewhat promiscuous testimony, old Edwina, on her very deathbed, had so promised them. And the zealous Dr. Moffet too was in attendance, no matter that he was badly wanted at another household in the village, where a troublesome young woman lay in labor for upward of twelve hours, with no end in sight. (Dr. Moffet had quite offended Prudence Zinn, by his reiterated boasts, that his “most esteemed patient” Edwina, had broadly hinted that he was to be remembered bountifully in her will, in proportion to the medical skill he possessed.)