A Bloodsmoor Romance (25 page)

Great-Aunt Edwina clasped her shawl more tightly about her shoulders, as if she were suddenly cold, and indicated, with a graceful gesture of her hand, that Samantha should pour them each another cup of tea. And cut another slice of fruitcake, if she would be so kind.

“Thank you, Aunt Edwina,” Samantha said, performing the little ritual with a mechanical ease, “but I think I will decline your offer of another slice of cake, myself. The tea, however, is delicious.”

“You must eat, you must fill out,” Great-Aunt Edwina said, almost peevishly. “You are far too thin, Samantha; and it is not appealing. That you are naturally petite is, of course, admirable—your waist is no more than seventeen inches, I daresay?—which is very, very good, of course—and yet—as you know—a certain generosity of—of—
bodily presence
—a certain attractive
distribution
of mammalian flesh—is thought to be socially desirable; otherwise we shall have to see about padding for you, and I halfway wonder at your mother's judgment, that this problem was not approached before now.”

“Yes, Aunt,” Samantha said, blushing, so that the scattering of freckles on her face darkened at once, “I mean—I am dreadfully sorry.”

“One of your maids would be capable of making something up, I should think,” Great-Aunt Edwina said, sipping at her tea, “and, if not, my girl could do it. A small amount to begin with, at the bosom and hips; nothing pronounced; so that your gentleman friends would not take notice. But gradually, gradually . . . You have not buttered this fruitcake, Samantha.”

Samantha rose from her chair, apologized, was waved back in place, and blushed more deeply than ever.

“You are not a jack-in-the-box, my dear young lady,” Great-Aunt Edwina said. “Nor are you a common servant girl—to blush so ferociously. Can you not control yourself?”

“I am sorry, Aunt Edwina,” Samantha said miserably. “I—I—I scarcely know what overcomes me at such moments.”

“Thinness is not what we wish,” the old woman said slowly, “for we should not, after all, like to see you so skeletal and unappealing as—as your former sister. I mean—your
lost
sister.”

Samantha blinked solemnly at these words.

“Yes,” she stammered, “I mean—no. Thank you, Aunt Edwina, for—for your kind advice.”

“You are blushing more deeply,” Edwina said, not without a smile. “As I recall—for he honors me with a visit so infrequently—such blushes are also a characteristic of your father, I believe?”

Samantha murmured a vague assent.

“And Mr. Zinn has a birthmark as well, which asserts itself from time to time,” Great-Aunt Edwina said slowly, now chewing her cake, and brushing daintily at her lips with a lace handkerchief, “tho' it is not unattractive, in its place. The success with which he eradicated a similar disfigurement from your left temple, in infancy, is all to his credit: a courageous gesture, and I think a necessary one.”

Samantha stared at the carpet.

“You
do
recall the birthmark, perhaps? Or the procedure which eradicated it?” Great-Aunt Edwina inquired.

“I—I am afraid not, Aunt,” Samantha said.

“But you know, of course, that you did have a birthmark?—and that your father removed it, with some sort of chemical abrasion, I believe.”

“I did not know,” Samantha said.

“Your sister Malvinia, for all her pride in her beauty, has a sort of birthmark—a Kidde­master mark—of her own,” Great-Aunt Edwina said, smiling oddly, stirring another cube of sugar in her tea.

“Yes, Aunt,” Samantha said, staring. “I mean—I did not know.”

“A far less visible defect, and perhaps, to the charitable eye, no defect at all,” Great-Aunt Edwina said. “I refer of course to her widow's peak, sometimes considered, I think wrongly, a sign of especial beauty.”

Samantha murmured another vague assent. She had grown quite nervous, and was in terror of spilling tea down the front of her dress.

“By one of those peculiar and sometimes disagreeable coincidences, your adoptive sister, Deirdre, was afflicted with a similar mark: tho' hers, I am sorry to say, was far more pronounced, and hardly contributed to her beauty,” the old woman said in a slow, queer, flat voice. “I have often asked myself—to what end such grotesque coincidences?—to what purpose, such ironies of fate?”

“I—I do not know, Aunt Edwina,” Samantha said.

“Can they be, do you suspect, directed toward our
humbling?
—or our
humiliation?
”

Samantha bestirred herself to speak, miserably. “I do not know that either, dear Aunt,” she said in a faint voice.

The old woman, absently stirring her tea with a tiny spoon, stared at Samantha as if looking through her. The fussy prettiness of her afternoon cap and the rich fabric of the Japanese shawl contrasted rather grimly with her face, or with its expression, which was uncharacteristically melancholy; and her soft, fairly unlined skin, usually so high-colored, had a drained, leaden look. “To be
humbled;
to be
humiliated,
” she said slowly, “in God's great scheme. Can we, do you think, altogether trust
Him
to make an intelligent distinction between the two?”

Samantha shivered, perhaps as a consequence of a draft of wintry air from the window; perhaps as a consequence of her great-aunt's blasphemous remark. She could no longer trust her voice, but shook her head, in a negative gesture, like a small unmannerly child, to indicate that she did not know.

“Ah,” said Great-Aunt Edwina, suddenly setting down her teacup, so abruptly that tea spilled onto the cashmere blanket, and now bringing her small plump beringed hands to her face, to rub the eyes fiercely, “ah, I will get my revenge!—on
Him!
If I live long enough—if my wit does not soon fail me—you will see!”

These words so astonished our young lady that, for a very long moment, she simply sat, staring; she had not the presence of mind to rouse herself and take her leave, tho' it had become quite obvious that Great-Aunt Edwina, whether through an excess of sudden and unaccustomed emotion, or as a consequence of elixirs quaffed before Samantha's arrival, had lost all awareness of her—and was, in effect, alone: unmistakably alone.

“If I live long enough—if my wit and my courage and my rage do not slacken—yes—you will see—yes indeed—fools and idiots—knaves—men—
Him
—and my belovèd swept from me—my motherhood bereft. You will see, you will see,” the stricken woman cried, still rubbing her eyes with an alarming energy, and beginning now to shake, not with sobs but with silent laughter!—which so terrified little Samantha that, unthinking, unmindful of decorum, she rose at once from her seat, and set her teacup down on a table (the cup rattling so against its saucer from her trembling, she feared it might crack), and, backing away from the distraught woman, took her leave with nothing more than a frightened whisper.

But Great-Aunt Edwina did not hear; nor did she, mercifully, notice Samantha's departure.

 

I SHALL TELL
everyone this revelation,
Samantha thought, as the horses pulled the Kidde­master carriage back home, and her heart pumped with a gleeful intoxication, and the very tip of her nose went waxen-cold with excitement; and then, when the Octagonal House came into view, and a certain wintry desolation struck her soul—despite the attractiveness of Mr. Zinn's house, and the dear familiarity of each window, each cornice, each lightning rod—she thought
I shall tell no one this revelation.

And, to Samantha's credit, this is exactly what she did.

EIGHTEEN

O
nce there were five Zinn daughters dwelling harmoniously with their loving parents, in the Octagonal House on the river: a scant twelve-month later, there were but two daughters remaining.

The grief of losing
one
was soon deepened by the all but incomprehensible grief of losing
three!

For, as if following their stepsister's infelicitous example, Constance Philippa and Malvinia soon fled decent society—by what flagitious routes, for what unspeakable purposes, I can scarcely bring myself to say.

 

BUT DID THE
Baron reject his fiancée, the reader must naturally inquire, fearing the worst; and did the reckless Malvinia elope with her most attractive suitor, Cheyney Du Pont de Nemours? We have reason to believe that the Baron Adolf von Mainz, though devoted to Constance Philippa and her family, and particularly indebted to Mr. Vaughan Kidde­master for certain financial
coups
of no explicit interest to our history, did suffer the agonies of a reconsideration (however unarticulated) of his decision to align his illustrious family with that of his fiancée's—for one must assume that the Baron, despite a certain insouciant gallantry of manner, was a highly sensitive gentleman; and it must have offended his aesthetic sense, as well as his sense of decorum, to see the names
Zinn
and
Kidde­master
hawked in the two-penny press, and gossiped over in even the best society. (How pertinacious gossip is in our time! One can hardly credit its longevity, in a dazed age in which fame and notoriety soon blur, and achievement and sin are oft confused.) More than once that worthy gentleman sent a message to Miss Zinn, explaining that he was indisposed, or suddenly called away on business, and consequently unable to accompany her on one of their obligatory visits to the homes of relatives, for, escorted by Prudence Zinn, the proud mother of the bride-to-be, and, less frequently, by John Quincy Zinn, the engaged couple was expected to visit virtually every related family in the southeastern corner of the state, and in Wilmington, Delaware: Whittons, Kales, Bayards, Gilpins, Woodruffs, Millers. “The trapped man naturally resents being dragged about as a sort of trophy,” Constance Philippa said with a grim smile, holding one of his messages of deep florid regret out to her mother. “One would hardly be surprised—one would
almost
be sympathetic—if he chose to flee to his homeland.” Mrs. Zinn was not amused by her eldest daughter's jest, nor diverted by her challenge. “I forbid you to utter such sentiments,” she said, taking the stiff sheet of paper from Constance Philippa, and noting with an irritated satisfaction the propriety of the von Mainz coat-of-arms, in modest gilt, and the graceful contours of the Baron's hand, “even under your breath.”

And it was the case as well that Mr. de Nemours, perhaps under the instruction of his wealthy father Irénée (of the firm of Du Pont de Nemours, Père, Fils & Cie, of New York City), stayed away from Bloodsmoor for an awkward period of time, despite his obvious infatuation for the beautiful Malvinia. His
silence
as well as his
absence
struck Malvinia to the core, in her pride rather than her heart; and, as her pride was far more vulnerable than her heart, because more greatly indulged, one can gauge the degree of her consternation. (“I am weary of this constant round of parties, teas, dinners, and balls,” Malvinia cried to Octavia, throwing herself down on their canopied bed, and letting her lovely hair tumble in a most unladylike spill across the pillows. “This very afternoon I prowled about Grandfather Kidde­master's library—as, I begin to recall, I did in late childhood—and quite astonished myself by the joy with which I snatched certain volumes off the shelves—a joy and a hunger combined—for the
mind
seeks nourishing food, as well as the
stomach;
and what is more nourishing than an hour spent in the company, not of the vapid Mr. de Nemours, but of the great William Shakespeare, or Plato, or Oliver Goldsmith?” And Octavia, though undeceived as to the cause of her sister's passionate outburst, did but assent in kindly silence.)

Yet the irony was to be, that the Baron did
not
extricate himself from his obligations to the Kidde­masters, and was the more aggrieved—the more wounded. It is a measure of the perversity of Constance Philippa's behavior that she was not, indeed, rejected by her fiancé: he did in fact fulfill his side of the wedding contract, and take Constance Philippa Zinn as his lawfully wedded wife, at the flower-bedecked altar of our picturesque old Trinity Church, in the autumn of 1880,
as if nothing untoward had ever happened in her family
—as if no invisible prowling demon had been loos'd. For it was not to be Miss Zinn who disappeared from all that was familiar and known, but the Baroness von Mainz . . . !

By a similar irony, within that very week, the impulsive Malvinia cast her lot with a gentleman whose name, though known to society, was hardly known in any intimate sense to her family: in short, not the handsome young heir to the de Nemours fortune, but a stranger to all of Bloodsmoor—a stranger, save for his somewhat meretricious fame, to the drawing rooms of Philadelphia.

 

(ONE CAN IMAGINE
the impact of this double—nay, triple—destruction upon a single Christian family: the bewildered heartbreak of the parents, the shame and sorrow of the remaining sisters. Indeed, the deaths of Constance Philippa and Malvinia would have been more welcome, and far more merciful, than the fates that overtook them; and the
humiliation
(for
humbling
is, perhaps, too mild a term) that deepened the maledict cloud already obscuring the heavens above Kidde­master Hall.)

 

IN THE LONG
busy months of her engagement Constance Philippa had ample opportunity to acquaint herself, through her reading, with the sacred duties of Wifehood soon to be hers; she was often to be found hidden away in a corner, alone or with sweet-faced Pip sprawled asleep on her lap, studying one or another of the books Mrs. Zinn, Great-Aunt Edwina, and other female members of her family had pressed upon her. How diligently she read them!—how her forehead creased as she turned back a page, and reread, her lips sometimes shaping the words aloud! The treacherous winds of January and February subsided to the merely cold winds of March; and then, with a wondrous abruptness characteristic of our part of the world, it was early spring—and then spring; and then summer. If the Baron had demonstrated, by an unfailingly subtle restraint in his passion, that he had had
thoughts
about the situation, about marrying the elder sister of a young lady whose fate was so sensational as Deirdre's, he naturally did not speak of these thoughts to his fiancée, or to anyone in the family; and, to the quiet joy of the Zinns and the Kidde­masters, it soon became apparent, as the months passed, as winter shaded into spring and all the numbed, sleeping world awoke, that the Baron's high regard for Constance Philippa and for her family had triumphed over all indecision. Not only would the young couple marry according to plan, but the Baron was reported to have expressed, with his usual cosmopolitan gallantry, and yet not without a trace of sincere emotion withal, the wish that the wedding be held even sooner. (It was Malvinia to whom he addressed this surprising observation, at an evening reception in the palatial Main Line home of Mr. and Mrs. Hambleton Kale. To Constance Philippa's annoyance, and yet to her relief as well, the Baron spoke with far less restraint to Malvinia, and was actually observed smiling and laughing in her presence, while he was quite stiff in the presence of his fiancée, as, indeed, she was in his. Perhaps it had to do with the disparity in their heights, for Constance Philippa “towered” over him, as she expressed it, by at least three inches; perhaps it had to do with the formality of his regard for her—for she
was,
after all, singled out from all of womankind as his fiancée, and therefore a sacred being. Nonetheless Baron von Mainz evidently told Malvinia that “your American engagements are extraordinarily long,” and the implied meaning of his statement was unmistakable: the young man was so in love with Constance Philippa he wanted to marry her at once! Or so Malvinia hastened to report to her sister, who blushed ferociously when she heard, and had no reply at all. Mrs. Zinn, to whom all this was dutifully repeated, made only the observation that it was hardly proper for Malvinia to behave as a sort of
confidante
to her sister's fiancé: such intimate exchanges must cease at once. “I thought you might be pleased,” Malvinia exclaimed, “by the Baron's very impatience, for surely it argues sincerity?—and affection?” “It argues,” Mrs. Zinn countered evenly, “a certain want of delicacy, and a blindness to our Philadelphia customs I should not like generally known, as the Baron's prospective mother-in-law.” It was Constance Philippa who observed in her dry droll manner, uncaring of the effect upon Mrs. Zinn: “Ah!—the poor man simply wants to get the ceremony over with, as quickly as possible, before he truly
does
change his mind.”)