A Bloodsmoor Romance (18 page)

 

IT HAD BEEN
in a chill and drear autumn, some five years previous, that the dissolute man-of-letters, Edgar Allan Poe, was found unconscious on a Baltimore street; and died at the age of forty. Thus, against the vociferous protestations of several older members of the Arcadia Club, a belated tribute to his poetic “genius” was planned, in which John Quincy Zinn volunteered to take part.

“It is a pity, and a scandal,” Miss Parthenope Brownrrigg vehemently exclaimed, with an unseemly forcefulness to her voice, “that so rare, so strange, and so unique a poetic talent, has not been properly valued in Philadelphia.”

Tho' Poe had dwelt in the city for some years, and had edited
Graham's Magazine,
it seemed that no one amongst the Arcadians had known him; for he had not moved in the best society. There was the unpleasantness of the feud with Longfellow, and a battery of disquieting rumors: the man was ungentlemanly, and morbid, and alcoholic, and his linen was oft unclean, and his hair inadequately groomed.

Yet, the younger Arcadians argued, was he not a native genius? Ah, and consider his wretched death!—brought about, it may have been, by the harshly materialistic and unfeeling world, which despised poetry.

Even Dr. Tremblay, whilst disapproving of the man himself, and doubtful of the value, to posterity, of his
oeuvre,
conceded the brilliance of “Ulalume,” “To Helen,” “The Raven,” and one or two other poems. John Quincy Zinn was, it was revealed, the only person at the meeting to have read both
The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym,
and the remarkable
Eureka,
in their entirety; and he surprised the membership by stating that, in his opinion, certain of Poe's scientific theories would one day be prov'd sound, by future scientists. With a very charming blush Mr. Zinn allowed that, had
he
sufficient freedom, which might only be acquired by financial independence, he might seek to verify Poe's theories himself.

Each law of Nature depends at all points, on all other laws.
This theorem of Poe's struck Mr. Zinn as self-evident, and an expression of genius.

The meeting then proceeded, with several recitations of the tragic poet's work, by his especial admirers. (How apt, that the evening was bleak, and drear, and darksome, and the leaded windows of the drawing room beset upon, by unfriendly winds!—so that Prudence, of late fatigued by sleepless nights, and a severe diminishment of her natural robust appetite, felt the chill pierce to the very marrow of her bones, and half-wondered, tho' knowing full better, if the spectre of that wretched man did not stalk the earth, and seek a sort of underbred revenge, by peeking in at his betters, upon such ill-guided occasions.) It was toward the end of the o'erlong evening, during John Quincy Zinn's mesmerizing recitation of “Dream-Land,” that something very untoward happened to Prudence: she grew lightheaded, and seemed to see “sparks” in the air, and would have sunk swooning to the carpet had she not been firmly ensconced, in an overstuffed Turkish chair, with substantial arms.

How her senses reeled!—the while her belovèd recited the poem, his eyes benignly shut, and his frame swaying just perceptibly from side to side, in obedience to the uncanny rhythm of the verse:

By a route obscure and lonely,

Haunted by ill angels only,

Where an Eidolon, named
NIGHT
,

On a black throne reigns upright,

I have reached these lands but newly

From an ultimate dim Thule—

From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,

Out of
SPACE
—out of
TIME
.

At this, poor Prudence's maiden heart beat the more rapidly, and her breath grew so wildly shallow, she was in terror of fainting: for the air seemed of a sudden stagnant, and her corset cruelly tight, and the hypnotic words of her
husband-to-be
so powerful:

By the gray woods,—by the swamp

Where the toad and newt encamp,—

By the dismal tarns and pools

Where dwell the Ghouls,—

By each spot the most unholy—

In each nook most melancholy,—

There the traveller meets, aghast,

Sheeted Memories of the Past—

Whereupon Prudence seemed to lose consciousness, with a scarce-audible sigh (which, fortunately, no one heard, being so rapt with attention, at John Quincy Zinn's performance). She sank into a light swoon, and could not rouse herself for some minutes, until, with the completion of her belovèd's recitation, the company generally bestirred itself: and her strength, and her consciousness, flowed back to her.

Ah, unhappy maiden! She was so ashamed of this curious manifestation of her
weakness,
that she did not care to tell her mother about it: for she believed (how mistakenly, we shall see), that it would never again happen to her: and there would be no public revelation, of her illicit love, for the handsome young bachelor Mr. Zinn!

THIRTEEN

I
t was the case that the Kidde­masters were well aware of their daughter's
fixation
upon Mr. John Quincy Zinn, and her e'er-increasing turbulence, of mood and temper; but, for numerous reasons, they were somewhat hesitant to speak frankly to her. (Even Judge Kidde­master, whose reputation on the bench had grown formidable, in recent years, confessed that he “did not like to stir a hornets' nest—
the female soul.
”) That their only daughter should, after so many years of stubborn resistance, now
fall in love,
struck them as remarkable; for had they not, with some display of grim stoicism, resigned themselves to their daughter's
spinsterhood?
(I am bound to record here, that it was not altogether true, that Miss Prudence Kidde­master had spurned numerous suitors: but it was certainly the case that, had the young lady been more congenial, some would surely have stepped forward—the Kidde­master fortune by no means being a modest one.)

Remarkable, Prudence's impassion'd feeling: and ironical, perhaps: and, should her high regard for Mr. Zinn not be returned, very possibly tragical. Thus the tongues wagged, and no one knew quite what to think. For, on the one hand, Mr. Zinn was quite clearly an estimable young man; then again, on the other— If he
did
sue for Prudence's hand,
was such a match tolerable, in Philadelphia?

On this issue, as the reader might well imagine, there was much controversy amongst the family: the women being generally of one opinion (tho' arrived at only after much rumination), the men, somewhat stoutly, of another. For, consider: the Kidde­masters and the Whittons (Mrs. Sarah Kidde­master being a Whitton, of Baltimore) were descended from old English country families, related by ties of marriage to the Lamberts of Sussex, the Ashbery-Foxes of Warwickshire, the Chuzzlewits of Manchester, the Gilpins of Rowbothan, the Bayards of Norwich, and the Duke of St. Giddings. A Kidde­master officer had distinguished himself in Cromwell's Army; another had fought bravely at Waterloo; still others had attained eminence, on this side of the Atlantic, as a consequence of their uncommon courage, and manly diligence in the field. The renowned Erasmus Kidde­master, for instance, had led the noble expeditionary forces of the 1660's, against the Dutch enemy, along the Bloodsmoor River: this fierce gentleman being feared, by his men as well as his foes, for the stern and unbending nature of his
justice.

Nineteen-year-old Randolph Kidde­master, a lieutenant in the Continental Army, was credited with saving General George Washington's life, in one of the first skirmishes, in our glorious Revolution; and John Branch Kidde­master, a controversial figure to this day, had so ensconced himself as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, that, for some three decades after the election of Jefferson, it scarcely mattered who was President, so resolute were this gentleman's Federalist sympathies, and so ingenious his cunning.

In more recent decades, the Kidde­masters had acquired considerable wealth, by way of their iron mining property in the Chadds Ford region, and their several paper mills (the Kidde­masters having intermarried with the Gilpins, as early as 1790), and their import businesses (this being, I believe, primarily a China trade), and scattered investments, too complex and varied to be here enumerated. It is to be kept in mind, however, that this great family's sense of decorum, and abhorrence of all fulsome display of material wealth, dictated their behavior in society; and would never have countenanced the erecting of any house, of a vulgarian sort of splendor, soon to become commonplace in the Union, as our troubled century unfolds.

Godfrey Kidde­master, though disdaining politics outright, like all cultured gentlemen of his time, knew it his solemn duty to serve his country in some wise, and consequently entered the law: there, by merit alone, and the affectionate support of certain of his relatives, rising with enviable rapidity, having been, for some years, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, when young Mr. Zinn was to make his acquaintance. Nor was it entirely out of the question, that Judge Kidde­master might be called soon to Washington—if only the Whigs were not so bankrupt, and the Free Soilers so churlish a lot, and the future of the Presidency so uncertain.

In this wise various observations were daily made to Prudence, with a semblance of the “accidental,” that she might absorb the moral that the Kidde­masters were, by no means,
common:
a fact the proud young lady well knew, but did not care to contemplate o'ermuch at this time—the spectre of John Quincy Zinn always hovering near, in her inflamed imagination.

I quite realize that I am a Kidde­master, Prudence bethought herself, biting her lip, but must I remain thus, forever?

To her shame, she began to succumb to those very “spells”—lightheadedness, temper, weeping, melancholy, “fagged nerves”—she so deplored in the females of her acquaintance; nor did she resist her Aunt Edwina's ministrations, as to dosages of Dr. Fayer's Dyspepsia Pills, Essence of Tyre, Woodbridge's Natura, and Miss Emmeline's Remedy—this last medicine being most agreeable to the taste, syrupy, very sweet, with a pronounced orange base, and almost miraculously
calming,
to the distress'd heart.

 

FOR SOME TIME,
God took mercy on the fretting young woman: and the very worst of the rumors subsided.

Alas, then sprang to life again!

Yet, again, ebbed: and Prudence again enjoyed John Quincy's company and, summoning forth all her Kidde­master pride, gave every indication of
not knowing
how idle tongues wagged.

“I shall not concern myself with anything save the present moment,” Prudence wisely counseled her heart, “nor shall I give way to vexations arising out of mere emotion, and particularities. For, as Mr. Emerson teaches, ‘I live now: I am a transparent eyeball opened to nature.' ”

So John Quincy was invited to tea, and to dinner, at the Kidde­masters' Cobbett Square home; and they went together to one or more of the milder Abolitionist speakers; and to Thursday afternoons at the Arcadia Club; and to the Philadelphia Academy of Art, there to gaze with especial delight upon a watercolor exhibit, of “Autumnal Blossoms.” They attended the opening night of that production of
Macbeth,
at the new Varieties Theatre, in which Miss Charlotte Cushman gave an historic performance (for thus the reviewers claimed, in their rhapsodies of praise): tho' Prudence believed that the actress's Lady Macbeth was somewhat too impassioned, and John Quincy expressed some philosophical doubt, less pertaining to the performances themselves, than to the general
violence,
and
gloom,
and
deficiency of beauty,
of the great tragedy itself.

“It may be,” the handsome young man allowed, “that, in less enlightened times than ours, and in climes differing substantially from ours, such a spectacle of human nature did not arouse skepticism, amongst persons of intelligence: but we here in America, in our more advanced civilization, have come to believe otherwise, concerning human nature.”

Prudence's heart so swelled, as, by John Quincy's side, she heard these forthright words, that she could not speak, save to assent. How judicious his insights, how measured his words!—and how she adored him!

 

AT THIS STRATEGIC
time, Miss Rachel Triem was said to be visiting relatives in Richmond, there to remain for some six or more weeks; the ivory-complected beauty, Miss Honora LeBeau, was being assiduously courted by René Du Pont de Nemours (the uncle of Cheyney, at this time but an infant of some six months of age); Miss Evangeline Ferris, accompanied by her mother, had sailed off to London on a line-of-packet ship; and poor Parthenope Brownrrigg, tho' absurdly enamored of John Quincy Zinn, sought to disguise her futile passion by absenting herself from meetings of the Arcadia Club.

Mr. Zinn had of late declared himself somewhat o'ertaxed, as a consequence of his numerous social obligations, and new-arisen difficulties at the Brownrrigg Academy. (For, it seemed, certain dissatisfied parents had complained to Mr. Brownrrigg, that the Socratic method, whilst pristine in itself, seemed to be leading their children into remarkable areas of knowledge, not excluding the
agnostical,
and the
biological.
And there was some small flurry of concern, that the anatomical lessons, whilst conducted with but dry skeletons—of squirrels, weasels, cats, and similar small creatures—nonetheless could not fail to suggest, in the impressionable mind, the grosser private organs, of the human body.)

“I do not care in the least, Mr. Zinn, what rumors are whisper'd about you,” Prudence forthrightly declared, “for I know, from having closely perused your manuscript, and from our numerous intimate discussions, the degree of your seriousness as an educator; and I cannot be dissuaded—nay, not even by the priggish Miss Brownrrigg—of your high moral worth.”