A Bloodsmoor Romance (21 page)

Yet she sank still deeper, in her helpless swoon, whilst her lover cried to her, now from a great distance: “O my dear—my belovèd—my bride—ah, do awaken!—my love, my
bride
—”

III

The Unloos'd Demon

FIFTEEN

T
he anxious reader will be, I know, gratified to learn, that a
formal engagement
betwixt Prudence and Mr. Zinn duly followed, upon the heels of this too-tempestuous scene; and that, after the space of a twelve-month, during which time the love of both parties naturally deepened, and acquired a somewhat more sombre tone, and the Kidde­masters to some degree relented, in their prejudice against Mr. Zinn (of which I will speak more, at a later date)—the handsome young couple was married in a most beauteous and solemn ceremony, at our old historic church in Bloodsmoor, the Reverend Hewett presiding: on the morn of 18 November 1855.

How it would ravish your eye, to see the stone church all sumptuously bedecked, with floral glories, of divers varieties!—and to observe how the quaint old church was happily filled—
every pew, every seat
—with Kidde­masters and their relations, from several states. (Tho' of the bridegroom's family there was, I am sorry to say, no one at all.)

SIXTEEN

T
hough Mr. Zinn had instructed his womenfolk to expunge from their minds all fanciful thought of the occult, wisely teaching that what we know as the Supernatural is but the Natural, imperfectly grasped, it did come to seem as if, on that golden autumnal day when Deirdre was carried off, a demon of some sort—bodiless, but ah, how powerful!—was loos'd, upon Bloodsmoor; it truly seemed as if the sacred mechanism of the universe had been grievously upset, and the highest of civilized values—not only gentility, and Christian morality, but Maidenhood itself—were cast down into the mud.

With what catastrophic results, we shall see: for I scarce exaggerate when I say that, from that day onward,
the fortunes of the Zinn family were tragically alter'd.

 

THE PITY OF IT
!
Tiny pink velvet rosebuds (with the most beauteous silky-pink interiors) strewn on the trampled grass, of the riverbank.

The pale yellow satin-and-poplin bonnet, its veil hideously torn.

Broken rushes, and sere grass, and a lone branch snapped off a willow tree, from the violent passage of the balloon, in its hasty ascent.

Ah, and the spectacle of the balloon rising, its insensible prey aboard!—a black silken balloon drifting across the wide river—over the line of sentinel oaks—rising, and drifting, and growing ever-smaller—and smaller—the helpless girl aboard, hidden from view—captive, and lost—as her stricken sisters at last begin to scream for help—as the balloon drifts away—now a black sun, against the darkening sky—now a moon, all tremulous and indistinct—and now gone: vanish'd into air!

 

AND, IN THE
confus'd days to come, the onslaught of the dread tribe of
journalists,
amongst them keen-eyed reporters from the Philadelphia
Inquirer,
and the Wilmington
Globe
(the publishers of which dared profess themselves friends of Godfrey Kidde­master, of old); and the insult of the dignified Kidde­master name not only printed widely in the common press, but accompanied by illicit daguerreotypes of the great Hall!—and, from time to time, accompanied by crude pencil sketches of the abducted “Miss Zinn” as well, these being entirely fictitious and fradulent drawings, of a young girl not resembling Deirdre in the least.

But tho' the invidious creatures poked and pried as best they could, not scrupling, even, to make their queries in the poorer regions of Bloodsmoor, they remained as ignorant as the authorities, who confessed themselves quite baffled:
how
the resisting young lady was abducted from the riverbank;
why
no one, not even a servant, was near;
where
the balloon sailed, and eventually landed;
who
the abductor was (for surely he must have been a skilled balloonist); and
why,
after the spectacular kidnapping, he chose to make no attempt to contact the grieving family, or the authorities?

“It is an act of singular audacity,” Great-Aunt Edwina said, “an assault of the criminal classes against their betters: for I cannot think that, in any wise, the unhappy girl brought this misfortune upon herself.”

“It is an insult to the Kidde­master name,” Judge Kidde­master said, his white-maned, leonine head still held high, tho' greatly saddened by grief, “but one which shall not go unpunished, while I have strength, and breath, and resources at hand.”

“I fear,” Grandmother Kidde­master murmured, but very gently wishing to qualify the statements of the others, “alas, I fear that we shall not see poor Deirdre again: for the balloon, as the girls have described it, is surely a balloon out of the darkest regions of the earth; and its pilot, not one to be summarily dealt with.”

Whereupon Great-Aunt Edwina, and Judge Kidde­master, and Mrs. Zinn, and divers others, primarily of the elder generation, soundly took her to task; with every consideration, of course, of her invalid state, and the weaknesses of her mind. Even Mr. Zinn, by nature soft-spoken and courteous, could not restrain himself from observing, to his mother-in-law, that the balloon and its pilot were naught but
natural
phenomena, soon to be discovered by the police—there being a goodly number of policemen employed in this case, owing to the Kidde­masters' importance, and the especial luridness of the event. Indeed, Mr. Zinn near-surrendered himself to some vehemence, in asserting: “Not only is the abduction an altogether
natural
occurrence—by which I mean, it is not
supernatural
—but, it is my prediction that, within a very few days, we shall have our belovèd daughter back, uninjur'd, and untouch'd, and
quite as she was before.
”

Oft the four sisters gathered, in the bedchamber shared by Malvinia and Octavia, or, if no adult or servant was near, in the cozy parlor downstairs, and spoke with tireless melancholy, and not a little continued amazement, of the brute loss of their sister. Ah, and how very strange it was, that the days passed, and the weeks, and no ransom demand was voiced!

“I remember her hair coming loose, that I had labored o'er with such love,” Malvinia said, visibly shivering, “and tumbling in a promiscuous tangle, down her back!—a most repulsive sight.”

“I remember her bonnet falling, and her skirts billowing about her,” Octavia said, dabbing at her reddened eyes, “but most of all I remember her piteous cries for help.”

“Her cries for help?” Constance Philippa inquired, with some honest bafflement, nervously turning her engagement ring about her thin finger, for, alas, the eldest Miss Zinn had lost some weight in recent weeks; and her nobly-sculpted countenance displayed a measure of strain. “But I remember no cries at all, Octavia: no cries, save, after some minutes, our own.”

Whereupon petite Samantha bestirred herself, and knitted her smooth freckled brow, and came so very close to
grimacing,
that Malvinia felt obliged to pinch her, in chastisement; and said, in a halting voice unlike her own: “I remember poor Deirdre calling to us—I remember the force of certain words—
Oh, help! Help me! Father! Mother! My sisters! Please! Oh, do not let them take me!
And yet,” the somewhat breathless girl continued, staring with affrighted green eyes at the others, “and yet, at the same time, I am quite certain that Deirdre uttered no words at all: and that the abduction transpired in absolute, hideous silence.”

“That is true,” Constance Philippa allowed, with some hesitation. “And, I think, very well put:
absolute, hideous silence.
”

Octavia drew in her breath so sharply, her stays gave her some pain; and protested that she was certain she
had
heard Deirdre crying for help. She then paused, and a very perplex'd expression o'ercame her pretty countenance. “Unless I
am
mistaken, and these piteous cries were somehow rendered
in silence:
or, it may be, in a dream of that night.”

“I remember no cries for help,” Malvinia said curtly, “neither in
reality,
dear Octavia; nor by
magic.
Constance Philippa does not remember; and I am very certain that, if she examines her memory closely, Samantha does not remember either. You are o'erwrought: you are most unpleasantly
panting,
at this very moment. What
I
recall most vividly is the shameful spectacle of our sister's bonnet knocked awry, and her hair coming loose, in an untidy sort of darksome splendor, of a type not to be glimpsed outside the dressing room.” These words spoken with such especial crispness, and such haughty authority, no one wished to contest them; and the matter was closed.

SEVENTEEN

T
hat this particularly unhappy period in the history of the Zinn and Kidde­master families—rivaling the Civil War years, in fact, when Mr. Zinn was away for so long, and numerous young male relatives were wounded or killed outright—is to culminate in the loss of yet two more Zinn daughters, strikes me, upon retrospective study, as less astonishing than it had seemed originally: for there were signs all along, not only that two of the young ladies were infected with the
restiveness
of the era, and wildly susceptible to all that was corrupting in the guise of being “glamorous,” but that idyllic Bloodsmoor itself had been tainted, by the shadow of the balloon as it passed so swiftly o'er.

For instance, almost immediately after the alarm went out, and news of the kidnapping was bruited about the countryside, eyewitnesses stepped forward to report to the authorities (and in several impertinent instances to poor distraught John Quincy Zinn himself), a veritable gallimaufry of balloons!—not only U.S. weather balloons and Army dirigibles, which were altogether natural, but an ornate red-and-green balloon said to be of a “chintz” design; and a large “shimmering” golden balloon of the type designed, it was said, by the Frenchman Charles Guillé, but never constructed in the New World; and an egg-shaped green-and-yellow-striped rubber balloon rather like that built by George Hambleton Fussell, the celebrated Boston aeronaut, in the early Sixties—which balloon had suffered a tragic air accident, some years previous, when struck by lightning over the Charles River, killing both Fussell and his young assistant! There was also sighted something resembling the five-balloon aerostat flotilla employed to advertise the famous 1,227-Mile Walking Race of 1868; and a “coppery red sphere”—unless, perhaps, it was a dense cloud of smoke from one of the Whitton factories along the river; and a small, gravely silent balloon of an ivory hue, with an unusually large rectangular wicker basket—this last apparition claimed by Constance Philippa's fiancé, the Baron Adolf von Mainz, by no means an excitable or unreliable temperament, who saw it drifting serenely over a meadow bordering the Philadelphia Pike at a time when, of course,
he could have had no knowledge of the disaster unfolding back at Kidde­master Hall.
Various witnesses believed they had seen “dark-hued” balloons, up and down the Atlantic seaboard, but no descriptions answered
precisely
to the balloon in which, to the best of the sisters' knowledge (and following closely Samantha's meticulous sketch) young Deirdre had been spirited off.

Mr. Zinn, sometimes accompanied by his father-in-law, sometimes by one or another of Mrs. Zinn's cousins, and sometimes alone, traveled hundreds of miles in the latter part of September, and through October, to investigate these eccentric claims. He tirelessly interviewed persons whose propensity toward hysteria, and whose visible want of intelligence and judgment, would have immediately discouraged a less determined man. For he continued to believe, even in the face of repeated failure, that the balloon phenomenon
could be explained;
and that perseverance could lead him to the explanation. At a time when other members of the family—most conspicuously, Mrs. Zinn—signaled by a depression of spirits that they had given up all hope, and when uncertain health of his own (a resurgence of insomnia, headaches, sharp pains in his old war wounds) plagued him, John Quincy Zinn exhausted himself by his insistence that each eyewitness, no matter how questionable, be examined thoroughly. (“For could not a black
silk
balloon, which Samantha has described as iridescent, somehow acquire another shade, or shades, as a consequence of reflections from the ground? or optical illusions similar to rainbows?” Mr. Zinn asked plaintively. “And could not even its
shape
appear to be distended by the vicissitudes of air currents, and the vagaries of individual witnesses?”)

Godfrey Kidde­master, however, compulsively designating himself, both in private and in public, in muttered exclamations, as the “grandfather of the violated child,” believed that far more direct action was required to bring the scoundrel to justice. In short, and bluntly, the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania demanded that State and Federal law enforcement officers, working with the United States Army, arrest all known balloonists in the eastern part of the country, and interrogate them ruthlessly, until they confessed all knowledge of the outlaw balloon: for surely the balloonists constituted a compact little world, and knew one another intimately. The authorities should, Judge Kidde­master insisted, feel empowered to use any method of interrogation that
worked,
including certain techniques of torture acquired from the Iroquois Indians. “We must fight evil, I fear, with its own cruel weapons,” the Judge solemnly averred.