A Bloodsmoor Romance (39 page)

(This knotty issue was to be taken up again in John Quincy's career, but only after a considerable span of years—near the end of his life, in fact, when he felt called upon to correct certain contemporary aspirations concerning “time-travel”; and then, only in theory. For after the
débâcle
of March 1853 he was to destroy his machine, and all his diagrams, and reject the very notion of time-travel, as a scientific folly, if not a diabolical temptation. Indeed, it was the American publication of H. G. Wells's
The Time Machine,
and its popular reception, in 1895, that roused sixty-eight-year-old J.Q.Z. to a forthright denunciation of Wells's basic premise, which he held to be a dangerous one, in that it might tempt inventors and tinkerers to experiment with time-travel
as if it were play.
His essay was entitled “On the Probability of Time-Travel,” modest in ambition, and understated in tone, and consequently doomed to a very limited readership; unlike the Wells novella, with its romantic appeal to the adolescent temperament above all. For the esteemed J.Q.Z., despite his amnesia concerning the specific factors of his own failure, understood very well both the physical and the metaphysical impossibilities of time-travel, as the English man of letters and half-baked ideas surely did not. But enough—I am guilty of an inexcusable digression, and into the future at that!)

The gist of John Quincy's predicament, as the reader has by now inferred, had to do with both the susceptibility to time of the wretched Nahum, and the crude nature of the time-machine's gauge. In plunging into the future by some years, the child must have rapidly—nay, instantaneously—aged; the dial had been set for ten years, but it is impossible to say whether ten years were in fact bridged, or more, or less. In reversing the machine's motion, John Quincy had naturally set it for ten years again, but with the astounding results we have seen: the machine o'ershot itself, in a manner of speaking, and poor Nahum was delivered as an infant of a half-year, and not in his “true” form. The terrifying sound of the rock on the schoolhouse roof signaled to the schoolmaster an ignoble end to his career, for, Nahum's brother having so inopportunately appeared, John Quincy should in another minute have no recourse other than to confess to him what had happened: and to take full responsibility for the grotesque accident. No twelve-year-old Nahum, but a kicking, squirming, wailing infant—the selfsame infant that had emerged into Time some twelve years previously, now so astonishingly returned! It would beggar all belief, John Quincy thought. Indeed, he himself could not grasp it.

The rock rolled down the shingled roof, and fell to the ground, and, if this afternoon proved no exception, Nahum's brother would probably give him a few minutes' grace, before tossing another rock, or shouting his name. (The rudeness of the procedure, and the insult to
him,
John Quincy had not entirely grasped until this moment. But surely such casual manners in the presence of a schoolmaster, argued for a singular lack of respect.) Seizing upon this temporary respite, John Quincy decided to make another attempt to rescue the twelve-year-old Nahum, and resolutely turned the dial again, with the unanticipated result that the wailing baby, in all its warm flesh, began at once to deliquesce, and melted away before John Quincy's eyes into—into a
vapor,
and then a
shadow,
and then
nothing.
And the wail's echo, poised for an instant in the lamplight, amidst the silent rows of desks and the high windows in which ghost-reflections of the schoolmaster himself danced, gradually faded: and then there was no sound at all.

And, of a sudden, John Quincy found himself staring into his empty mechanism, with no idea at all of what he was doing; or why his heart pounded so queerly, and his body was bathed in chill perspiration.

He remembered the time-machine clearly enough, for he had been working on it all afternoon, alone. But he could not understand why he felt so agitated. Or why, stooped over, he was staring into its shadowy empty space.

 

“AM I TURNING
somewhat eccentric in my solitude?” John Quincy was to ask himself that night. “Is it perhaps time for me to venture out of these hills, and seek the company of my equals; time, perhaps, to take a wife? And to set aside, for the health of my soul, these damnable vexing problems!”

 

ANOTHER ROCK TUMBLED
down the roof, and John Quincy, wiping his oe'rheated forehead with a handkerchief, went to the door, to inquire what on earth was wrong: why such a commotion: who was being murdered? A boy approached him out of the late-winter dusk, one of the Hindley boys, a former student, in fact, who now peered at him with an expression that reflected both arrogance and embarrassment. After a long strained moment it became clear that the boy had no idea what he wanted: some notion had driven him here to the schoolhouse, but now it had fled, and he simply could not remember.

John Quincy, plucking nervously at his beard, inquired again what on earth the boy wanted—and how dared he make such a clatter, rolling rocks down the roof!

The boy came no nearer. He paused, staring; and could think of no word to utter; no word at all. Whatever had drawn him to the schoolhouse on this late afternoon in mud-time, had now precipitantly vanished . . . and the poor blushing creature could not even stammer an apology, before he turned and fled.

TWENTY-FIVE

T
he singular irony was that John Quincy, in his desperation, must have turned the faulty dial farther to the left, that is, into the
past,
rather than to the right, in order to bring Nahum forward to a more advanced age. Whereupon the unfortunate creature vanished forever!—into that bottomless abyss of Time that preceded his birth, dragging all that pertained to him along with it, into oblivion. Quite as if he had never been born; for, indeed, under these circumstances, he never
had
been born.

An even greater irony, perhaps, lay in the fact that John Quincy Zinn's expulsion from Mouth-of-Lebanon had little to do with the embarrassment of the time-machine and the disappearance of Nahum (whom, of course, no one remembered), and a great deal to do with the mechanical universe: which contraption (in the Reverend Tidewell's contemptuous words) argued for atheism, immorality, and blasphemy, and could not be countenanced in a Christian community.

So objections to the schoolmaster were raised, until a veritable blizzard swirled about his head. He had not the heart to defend himself: of late he had felt unaccountably weary, in advance of his twenty-five years, and even his machines could no longer fascinate him. Folly, he declared them; vanity; and unworkable besides! So he dismantled them, and ripped up the diagrams, and burnt them in the stove.

I must seek the company of my equals,
John Quincy told himself.

One moonstruck April evening it happened, quite by accident, that John Quincy, staring out his window, sighted a small group of men in the muddy road, approaching the schoolhouse on foot. Surely, at this hour, they did not intend a social call. Surely, moving with such grim deliberation, they did not intend to give pleasure.

So he betook himself into his narrow room at the rear of the school, and made haste to pack the few things he could readily lay hands upon. A few precious books; his journal; the marvelous letter from Dr. Horace P. Bayard of Philadelphia, which had arrived only a few days before. . . . He gave no thought for his defense, knowing that mere words would not protect him, and that, in any case, it was too late: Mouth-of-Lebanon had expelled him, and he must be gone.

Even as the men approached the schoolhouse from the road, John Quincy slipped quietly out a rear window, and was gone. For he was, after all, despite the passage of so many fruitful years, the Yankee pedlar's son.

TWENTY-SIX

W
hen, on that blustery sunny morning in November, John Quincy Zinn received a message from the Honorable Godfrey Kidde­master, in his own hand, all but summoning him out to Kidde­master Hall at his convenience, he exclaimed aloud at the evident
synchronicity
in operation: for he had been mining his courage, over the days and weeks, to write to Mr. Kidde­master himself, requesting an audience on a matter of some delicacy . . . !

“Is there a law of coincidences?” he asked of himself, holding his pen aloft, scarce trusting his trembling hand; “an invisible logic to which we must yield, in gladsome surrender?”

The Kidde­master carriage came to pick him up, at his humble boardinghouse near the warehouse district, and many an admiring (and envious) eye accompanied his departure, for was this not proof positive, at last, that John Quincy, so popular amongst his fellow boarders, and quite the favorite of his landlady, was a prince of sorts in disguise, now being raised to his rightful eminence? Some little envy, of course; but much admiration; and rejoicing for him, on the part of his friend Charles most of all, who may have thought innocently that, were John Quincy Zinn raised to another social station by marriage, let us say,
he,
Charles Guiteau, might one day follow. At the very least, the boyish Guiteau envisioned himself someday riding with his friend John Quincy in that very same carriage—a brougham that would easily seat eight persons, of a gleaming copper with regal ebony trim, drawn by four matched high-stepping bays with long braided tails, and starkly black hooves. And how glorious a sight, the proud Kidde­master coat-of-arms emblazoned on the side: a fierce-visagèd lion, rampant, grasping in his paws an olive branch!

The crimson silk lining of the carriage's interior, as well as the induced solitude of the long journey, soon made John Quincy restive: and so he rapped for the driver to stop, and quite astonished the man by insisting upon riding
up front
with him—so that they might chat.

Indeed, once the young driver recovered from his natural astonishment, and some suspicion as to the sincerity of the proposal, the journey out to Bloodsmoor was a highly pleasurable one, John Quincy allowing that he learned a great deal from the driver, Mr. Patrick McInnes, late of Cork, Ireland (whose lamentation for his motherland, still suffering from the great famine of 1845, was somewhat leavened by his delight in singing ballads for John Quincy's delectation: one of the ballads, by a preternatural coincidence, being “Deidru the Raging One”); and Mr. McInnes allowing that he had never met so friendly and bright and talkative a gentleman, who clearly wished to make no distinction between an Irish coachman and his betters, or was not aware of a significant distinction, in his passionate talk of his own future plans (John Quincy being much absorbed, at this time, with the proposal he wished to make to the wealthy Mr. Kidde­master, for the financing of certain experimentations of an eminently practical nature).

At Kidde­master Hall, as the liveried footman approached to open the carriage door, he was amazed to see Mr. Zinn shake hands with Patrick McInnes, and leap down to the ground. It could not have failed to amaze him still further, and perhaps to offend him as well, that the men not only parted on the most convivial of terms, but the one freely addressed the other as
Patrick,
and was called in turn
John Quincy;
and that some hope was expressed that the return journey should prove as pleasant, and that they should continue their lively conversation.

(Thus John Quincy Zinn's arrival at Kidde­master Hall;
but,
I am grateful to be able to note, no Kidde­master was a witness to this curious behavior.)

John Quincy had little time to be intimidated by the Greek Revival façade of the great house, with its high white columns, and its elegant portico; nor could his awed eye do more than scan the gilded interior of the foyer, and rise to the coffered ceiling some thirty feet above. He was immediately ushered into Judge Kidde­master's private library, empty for the moment, and given a chair; and, seated, fortunately alone, he was able to recover himself, and to rehearse once again the exact words he might use, as his gaze moved slowly about the handsome room, resting here and there on something of especial beauty or charm: the cherry paneling, the tall windows with their panes of stained glass that took the sunshine so boldly, the matching silver tankards on a bow-fronted sideboard, the calfskin-bound classics of English, French, and American literature (which John Quincy's eye lingered upon hungrily: how very much he would have cherished such a library, and how frequently he would have consulted it!). A bewigged gentleman of Colonial times, in a gold velvet jacket, with a generous gathering of lace at his throat, and a black, hatchet-faced look, glowered down at John Quincy from an oil painting above the mantel, as if suspecting him of common—nay, outlaw—blood; ostentatiously laid upon the mantel itself was a long dress sword in a golden hilt, its grip decorated with American stars and the Goddess Athena, also in gold.

The carved oak doors were quietly opened by a servant, and Judge Kidde­master strode into the room, a figure rather more frail than John Quincy had recalled, and somewhat more grizzled at the eyebrows, but imperious withal, and signaling by a brusque gesture of his hand that the younger man should remain seated. Greetings were exchanged, of a formal nature; the manservant was given muttered instructions regarding tea, and a light repast; and the estimable Godfrey Kidde­master sank into a rosewood rocker with black haircloth cushions, and fixed his stern, skeptical gaze upon John Quincy Zinn.

After a dramatic pause, during which the younger man felt his face grow mercilessly warm, Judge Kidde­master observed with cool, dry, aristocratic hauteur, yet not without graciousness: “And so, my dear young Mr. Zinn, I believe you have urgent business to discuss with me . . . ?”

John Quincy blinked at the Judge's prescience, and for a confused half-moment bethought himself that he
had
written the letter he had planned, and mailed it bravely off to Kidde­master Hall. (This much-debated missive, which he had hoped to discuss beforehand with Miss Kidde­master, in order to seek her shrewd counsel, was to set forth in fastidious detail John Quincy's ideas for a practical drilling operation in western Pennsylvania, near Titusville, where crude “rock oil” was to be found in abundance. This “rock oil”—one day to be called “petroleum”—was secured at the present time by laborious digging of holes and ditches, and by a still more laborious method of scooping up oil as it floated on creeks; and it had come to John Quincy in a flash, as he read about the properties of rock oil in a Philadelphia newspaper, that one might sink a
well
to
draw the oil up,
precisely in the way that water was drawn to the surface of the earth!—for surely the physical principles were the same. John Quincy's obvious disadvantages were his lack of firsthand knowledge of the Titusville area in particular, and of the actual qualities of rock oil in general: but a natural optimism had fired him, and he had hurriedly sketched a number of diagrams, for the Judge's leisurely perusal, pertaining to the mechanics of the drilling operation.) So startl'd, he could do no more than murmur an expeditious assent, and was at once distracted by the silent manservant, who had reentered the library, now bearing a heavily laden silver tray.