A Bloodsmoor Romance (40 page)

“I—I scarcely know how to begin, Your Honor, my humble plea,” he said, as the blush rose more savagely up his face, “it—my mission—the very audacity of my hope—”

Tea was ceremoniously poured, and tiny crustless sandwiches offered, and, as John Quincy spoke—how much less forcefully, than he had wished!—the elder gentleman furrowed his high, noble forehead, the which was rendered all the more distinctive, by his prominent widow's peak; and knit his generously endowed white eyebrows; and nodded, and murmured “Yes, yes,” as he fussed with his teacup, and a sandwich of thin-shaved beef; and when John Quincy took courage, to inquire nervously whether His Honor might now like to examine the diagrams—for he had brought them along, carefully folded, in his coat pocket—the elder man appeared not to hear, but, gazing sternly at the part-devoured sandwich in his hand, murmured once again an impatient “Yes.”

Which naturally bewildered John Quincy, but did not discourage him, as he ranged more freely about, talking of past inventions, American and otherwise, that had been created out of “obvious” principles—the chronometer, the rotorship, the reaper, the gas-filled balloon, the nefarious rocket weapons the British put to such degrading use, at Bladensburg, in 1814. He thought it odd, and verging on rudeness, that in the very midst of his speech Mr. Kidde­master should draw out his pocket watch, and stare into it; but then, he reasoned, the elder man's time
was
inestimably valuable, and one of his own humble station should be grateful for whatever attention he might be granted. “I hope, sir, that my boldness does not offend you,” he said, tho' with much more diffidence than his words suggest. “I should perhaps have discussed the proposal in outline, if not in specifics, with Miss Kidde­master, who might have—with her instinctive womanly wisdom!—guided me; or dissuaded me outright. But I have not been so fortunate as to talk with Prudence for some time now, owing to—well, I scarcely know
what;
and in any case—”

So the poor young man talked nervously, and without direction, and it soon became evident that Mr. Kidde­master, for all his air of authority, and the regal nature of his bearing, was somewhat deaf in his left ear; or, very possibly, in both ears; and that the brusque little nodding of his distinguished head, and his murmured
yesses,
failed to inspire true confidence. He interrupted John Quincy's remarks on the likelihood of so developing rockets and torpedoes (along the lines Robert Fulton had envisioned), that, such terrible weapons being available, war should abruptly cease to be waged, by snorting in amusement: “Yes—
yes
—such overtures are always difficult—for
Poppa
and prospective
Husband
alike!”

At this juncture both men fell silent for several minutes, Mr. Kidde­master impatiently stirring sugar in his tea, John Quincy chewing without appetite a damp sandwich. That there was, in the imposing cherrywood-paneled sanctity of Mr. Kidde­master's retreat, a profound misunderstanding of some sort, whose consequences would be far-ranging indeed, seemed likely: and yet John Quincy Zinn, in his boyish innocence, could not quite grasp what it might be.
Poppa, husband
.
.
.
?
Were these arcane terms, professional jargon, pertaining to rock oil, or to the financing of fairly radical experiments, by wealthy patrons like Mr. Kidde­master . . . ? John Quincy reasoned that he could not ask; and, in any case, his host being afflicted with partial deafness, he could not hope of a reply.

(How much shrewder it would have been, he saw now, to have discussed the delicate matter with Prudence! For she oft joked about her father's willfulness; yet hinted that she knew well “how to get round” him, and from which side “he might best be saddled.” But he had not seen Prudence for many days. He
had not
—I am most pained to say—seen her at the Bayards' home, on the fateful day of her fainting fit; the simple reason being he had not been invited, and knew nothing of the party. That the febricity of Miss Kidde­master's passion for him had induced both the
fainting fit,
and the
vision
of John Quincy Zinn that attended it, I cannot help but surmise; that John Quincy Zinn knew anything about it, or, indeed, anything about his friend Prudence's amorous attachment to him, I cannot but deny. In any case, he had not set eyes upon her for some time, and had begun to feel her absence, but casually.)

Some remarks of John Quincy's as to the activities of Know Nothings in Philadelphia, and a diffident query concerning Mr. Kidde­master's opinion of them, were interrupted by the elder man's irritable ringing for his manservant, and an order given for two glasses of sherry—notwithstanding John Quincy's demurral; and a question voiced, in much the same tone, as to the
particulars
of John Quincy's background. “It being time, after all, for us to speak of such things,” Mr. Kidde­master said frankly.

So John Quincy looked him full in the eye, and did not flinch before a certain half-contemptuous condescension he saw there, and spoke of “domestic tragedy” in his childhood: consumption, influenza, the thin, rocky soil of his grandfather's and father's farm, a series of crop failures. He hesitated, then plunged forward into admitting—stating—that he had spent some years “hired out” to families in the Germantown area, on the Granitehill River; and that he was accustomed to being worked hard, and to thriving on it. And one day, browsing at a bookseller's stall in Allentown, where he had come with his farm family for the day, he had happened upon a slender book by a man unknown to him until that very moment—the great Ralph Waldo Emerson. And the book—he assured Mr. Kidde­master he did
not
exaggerate—changed his life.

“Indeed!” Mr. Kidde­master observed, sniffing his sherry. “Emerson, you say?”

The conversation continued, consisting for the most part of the self-conscious young man's presentation of himself, interrupted by
hem's
and
ha's
by Mr. Kidde­master, and brought to a full halt by the bemused observation: “My dear boy, you are young: but you will not always be so.”

There was a pause; John Quincy wondered if he should respond, or sit in blushing silence; and then Mr. Kidde­master, again drawing out his handsome gold watch, opening it, and staring half angrily into it, said in an orotund voice that might have done honor to the bewigged ancestor above the mantel: “Deambulations, my dear boy, may very well draw us to the point, had we an unlimited fount of time; but such, alas, is not the case, no more for my belovèd daughter, if I may be so bold, as for Mrs. Kidde­master and myself. And so—to be blunt: I believe that we understand each other, Mr. Zinn, no matter that we seem hardly to speak the same language. My belovèd Prudence has confessed all to me; and, after my initial alarm, I came round to grasping the essence of her case, and to seeing some merit, however eccentric, in it. That my daughter, at her age, should have attracted the affection of a gentleman so forthright, and, if I may say so, so rough-hewn in his manliness, as you, cannot fail but strike a doting father's heart as felicitous—for we Kidde­masters are, after all, altogether
human;
if pricked, we sometimes deign to bleed. That my daughter, at her somewhat advanced and, it may be, level-headed age, with the assurance of both a professional career before her, and a substantial income from numerous investments held in trust expressly for her, should be attracted, in her turn, to any gentleman at all—to
any
gentleman at all—cannot fail to strike a doting father's heart as altogether welcome: for I wish grandchildren as much as any man, and I cannot think (no matter how I humor little Prudence, and my dear sister Edwina) that a woman's place can be anywhere outside the household, if she is to be, in the fullest sense of the word,
womanly.
The weaker sex necessarily being weaker, less by divine ordinance than by simple biological accident, it inevitably follows that the stronger sex
must
provide—if not, in every case, financial support, then surely strength; and guidance; and protection. I had no objections, sir, to my daughter's studying all the books she could lay her hands on, or to her ordering away for e'en more radical reading material, or hobnobbing with every Transcendentalist, Abolitionist, and Free Thinking boobie in the Union; but I did object, sir, and my wife was sorely distressed, that she should profess not only indifference but outright
scorn
”—and here the old gentleman's voice gave way, and began to tremble—“for the sacred obligations of motherhood: yes, sir, I did indeed object!—yes!—I did
indeed;
and you may quote me. For just as one is compelled to look with contempt upon the traitorous soldier who flees his position on the battlefield, so one is compelled to look with e'en greater contempt upon the woman who, refusing to marry, refuses to have children, and to continue her line. Yes, my dear sir: I assure you this is my position, and I shall not budge from it: and you may quote me for the record, and publish it in the damn'd penny papers if you like!”

At this point he paused, breathing rather laboriously, and rang for another glass of sherry. His frost-glazed eyes fixed themselves upon the altogether astonished John Quincy Zinn, and, tho' for a long moment no word passed between them, it did seem to the younger man that
something
quite substantial passed between them: and that he had no alternative, but to tactfully acquiesce.

A profound misunderstanding, John Quincy thought. Ah, indeed!—the aspiration to provide ingenious mechanical means to draw up rock oil to the surface of the earth, supplanted by—can it be?—the prospect of marriage, with the daughter of Chief Justice Godfrey Kidde­master of Kidde­master Hall. Somehow, he could not dream of guessing
how,
the one bold aspiration had been jettisoned, to be replaced by the other: so the machinery of the Universe, benign, in perpetual motion, its infinite wheels and springs and cogs and pistons in perfect (if inscrutable) harmony, had brought him, in mute astonishment, to
this.

And, it may be, the blushing young man saw again that tarred and blazing figure, hauled aloft by a jeering crowd; and saw the mockery of its white fluttering feathers; and smelt the enormity of burning tar, burning hair, burning flesh. The Yankee pedlar that is no more, the rich man's son that
is;
and shall bring forth, for his wife's family, and for himself, and for all the world, the most glorious
issue.

John Quincy Zinn had given little thought to marriage, and still less to love: his innocence was such, he had but casually meditated upon any course of future action other than his
work
—the work that was his Destiny, and bound up with the Destiny of his great nation. Miss Prudence Kidde­master with her broad, bold, forthright countenance, and her stolid figure, was his dear
friend;
a kind of sister; and a conscience as well. Of the other young Philadelphia heiresses who had seemed particularly attentive to him, Miss Parthenope Brownrrigg with her ethereal verse had made a great impression upon him, for he thought her worthy—if he might judge such matters—of residing in Concord itself, with her special poetic gifts. And there was Miss Rachel Triem, rather more John Quincy's age, perhaps, at twenty-three, than either Miss Kidde­master or Miss Brownrrigg, however formidable their qualities; and the slender Miss Honora LeBeau with her astonishing pale skin and crimped hair and billowing skirts—ah, Miss LeBeau struck him, of a sudden, as
quite
an attractive woman!—but perhaps it was too late?

Mr. Kidde­master, swallowing his sherry, had plunged forward to speak companionably of a dowry; and of a “sizable parcel” of land, on the Bloodsmoor grounds, with an excellent view of the river, and the scenic gorge, for the house John Quincy and Prudence would one day wish to build. He spoke of other matters—he touched lightly upon the “financial”—while his prospective son-in-law, head ringing with blood, stared and blinked and made every effort to follow. So shaken was the young man, he caught himself reaching for his glass of sherry; but drew back his hand in time, as if he had been about to touch a snake.

The Yankee pedlar that is no more, the rich man's son that
is.

Grandchildren, Mr. Kidde­master was murmuring fondly. Sons.

“It is less that my daughter becomes a
Zinn,
” Mr. Kidde­master said, his noble lips pursed just perceptibly upon the pronunciation of that name, “than that you, my dear John Quincy, become a Kidde­master. We shall put it in those terms; we shall think of it that way.
And you may quote me.
”

V

The Wide World

TWENTY-SEVEN

S
o wicked were the Eighties, and so lost to common Christian decency and justice, it is hardly a surprise to learn that the fallen Malvinia Zinn—by brash magic rebaptized “Malvinia Morloch”—was not despised on all sides, but rather elevated—to become one of the theatrical celebrities of New York City within a few years of her
début
(in itself absurdly premature) at the glittering new Fanshawe Theatre at Union Square, as celebrated in the press as the infamous Lola Montez of another era, and the far more gifted Ada Rehan of her own!

It was claimed for “Malvinia Morloch” that, in performance, she was both
audacious
and
tender; angelic,
and yet
provocative; coquettish; noble; enchantin
g
; piquan
t
; subtle; irresistible;
and
unforgettable.
She was a
truly inspired
Rosaline in
As You Like I
t
,
and a
sly, spoiled, outrageous, and absolutely charming
Countess in
Countess Fifine.
She moved audiences to tears with her
spirited yet profoundly tragic
portrayal of Juliet (in a production in which her protector Orlando Vandenhoffen, tho' rather seasoned for the role, evoked an impassioned and convincing Romeo); she commanded peals of laughter as Phronie in
Dollars and Sense,
and awed admiration for her energy, as well as her beauty, in that curious and coarse
Ah Sin: A Play of the Western Life,
concocted for the stage by Bret Harte and Mark Twain. (“Lovely Malvinia is quite the best thing in the play,” Mark Twain himself allowed in his amusing opening-night speech, “but I will not ask for a show of hands—whether the poor girl redeems it, or goes down with the rest of us.”) The usually judicious William Winter behaved as if he had fallen in love with her, writing in the
Tribune,
on the occasion of her
début
in the silly melodrama
A Flash of Lightning:
“The stage presence of young Malvinia Morloch is nothing less than stupendous. Her feminine charms are electrifying, her beauty mesmerizing, the pathos of her suffering brilliant, her flashes of scorn, courage, defiance, and female sacrifice heartrending. Ladies and gentlemen, we will hear a great deal of Malvinia Morloch in the years to come!”—all this in praise of a performance the unskilled actress merely learned by rote, with her wonderful capacity for imitation and mimicry.