A Bloodsmoor Romance (72 page)

John Quincy fumbled for the shabby leatherbound tome he had set aside, and his sketch, and pencil, not in order to resume his speculative work, but, as it were, in a sort of daze, needing to occupy his trembling hands. His
daughter.
And his
assistant.
Nay, the good man, so accustomed to the merciless but fair-minded logic of machines, and mechanical motion, and the all-seeing Benevolence that suffused the universe, found it most difficult to grasp Prudence's words: and shaped them again and again with his numbed lips. His
daughter.
And his
assistant.
An
outlaw romance.
In his very
workshop.

Mrs. Zinn continued to speak, in a rambling monologue, now peevish, now philosophical and stoic, with an occasional glance at her stricken spouse, who, as the minutes passed, began unseeingly to sketch and doodle, his pencil moving slowly at first, and then with increasing speed: tho' his eyes, I am unhappy to say, acquired none of their customary lustre, but remained grimly narrowed. The passing years had been exceptionally kind to John Quincy Zinn, for, as a gentleman in his sixties, he looked admirably youthful, and were it not for his somewhat disheveled beard, and his thick, stiff, silvery hair, he might have been mistaken for ten or even twenty years younger. Mrs. Zinn, alas,
did
look her age, or more—that age being near to seventy, I believe. Ah, how greatly she had changed, from the vigorous, clear-eyed Prudence Kidde­master we had first known in Philadelphia, as an independent young woman! How flaccid her skin had become, and how darkly pouched her eyes! Her somewhat square jaw would have been sadly disfigured by some three or four stiff, wirelike hairs that sprouted from it, had she not (upon the emphatic advice of her Aunt Edwina) taken care to pluck them regularly; her bosom and stomach and hips would have strained more liberally against her confining clothes, had she not worn a whalebone girdle of more than ordinary strength. Yet such was John Quincy Zinn's love for Prudence, and his high regard, that he seemed hardly to notice the grievous changes in her: it may have been, in fact, that he did not notice, and had long ceased to recall, even in reverie, the handsome young woman of the Fifties, and the giddy romance of their youth.

Mrs. Zinn addressed her distracted husband for upward of an hour that evening, tho' you should not think she spoke continuously: rather, she touched upon one subject (the unspeakable betrayal of the three daughters), and sighed angrily, and drifted to another subject (the happy match between Mr. Rumford and Octavia) and yet to another (Mr. Watkins's superb article), and to another (the handsome honorarium bestowed upon John Quincy by Congress: which Judge Kidde­master, by arcane negotiations it were better not to dwell upon, caused to be raised to $20,000
per annum
), and to another (the extraordinary rise to genuine wealth of the Du Ponts, who had begun, not so many decades ago, with a modest powder mill on the Bloodsmoor, and a substantial loan from the Kidde­masters: their fortune being made, of course, by the happenstance of the war against Mexico, and the
still more
fortunate happenstance of the Civil War). Which subject brought her to the matter of young Cheyney, who had returned from a trip to the Orient, mysteriously broken in constitution, but withal said to be still charming: and desirous of making his permanent abode at the Du Pont country estate, but a scant twenty miles away. “He is said to be under the care of the finest physicians,” Mrs. Zinn commented, “several of the very staff who had made so valiant, if doomed, an effort to save poor President Garfield from his fate.”

In this wise Mrs. Zinn held forth as she knitted, and Mr. Zinn's lead pencil moved, as of its own volition, creating one rudimentary but inspired sketch after another. By an irony of history it would be, in later years, Samantha herself—who was, alas, to cause her father such grief!—who most clearly characterized John Quincy Zinn's genius: a veritable flood of inspiration, lasting upward of several hours, during which his pen moved, and moved, and moved, and one sketch after another was made, and allowed to drop to the floor at his feet, until, by some process never to be known by the mind of man (for how, pray, can the
mind
know the
mind?
), the
perfect,
or
near-perfect,
sketch was realized: and the fatigued gentleman then sank back in his chair, his face slack, his eyelids drooping, a haze of perspiration on his brow, but, let us hope, a small still smile on his lips.

Thus Mrs. Zinn spoke; and spoke by degrees companionably, and then peremptorily; and, reverting to the original subject of Samantha and “that penniless Nahum,” turned suddenly to her dazed husband, and inquired of him, her mouth bracketed by deep ironic creases: “And what, Mr. Zinn, do you propose to
do
as a consequence of our dialogue?”

Mr. Zinn, in his exhaustion, did not precisely hear his wife's words, nor had he, I fear, been attending to their general sense, for some minutes; but this pointed question struck him, with no great difficulty, and, extending his most recent sketch for Mrs. Zinn to see, he seemed to indicate that this surprisingly elaborate, tho' hurried, drawing was a reply of sorts to that question.

“Yes?” said Mrs. Zinn, frowning, and taking it from his fingers. “What am I supposed to make of
this?
After your furious scribbling—after your scant pretense of attention—after your near-unforgivable dereliction of your duty, Mr. Zinn, in overseeing your daughter's behavior: what am I to make of this—this—why, is it a bed? Is this contraption, with all its knobs and wires and nonsensical coils, a mere
bed?
”

Despite his considerable fatigue, and the lateness of the hour, and the sorrow that clouded his heart—and would, I hardly need to aver, continue greatly to cloud that noble heart, for some time—Mr. Zinn made an effort to smile at his wife's fondly chiding words, and, leaning forward in his chair so that, with one forefinger, he might tap forcibly on the sheet of paper, which his wife held in such doubtful fingers, said quietly: “Yes, my dear, a bed: but an
electric bed.
”

FIFTY-ONE

T
here came a day, not many weeks after this impassioned conversation between John Quincy Zinn and his wife, when, at a small and elegant reception in Kidde­master Hall, Samantha was brought near-forcibly into the company of her old acquaintance Mr. Cheyney Du Pont, and, in silent rebellion against the chatter ringing on all sides, consoled her hot beating heart with these secret words:
I love Nahum, and I shall claim him, and run away with him I know not where, whether we be married or no—for, what is marriage after all?—but I shall make my claim nonetheless. And who is to prevent me!
—all the while extending her pretty little hand, and staring coolly at the handsomely attired young gentleman before her, who bowed with some awkwardness, and muttered a few startl'd and embarrassed words in her direction, and stared with perplexity at her, as if the young Mr. Du Pont no more recognized Samantha, than she recognized him.

For Samantha, as I have said, had grown most alarmingly beautiful, over a mere twelve-month, and, with her graceful petite figure, and small porcelain-smooth face, she resembled nothing more than a lovely little china angel, of the kind wrought by the gifted Rogers, for his most privileged subscription customers. Great-Aunt Edwina had insisted that Samantha prepare herself for this social event (such events, alas, having become rare at Kidde­master Hall in recent years), so the reluctant young miss was attired, not in one of her old best dresses, but in a striking new peach-colored Swiss voile gown, in the fashion of the late Eighties, with an exaggerated long bodice, an angular bustle, and a wide, heavy, layered skirt flounced in Chantilly lace; and she wore, upon her tight-molded red hair, with its fringe of charming ringlets, a tall hat—well over eighteen inches in height—very prettily adorned with peach blossoms, peacock feathers, and white silk ribbons. Indeed,
could
this young beauty be the “brainy, strange, homely one” amongst the Zinn sisters of old?—so every countenance seemed to proclaim; and the elderly René Pierre Éleuthère Du Pont, leaning on his cane, and wiping a negligible clot of saliva from off his trembling chin, said, in a hoarse chuckling undertone to Judge Kidde­master: “Ah, sirrah, your trump card!—yes indeed!—no more than sixteen or seventeen, I wager!—and most luscious! And if the sickly young pup cannot whelp her, why, sir, I shall volunteer—it shall be my final sacrifice for my family”—thereby provoking himself into a hacking spasm of laughter, which in turn shaded into a spasm of coughing.

That Cheyney Du Pont, blinking with watery red-rimmed eyes at Samantha, failed at first to recognize her, is perhaps to be attributed not simply to Samantha's alter'd appearance, but to certain mysterious changes in the young Du Pont heir himself.

I know not what tragic illness had o'ercome this charming young gentleman, in the years since he so passionately wooed the heartless Malvinia, or even whether it arose as a consequence of his long romantic journey to the East, or had its origins close to home: whether it was an “illness” in fact, or a “condition”; an infection from without, or from within. It is altogether likely that the heartbreak suffered by Cheyney Du Pont, upon Malvinia's elopement with Orlando Vandenhoffen, so precipitated a crisis of some sort that, the sensitive young man's bodily constitution being weakened, any manner of disease might successfully assault it: nor did his style of living, which involved a considerable expenditure of his income, in New York City and elsewhere, contribute to his physical stamina. In any case, tho' Samantha was very wrong to behave coolly to poor Cheyney, in the presence of both their families, her bewilderment at his appearance, and her difficulty in recognizing him, are perhaps comprehensible.

Where the Cheyney Du Pont de Nemours who had so gallantly courted Malvinia, in those halcyon days of old, pleased the eye in every respect, with his tall trim manly bearing, and his strong-boned handsome face, about which, withal, a boyish smile oft played,
this
Cheyney could not hope to please any eye at all, I am afraid, save one dimmed with familial love, or wifely Christian forbearance. No longer precisely tall, and disturbingly soft, in a queer red-flushed voluptuousness, not truly fat, nor yet obese, but rather puffy and bloated—awkward in his motions, as if he had yet to grasp how radically his virile grace had been qualified—his skin, which had once been a fine hearty bronze-tan, now reddened, dry, and flaky on every visible inch, but most grievously between his fingers, and about his lips—the hair, once so thick and wavy, now retreated almost entirely from his forehead and temples, to reveal a patched and flaking scalp—the eyes, once so finely-lashed, and so impudently masculine, now small, squinting, reddened, and virtually lashless—and his once-proud mustache so sadly depleted, it was but a grayish wisp on his tremulous upper lip: that this agèd and broken creature had once been that paragon of young manhood, Cheyney Du Pont de Nemours, over whom even Malvinia had shed a tear or two, and in whose veins flowed the blood of an
historic
—it may even be a
noble
—family: ah! quite beggars the understanding. For he could not have been above thirty-five years of age at this time.

Cheyney Du Pont was, however, attired in the very latest fashion—a dinner jacket of black velvet, startlingly informal in its shortness, yet with an elegant roll collar, and black trousers which, cuffless, fell quite properly to the heel of his shoe; his waistcoat was of white Marseilles quilting, and almost too sumptuous to the eye.

His stammered greeting to Samantha was but the prologue to a somewhat awkward exchange, during which it became gradually evident to Samantha, that Malvinia's former suitor had undergone not simply a physical transformation of the most mysterious sort, but a mental transformation as well. That a young gentleman of our time should converse with a young lady, in a drawing room of faultless propriety, chiefly on matters concerning the weather, did not surprise Samantha (tho' of course it greatly wearied her): that the gentleman in question should proceed so slowly, with such hesitation, drawling and repeating his words, and surreptitiously wiping at his mouth with a stained handerkerchief, did naturally alarm her, and cause a most unbecoming frown to appear between her pretty pale-red brows.
I love Nahum, and am confident in his love for me,
Samantha told herself bravely,
and we shall not be cheated of each other: nay, not even Providence shall part us!
—words of such extraordinary brazenness, I can scarcely bring myself to record them.

And these heretical thoughts were transpiring in one of the most beautiful drawing rooms at Kidde­master Hall, in the heart of a fairy-sprite young lady, who looked but half her age, and bestowed upon the world an angel radiance!—well-observed, on every side, by her family: Mrs. Zinn and Miss Edwina Kidde­master in particular, who might
guess,
but could not
know,
of the serpent lurking in Samantha's heart.

Indeed, there was nothing in Samantha's overt behavior to incriminate her. She attended to Mr. Du Pont's lengthy, halting, stammering monologue, which, drifting from the subject of Bloodsmoor weather, reached an early plateau of interest when it touched upon weather in the Orient (monsoons, tempests, heat of 130 degrees Fahrenheit, droughts of such severity “you could see,” as Cheyney mumbled, “that God detests the heathen”), but descended swiftly to tedium, when it drifted onto the subjects of the tariff, and the rabble-rousing Democrats, and the “anarchist thugs” who were seducing the American workingman—issues which Samantha had heard many times discussed by her grandfather, and other of her older relatives, in the same terms.