A Bloodsmoor Romance (87 page)

So the skillful medium averred, I know not how sincerely, all the while gazing upon the spectral countenance of the sullen Florette, who held herself rigidly as before, and continued to succumb to convulsive spasms of shivering, the which were soon contagious, as Deirdre herself began to shiver, the hour fast approaching midnight, and the nocturnal air markedly cool.
That is the face of Death,
Deirdre's thoughts ran, disjointed from her articulated argument,
that is the face, the very face, of Self-Death,
she mused. Brooding, and morose, and sickly, and spiteful, and characterized by a perverse admixture of
angry resignation,
and
lethargic righteousness:
the very image of the child who seeks to punish others, by punishing himself, and cannot comprehend why his energies bring him no satisfaction, but the more hot tears.

For a very long time Deirdre spoke, and then too lapsed into silence, and the birds of night sang lewdly to one another, and the glaring lantern of a moon made its journey through the star-twinkling sky, and the mood was reminiscent of nothing so much as this passage of that wicked but ah! so greatly gifted Mr. Poe—

Said we, then—the two, then: “Ah, can it

Have been that the woodlandish ghouls—

The pitiful, the merciful ghouls—

To bar up our way and to ban it

From the secret that lies in these wolds—

From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds—

Have drawn up the spectre of a planet

From the limbo of lunary souls—

This sinfully scintillant planet

From the Hell of the planetary souls?”

—words of great mystic import, not comprehensible, perhaps, to those of us of unpoetical bent, yet, withal, fraught with wise counsel, in the dim nether regions of the soul.

Thus the agoniz'd night unfolded, and once again the spirit took up her plea, and droned, and whined, and cast a gaze of ember-hot fury at Deirdre; and Deirdre with infinite patience and compassion repeated her expostulation; and again silence ensued; and again the spirit made remonstrance, that the profligate had savagely “misus'd” her, and “cast her into the dirt, when he had had his fill”; and yet again the valiant medium put forth her advocacy, even as (in Mr. Poe's awesome words)

—the night was senescent

And star-dials pointed to morn—

As the star-dials hinted of morn—

and the lusty cock crew, to be answered by another, and yet another: and all the world cast off the sickly eclipse of
Night,
to take up the bright mantle of
Day:
save Deirdre of the Shadows and Florette, who remained locked in their dispute, which exerted the more power over the human participant, in that her energies were fast fading, and her judgment uncertain, and a terror leapt and frolicked along the precarious pathways of her nerves—that, should she suddenly weaken, her contact spirits, and divers others (she scarce knew who, or what, they might be, having felt them gather behind her, so to speak, all the long night), would rush forward shrieking and gibbering, in total control. Ah, and then—! And then—!

It is hardly my pleasure, to reveal to the reader, at this point, that Deirdre's premonitions were exactly correct: and that, upon the very moment of what should have been a considerable victory (to be, in fact, considerably rewarded, by young Mr. Fairbanks—the payment made to Deirdre of the Shadows by way of her financial advisor, rather than to the stricken medium directly), these altogether undisciplined—nay, savage—spirits broke loose, of the mysterious bonds which had restrained them for so many years, and so flooded Deirdre's being that she could not for more than a heroic minute or two withstand them: and quite succumb'd, to that dread
loss of sanity,
of which I have previously spoken.

 

ALAS, THE PATHOS
of the situation!—the hideous irony!

For, after so very many hours, after so very selfless and courageous an ordeal, Deirdre of the Shadows did indeed convince the kitchen wench to surrender her resistance, and to “pass over” into Spirit World—not, I am sorry to say, as a consequence of her admirable argument for Christian
charity,
and Christian
forgiveness,
but rather as a consequence of her patient explanation that the profligate, and all of his family, now dwelt in Spirit World, and were best apprehended there: a happy, and all but unlook'd for, development indeed! So the spirit acquiesced, and hid her pinched face for a long moment in her hands, and appeared to be weeping, indeed, racked with sobs: and Deirdre, tho' dazed with the long effort, continued to stare with the utmost concentration, and no sign of her internal distress: and, ah! how wondrous! the slatternly Florette enunciated the words, “Yes: I will: I will at last
die,
” and, lowering her wasted hands, cast upon Deirdre a queer ghastly joyous smile, the which struck deep into the medium's heart, and brain.

So saying, Florette rose from her bench of sombre stone, and began to dematerialize, as Deirdre continued to stare, and stare, in hapless fascination; and surely it is to the credit of Deirdre of the Shadows, whose hardness of heart has so oft been remarked upon, in these very pages, that, the penitent spirit making a gesture of spontaneous sisterly affection—extending her arms toward Deirdre, across the pond—Deirdre responded at once, with no prudent hesitation: with the consequence, so very confus'd I cannot satisfactorily explain it, that,
despite the significant distance that divided them,
Florette managed to snatch off Deirdre's little golden locket, and, grasping it triumphantly in her clenched fist, stole it away with her to Spirit World!

Ah, the unhappy, the wretchèd Deirdre! “Deirdre of the Shadows” that was! Where is your composure now, whence has fled your much-priz'd calm, and control, and icy-cold self-determination?

Deirdre's initial outcry was one of simple physical pain, for, in snatching off the locket, Florette broke the chain, tugging it hard against Deirdre's neck. Alas, to be treated thusly, after such patience, and such sacrifice! To lose the belovèd locket that Mrs. Bonner had so long ago given her, as a reminder of the bountifulness of maternal love! It were well that the spirit of Mrs. Bonner had, in recent years, so greatly faded, so that the good-hearted woman might be spared this act of sacrilege: and the witnessing, too, of Deirdre's sudden collapse: which followed the loss of the locket by not more than five minutes.

Spirit vengeance! Spirit madness! The ravening as of ghouls—wild beasts—greedy—clamorous—the once-gentle
Father Darien
transform'd into none other than the
Raging Captain,
hellbent on possession—the once-pretty
Bianca
shrieking in triumph, and raking furiously with her long nails—
Zachariah
a lewd horn'd Cupid—the
Red Indian
screaming out his blood-chilling war whoop, against all the White Race—
Mrs. Dodd,
too, transform'd into a trumpet-voiced termagant, in the company of an elderly woman who very much resembled
Grandmother Sarah Kidde­master
—now greatly changed, and as crazed as the others, in her blood lust!

Thus the unspeakable horror, which the prescient medium had half anticipated, broke upon her: and no mortal effort would have been adequate to save her, as she fled from the garden, crying most piteously for help, her voice shrill and broken, a voice scarcely hers at all: “Oh, help me! Save me! Oh, do not touch me! Save me!”—so loud that all the household was summoned, and those incredulous assistants who had accompanied her to Fishkill: all, I am aggriev'd to say,
to no avail.

SIXTY-FIVE

I
t will be hardly required, I am sure, for this historian of the Zinn family, to speak at any length on the difference between the fates of “Malvinia Morloch” and “Deirdre of the Shadows,” and the courageous equanimity with which their sister Octavia endured
her
trials.

On the one hand, reader, we have
selfish, vain,
and
deluded
creatures; on the other, a gentle Christian heart, greatly strained, it is true, by the tragic losses of her loved ones (ah, within so brief a span of time!—not only Baby Sarah, but agèd Grandfather Kidde­master; and Mr. Rumford; and, most heartrending of all, Little Godfrey himself), greatly strained, and, doubtless,
tempted
to despair: yet unyielding to the Serpent, her trust all in her Saviour, that He would give her strength beyond the frailty of the flesh; and dwell always by her side. And, as mistress of old Rumford Hall, no matter her afflictions, and the heaviness of her heart, Octavia had little choice but to busy herself with one hundred tasks daily, great and small: and this too, I am bound to observe, contributed to her forbearance. For as we read in the sacred Book:
She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.

 

THE SORROWS OF
the Zinn!

The unspeakable losses!

For, not very many weeks after the shocking defection of Samantha (the which betrayal, the elder Zinns shrank from calling an
elopement
), it happened that our grand old gentleman, one of the last of an expiring breed, was found dead of a stroke in his study at Kidde­master Hall: Former Chief Justice Godfrey Horatio Kidde­master, discovered by a terrified manservant, on the carpeted floor, his ancestral sword atangle in the skirt of his dressing gown, and his
jubilant voice still sounding
—from out of one of those recording plates or discs, revolving mechanically on an apparatus known as a “phonograph.” (This apparatus, popularly credited to Mr. Edison, had been ingeniously if casually improved by J.Q.Z. himself, who, tho' greatly absorbed throughout the Nineties in his research for the United States government, nonetheless found time in his busy day for that “tinkering,” which he so dearly priz'd, and would not abandon for all the riches and acclaim in the world.)

Alas, poor Grandfather Kidde­master! He passed from this vale of tears but a twelve-month after the demise of his elder brother Vaughan; and some sixteen years after that of his belovèd wife, Sarah: the last of a breed, I daresay, of
giants
rather than
mortal men:
the likes of which, this nation shall not again see.

For some weeks prior to his fatal stroke, Grandfather Kidde­master had been behaving with uncommon secrecy, locking himself away in his study for very many hours at a time, with that contraption his son-in-law had built for him: his evident intention being to record his voice for posterity, his heirs, and as a means of communicating to those “fools” and “knaves” in his own party, who seemed incapable of smashing, for once and forever, the triple perils of
socialism, communism,
and
devilism,
which the Democratic Party freely endorsed, out of blindness as much as wickedness. (Grandfather Kidde­master had suffered a mild stroke in June of 1894, when the Democrats in Congress had vociferously enacted a 2 percent tax on incomes in excess of $4,000; and the fact that the Supreme Court later declared the tax unconstitutional, scarcely cheered him, in his philosophical gloom and pessimism about the future of our nation. Reader, you may well imagine, and doubtless sympathize with, the patriotic old gentleman's fury at that traitorous upstart William Jennings Bryan, then campaigning for the Presidency, against McKinley! And, yet, his bitter resentment of Mr. Mark Hanna, whose “extortionist” methods within the Republican Party, could not fail to offend the sensibilities of a Kidde­master.)

I am in possession of very few details, surrounding the tragic death of the old Judge, save that, as a consequence of his repeated experiments with the recording machine, the household staff had grown somewhat benumbed, as to his raised voice, shouts, and wild climbing laughter, whereby he signaled contempt to his enemies; and his sister Edwina, in somewhat depressed spirits herself, as a consequence of age, and of the extraordinary popular success of a rival etiquette expert, so avoided that part of the house in which his voice sounded, that she scarce saw her brother save at formal meals—at that time reduced, by mutual consent, to but one daily repast, at two o'clock in the afternoon. Mrs. Zinn, ever a loyal and dutiful daughter, thought it wisest, to limit her visits to her father, to but once a day, after teatime had commenced: and yet, alas!—many were the afternoons, when Grandfather Kidde­master's manservant informed her, that her father was “so absorbed in his patriotic task, he must beg to be excus'd.” That J.Q.Z., energetically absorbed in
his
labor, delayed from day to day, and from week to week, his visits to Kidde­master Hall, must have gone unremarked by Grandfather Kidde­master, who never spoke of his son-in-law save in the vaguest of terms, and even gave evidence, from time to time, of confusing him with Mr. Lucius Rumford! (Nor did he remember him, I am saddened to say, in his will—but with the casual observation that, his daughter Prudence's household being so lavishly
in debt
to him, a mere erasing of that debt, upon the occasion of Godfrey Kidde­master's death, should constitute a substantial
inheritance.
)

All of the household being, then, so accustomed to Grandfather Kidde­master's noises, behind the locked door of his study, it was some hours before the most sharp-eared of the servants took note that the Judge's words, and the exact modulation of his voice, appeared to be
repeating
themselves: whereupon, the door forc'd, it was far too late, the terrified witness being greeted with the sorry sight of which I have spoken, yet much confus'd, to hear that noble voice ringing out nonetheless!

So extreme were Judge Kidde­master's terms of abuse, in these recorded messages (even, I am sorry to say, in those messages intended for certain of his family members), the milder amongst them being such expletives as “blackguard,” and “villain,” and “blockhead,” and “lackwit,” and “donkey,” and “d——'d fool,” and “d——'d a——e,” and “h——t,” and “m——b,” I cannot see the exercise as fructifying, to record them here; and would worry that, granted even the genuine admiration and interest of historians of this period, in the great Kidde­master heritage, some misinterpretation of the Judge's sensibilities, and the wide range of his intellectual capabilities, might result. Indeed, I concur with Great-Aunt Edwina's wisdom, not only in commanding that all of the record discs (estimated at above two hundred) be destroyed immediately, but in personally presiding over that action, and even volunteering some aid, in thrusting the offending “records” into the flames, and dealing with them soundly, with a poker.