Samantha alone of the sisters dared to appear in Great-Aunt Edwina’s bedchamber in an everyday walking dress, of plain cotton, without a train, trimmed only by horizontal bands of pleating and ruching, and a few limp ribbons of an indefinable hue. Sometimes she even kept on her workshop costume, a loose-fitting flannel dress, long in the sleeves, that had once belonged to Malvinia and had, through repeated launderings with soapwort, borax, and even tincture of benzoin, become quite threadbare. Summoned to her great-aunt, she impatiently tied on her plain woollen bonnet, rarely troubled to bring along her pretty little purse of rabbit fur and beads, though it had been a gift from Edwina Kiddemaster herself, did not scruple to change her shoes; and kept on her everyday plush mittens until she was about to alight from the carriage, when, frantically, she forced her good white gloves on her hands (which, alas, tho’ scrubbed with Castile soap, were rarely free of stains), grumbling and complaining to herself in a voice mercifully too low to be heard by the young Irish driver. (Tho’ impetuous little Samantha would have preferred to walk through the woods to her grandparents’ house, on sunny, mild winter days, Mrs. Zinn necessarily forbade such folly, and their disagreements frequently provoked both to angry tears. “You are hardly a boy,” Mrs. Zinn charged her, “and you must not behave as if you were one.”)
She sighed loudly, and gnawed at her lower lip, and cast her eyes about blindly as if seeking an improbable escape, led upstairs by the mute servant girl past oval blackwood-and-gilt-framed portraits of her Kiddemaster ancestors—a solemn portly gouty lot, she judged them, who had, despite the acuity with which they stared at her, very little to do with her. (And what of her Zinn ancestors, who were represented by no portraits, not even daguerreotypes? What sort of men and women had they been? Alas, Samantha knew nothing about them save for the meager fact that a young man named Rudolph Zinn, Austrian-born, a soldier under General Benjamin Lincoln, had been badly injured in a skirmish on the Bloodsmoor River, left behind by the retreating Continental Army, and gradually nursed back to health by a Quaker farm family—Quakers in the region being neutral so far as the Revolution went, and generally unmolested by both the rebels and the British. This solitary Zinn found himself in the Bloodsmoor Valley in approximately the year 1777; he might have been as young as twenty years of age; and beyond that Zinn history was tantalizingly blank since John Quincy Zinn, faithful to his Transcendental beliefs, considered the history of his family, as well as his own history, simply too “personal” to be of significance. . . . And yet Samantha fancied herself a Zinn rather than a Kiddemaster, and liked to think that, generations back, there was a young woman not unlike herself, impatient with housekeeping and women’s work, and eager to fuss with numbers and gadgets and schemes to change the world. Deluded child! Had she paid a more scrupulous attention to the examples of her elders, and not allowed her frivolous mind to wander hither and yon, like clouds blown by a capricious breeze, her own history would have been less unruly; and she would not have broken her parents’ hearts.)
Tho’ she had been urgently summoned to her great-aunt’s chamber, she was nevertheless made to wait in an anteroom, and again she sighed loudly, and retied the bow of her bonnet, and calculated how long she would have to remain in Edwina’s presence, before she might make a discreet escape. Upon one occasion, back in January, Edwina had been too nerve-sick and fatigued to really converse with her, and had sent her away within a merciful half-hour; upon another occasion, Grandmother Kiddemaster had been visiting, reclining on a block-footed Empire chaise longue beneath a quilted satin robe, too weak to do much more than murmur a gentle greeting to the startled Samantha—for both women had been bled that afternoon by Dr. Moffet, and gave off an air, as they fussed with their crocheting, of virtuous anemia.
When, upon this occasion, Samantha was ushered inside, she was relieved to see that Great-Aunt Edwina was out of bed, seated in a chair, with a brocaded Japanese shawl about her plump shoulders, and a gold cashmere blanket tucked in about her legs. A single lamp burned on the rosewood table for, tho’ it was early afternoon, the midwinter day was already dark; the Tiffany shade glowed a rich warm cornucopia of greens, blues, and oranges. Agreeable as the scene was, however, Samantha smiled but thinly, and gave her aunt a stiff, perfunctory curtsy. She was immediately asked to pour two cups of tea and to cut two pieces of fruitcake and butter them as lavishly as possible—for it was necessary, Great-Aunt Edwina said, for one to keep one’s strength up, through this everlasting winter.
As Samantha nervously poured the tea, and sliced the cake, her aunt continued in a tone of characteristic irony: “I have dragged you away from your father’s side, my dear girl, only because I suspect it would never occur to you to visit me, otherwise; and an old invalid like myself can become very, very lonely for her flesh-and-blood nieces.”
Samantha stammered a reply, handing Edwina her cup of tea, and her thickly buttered slice of fruitcake; and in the silence she heard a clock calmly tick. She said, stupidly: “Flesh-and-blood nieces?”
Great-Aunt Edwina gestured for her to sit. “As one ages,” the old woman said, smiling coldly, “one feels a certain passionate tenderness for one’s younger relatives—children in whom, so to speak, one’s youthful blood flows. But I hardly expect you to understand, my dear; there is no need to look so anxious.”
Samantha stared at the carpet, and could not think of a coherent reply. Alas, the clever old lady might well have been speaking in code, and Samantha lacked the wit, at this precise moment, to interpret it. “I am sorry, dear Aunt,” she murmured, “if I impress you as looking anxious.”
“Anxiety, restiveness, and, indeed, any form of undue mental exertion, are very disfiguring, in our sex; and have been, as Dr. Moffet has said, sadly deleterious to the health—my own, I mean,” Edwina said, with a placid frown that yielded to a melancholy smile, “—pertaining to my work: which does, as you may well imagine (tho’ I rarely speak of it), demand a considerable expenditure of spirit.” Pausing, she then proceeded to make her usual formal inquiries about Samantha’s health, and sleep, and digestive faculties; and the states of health, so far as Samantha might know, of the other inhabitants of the Octagonal House. With infinite tact and courtesy Samantha made her replies, and, I hope I will not prejudice the reader against this young lady, if I confide that her mind, the while she spoke, fled back to the gorge, and the snug little workshop, and the vision of her belovèd father, who, at the moment, might have paused in his work, to stare out the window at the snowy ravine, of picturesque rocks, and stunted trees, and the fleet darting of birds—all unseen by him: for, tho’ John Quincy Zinn oft stared out the window, his extraordinary mind was such, that he saw not a thing. But ah! how Samantha loved the workshop! How she yearned to be freed from her great-aunt’s presence, and back at her father’s side, where dear little Pip might even now be perched upon Mr. Zinn’s shoulder, gnawing on a sugar cube, unbeknownst to Mr. Zinn himself.
Samantha was roused from her pleasant daydream, by an inquiry of Edwina’s, as to the progress of Mr. Zinn’s present invention; and so she replied, as best she could, knowing how her mother’s family, in secret, valued her father’s great effort—how they lightly jested, and laughed, and shook their heads, behind his back! Thus, did Edwina truly wish to know; and how should Samantha most diplomatically reply?
The other day, an inventor named Hannibal Goodwin had come to call, unexpectedly; he and Mr. Zinn had talked together for some time, with animation; Mr. Zinn had spoken quite freely of his work-in-progress (“Alas, work-in-stasis might be a more accurate term!” the modest man exclaimed), and he had shown Mr. Goodwin other, interrupted projects, some of them mere sketches, some fairly complete drawings, one or two scale models. . . . Mr. Goodwin, whose own obsession, as he expressed it, had to do with photography—photographic film—and motion—the motion of the eye, and the motion that exceeds that of the eye—was particularly interested in an old toy Mr. Zinn had been working on, for the entertainment of his daughters prim
arily, in his convalescent years in the mid-Sixties. The toy would have been called the “Zinnoscope,” had it been completed, patented, manufactured, and sold. (“An unlikely sequence,” Mr. Zinn observed.) Samantha had drawn a half-dozen sketches of Pip in pastel chalk, on the inside of a cylinder of some two and a half feet in length, and Mr. Zinn had set a polygon of small mirrors within the cylinder, to be illuminated by a light from above. As each mirror came before the observer’s eye, it reflected the drawing opposite it, and as the cylinder and the polygon turned, more and more rapidly, the successive images of Pip gradually and miraculously merged into one another—so that, blinking and staring, the observer might very easily imagine that he was peeking through a hole of some kind at a living and motile reality! Mr. Zinn had also experimented with the notion of projecting these mirror images somehow, perhaps with a magic lanter, tho’ he would probably have required more than one, but nothing had come of it: as usual, he had abruptly lost interest in the project since an astounding idea for a new project had suggested itself to him, in a moment of reverie, and he had thought it best not to resist. “And then, of course, as you can see, Mr. Goodwin,” Mr. Zinn said apologetically, stooping to blow dust off the model (for the girls had naturally lost interest in it after a few excited evenings, and even Pip, initially fascinated by his own image in motion, was soon bored by its simplicity and repetitiveness), “as you can see, the thing is only a toy; and a man cannot content himself with toys while the great mass of our fellow Americans pass their days in useful labor.”
Great-Aunt Edwina professed very little interest in the forgotten Zinnoscope, other than to observe that it might be a marvelous pastime indeed—for a monkey; she was more concerned with the experimentation Mr. Zinn had been doing with the icebox in the basement, since that large, squat, odoriferous, and dismayingly ineffectual thing caused the household much grief, particularly in the summer months. (A veritable crescendo of odors flew forth as humid August advanced!—and upon more than one ghastly occasion the smells of what might be called “sewer gas” had somehow backed up the drainpipe and into the icebox, permeating the food.) But, unfortunately, after a few weeks’ puttering and tinkering, Mr. Zinn had come up with the absurd notion that the entire concept of the “icebox” would have to be revised, and that, rather than rely upon the icehouse ice stored in the bottom of the compartment, which inevitably melted and drained away into a pan, in a most inefficient manner, one should work out some sort of method by which the cold of the icebox creates the ice!—which would utterly reverse the present procedure, and constitute, in Mr. Zinn’s words, another “transmogrification” of reality. When the household greeted this fanciful notion blankly, and even Samantha stared in embarrassed bewilderment, Mr. Zinn quickly lost interest in the project.
Samantha spoke haltingly, fearing that she was betraying her dear father, for the condescending smile with which Great-Aunt Edwina greeted her report of his “progress” only very thinly disguised a more characteristic irony; and she was loath to touch upon the guilt she naturally felt, regarding her unfortunate youngest sister.
Great-Aunt Edwina clasped her shawl more tightly about her shoulders, as if she were suddenly cold, and indicated, with a graceful gesture of her hand, that Samantha should pour them each another cup of tea. And cut another slice of fruitcake, if she would be so kind.
“Thank you, Aunt Edwina,” Samantha said, performing the little ritual with a mechanical ease, “but I think I will decline your offer of another slice of cake, myself. The tea, however, is delicious.”
“You must eat, you must fill out,” Great-Aunt Edwina said, almost peevishly. “You are far too thin, Samantha; and it is not appealing. That you are naturally petite is, of course, admirable—your waist is no more than seventeen inches, I daresay?—which is very, very good, of course—and yet—as you know—a certain generosity of—of—bodily presence—a certain attractive distribution of mammalian flesh—is thought to be socially desirable; otherwise we shall have to see about padding for you, and I halfway wonder at your mother’s judgment, that this problem was not approached before now.”
“Yes, Aunt,” Samantha said, blushing, so that the scattering of freckles on her face darkened at once, “I mean—I am dreadfully sorry.”
“One of your maids would be capable of making something up, I should think,” Great-Aunt Edwina said, sipping at her tea, “and, if not, my girl could do it. A small amount to begin with, at the bosom and hips; nothing pronounced; so that your gentleman friends would not take notice. But gradually, gradually . . . You have not buttered this fruitcake, Samantha.”
Samantha rose from her chair, apologized, was waved back in place, and blushed more deeply than ever.
“You are not a jack-in-the-box, my dear young lady,” Great-Aunt Edwina said. “Nor are you a common servant girl—to blush so ferociously. Can you not control yourself?”
“I am sorry, Aunt Edwina,” Samantha said miserably. “I—I—I scarcely know what overcomes me at such moments.”
“Thinness is not what we wish,” the old woman said slowly, “for we should not, after all, like to see you so skeletal and unappealing as—as your former sister. I mean—your lost sister.”
Samantha blinked solemnly at these words.
“Yes,” she stammered, “I mean—no. Thank you, Aunt Edwina, for—for your kind advice.”
“You are blushing more deeply,” Edwina said, not without a smile. “As I recall—for he honors me with a visit so infrequently—such blushes are also a characteristic of your father, I believe?”
Samantha murmured a vague assent.
“And Mr. Zinn has a birthmark as well, which asserts itself from time to time,” Great-Aunt Edwina said slowly, now chewing her cake, and brushing daintily at her lips with a lace handkerchief, “tho’ it is not unattractive, in its place. The success with which he eradicated a similar disfigurement from your left temple, in infancy, is all to his credit: a courageous gesture, and I think a necessary one.”
Samantha stared at the carpet.
“You do recall the birthmark, perhaps? Or the procedure which eradicated it?” Great-Aunt Edwina inquired.
“I—I am afraid not, Aunt,” Samantha said.
“But you know, of course, that you did have a birthmark?—and that your father removed it, with some sort of chemical abrasion, I believe.”
“I did not know,” Samantha said.
“Your sister Malvinia, for all her pride in her beauty, has a sort of birthmark—a Kiddemaster mark—of her own,” Great-Aunt Edwina said, smiling oddly, stirring another cube of sugar in her tea.
“Yes, Aunt,” Samantha said, staring. “I mean—I did not know.”
“A far less visible defect, and perhaps, to the charitable eye, no defect at all,” Great-Aunt Edwina said. “I refer of course to her widow’s peak, sometimes considered, I think wrongly, a sign of especial beauty.”
Samantha murmured another vague assent. She had grown quite nervous, and was in terror of spilling tea down the front of her dress.
“By one of those peculiar and sometimes disagreeable coincidences, your adoptive sister, Deirdre, was afflicted with a similar mark: tho’ hers, I am sorry to say, was far more pronounced, and hardly contributed to her beauty,” the old woman said in a slow, queer, flat voice. “I have often asked myself—to what end such grotesque coincidences?—to what purpose, such ironies of fate?”
“I—I do not know, Aunt Edwina,” Samantha said.
“Can they be, do you suspect, directed toward our humbling?—or our humiliation?”
Samantha bestirred herself to speak, miserably. “I do not know that either, dear Aunt,” she said in a faint voice.
The old woman, absently stirring her tea with a tiny spoon, stared at Samantha as if looking through her. The fussy prettiness of her afternoon cap and the rich fabric of the Japanese shawl contrasted rather grimly with her face, or with its expression, which was uncharacteristically melancholy; and her soft, fairly unlined skin, u
sually so high-colored, had a drained, leaden look. “To be humbled; to be humiliated,” she said slowly, “in God’s great scheme. Can we, do you think, altogether trust Him to make an intelligent distinction between the two?”
Samantha shivered, perhaps as a consequence of a draft of wintry air from the window; perhaps as a consequence of her great-aunt’s blasphemous remark. She could no longer trust her voice, but shook her head, in a negative gesture, like a small unmannerly child, to indicate that she did not know.
“Ah,” said Great-Aunt Edwina, suddenly setting down her teacup, so abruptly that tea spilled onto the cashmere blanket, and now bringing her small plump beringed hands to her face, to rub the eyes fiercely, “ah, I will get my revenge!—on Him! If I live long enough—if my wit does not soon fail me—you will see!”
These words so astonished our young lady that, for a very long moment, she simply sat, staring; she had not the presence of mind to rouse herself and take her leave, tho’ it had become quite obvious that Great-Aunt Edwina, whether through an excess of sudden and unaccustomed emotion, or as a consequence of elixirs quaffed before Samantha’s arrival, had lost all awareness of her—and was, in effect, alone: unmistakably alone.
“If I live long enough—if my wit and my courage and my rage do not slacken—yes—you will see—yes indeed—fools and idiots—knaves—men—Him—and my belovèd swept from me—my motherhood bereft. You will see, you will see,” the stricken woman cried, still rubbing her eyes with an alarming energy, and beginning now to shake, not with sobs but with silent laughter!—which so terrified little Samantha that, unthinking, unmindful of decorum, she rose at once from her seat, and set her teacup down on a table (the cup rattling so against its saucer from her trembling, she feared it might crack), and, backing away from the distraught woman, took her leave with nothing more than a frightened whisper.