At times, alone in the parlor, when she was confident that no one could hear, she clumsily picked out the tunes Malvinia had played with such dash on the piano, and sang under her breath Malvinia’s favorite songs—“When the Swallows Homeward Fly,” “Is There a Heart That Never Lov’d,” “Sunbeam of Summer,” “It Is Better to Laugh Than Be Sighing,” from the much-admired production of Lucrezia Borgia which Malvinia and several of her Philadelphia cousins had attended, at the Stadt Opera House; and her tears often fell afresh down her cheeks. The old Mother Goose book, its pages much-tattered, she again perused, tho’ knowing her action futile, and in danger of arousing Mrs. Zinn’s ire should she enter the parlor without warning. “It is sinful to confess, as if in defiance of Mother’s wishes,” Octavia confided in Samantha, “but I miss Malvinia very, very much . . . and believe that, were she to appear in the doorway this very instant, I would forgive her everything, and hug and kiss her till she was breathless!”
Samantha, never a garrulous young lady, had become even more reticent of late, and often did not reply to Octavia’s nervous chatter as if, perhaps, she was not seriously attending to it. Her thoughts she kept to herself, guarded; even her small freckled face, so apparently open, and guileless, rarely registered any emotion save that of an innocent and friendly attentiveness. That she was not altogether the childlike sister she appeared, to Octavia’s eye, was evidenced by the resistance, and finally the vehemence, she put forth, when urged by both Octavia and Mrs. Zinn to move into Octavia’s bedchamber—for Octavia was extremely lonely, and found it difficult to sleep at night, with no companion. But she held her ground: she resisted; she refused. In the end Mrs. Zinn acquiesced, albeit angrily, for Samantha insisted that she had need of quiet in the evenings, in order to work at the mathematical problems Mr. Zinn had assigned her. And Octavia, tho’ wounded, allowed that she understood—for she was an inveterate chatterer.
“Is it wrong of me to miss Malvinia so very much, seeing that she has abandoned us?” Octavia asked Samantha in a whisper.
Hardly troubling to glance up from a sheet of paper on which she had scribbled the most perplexing figures and shapes, Samantha replied absently: “Not wrong so much as futile.”
THAT “MALVINIA MORLOCH” became so successful a stage actress in New York, within months of her theatrical début, and that her bright mercurial talents continued to win praise from the most jaded of reviewers and critics, did not truly surprise Octavia, who remembered fondly her sister’s childish love of singing, dancing, “dressing up,” playacting, and mimicry. At times there had been a certain frenzy to the girl’s wish to perform, to however tiny an audience (often only Octavia and Pip—Pip had adored Malvinia), and her troubling wish to draw praise and applause; but most of the time Malvinia had been wonderfully charming, and imaginative, and amusing; and had earned the attention lavished upon her. It was impossible to be jealous of her, Octavia felt, for she was so very pretty, and so tirelessly spirited . . . ! Octavia had only to glance covertly at Mr. Zinn’s countenance, during one of Malvinia’s parlor performances, to see how paternal pride manifested itself, and to see that such pride would never be inspired by her: yet, such was the girl’s sweetness and generosity, she felt only the tiniest pinch of envy, which was then forgotten in a burst of wild applause, as she clapped for Malvinia with the rest. (It is true that she might have liked Malvinia’s numerous suitors for herself; and Mr. Du Pont de Nemours above all; but only since Malvinia had said carelessly, upon so many occasions, that she cared for none of them, and surely did not “love” a one!—whatever that vexing word “love” might mean. And even then Octavia was not jealous.)
In the old days, when poor Mr. Zinn had been away at the War, and his family had missed him terribly, the little girls and their mother had oft entertained themselves in the parlor, singing, and playing games, and doing pantomimes; and even at that very young age (she could not have been more than four) Malvinia had displayed considerable talent—and considerable energy. She was brash, she was bold, she was silly and funny and reckless: and her sparkling eyes and pretty flushed face and raven-dark flyaway hair (with the exquisite little widow’s peak) had usually been sufficient, to deflect Mrs. Zinn’s exasperation. But what inventiveness!—what hijinks! Upon one memorable occasion the saucy miss ran into the parlor with Mrs. Zinn’s best Sunday hat on her head, all feathers and tulle, and a long lace doily wrapped about her tiny shoulders like a shawl, and, in a high shrill fevered voice she sang her favorite Mother Goose song, “Girls & Boys Come Out to Play,” so insistently that the laughing Mrs. Zinn finally relented, and accompanied her on the piano—
Girls & boys come out to play,
The moon doth shine as bright as day;
Leave your supper, & leave your sleep,
& come to your play-fellows in the street!
Come with a whoop,
& come with a call,
Come with a good will—or not at all!
Upon another occasion Malvinia worked up a sort of pantomime with Pip (who was costumed in the darling little sailor suit Octavia had sewed for him), that was such a success it had to be performed at her grandparents’ house, for an admiring group of relatives; and how proud Mrs. Zinn had been, tho’ she had tried not to show it! Upon another occasion, of a more infamous nature, two or three years later (for Mr. Zinn was now returned from the War, and gradually “becoming himself” again), impudent little Malvinia had stolen out of a closet in Kiddemaster Hall an old corset from the 1780’s, which had evidently belonged to Judge Kiddemaster’s mother, and she had frolicked about inside it, as if wearing it, rolling her eyes and poking out her pink little tongue and acting, in short, supremely silly—until her mother put an abrupt end to the performance, and ushered the child off to bed. (The old buckram corset, tho’ much derided in modern times, surely had its advantageous qualities; and was, in my opinion, stouter, more reliable, and generally more effective, than the “streamlined” corsets worn by the ladies of the 1870’s and 1880’s. Its construction was simple and forthright: betwixt an external covering of firm worsted cloth, and a lining of strong white linen, bound together on the edges with white kid, were ranged a number of stiff whalebones—I once counted one hundred, before giving up—placed close beside each other, with rows of white stitching set between. Seven segments, or gores, divided the stays from top to bottom, and gave them their unique shape, for which they were prized by our ancestors. Stiff and thick and agreeably substantial, tho’ a trifle weighty, the buckram corset was laced behind with a leather string, tied to the eyelet-holes, while a broad wooden busk kept the long front as straight and imposing as possible. One has only to consult Copley’s paintings, to note the striking effect, in the bodice particularly; and the few remaining works of our “American Hogarth,” the brilliant John Lewis Krimmel.) Leaping about inside this stiff garment, the audacious little Malvinia had tried to sing “O What Have You Got for Dinner, Mrs. Bond,” but managed only one chorus—
Mrs. Bond went to the duck pond in a rage,
With plenty of onions, and plenty of sage;
She cried, “Come you little wretches, come, and be killed!
—For you shall be stuffed, and my customers filled!”
—before her angry mother hauled her away.
“Was there ever such a naughty miss!” Mrs. Zinn muttered. “One might almost think you weren’t of our own blood, but were a changeling!”
HOW DELIGHTFUL THEY were, and haunting too, the old nursery songs!—whose rollicking melodies and simple rhymes dispelled the gloomy thoughts of many an evening, in those days long past! If I listen closely enough I can hear them again; if I close my eyes I can see the girls again, in the old parlor, grouped about the piano as Mrs. Zinn played. Constance Philippa as a young girl, and Malvinia, and Octavia, and little Samantha—and, shortly, Deirdre herself, who, for all her sorrow, was capable of a sunny startl’d smile now and then, and a burst of melody that caused her slender frame to tremble with joy.
> Octavia’s favorite song was “Mulberry Bush,” for she loved the bouncy rhythm, and the way all kept going round and round and round: so safe and tidy and delightful! She fancied too, in secret, that she might one day resemble the demure miss illustrated at the top of the page, who stood with her hands clasped at her waist and her eyes lowered, as two husky boys danced about her.
Samantha’s favorite song had not a whit of sentiment about it, but went so swiftly it was all over (she had counted) in but three breaths: “Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son.” Compact as a tiny, perfectly functioning machine, with nothing fussy to impede it; yet what a very odd world it must have been, in which a pig—living?—or dead and roasted?—but in the illustration it looked as if it were living—was stolen in the street, and eaten at once, as if little Tom were extremely hungry. Samantha did not ponder o’erlong upon the song’s mystery, however, but sat on the piano stool, her short legs dangling, and hammered away at the tune, which she had learned by rote, and could play with faultless mechanical skill.
Malvinia loved “Sweet Lavender,” for the innocent promise of its words (“Some to make hay, diddle-diddle! Some to cut corn; Whilst you and I, diddle-diddle! Keep ourselves warm”), and for its pleasant illustration, in which a handsome youth, cap in hand, bows before a pretty young miss. And “Little Bo-Peep,” despite its insipid lyrics, had a most compelling illustration, which made Malvinia’s mouth dry as she studied it in secret: a gorgeous Bo-Peep with long curly tumbling red hair, and an aggrieved expression, and a graceful white gown of a Grecian style, all folds and ripples, which showed her lovely figure to great advantage, as if she were naked beneath it—as one could never be, Malvinia knew, in real life.
Constance Philippa admired the crow in that rollicking song, particularly as he was illustrated at the bottom of the page, in high boots and a pirate’s jaunty hat, a mean-looking sabre tucked beneath his wing. Better yet was “The Fairy Ship,” which Constance Philippa fancied she would one day sail (no matter that the sailors were mice, and the captain a duck); best of all was “A Fox Went Out,” which Constance Philippa found deliciously naughty, tho’ her sisters heartily disliked it. “At last he got home to his snug den, To his seven little foxes, eight, nine, ten; Says he, ‘Just see, what I’ve brought with me, With its legs all dangling down O!’ ” Malvinia clapped her hands over her ears, and cried: “It isn’t nice—it’s bad to hear—you’re bad to always want to sing it!” and Constance Philippa said: “It’s in the book with the other songs, and I’ll sing it all I want!”—her lower lip swollen in an unattractive pout.
The Zinns were poor, but their well-to-do relatives were always taking pity on them, and since the sisters were so winning, and so grateful, they were given a great many presents over the years. By the time Deirdre came to live with them they had acquired the makings of a little orchestra—tiny fiddles, a tiny accordion, a mouth organ, drums and cymbals and even a flute (of a very simple design); and of course they had the spinet piano, which was part of Mrs. Zinn’s dowry, and a very fine piano it was, with ivory keys and massive tapering octagon legs, of solid mahogany. Samantha had devised an ingenious method by which a single person could play a half-dozen instruments simultaneously, with the employment of strings, sticks, and wires, attached firmly to the feet. “Isn’t she clever!” the family exclaimed, even as they winced at the dreadful noise that ensued. “She takes after her father, doesn’t she? What a clever little monkey!”
When Deirdre was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Zinn she was nearly ten years of age; and the year was 1873. Mr. Zinn having been persuaded by his wife to submit to the nuisance of applying for a patent, to secure the rights to certain waterproofing discoveries he had made (which, tho’ crude by our contemporary standards, and soon overtaken by others’ improvements, were nonetheless valuable), and having been persuaded as well by his vigorous Kiddemaster relatives, to allow them to “talk up” his invention to those manufacturers of boots and raincoats among their acquaintance, the Zinns basked in the delightful if temporary warmth of affluence—and the child might have seemed a sign of that affluence, or one of its literal manifestations. If she aroused their pitying affection with her downcast mourner’s gaze, and the tears that seemed forever brimming in her eyes, she nevertheless surprised them with her spontaneous talent for the piano: which was to alter the nature of the music-making evenings entirely, and to embarrass the other girls, Malvinia in particular, who had fancied herself musical.
It came about quite by accident one evening, five or six months after Deirdre’s arrival, when all were gathered in the parlor, including Mr. Zinn, who had had an agitated day in the workshop—revising diagrams for his “sun-furnace,” which would, he felt confident, entirely revolutionize the heating of America, if only he could get it right; and little Pip, sleepy after his supper, who lay in his master’s lap. Mrs. Zinn went to the spinet and played a few songs at the girls’ requests—“Woodman! Spare That Tree!” was a favorite, and “Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair,” which Malvinia sang in a breathy dreamy voice; and then Malvinia played, for perhaps a half-hour; and then Octavia, settling herself in her billowing skirts on the stool, with many apologies; and then Samantha hammered fiercely through one or two familiar pieces. Little Deirdre was then encouraged to come forward, and to sit with Mrs. Zinn at the piano, simply for the pleasure of it, to explore the sounds, and to feel the exquisite smoothness of the ivory keys. Which the child did, reluctantly: for she was naturally shy, and at the same time failed to grasp the sincerity of her new family’s affection for her.
“This is the way the hand is stretched,” Mrs. Zinn instructed, taking Deirdre’s small chill hand in her own, and encouraging her to depress the keys; which she did, tho’ very faintly. Malvinia, crowding near, could not resist a demonstration: galloping up and down the treble keys in dissonant chords.
Mrs. Zinn shooed her away, and continued to give Deirdre instructions, of the elementary sort one might give to a very young child, and gradually Deirdre took heart, and depressed the keys more firmly, producing a sound of crystalline clarity, and startling beauty—as if a peculiar strength were surging through her fingers, to her own amazement. She played with her right hand; then with her left; then both hands together, feebly, hesitantly, then with sudden strength, which immediately ebbed; and returned again, to the astonishment of everyone in the parlor, including little Pip.
“Why, she knows how to play!—she knew all along!” Malvinia cried, with an air of reproach.
“She does not know how to play,” Mrs. Zinn said sternly, “it is—it is simply coming to her.”
And so indeed it seemed: for the frail little girl, her dark gray eyes huge in her face, formed chords and did abrupt sparkling runs, and “played” melodies for a minute or two at a time, before losing the thread, and stopping. Samantha recognized an echo—a queer echo—of “Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair,” and Octavia believed she could hear, inside the cascade of unfamiliar notes, the simple tune of “Hey Diddle Diddle.” Mr. Zinn claimed, with some excitement, that he could hear musical sense in all the pieces, albeit he was very much an amateur, and was certain he had a tin ear; and Constance Philippa voiced an emphatic agreement, adding, however, that she could not believe Deirdre had never had lessons, or had not been instructed, however informally, by the Bonners. Which statement, tactlessly put, caused the little girl to cease playing at once, and to sit with her hands frozen on the keys, staring ahead, as if seeing nothing.
Whether it was the vociferated doubt of her musical innocence, or the mere mention of the name Bonner, the girls’ new sister went mute; and would not reply to anyone; and after some distressed moments, Mrs. Zinn noting the degree of her agitation, she was carried off to the nursery, to bed, and settled in with many hugs and kisses, and the promise that she should have piano lessons if she wished.
The child clung to Mrs. Zinn’s neck, and whispered into her ear, in a plaintive voice, that she had not had lessons before: she was not a liar. And Mrs. Zinn comforte
d her, and stayed with her until she drifted off to sleep. Poor strange disturbing little girl!—the very vision, one is forced to observe, of the orphaned child.
Deirdre stayed away from the spinet for some days, and then returned, and much the same sounds ensued, tho’ a pleasant rendition of “Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway” was interrupted by a sudden crashing of chords, and a run up and down the keyboard, with both hands, that struck all ears as diabolical; and that quite frightened the girl herself. It was a measure of the sisters’ sensitivity, to Deirdre’s feelings, that they suppressed the remarks they would naturally have made, and the snorts of derision, had one of them been responsible for such a noise: tho’ Malvinia could not resist a sly chuckle, and the murmured inquiry, as to whether “Father should discern musical sense in that.”
Sometimes she played feebly, like any ten-year-old, stumbling through simple Mother Goose tunes; at other times, with a most disconcerting brilliance—snatches and fragments of pieces that, to Mrs. Zinn’s moderately sophisticated ear, belonged to the classical repertoire, and might indeed have been written by Mozart or Bach! At such times the child’s pale skin appeared to glower, and her eyes grew even darker, and more intense; and Octavia, sitting with her on the piano stool, claimed that she grew cold—an emanation issued from her, subtle as a breath, but decidedly cold; and her body temperature dropped so alarmingly, her little fingernails showed bluish-purple. She might play these bits of “serious” music for a minute or two, but then another music would interfere, usually a simple, stumbling, American sort of tune (there was a period of some weeks when “I Wish I Was in Dixie’s Land” emerged rather too often, given Mr. Zinn’s sentiments about the War; and “Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! or, The Prisoner’s Hope,” which stirred, with its pounding chords, memories Mr. Zinn had hoped to bury); but sometimes the mad half-angry runs and trills and crashing chords would diabolically assert themselves, to the distress of all the household, including the servants, and the poor child was unable to stop the agitated motion of her hands, until such time as one of her sisters stilled them. She protested that it was not her fault: the keys simply banged down, and her fingers had to follow.