In those early years Mr. Zinn not only divided his time more equitably between his workshop and the Octagonal House, feeling a deep responsibility for his daughters’ education, but consented, upon two separate occasions (of seven months and three months each), to accept an untitled position at one of the family-owned factories downriver: for the Zinns were already in debt, producing a worrisome strain in their domestic life. (John Quincy naturally despised the factory, both in itself and for what it represented of the crass materialism of the new post-War era, and his position—one that combined the duties of a manager with the technical skills of an engineer—did not afford him the autonomy he so badly required, in order that his spirit might flourish.) He was, then, necessarily absent from home for long hours, or even for an entire day, which worried his family, little Samantha in particular. (It was amusing, and touching, that both Samantha and Pip languished when Mr. Zinn was away—mooning about his chair in the parlor, glancing through his papers and journals, running every five minutes to the window, to see if he had returned.) These prolonged absences were, however, coupled with exhaustive sessions in the nursery-classroom, for Mr. Zinn felt always that he must compensate for lost time, and he had vague plans, which never altogether materialized, for transcribing his question-and-answer lessons along the lines of Out of the Mouths of Babes, which might bring some modest financial reward. It was the case, then, that while his daughters tortured themselves with the silly terror that he should not return home, they also feared that he would return, too abruptly, before they had mastered their assignments! Their love for him was so gratifyingly strong, the merest flicker of disappointment in his face greatly upset them. He had no need to punish—ever. He had no need to exclaim: “Your ignorance has wounded me”—for they could read it in his expression: nay, in the calm hurt and bafflement of his eyes.
In this rather feverish atmosphere Malvinia naturally shone, and was her father’s darling: and it cannot greatly surprise us that, a scant decade later, upon being presented to the renowned Orlando Vandenhoffen, in the Philadelphia drawing room of a lady of less than admirable reputation (Mrs. Horatio Broome being the handsome widow of a once-upstanding gentleman who, succumbing to madness of some kind, in his late middle years, chose, after his wife’s death, not only to marry an artist’s model whom he had been supporting in secret, for years, but to live abroad with her, in Paris, Rome, and Venice!), she should skillfully suppress her awe, smile boldly, and reach out to shake his hand: as if she were not a young American lady at all, but a European courtesan. And she gave the air, too, which naturally aroused the actor’s curiosity, of being in a way already acquainted with him, and knowing quite instinctively how to best please and flatter and beguile him, and win his heart.
THAT MALVINIA MORLOCH should possess, and so cruelly exercise, a certain fatal power over the masculine sex in general (tho’ not over every member of that sex, as we shall see), is perhaps more readily understood if we learn that she was the inheritor of a disposition toward wickedness, in her blood; and had half-consciously cultivated such power, from the nursery onward, tho’ always in the most innocent manner. She did not know, and yet she fully knew, what she did; and how her attractions cast their net over others.
For instance, in the case of young Malcolm Kennicott, Reverend Hewett’s assistant in the late Sixties, when Malvinia was scarcely eight years old, and, to all eyes, a normal child: albeit uncommonly pretty, and given to spirited tantrums . . .
Mr. Kennicott must have been in his very early twenties, when he came down to Trinity Church, from the Theological Seminary at Princeton. Tho’ he declared himself a Christian, and was certainly believed to be such, by the Reverend Hewett, who entrusted him with many churchly responsibilities, the moony, dreamy, lank-limbed youth was rather more of a poet, and spent hours scribbling verses in French, in which religious and romantic sentiments were confusedly rendered. Because he dwelled alone in Bloodsmoor, and was a bachelor of good family, he was naturally taken up by many local families, including the Kiddemasters and the Zinns: and many an hour he spent at the Octagonal House, happily discussing with John Quincy one or another scheme for Utopianism, or his own plans for “America’s greatest hymn” (a massive three-part epic poem to deal with the discovery of the New World by Columbus; Pizarro’s conquest of Peru; and Cortez’s expedition to Mexico), or the very newest and most radical notions of education, social reform, and the dismantling of the “peculiar institution” of the South. He dined frequently with the Zinns, not minding the little girls’ presence but rather rejoicing in it: for Constance Philippa, as a grave young lady of ten or eleven, sought to engage in real conversation with him, oft declaring that she wanted him for her older brother, it being so lonely amidst all the girls!—and vivacious little Malvinia won his heart, with her cheerful prattling and teasing.
The lamentable tale of how this congenial if somewhat preoccupied young man seems to have fallen in love, not with a woman of his own age and capabilities, but with the eight-year-old Malvinia, must necessarily be truncated, for it is, at best, an unnatural story, reflecting ill upon both sexes, and calling into question the theological institution that sent Mr. Kennicott out to Bloodsmoor with such excellent recommendations. Suffice it to state that the young man’s hazel eyes dwelt too obsessively upon little Malvinia, and his behavior in playing with her and her sisters and Pip, at shuttlecock or croquet, or even at cards, soon attracted attention to itself. “He is a lonely boy, and we must be his second family,” Mr. Zinn observed, stroking his beard, to which Mrs. Zinn replied evenly: “He is perhaps too lonely—and he is not a boy.”
In those days Malcolm Kennicott was clean-shaven, with a somewhat weak chin, and a soft, sweet mouth; and fawn-colored hair that fell in lank waves to his collar. Tho’ his clothes were clearly of superior cut, he dressed carelessly, and his rectangular wire-rimmed spectacles gave him an owlish look. Viewed with sympathy, he might have presented an attractive, even a handsome, figure; viewed with detachment, or the oft-cruel caprice of children, he presented an awkward figure—and his pert, prim little glasses afforded some childish jokes at his expense. (On Valentine’s Day, for instance, the sisters sent him an enormous homemade Valentine, constructed of stiff colored paper, dried flowers, and sequins, at the center of which Malvinia had drawn a cartoon face, smiling, and burdened with outsized spectacles: the jollity of which might have blinded him to a certain cruelty in the execution.)
Mr. Kennicott betook himself on long solitary rambles, in the Kiddemaster woods, when in truth he ought to have been working in the rectory, and it was on one of these strolls that he came upon little Malvinia, with Pip, dancing on the stone stage Judge Kiddemaster had had built some years before, in an atmosphere of simulated Grecian ruins. So absorbed was the eight-year-old child in her playful dancing, and so astoundingly beautiful, that Mr. Kennicott sank in a sort of trance upon a stone bench, and gave himself up to simply staring at her—for how long a period of time, I cannot say. Malvinia sang and prattled and frolicked, doing a passable imitation of some of the fairy dances from “The Seven Castles of the Diamond Lake,” until even the spirited Pip grew tired. Tho’ it was surely the case that Malvinia was well aware of her audience of one—indeed, his presence wonderfully stimulated her—she glanced up with pretended surprise, at his loud, lusty applause, as if she had never seen him before, and was offended at his intrusion. Pip, too, jabbered and squealed and made an absurd show of being frightened. “Malvinia!” Mr. Kennicott cried, rising hastily to his feet; “you know me, surely. It is your friend Malcolm.”
But the diabolical child cast a cold eye upon him; a parody, it may have been, of the disapproving glares the elder Kiddemaster females bestowed upon the little Zinn girls, when they were not well-behaved. “Go away,” Malvinia sang out, with all the whimsical cruelty of which a child is capable, “go away, you’re wicked to be hiding there, we don’t like you!”
And, after some hesitation, poor trembling Mr. Kennicott did go awa
y—crestfallen, with tears in his eyes.
Not long thereafter he vanished out of Bloodsmoor, and the girls heard nothing of him, save that he had “o’erworked himself” in Mr. Hewett’s employ; and that, having become obsessively interested in the Abolitionist cause, he had gone away to join their forces. Then again, it was said that his family had sent him to Europe, for his health: his sensitive nerves being “shredded” by an excess of poetical effort. The Belles Lettres Club of Philadelphia, of which he had been a member, published a slender volume of his verse in French; and Mr. Zinn, reading through the book, declared that, try as he might, he was unable to make sense of the rhyme, let alone the sentiment. “It is all perfumy mists, and fairy dances, and the laughter of invisible children,” he said, with a perplexed smile.
SUCH WAS THE wanton indifference of Malvinia Zinn, however, that she never again gave a thought to her twenty-two-year-old suitor: not until she was of that age herself, and desperately in love. Then, for some reason, stray thoughts of the doomed, lost Mr. Kennicott floated into her imagination, and she felt—however briefly—an uncharacteristic tinge of guilt. “But I was so very young then,” she told herself, “I could not possibly have known what I did.”
THIRTY-TWO
The great Orlando Vandenhoffen was less imposing of stature in real life, than behind the footlights; but such was the aristocratic authority of his face, and the bemused complacency of his smile (which revealed teeth that seemed almost too white), that all who approached him fell under his spell—or were stirred to resist him instinctively.
He was darkish of complexion, with a black mustache wide and full upon his upper lip, and a strong, imperial jawline. The uncanny power of his black eyes was not exaggerated, nor was the potency of his rich, low, elegantly modulated voice. Rumors of his sybaritism, his cavalier treatment of women, the restiveness of his spirit, and the proud melancholia that flashed forth betimes in rage, did not, alas, dissuade admirers of the female sex, of whom Malvinia Zinn was one—ah, how recklessly! Indeed, it is probable that Vandenhoffen’s egregious reputation attracted willing victims, for each woman alone imagined herself capable of triumph, where others had ignominiously failed.
Upon the occasion of their meeting for the first time, in Mrs. Horatio Broome’s drawing room, amidst a great deal of insipid gaiety and chatter, Orlando Vandenhoffen could not have failed to be struck by the beauty of Miss Malvinia Zinn; and by her vivacity; and a certain fey boldness in her manner—for, while acknowledging Vandenhoffen’s thespian genius (with some small, half-flattering qualifications pertaining to his interpretation of Ray Trafford in Under the Gaslight), the saucy young lady put herself forth as one of the acting tribe too: albeit her status was, at the present time, but that of an amateur. Vandenhoffen, amused, could not resist inquiring, which theatrical roles she had performed as an amateur; and the blushing Malvinia was forced to admit that her experience had not yet widened to include actual performances, but was in fact confined, at the present time, to recitations, of which she knew many by heart. “Ah! I see! A schoolgirl’s recitations!” Vandenhoffen laughed, vastly amused. “Well, my dear, you must do one or two for me someday: as a sort of audition.”
Another young lady, rebuffed so merrily, might have shrunk away at once; but not Malvinia, who managed, however faintly, to join in the laughter, as her lovely cheeks burned, and her blue eyes, too, appeared to burn, with both girlish embarrassment and defiance. That she was more than ordinarily beauteous that evening, in an ivory brocade gown bedecked with pink velvet ribbon, pink velvet roses, and some seventy yards of lace; and with her gleaming dark hair arranged in angelic ringlets on her forehead and cheeks, and covered in part with lace, velvet tea roses, and ostrich feathers; and her satin-smooth skin glowing with spirit, the self-conscious young lady naturally knew (for she was forever checking her image in mirrors, and had so refined the art, her glance manipulated so adroitly, that few observers knew what she did, or how frequently she did it): that she must—she absolutely must—seize the opportunity of the moment, in trepidatious knowledge that it might never again repeat itself, she naturally knew as well. So she did not shrink away from Vandenhoffen’s cruel laughter; she did not retreat to Cousin Basil’s side, and ask to be driven home; she allowed the hilarity to subside, and said, with admirable coolness: “I shall do so, indeed, Mr. Vandenhoffen, at your convenience: but for the mere sport of it, and for no audition.”
The villainous gentleman, taken aback, as it were, by Malvinia’s challenge, gave her the honor of a look of evident admiration; and, seizing her hand, placed a kiss upon it, fixing his eyes upon her face all the while with such mock severity, Malvinia felt a decided palpitation of the heart, and bethought herself for a moment—but only, alas! for a moment—that she had spoken too recklessly, and she would have done best to retreat. But Vandenhoffen was saying, in a mellifluous voice that contrasted vividly with his craggily handsome features, and the slumbering ferocity of his dark eyes: “My dear Miss Zinn—it is Miss Zinn, I gravely hope?—there must be, then, at your earliest convenience, a sort of command performance, at which all the splendors of your no doubt vast repertoire will be displayed: nor will I release you from your obligation, since you have prick’d my interest so cruelly.”
WHAT MANNER OF man is this, Malvinia inquired of herself, when she was alone, to arouse such fancies!
She knew, and refused to know, that she would surrender to him; and surrender, to her shame, with such little resistance, her seducer should be astonished to learn that she was a virgin: nay, a most innocent and sheltered virgin: and a Kiddemaster heiress as well.
Malvinia realized, of course, without needing to inquire of Basil Miller, that Orlando Vandenhoffen had won the hearts of many ladies in America; it is probable, however, that the reckless, inexperienced girl did not know precisely what that expression meant. To “win” a heart; to triumph; to trample underfoot; to despoil, besmirch, shame . . . She did not know, yet knew: and knew she would not resist.
If it were done, when ’tis done, the unhappy Malvinia thought, quite cynically, then ’twere well it was done quickly!
Basil Miller, belatedly realizing that he had of course acted rashly, in bringing his impressionable young cousin together with the notorious womanizer Orlando Vandenhoffen, sought a private audience with her, to speak of Vandenhoffen’s “hellish charms,” and to state, in a voice less airily amused than he would have liked, that naturally she would never consent to meet Vandenhoffen unescorted, under any circumstances at all: and was quite dumbfounded by Malvinia’s gay response, that naturally she should not go unescorted to the Hotel de la Paix (where Vandenhoffen had rented a luxurious suite), nor would she even consent to go unescorted to the theater (for Vandenhoffen had sent her tickets for each of a week’s performances, along with a handwritten message to the effect that, no matter which night she came, she was obliged to visit him backstage); she should not go unescorted, indeed, but with Cousin Basil as her escort; for the early part of the evening, that is. “Your services then having been rendered,” Malvinia said, showing her small white perfect teeth as she laughed recklessly, “you will then be free to leave us: and to pursue nocturnal adventures of your own.”
“I—your escort! In such a scheme—!” Cousin Basil exclaimed.
And before he could continue, Malvinia interjected: “You, my escort, in such a scheme: precisely. Else I shall feel obliged to complain to all who will listen—my dear mother and father, and Grandfather Kiddemaster, and your mother and father, and anyone who comes to mind, as appropriate in the context—I shall complain of your having brought me to the Broome salon, in defiance of all decorum, and your having introduced me to Mr. Orlando Vandenhoffen for, I do believe, your sport.” She paused, and flashed again her bright insouciant smile, and had an impulse to rumple her cousin’s hair, as if he were suddenly a small frightened boy, and she a sophisticated and mature young lady. “That it is no longer your sport, dear Basil, but ours, is perhaps what disturbs you???
?
And so the folly came about, not five evenings after the unfortunate meeting in Mrs. Broome’s house, and, at the conclusion of the ten-week run of Under the Gaslight, in Philadelphia: the lovers eloped by private carriage to New York City, where Vandenhoffen had rented, in readiness, one of the immense and ornately appointed honeymoon suites at the Plaza Hotel. The heartless cruelty of the letter Malvinia sent to Mr. and Mrs. Zinn, with its protestations of love, and its boasting of a theatrical career to come, has already been recorded: that the treacherous daughter of such devoted parents should have declared herself not simply “in love,” but “very, very happy—for the first time in my somewhat troubled life,” will strike the reader to the heart, who has been a parent, or who, perhaps, in a wider sense, has felt the sting of ingratitude of the young, who know not and care not the degree of sacrifices oft made for them, but seize only the hedonistic pleasures of the moment!—much as the rabble swarming forth after the conclusion of the War sought their infamous “eight-hour day,” bringing the nation to a standstill with their hellish strikes and labor violence, and demands of a wild anarchic sort, that can never be met. Folly of one sort, and folly of another: and I am not ashamed to confess myself so agitated at the moment, so sickened with the outrage of impurity of Malvinia Zinn’s act, that I can barely force myself to continue. Nay, I shall not continue along these particular lines, save to say that Miss Malvinia Zinn’s virginity was as much o’ercome by champagne, verbal flattery, and promises of a sort that any child might have doubted their plausibility, as by the much-vaulted power of Orlando Vandenhoffen’s virility; and that the usual exclamations and protestations were made, and continued to be made for some weeks—“I shall love you forever; You have wrenched my heart from out my breast; There has never been anyone so magnificent as you; I adore you; I will do anything for you; My precious one; My adorable one; My infinitely glorious one—”