IF I HAVE neglected Samantha of late, in deference to the greater flurry and ado of those sisters who had fled Bloodsmoor, thereby bringing much shame and scorn upon their own heads, and, alas, the heads of their innocent relatives, it is hardly out of a sense of the child’s comparative insignificance: for she and Octavia, at this point in our history, are still the most virtuous of young ladies, and models of daughterly deportment. Tho’ Samantha’s fervent devotion to her father, and her near-obsessive interest in work, did displease the female members of her family—not only Mrs. Zinn and Great-Aunt Edwina, but Octavia, too, and cousins Rowena and Flora and Odille, and every Philadelphia aunt who had an opinion on the subject—her loyalty surely pleased her father; and her assistance in the laboratory, never less than diligent, and frequently inspired, was invaluable to him.
She did his mathematics for him (for he had never quite mastered that discipline); she copied over his inky diagrams and charts, oft expanding them in scale, so as to make their dimensions clearer; she betook herself through the woods, to Judge Kiddemaster’s library, to check certain references, unavailable in the scanty encyclopedic volumes kept on hand, in the workshop. In the past several years she had taken from Mr. Zinn the burden of conversing with most visitors, including those manufacturers who journeyed to Bloodsmoor to offer research assignments to him (angered and discouraged, in many cases, by the prohibitive fees and royalty arrangements demanded by the megalomaniac Wizard of Menlo Park—a former associate of the notorious bandits Jay Gould and James Fisk, it is perhaps not generally known: and by temperament very much of their ilk); being a self-possessed young lady, and by no means the simple child her petite figure, plain freckled face, and small features made her out to be, she was able to speak with admirable composure to these gentlemen, and to induce them—in most cases—to raise their offers by at least a few hundred dollars: a feat Mr. Zinn would have been incapable of doing, both out of his innate modesty, and a disproportionate sense of his own market value.
By the age of twenty, this remarkable young lady had acquired her first patent, for a minor improvement upon Foucault’s printing key frame (a device by which, it was thought, the blind might learn to write); and, were it not for Mr. Zinn’s charity, or carelessness, in discussing this improvement with one Christopher Latham Sholes, of Mooresburg, Pennsylvania, it might have been the case that Samantha would have continued to experiment, until she hit upon the typewriter itself—an invention patented, in many stages, by Sholes, and eventually sold for a sadly low figure ($12,000) to Eliphalet Remington & Sons of Ilion, New York, with such extraordinary commercial results, in later years, the reader scarcely needs to be informed. Not long before Mr. Nahum Hareton knocked upon the workshop door, Samantha had been granted her second patent, for a method of waterproofing that was a considerable improvement over Mr. Zinn’s earlier method, tho’ still far from being ideal (that would come with rubberized fabrics); and from this she earned a small fee—hardly more than a pittance, in fact—every six months. In truth, Samantha thought little of these accomplishments, judging that her real work lay in the future, with the development of such inventions as the aluminum-frame dirigible; but her loving sister Octavia fussed over them, and insisted upon framing the patents in chestnut panels, painted in lavender and gold, to be hung over Samantha’s workbench—to Samantha’s embarrassment.
At other times, however, Octavia, like their numerous female relatives, professed to be concerned over Samantha’s prospects for marriage. Her own engagement to Mr. Rumford having instilled in her a certain measure of confidence and generosity, she was forever nagging at Samantha to fashion her hair more attractively (for, indeed, the lacklustre chignon in which it was, each morning, so hastily fixed, hardly did justice to Samantha’s beautiful red hair); and to have the servants unpick one or another of her housedresses, in order to launder it (for Samantha’s clothes did have a tendency to lose their freshness, partly as a consequence of the fervor with which she customarily worked, and her negligence in applying deodorizing chloride of lime, or salicylic acid and talc, to her underarms); and to attempt a more consciously pleasant manner, befitting a young lady who has, after all, “come out” in society, and is not ignorant of social obligations and responsibilities.
“Do you want to be a spinster?” Octavia asked Samantha in exasperation, upon more than one occasion. “Do you want to frighten every eligible gentleman away, and have all of Bloodsmoor pity you?”
“A spinster is a lonely old maid who has wished to marry, and been neglected,” Samantha said, with an air of pert dignity that quite belied the hotness of heart she felt at her sister’s persecution, “and since I have not the slightest wish to marry, and feel no terror of loneliness, I cannot therefore be a spinster: and must beg you to leave me in peace.”
(Samantha felt a sisterly happiness that Octavia was to be wed within a year; and that, Rumford Hall being not a great distance away, they would see each other frequently. But she could not deceive herself as to the masculine attractions of Lucius Rumford, who put her rather mischievously in mind of Gnasher, one of Grandfather Kiddemaster’s retired carriage horses, and she refused to share in the gaiety of spirits, exhibited by her cousins, and by Mrs. Zinn, which she judged somewhat hysterical—for did these women have so contemptible an opinion of the single state, and of their own innate worth?—had they feared so very much that Octavia might be “left behind”?)
Samantha adjudged Octavia to be superior to her prospective bridegroom in every conceivable way, and took note, to her own satisfaction, that, since the announcement of the wedding banns by the Reverend Hewett, from the pulpit of the village church, Octavia looked prettier than ever before in her twenty-four years. Her warm brown eyes shone with good health, her brow was smooth, and her round cheeks were lightly touched with a pale rosy blush. If Octavia did not possess Malvinia’s extravagant loveliness, or Constance Philippa’s haughty good looks, or even Deirdre’s mysterious, enigmatic beauty, it was nevertheless the case that her warmth, and the excellence of her heart, made her a far more desirable companion for any man—so Samantha thought, in passionate defense of her sister, tho’ Octavia would nag about Samantha’s own prospects.
When next Octavia raised the maddening question, “Do you want, Samantha, to be a spinster?” Samantha answered at once: “I had rather be a spinster, and answer only to myself, than be an apprentice to another person—one whom, no doubt, I would hardly know.”
LEST THE READER suspect that John Quincy Zinn, under the duress, perhaps, of o’erexacting work, was led to imagine that Thomas Alva Edison sought to spy on him, in order to steal his secrets, it should be pointed out that certain sketches for an incandescent lamp, first made by J.Q.Z. in the early Seventies, were appropriated by Edison, and released to the world—under Edison’s imprint, of course—in 1879. So with numerous minor improvements on Morse’s telegraph; and, later in the century, the “discovery” of the wax cylinder phonograph, in which sound was first recorded and preserved and replayed, by the same Edison, the self-proclaimed Wizard of Menlo Park, who gave no more tribute to the honest inventors from whom he thieved, than he gave financial remuneration!
If John Quincy harbored bitter thoughts, and resented the public acclaim so lavishly bestowed upon his rival, he said not a word; no more than he spoke, even to his dear wife, of his disappointment at each spring’s failure to find him elected to the American Philosophical Society. (That his father-in-law, Judge Kiddemaster, should feel anger at this slight, and speak of it to all who would listen, is not surprising, given the Judge’s rash temper; but the elderly man’s rancor caused J.Q.Z. some chagrin.) “I am, it seems, one of those whose duty it is to stand and wait,” John Quincy said, in jest; but Mrs. Zinn was not amused. “This nation shall one day kneel in tribute to you,” she said, her stern lower lip quivering, “nay, I would wish the nation might cower before you.”
“My dear Prudence,” John Quincy said, startl’d, “how can you wish the United States o
f America to cower before anyone!”
He threw himself more obsessively than ever into his work, assisted now by both Samantha, and young Nahum Hareton: and his dreams were all of the gigantic dirigible; and the (revised) perpetual-motion machine; and an electric grinding machine to dispose of chicken, turkey, goose, and duck feathers (the marrow of such feathers being treacherously difficult to grind down, as all farmers know); and a thermal suit, for Northern winters, which the wearer would adjust to his comfort; and a new, still vague, sketch for a device called only The Eye, to be composed of many electrified mirrors, for instantaneous communication to a central focus or authority, with the hope that crime might one day be eliminated, from the civilized nations.
I very much doubt that so good-tempered, and so industrious, a gentleman, might be subject to fits of jealousy, or bitterness; but, if this was ever the case, Mr. Zinn gave no sign, to the outward world: no more than he gave any sign of the disappointment he so keenly felt, in regard to his three lost daughters. (Whose names, alas, he did not wish to hear uttered, in his household!)
“Do you ever allow yourself, to think of them,” Mrs. Zinn sometimes asked, as, yet unsleeping, wife and husband lay abed, “to think, and to envision their probable fates?”
Whereupon Mr. Zinn but heavily sighed, and made no other response, lying stock-still on his side of the expansive bed—feigning sleep, it may be, until, indeed, sleep o’ertook them both.
ONE DAY I shall awake, to discover that I have sleepwalked my way through life, Samantha bethought herself, of a sudden, but how is it to be prevented? What, apart from our companionable labor in the workshop, and the delight of Father’s presence, and Pip’s mischief, is there in this world, to impede my headlong flight?
Thus the small, pale, plain girl with the colorless lashes, and the thin lips, and the quizzical green eyes queried herself, not knowing what her premonition signified; or why peculiar emotions, at unpredictable times of the day, seized hold of her petite frame, and made her tremble with cold. One day I shall awake, she thought, staring at the workbench before her, and at the clutter she so dearly loved, but to what?—and how?
Nor do I entirely comprehend the motive for such idle thoughts. Yet I would not be altogether honest, if I did not soberly present them in my chronicle, that the reader might judge for himself. For why should so cherished and entrusted a daughter, knowing herself infinitely privileged to work in the laboratory of a man of genius, knowing herself, as it were, set apart from the common run of young women, think any distracting thoughts at all?
All busily and happily the months passed, and the seasons: and, not long after her twenty-second birthday, Miss Samantha Zinn was granted her third patent, which Octavia, unfortunately, neglected to frame, as a consequence of her own activity, as a new bride, and mistress of austere Rumford Hall. Mr. Zinn, Samantha, and the humble young apprentice Nahum Hareton, working together, yet oft silently, in the rustic cabin above the gorge, passed many a tiring but rewarding day, in their pursuit of divers dreams, primarily that of the aluminum-frame dirigible—the which presented some small, but very nagging, problems, deriving from its extreme weight. For the most part, Samantha acquitted herself admirably, in her father’s service; and, living all absorbed in the present challenge, rarely succumbed to the idleness, of which I have just spoken; and rarely to thoughts of remorse, or regret, or wonderment, concerning her renegade sisters.
Indeed, being born in 1862, she felt herself very much a child of the era, maturing—nay, being catapulted—into the accelerated times, of the post-War years, in which it was so commonly felt that one must make haste, else Destiny will be lost; and greedy rivals triumph. Ah, what a pity it would be, what a tragedy, Samantha oft thought, if other inventors—less scrupulous, more criminal—should rush forward, to discover, and patent, and become millionaires by, the great machines she and John Quincy Zinn had been born to perfect!
THIRTY-FIVE
It was as the slyly manipulative and irresistibly charming Countess in the confection Countess Fifine, which ran for more than two hundred performances at the Fanshawe, that Malvinia Morloch achieved her first truly extravagant commercial success, and so succeeded in entering the cultural milieu, by accident rather than merit, that, for a time, she was an object of adoration whose name and picture were likely to be in all the papers, from one week to the next; and whose suitors—among them a number of very wealthy men, both married and unmarried—were so persistent, special doormen had to be hired at the Plaza Hotel, simply to deal with them. Her hair style in Countess Fifine inspired a vogue among the most fashionable ladies of New York, and for a while one saw “Countesses” everywhere: none, alas, possessing quite the attractions of the original. (As Countess Fifine, Malvinia wore her magnificent dark hair in a heavy chignon that hung to her shoulders, enclosed in a chenille net snood, with a coronet of purple velvet trimmed in pearls—the effect of which was to emphasize, ironically, the angelic beauty of her features.)
Coquettish . . . enchanting . . . unforgettable . . . simply marvelous: so the critics unanimously responded. Malvinia read every notice of her performances, and saved every scrap of newsprint that mentioned her name, greedy and delighted as a child. If, at times, her connection with Orlando Vandenhoffen gave her cause to brood, and even to weep; if the frequent mention, in the same papers, of “Deirdre of the Shadows” (who was becoming famous as well—for a very different sort of performance), caused her considerable agitation; and if, however rarely, the reckless child cast her mind back upon Bloodsmoor, and the family that had loved her so dearly, she had only to sift through her growing stack of notices, and reread the letters of fulsome praise and adoration she received daily, and tear open the wrappings of yet another luxurious gift, to placate herself, and forget who she was.
I am very very happy, she scribbled idly, on the reverse of a crumpled sheet of gilt wrapping paper, I have never been so happy in my life. . . . Indeed, I cannot remember my life until now!
(Yet even then, in what might be called the halcyon, or even the honeymoon, phase of her existence as “Malvinia Morloch,” an unmistakable evil was asserting itself in her being: an evil to which I will assign the name The Mark of the Beast, since it was in these terms certain members of the Kiddemaster family referred to it . . . the affliction being an hereditary trait, of which I will write in detail at a later time, the prospect is so displeasing, and humanly vile.)
HOW MALVINIA ZINN was transformed so rapidly, and with such immediate reward, into “Malvinia Morloch,” had much to do with the arrogance of Orlando Vandenhoffen (who boasted that he could “create” an actress overnight; and who so threatened the manager of the Fanshawe Theatre with a defection to the rival Broadway, the hapless man bitterly surrendered, and cast Malvinia opposite Vandenhoffen in A Flash of Lightning), and very little, indeed, to do with Malvinia’s natural gifts for the stage. I am not one of that slavish tribe that attributes to the acting profession the accolade artist (for such must be reserved for those who have dedicated themselves to a spiritual and moral idealism), yet I acquiesce in the widespread belief that there may be a certain genius amidst the thespian endeavor, as demonstrated by such stars of the American stage as Charlotte Cushman, Edwin Booth, Charles Coghlan, and Maurice Barrymore. This Malvinia did not possess. She knew no more of genius, than she knew of virtue; tho’ a certain low cunning and monkeylike shrewdness were adequate, for a time, to bedazzle her audiences, and even her fellow actors.
That Malvinia could flounce herself about, attired in costly and ostentatious costumes, her face so luridly made up that its charms were broadcast to the cheapest seats in the house; that she could prattle, and lisp, and weep, and laugh, and stamp her foot, and make pretty little moues, and pretend to claw at her cheeks with her nails, so that her admiring audiences shuddered; that she could recite to perfection any speech presented to her, with so livid a semblance of sincerity, that even her director and fellow actors might be gulled into thinking she knew what she did—all
this she was fully capable of accomplishing; and if this be “talent,” then “talent” Malvinia Morloch possessed.
“Isn’t it an enchanting little monkey!” Orlando Vandenhoffen exclaimed in an undertone, to his very good friend and confidante Mrs. Agnes Foote, the actress who had retired so notoriously from the stage a decade previously, in order to take up residence, as New York would have it, in the role of “hostess” for the elderly financier Hiram DeHorne. “You see her reciting by rote the speech I instructed her in, only last night: and mark how she animates her face, and uses her beautiful little hands! And this in an actress so amateur, any schoolgirl could boast of as much experience.”
“She is good,” Mrs. Foote acknowledged, fanning herself lazily, “and you are wonderfully fortunate: for what else, may I inquire, have you taught her to do by rote?”
Orlando Vandenhoffen, smitten with his beauteous young charge, and basking, no doubt, in the dazzling glare of her infatuation for him, would not rest until he had introduced Malvinia to all his friends and associates; and bragged of her even to the press, as “the next Adelaide Neilson”—a remark tactless indeed, for the beautiful Miss Neilson had died so recently as 1880, and was still warmly remembered, and even adored, by not a few among the playgoing public. “Like Miss Neilson,” Vandenhoffen said, “Miss Morloch has come from a most alluring romantic background—the details of which I am not privileged to reveal, at the present time.”
With a blatant disregard for the mores of society, Vandenhoffen established Malvinia in his suite at the Plaza, and showed her off, as it were, at Sherry’s, and Delmonico’s, and the Park Lane, and the St. Nicklaus, and the Astor, and the Hotel Marie Antoinette, and the vulgarly sumptuous Fifth Avenue residence of the W. K. Vanderbilts (where, at a fancy-dress ball of 1883, Vandenhoffen and his young mistress came as Romeo and Juliet, in the midst of a crowd of “historical personages,” including Biblical figures, Renaissance despots, dethroned and decapitated European nobility, and General Ulysses S. Grant, who appeared, not altogether soberly, as himself); he was proud to have Malvinia on his arm, at the annual game banquet at the Waldorf, in which the main dining room was transformed into a miniature forest replete with stuffed animals and fowl, where freed nightingales sang in groves of rose and hibiscus trees, and artificial arbors were lavishly hung with hothouse grapes, and every manner of meat, fish, and fowl—every manner, from walrus steak to hummingbird tongue—was served, on gold plates, to the frenzied delight of the hundreds of guests.