He saw no harm in introducing her to Mr. Jay Gould, and Mr. Russell Sage, and Mr. Edward Daly (who had installed a faucet in his Park Avenue mansion that served champagne), and Mr. James Brady (the infamous Diamond Jim, whose attentions at that time to a “Portuguese” chorus girl were such that his interest in Malvinia was necessarily modest: he sent over to her, at the Plaza, a prankish gift of a gold-plated rocking-horse studded with tiny chip diamonds, sapphires, rubies, and emeralds, and an ermine fur side-saddle for “Countess Fifine to ride upon, bare”). So secure was Vandenhoffen in his vanity, and so convinced of his young mistress’s passionate dependence upon him, that he did not even hesitate to introduce Malvinia to the notorious womanizer Nicholas Drew, at that time a frequenter of the theater, and dance halls of a questionable reputation. (Drew, the millionaire railroad man, was soon to be under fire from the Democrats, for having bribed “The Plumed Knight”—that is, the contemptible James G. Blaine—for numerous favors, in excess of $200,000.)
Now and then, of course, particularly as the months passed, Vandenhoffen did succumb to attacks of masculine jealousy; tho’ he could not seriously believe that Malvinia might have an interest in any other man, however persistent. And it was also the case that a certain piquancy was added to their love relationship, by his own unpredictable flashes of rage, and Malvinia’s shocked protestations and tears.
“I cannot believe, Orlando, that you would doubt—that it would cross your mind to doubt—my love for you,” the stricken young woman said, in a voice trembling with restraint. “These gifts—these fripperies—these mere tokens of passing interest: you must know how little I value them, and how swiftly I would discard them, if I thought you misunderstood.”
“No need, no need,” Vandenhoffen said coolly, yet with a certain pragmatic haste, lest his weeping mistress act the fool, and toss an emerald bracelet through the window, as if she were prancing about the stage at the Fanshawe. “You gravely misunderstand me, I fear.”
“But do you doubt my love for you?” Malvinia asked, staring. Her blue eyes became enormous, and her lovely skin had gone a deathly ivory-white. “My loyalty to you? My sacrifice for you?”
“I doubt everything and nothing,” Vandenhoffen responded, tugging impatiently at his mustache, and catching sight of his stolid, virile reflection in a gilt-framed mirror on the wall. “Yet you must recall, my sweet Malvinia, how very readily you fled your native city with me—how abruptly you cast aside your former life. As the canny Brabantio observed to Othello: ‘Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see: She has deceived her father, and may thee.’ ”
Whereupon the grieving Malvinia lost all restraint, and burst into angry wailing tears, and would have raked her nails across her burning cheeks had not her lover seized her wrists, to subdue her.
“Oh, cruel—cruel—cruel—and heartless!” she wept, with as much passion as if her tears, and her sorrow, were naught but artifice.
So Malvinia Morloch and Orlando Vandenhoffen quarreled, and the hotel room resounded with their high outraged voices, and many an innocent object was thrown to the floor, including vases filled with long-stemmed roses, and crystal decanters filled with wine, and the “fripperies” of Malvinia’s numerous admirers. They quarreled; and were reconciled; and quarreled again, more violently; and were again reconciled. There were complaints to the management of the hotel, and lavish tips from Vandenhoffen, by way of apology. There were late-night suppers at Delmonico’s, for Malvinia, who was toasted by everyone at the table, and drank rather too much, and would have crawled onto her lover’s lap to sleep, like a babe, had he not pushed her, laughing, away. “Ah, but do you love me?” she murmured. “You don’t! You don’t love me!”—sinking back against the burnt-leather cushions, her half-dozen sapphires licentiously glinting in her hair.
Malvinia was cast as Pauline in The Lady of Lyons, but Vandenhoffen insisted that she accompany him to the West Coast, where he was touring in The Two Orphans (an unfailing favorite, in which Vandenhoffen played a knife-throwing villain, earnestly hissed by his audiences—the misfortune being that there was no suitable role for Miss Morloch). She acquiesced, but greatly resented her idleness, with the result that the lovers quarreled more frequently than before, and were actually evicted from their lavish quarters in the great Palace Hotel; whereupon they moved, with great pomp and ceremony, to the rival Baldwin—which boasted the longest bar in San Francisco, a billiard room exclusively for women, one hundred twenty-five miles of electric wiring, and interior woodwork of mahogany, East India teak, rosewood, ebony, and primavera from Mexico.
At the close of Vandenhoffen’s run they returned to New York City, to a suite at the St. Regis, and rumors circulated that they were soon to be wed: or were wed already. (“But hasn’t Orlando a wife and children stuck away somewhere in Europe?” it was asked.) Despite their troublesome reputations, the manager of the Fanshawe troupe was persuaded to cast them together in a revival of Richard III, in which Vandenhoffen repeated an old reliable success, as the sinister hunchback king, loathed and yet adored by his audience; and Malvinia Morloch established a somewhat lesser, but still significant, success as Anne, the widow courted by Richard in the very presence of her husband’s corpse!
On many an evening the lovers quarreled backstage, and brought their white-hot nerves behind the footlights with them, so that the theater thrilled with their undisguised passion—whether love, or intense hatred—for each other. Richard was a diabolical villain, Anne a trapped victim, his equal in venom:
ANNE: Thou wast the cause, and most accurs’d effect.
GLOU: Your beauty was the cause of that effect—
Your beauty, that did haunt me in my sleep
To undertake the death of all the world,
So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom.
ANNE: If I thought that, I tell thee, homicide.
These nails should rent that beauty from my cheeks.
GLOU: These eyes could not endure that beauty’s wrack;
You should not blemish it, if I stood by:
As all the world is cheered by the sun,
So I by that; it is my day, my life.
ANNE: Black night o’ershade thy day, and death thy life!
GLOU: Curse not thyself, fair creature—thou art both.
ANNE: I would I were, to be reveng’d on thee.
Upon more than one occasion the saucy Malvinia Morloch, fortified, it may have been, by a half-bottle of French champagne consumed before the performance, so earnestly acquitted herself of the spitting scene that her leading man—muttering a curse beneath his breath, as if he were the murderous king, and not his semblance—had to pause in his speechifying, to wipe his face with a handkerchief.
“Would it were mortal poison for thy sake!” Malvinia cried.
“Never came poison from so sweet a place,” Vandenhoffen claimed—but not always with the utmost sincerity.
And so they quarreled; and were reconciled; and Malvinia forgave her lover his cruelty, and Vandenhoffen forgave her her ill-temper, and took her in a carriage to the great Thames Department Store on Twenty-eighth Street, where, like a child, she might select as much as she wished, of kidskin gloves, and Japanese fans, and shawls of the finest Highland cashmere, and tortoise-shell combs trimmed in gold, and gold-backed hand mirrors, and French bonbons, and alligator-hide bags. “My favorite place in all the world!” Malvinia said greedily, her blue eyes narrowed and her breath swift and shallow, as, her lover beside her, she rode the palatial elevators, and moved, amidst a throng of shoppers, along the wide aisles of the world’s largest store, a very Heaven of costly trinkets. (The Thames was eight floors high, a cast-iron reproduction of a Venetian palazzo with narrow columns, spandrels, and small ornate windows, in a design extremely pleasing to the American eye. That P.J. Thames had once been a mere Yankee pedlar filled Malvinia with astonishment, for it was quite a miracle, and quite an American feat, that the “World’s Largest Store” had arisen out of a pedlar’s shabby
backpack! “Indeed,” Malvinia murmured, turning a Japanese sandalwood fan in her fingers, “my favorite place in all the world. Excepting, of course, our private chamber.”)
LIKE ALL COLD-HEARTED persons, no matter the cherubic nature of their faces, Malvinia Morloch pondered but briefly on the sorrow she had wreaked, in days past: tho’ from time to time, when most aggrieved with Orlando Vandenhoffen, or pettishly incensed by some real or imagined slight to herself at the theater, she recalled with a pang of sentiment the Octagonal House, and the cozy bedchamber she had shared with sweet simple Octavia, and the parlor where, in the evening, the family gathered for music, and games, and reading, and the warm childlike pleasures of the hearth. Sentiment was felt; but never remorse or guilt. She brooded nostalgically upon herself as a child (and so pretty a child! all the relatives exclaimed); and Constance Philippa as a gawky-limbèd young girl, so bony at the pelvis that her corset could be turned freely about; and Octavia who had adored her, and petted her, and fussed over her, warming her chilled feet between her hands, or brushing out her hair, after washing, in a protracted, solemn ritual. And there was Samantha, of course, ugly little Samantha, with that head of beautiful hair which Malvinia had oft coveted; and Mrs. Zinn, who had never forgiven her, perhaps, for the excruciatingly painful hours she had had to endure, at Malvinia’s birth. (“Alas, dear Mother!—how was I at fault?” Malvinia murmured aloud, in the chilly ostentation of her boudoir at the St. Regis, high above the street in which carriages and horsedrawn cabs clattered. “You might more justly have blamed Providence, after all; or Father himself.”)
With many sighs, and a false tear or two in her eye, Malvinia gave herself up to thoughts of Mr. Zinn: not as he was at the present time (for she did not know him, at the present time), but as he had been many years ago, in the nursery, ah, so many, many years ago, when she was his heart’s favorite, and performed to his great delight. That Mr. Zinn might have suffered great agony on her account, or might even have wrenched her violently from his affections, the maudlin young woman naturally did not consider: for was she not Father’s favorite, the daughter of whom he was most proud?
And then there would sound a timid knock on her door, and it would be her French lady’s maid, informing her that a gentleman had come to call; or Mr. Vandenhoffen was awaiting her, in the parlor; or her bath water was drawn, and the warm bubbly suds, liberally spiced with Fleur de lis Oils and Blanc de Neige, in preparation for her: and naturally she would forget all that she had been thinking, for thoughts flew in and out of Malvinia Morloch’s head, rarely lingering for long.
“I am so besieged!—so beset-upon!” Malvinia exclaimed to herself, with a gratified little smile.
SIGNIFICANT IT IS, that Malvinia suffered a kind of amnesia, never recalling the buttonlike eyes of little Pip (save in occasional dreams, in which they were fixed most sternly, and most humanly, upon her); and never recalling the pallid face of her youngest sister Deirdre.
Indeed, she very nearly called attention to herself, by the way in which she scoffed at the “Spiritualist nonsense” so many appeared to believe in: she thought it “ridiculous,” and “a consequence of criminal bribes,” that the well-known journalist Colonel Lynes, writing for the New York Daily Graphic, had a moderate word to say for the mediumship of “Deirdre of the Shadows,” after he had exposed so many other popular mediums, in his inimitable jocular style.
Most of the time, however, she resolutely ignored the newspaper stories about this mysterious “Deirdre,” turning the page impatiently, as if fearing contamination; and when Vandenhoffen inquired idly, to a party dining after hours at the Park Lane, “Should we all remove ourselves to a séance downtown, for the sport of it?—since ‘Deirdre of the Shadows’ is now operating out of a respectable brownstone on the lower Fifth Avenue, and it might be amusing,” Malvinia answered at once, in a jeering voice, before anyone else could reply: “My dear Orlando, the Spiritualists are our competitors in the theater: they are but actors and actresses, pretending otherwise.”
And the matter was dropped, to Malvinia’s great relief.
HOWEVER—IT WAS ON a rain-lashed night in the final week of Richard III, when theatergoers were driven up to the Fanshawe in closed carriages, and gusts of wind made the gaslight flicker lewdly, that something very disturbing occurred, to suggest to our haughty lady that the matter could not be so lightly dropped.
The performance on that evening moved forward as always, perhaps with some diminishment of energy, which is only natural after a run of many weeks. But tho’ Malvinia made every effort to give her Anne some spirit, it seemed to her—and perhaps to Vandenhoffen as well, who spoke his lines rather leadenly—that something was amiss in the theater: some odd, chill, discomfiting presence in the audience. Like any competent actress, Malvinia spurred herself to defeat the mood, pronouncing her lines less mechanically than usual, tho’ she was rather disconcerted, feeling a pair of remorseless eyes in the audience, eyes that, refusing to be taken in by the elaborate illusion on stage, saw her clearly.
So she recited her lines, she displayed anger, and loathing, and an almost coquettish resignation, and whilst Vandenhoffen embarked upon one of his longer speeches, his leading lady took the opportunity, rather hesitantly, to run her eyes along the rows of spectators, finding nothing, until she happened to glance up to the box usually reserved for the wealthy Vander Elst family: whereupon she saw a sight that pierced her to the roots of her being, and made her doubt for a moment that she would be able to continue with the farce of Shakespeare, in the light of genuine malevolence.
For there was no mistaking it: the chill, leaden, paralyzing presence she had sensed, from the very opening of her scene, could be attributed to two personages seated in the front row of the box.
One was a woman of flaccid middle age, who peered at her through a lorgnette, in an attitude of affected refinement, ludicrously at odds with her squat, dumpy figure, and her corpulent face: this woman, attired in a grande toilette silk dress with a multitude of ribbons, and an ostrich-plume hat of a jaunty shape and size, with innumerable chains and beads looped about her neck, gazed at Malvinia with more than moderate interest, yet, withal, a not entirely unsympathetic mien.
It was the other person—heavily veiled, small of stature, immobile as a statue—who was staring so intently at Malvinia, and from whom, so the frightened actress imagined, the odd, chill, remorseless atmosphere emanated.
Had this evil presence declared itself many months before, at the start of Malvinia Morloch’s career; had it—God forbid!—manifested itself on the very night of her début, the ascent of Malvinia Morloch to the stellar heights of celebrity would have been hideously crippled: nay, it might have been crushed altogether. But so practical-minded had Malvinia become, as a working actress, and, it may be, so skillful that the ominous presence of the veiled stranger did not incapacitate her, despite her initial trepidation. I must finish out this scene, Malvinia thought, in a panic. I cannot let her o’ercome me.
And so she continued with Anne’s lines, speaking animatedly, so in control of her facial expression, and her rehearsed stage mannerisms, that she was able to disguise the agitation she felt. She experienced a curious numbed detachment, as if she were simultaneously Lady Anne, and the actress Malvinia Morloch, and Malvinia who stood apart from both, no matter that her breath came swift, and her heart hammered, and, involuntarily, her gaze swung up to the veiled lady in the Vander Elst box, with whom she fancied she exchanged a hard, frank stare, despite the stranger’s black veil.
And then—God be thanked!—her exchange with Richard was over; and she could escape the stage, all breathless, and close to swooning.
SO DEIRDRE HAS come to claim me, she thought, in her dressing room, as her hair was being adjusted, and some trifling bouquets of roses were being vased, but am I hers to “claim”?
Her premonition was mistaken, in any case. After the first act, the Vander Elst box was empty. And the chill, uncanny presence—the atmosphere of uneart
hly menace—had vanished.
“HATEFUL CREATURE!—AH, HATEFUL!” Malvinia stormed, in private, striking her fists together. “I do not know her—she is no sister of mine—we have no blood in common—it is intolerable, that she should intrude into my life!”
She told Vandenhoffen nothing of what had transpired, for she dreaded his surprise, and his curiosity, and his inevitable interrogation. And surely he would want to be introduced to Deirdre, surely he would demand that Malvinia arrange for a meeting. . . .
So she did not tell her lover of the agitation that gnawed at her heart, or the image of that slight, veiled, sinister figure, which haunted her for many days and nights. “Hateful—hateful!” she murmured. “Ah, it is intolerable! I will not countenance it!”
Nor did she tell him of an astonishing incident that happened only a few days later, on the very last night of the play: an incident more perplexing, it may be, than the first.
On this final night, the curtain having fallen for the last time, and the cast much relieved, Malvinia made her way to her dressing room, expertly undoing her tresses, when a stranger—a comely young gentleman—all but accosted her, to hand her a bouquet of flowers. “My dear Miss Morloch,” he said, in a cool, cultivated voice, eying her with obvious satisfaction, and not a little irony, “you have been a superb Lady Anne: a role lacking in substance, but withal quite poignant. May I congratulate you? And will you accept this small tribute?”