After some minutes of great confusion, Madame’s spirit was satisfactorily subdued, and vanquish’d by the others; and the séance continued with no further disturbances. But the mischief had been done, and it was quite some time—upward of two hours, in fact—before the affrighted spirit of the long-deceased Baron could be coaxed into resuming the dialogue with his widow. (Poor Madame Blavatsky! She had, it seemed, never truly forgiven her Lolo for having rejected her; and had been quick to imagine, or to perceive, a most subtle attraction between Deirdre of the Shadows and the comely young chela. Grave financial problems had attended her Indian pilgrimage, and not a few embarrassing episodes, too tedious here to recount; and, returning to Europe, she eventually settled in the Avenue Road house of a London Theosophist, who tended to her, until her death by way of heart trouble, rheumatism, influenza, and Bright’s disease, on that May afternoon of 1891. Along with the rather more gracious William James, who died in 1910, “Madame B.,” as she came to be called, was the most familiar of all famous spirits who found their way, unbidden, into séances in America. But the uncouth Russian immigrant never sufficiently mastered our great language, as to be capable of communicating, with the forcefulness she desired!)
THESE NUMEROUS STARTLING—INDEED, frequently terrifying—séances did not, as the reasonable observer might suspect, bring upon Deirdre of the Shadows anything more than a negligible disapprobation: but did in fact (alas, the folly of the times!) so fan the desire to witness them, on the part of even the most genteel of Spiritualists, that Deirdre and her associates had all they could do to deal with demands for sittings—and to deal with the angry disappointment (oft shading into bizarre expressions of threat) of those whose petitions were denied.
Nay, the increasingly frequent eruptions, from out of Spirit World, of spirits who were not only unsolicitous, but positively unhelpful, and, in some instances, unrelated to the proceedings entirely, had not the anticipated effect of so disgusting Spiritualist believers, that they turned aside from the young American medium (a development that would certainly have “saved” her—at least temporarily): and this was as true in the States, when she returned, near-broken in health, and oft dazed for many hours after a séance, as it was in historic Old Europe, where one might expect primitive, and certainly foreign, manners.
SIXTY-THREE
As close to madness as a cobweb has breadth—so Deirdre mused, of herself and her condition, with that curious detachment in all personal matters that came to characterize her, at the peak of her career. As closely akin to the earth beneath my feet, she continued, in idle anxiety, as a cobweb has weight!
THE DEATH OF Madame Blavatsky, and the intermittent disturbances that formidable woman caused, might have stimulated Deirdre to truncate her European tour, and to return home without satisfying numerous engagements: that, and the betrayal of an associate (who absconded with a considerable amount of money); and repeated yieldings to extreme fatigue, which had the additional consequence of so affecting Deirdre’s sensitive eyes, that she could barely tolerate daylight, and much preferred to remain inside, on the sunniest, most pleasant of days, dwelling in candlelit seclusion.
Do I object? Deirdre queried herself. Do I raise my voice, in opposition? Not at all, for I have grown enamor’d of the dark.
IT HAS BEEN observed that monetary gain did not greatly excite this young woman, tho’ she took a cold pleasure in the waxing of her fortune, and felt some panicked anger when it ebb’d. Avaricious greed she knew not, no more than she knew sensual indulgence: yet, alone in her chamber, she oft contented herself with a consideration of her accounts, and a perusal of those gifts—most of them ostentatious trinkets, like the emerald bracelet, forced upon her by grateful clients. “Yes; good; this is my desert; it is earned with my blood,” Deirdre counseled herself, “—nay, with my soul.”
About her slender neck she continued to wear the little golden locket given her by Mrs. Bonner, so very many years ago: perhaps not “golden” entirely, for it had long ago begun to tarnish; and was, in fact, rather shabby and diminished in appearance. In contrast to the costly items Deirdre now received, which she never deigned to wear, the locket was decidedly modest, and “did not do her justice,” in Madame Blavatsky’s words. Yet she wore it, on its thin chain (which had tarnished so thoroughly, it no longer even resembled gold), inside her dark raiment, hidden from sight: as tho’ it were a secret, of which she was ashamed.
The tiny likenesses of Mr. and Mrs. Bonner, Deirdre’s true parents, had, alas, so greatly faded with time—it being, now, some thirty years since the daguerreotypes had been taken—that, had Deirdre opened the locket, to contemplate them, she would have been greatly saddened at their loss: for one might scarcely have distinguished Mrs. Bonner from her spouse, and both had faded into sepia-pale wraiths! But Deirdre did not distract herself from her absorption in the present, by so purposeless an activity. If she continued to wear the shabby locket, and even to caress it, at times, half consciously, it was not perhaps for sentimental reasons, but solely, I am saddened to say, out of habit.
Consider, O Reader, how far—how tragically far—this heedless young woman has come, from her innocent origins in Bloodsmoor! At the time of her collapse she dwelt alone, in public accommodations, moving restlessly from one hotel to another, having no companions but only associates, of a managerial nature; and counting amongst her friends only that coterie of Spiritualist enthusiasts, widows and widowers primarily, and those afflicted with severe loss, or with such a terror of personal mortality, an unchristian fanaticism had sprung to life in their souls. It hardly needs to be said that she had no gentlemen suitors, for only a very brave-hearted man—or a very unwise one!—might have wished to approach her, with romance in mind: risking thereby not only the jeering interruption of the contact spirits, who were evidently always present, but the unmanning frost of Deirdre’s own scorn.
“Alone I assuredly am,” the vain young woman declared, “but, as assuredly, lonely I am not.”
THUS DEIRDRE OF the Shadows at the advanced age of thirty-one: “advanced,” I mean, for a young lady not married, or with any prospects in sight.
You will be surprised, then, to learn of her emotion, in which astonishment, gratification, and pain were commingled, when the news of Malvinia Morloch’s humiliation came to her: for the gutter press so luridly hawked the pathetic incident, as to insist that the distraught actress had fled from the stage as a consequence of a “tragic affair of the heart,” and an “overindulgence in alcoholic spirits”! So crude speculation was abbreviated into still cruder fact, and that, into two-inch headlines; and, in some ghoulish versions of the story, it was proposed as a certainty (“according to authentic police conjecture”) that Malvinia Morloch had taken her own life—in some wise not yet known.
Indeed, witnesses had already stepped forward, to noisily assert that they had seen the figure of a woman plummeting from one bridge or another, into the river: in some cases they swore they had seen the “beauteous, damn’d” countenance of the celebrated actress. Already a “phantom woman” had been sighted, wandering at midnight along the walkway of the gloomiest of the bridges—to dissipate into mere vapor, and vanish, when approached by a policeman!
Greatly agitated, Deirdre hid herself away, to peruse all the newspapers, and to pace about her bedchamber, murmuring to herself, and laughing softly, and stumbling upon the carpet as if she had no notion where she was. It was nearly as much of a distressing revelation, to read that her sister was now thirty-three years old, as to read of her public humiliation, and even the possibility of her suicide: for Malvinia had always been so indefatigably young, so brilliantly vivacious! Ah, the shame of this Malvinia Morloch, driven from the stage, in full view of an audience, vanquished utterly, and for so pathetic a reason: a mere love affair!
“This,” Deirdre said aloud, “this scandal is her just desert, and I can feel no pity for her.”
Yet she found it surpassingly difficult, to set aside her thoughts, and
her emotions, with the ease with which, after a few days, she disposed of the newspapers. For she was haunted by Malvinia’s image, and could nearly hear that melodious, sly, inimitable voice: not so much as she had heard it, and had thrilled to it, in the Fanshawe Theatre, upon the occasion of that performance of Richard III, but as she had heard it—ah, so many times!—so many cruel times!—in Bloodsmoor.
“A pathetic half-drowned river rat,” Malvinia had once called Deirdre, in her hearing. “And this sorry specimen is presented to us as a ‘sister’!”
Sister. Adoptive sister. Despised.
“I hate you,” Malvinia had said, turning the chill contemptuous gaze of her lovely eyes upon Deirdre: “I hate you, and wish you too had died of the typhoid, and I am most vex’d with myself, that I should even trouble to hate such a wretch as you!”
But were these cruel words uttered, or only imagined?
Beautiful Malvinia, Mr. Zinn’s favorite! So capricious, so wanton, so utterly charming, who could resist her sporadic outbursts of affection, even while cowering against the lancet of her wit!
Malvinia, who had eaten of Deirdre’s heart. Greedily, and yet—who could forgive her!—disdainfully.
“I know that I am not your sister,” Deirdre once murmured, in Malvinia’s presence, when the two girls had chanced to meet alone, “I know that I am but your stepsister: but, for all that, I refuse to be despised: I will not be despised.”
Whereupon the slim-bodied maiden, trailing a dozen ribbons, and giving off a fragrance of powdered rose and hyssop, merely bestowed so mock-startl’d a glance upon her, as if a contemptible creature—indeed, a river rat—had reared back upon its hind legs, to speak, that Deirdre felt the full and incontestable weight of being despised: and knew that it was her fate.
Never, never will I forgive, Deirdre bethought herself, her eyes spilling salt-stung tears, even had I in me, as these Christians teach, to forgive, why, I should not!—I should not!—ever!
Malvinia the loveliest of the Zinn daughters: the loveliest of all the Kiddemasters: Malvinia whom everyone of her age, and of the female gender, could not help but envy: nor was the cowering river rat any exception, despite the bitterness of her heart.
Malvinia, in the frothy white dress, new for that very occasion—that fateful occasion!—of the Kiddemasters’ high tea, in honor of Constance Philippa and the Baron, and those bewhiskered gentlemen from Boston, who had belonged to some sort of august society, in which Mr. Zinn was a candidate for membership. Malvinia, erect in the high-necked bodice that fitted her so smoothly; one could not guess at the apparel beneath, no more than one might have guessed at the flesh, the young woman, beneath. Malvinia, in yards and yards of fragrant floating translucent fabric, adorned with hundreds of flounces and ruffles and pink velvet ribbons: Malvinia, commandeering, imperious, yet altogether magnificent. “I insist that you allow me to refashion you,” Malvinia said crisply, “to make of you the striking young lady you assuredly are, somewhere beneath that dowdy hairdo, and that peevish sickly unutterably stubborn expression—!”
Deirdre had of course protested, and feebly resisted: but who in all of Bloodsmoor was ever capable of thwarting Malvinia’s will?
And so she had submitted, meekly enough, for all her sullen stubborn soul. And Malvinia had refashioned her, in ringlets and plaits and ingenious curls: a very pretty miss, indeed. But Malvinia’s handiwork had naught to do (so the embittered Deirdre reasoned) with Deirdre, but only with Malvinia: Malvinia’s industry, Malvinia’s charity, Malvinia’s legerdemain in prettifying the half-drowned river rat.
Why should I thank her for this exhibition of her vanity, Deirdre bethought herself, even as her cheeks flushed with involuntary pleasure, at her sister’s warm propinquity, and at the attractive stranger in the glass. Why should I thank her who despises me, and whom I in turn despise!
Thus—alas!—the bitterness of Deirdre’s heart!
Thus it was at the tender age of sixteen years; and thus, still, at the sober age of thirty-one. For in some hearts, prematurely shriveled, as it were, or touched from the very moment of conception in the womb, with that Original Sin that falls upon our race like a shadow of granite, there is, and can be, no spiritual progress!
I did not thank her that day, and I was right in refusing to do so, Deirdre thought, pacing her bedchamber, which was shielded against the bright blazing sunshine of a clear January morning, by heavy velvet drapes, which Deirdre had bade the servant girl not to pull: for the daylight pained her eyes, and caused vexing tears to stream down her cheeks. She despised me as an orphan, and never loved me as a sister, Deirdre continued, her small angry fist of a heart knocking against her ribs, no matter the foolish adoration I felt, in my girlhood ignorance, for her.
So she counseled herself, locked away in a hotel suite, in a city it is purposeless to name, for it carried not a whit of meaning for Deirdre of the Shadows, but was nothing other than a place, tolerable since temporary, for the brazen enactment of her mediumship.
Nay, this heedless young woman not only refused to pity Malvinia’s public shame, or to concern herself with the possibility of Malvinia’s death (as if the shadowy realms of Death were her province solely): she took pride in thus hardening herself against any natural feeling, and wiped the stinging tears harshly from her eyes.
It was to Mr. Zinn that her mute but impassioned plea was directed, tho’ she had resolutely hardened herself against him as well, for all the years she had been away from Bloodsmoor: O Father please hear how my cruel sisters despise me O Father do not turn away do not deny me O hear how Malvinia drew from out her bodice a tiny silver scissors and with it snipped at my breast and pierced my cringing flesh and lifted the skin away and touched my heart my living heart O Father hear how she broke off a piece of my heart and ate it and Ah! this is bitter she spat how bitter! she mocked and jeered. How bitter it is, her heart!—her heart!
And so indeed it was; and continued to be; until the very day of her downfall.
SIXTY-FOUR
It is fitting that Deirdre of the Shadows, in seeking to exorcise a spirit, should find herself, in a manner of speaking, exorcised—so o’ercome at last by malicious Spirit World contention, and by the prolonged strain to her own nervous system, that she fled on foot into a marshy woods, and had to be forcibly rescued, by those of her assistants who had accompanied her to Fishkill, and by those employees of Fairbanks House who had not been earlier frightened away. “Help me! Save me!”—so the hysterical young woman cried; and yet, such was the extremity of her condition, that she sought to beat her captors away, and seemed not to recognize them. “Do not touch me! Oh, help me! Save me!”—thus she raved.
This pathetic episode occurred in the late summer of 1895, at the Fishkill estate of General Darius Fairbanks, known locally as Fairbanks House, a handsome mansard-roofed stone mansion, set atop a majestic knoll o’erlooking the Hudson River—that grandiose and invincible monarch of rivers—and surrounded by great copper beeches of a Palladian hauteur. The princely country estate had been in the Fairbanks family for many generations, since the first settlement of our country, and not even the vicissitudes of the Revolution had divided its fertile acres, which numbered in the thousands. In recent decades, since the retirement of General Fairbanks, and the onset of a protracted and undiagnosable illness in Mrs. Fairbanks, the elderly couple had chosen to live all the year round in their Manhattan dwelling place, leaving Fairbanks House untenanted: and uninhabited, save for a small staff of servants and groundskeepers. (The rich farm- and orchardland was rented out to neighboring farmers, and was said to yield a rich return, save in the very driest of summers.) If you know the Fishkill region, scarcely a two-hour carriage ride from the bustling Fifth Avenue of Manhattan, you know its idyllic beauty, and the aristocratic grace with which its grassy hills rise one above the other; you know the grandeur of the old forests, which hark back, it might seem, to the very beginning of time, before our mere human history had its origin. And if your eye has
chanced to fall upon the imposing Fairbanks House itself (for it is partly visible from the road, tho’ the sloping front lawn is richly cultivated, and aged vines grow thickly upon the wrought-iron fence), you have, perhaps, registered naught but pleased surprise, and unstinting admiration, for so splendid an abode. But know, O Reader, that Fairbanks House yielded, for its tenants, very little save vexation, and a good deal of distress—this regal dwelling place, for all its manly stone, and the strength and weight of its four-square structure, being haunted!
It was not so much the house itself, but the garden to the rear, that gave evidence of contamination by a malicious spirit, tho’ at any time on the estate, and at virtually any spot, according to servants, the spirit might manifest itself—or herself, to be precise, since it was generally believed that the spirit was female. The garden, laid out in a classic Italian style, most pleasing to the eye, consisted of every variety of rosebush, including rose trees, and was dissected by a long rectangular pond, some fifty yards in length, and perhaps two yards in width, but rather deeper, at five or six feet, than the casual observer might believe. Tho’ in recent years, as a consequence of the elder Fairbanks’ marked lack of interest in their property, the rosebushes had been allowed to grow somewhat shabby, and the pond to become choked with water lilies, the garden was still charming, and exerted an eerie, bittersweet spell, upon all who chanced to enter it. An especial pity, then, that this spot had come to be the favorite habitation of the ill-tempered spirit!
According to those servants who had not been driven away over the years, this preternatural creature was rarely visible to the human eye, save occasionally at dusk, when her form assumed, for a brief period, a phosphorescent glimmer—so tremulous and uncertain, as to be naught but mist. The estate’s animals—dogs, cats, and horses in particular—ofttimes demonstrated, by every variety of startl’d response, that they had no difficulty in sensing, or actually seeing, the malevolent interloper: and many were the nights (so the elderly housekeeper told Deirdre) that all were kept awake by the furious and terrified baying of the dogs, which might continue for as long as six or eight hours at a time!