For this girl, or, rather, the materialized spirit of the girl, seated directly across the pond from her, no more than eight feet away, seemed to her distressingly familiar, tho’ clearly a stranger: a stranger, yet a sister: and one whose palely glowering, brooding, petulant countenance could not fail to strike her as sympathetic.
Whereupon an interview ensued, of a strained, awkward nature, during which Deirdre repeated her declaration—that she was a friend, that she meant no harm—innumerable times, as if speaking to a very small child; and in a hoarse reproachful voice the girl replied, enunciating her words with a curious intonation—shy, yet bold, untutor’d, yet genteel and affected.
Deirdre was now hunched forward in her seat, and stared with amazed, and undisguisèd, interest, at this long-dead female adolescent, who told a halting, disjointed, and probably quite false tale, of having been a kitchen maid “cruelly used” by one of the Fairbanks sons, and thereafter shunned by him, until, in desperation, that he might take pity on her, or at least acknowledge her, she scaled the garden wall—and threw herself into the pond—and succeeded in drowning herself, her weakened physical condition, and the great weight of her water-soaked petticoats and skirts, preventing her flailing limbs from saving her.
“A suicide!—ah yes,” Deirdre breathed. “It could not be otherwise.”
Our repugnance for so extreme a sinner, and for so shameless a liar (it being quite questionable, that a scion of the great Fairbanks family should behave in an ungentlemanly fashion, or even consort with a female of the servant class in this wise), should not prevent any natural upsurge of pity; for, indeed, the drowned creature was pitiable, the more so that her face was so pinched, and her pallid complexion so unwholesomely roughened, as if with smallpox scars; and her plaited and banded hair was disheveled, and sluttishly frizzled, giving off an odor, after more than one hundred years, of stagnant damp! Her small, bright, suspicious eyes were set deep in her narrow face, and so shadowed by indentations in the bone, she appeared rather more like a woman of advanced, and ravaged, age, than a mere girl of eighteen or nineteen. Her reedy voice whined and droned, as she recited her tale, to a most unfortunate effect; tho’ she held herself stiffly, observing very poor posture, she could not prevent spasms of near-convulsive shivering from passing over her thin frame. The gray cotton dress she wore, and the torn and soiled apron, would have been quite appropriate for one of her station, had the vain creature not sought to prettify it by a most pathetic and sickly assortment of ill-matched ribbons: all of which, I hardly need say, had become markedly shabby, with the passage of years.
Nonetheless, this sorry personage held Deirdre’s rapt attention, as she recounted her story, the doubtful tale o’erleaping itself, and twisting back, and offering embellishments, and contradictions; and then it was interrupted by a spasm of angry sobbing; and then by a spasm of laughter that greatly resembled sobbing. All of which Deirdre attended to, scarce allowing herself to breathe.
A tale so jumbled and incoherent, and fraught with libel, does not require summary here, in a chronicle determined from its outset to Truth: yet it may be helpful to note that the suicide (who not once, in the course of more than twenty-four babbling hours, was to show proper remorse for her sin) died, by her own spiteful efforts, on a moonlit night in the summer of 1787, so very long ago, our noble General Washington had not yet been elected to the Presidency, and our proud states not yet united, under the Constitution. Alas, that bitterness, and every kind of ill-feeling, and a mean-hearted lack of Christian charity, should pursue so young a woman, into the grave and beyond! And that a shameless disregard for her own failure of chastity should give rise to audacious sentiments, and still more audacious charges, leveled against such illustrious personages as the Fairbanks, those gentlemen who were the trusted associates—nay, the intimate friends—of such Founders of our nation as John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton, and General Schuyler, and Washington himself!
Yet it is foolish indeed, to expect from so gross a sinner, as one who has died by her own hand, in blasphemous defiance of God’s will, any modicum of rational behavior, let alone moral scruples: so the drowned girl raved on, with no sense of her violation of propriety, and very little concern that she exposed herself, with every churlish innuendo, and vulgar accusation. Perhaps it is to her credit, that Deirdre of the Shadows, practic’d in her intercourse with Spirit World, did not once seek to interrupt this stream of foul babble, tho’ hour upon hour passed, with excruciating slowness, by human measurement: perhaps it is a reflection of her waning judgment, and the accelerated frailty of her nerves, the which she had been straining to the limits of endurance, well before consenting to journey to Fishkill.
“A suicide—by drowning—yes—yes of course—it could not be otherwise.” So the fatigued medium murmured, gazing all the while at her scurrilous communicator, whose spectral form, in the ghastly pallor of moonlight, seemed of nearly as much substance as her own: and cast a faint reflection in the turbid pool of water that lay between them.
After a most protracted spell, the drowned girl lapsed into silence, and Deirdre, with the greatest semblance of composure, again repeated her simple words, and went on, to speak of the “Earth Plane” and “Spirit World” and the vastitude of space, in which “deceased souls” were reunited with their loved ones, in a communion too mysterious to elucidate, and too evident to doubt. It was both mistaken, and self-injurious, to refuse to “pass over” into Spirit World, at death: a volitional act that brings with it unforeseen consequences, quite in excess of all anticipation. For, if the homeless (and bodiless) spirit imagines he will exact revenge upon those who have injured him, it is more often the case that revenge so contaminates the aggressor, he becomes blinded to his circumstances, and fails even to notice the ineluctable passage of earthly time—with the remarkable result that his “revenge” falls upon totally innocent persons, as one generation succeeds another. “That there is some small pleasure in the exercise of revenge, for revenge’s pristine sake,” Deirdre said uncertainly, her throat grown hoarse, “I cannot doubt, and would not deny: and yet, I am bound to instruct you, your imagin’d transgressor, or transgressors, has long since ‘passed over,’ and has not dwelt here at Fairbanks House for a very many decades. Indeed, my dear Florette”—for so the affected young baggage had called herself—“indeed, it is the case that those whom you love, as well as those whom you hate, have all passed over into the other plane—and are waiting with great impatience, and infinite compassion, for you to join them.”
This speech, falteringly uttered, yet impeccable in its logic, did not evoke any immediate response in the drowned girl, who, it may be, had for so long been isolated from all human discourse, that she had difficulty in the simple comprehension of commonplace words and diction: but Deirdre tirelessly repeated it, and expanded upon it, pointing out that Christian charity obliges us to forgive our enemies, and to love them, despite the wrongs they have inflicted upon us, and the hardness of their hearts. If one’s cheek is harshly slapped, one must, in imitation of Our Saviour, bravely turn the other cheek: for such is the mystery of the Crucifixion, that it brings about the Resurrection, in the flesh as well as the spirit: and this is a mystery pertaining to all mortals—to all Christian mortals, that is, who embrace Jesus Christ as their Saviour.
So the skillful medium averred, I know not how sincerely, all the while gazing upon the spectral countenance of the sullen Florette, who held herself rigidly as before, and continued to succumb to convulsive spasms of shivering, the which were soon contagious, as Deirdre herself began to shiver, the hour fast approaching midnight, and the nocturnal air markedly cool. That is the face of Death, Deirdre’s thoughts ran, disjointed from her articulated argument, that is the face, the very face, of Self-Death, she mused. Brooding, and morose, and sickly, and spiteful, and characterized by a perverse admixture of angry resignation, and lethargic righteousness: the very image of the child who seeks to punish others, by punishing himself, and cannot compreh
end why his energies bring him no satisfaction, but the more hot tears.
For a very long time Deirdre spoke, and then too lapsed into silence, and the birds of night sang lewdly to one another, and the glaring lantern of a moon made its journey through the star-twinkling sky, and the mood was reminiscent of nothing so much as this passage of that wicked but ah! so greatly gifted Mr. Poe—
Said we, then—the two, then: “Ah, can it
Have been that the woodlandish ghouls—
The pitiful, the merciful ghouls—
To bar up our way and to ban it
From the secret that lies in these wolds—
From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds—
Have drawn up the spectre of a planet
From the limbo of lunary souls—
This sinfully scintillant planet
From the Hell of the planetary souls?”
—words of great mystic import, not comprehensible, perhaps, to those of us of unpoetical bent, yet, withal, fraught with wise counsel, in the dim nether regions of the soul.
Thus the agoniz’d night unfolded, and once again the spirit took up her plea, and droned, and whined, and cast a gaze of ember-hot fury at Deirdre; and Deirdre with infinite patience and compassion repeated her expostulation; and again silence ensued; and again the spirit made remonstrance, that the profligate had savagely “misus’d” her, and “cast her into the dirt, when he had had his fill”; and yet again the valiant medium put forth her advocacy, even as (in Mr. Poe’s awesome words)
—the night was senescent
And star-dials pointed to morn—
As the star-dials hinted of morn—
and the lusty cock crew, to be answered by another, and yet another: and all the world cast off the sickly eclipse of Night, to take up the bright mantle of Day: save Deirdre of the Shadows and Florette, who remained locked in their dispute, which exerted the more power over the human participant, in that her energies were fast fading, and her judgment uncertain, and a terror leapt and frolicked along the precarious pathways of her nerves—that, should she suddenly weaken, her contact spirits, and divers others (she scarce knew who, or what, they might be, having felt them gather behind her, so to speak, all the long night), would rush forward shrieking and gibbering, in total control. Ah, and then—! And then—!
It is hardly my pleasure, to reveal to the reader, at this point, that Deirdre’s premonitions were exactly correct: and that, upon the very moment of what should have been a considerable victory (to be, in fact, considerably rewarded, by young Mr. Fairbanks—the payment made to Deirdre of the Shadows by way of her financial advisor, rather than to the stricken medium directly), these altogether undisciplined—nay, savage—spirits broke loose, of the mysterious bonds which had restrained them for so many years, and so flooded Deirdre’s being that she could not for more than a heroic minute or two withstand them: and quite succumb’d, to that dread loss of sanity, of which I have previously spoken.
ALAS, THE PATHOS of the situation!—the hideous irony!
For, after so very many hours, after so very selfless and courageous an ordeal, Deirdre of the Shadows did indeed convince the kitchen wench to surrender her resistance, and to “pass over” into Spirit World—not, I am sorry to say, as a consequence of her admirable argument for Christian charity, and Christian forgiveness, but rather as a consequence of her patient explanation that the profligate, and all of his family, now dwelt in Spirit World, and were best apprehended there: a happy, and all but unlook’d for, development indeed! So the spirit acquiesced, and hid her pinched face for a long moment in her hands, and appeared to be weeping, indeed, racked with sobs: and Deirdre, tho’ dazed with the long effort, continued to stare with the utmost concentration, and no sign of her internal distress: and, ah! how wondrous! the slatternly Florette enunciated the words, “Yes: I will: I will at last die,” and, lowering her wasted hands, cast upon Deirdre a queer ghastly joyous smile, the which struck deep into the medium’s heart, and brain.
So saying, Florette rose from her bench of sombre stone, and began to dematerialize, as Deirdre continued to stare, and stare, in hapless fascination; and surely it is to the credit of Deirdre of the Shadows, whose hardness of heart has so oft been remarked upon, in these very pages, that, the penitent spirit making a gesture of spontaneous sisterly affection—extending her arms toward Deirdre, across the pond—Deirdre responded at once, with no prudent hesitation: with the consequence, so very confus’d I cannot satisfactorily explain it, that, despite the significant distance that divided them, Florette managed to snatch off Deirdre’s little golden locket, and, grasping it triumphantly in her clenched fist, stole it away with her to Spirit World!
Ah, the unhappy, the wretchèd Deirdre! “Deirdre of the Shadows” that was! Where is your composure now, whence has fled your much-priz’d calm, and control, and icy-cold self-determination?
Deirdre’s initial outcry was one of simple physical pain, for, in snatching off the locket, Florette broke the chain, tugging it hard against Deirdre’s neck. Alas, to be treated thusly, after such patience, and such sacrifice! To lose the belovèd locket that Mrs. Bonner had so long ago given her, as a reminder of the bountifulness of maternal love! It were well that the spirit of Mrs. Bonner had, in recent years, so greatly faded, so that the good-hearted woman might be spared this act of sacrilege: and the witnessing, too, of Deirdre’s sudden collapse: which followed the loss of the locket by not more than five minutes.
Spirit vengeance! Spirit madness! The ravening as of ghouls—wild beasts—greedy—clamorous—the once-gentle Father Darien transform’d into none other than the Raging Captain, hellbent on possession—the once-pretty Bianca shrieking in triumph, and raking furiously with her long nails—Zachariah a lewd horn’d Cupid—the Red Indian screaming out his blood-chilling war whoop, against all the White Race—Mrs. Dodd, too, transform’d into a trumpet-voiced termagant, in the company of an elderly woman who very much resembled Grandmother Sarah Kiddemaster—now greatly changed, and as crazed as the others, in her blood lust!
Thus the unspeakable horror, which the prescient medium had half anticipated, broke upon her: and no mortal effort would have been adequate to save her, as she fled from the garden, crying most piteously for help, her voice shrill and broken, a voice scarcely hers at all: “Oh, help me! Save me! Oh, do not touch me! Save me!”—so loud that all the household was summoned, and those incredulous assistants who had accompanied her to Fishkill: all, I am aggriev’d to say, to no avail.
SIXTY-FIVE
It will be hardly required, I am sure, for this historian of the Zinn family, to speak at any length on the difference between the fates of “Malvinia Morloch” and “Deirdre of the Shadows,” and the courageous equanimity with which their sister Octavia endured her trials.
On the one hand, reader, we have selfish, vain, and deluded creatures; on the other, a gentle Christian heart, greatly strained, it is true, by the tragic losses of her loved ones (ah, within so brief a span of time!—not only Baby Sarah, but agèd Grandfather Kiddemaster; and Mr. Rumford; and, most heartrending of all, Little Godfrey himself), greatly strained, and, doubtless, tempted to despair: yet unyielding to the Serpent, her trust all in her Saviour, that He would give her strength beyond the frailty of the flesh; and dwell always by her side. And, as mistress of old Rumford Hall, no matter her afflictions, and the heaviness of her heart, Octavia had little choice but to busy herself with one hundred tasks daily, great and small: and this too, I am bound to observe, contributed to her forbearance. For as we read in the sacred Book: She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.
THE SORROWS OF the Zinn!
The unspeakable losses!
For, not very many weeks after the shocking defection of Samantha (the which betrayal, the elder Zinns shrank from calling an elopement), it happened that our grand old gentleman, one of the last of an expiring breed, was found dead of a stroke in his study at Kiddemaster Hall
: Former Chief Justice Godfrey Horatio Kiddemaster, discovered by a terrified manservant, on the carpeted floor, his ancestral sword atangle in the skirt of his dressing gown, and his jubilant voice still sounding—from out of one of those recording plates or discs, revolving mechanically on an apparatus known as a “phonograph.” (This apparatus, popularly credited to Mr. Edison, had been ingeniously if casually improved by J.Q.Z. himself, who, tho’ greatly absorbed throughout the Nineties in his research for the United States government, nonetheless found time in his busy day for that “tinkering,” which he so dearly priz’d, and would not abandon for all the riches and acclaim in the world.)
Alas, poor Grandfather Kiddemaster! He passed from this vale of tears but a twelve-month after the demise of his elder brother Vaughan; and some sixteen years after that of his belovèd wife, Sarah: the last of a breed, I daresay, of giants rather than mortal men: the likes of which, this nation shall not again see.
For some weeks prior to his fatal stroke, Grandfather Kiddemaster had been behaving with uncommon secrecy, locking himself away in his study for very many hours at a time, with that contraption his son-in-law had built for him: his evident intention being to record his voice for posterity, his heirs, and as a means of communicating to those “fools” and “knaves” in his own party, who seemed incapable of smashing, for once and forever, the triple perils of socialism, communism, and devilism, which the Democratic Party freely endorsed, out of blindness as much as wickedness. (Grandfather Kiddemaster had suffered a mild stroke in June of 1894, when the Democrats in Congress had vociferously enacted a 2 percent tax on incomes in excess of $4,000; and the fact that the Supreme Court later declared the tax unconstitutional, scarcely cheered him, in his philosophical gloom and pessimism about the future of our nation. Reader, you may well imagine, and doubtless sympathize with, the patriotic old gentleman’s fury at that traitorous upstart William Jennings Bryan, then campaigning for the Presidency, against McKinley! And, yet, his bitter resentment of Mr. Mark Hanna, whose “extortionist” methods within the Republican Party, could not fail to offend the sensibilities of a Kiddemaster.)