SEVENTY-TWO
Great-nieces of the late Miss Edwina Kiddemaster, of Bloodsmoor, Pennsylvania, are URGENTLY REQUESTED to make contact with Mr. Basil Miller, of the law firm of Southerly, Butterfield, Ruggles & Miller, Philadelphia.
Thus the zealous Mr. Miller placed discreet notices in newspapers, and in the better journals; and he refused to stint, in employing the generous resources of the allowance stipulated for him, in traveling about in the late winter of 1899, oft with a small staff, to make inquiries after the possible whereabouts of the sisters, in numerous cities along the Eastern seaboard. “If they live—and I am determined they do live, each of them!—I shall locate them,” he averred, “and bring them back to Bloodsmoor.”
Yet many days passed; and weeks. And no word was received.
“It is hopeless,” Mrs. Zinn declared flatly, “not even the prospect of money can tempt them: that being, I am afraid, one aspect of the deformity of their characters, which led them astray in the first place.”
“I cannot grant that,” Mr. Miller said. “Not money but curiosity: that shall tempt them.”
The reader will be pleased, I hope, to learn that Mr. Miller was to be prov’d the more nearly correct, in this exchange: and that, after many weeks, and innumerable false leads and disappointments, he did succeed in discovering three of the renegade sisters—and his office was contacted, by telephone, by one “Philippe Fox,” who designated himself as an agent “empowered to represent the legal and financial interests of Miss Constance Philippa Zinn.”
And so, whether it was money, or curiosity, or repentance; or an unlook’d-for recrudescence of familial love and duty, in bosoms long thought hardened, I cannot say: nor, perhaps, could the principals themselves have lucidly stated their motives. Nonetheless they did agree, in turn, after a great deal of argument on Mr. Miller’s side, in which he appealed to them as a cousin, and then as an attorney, and then, most convincingly, as a man of the world, to meet at a strictly appointed time, in the Golden Oak room of Kiddemaster Hall, there to be witnesses to the breaking of the seal of their great-aunt’s will, and to the reading of the will, and any other relevant documents on hand. “You will not regret this incursion upon your privacy,” Mr. Miller told the sisters, with whom he had personal contact, “not that I promise material reward: for I cannot. But, I think, you will not regret returning to Bloodsmoor, for some very interesting revelations our aunt chooses to make, from out the grave.”
Malvinia and Samantha concurred; but Deirdre, tho’ modest and docile in every other respect, could not resist saying: “ ‘Our’ aunt, Mr. Miller? I think you are confus’d, in the excitement of the moment: and have forgotten that I am not a Zinn by blood, but only by law.”
Mr. Miller gravely bowed. And added: “I would not, if I were you, Miss Zinn, too earnestly scorn the law!”
AND SO IT transpired—and I cannot but choose to think it emblematic—that, on the third day of Easter Week, of 1899 (this being in late April, a most mellifluous season in our fragrant Bloodsmoor), the four “lost” sisters did meet with the fifth, and all five, in the presence of their parents, were witness to the ceremonial breaking of the seal of Miss Edwina Kiddemaster’s Last Will and Testament.
An historic meeting, fraught with so many startl’d glances, and sudden tears, and fierce embraces, and surprises of both a small and monumental scope, as to render me near-powerless, in attempting the task of faithfully transcribing it!—yet I must proceed, as fastidiously as possible, with the authorial hope that the larger, and distasteful, revelations to come, will not despoil for the reader, some of the small pleasures the scene affords.
Firstly, the handsome setting: the Golden Oak room of Kiddemaster Hall, the which, I believe, you have not yet seen, for it was employed primarily, in the old days, as a meeting room for gentlemen—politicians, military men, business associates of the Kiddemasters, and others, mainly of the Whig persuasion, tho’, I believe, some conservative Democrats did secretly join them from time to time, in the hope of steering our Ship of State through troubl’d waters. This room was paneled in the most exquisite golden oak, with a stenciled ceiling in which motifs from Paradise Lost were beauteously delineated, in rainbow hues; and three ponderous chandeliers, in which gold, brass, and crystal formed an agreeable harmony, and tall tapering white candles lent a distinct air of nobility. Ah, and the sun-warm’d spectacle of the stained-glass windows, in which motifs from Shakespeare’s great tragedies were depicted!—these windows, from the workshop of Mr. Baines, of Philadelphia, being employed as frames for the windows of clear glass, which looked out upon one of the pastoral slopes, which dipped gently away to the Bloodsmoor River, sparkling and glinting in the sun, like a serpent so imbued with health, all his scales wink!
That the atmosphere might suggest itself as less formal, with the hope that any strain and anxiety the principals, and their parents, might feel, would be ameliorated, the thoughtful young Mr. Miller had commanded the servants to take out certain heavy items of furniture, including a massive table, wrought of solid mahogany, about which as many as fifty gentlemen had comfortably seated themselves: and to bring into the room, and judiciously arrange, a number of cushioned chairs, and small tables, and étagères, and even a few trinket boxes, and other aesthetic objects, so as to induce a feeling of elegance and calm, the which would make, I am bound to say, certain lurid revelations to come, strike an altogether nightmarish and unreal note.
At the appointed hour, Mr. and Mrs. Zinn, and Octavia, and the gentleman whom Octavia had seen fit to retain as her legal advisor, Mr. Sean McInnes, had already seated themselves, with some uneasiness, to await in silence, and, no doubt, great apprehension, the others: scarce knowing, of course, whether these renegade others would fulfill their promise, and appear. (All the family rejoiced in Octavia’s good fortune, in that an attorney of such caliber, and possessing so gentlemanly, and warm, and patient a character, should step forward, and, for no fee, agree to defend the widowed and many-times-bereft Mrs. Rumford, from certain libelous charges made against her, by the grown children of her late husband: in that Mr. Rumford’s impulsive will, giving over all his property, possessions, and cash investments, to the boy Godfrey, was unjust, and must be broken: with the look’d-for result that, Mrs. Rumford having inherited from her son, she would then be penniless!—and cast out from Rumford Hall, with naught but her two-year-old son Lucius Quincy to accompany her. It had been, for many months, the courteous task, on the part of Mr. McInnes, to both console the aggrieved widow, and advise her, as to the most pragmatic legal maneuvers—all the more so in that, of late, Mr. Rumford’s investments in certain agricultural interests had begun to yield a healthful return, with the advent of the new Christianized rule in Hawaii, and the stabilization of the sugar beet crop.)
“I cannot think—I cannot dare hope!—that, within the hour, I will embrace my belovèd sisters once again!” So the tremulous Octavia warmly exclaimed, despite the gravity of the setting, and the taciturn countenances of her parents, who were seated beside her.
Mr. and Mrs. Zinn remained silent, each with lowered gaze: whereby, to alleviate the tension, Mr. Basil Miller allowed that the prospect was past mere hoping, and was in fact a certainty; and Mr. McInnes concurred.
Yet the elder Zinns sat in brooding silence, Mrs. Zinn with drear pouched eyes, and a nervous twitch in her cheek, and a resigned and melancholy smile, of that resolute “social” cast, that had been taught to her—ah, how many decades ago!—by her mother; and Mr. Zinn, tho’ attired in his best suit, his long patriarch’s beard newly trimm’d, with that brooding, shadow’d, nervous, and, I am saddened to say, unwholesome look, that anticipated the infirmity to come. (Alas, the paradoxes and riddles of our earthly sphere! For tho’ J.Q.Z. now enjoyed some measure of success, and was, indeed, seized many times a day by euphoric eruptions of triumph, and glee, and boyish gloating, in that his newest experiments, with “detonation at a distance,” and “nightscopes” for rifles, and “robot
soldiers,” and other ingenious inventions, of which I know too little to speak, were being greeted with cautious enthusiasm by manufacturers, nonetheless he was, for the most part, more distracted, and anxious, and peev’d, than anyone could recall. That this disconsolate air had much to do with his daughters’ behavior, I cannot doubt, for, most of all, he bitterly grieved the loss of Samantha, and had some reason to think that, in a supreme act of betrayal, she and the villainous apprentice Nahum had sold certain of his most priz’d secrets to Mr. Edison! Yet the sallow and sickly cast of his complexion also prefigured this great man’s final illness, which, even in the resplendent sun-graced warmth of the Golden Oak room, upon this idyllic April morn, had set its teeth cruelly into its victim—and was not to surrender its hold.)
Upon the last stroke of the clock, signaling eleven, the old butler entered, in his liveried costume, to announce in solemn tones that “Miss Malvinia Zinn has arrived.”
Reader, you may well envision the scene: the shock’d alarm of the elder Zinns, at once suppressed; the gladsome, and irrepressible, joy of Mrs. Rumford—who, behaving in all defiance of the protocol of the scene, and very much against the note set by her heavy-skirted widow’s raiment, and the penitential nature of her black satin bonnet, could not prevent herself from leaping to her feet, and hurrying to the door, that she might, in tears and stifl’d exclamations, and great confusion, fold Malvinia into an embrace—the which that criminal sister may have resisted, for some scant seconds, before, dissolv’d in tears herself, she surrendered: and a scene of such sisterly rejoicing, and lavish weeping, and fulsome ejaculations, ensued, as to make it near-impossible for me to continue in this wise, at the present moment—my eyes brimming with salt-tears, and my heart fairly hammering, as Octavia’s and Malvinia’s hearts hammered, in that heavenly embrace!
Ah, that Malvinia should appear, after so many years, and such mortification!—after her family had oft wished her dead, as, doubtless, the fallen woman must have wished herself dead, and freed of her earthly wretchedness!
That she should have summoned forth the strength, and, I do not hesitate to say, the courage: which all but deserted her, in those first confus’d minutes, when, extricating herself from her sobbing sister’s arms, she advanced with dutiful courtesy to her parents, to greet them in subdued tones, and to be similarly greeted by them, wisely offering no hand for either to grasp, and taking no apparent note, it would seem, of Mr. Zinn’s rigidity of demeanor, in that he did not rise to his feet.
Thus Malvinia: much alter’d since we have seen her last, her silver-threaded hair now fashioned into a graceful and modest chignon, the sides affixed in sweeping wings, to cover her ears; the old stealth of her eyes now calmed, or, it may be, hidden, by the tulle veil that drooped from the brim of her traveling hat, and by a solemn, and chasten’d, cast to her pale face. Tho’ past the rosy flush of youth, Malvinia remained a most attractive woman still, pleasingly soft-spoken, and conservative of attire (in a traveling cloak of gray-lavender, lined with gray raw silk, and a matching dress of wool-and-silk, many-skirted, but without a bustle, and very plainly trimmed); and agreeably undramatic in her gestures, and employment of her corporeal being. It is not a cruel observation, to say that one might candidly guess her age to be thirty-eight: but one could not guess, I am pleased to say, the Malvinia Morloch of old, with her extravagant beauteousness, and her childish, and captivating, ways!
Whilst Malvinia seats herself, succumbing yet again to another embrace from Octavia, and scarcely repressing (by a visible effort of her will) a fresh fit of tears; whilst she declines, in a somewhat shaken, but resolute, voice, the toneless offer of Mrs. Zinn, that she “accept some refreshment, if only a chilled glass of water, after your long journey,” I shall take the opportunity to explain, with necessary brevity, the circumstances of Malvinia’s life since that pathetic night, at the Fanshawe Theatre; and the fortuitous steps that led her cousin Basil to her.
FORTUITOUS, INDEED!—for, you will grant, the circumstances that resulted in Basil’s discovery of Malvinia, as “Miss Malvinia Quincy,” spinster instructress of Elocution, Music & the Thespian Arts, at the St. Veronica Academy for Young Episcopal Ladies, in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, would challenge those invented by such masters of the novelistic craft as Mr. Dickens or Mrs. Southworth—and would be, perhaps, distasteful in a work of fictional fancy, for the strain placed upon normal credulity. Such uncanny circumstances in real life, however, strike us as wondrously pleasing—proof, if proof be required, to fling in the teeth of the Darwinists, that Our Heavenly Father dwells in our midst, as both progenitor and guide, and that His earthly creation is naught but harmony, if properly observed.
Consider: Was it happenstance, or Fate, that led a travel-weary Basil Miller to the Knickerbocker Club of Manhattan, upon a night of pitiless sleet and wind; was it happenstance, or Fate, that led him to seat himself in one of the massive leather chairs in the smokers’ lounge, and, drawing out his pipe, sigh with such amused resignation, that he attracted the sympathetic attention of a gentleman seated nearby?
A casual greeting ensued, an exchange of names, and a handshake, and some ejaculative commentary on the weather, and on the general topics of the city of New York, and the nation itself, both of which seemed, to the friendly stranger, “greatly fallen from past grandeur, and well on the way to Decadence: the new century being no herald, it is feared, of rebirth.”
Mr. Miller heartily concurred: for his native city of Philadelphia had fallen even more sharply from what it had been, before the War; and it was unspeakable, how the vulgarians and bullies had seized control of the Republican Party: there being little hope for improvement, with the noisome “Teddy” Roosevelt rough-riding over his betters, and drowning out all opposition with his pip-squeak’s voice.
Each being alone for the evening, the gentlemen decided, most reasonably, to dine together: whereupon, during the leisurely course of an excellent meal of salmon, canvasback duck, and roast beef, Basil Miller saw fit to reveal that he was in search—“perhaps futilely”—of four female cousins of his, amongst them the former actress Malvinia Morloch: her real name being Malvinia Zinn.
Remarkable to see, how his companion reacted!—expressing some shock, and, after a moment’s troubled silence, haltingly inquiring of the details of the search, the which Basil offered him, stressing rather the legalistic nature of the problem, than the personal. During these minutes Basil closely observed the gentleman, and bethought himself, did he not find those features somewhat familiar?—round-rimmed glasses giving to the man’s eyes a scholarly cast; and the long slender nose, not without a hint of nobility of blood. He was perhaps in his mid-fifties, and of moderate height, rather bald, yet, withal, a fringe of curly graying hair low upon his skull gave him a most appealing, and even boyish, appearance. When Basil finished he spoke quietly, and modestly—but you can imagine Basil’s surprise, when he averred that “perhaps he might aid in the search for Miss Malvinia Zinn: having, by a coincidence too wondrous to be explored, a missive on his person, from that selfsame young lady.”
And so it was, against what odds, I cannot fathom: for this soft-spoken gentleman was none other than Malcolm Kennicott!—whom we had last known as a young, and sadly immature, clergyman, assisting the Reverend Hewett at the Trinity Church in Bloodsmoor. It had been Malvinia’s self-absorbed fancy, that young Mr. Kennicott had done away with himself, for her: but such was not the case, and I am even uncertain as to whether, in his protracted melancholy (which led him to precipitantly resign from his church, and to remove himself to the Old World, there to study classical languages and literature, and toil at his epic poem), he even made any serious attempt to do so: the sin of suicide being the most grievous of all sins, and the most harshly punished by Our Lord.
In introducing himself to Basil Miller, Mr. Kennicott had but murmured his own name, for, the recent public success of The Vision of Columbus: An Epical Hymn in Three Parts, having made the shy gentleman abash’d, he did not wis
h to call Mr. Miller’s attention to himself, and to deflect from the normal course of the conversation. (In any case, it was not altogether certain that Basil would have recalled the name “Kennicott”—for he had heard but snippets of the sorry tale, laughingly recounted by Malvinia, some years after the unfortunate clergyman had banished himself from Bloodsmoor. And how very puzzling a tale it was, that a young gentleman of good family, ordained in the Episcopal Church, should fall in love with an eight-year-old child!) But these were the circumstances: after much delay, and many disappointments, the six-hundred-page epic had at last been published, by the relatively small firm of Rogers & Sons, of New York City, only to be heralded in the press, as a classic, which exposed in “deathless rhymes” the savage and bellicose nature of the Spanish soul (this being a time in our history, the reader should recall, when the sensationalist newspapers raged and foamed daily against Spain, urging war, that American “honor” and “commercial interests” might be upheld, in the Caribbean and elsewhere). And so it had come about, to no one’s astonishment more than Malcolm Kennicott’s, that his tripartite poem, long dreamt-of in the claustral sanctuary of his imagination, and grown most intricate, and most difficult, with the passage of years, was not only sprung into the public domain, with considerable notice, but had gone through some fifteen editions in a scant twelve-month!—which popular success, tho’ having the agreeable effect of bringing the poet monetary reward, and the offer of a distinguished chair from his own college (for Mr. Kennicott was Professor of Classic Languages and Literature at Columbia), had as well the troubling effect, of making him decidedly self-conscious in society, and embarrassed, before his literary and academic peers, whose praise and congratulations he found most difficult to accept.
All this is of course worthy of notice: but it is more crucial for our narrative, that, with the publication of The Vision of Columbus, Mr. Kennicott came into such renown, as to capture the attention of the exil’d “Malvinia Morloch,” then in disguise, in a small town in New Jersey, as “Malvinia Quincy,” an academic spinster, habituated to solitude, and attired, for the most part, in plain, shapeless, and decidedly unfashionable clothes. How Malvinia had lifted herself from the ignominious depths to which she had fallen—how she had rescued some small particle of self-respect, and of mental sanity, from the chaos of her life (for the last we have glimpsed of her, she was fleeing in graceless terror from the stage of the Fanshawe Theatre!) is an exemplary tale in itself, involving much hardship, and prayer, and Christian humility, over a passage of years: not all of which, I must admit, was to be revealed, upon her reconciliation with her family, and the rekindling of that courtship—so shrouded in the mists of distant romance, in 1867 or ’68, it was scarce recalled by the participants!—betwixt herself, and the faithful Malcolm Kennicott.